‘When did you speak to her?’
‘Yesterday evening. I wouldn’t have called her if it wasn’t important.’
The nearest trees swayed, raindrops sprinkling from the branches in a sudden gust of wind. Brown leaves were tossed along the ground at the front of the cottage. Suzanne had not mentioned it.
Ingrid would never have given out that information. Though not exactly risky it was unnecessary all the same. Sigurd Henden was a professional participant in current events, but who else might Suzanne have spoken to? Ingrid would have limited herself to taking a message and passing it on. He ran his hand across his rain-soaked face. Haber had left the car and walked over to the birch thicket, where it seemed he was breaking off a few twigs. ‘What’s so important?’ he asked.
Sigurd Henden cleared his throat noisily. ‘He doesn’t believe it was you.’
Wisting turned round to face him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Rudolf Haglund. He doesn’t believe you were the one who planted the DNA evidence.’
Wisting fixed his eyes on a seagull flapping its wings to catch the air currents. What Rudolf Haglund believed was of no significance. The defence lawyer had not come all the way out here to tell him that. There must be something more. ‘What do you both want?’ he asked.
‘Justice.’
‘That makes three of us, but for your information I still believe he did it. That your client abducted and murdered Cecilia Linde.’
The lawyer ignored that. ‘He knows who it was,’ he said.
The seagull broke off its gliding motion, launching itself into a breakneck dive towards the surface of the sea. Wisting opened his mouth, closed it and then opened it again. ‘Knows who did what?’
‘Who planted the DNA evidence.’
‘Who was it then?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t want to tell me.’
‘How can he know?’
The defence lawyer shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
Stepping forward, Wisting raised his hand to pull his jacket more snugly round his neck. ‘So what do you want right now?’ he repeated.
‘He wants to meet you. He wants to give you what you need to clear your name.’
38
Settling behind the steering wheel, the lawyer switched on the ignition before lowering the electric side window to offer a newspaper. ‘Take this.’
Wisting approached the vehicle and took the paper.
‘Read that,’ the lawyer continued, pointing his finger at a headline on the front page: The Witness who was never Heard. ‘I don’t think it was you. Not then either.’
Wisting watched the car disappear over the brow of the hill. It felt as if he had been left behind, and wondered at what he had agreed to. When Rudolf Haglund had been led from the courtroom seventeen years earlier, he had hoped never to clap eyes on him again. Now he had agreed to a meeting tomorrow, twelve o’clock, at Henden’s office in Oslo.
Haber approached him, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke after the enormous Mercedes. ‘What did he want?’ he asked.
‘I don’t really know.’
Haber regarded him through narrowed eyes, before pressing his cigarette between thumb and forefinger and lobbing it away. ‘Shall we make a start?’
Wisting opened the car boot. Haber lifted out the equipment and walked off in the direction of the plastic basin. ‘I need some water and a container to mix the plaster in.’
Wisting fetched a bucket and a large jug of water. When he returned, Haber was shaking an aerosol can of hair lacquer.
‘Lift off the plastic basin,’ Haber said. ‘Hold it above the print so the rain doesn’t touch it.’
Haber produced a leather strap he drew around the footprint like a kind of casting frame, crouched down and sprayed the impression with lacquer. He angled the aerosol from a distance, not to damage minute details in the print. He did this twice. When the print was fully prepared, he mixed the plaster.
‘I assume you’re not planning to report the burglary,’ he said.
Wisting shook his head.
Haber poured the thin, white liquid carefully into the mould, placing fresh birch twigs in a criss-cross pattern, for reinforcement, before pouring in the rest. ‘ ‘Now, it has to be left for an hour. Coffee?’
Wisting invited Haber inside. He found a half-empty glass jar of instant coffee and a packet of biscuits in the kitchen cupboard, took out both and put a kettle of water on to boil.
Finn Haber unfolded the newspaper on the kitchen table. ‘There are pictures of us both.’
