Smoke Screen

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘We should find out about that sometime in the next few hours as well. Some of the components have been secured and brought in, and we have divers in the harbour as we speak, searching for more remains from the bomb, seeing as the bin was located so close to the water.’

  Rafto glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll be meeting the justice minister for a briefing in half an hour,’ he said, looking around the table. ‘Does anyone have anything else?’

  The head of the Undercover Police Unit spoke up.

  ‘We’ve been tracking an escalating gang conflict,’ he said. ‘We know that the Balkan Brothers were at a bar just up the road, about three hundred metres from the site of the explosion—’

  ‘Details,’ Rafto cut him off. ‘Chase that up with the relevant departments.’

  He began collecting his papers. ‘The investigation will be conducted from our premises in Nydalen, but everyone will be assigned important tasks. I ask that the unit heads remain. Everyone else can go.’

  Chairs scraped against the floor as people stood up. Blix caught up with Fosse.

  ‘One of the injured, one of the most seriously injured, has been identified,’ he said.

  ‘File a report,’ Fosse replied.

  ‘It’s Ruth-Kristine Smeplass,’ Blix continued. Fosse slowed his pace momentarily. ‘Patricia’s mother,’ Blix clarified.

  ‘Some people just can’t catch a break,’ Fosse sighed. ‘Will she survive?’

  ‘It’s too early to say,’ Blix answered. ‘But it might be worth looking into a bit more.’

  They had reached the top of the stairs.

  ‘How so?’ Fosse asked. ‘You think the bomb could have something to do with Patricia?’

  Blix struggled to justify the suggestion, but that was how he worked – always starting with whatever stood out most, following any random angles and irregularities in a case.

  ‘The bomb was not positioned to inflict maximum damage,’ he said.

  Kovic had appeared at his side.

  ‘It wasn’t intended to harm anyone other than those in the immediate vicinity,’ she added. ‘Most of the pressure wave was sent out into the fjord. The bomb would have caused far more damage if it had been located anywhere else on the square, or along one of the streets closer to the centre, like on Karl Johans gate, for example.’

  Fosse scoffed. ‘It did more than enough damage,’ he retorted. ‘We should be thrilled that more people weren’t killed.’

  ‘It may have been a targeted attack,’ Blix pointed out.

  ‘And who would be the target?’ Fosse asked. ‘Ruth-Kristine Smeplass? The last I heard, she was nothing more than a haggard drug addict. Neither she nor any of the casualties were people of importance.’

  Blix felt a wave of anger wash over him.

  ‘They were important to someone,’ he said.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Fosse replied. ‘They were innocent bystanders. That’s what terrorism thrives on. Inciting fear.’

  ‘One of the casualties was a Danish journalist,’ Blix said. ‘Kasper Bjerringbo.’

  They had made their way into the corridor on the sixth floor. Fosse glanced up at the meeting room directly above them, where there had been no mention of a dead journalist.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asked.

  ‘He was Emma Ramm’s boyfriend,’ Blix explained. ‘They were both there.’

  Gard Fosse’s lips tightened. He disapproved of the close relationship Blix had with the young journalist. Fosse had been working with Blix that day, on the patrol nineteen years ago that had ended with Emma’s father, armed with a gun, barricading himself and his family in their home. While Blix had decided to go in, Fosse had stayed outside, waiting for back-up.

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t change anything. He was an innocent bystander.’

  Blix wasn’t ready to let it go. ‘I think we should look into it,’ he repeated.

  ‘Look into what?’

  ‘The possibility that this could be something other than a terrorist attack.’

  Fosse stopped again and looked directly at Blix, shifting his gaze to Kovic and then back.

  ‘Our department will be handling the incoming tip-offs,’ Fosse said. ‘You’re a part of something bigger this time, Blix. You can’t just do what you want, following your own initiative. You will have to play as part of a team and do as you’re told, for once.’

  Blix waited until Fosse had disappeared into his office, then turned to Kovic: ‘I’m going down to the archives.’

