Closed for Winter

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘Could we make it as discreet as possible?’

  ‘We can find a solution, I’m sure.’ Wisting said. ‘We could meet at my house.’

  ‘At your house?’

  ‘I need to go home anyway.’

  ‘If we can do things that way I’d appreciate it very much.’

  Wisting had never taken such a course of action before, but had no objection to it. The most critical aspect was to create an atmosphere in which the witness felt relaxed. He gave Thomas Røningen his address in Herman Wildenveysgate, and an hour later was parking in the driveway.

  Suzanne was working beneath the giant birch tree in the garden, raking wet leaves. She wore his black Wellington boots and a pair of gardening gloves from the shed. Straightening her back, she smiled when she caught sight of him. Resting the rake against the tree trunk, she removed her gloves as she approached.

  ‘Great that you could manage,’ she said, giving him a kiss.

  ‘You’re so clever,’ he smiled, glancing over her shoulder.

  ‘I like working in the garden. It lets your thoughts run free.’

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘I can tell you another time.’ She laughed as she kissed him again, and then drew back to scrutinise his features. ‘How are you?’

  ‘It’s throbbing,’ he replied, walking to the front door. ‘I need to find some painkillers.’

  ‘Was that why you came home?’

  ‘One of the reasons,’ he smiled. ‘We’re going to have a visitor.’

  ‘Who would that be?’

  ‘Thomas Rønningen.’ Suzanne repeated the name, without seeming to understand who he meant. ‘He’s a witness in the case,’ Wisting explained. ‘The body was found in his cottage.’

  ‘Does he have anything to do with it?’

  ‘That’s what I’ll be trying to find out.’

  ‘And you’re going to talk to him here?’

  ‘It was a practical solution.’

  Suzanne pulled off the overlarge boots. ‘It’s a bit strange,’ she said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘We were sitting watching him on TV yesterday, and now he’s actually coming here.’

  Inside, Wisting filled a glass with water from the tap and swallowed two Paracet tablets while Suzanne boiled the kettle for tea. ‘Line was here,’ she told him. ‘She took the key for the cottage.’

  ‘You didn’t manage to persuade her to stay here?’ Wisting asked, taking a seat at the window.

  ‘I asked her, but she said she wanted to have some time on her own.’

  ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘Fine, but I don’t like her being out there at Værvågen by herself. I wonder whether I should take a trip out there.’

  Wisting drank the tea, appreciative of the concern she was displaying for Line. ‘That was what she wanted, of course,’ he said. ‘To be on her own for a while.’

  ‘All the same,’ Suzanne replied, nodding at the gloom outside. ‘The forecast is for the weather to worsen.’

  The doorbell rang before they had finished their tea, and Wisting opened the door.

  Thomas Rønningen, shorter than he had imagined, was dressed in jeans and a black turtle-necked sweater underneath his windcheater jacket. As he extended his hand with a jovial twinkle in his blue eyes, it struck Wisting that this felt like greeting an old friend. He led the way inside, where the famous television host hung his jacket in the hallway, removed his shoes and said hello to Suzanne. In the upstairs living room he stood by the window while Wisting found something to write on. Daylight was dwindling in the ashen sky outdoors.

  ‘Fantastic view here in good weather, I should think,’ Rønningen remarked.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ Wisting agreed. ‘Do sit down.’

  ‘We could probably have done this over the phone,’ Thomas Rønningen said, settling on the settee. ‘I don’t know anything about what has happened.’

  Wisting sat directly opposite him and switched on the little tape recorder, prompting a more formal context. ‘All the same, it was good of you to take the time,’ he said.

  The purpose of an interview was always the same: to obtain fresh information. Wisting often considered it a game played by two people who sat on opposite sides of a table, each with different information about a case. The police officer should take the lead to establish the terms of the interview but, occasionally, the interviewee was so proficient that he assumed control and the policeman ended up giving information instead of gathering it.

