The Caveman

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘That’s me,’ Line said. His handshake was exaggeratedly firm. ‘Shall we sit in the bar?’

  They sat in the deep sofas on either side of a window table. Far out on the fjord, they could see the lights of the Danish ferry. Closer to shore, the sea had frozen solid. Waves broke over thin ice, driving the floes inland. A waiter approached to take their order. ‘A glass of apple juice,’ Line said, turning to Frank Iversen. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘I’ll have a beer.’

  Nodding, the waiter made a note and took his leave.

  ‘Are you in Norway often?’ Line asked, taking out her notepad.

  ‘Maybe a few times a year.’

  ‘Do you still have family here?’

  ‘No. It’s only in connection with my job.’

  The waiter returned with bottles and glasses and poured for them both. ‘How do you remember Viggo Hansen?’ Line asked when he had gone.

  Frank Iversen shrugged. ‘I don’t actually remember him.’

  ‘You grew up just a couple of hundred metres from each other, and worked together at the prawn factory.’

  ‘That’s more than forty years ago,’ Iversen said. ‘I can hardly recall working there myself.’

  Frank Iversen spoke a mixture of Norwegian and Danish, almost certainly more Norwegian now that he was talking to her, but there was something dilatory about him, making his sentences seem very sluggish.

  ‘You sent him Christmas cards.’

  ‘That could well be, but not for the past twenty years.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s just how it went. He never sent me any.’

  Line held her glass and reclined into the sofa. A man in a black suit at the bar looked at her. Their eyes met momentarily before she looked away. ‘I spoke to Annie Nyhus yesterday,’ she continued. ‘Do you remember her?’

  ‘There’s something familiar about the name.’

  ‘She lived diagonally opposite you when you were growing up. Next door to Dr. Welgaard.’

  Frank Iversen smiled. ‘Old Annie, yes. What about her?’

  ‘She told me about you and Viggo, that you hung out together. I hoped you might remember more.’

  ‘Sorry, but that’s how it is. I remember how we moved from Stavern, but everything from the time before is pretty vague.’

  ‘When did you move to Denmark?’

  ‘In 1990. First of all I met a woman, and then I got a job there. Now there’s only the job.’

  Line asked other questions, but none of the answers brought her any closer to Viggo Hansen. When Iversen finished his beer, she did not offer him another.

  ‘Well,’ he said, standing up. ‘It was nice talking to you. Apologies again that I couldn’t be of more help.’

  Line thanked him for his time, before checking through her notes. She had tracked down many of the people who at some time or other had been part of Viggo Hansen’s life, but it seemed they had all drawn a veil of forgetfulness over him. Frank Iversen had not told her anything she had not previously known. On the contrary, really, since she was the one who had revealed what she knew.

  The waiter appeared again to place a drink clinking with ice cubes, slices of lime and a straw, before her. ‘I haven’t ordered anything,’ she said.

  ‘From the man over there,’ the waiter nodded at the man in the dark suit.

  He slid down from his bar stool. Around her own age, the beginnings of a beard gave his cheeks a fine dark veneer and the skin on the rest of his face bore witness to many hours spent in the fresh air. The muscles on his neck were taut and his brown eyes sparkled.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he asked in an American accent, gesturing to where Frank Iversen had been sitting.

  Line was neither dressed nor groomed for an evening in a bar, but she smiled and nodded.

  He extended his hand and introduced himself. ‘John Bantam.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said in English, glancing at his hand. No ring. ‘Line.’

  ‘Are you staying at the hotel?’

  ‘No, I live in Stavern,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been here for a meeting.’

  His gaze was penetrating, in a very affable way. ‘This is a beautiful country you live in,’ he remarked.

  ‘Thanks. Where do you come from?’

  ‘Minneapolis.’

  Line placed the American city on a mental map. Far north, near the large lakes on the Canadian border.

  ‘You would feel at home there,’ he continued. ‘Snow, wind, hats and gloves.’

  ‘So, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Work,’ he replied, as if his business was something very boring indeed. ‘I’m an analyst.’

  She lifted the drink he had bought for her. Gin and tonic. Her car was outside, but she could have a couple of sips without any danger.

  Raising his glass, he smiled and steered the conversation by asking questions about Norway, Norwegian authors, musicians, Thor Heyerdahl and the polar explorers.

  ‘My great-great-grandfather was one of the first men in the world to reach the South Pole,’ she told him.

  John Bantam’s eyes opened wide. ‘Really?’

  She told him about Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole in 1911, and how one of her ancestors had been a member of the group.

  ‘My great-great-great-grandfather came from Kristiansand,’ the American said. ‘His name was Daniel Larsen. Perhaps they knew each other?’

  After half an hour’s conversation she had drunk slightly more gin and tonic than she had planned, and pushed the half-empty glass away. ‘I have to go,’ she said, but in fact she had nothing to go to, and this was something she had yearned for on her own at home in Oslo. Interesting conversation, no strings.

  He took hold of his glass. ‘Already?’

  ‘I have an appointment,’ she lied, although the only plans she had were to sit at the computer and record the information she had gleaned that day. ‘How long are you staying?’