  He pressed the button next to the lift doors.

  ‘What are you going down there for?’

  ‘To get the files for the Patricia case.’

  6

  As the lift made its way down to the basement, Blix leant back and thought about the first few weeks and months that had followed Patricia’s disappearance. The intense search, the close connection he had formed with the girl’s father. His despair, which had quickly become Blix’s own. It had been so easy to imagine that something similar could have happened to Iselin, his own daughter.

  The lift juddered as it came to a stop on the bottom floor. He rarely visited the archives, but it was a well-organised system that stored every single one of their cases chronologically, regardless of whether it had been solved or shelved. The case files for the investigation into Patricia’s disappearance consisted of nine separate ring binders, all stacked inside a cardboard box. A cloud of dust swept into the air as he lowered it from the shelf.

  He found Kovic waiting for him when he arrived back upstairs, eating a cold tortilla wrap.

  ‘It’s going to be a long night if you’re expecting us to get through all that,’ she commented, swallowing.

  Blix put the box down on the desk between them.

  ‘It’s mainly dead ends,’ he said. ‘A lot of documentation from an investigation that led nowhere.’

  Kovic wiped her mouth with a napkin. ‘Can you give me a quick run through of the main details?’

  The open-plan office was packed with police officers and other investigators. It was much louder than they were used to. With a lot more people than usual, too.

  Blix lifted the main folder out of the box, sat down and took a deep breath, unsure where to begin.

  ‘Patricia was kidnapped on the eleventh of August, 2009,’ he started, removing the band from around the folder. ‘Her au pair was assaulted on her way home, after picking Patricia up at the nursery in Tangenten. She was beaten and pushed into one of the bushes in Bjølsen Park, and the perpetrator disappeared with the pushchair. The au pair couldn’t remember anything about the attack. No description, other than the fact the perpetrator was wearing dark clothes.’

  Blix put the folder down and took out the first few pages.

  ‘Patricia’s father, Christer Storm Isaksen, had full custody of the child at the time. Ruth-Kristine was one of our first suspects, seeing as she and Christer had fought so vehemently over who would get custody of Patricia. A lot of people thought she had been involved.’

  ‘So what was the reason Ruth-Kristine didn’t have custody of her own daughter?’ Kovic asked. ‘It must have been serious, if the father was granted full custody.’

  ‘Mental-health issues,’ Blix explained. ‘A long history of psychoses, personality disorders, hospital admissions, rebellious behaviour and self-harming. She was also an addict and was deemed a potential danger to the child, so she was only allowed limited visitor rights.’

  ‘But she wasn’t involved in the kidnapping?’

  Blix rubbed his hands over his face. His cheeks were warm. He would probably end up catching a cold after his dip in the harbour.

  ‘She had an alibi,’ he said eventually. ‘There was nothing to suggest that she had anything to do with it. That was until Patricia’s father met with a man named Knut Ivar Skage about two years later, in the car park that leads into the forest at Solemskogen.’

  ‘I remember that,’ Kovic said, eagerly. ‘Skage was murd
ered, wasn’t he? Patricia’s father killed him?’

  ‘Correct,’ Blix nodded. ‘He was after the reward that Isaksen had promised for any information that might help him find Patricia. According to Isaksen, Skage admitted that he had seen his daughter after the kidnapping, and that the person behind it was a woman who Christer knew well.’

  ‘Ruth-Kristine,’ Kovic concluded.

  Blix nodded. ‘That’s how Isaksen interpreted it anyway. As did we.’

  ‘But why would he kill the man who could give him all the answers?’

  ‘When they met, Isaksen asked for some sort of reassurance, to make sure Skage actually had reliable information. Skage told him that Patricia had a birthmark on the top of her thigh, just inside the groin. Isaksen presumed the worst. He thought his daughter had been abused.’

  Kovic bit her lip thoughtfully.