Wisting leaned over and saw the inset photo of himself. Haber was in an archive photo at Gumserød crossroads, during the reconstruction, gesticulating among a group of detectives. Nearly all of them were present, except Wisting. Kai Skodde, Magne Berger, Thore Akre, Ola Kiste, Vidar Bronebakk and Svein Teigen. Frank Robekk was in white T-shirt and jeans like the perpetrator, but with his own thick glasses. He was leaning against the boot of the white Opel, rolling a cigarette.
‘This doesn’t give him an alibi,’ Finn Haber asserted, placing his finger on the picture of the witness whose statement had not been recorded. ‘He saw the white Opel around eight o’clock in the evening when Cecilia had been missing for almost six hours.’
A pair of icy blue eyes stared out of a rough-hewn, weather-beaten face. His hair was curly and dishevelled.
‘What kind of person abducts a young girl, locks her up and goes off fishing?’
“A person such as Rudolf Haglund,’ Haber said.
Wisting removed the kettle from the hob. ‘That’s not the point, though,’ he said. ‘He was never interviewed. His tip-off was never followed up.’
Haber read on in silence.
‘He doesn’t say he spoke to you,’ Haber continued, taking the cup Wisting handed to him. ‘He’s quoted as saying he asked to speak to the person in charge of the case.’
‘I was in charge.’
‘Did you speak to him, then?’
Wisting shook his head.
‘I would have remembered that.’
‘Not only remembered, you would have brought him into the interview room. All tip-offs were directed to Frank Robekk’s office, the only use we could put him to.’
Wisting nodded. Frank Robekk had dropped out almost entirely, but had been taking care of tip-offs received by phone. All enquiries directed to the central switchboard were transferred to his office. Even if callers had asked to speak to the person in charge, they would have been connected in the first instance to the tip-off reception centre that also filtered requests aimed at the investigation leader.
‘He didn’t even manage that,’ Haber groaned. ‘There was always something odd about Robekk.’
‘He was a competent police officer.’
‘Until he went crazy, but there was always something odd about him.’
Wisting had known Frank Robekk as a strong-willed and stubborn investigator, a determined tactician with a strategy for everything he did. Right up until everything unravelled. However, there may have been something else about him, on a different plane from the professional interests he and Wisting shared.
‘I remember wondering if he was homosexual,’ Haber said. ‘He never had a girlfriend and never took part in any social events. Never a beer on a Friday or a trip into town.’
Wisting looked at Frank’s picture with fresh eyes. He ran his gaze over the other policemen before returning to Robekk. He would go and speak to him.
39
The plaster cast was perfect, and Finn Haber smiled for the first time that day. He brushed the white print clean, revealing an identical copy of the bootprint on the path. ‘It looks little used,’ he said. ‘No signs of wear. A clean, intact sole. It might be difficult to link it to a particular boot.’
Wisting still did not know how to use the cast, but hoped to connect someone to the break-in.
‘The earth here is saline,’ Haber said, turning to face the sea. ‘If you find the man who’s been
here, you should take samples from his boots. A comparative analysis would be supporting evidence.’
Wrapping the plaster cast in a rag, Wisting placed it in the boot. Haber brought the spray can of hair lacquer and the bag containing the rest of the plaster, and they both sat in the car. ‘Is he on your list?’ Haber asked when they were halfway back to the pilot station.
‘Who?’
‘Frank Robekk.’
‘He’s on the list of people I want to talk to, yes.’
No more was said until Wisting stopped his car in front of the garage at the end of the track. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said.
Haber opened the car door, but remained seated. ‘I’ve something for you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Something that might be of interest. You should really come in.’
Wisting followed him down to the main building, where Haber set his boots on the cellar trapdoor as before. Wisting kept his on. They entered the workroom where Haber had stored the plaster.
‘Over there,’ Haber said, pointing to a tall cupboard at the far end of the room.
