The Caveman

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Wisting raked his hands through his hair. They lacked forward momentum when the most important element in any investigation was to keep up the pace. As things stood, they were at a complete standstill. His mobile phone rang: Nils Hammer.

  ‘Empty,’ said Hammer.

  ‘You mean the water tank?’

  ‘It took some time to locate it under all the snow, but when we finally removed the concrete lid, it was completely dry. Only a few fragments of old pipe from the irrigation system.’

  Benjamin Fjeld appeared at the door. ‘I’ve found the third well,’ he said, waving the picture from Bob Crabb’s camera.

  ‘Wait,’ Wisting said. He put his phone on the desk and switched it to loudspeaker. ‘Benjamin has got something.’

  ‘The third well is no more than a kilometre from where you are now,’ Benjamin Fjeld explained to Hammer, leaning across the desk. ‘It’s a disused smallholding, just like the place you went to yesterday.’

  ‘Do you still have a crew there?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we’ll come to you.’

  55

  The pathologist who conducted Viggo Hansen’s autopsy was called Mogens Poulsen. He had something of the same accent as Frank Iversen, using Norwegian words but with Danish pronunciation.

  ‘I’ve received a copy of the autopsy report from the police,’ Line explained. ‘Do you remember Viggo Hansen?’

  ‘Of course,’ Poulsen replied. ‘It was an extremely unusual case. Bodies that have lain for as long as that will normally be decomposed and rotten. This one was almost mummified.’

  ‘How could that be?’

  ‘First and foremost because it was not exposed to different kinds of living organisms that can produce enzymes to degrade organic material. In this case, the corpse was located in an almost air-tight house in which all doors, windows and air vents were closed, and low humidity and temperature led to it drying out.’ He checked himself. ‘Actually, that has to be a general observation. I can’t speak about individual cases.’

  ‘I have a more general question,’ Line said. ‘It’s most likely that I won’t write anything about this, but I wonder what he actually died of?’

  ‘Loneliness, presumably.’

  ‘Loneliness?’ Line repeated, hoping at the same time this might be something she could quote, even though she doubted whether it was a strictly medical diagnosis.

  ‘Or of mental distress,’ the doctor clarified. ‘That is perhaps more accurate. He must really have led a dreadfully lonely existence if he could sit dead for four months without anyone finding out.’ The doctor sighed. ‘What good does it do us to have all the riches in the world if we no longer bother about one another? We are spiritually backward in this country. Empty shells only concerned with satisfying our own needs.’

  ‘Do you really mean that?’ Line asked. ‘That someone can die of loneliness?’

  ‘It’s obvious. Good social networks, friendship and family ties are important for our health, more important than blood pressure and cholesterol. Studies show people who are lonely are more disposed to contract all sorts of diseases and ailments. Everything from sadness, anxiety and depression to physical illnesses such as heart and vascular problems.’

  Line took notes.

  ‘Many married couples practically keep themselves alive so they can spend happy days with the one they love and help and support one another. When one of them dies the surviving partner will often follow after only a few months.’

  Line could not restrain a smile. She had obviously hit upon a subject close to the doctor’s heart.

  ‘One thing is the long-term lack of social contact,’ he went on. ‘Another is that you actually don’t have anyone to call the emergency number when you suffer from chest pains or fall downstairs. No one who can make sure your airways are not blocked, administer artificial resuscitation or heart compression before the ambulance arrives.’

  ‘Do you believe Viggo Hansen died of a heart attack or a stroke?’

  ‘Those are the most common causes of death, but it’s quite impossible to give a conclusive answer to that.’

  ‘What else might it have been?’

  ‘For all I know, he might have choked on something and suffocated. Although the body was well preserved there was not much to work with. What I can at least tell you is that he was neither shot, nor stabbed with a knife, nor hit over the head with a blunt instrument.’

  ‘So you lean towards the conclusion that Viggo Hansen died a natural death?’

  ‘Death is always natural,’ the doctor replied. ‘Sometimes it simply comes more suddenly and more violently and brutally than other times.’

  Line glanced down at her notepad. Suffocated she had written, followed by a question mark. ‘You said he could have been suffocated?’

  ‘That was just an example. There are no grounds for saying anything at all. No physical clues such as overturned furniture or other indications of a fight. The body was not sitting in an unnatural position, on the contrary really. He had fallen asleep nice and easy in his chair in front of the TV.’

  ‘But someone could, for example, have held a cushion over his face and suffocated him, without there being any visible signs?’

  ‘What I’m saying is we probably won’t arrive at any answers about how Viggo Hansen died, at least not from a forensic perspective.’

  Line thanked him and crossed to the window. Outside, the wind was whipping up the loose, powdery snow and sweeping it down the street. She had read more than enough police and post-mortem reports, as well as public statements, to know that what was printed on paper was only what the author was certain about. Leaving room for doubt or interpretation only created problems. What was stated in such reports was therefore, as a rule, plain facts: information it was possible to vouch for one hundred per cent. Her conversation with the pathologist, however, opened up other possibilities.

