Supporting herself on the first tree trunk, she turned and looked back to see flames licking round the peepholes high on the barn wall, and him approaching, wading through the snow with flashlight in hand, the cone of light picking out her footprints. Behind him, flames were eating through the barn roof.
Fear sharpened her senses and she heard the helicopter rotors as it again approached. The fire would attract the pilot’s attention. Only one question: would it be in time? The man was heading directly towards her. Their eyes met. Despite being over sixty years of age, his bulk and strength were nevertheless superior to hers.
She retreated into the deep snow, falling on her back, but managed to right herself again. Terror overwhelmed her. She held out one hand and begged incoherently, ‘No! Don’t!’
He struck a blow with the flashlight to the side of her head, stunning her and forcing her to her knees. She tasted blood in her mouth as she struggled to her feet, but he was quickly behind her, pressing hard around her neck with one hand and holding her kicking legs in check with the other.
Line used her arms to fight him off, grabbed his foot and yanked it hard. He lost his balance and fell, and she aimed a kick at his groin but was hampered by her sore foot. He caught hold of one of her wrists and grabbed her hair with the other, dragging her behind him. The pain at her hair roots was excruciating, and she struggled to scramble after him. From the corner of her eye she saw flames advance along the barn walls and creep under the roof.
He hauled her towards the well opening. Realising his intention, she twisted and turned and tufts of hair were pulled from her scalp. The heat from the fire was intense. Near the edge of the well she hurled her body forward and sank her teeth into his hand, forcing him to let go, and tried to take hold of the spade he had dug into the snowdrift.
Ole Linge launched himself at her and they rolled on the ground. When she dug her fingers into his face, pressing her thumb into his eyeball, Ole Linge screamed and pulled himself free. As he stood up, he kicked her on the jaw, grabbed her by the feet and pulled her towards the well opening.
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Wisting sprinted along the snow-covered road, his pulse racing until he was on the verge of passing out. He slipped and tumbled headlong on the snow before hauling himself up and continuing.
At an old milk depot hut he saw footsteps leading from the road into the forest. Among the trees the fire had grown fiercer. Flames broke through the barn roof and a plume of grey smoke billowed towards him.
Five metres from the barn he stopped and raised his hand to shield his eyes. The fire burned most voraciously at the other end of the building, where the roof had already started to sag, and twisting, curling tongues of flame were consuming the entire structure.
He looked over his shoulder before stepping forward and pulling the barn door open. Smoke belched out and brought tears to his eyes. He shouted, but received no answer other than the crackling of the inferno. Using his arm to cover his nose and mouth, he dived inside.
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Line made a last strenuous effort to find a handhold, clutching at the powdery snow, digging down in the hope of locating something. She struggled and twisted, and managed to take hold of the open trapdoor. As Ole Linge kicked at her to make her release her grip, splinters pierced her fingers. She was on the point of letting go when something inside the barn exploded and the entire wall blew out. Chunks of burning timber flew in all directions. Sparks showered against the sky above a sea of blue and orange flames.
Line watched as what was left of the roof was destroyed. The internal framework resembled a black, fragile skeleton. One of the dividing beams between the roof ridge and the wall slowly gave way, subsiding into the burning room and disappearing. A series of smaller explosions followed, and yet another beam loosened its grip on the wall, swayed and plunged into the flames. The roof structure collapsed, and a shudder passed through the back wall before it fractured and fell into the demolished building.
Only when she saw blue flashing lights on the road and silhouettes of running figures did she turn to discover that Ole Linge was gone. Struggling into a kneeling position, she crawled to the edge of the well and peered down. Flames from the barn cast flickering lights down into it, but the bottom was too deep and dark to make anything out.
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The heat was too ferocious. Wisting struggled out of the barn and skirted the building to find Line on the ground just as the explosion ripped through the yard. She was lying prone with Robert Godwin straddling her, but the pressure wave from the detonation lifted him into the air and flung him sprawling onto the ground. He disappeared in a hail-storm of burning wood splinters.
Hit by the same blast, Wisting, struck between the shoulder blades by something heavy and hard, staggered and fell, but managed to scramble to his feet. Behind him the internal barn walls collapsed.
He rushed forward to Line, put his arms around her and, with flames mirrored in her moist, red-ringed eyes, held her tightly until she carefully extricated herself from his embrace. Blood dripped from a cut above her eye. ‘He fell,’ she said. ‘He slipped into the well.’
