18
The snowplough had left a huge snowdrift in front of the driveway of the house, a substantial old building with icicles hanging from the roof. Wisting dropped Hammer before parking as close as possible to the pile of snow at the side of the road. They heard the faint sound of the doorbell as they waited. Wisting rubbed his hands and blew into them. He was about to ring again when Else Britt Gusland opened the door. It was obvious that the previous night had been a late one. Her eyes were moist and red-ringed.
A dark blue suitcase sat immediately inside the door. The luggage tag, marked OSL, Oslo airport, was still attached to the handle with the arrival date 14th July. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Do you know any more about what happened to him?’
‘No more than that he’s dead,’ Wisting replied. He crouched down and opened the suitcase. The clothes seemed to have been packed in a hurry.
‘Was it you who packed?’
‘Yes, I just gathered up everything scattered about the flat.’
‘So this is everything?’
She nodded.
Wisting moved a sweater and lifted a thick grey envelope. ‘What’s this?’
‘I haven’t looked.’
Wisting opened the envelope to look inside. It was a mixture of old newspaper cuttings and internet printouts. He removed one of the yellowing pages and shuddered. The article bore the headline Remains of Lynn Adams found in drain. As he held the cutting out to Hammer, shielding it from the woman, the two detectives exchanged a look.
The story had been published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on 3rd September 1983 and described how a maintenance worker had found the remains of eighteen-year-old student Lynn Adams who had gone missing six months earlier. The article was illustrated with a picture of the discovery site where several detectives in suits stood in a circle around an open manhole.
He replaced the cutting, allowing himself no more than a brief glimpse of a few others. All were similar. He tucked the envelope into the suitcase and picked up a toilet bag, registering that it contained a toothbrush and shaving gear. If necessary, they could take some material for DNA analysis.
‘Did he arrive in a car?’ Hammer asked.
‘Yes, a small grey one.’
‘A hire car?’
Else Britt Gusland shrugged.
Wisting moved to close the suitcase, intending to take it with them to the police station for thorough examination of the contents, but spotted a little pocket camera. He picked it up and searched for the on-button.
‘He had a larger camera as well,’ Else Britt Gusland said. ‘And a laptop computer.’
‘It’s not here?’
‘No. He carried it in a shoulder bag.’
‘What about a mobile phone?’
‘He had one of those too. I tried to phone him a number of times.’
Wisting replaced the camera. The battery must be flat by now. ‘How did he make contact with you?’
‘By email at the end of May. He wrote that he had seen the advert on the internet and asked if he could rent the apartment. He offered to pay in advance.’
‘And did he do that?’
‘The money was transferred from the USA before he came.’
‘How much?’
‘We charge five thousand kroner a week for the apartment in the summer. It turned out that he got it for slightly less because of the dollar exchange rate and some fees that were deducted.’
‘When did you see him last?’
‘On the Wednesday of the last week he was here. We’d been at the Wednesday market and went to the Skipperstua restaurant afterwards to get something to eat. He was sitting there.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Just some pleasantries. I got the impression he didn’t want to talk to us. He seemed a bit reluctant.’
‘Was he on his own?’
‘Yes, but it looked as if he was waiting for someone. He was looking at the people walking by, as if watching for someone.’
Hammer took over. ‘Can you remember what sort of clothes he wore, that last time you saw him?’
She thought for a few moments before answering, rather hesitantly. ‘A blazer, I think.’
‘You didn’t take any photos or anything like that?’
‘No, not us. But there were probably lots of people who did. The streets were thronged with summer tourists.’
Wisting picked up the suitcase and headed for the door.
‘I thought at first that he was the one who’d broken in, but it must have been someone else if he’s the man who’s dead,’ she said.
‘Broken in?’
‘Yes, into the flat. It was the weekend afterwards. The students had gone home. I thought he had come to collect his belongings and had broken in when he discovered I had changed the lock.’
‘Did you report it to the police?’
‘Yes, but it was never cleared up. I got a letter saying the case had been shelved six weeks later.’
Wisting nodded, listening to an old story he had heard many times before. ‘Thanks for your assistance,’ he said, opening the door with his free hand.
Outside, a glacial blast of wind struck him in the face. He clenched his fingers around the handle of the suitcase. The cold seeped into his fingers but he stood motionless all the same, shutting his eyes and taking deep breaths of freezing air before he felt ready to go on.
19
Line took a series of photographs while waiting for the police. The dark walls of the empty house stood out against the snow. In the viewfinder, it seemed frozen into the hillside, deserted and suffused with cold. The black birds did not appear, but the gnarled branches of the apple trees created a menacing atmosphere.
She had always liked taking pictures, and had acquired her first camera when she was ten. When her father realised this was something that really interested her, he had given her a more expensive camera for her thirteenth birthday and signed her up for a course in photography. That not only taught her the functions of a camera, but made her more creative and showed her how to compose. Later, she bought an even better camera with the money she received at her confirmation.