  Thomas Rønningen was a professional adversary. In case he was more involved in this matter than he was admitting, Wisting decided to proceed with caution. He placed his notepad on his lap and leafed through to a blank page, mostly as a signal that a formal examination was in process.

  ‘When did you last visit your cottage?’

  ‘A fortnight ago. I was there from Friday to Monday.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Wisting glanced at the tape recorder. He had learned from the celebrity press that Thomas Rønningen was divorced. They referred to him as an attractive young man who, in recent years, had been associated with a number of famous female actors and musicians. ‘No visitors?’ he asked.

  Thomas Rønningen took a second or so to reflect. ‘No, actually not. I’m writing a book, and so I prefer to be on my own.’

  ‘A book?’

  ‘About what you don’t get to see onscreen,’ Rønningen said with a smile. ‘What happens behind the scenes and after the camera lights are switched off. I’ve hosted almost two hundred programmes with nearly one thousand guests. All the elite of Norwegian society have been there. Industry leaders and cultural icons. I’ve been visited by heads of state and members of royalty, porno stars and celebrated criminals. It’s obvious there has to be a book in it.’

  Smiling back, Wisting continued. ‘Does anyone other than you make use of the cottage?’

  Thomas Rønningen squirmed in his seat. A hint of tension at the corner of his eye suggested that he felt uncomfortable about this question. ‘I don’t quite understand where you’re going with all this. The point is surely that the people who were there yesterday weren’t there by invitation.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Wisting placed his pen on the open notepad. He should have explained the purpose of the interview more clearly; an uncertain witness was a poor witness. ‘This is about elimination,’ he explained. ‘The crime scene technicians have obtained fingerprints and DNA profiles, so we need to exclude people who have had authorised access to the cottage before we can be sure which traces have been left behind by the assailant. We will require fingerprints from you. If this becomes a lengthy investigation, it may also be necessary to take prints from your guests.’

  Thomas Rønningen leaned back in his seat ‘I don’t know …’ he began, but broke off just as he did on the TV screen. ‘Let me try to understand,’ he said instead. ‘My cottage is the scene of a murder.’ Wisting nodded. ‘I understood that the man who was murdered was found in the outer hallway. Was he killed there, or inside the actual cottage?’

  ‘He was killed in the hallway,’ Wisting clarified. ‘On the way in. The assailant was already inside the cottage.’

  Wisting said no more, wondering whether he had given away too much. He had to assume that Rønningen would be interviewed by the press and make reference to what he had learned.

  ‘A burglar?’

  ‘That’s one theory.’

  ‘What did they steal?’

  ‘Several cottages were broken into. It appears that they were after easily marketable domestic electronics equipment. What did you have there?’

  ‘I certainly had that kind of thing, and a portable computer I worked on when I was there.’ Wisting saw the ransacked cottage in his mind’s eye. ‘It was on the coffee table,’ Rønningen added.

  ‘That’s probably gone,’ Wisting confirmed. ‘There were some pages of manuscript left behind.’

  Thomas Rønn
ingen grimaced. ‘It was an old computer, and I’ve backed up the files, of course, but I don’t like the thought of the manuscript going astray.’

  Wisting picked up his pen once more. Rønningen’s focus had shifted and he had avoided the question of who used the cottage other than himself. Throughout the interview his hands had been fidgeting, which was unlike his demeanour on television. Restlessness suggested unease.

  Wisting restated his question. ‘Who, other than yourself, has been to the cottage?’

  ‘I had a lot of visitors during the summer, including Se og Hør magazine. And I had visits from some colleagues at NRK.’

  Thomas Rønningen rattled off a few names, and listed several summer guests, while Wisting took notes. Eventually the list contained an excess of blonde women considerably younger than the cottage owner. ‘And what’s more, I was visited by David Kinn and some of his friends.’

  Wisting could not disguise how surprised he was. ‘The investor?’ he asked.