Wisting advanced a few steps. Behind him, Haber replaced the equipment he had used for the plaster cast. ‘I saw you had copies of all the other material in the Cecilia case out at your cottage.’
He opened the cupboard. The contents looked no different from what sat on the shelves all around. Ring binders, books and journal folders, a number of shallow, but broad, cardboard boxes located on the two top shelves. Haber lifted one down and carried it across to the desk. ‘I don’t have any use for it,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
‘Surplus photographs from the Cecilia case.’
He opened the box and Wisting peered inside. Several hundred photos had been placed edge-to-edge, in three rows, separated by dividers marked with date and location.
‘They should have been shredded when I left,’ Haber said ‘but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It’s as if my whole life is in these boxes. Everything I’ve been involved in is documented. I even considered writing a book and using the photos as illustrations, but nothing came of it.’
Wisting let his fingers run across the rows of pictures, drawing out a random selection from the section marked Clinical Examination 30/7, pictures of Rudolf Haglund in an examination room at the hospital to record wounds possibly inflicted by Cecilia Linde. Scratches, bites or suchlike. The examination had been fruitless. Perhaps that was why Wisting had not seen the pictures before, but only read the doctor’s report.
Rudolf Haglund stood with his upper torso bare. He was pale, but appeared muscular and sinewy. His face had the same blank expression Wisting recalled. The other photos were close-ups of hands, arms and other body parts.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, pointing at a photo of an old scar on Haglund’s inner thigh.
‘An operation scar. He had three from having a number of moles removed. They were cancerous.’
This was news to Wisting. He could not remember hearing that Rudolf Haglund had suffered from cancer, but the scar seemed old, and health status information was not something normally included in the investigation of a crime.
In what were probably test photographs to measure the light, the two investigators who accompanied Rudolf Haglund to the examination appeared in the picture: Nils Hammer and Frank Robekk. The flash was reflected on one of Robekk’s glasses, and Wisting thought he could see in his eyes the emptiness that eventually stopped him. Nils Hammer was different, almost triumphant, his eyes shone like a well-trained hunting dog delivering its prey.
‘Take them with you, if you think you can use them,’ said Haber.
40
Finn Haber accompanied Wisting to his car. Though the weather had cleared, the temperature had dropped.
Behind the wheel, Wisting’s thoughts turned to Suzanne. He felt he had unintentionally embarrassed her, and that it was time to talk, to ask her frankly what she felt for him. At the same time, however, he realised this was not the moment. Instead he drove towards Brekke, turning off for Ruglandstrand and the Linde family’s summer house. A gate closed off the last stretch leading to the property. Wisting parked and walked the rest.
He had been here every day in the weeks following Cecilia’s disappearance, if only to say there was no news. It seemed to have grown even quieter and more desolate, rain-sodden and dull. The estate held several buildings. The main house was a white two-storey sea captain’s house with green window shutters, a hipped roof, protruding dormers, and faded red roof tiles. Roses and wild ivy climbed along the walls.
A flock of crows took flight from one of the nearby trees, cackling as they flew towards him. The stone path was overgrown with weeds, and what had once been a well kept garden was now autumnal brown grass. A circular patio table lay upside down, surrounded by high stinging nettles. In the middle of the courtyard, a flagpole stood with the tattered remains of a blue pennant flapping at the top, the cord whipping against the pole in the wind. A faded letter C from the company name Canes was barely legible on the blue background.
The once magnificent summer estate was not only empty, but also completely abandoned. The Linde family could not have been here since that summer seventeen years ago.
He placed his hands on the glass of a grubby window. The window ledge was covered in cobwebs and dead flies lay spread-eagled, wings down and legs in the air. The faded curtains were closed, but through a gap he saw the past: massive pine furniture with close-weave covers in traditional colours and patterns, wainscoting and mahogany-coloured walls.
Cecilia’s room was located on the east gable wall. He could see the traces left by the burglary on her windowsill. How really strange that the place had been left untouched, even by thieves.
