Smoke Screen

by Jorn Lier Horst

  It was a tactical move. The latest death would make the headlines, instead of their blunder regarding the woman’s identity.

  She opened her laptop and went into the news.no website, looking to see how Wollan had reacted. His article was posted one minute ago. He had only had about an hour to gather enough information about the correct victim. He had been sending her details as he found them.

  Nina Ballangrud had been a promising member of the Bækkelaget handball team, but a serious injury had ruined her chances of a career. He hadn’t included the fact that her use of painkillers had eventually led to her drug addiction. Nor that she had grown up in a house of alcoholics, or that she had been abused by her father. He had, however, given plenty of attention to the opinions of a former police investigator who criticised the current investigation and disapproved of Gard Fosse’s handling of the entire situation.

  She took a bite of the sandwich. The article with Isaksen’s interview would have to be postponed even longer. The rewriting of the article about Patricia’s disappearance and now that of Ruth-Kristine was quite a lot more complicated than she had anticipated when she suggested to Anita that she could just edit it. Instead of tying it to the bomb on New Year’s Eve, she would have to write it as a missing-persons case, angling it around the fact that she was the victim of the police’s misidentification, and that the search for her had therefore begun more than two days late. Still, there was something missing. She needed something personal.

  Emma had tried calling both of Ruth-Kristine’s parents, but neither was picking up. She could go via Blix to see if he knew where they were, but was reluctant to ask him. She could also try the sister again. There was something strange about the way she had behaved and how reluctant she’d been to talk when Emma had called in on her on New Year’s Day. Maybe she saw things differently now.

  A young couple sat down at the next table. Emma packed her things and left the coffee where it was, but took the rest of the sandwich with her out to the rental car. As she wasn’t used to driving through the city centre, she typed Britt Smeplass’s address into the sat nav, and concentrated as she followed the directions, gradually recognising her surroundings. With only slight difficulty, she managed to manoeuvre the car into a tight space on Aschehougs vei, just a stone’s throw away from where Britt Smeplass lived.

  The curtains were still drawn. None of the lights were on. She made her way to the front door anyway. There was a biting chill in the air, and a wind that made Emma’s cheeks tense up almost immediately. The last time she was here, the dog had warned its owner of her presence long before she had even had the chance to ring the doorbell. This time, there was no reaction from the four-legged inquisitor, not even after Emma rang the doorbell. She tried knocking, but couldn’t hear any movement inside.

  A car drove by. Emma waited a moment before walking over to the post box. There were a few promotion leaflets from the usual furniture chains. Two recently tied bin bags were stuffed into the wheelie bin. Emma stood there for a few seconds, thinking about what to do. She didn’t want to leave, so she walked around to the back of the house. Dead leaves from the autumn had frozen into some of the patches of ice around the garden. Traces of paw prints and some piles of old faeces were dotted about here and there. She tread carefully up to the porch and walked right up to the window, cupping her hands around her face to see inside. Emma half expected to see a body on the floor in the dark, naked, lifeless, but she tried to shake those thoughts away. She knocked on the window, to no avail. Britt Smeplass wasn’t home.

  Emma got back in the car. It was starting to get dark. She was met with the sight of her own face in the rear-view mirror. She looked exhausted. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours last night, after the accident and the questioning that had followed at the police station in Tønsberg.

  She turned on the ignition. The headlights reflected off someone wearing a high-vis vest. A woman walking her dog. Emma pulled out and drove around them, looking back in the mirror as she passed. It looked like Britt Smeplass’s dog. Eddy, wasn’t that its name?

  Emma drove for about a hundred metres before she decided to turn back. She slowed down and rolled past the woman with the dog again. The dog turned its head towards the car. It had a large white blotch around one eye, just like Eddy, but she didn’t recognise the woman. She was small and stocky.

  Emma pulled over, jumped out with the engine still running and crossed the street.