  ‘But that was unlikely,’ Blix continued. ‘The last thing Skage said before he died was that all he had done was change Patricia’s nappies. He hadn’t been involved in the kidnapping itself. He had just been contacted afterwards because the kidnapper didn’t know how to look after a baby.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Kovic moaned.

  ‘Tragic. And even more so as Knut Ivar Skage was already a dying man.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He ran a garage in Kalbakken, his own car repair workshop, so he’d been inhaling all sorts of solvents for years. He was riddled with cancer. The doctors had given him a few months to live.’

  Kovic looked at what was left of her tortilla wrap and, with a grimace, chucked it in the bin.

  ‘So, he really did just want to tell Isaksen what he knew before he died?’ she asked, wiping her hands clean with the napkin.

  ‘And probably to cash in on the reward, to leave some money for his wife and children,’ Blix nodded. ‘He couldn’t carry on working, being that ill, and they were struggling, financially. It was discovered that he hadn’t been paying his taxes from the business either, so was basically left with no income.’

  ‘Did he have a criminal record?’

  ‘Nothing much. One or two cases about his lack of bookkeeping, and one report of fraud relating to a car sale,’ Blix explained. ‘When we went through the garage after he died, we found spare parts from various stolen cars. It was probably how he managed to stay afloat. Bought cars that had been written off and then repaired them with parts from stolen cars, before reselling them.’

  ‘Did he have any connection to Ruth-Kristine?’

  Blix shook his head.

  ‘Where was she when her daughter was kidnapped then? You said she had an alibi.’

  ‘She was with a friend – her neighbour. They were out shopping that day. And there were CCTV recordings and card receipts to prove it.’

  ‘Wasn’t it a man who had kidnapped Patricia, anyway?’

  ‘All the evidence we had seemed to point to that,’ Blix confirmed. ‘And after Christer told us about what Knut Ivar Skage had said, we began the search for a man in Ruth-Kristine’s social circle who had no children of his own.’

  ‘Because of the thing with the nappies?’

  Blix nodded again. ‘We found a few who fit the criteria, but they checked out.’

  ‘Could the au pair have had something to do with it?’ Kovic queried.

  ‘Carmen Velacruz,’ Blix said, trying to pronounce the Spanish name correctly. ‘We didn’t find anything to indicate that was the case either. No motive. Besides, the attack was quite brutal. The hit she took to the head that day could easily have been fatal.’

  ‘Have you kept surveillance on her since?’ Kovic asked.

  ‘We’ve checked up on her now and then,’ Blix said. ‘She’s back in Spain now. I’ve looked into her movements occasionally, just to see if she’s had any contact with a child who might match Patricia’s age – if she’s still alive that is.’

  ‘And she hasn’t?’

  Blix shook his head. ‘There is also a limit on the amount of resources I can request from our colleagues in Madrid.’

  ‘What sentence did Isaksen get?’

  ‘Twelve years. He’s still in prison.’

  Blix could tell that she was thinking about something, and sent her an inquisitive look.

  ‘It’s nothing. I was just thinking that, if Ruth-Kristine did actually have something to do with the kidnapping, there couldn’t be anyone else who has a greater motive to kill her than Isaksen. But, if he spent New Year’s Eve in a cell, then…’

  She turned to her computer and opened up the criminal-records database, the directory where all prison violations and requests for furlough were registered.

  ‘I don’t think he’s ever applied for furlough,’ Blix said as he watched her type in his personal details.

  Kovic nodded and squinted at the screen.

  ‘He hasn’t left Oslo Prison since the trial,’ she said. ‘Except for when his mother died.’

  Blix could hear the lingering suspicion in her voice.

  ‘He could have asked someone else to do it for him,’ she suggested. ‘He could’ve met someone in prison, someone with explosives expertise – or who has a connection to someone who has. Foreign criminals, maybe. What do I know? People who are willing to do that kind of thing for money.’

  ‘Christer has practically isolated himself while he’s been in prison,’ Blix said. ‘He barely interacts with the other inmates.’