Her photographic skills had proved useful in her career as a journalist. The newspaper had photographers, but she preferred to take her own pictures for her own stories and so become more closely involved with them. Nevertheless she had not kept up with developments and had planned for some time to learn how to use Photoshop. It was an advanced program, and she had not found enough time to get to grips with it. During her next spell of holidays, she thought, then I’ll learn all about it.
After half an hour she felt the cold creeping from the ground through the soles of her feet. Being aware of Greta Tisler’s eyes upon her from her kitchen window, she decided to go and see her. Line remembered her as a pleasant woman; good and round and always generous when they went from door to door singing Christmas carols. Unstinting when they rang doorbells to sell raffle tickets.
The old lady smiled just as broadly now as she had done when Line was small, and ushered her into the kitchen where the heat made her cold cheeks burn. Greta Tisler said how lovely it was to see her again, as she set the table with cups and saucers, and told her she followed everything Line wrote in the newspaper.
‘There’s been a break-in at Viggo Hansen’s house,’ Line said as she sat down.
Greta Tisler stood with a plate of little cakes in her hand, her expression changing. ‘A break-in?’ Her eyes wandered to the window and the house on the other side of the hedge.
‘It can’t have happened very long ago. There were tracks in the snow leading to the door. The police are on their way.’
Greta Tisler took a seat at the table.
‘I’m going to write an article about Viggo Hansen for my newspaper,’ Line continued, telling her about how she had been given permission by the police to borrow his house keys.
‘You are going to write about him in VG?’ Greta Tisler asked. ‘Why?’
‘It’ll be about more than him,’ Line said. ‘He’s only a representative of a negative development in our society, a development towards a colder society in which people no longer have time for one another.’
As soon as she had said this, she realised it could be interpreted as a complaint about the elderly woman.
‘That’s the way he wanted to live,’ Greta Tisler said. ‘It wasn’t a burden to him. He wanted to keep himself to himself. Some people are like that. I’m alone myself, and I think that’s okay.’
Nodding, Line refrained from pursuing the topic. ‘When did you see him last?’ She helped herself to one of the little cakes.
‘He was never out, really. We never saw him outside apart from late at night. He should have taken care of his house and garden.’
‘How long ago could it have been since you did, then? See him, I mean.’
‘He didn’t come to Trygve’s funeral. He was our nearest neighbour, but he didn’t even send flowers or a sympathy card.’
‘I understood that Trygve had talked to him?’
‘That’s a long time ago. In 1993 we built a garden room and had to obtain signatures from all our neighbours for the planning application. That’s when Trygve went over there, but they only stood outside on the steps.’
The old woman took a sip of her coffee. ‘He wasn’t like that before, you know,’ she said. ‘He’s always been peculiar, but not so shy of people.’
Line lifted her own cup but her hand hovered in mid-air. ‘Before what, then?’
‘Trygve said that too,’ Greta Tisler continued without answering the question. ‘When he spoke to him about the garden room. It was as if he wasn’t really himself, he said. After that he kept away from everybody and everything.’
‘What was it that happened? Why did he end up like that?’
Greta Tisler’s lips contracted, as if she were keeping back something she really ought not to say. ‘I only know this because Astrid confided in me, and that was many years later.’ The old woman held her cup in both hands, lifting it to her mouth before continuing in a low voice. ‘Astrid was the medical secretary at Doctor Gravdahl’s. She’s retired now, and it was just after she’d stopped working that she told me.’
‘What was that?’
‘Gravdahl was his doctor,’ she said with a nod to the kitchen window. ‘He was the one who had Hansen admitted.’
‘Did he have a psychiatric illness?’
Greta Tisler nodded above her coffee cup before taking a drink.
‘What was actually wrong with him?’
‘I honestly don’t know. He just snapped, I think.’
Line remained seated, immersed in her thoughts, wondering how a psychiatric condition would change the basis for her newspaper article. It was one thing to reveal his solitary life, quite another to expose a history of serious mental illness. ‘Might someone else know more about this?’ she asked, rephrasing the question before Greta Tisler could get her answer out. ‘Do you know anyone else who knew him? Somebody who might have visited him?’
‘Not after he changed.’
‘Who was there prior to that?’
‘There was a friend about the same age who came sometimes, but his visits became less and less frequent.’
‘Did you know his parents?’
‘No. His mother lived alone with Viggo when we moved here in 1972. She died only a few years later.’
‘Wasn’t his mother ill as well?’
‘Yes, poor woman. It’s hereditary, you know, that kind of thing. And it wasn’t helped by what her husband did.’
Line raised her eyebrows to show she hadn’t a clue what Viggo Hansen’s father had done.
‘He committed suicide. At least, that’s what people said. But that was before we moved here. I don’t really know any more than that.’
‘I heard he’d been in prison.’
Greta Tisler nodded, and her eyes took on a faraway look, searching out old memories.
‘Do you know any more than that?’ Line asked.
‘It didn’t happen here,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘It was while he was working in Western Norway.’
The old woman’s attention was again directed at the kitchen window. A police patrol car had stopped outside her neighbour’s house. Line stood up but stopped in her tracks, wondering whether she could get anything more out of Greta Tisler. Something had happened twenty years earlier that had changed Viggo Hansen and put him in a psychiatric unit.