  56

  Nils Hammer had ensured the track was cleared all the way to the smallholding and the third well. To the left the land was thickly forested. On the right, a drystone wall separated the track from a field. The wind had swept away its top layer of snow, and stones protruded like jagged peaks on a mountain range.

  In front of the old farmhouse, more snow had been blown into towering drifts. A tractor with a snowplough, and the same anonymous delivery vehicle they had used the previous day, were parked in the farmyard. Several of the police contingent wore thermal suits marked with the logo of Larvik local authority, some of them huddled round a propane stove, the kettle steaming vigorously. Wisting was forced to screw up his eyes against the snow flurries.

  ‘Five minutes, then we’ll be ready,’ Hammer said, looking towards the barn where two men had cleared the pyramid-shaped well cover and were now lifting the lid while another prepared a climbing rope.

  Wisting stood with his back to the wind. ‘Is there water in it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not so far down to the surface.’

  The men at the well signalled they were ready. A portable generator was fired up, and a floodlight directed into the opening. The first policeman tied the rope to his abseil harness, leaned back over the edge and dropped down.

  Wisting walked over to the well and peered into a square shaft lined with concrete for the first metre of its depth. He could see the impressions of the formwork boards in the grey concrete. Below that, the walls were built of stone.

  The ice in the well was almost as thick as the layer they had hacked their way through the day before. The man at the foot of the well took five minutes to smash through, breaking out increasingly large chunks that were hauled up and piled at one side. Hunching his shoulders, Wisting stood with hands deep in his pockets as he watched them work.

  As soon as the ice had been removed, the bilge pump was lowered, and Espen Mortensen placed the hose in the box he had constructed to collect loose objects. The pumped water quickly froze to ice which he had to chip away with a hammer, to
prevent it clogging the mesh. Eventually a large patch of ice formed underneath the contraption.

  The water level sank centimetre by centimetre in the well until Wisting spotted something that glinted and twisted before moving out of sight. He leaned forward and stared into the depths. Mortensen and Hammer arrived to stand beside him, gazing into the same nothingness.

  An object was sucked into the bilge pump. The hose pipe writhed and squirmed and spat a piece of wood into Mortensen’s box.

  There was another movement in the bottom of the well. It looked like currents caused by the bilge pump, but there was something wriggling directly under the surface.

  ‘Fuck,’ Hammer said. ‘It’s an eel. In the old days people used to drop eels into wells to keep the water pure and uncontaminated by worms and creepy-crawlies.’

  Wisting groaned. Eels could live to be more than eighty years old. This one could have subsisted for years on snails, tadpoles, insect larvae and scraps of God only knew what.

  ‘There are two of them,’ Mortensen said, pointing.

  He was right. Two gleaming bodies twisted and turned under the surface; gradually, as the water level sank, coiling around each other. Suddenly, another sound came from the bilge pump. The regular thrum turned into a high-pitched whine and the hose pipe emptied itself of water. Hammer unplugged the pump from the generator and hauled it up. A length of fabric was blocking the inlet. He let Espen Mortensen remove it. About the size of a newspaper page, but ragged at the corners, as if it had been torn, the fabric was saturated with brown slime but it was possible to make out a striped pattern, like a piece of clothing.

  Wisting leaned over the edge again. The eels had calmed down now the pump was gone. The remaining water was thick with mud so that, even in the strong floodlight, it was impossible to see what else might be lying down there.

  Hammer lowered the pump again, and once more dirty brown water streamed from the hose. A smaller fragment of fabric was tossed out, again with the same striped pattern.

  Five minutes later the bilge pump began to gurgle and draw air. The eels writhed in the thick mud but there was something else down there. At first it looked like part of a tree root, brown and round and slippery, but that was not what it was. What lay down there was what they were looking for and why they were here. The slick bodies of the eels were curling around human bones.

  57

  Half an hour later a large tent had been erected above the well and a space created beside it. The tent walls stopped the bitterly cold wind, and a space heater raised the temperature inside to make it possible to remove gloves and loosen scarves.

  A ladder had been dropped inside the well. The eels had been brought up and were lying, frozen stiff, on the snow.

  Espen Mortensen climbed down the ladder to retrieve a bone he saw sticking out of the mud. There was a gurgling sound as he pulled it free. Balanced on the bottom rung he studied it closely, before bringing it up and into the tent. Dark brown, it looked like a knobbly piece of wood.

  ‘Human or animal?’ Wisting asked.

  Mortensen placed it in the middle of a table and took a thick book from his rucksack. Henry Gray: Anatomy of the Human Body. He leafed through it until he found what he was looking for: a human bone shown from both front and back.

  ‘Humerus,’ he read, as he placed his finger on the sketch. The bone they had found fitted into the upper arm of a skeleton.

  Wisting drew on a latex glove and lifted it carefully. He held the bone above the illustration and compared them point for point. No doubt about it, the bone came from a human arm. The stench of putrid well water assailed his nose.

  Mortensen descended into the well again. In the same way an archaeologist unearths relics of the past, he used small tools to dig into the brown, mushy pulp at the bottom. Several more bones appeared, each discovery photographed before being laid in a basket and hauled to the surface: fragments of vertebrae, a hip bone and ball and socket joints. Each one was listed, placed in a paper bag and collected in a box.