The Swedish police arrived at full pelt, armed with guns and flashlights. Wisting directed them to the well and assisted Line to the edge. A rancid stench rose from the depths as three torches trained their powerful white lights on the bottom. The well was dry, and Robert Godwin lay six or seven metres below on bundles wrapped in grey canvas. One leg projected at an unnatural angle from his knee, but he had survived the fall. Grimacing with pain, he pushed against the well wall to put his head back and peer up. The dark lustre in his eyes had been extinguished.
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Not until she was lying in hospital in Gothenburg could Line fully assemble the story, as her father slept in a chair at her bedside.
The extra bulletins on the TV above her bed had continued all night, repeating the press conference in Norway with representatives from the Swedish and American police forces present. Sixty-one-year-old Robert Godwin from Minnesota was charged with twenty-three homicides in the USA, ten in Norway and five in Sweden.
The picture transferred to the forest outside Hamburgsund and footage of firemen coiling their hoses. A reporter explained that several bodies had been removed from the property behind. Subsequently, a taciturn police officer took questions, confirming that the case involved a joint action in which Norwegian police had participated, leading to the arrest of the wanted American.
Her father moved in his sleep in the chair. She changed the channel to watch CNN and Sky News. In both instances, the sensational arrest in Sweden was the main news item. The American channel showed archive photographs from when Godwin had been nicknamed the ‘Interstate Strangler’.
On the Swedish channel, a burly criminologist and author was interviewed by a reporter who wanted to know how Robert Godwin had managed to avoid police attention for so many years. The expert pushed his glasses over his forehead onto his thick grey hair before embarking on a lengthy response. He reckoned there were probably as many as fifty thousand people living illegally in Sweden. The authorities had no clear picture of who they were. The only thing known for certain was that they financed their existence and residence through criminal activities.
Line switched off the television. At present she was not part of the news story, but that would come later. She pulled aside the quilt and, studying her ankle encased in plaster, reached for a pencil and the bundle of writing paper that one of the nurses had acquired for her.
Twenty years ago, Viggo Hansen had been regarded as crazy and was admitted to hospital when he thought one of his few friends was no longer the person he purported to be. Now he had become part of an international news story, though that did not change the principal fact. His life had been spent in loneliness.
We will never really know how he lived, she wrote, nor will we ever know how he actually died. We only know that he was alone. Alone in every respect.
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Line’s article about Vig
go Hansen was published the day after Boxing Day.
Wisting slept late before getting up to go to the local shop, where he bought a couple of freshly baked rolls and returned home with the newspaper. Line had gone back to Oslo and the house was empty.
He switched on the radio, relishing the company of a morning discussion programme as he made himself a cup of coffee. He cut the rolls open, spread jam on two halves and herring on a third. Breaking the last half into pieces, he opened the kitchen window and put them on the bird tray outside.
Robert Godwin was still all over the front pages. VG’s journalists had travelled to the USA to interview the families of several of the American victims, who thanked the Norwegian and Swedish police for finally catching the murderer. Now they could move on with their lives.
Godwin had been released from hospital and placed in the secure unit at Tidaholm Prison. According to the newspapers, he was willing to give a statement to Swedish police, but demanded guarantees that he would not be handed over to the US authorities. Many questions had not been answered, and Wisting anticipated they never would. That was how it always was. In every investigation, a number of elements sank to unfathomable depths.
Two red-breasted birds with blue-black hoods and grey body feathers appeared outside the window, as they had every day throughout the Christmas period, helping themselves to crumbs from the tray.
He read Line’s article twice. The frame was still the story of a lonely man, but it had gained another dimension and another context. She drew a portrait of a man no one would miss, but who had occupied his place here on earth. Afterwards Wisting crossed to the window to stare at the empty house further down the street. It had started snowing again, as forecast. Large feathery flakes swirled through the air, obscuring his view, until at last a grey wall divided him from the world.
Returning to the kitchen, he rinsed his plate and placed it upside down to drain, before carrying the newspaper to the living room. As he located the TV listings on the back pages, he picked up the remote control and chose a film about a boy alone at home when burglars tried to break into the house.
He leaned back in his chair and it took only ten minutes for him to fall asleep. Outside, fierce gusts of wind whipped snow along the street, obliterating all traces.
The Caveman Page 29