  He stood up at the same moment she did. ‘Not too sure. It would be great if you could keep me company another evening. Would it be very forward of me to ask for your phone number?’

  She produced one of her business cards from her bag. They had not spoken of her job, and she prepared herself to explain how she worked with VG.

  ‘Wisting,’ he said, tapping the card lightly on the palm of his hand. ‘Is that a common name in these parts?’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘Well, Line,’ he said, slipping the card into his inside pocket. ‘It was very nice to meet you.’

  52

  The courtyard in front of the house was empty when Line arrived. Her father must still be at work.

  As she switched off the ignition, she heard knocking noises from the engine followed by an indefinable rumbling sound. When it ended she picked up her bag and stepped outside. A gust of wind blew powdery snow into her face. Tugging the lapels of her jacket round her neck, she hunched her shoulders and lingered for a second or two in the chilly darkness before making up her mind, taking out the key to Viggo Hansen’s house, trudging down the street and letting herself in.

  All was cold and silent, but the nauseating smell still hung in the air. She located the switch and turned on the hallway ceiling light before entering the living room and switching on the old standard lamp and wall lights.

  Her mobile phone gave a signal, and she took it out to read the message: Thanks for a pleasant evening, in English. John. She had not really expected to hear anything further from the American, but tapped in a return message to say she had enjoyed meeting him.

  The TV magazine was still spread out on the coffee table. The pages, once glossy, were now faded and dog-eared. She picked it up and browsed through, again noting that, in several places, the times of programmes he had wanted to watch were circled, and others had an asterisk drawn at the side.

  She glanced at the television set and back at the TV listings. It did not take her long to work out the code. The asterisks appeared ev
ery time he wanted to watch two programmes broadcast simultaneously. On a shelf under the television sat an old video recorder. Viggo Hansen must have asterisked the programme he intended to record. All the same, something did not add up. On that last day, he had asterisked the programme about notorious cases from the archives of the FBI, even though it did not clash with another programme on the broadcast schedule.

  She put the magazine down again. That might mean he wanted to watch it more than once, or possibly he would be busy while it was showing. He may have been expecting a visitor.

  In the kitchen the fridge motor kicked into life, breaking the silence. It struck her that the possibility of a visitor was consistent with the coffee in the machine.

  She crossed to the opposite end of the living room, where the game of solitaire was laid out on the table. The cards Viggo Hansen had held in his hand were lying on the left of the spread of cards. She picked up the little bundle of four cards: four of clubs, ten of hearts, eight of hearts and two of diamonds.

  The ten could be played immediately. Five moves later, she had won the game.

  Viggo Hansen had not stopped playing because he could not finish, so there must have been another reason.

  The wind outside picked up and a sudden squall drew a creak out of the north-facing wall. A long-drawn-out wail echoed along the roof ridge. Line crossed her arms. Who had been here on the last day of his life?

  She had scrutinised Viggo Hansen’s existence, but the closest she had come to someone who knew him was a girlfriend from the time he had been admitted to a psychiatric unit, twenty years previously, and a random locksmith who, to the best of her knowledge, had been the last person to speak to him. She turned off the lights on her way out.

  For every step she took away from the house, an uncomfortable, stabbing sensation grew along her spine. A feeling that something quite odd had happened there during the last days of Viggo Hansen’s life.

  53

  Wisting stood at John Bantam’s side, studying the map on the office wall. Outside, it was becoming possible to make out the neighbouring buildings in the silvery light of dawn. ‘We’ll go out to the other well as soon as it’s light,’ he said.

  The young FBI agent raised his coffee cup to his lips and nodded in agreement. ‘What are you doing about the women on the Swedish side of the border?’

  Wisting gathered his notes for the morning meeting. ‘Being cautious,’ he said. Leif Malm and Anne Finstad of the Kripos international section had returned to Oslo, but he had already discussed it with them by phone. They agreed that a discreet approach should be made to their colleagues in the National Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm.

  John Bantam nodded and followed Wisting into the conference room, which was cold. He crossed to the window and felt the radiator. Cold.

  ‘I’ve told the caretaker,’ said Torunn Borg, who had already taken her seat.

  Wisting sat at the head of the table and checked the agenda as the room filled.

  Hammer had brought the morning edition of the VG newspaper. ‘Fucking freezing in here,’ he said.

  ‘The caretaker said he’d attend to it.’

  ‘Here,’ Hammer said, flinging the newspaper onto the table.

  Wisting drew it towards him. Mysterious death was the front page headline. Chief Inspector William Wisting has admitted that the man found dead last week in a Christmas tree felling area presents the police with a mystery. They do not know who he is, where he comes from, how he died or what he was doing in the location where his body was found.

  Donald Baker and Maggie Griffin sat beside John Bantam in what had become their usual seats at the table. Wisting translated the report for their benefit.

  ‘We really need to watch our step,’ Baker said. ‘If they dig deeper, the case could unravel.’

  ‘Let’s get started,’ Christine Thiis said.

  Wisting agreed. ‘We’ve located another well. Hammer?’

  ‘Not exactly a well, but a water tank belonging to a private irrigation system that farmers use. Something about the hydraulic gradient meant the tank was never used.’