  ‘Still,’ Kovic pressed. ‘We should check it out.’

  Blix stood up and started to gather together the papers that were now spread across the desk. He put them back in the box with the rest of the files for the Patricia case, suddenly feeling lethargic and drowsy.

  ‘We’ll approach this one thing at a time,’ he said. ‘First of all, I suggest we get a few hours’ sleep.’

  7

  With trembling hands, Emma unlocked the door to her flat on Falbes gate and stepped inside. She found herself immediately looking down at a pair of Kasper’s trainers, one shoe left haphazardly on top of the other, next to her neatly positioned winter boots.

  The door closed behind her. She shut her eyes and stood there for a few seconds. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion.

  Emma drew in a short gasp and blinked a few times. It would have been at this very moment that he’d have walked down the hall to greet her, open arms and a wide smile. She would have taken in his unruly curls, his glasses, the white shirt that he had probably untucked, maybe even undone a few of the buttons, now that he was home, now that the evening, the party, was over. She would have noticed his chest hairs, just peeking out. His stomach, the slight hint of his defined muscles beneath his shirt. Emma had always been most attracted to men when they weren’t completely undressed, when she could still imagine what the rest of their body looked like underneath. For some reason, she also liked Kasper most when he was a little bit tired and surly, as he might have been now, at half past four in the morning.

  She would have welcomed his embrace, kissed him. His lips might have been dry. They might have tasted a little like stale alcohol. A cigar, maybe, too. He would have pulled her in close, and they would have stood there in the hallway, silently holding each other. She would have whispered an apology into his ear, having left Irene’s New Year’s dinner without him. She would have explained why she had felt it necessary to have been down at the square, at that exact time. And he, as she knew he would, would have said that it was fine, that it didn’t matter, that the most important thing was that she had come home to him in one piece.

  Emma pulled her wellies off, threw both pairs of woollen socks aside. Her feet were clammy. She made her way slowly into the flat. His suitcase was pushed up against the wall outside her bedroom, wide open. She stopped in front of it and stared at his clothes. She squatted down and lay a hand on one of the white T-shirts he had been wearing a few days ago. She took it out, held it up to her face. It wouldn’t have mattered whether she had been there or not. She couldn’t have prevented the explosio
n. People would have died anyway. But Kasper would not have been one of them.

  Emma got up and walked into the kitchen. A bread knife had been left out. Three glasses on the table. A plate. She loaded everything into the dishwasher and closed it. She pulled her phone out of her pocket. Anita had called three times, Blix five. Irene had sent her a text. It dawned on Emma that she had not yet read her sister’s reply after she had sent her a message earlier, assuring her that she was fine.

  She opened it.

  I’m so glad to hear that. God, how awful! Have you found Kasper? Is he okay? He changed his mind and went after you. Said he wanted to surprise you.

  Emma closed the message. She tilted her head back and took a deep breath, and felt her lips begin to tremble.

  8

  Blix woke with a start. The feeling that he was late for something made him sit bolt upright, before he realised what day it was and what had happened the previous night.

  He had only managed to get a few hours’ sleep, but he rubbed his eyes anyway and picked up his phone from the bedside table. There had been no new internal police bulletins since he had gone to bed, sometime around five o’clock that morning. He hadn’t received any breaking news notifications from the newspapers either, no new developments. A swift sweep of the largest online publications showed Norway’s media waking up to a rare, disoriented frenzy. The fear of another terror attack reigned.

  Blix loaded the news.no website. They had posted full coverage of the incident too. None of the articles had been written by Emma.

  Blix’s thoughts had frequently drifted back to Emma the previous night. He knew she was strong and resilient, and was always determined to not let anything or anyone control her life. He had occasionally wondered whether it was all just a façade, if she was still that scared young girl he first met. He had a feeling that if her defences did start to crumble, then the entire fortress would collapse.

  In any case, he would try to help her as best he could. How he would actually go about that, he did not know. There was a limit to how much he could do. He hoped she would call back sometime this morning at least.