Here, too, a chink in the curtains allowed him a glimpse inside: a wide bed with a pink blanket at the footboard, a large cassette player on a chest of drawers, and on the shelves above, her music cassettes arrayed with ornaments, little plush teddy bears and other items.
Wisting advanced onto the south-facing terrace and stared out across the ocean, listening to the pounding waves in the cove below.
On the beach a man was walking a black Labrador, the dog scampering freely at his side. When he caught sight of Wisting he called the dog and attached its lead. Wisting thought there was something familiar about him, but he had reached halfway before he knew who it was. Danny Flom, the photographer who had been Cecilia Linde’s boyfriend. Still retaining some of his bohemian style, he was dressed in jeans full of holes, a black polo-neck sweater and a well-worn windproof jacket. His clear brown eyes were overshadowed by the stiff brim of an old-fashioned cloth cap.
‘It’s been ages since I’ve seen anyone here,’ he said, holding out his hand to Wisting.
‘It’s ages since I’ve been here,’ Wisting replied. ‘Seventeen, to be exact.’
‘Do you recognise me? It was another detective I had most contact with. Hammer. Is he with you these days?’
Wisting confirmed his recollection and that Nils Hammer still worked at the police station. The black dog sniffed round his ankles. He crouched down to scratch behind its ears.
‘I’m here a lot,’ Danny Flom said. ‘Not exactly here at the Linde place, but I have a cottage on the other side of the headland.’ He pointed in the direction he had come. ‘We bought it four years ago. Despite everything that happened I always longed to come back. My life took quite a different direction from what I had expected that summer, of course, but I moved on. Onwards and upwards.’
‘Flomlys,’ Wisting said.
Danny Flom looked surprised.
‘I read about you in a newspaper a few years ago,’ Wisting said. ‘You’d won an award.’
‘Flomlys was an idea Cecilia and I had. She was brilliant in front of a camera, but even better behind it. I managed to get it up and running all the same. It just took a bit longer, and with another guy as my partner.’
He unclipped the dog’s lead and it shu
ffled off in the direction of the huge glass doors of the main house. Virginia creeper had spread across the walls and its fronds had spread over the cracked glass.
‘I read about you in the newspaper as well,’ Danny Flom said. Wisting did not reply. He walked over to the railings, spattered with dried bird droppings. ‘I’m not bothered how you managed to catch him. I’m just happy you did. I told Hammer that at the time. Just get him caught. What pains me is that he’s out again. He took Cecilia from us forever, but now he’s out and has the nerve to claim he’s innocent.’
Danny Flom had been the special project assigned to Nils Hammer. His financial difficulties and strained relationship with Cecilia’s father had meant that they had considered the theory that the abduction had been arranged by the lovers.
‘Do you have any contact with her family?’ Wisting asked.
‘Not now. Her mother sent me Christmas cards for a few years, and I phoned her a couple of times, but I had to move on with my life, you see. I got married four years later, if you didn’t know. Then I got divorced and remarried. I put the Cecilia business behind me.’ He called to the dog, though it did not respond. ‘Now it’s happened again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The girl who’s missing. Linnea Kaupang. Haven’t you considered that someone may have taken her?’
Wisting had indeed considered that. It overshadowed everything else.
41
On the way back to the cottage Wisting stopped at the Meny supermarket in Søndersrød, but didn’t get out of the car. Too many familiar faces, and as he preferred to avoid the questions, comments and looks, he had driven on.
He put Haber’s box on the coffee table and picked up the newspaper still lying open at the Cecilia story.
Haber was right. The amateur fisherman who gave a statement to VG was not an alibi witness. He might have seen Haglund at the lake, but Haglund could have managed to fit in a fishing trip while Cecilia was in the cellar. He checked himself. This was exactly the kind of thinking that led to Haglund’s prosecution when they had found means of explaining away all objections.
The Hunting Dogs Page 14