  Thomas Rønningen nodded. David Kinn was described in the media as an acrobat of the financial world and a repeated bankrupt. He was involved in gambling and pyramid schemes, and several years earlier had been sentenced for receiving criminal proceeds after borrowing money that turned out to be stolen. The most recent headlines had him being pursued by thugs.

  ‘He was a guest on my programme around Easter. We had some business meetings during the summer, but they didn’t lead to any agreements.’

  Wisting sat without uttering a word, hoping that the television presenter would find the silence uncomfortable and, from habit, take up the thread of the conversation.

  ‘He borrowed the cottage for a few weeks in late summer,’ the man finally said. ‘I don’t know if he had visitors or anyone else staying with him.’

  ‘A few weeks?’

  ‘Three. From the 4th to the 25th of August.’

  Wisting noted the name David Kinn at the top of the sheet of paper. The list of visitors had become lengthy, and a furrow was digging into the TV personality’s brow. ‘Do you have any idea who the murdered man was?’ he asked.

  Again the conversation was being diverted. ‘We don’t have a firm identity,’ Wisting said.

  Thomas Rønningen indicated the notepad. ‘Do you think it might be one of them?’ he asked.

  Wisting cast his eye over the list of names. ‘Do you?’ he threw the question back.

  The television celebrity shook his head. ‘I think it was completely accidental that it happened in my cottage,’ he said, gesturing with his hand as Wisting had seen him do on TV when he wanted to introduce a new topic. ‘You must have a difficult job. Challenging, is it not?’

  ‘That’s what makes it so interesting.’

  ‘I’m fascinated by the way competent investigators like you manage to see connections that others are blind to.’

  Wisting understood how television guests felt comfortable and opened up in Thomas Rønningen’s company. It was natural for him to be the central person and focus of attention, but at the same time he managed to direct the spotlight towards his conversational partner. His charm and gift for rhetoric created a congenial atmosphere, a type of charisma that could not be learned or practised. Nevertheless what he said seemed more like a diversionary tactic than a genuine opinion.

  ‘Where were you yesterday evening and last night?’ Wisting enquired, refusing to go down the conversational route.

  With a smile, Thomas Rønningen changed position once more. ‘You would perhaps think I have the best alibi in the world – a million TV viewers, but the truth is that what everybody sees on the screen is a recording. The programme is recorded in the afternoon and broadcast unedited.’

  ‘So where were you?’

  ‘At home. Alone.’

  ‘We’ve been trying to phone you, and even sent a car to your door this morning.’

  Thomas Rønningen nodded. ‘I disconnected everything,’ he said. ‘Mobile phone, doorbell, television, everything. I arrived home at about seven o’clock and sat down to write. I kept going until almost five, and then collapsed into bed. When I woke, I switched on my mobile, read my texts and phoned you.’

  Wisting considered the possible methods of checking his alibi. If he had been sitting at a computer connected to a home network, data traffic would have been registered. Leaving this aside, he posed several additional routine questions. The hour-long interview gave him a slightly different picture of the man than he had gained from his television persona. There was something feigned and affected about him that did not find its way onto the TV screen.

  Interview over, he accompanied his visitor outside, where the illumination from the street lamps was dulled by drizzling rain. ‘Where are you heading now?’ Wisting asked.

  Thomas Rønningen pulled up his jacket zip and thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘I was thinking of going out to have a look at the cottage. Do you think I’ll be able to do that?’

  ‘We still have technicians there. You’ll probably not be allowed in.’

  ‘I’ll go out anyway, and drive home afterwards.’ They shook hands in farewell. Thomas Rønningen sat in his car and reversed out of the courtyard.

  We’re not getting anywhere, Wisting thought, in a sudden attack of pessimism. We are at a standstill, stranded in a total vacuum, and don’t even know what we’re looking for.

  18

  At 21.57 Wisting brought their second working day to a close by gathering the detectives for a meeting. Despite his fatigue, he summarised the main features in the case – not fully thought through, but nevertheless weighty.

