Wisting raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you checked her email? Is it possible to do that?’
‘We can’t read the contents, but we can see when her address logs on and makes contact with the server.’
‘What about toll stations and speed cameras? Can you find anything there?’
‘We’ve set up a surveillance network,’ Malm said. ‘Five minutes ago, this cropped up.’
He handed across a printout, a report from the police operations log, in which all incidents were recorded. A car abandoned at a bus stop along the Stavern road had been towed in after a complaint from the bus company. The owner could have it returned after paying a fine. The registration number and name of the car owner were listed. Line’s car.
‘We’ve been in telephone contact with the vehicle recovery company,’ Malm said. ‘The car was unlocked with a handbag lying on the front passenger seat. Her phone was in it.’
He paused, holding back slightly, before continuing. ‘I’ve sent two of the crime scene investigators, presently tasked with sorting the skeletons in the basement, to the bus stop to see if they can find anything.’ He fell silent, before adding, ‘Viewed in connection with all the other information we have, I’m afraid this gives us real grounds for concern.’
Wisting blinked rapidly and repeatedly, struggling to find a logical explanation for what had occurred, something to rationalise events and render them innocuous. His thoughts all pointed the other way.
77
Line was freezing. Her damp breath crystallising in the air in front of her. The cold burned her thighs, but her fingers more. She pushed her hands into her jacket pockets, but it worked its way from her fingertips into her body all the same. Her feet were like blocks of ice.
The surrounding landscape was unfamiliar, with tall pine trees on both sides of the road. She had no idea where she was, but followed the cleared road. Fresh snow lay on the road surface with only one set of tracks visible; there must be very little traffic here. Looking back, her footprints left no doubt about which direction she had taken.
The narrow roadway twisted and turned through the forest landscape and she wondered whether she should have chosen the other road. In the end she decided she had made the right choice. This was the direction she had arrived from, and somewhere ahead must be an intersecting road with more traffic. However, she knew she could not risk continuing until she encountered a car. She must seek refuge from the cold, and from the man who would surely come after her.
Up ahead she spotted a lean-to shed beside the road with Vremmen painted on a sign, but that did not tell her much. An old milk shed; part of the roof had collapsed, and deciduous trees had grown between the grey timber planks. Beside it she found a narrow uncleared track and, in among the trees about fifty metres on, a few scattered buildings. A power line stretched between poles blown askew by the wind. The place was probably only used in summer but, if she was lucky, the power supply would still be connected. She came to a hurried decision.
Soon she would have no feeling left in her feet. She tottered onto the track, sinking to her thighs. After only the first few steps her boots filled with snow, but she battled forward dejected, knowing she could do nothing about her footprints. The farmhouse was burned down. Doors, windows and walls were missing. Only the brick gable-end with chimney and hearth remained, but the barn was intact.
Its timber walls were faded to pale grey by sun and wind and canted forward, the door closed and barred with a bolt. She unlocked it and pulled it against the snow, finally creating a gap she could squeeze through.
The wooden floor creaked under her feet and the place smelled of dry, old timber and thick dust. She had no plan other than to seek warmth, to rest here until darkness fell and it became safer to move outside.
Light filtered under the roof ridge and through cracks in the wall planks, but it took some time for her eyes to adjust. She could make out a cart and, behind that, dry hay hanging over the edge of the timber wall that divided the barn from the hay loft. Old crates and chests were stacked in the middle of the floor, grey with age. Abandoned tools were propped against the wall: a pitchfork, a crowbar and a couple of spades.
Farther forward was a wall with a door. She opened it and stepped through. The air in this room had a hint of mould and lacked ventilation; a high window provided light. The walls had once been whitewashed, but patches of black dampness had eaten their way up from the floor. A faded poster of a pin-up girl hung from a nail. There were two chairs and a table, and a work bench strewn with machine parts. Small boxes, plastic containers and jam jars containing nails and screws sat on a shelf. A pipe rested on the edge of an ashtray.
In the innermost corner lay a heap of canvas sacks. Line picked up a couple. Tiny balls of mouse droppings rolled off, and she could see they had been gnawed at, but they were thick and could be warm. She moved several aside before lying down and pulling five or six over herself. She could not stay long, but needed heat, and time to consider her course of action.
78
‘She fits his victim profile,’ Leif Malm said.
Wisting shook his head, though he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. ‘Line’s too old,’ he said. ‘She’s twenty-eight.’
‘She has put herself in a high-risk situation,’ Malm said. ‘Somewhere in her investigation she must have crossed Robert Godwin’s tracks.’
There was a knock at the door. Wisting did not often keep it closed, and though he did not want to share this with the others, he would soon have to tell them that his daughter might have become part of their enquiry.
‘Come in!’ he shouted.
It was Mortensen. ‘He’s been checked and is nowhere near. Odd Werner Ellefsen has a whorl pattern, while Robert Godwin’s fingerprints have a loop formation.’ He sat in the vacant chair and looked at them, picking up the tense atmosphere. ‘Spit it out,’ he said.
Wisting gave him a condensed version and watched Mortensen draw conclusions. As investigators, they were used to assuming that the worst had happened.