She thanked Greta Tisler for the coffee and ventured out into the cold.
20
The suitcase lay in the middle of the metal worktop in the examination room used by the crime scene technicians.
Espen Mortensen took charge, noting all the objects as he removed them. Each item of clothing was placed in turn in a paper bag. At the bottom of the suitcase he found a pair of binoculars but, apart from those, there was nothing inside that Wisting had not already seen. The two most interesting objects were on the worktop. The camera and the envelope crammed with newspaper cuttings.
‘What are we missing?’ Wisting asked. ‘Apart from the laptop, the mobile phone and a larger camera?’
‘Travel documents,’ Hammer suggested. ‘Passport and tickets. Something with his name on.’
Mortensen poured the contents of the envelope onto the worktop, using his fingers to spread them out. Several of the newspaper cuttings had tiny perforations in the corners, as if they had been fastened to a wall with drawing pins.
One of the cuttings was dated 24th September 1989 and showed Robert Godwin’s face: a black and white photograph in which he had a broad moustache and was wearing a white shirt buttoned to his neck. Wisting leaned forward to look the mass murderer directly in the eye.
‘It’s more than twenty years since Robert Godwin was posted wanted in the USA,’ Hammer said. ‘Why on earth should he turn up here now?’
‘He might have been here the whole time,’ Wisting said. ‘These items are not his possessions, more likely someone tracking him down.’
Torunn Borg entered the room, carrying a sheaf of papers. ‘This man is reported missing,’ she said, holding out a printout with a photo of an older man with a beard and fine-rimmed glasses. His expression was genial, but there was a seriousness in the depths of his grey eyes. ‘Bob Crabb,’ she said. ‘A sixty-seven-year-old widower from Minneapolis.’
‘He’s not in our records,’ Wisting said, searching the folder of missing people.
‘Minneapolis Police Department sent a report to the Norwegian police via Interpol on 3rd September. A friend and neighbour of his had made contact with them when he did not return home from a trip to Norway. It was a standard application in which they sought information. In our records, it’s registered only as a cause for concern.’ She took out one of the other sheets. ‘He arrived in Norway at Gardermoen airport on flight FI318 via Reykjavík on 14th July. His return ticket was for 14th August, but it was cancelled that same day.’
‘Cancelled?’
‘The airline company don’t know how, but expect it was done on the internet or by phone.’
‘What was he doing in Norway?’
‘According to his neighbour he was trying to trace Norwegian relatives. He had no surviving family in the USA. His forefathers had emigrated from Toten at the end of the eighteen hundreds. The report was sent to the police at Gjøvik to follow up.’
‘Gjøvik? We know he made the arrangement to rent the flat in Stavern as early as May, don’t we?’
‘He was supposed to go to Toten,’ Torunn shrugged.
‘The police in Gjøvik found he had hired a car through Avis. That is to say, the information actually came from the American police, taken from a statement from his credit card company to the effect that he hired a car at Gardermoen on the day he arrived. One of the investigators at Gjøvik called them and confirmed the vehicle in question was a grey Audi A3. It was returned on the same day that the journey home was cancelled.’
; Wisting was brimming with questions. ‘Could they tell you any more at the Avis office?’
Torunn Borg shook her head. ‘No more than what is on the computer screen.’
‘What about the credit card statement? Is there anything there?’
‘There’s a large withdrawal of money in Norwegian kroner from an ATM at the airport. Apart from that, no transactions.’
‘And that’s where the case has stalled?’
‘Yes. The US police have not made any further approaches. They’ve probably concluded that he extended his trip without telling his neighbours at home in Minneapolis.’
‘Maybe he met a cousin in Gjøvik?’ Hammer suggested.
Wisting was not in the mood for humour. ‘He hasn’t been to Gjøvik,’ he muttered. ‘He was here with us, until someone took his life and hid him under a fir tree.’
‘It must be the killer who cancelled the flight,’ Mortensen said. ‘All you need is the booking number and the surname. He could have found those in the papers that didn’t surface in the suitcase. As far as the keys to the hire car are concerned, it’s probably just a matter of dropping them into a postbox.’
‘Here is something very interesting,’ Torunn Borg said, producing a sheet of personal details. ‘Bob Crabb was previously a professor at the university in Minnesota. The same place where Robert Godwin worked.’
Wisting folded his arms and stared at the stack of newspaper cuttings. One of them reported a reward of up to one million dollars. ‘Bob Crabb was on his trail,’ he said. ‘But he became another victim.’
His next thought gave him a creeping, cold sensation. Somewhere out there, a serial killer was on the loose.
21
Wisting reached for Torunn Borg’s papers on the missing man. ‘Professor Bob Crabb,’ he said to himself. Several pieces fell into place.
The brochure from the sailing church was one of the clues the dead man had collected in his pursuit of the mass murderer. Robert Godwin must have had a leaflet pressed into his hand when the Elida was lying in port. Indifferent to its contents, he would have thrown it away. Retrieving it, Bob Crabb slipped it inside a plastic wallet to preserve the fingerprints.
The Caveman Page 8