  ‘Hi!’ she said. ‘Excuse me.’

  The dog barked.

  ‘Is that Eddy?’ Emma asked, pointing at the dog.

  ‘Yes,’ the woman replied suspiciously. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘No, but I know the owner.’ Emma tried to smile. ‘I’ve just been to Britt’s house,’ she said, turning her body slightly in the direction of the house. ‘But she’s not home.’

  Emma introduced herself. As did the woman. Trine-Lise Melbye.

  ‘No, Britt’s not home,’ she said. ‘I’m looking after Eddy while she’s away. I usually do. I like it. I think he likes it too.’

  She smiled down at the eager guy.

  ‘Do you know where Britt is?’ Emma asked. ‘I need to talk to her about something.’

  ‘Have you tried calling?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emma lied.

  The woman shook her head. ‘I actually don’t know where she’s gone.’

  Emma thought for a moment.

  ‘When did she leave?’

  ‘This morning.’

  Eddy started tugging on the lead.

  ‘Do you know if she’ll be away for long?’

  ‘Three days, max. But it seemed as if she wasn’t entirely sure.’

  ‘You know her well, by the sounds of it,’ Emma continued. ‘What with you looking after her dog and all?’

  ‘Yes, quite well, I’d say.’

  ‘Do you know if her sister visits much?’

  The woman’s brows furrowed slightly. ‘She was here quite recently.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw her,’ the woman said. ‘Very early one morning. Not that I was watching, but I happened to see them from the kitchen window.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The days all seem to blend into one at the moment.’

  ‘But can you remember if that was before or after New Year’s Eve?’

  Melbye considered the question. ‘After, I think. New Year’s Day, maybe? But they definitely stood outside for quite a while, talking on the front stairs before Britt invited her in.’

  Emma mulled the information over for a few seconds. Eddy was now straining forwards with all his weight, pulling the lead tight and huffing impatiently.

  ‘We should get a move on,’ Trine-Lise Melbye said. ‘Hope you manage to get in touch with her soon.’

  ‘Thank you. And thanks for stopping to talk.’

  43

  The investigation was at an impasse. There was little Blix could do to move forwards without finding out the results of the dummy’s DNA analysis.

  He pulled out his phone and started typing out a text to Iselin to say that it wouldn’t be long until he was home. If she was in, he could bring a pizza.

  The moment he pressed send, the phone rang. It was Emma. He stood up and walked in the direction of the toilets. Halfway down the corridor, he had a quick glance around him before answering.

  ‘Ruth-Kristine has been to visit her sister recently,’ Emma began. ‘And now Britt’s gone too.’

  Blix thought of all the unsuccessful times they had tried to call her. Of the visitor list at the hospital without Britt’s name on it. Emma filled him in about how she had met one of the neighbours who was looking after Britt Smeplass’s dog while she was away.

  Blix turned and walked back towards his workstation. It could be simple, he thought: Britt didn’t visit her sister in the hospital because she knew she wasn’t there.

  ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ he said.

  ‘Any news a
bout Ahlander?’

  He was itching to tell her about the dummy.

  ‘Not yet. How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ Emma replied quickly. ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with Jette Djurholm, Ruth-Kristine’s neighbour. Her alibi. Do you think she could be directly involved in the disappearance?’

  Blix ran his hand through his hair and surveyed the office.

  ‘I can’t discuss details about the case with you,’ he said. ‘But that was something we looked into, of course.’

  ‘And?’

  Blix saw no reason to continue that particular conversation.

  ‘Is it a good idea for you to be working this much, after everything that’s happened recently?’ he asked instead.

  He had expected a moment of hesitation on the other end.

  ‘I might go to Denmark for a few days,’ Emma replied. ‘Depending on when Kasper’s funeral is.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea.’ Blix approved.

  ‘It feels like something I have to do, anyway.’

  Blix said that he understood how she felt.