‘She could have discovered something,’ Mortensen said, leaning back.
‘She may have found the Caveman,’ Wisting said.
‘Talking to people about Viggo Hansen, she may have come into contact with him. That also opens the possibility that Viggo Hansen’s death was not from natural causes.’
‘You examined the scene,’ Wisting reminded him.
‘The discovery site,’ Mortensen corrected. ‘There was nothing to suggest a crime, but perhaps we were prejudiced. Blinded by the idea that there was no motive or people around him who might do him harm. Now we know that Bob Crabb visited him last summer. He could have stirred up something.’ He placed his palms on his knees. ‘Where’s her computer?’ he asked.
‘At home,’ Wisting said. He assumed it would be password-protected, but regretted not bringing it with him. Staff here could circumvent such things. He had not gone thoroughly through her papers either. The relationship chart was all he had brought.
‘What is it we’re not seeing?’ Leif Malm wondered. ‘Bob Crabb found something that led him here. Now it seems that Line has come across something similar.’
‘Bob Crabb followed the family history,’ Wisting said. ‘We have a theory that Robert Godwin’s Norwegian origins made him choose Larvik when he fled here. His ancestors were from this area. Crabb simply followed his tracks.’
A thought struck Wisting as he spoke. He searched among the papers on his desk and found the list of tip-offs that had arrived in the wake of the newspaper article with Bob Crabb’s photograph. He keyed in Torunn Borg’s room number on the intercom. ‘Did you say that Robert Godwin had no surviving relatives in Norway?’ he asked.
‘Yes. The last one who lived here was called Iversen and moved first to Langesund in the sixties and later to Denmark.’
Wisting held up the report from the pensioners who thought they had seen Bob Crabb on board the Danish ferry. Aware that his pulse was racing, he pulled out Line�
�s relationship chart. ‘Is his name Frank Iversen?’ he asked, in an unsteady voice.
‘Yes, he lives in Hirsthals, moved there in 1990. He has no other family.’
Wisting turned to face Leif Malm. ‘We need everything you can find on him,’ he said. ‘And we need it as fast as possible.’
79
Everything else was set aside and, only a few minutes later, a picture of Frank Iversen was formed.
‘His address is Fyrrevænget 16,’ Torunn Borg said. ‘It’s a terraced flat. According to the Danish Population Register he lives alone. He’s never been married, and has no children.’
‘No mention in Norwegian criminal records,’ Espen Mortensen added.
‘Not in the Danish ones either,’ Leif Malm said. He was receiving information on his laptop from the intelligence section at Kripos. ‘The records say he is employed by Aqua Consulting of Denmark.’
Wisting looked up the company name on the internet. They had their own home page, and were involved in advice and consultation in fish farming. Frank Iversen was on the list of employees. Though there was no photograph of him, a mobile phone number was listed.
He turned the screen towards Leif Malm. ‘Can you do anything with that?’
‘We’re already on it,’ Malm said.
Wisting turned the screen back and clicked, slightly tentatively, on the other links. ‘Here’s something,’ he said, turning the screen to the others again. One of Aqua’s projects was a mussel-growing facility outside Stavern.
Wisting picked up the office phone, programmed so that his number was not shown. He tapped in Aqua’s number, connected the loudspeaker and asked for Frank Iversen. A woman answered.
‘He’s away at the moment. You can have his mobile number.’
‘Is he in Norway?’ Wisting asked.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘At the mussel farm in Stavern?’
‘Yes, but he’ll be back on Monday. Would you like his mobile number?’
‘Yes, please.’
Wisting jotted it down, confirming it was the same as on the web pages.
‘He’s here,’ he said, putting down the receiver.
Mortensen turned his laptop towards him, showing the results of an internet search. The key words mussels and chloroform had produced almost two hundred hits. One was on Aqua Consulting and had to do with checking the toxicity of the shells.
‘Looks like they use chloroform to control algae toxins in mussels,’ he said, reading aloud: ‘Toxins from mussels are extracted using chloroform and analysed in our advanced laboratory.’
Unable to sit still, Wisting walked over to the window. The weather had eased, and a helicopter was flying across the fjord in the direction of the discovery site at Halle. The area would be besieged by journalists.
‘That’s our people,’ Malm said. ‘I’ve told them to remain on alert. We may need them.’
Wisting nodded, but remained at the window, listening to his colleagues working. His office had been transformed into a command post: keyboards were tapping and conversations buzzing, investigators coming and going.
‘He’s been staying at the Farris Bad Hotel until today,’ Mortensen said. ‘Checked out at 08.53.’
‘Has the room been cleaned?’
‘Cleaned, but not re-used. I’ve asked them to close it off.’
Wisting turned to face the others. Donald Baker stood with his back to the wall, silently watching. Conversations were conducted in Norwegian now. Baker did not understand the language, but would appreciate that the investigation was escalating. Most cases were about finding the guilty party. This time they had known who it was almost from the beginning, but only now were the pieces falling into place.
Torunn Borg returned. ‘According to the Color Line passenger lists, he arrived on Monday and has a return ticket for the ferry leaving today at 17.30. On the boarding card, an Opel Vectra with the registration number XM43251 is listed. He’s probably in the ferry queue now.’