  Several scraps of crumbling fabric were hoisted up. On one of the fragments they could see the remains of a zip fastener. A mouldy belt with a rusty buckle was hauled out, recorded and packed.

  ‘We have something here!’ Mortensen shouted, clearing the top of a ball-shaped object. With every layer of mud he scraped off, it became increasingly obvious that this was the top of a skull. He removed more before putting his hands round it and lifting. It came out to the squelching sound of a vacuum disengaging. Mortensen turned it over to show two empty eye sockets.

  ‘I think there’s only this one,’ he said, his eyes following the basket as the skull was hoisted up. ‘There’s only about thirty centimetres of mud on the foundation stones. I don’t think there’s room for more than one skeleton down here.’

  He resumed his slow and laborious work, scraping away another layer of foul-smelling mud to uncover the sole of a shoe. He put a photographer’s ruler alongside it and took a picture. ‘25.5 centimetres!’

  Size forty-one, Wisting thought, without knowing if any of the missing women had such large feet.

  Mortensen yanked the shoe out of the mud and turned it round. It was a sandal. One of the women had been wearing sandals, but Wisting could not remember which one. All the same, it suggested that the person lying at the bottom of the well had arrived there during the summer.

  Wisting stayed for another hour, following Mortensen’s meticulous work as he dug to the bottom of the well. A few more bones appeared, but the quantity suggested Mortensen was right. Only one body here. Wisting had seen all he needed to see. They had already made a great deal of progress and, in the course of the afternoon, would reach a considered opinion about the identity of the dead body.

  The sharp wind gnawed at his face as he opened the tent flap and stepped outside. He felt tense and restless. The thought ran through his head: it’s now it begins. It’s only now it all begins.

  58

  Had Line been sure she would have reported it to the police, but her work was about to take another direction. It was no longer a matter of finding out who Viggo Hansen was, but what had happened during the last hours of his life.

  On her computer, she had already saved a draft of more than five thousand characters describing Viggo Hansen as a lonely person although, at some time towards the end of his life, that loneliness had been broken. Of that much she felt certain, but who had been in touch with him, and why? And what was the motive if she was dealing with a meeting that ended with his death?

  She glanced at the clock. Almost 14.00. She had an appointment with Jonas Utklev, Chair of the committee that arranged the class reunion to celebrate the forty year anniversary of the pupils leaving Stavern Junior High School in 1964. She had found the invitation among the papers at Viggo Hansen’s home, but according to Utklev, Viggo Hansen had not even answered. Nevertheless, he had agreed to talk to her.

  Jonas Utklev lived in a block of terraced flats at the top of Ohlselia. Walking along the footpath would take less time than driving. She left her car but regretted this after a hundred metres. The cold had not loosened its grip. The wind made it even colder, and blew her hair into her face.

  Jonas Utklev had a large bald head and a stiff moustache. He waved her in as he opened the door, as if to avoid the inclement weather. ‘Did you come on foot?’ he asked, craning his neck to see where she had parked her car.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, nodding at the mountain ridge behind them. ‘I live just on the other side.’

  ‘Of course, of course. You’re William Wisting’s daughter. William Wisting at the police station,’ he chattered, leading her into a cramped living room crowded with furniture. ‘You live up in Herman Wildenveys gate. So you do.’

  The room smelled of leather, pipe tobacco and infrequent airing. Line looked around before sitting down: pine furniture, wall-to-wall carpet, family photos on the walls, green indoor plants with huge leaves in pots on the floor, a rocking chair in a corner and knitting in
a basket on the floor beside it.

  ‘My wife’s gone out on an errand.’

  Coffee was ready and waiting on the table. A thermos jug and small cups of fine porcelain. He filled one and pushed it over to Line without asking first.

  ‘You went to school with Viggo Hansen,’ Line said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Utklev replied, filling his own cup.

  ‘What can you remember from that time?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t good at coming forward. He sat at the back of the class, as I recall, always at the very back. I don’t think he ever put his hand up to say anything or ask the teacher a question. He was just there, but I don’t think many of us would have noticed if he wasn’t.’

  ‘Was there anyone in the class he spent more time with than the others?’

  ‘There were two of them who were really quiet. Viggo Hansen and Odd Werner Ellefsen.’

  Line nodded, refraining from saying she had spoken to the taciturn and simple-minded classmate two days earlier.

  ‘I don’t know if they were really friends,’ he continued. ‘It was more a case of them keeping themselves to themselves, if you know what I mean. They were the two who were left when we picked football teams and that kind of thing. Probably that’s the main reason I think of them together, because they both kept themselves to themselves.’

  ‘When did you last see or speak to Viggo Hansen?’

  ‘Oh, a long time ago. I’m honestly not sure if I would even recognise him. We had that class reunion party in 2004, the forty year anniversary, but he didn’t come. Didn’t even reply to the invitation. Neither him nor Odd Werner Ellefsen. Those were the two who were missing. Oh, and Eivind Aske, but he’s become so high and mighty since he became an artist. He doesn’t even say hello when I meet him in the street. At least, not until I’ve said hello to him first.’