  ‘How can we check it without arousing curiosity? It’s clearly visible from the main road.’

  ‘I’ve borrowed overalls and a vehicle from the local authority,’ Hammer said. ‘It will look like a routine inspection. Anyway, one department doesn’t know what the other is doing.’

  ‘What about the third well?’ Wisting enquired, turning to Benjamin Fjeld.

  ‘Nothing new, but all this palaver about the wells is really incidental work. How do we know whether any well Bob Crabb tracked down is one that Godwin has used? Assuming he has even used one at all. Shouldn’t we adopt a more systematic approach and conduct a survey of all the old wells in the area?’

  ‘There’s probably one on every farm in the region,’ Mortensen said.

  Wisting agreed. ‘Bob Crabb must have had access to information we don’t have. Torunn?’

  ‘We’re receiving help from the National Archives in Kongsberg to go through old parish records, censuses and other records from the nineteenth century. We know the person who led Robert Godwin’s family to the USA was Niels Gustavsen who emigrated in 1889. The archivists up there have gone back two generations and are now working on finding all the surviving relatives in Norway. That could give us something, but it could also be a time-consuming blind alley.’

  ‘What about the list of possible Godwin aliases?’

  ‘Dwindling. We don’t have a match from the face recognition software, but we’ve been able to exclude a few who are completely out of the question on the grounds of ethnicity. Soon we’ll have about fifty men who should be examined more closely. The question is how to do that without revealing our motives.’

  ‘What about the age progression software?’ Espen Mortensen asked Donald Baker.

  ‘We’ve told our people to subject his photo to a simulated ageing process.’

  Baker produced three pictures from his folder. In them the features of Robert Godwin, as depicted in the wanted poster, were recognisable. One was a simple picture in which he had been given wrinkles and other signs of age. In the other two, the software program had provided him with a beard and glasses. What all three had in common was the receding hairline, which had retreated even further, and his much thinner hair.

  They spent half an hour dealing with practicalities and allocation of assignments but, by the end of the meeting, had not made much progress.

  54

  Torunn Borg sent him the provisional list of names which Robert Godwin could be hiding behind. The printer spewed out thirteen pages, an alphabetical overview of 123 men accompanied by dates of birth and current addresses.

  The list had been pruned from 2,127 names. Some left by statistical criteria could be deleted. ASKE, Eivind was entered on page one, the artist Line had interviewed in connection with Viggo Hansen.

  Otherwise, it included people who had not drawn attention to themselves in any way whatsoever. People who had lived anonymously throughout their lives. Cave dwellers.

  Hunting for serial killers was not part of in-service training at the Police College. Wisting had read a considerable amount but had not followed recent research. Quite simply, they were too far removed from his everyday work.

  The internet was crammed with articles about mentally ill killers who ate their victims, left messages for the police and collected trophies. On the web pages of CEPOL, the European Police College Network, he found an article summarising several years’ research in Australia.

  As a rule, he read, a serial killer took the lives of people he or she did not know, and the murders were usually sexually motivated. The time interval between homicides could vary from hours, days, weeks, to months or years. Many serial killers were psychopaths but could appear entirely normal and were often extremely charming. The average serial killer was in the main a white, unmarried man with normal, if not higher than average, intelligence.

  Around sixty pe
r cent of them had been bed-wetters until the age of twelve. They seldom held down permanent jobs for long. They showed an early fascination for arson, cruelty to animals and similar sadistic activities. As a rule, they had grown up with single mothers and had little or no contact with their fathers. It was not unusual for them to have higher education and prestigious jobs.

  Serial killers often choose the same type of victim and employ more or less the same modus operandi both in making their approach and taking lives, the article concluded.

  Nothing helped. He tapped the stack of papers on the desktop to straighten the edges, and attached a paper clip at the top left-hand corner. Then, reclining in his seat, he read each and every name. Not until the final page did a familiar name appear. WANG, Jonathan. The man with the scars who had been in charge of the farm at Halle when Bob Crabb had been murdered.

  He took the papers to Torunn Borg’s office. Her desk was unusually untidy, with case documents piled in several bundles, and various printouts spread out, dotted with notes in different colours.

  ‘How many names have you arrived at?’ Wisting asked as he sat down.

  ‘Fifty-eight.’

  ‘Is Jonathan Wang still on the list?’

  Torunn Borg squinted at the screen and scrolled down. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘His is the only name that’s already cropped up.’

  ‘The temporary relief worker at Halle farm,’ she said. She drew a stack of documents towards her and riffled through to find Benjamin Fjeld’s interview.

  ‘We have a video recording of the interview,’ Wisting said. ‘I spoke to him when he was here, but actually thought he doesn’t look like Godwin.’

  ‘I’ll have his picture run through the face recognition software program anyway,’ she said. ‘The software doesn’t recognise facial features as we do, but takes measurements of various aspects of the face, for example the distance between the eyes or the breadth of the upper lip. A face contains different geometric characteristics that form a key to identify the person. But I don’t think we should rely on it too much. The shape of any face can alter in twenty years. Glasses and facial hair can confuse the system, and the suspect may even have had plastic surgery.’