The crew on standby to go into action against Odd Werner Ellefsen were actioned, leaving only Leif Malm and Torunn Borg with Wisting.
‘Do they have any history for him on their passenger lists?’ Malm asked. ‘When was he in Norway last?’
‘I’ll check that out,’ Torunn Borg said.
The first observation post reported that Frank Iversen’s Opel Vectra was parked in lane four, waiting to drive on board.
Wisting was still at the office window. A blue-grey winter dusk was settling. The helicopter came in over the fjord and hovered. Over the radio he heard how the crew were positioning themselves, and then were told to maintain radio silence.
The crowd in his office had made the air stuffy, and he found it difficult to breathe. Seconds ticked by, slowly turning into minutes. Listening to Leif Malm’s laboured breath, he struggled to overcome his anxiety.
Torunn Borg returned. ‘Frank Iversen was in Norway twice during the summer,’ she said, glancing up from a sheet of paper with the ferry company logo. ‘First one week from 14th to 21st July, and then another week from Monday 8th until Sunday 14th August.’
‘The week Bob Crabb was murdered,’ Malm said.
‘Kikki Lindén went missing from Trollhättan on 18th July,’ Wisting reminded them.
The police radio crackled: ‘Man taken into custody.’
Confirmation that the short message had been received was relayed, before silence descended again. That was all.
Wisting clasped his hands, in furious need of action. He crossed to the wall where Robert Godwin’s wanted poster hung alongside pictures of the missing women. Staring at the dark eyes, he imagined a pale, quiet kind of madness in them. Turning on his heel he paced to and fro beside the desk. It was too simple, he thought, the way everything had fallen into place and they were able to pick him out of a ferry queue.
Nils Hammer appeared in the doorway. ‘They’ve got him.’
Wisting nodded in the direction of the police radio on the desk, as if to tell him they had already learned of the arrest.
‘He was alone,’ Hammer explained as he entered the room. ‘They’ve brought him in so we can question him as quickly as possible.’
‘Good.’
‘I found this,’ Hammer continued, placing a photograph printout on the desk.
Wisting stooped over it. A grey-haired man with a slightly crooked nose and deep-set eyes.
‘Who’s that?’ Leif Malm asked.
‘This is Frank Iversen’s passport photograph.’
The man in the photograph bore no resemblance to the wanted serial killer.
80
Wisting stood in front of the TV screen to watch the video footage from the interview room. Nils Hammer sat in the chair opposite Frank Iversen. No one any longer believed him to be Robert Godwin, and it was only a question of minutes before his fingerprints confirmed that. From a purely practical point of view, they had fabricated a charge of falsifying documents and use of false identity papers. The grounds were flimsy, but it meant they could hold him and conduct an interview.
Hammer went through the formalities and Iverson freely explained how he had been born in Norway in 1949, grown up in Stavern but moved to Langesund when his father was appointed master of the ship pilots’ guild in the neighbouring district. Both his parents died young. He had studied as a marine biologist, and during a research project in Denmark had met a woman who attracted him there. The relationship did not last, but by then he had a job at Aqua Consulting and decided to stay.
‘What’s this actually all about?’ he asked.
Hammer produced a photograph of Bob Crabb and pushed it across to the man on the other side of the table. ‘It concerns this man,’ he said.
‘The American?’ Frank Iversen asked, picking up the photograph.
‘Do you know him?’
‘I don’t know him, but he visited me last summer.’
Wisting took a step closer to the TV screen, watching Hammer straighten in his chair.
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‘Did he visit you?’ Hammer asked. ‘At your house in Denmark?’
‘Yes, it was actually quite peculiar. Has he done something wrong?’
‘What did he want?’
‘He wanted to talk about the old days in Stavern.’
‘Why was that?’
‘He was searching for an old friend he had lost contact with. I answered as best I could, but don’t remember much about my childhood years.’
‘Was there anything or anyone he was particularly interested in?’
‘He was very interested in Ole Linge.’
‘Who’s Ole Linge?’
‘Someone I knew when I lived in Stavern. He asked probing questions, and I answered as best I could.’
Wisting left the room and walked rapidly back to his own office for the relationship chart. Then he returned and opened the door to the interview room.
The men sitting at the table turned towards him.
‘Ole Linge,’ Wisting said. ‘Was he known as German Ole?’
Frank Iversen looked across at Hammer in confusion. Nils Hammer nodded, inviting him to answer.
‘It was said that his father was German,’ Frank Iversen explained. ‘He was a few years older than us, born right after the war.’
Line had used that nickname on her chart. Wisting looked again at the man in the interview seat. ‘What do you know about him?’
‘Nothing, really. I tried to explain that to the American as well. He wanted to know about his family and that sort of thing, but there was only Ole and his mother.’
Wisting nodded in thanks and left the interview room. In the video room, Torunn Borg was already working at the computer.
‘Ole Linge,’ she said, reading from the screen. ‘Born 1946. His mother died in 1972, and he has no other family registered. Last employment was in 1984. Now on a disability pension. Lives at Brunlanesveien 550.’
The Caveman Page 27