  ‘The crime scene!’ he offered as a key word to Espen Mortensen when he concluded his own summary. The crime scene technician switched on the projector.

  ‘At the moment it’s the footprints that are of most interest,’ he said, showing them photographs of bloody footprints heading towards the exit. The grooves in the tread on the soles were clearly delineated in the angled beam of light. ‘They’re interesting because they’re marked in blood and must be from the last person in the house.’

  ‘Type of shoe?’

  ‘We’re working on that, but preliminary findings are that it’s a casual shoe in size 44.’

  The next photograph was self-explanatory. Several fingerprints had been found on the doorframes. ‘The victim was wearing gloves, and we don’t know whether they belong to the owner of the cottage or someone on a visit. A search through the records is being conducted.’

  A picture of a crumpled cash receipt appeared on the screen. As the ink had run on the wet paper, the letters had blended together and were impossible to decipher. ‘This was found at the side of the path leading to the cottage,’ Mortensen explained. ‘It hasn’t been lying outside for very long, but enough to damage it. I’ve placed it in the vacuum container. Hopefully the text will become clearer once the paper is freeze-dried.’

  Nils Hammer tilted his head, squinting at the large picture. ‘I think it says Hot Dogs. Probably a receipt from a Statoil petrol station dropped by somebody in the dog patrol.’

  His comments unleashed a burst of laughter.

  ‘How’s the video project progressing?’ Wisting asked.

  Hammer lifted his coffee cup. The gathering of CCTV videos was his responsibility. ‘We’re in the process of collecting them all, but it’s a huge task. I’ve been in contact with every petrol station in town to make sure nothing is deleted. Some places have people working who can deal with the CCTV equipment, but in other places they have to wait until somebody competent comes on duty.’ He swallowed a mouthful of coffee. ‘And then things are going slightly more slowly with the toll station project. That’s come to a complete standstill.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The vehicle register is down for maintenance and won’t be in service again until tomorrow morning.’

  Wisting felt his irritation grow. He had become used to the outdated police data systems causing problems but, now they had reached such a critical point in the investigat
ion, it was difficult to be patient. He progressed the meeting. Torunn Borg had been to Oslo with Benjamin Fjeld. Wisting chose to let the young probationer give an account of their cooperation with the Oslo police.

  ‘Now at least the body has been safely delivered to Forensics,’ said Fjeld. ‘The post mortem starts early tomorrow, but I don’t think we have great expectations. There was little to obtain from the examination of the vehicle either. There were traces of inflammable liquid, but it doesn’t come as a surprise that the fire was deliberate.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘Nobody other than the hikers who reported it. We’ve spoken to the lab technician who saw the car outside the National Hospital. She can’t tell us any more than that. She saw the car from the side and partly from the rear. She didn’t see who was driving.’

  ‘Anything new about the driver from the undertakers?’

  ‘No, and that’s actually quite remarkable. He surely can’t simply vanish.’

  ‘What are we doing about it?’

  ‘We’ve contacted his employer and family, and have made a formal missing person report.’

  The uncertainty surrounding the driver had created a vague internal ache of unease in Wisting. Something did not add up, but the whole day had been like that. Nothing added up, and their time had been spent searching for the unknown. The best he could hope for now was that both he and the investigators could get a good night’s sleep, and that tomorrow would provide more answers.

  19

  Wisting drove through the darkness, his thoughts skipping across the events of the past twenty-four hours like an anchor hauled across a seabed without finding any grip. The tide of reflections withdrew as he approached his house in Stavern. Not until he swung the car to a halt though, did it dawn on him that he ought to phone his daughter. He stayed in the car to call. ‘Hello! How are things going?’

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ Line answered. ‘Suzanne just phoned to ask the same question. She was hoping you’d be home soon.’

  ‘I’m on my way into the house at the moment,’ he said, stepping from the car. ‘Was the place really filthy?’