  ‘I’ll look into that, by the way – about Britt Smeplass,’ he concluded. ‘But I’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Of course,’ Emma replied. ‘Keep me updated, then. If you can.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  As he hung up, he noticed he had received a reply from Iselin:

  Pizza sounds great. I’m not going out after all. Safety first!

  She had ended the text with a smiley face. He sighed, leafed through his papers and found Britt Smeplass’s phone number. The call went straight to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message, deciding to call Nikolaj Smeplass instead.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to disturb you again,’ he began. ‘We’ve been trying to get hold of Britt. Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Not at all while we’ve been here,’ Nikolaj Smeplass replied. ‘We’ve tried too, but we’ve not been able to get through. Sonja and I had thought about going over to look for her.’

  ‘Do you have a key?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we meet you at her house as soon as possible?’ Blix asked. ‘We’re on our way there now.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Blix dodged the question. ‘We need to talk to her,’ he replied instead. ‘Have a look around the house.’

  Smeplass hesitated, before answering. ‘Sure. We’ll leave now.’

  Blix hung up and called Kovic and Abelvik over.

  ‘We need to head over to Grefsen.’

  Once in the car, Blix delegated the tasks. He would talk to the parents, while Abelvik would search the house for any clues as to whether Ruth-Kristine had, in fact, been there, and where they’d both disappeared to. Kovic was assigned the job of talking to the dog sitter and the other neighbours.

  Nikolaj Smeplass met them outside Britt’s place.

  ‘Sonja decided to stay at her sister’s,’ he explained. ‘What is this about?’

  Blix looked at him intently. ‘We have reason to believe that Ruth-Kristine has been staying here.’ He pointed at the house. ‘We need to verify that. And we need to find both of them.’

  Smeplass looked confused, but he eventually nodded and took out the key, letting them in. While Abelvik started examining the house, Blix sat down in the living room with Smeplass. They slowly worked their way through the usual topics. The relationship between the sisters, his daughters’ friends and acquaintances, what kind of contact he and his wife had had with them recently. And they discussed Patricia, and the time that had passed since she had disappeared. Smeplass had nothing new to contribute.

  Blix was relieved when Abelvik waved him out into the kitchen.

  ‘It looks as if someone’s stayed overnight at some point,’ Abelvik said in a low voice. ‘The bed in the guestroom has been slept in, and there are two red-wine glasses in the dishwasher.’

  ‘They may have been in there for a while,’ Blix commented.

  ‘For all we know.’

  Kovic entered the kitchen. ‘One of the neighbours saw a taxi outside here this morning,’ she said. ‘Two people were sat in the back.’

  Blix and Abelvik exchanged a look.

  ‘So they might have left together?’ Kovic asked.

  Blix looked into the living room, where Smeplass seemed to be immersed in something on his phone.

  ‘We have to find that taxi,’ he whispered. ‘Try and confirm that it was them.’

  The others nodded.

  ‘We know for sure that Ruth-Kristine hasn’t used her phone since New Year’s Eve, and that’s after her name accidentally ended up plastered across all the papers. So, to me, that sounds like a person who’s gone into hiding. She may have done so here.’ He gestured around them with his hand.

  ‘Britt hasn’t been interested in talking to anyone over the last few days either,’ he said. ‘And she told her neighbour that she would be away for a few days. Let’s check all the main transport hubs first.’

  ‘I’ll call Wibe,’ Abelvik said as she took out her phone and walked to the other side of the room.

  ‘We need to talk to the airlines as well,’ Blix continued. ‘Have them check their passenger lists. And then we need to start tracking Britt’s phone.’

  Nikolaj Smeplass came into the kitchen.

  ‘What is going on, exactly?’ he asked.

  Blix glanced quickly at Kovic, before he turned to Smeplass and said:

  ‘That is a very good question.’

  44

  By the time Emma arrived home, it was already quarter past eight. She sat down to finish writing up her interview with Christer Storm Isaksen, but she had too much going on in her head to settle.

  She turned on the loudspeaker that she kept on the windowsill, putting on a playlist of slow and contemplative instrumental music: Moods From Norway. She stood there, staring out of the window, before turning to sit in the deep armchair in the corner, pulling her legs under her and tugging a blanket over to lay across her lap. Thoughts of everything that had happened over the last few days flowed freely around her head. Something didn’t add up, she thought. Or, she corrected herself, there was a lot that didn’t add up. And Patricia’s mother seemed to be at the centre of all of it. Emma tried to search for an explanation, for where she could have gone, but didn’t land on anything that seemed logical or sensible. Ruth-Kristine could be anywhere.

  She leant back, resting her head against the chair. The sound of a violin and piano began to blend into one, before being cut off by a loud ringing. Emma yanked her phone from her trouser pocket. It was an unknown, foreign number. Denmark, she suddenly realised.

  ‘Hi, Emma,’ a woman’s voice said on the other end. ‘It’s Asta.’

  Emma felt her heart skip a beat. Kasper’s mother.

  After Kasper had died, she had only spoken to Jakob. She immediately felt the grief overwhelming her again and had to fight to keep her tears from flowing.

  ‘Hi,’ she said weakly. She pushed her shoulders back a little and stared over at the window.

  ‘How … are you doing?’ Asta asked.

  Her voice was cautious, gentle. Emma didn’t know how to answer.

  ‘I’ve been better,’ she said eventually.

  She started to pick at the fluff on the blanket that was draped across her lap.

  ‘How about you? … All of you?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ Asta replied with a heavy sigh. She stayed silent for a while, before continuing. ‘It’s been … difficult.’

  ‘I understand.’

  A long silence followed.

  ‘I actually just wanted to call and let you know that we’ll be coming to Oslo tomorrow. To bring him back. We … we’d like to see him before he … travels, and we wondered if … whether you wanted to come with us?’

  ‘Come with you … what do you mean?’

  ‘If you wanted to come see him,’ Asta said. ‘They have finished the autopsy now, and…’

  Emma closed her eyes. The last
thing she wanted to do was see Kasper.

  ‘I thought he had been sent back already,’ was all she could manage to say.

  ‘No, it’s taken quite a while,’ Asta replied. ‘I don’t know why.’

  Emma searched for what to say next.

  ‘When do you get here?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re flying out from Billund at ten tomorrow morning. So I guess we’ll be in the city a little before noon, maybe. We can call you?’

  Emma closed her eyes again. It annoyed her that she couldn’t bring herself to say no. Instead, all she could manage was, ‘Please do.’

  45

  The lift was packed with investigators, some of whom looked as if they had only just woken up. It trundled up to the sixth floor of Police Headquarters. Blix read through the morning’s headlines on his phone. They were now entering the fourth day after the first explosion, and the media was becoming critical. The demands for answers and explanations were gaining momentum.

  He stopped at the coffee machine on his way into the open-plan office. Wibe came and fetched him.

  ‘We think we’ve found Ruth-Kristine and her sister on a recording from Oslo Central Station at 12:54 yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘They were heading to one of the platforms.’

  ‘Which train did they take?’ Blix asked, suddenly feeling more awake.

  Wibe led Blix to his desk, where an image from one of the CCTV cameras had been left open on the screen. Two women were walking towards platform eighteen. There was a certain resemblance between them, one woman had features similar to Ruth-Kristine, although it had been a few years since Blix had last seen her.

  ‘That train went to Gothenburg,’ Wibe explained.

  ‘So they’re in Sweden,’ Blix said, sipping his coffee.

  ‘Arrived at 16:50,’ Wibe added. ‘There are only three stops before Gothenburg, all of which are on the Swedish side of the border. I’ve sent the missing-persons photos over, so the Swedes are assisting, looking through their surveillance footage from Gothenburg Central Station and the other stops.’