Once he had started the engine, he backed onto the main road. It had stopped snowing, he noticed. There was blue sky above the pine trees. The sun was low on the horizon and on its way down. Soon it would be dark.
23
Chief Inspector Ove Dokken was rounding off a call when Wisting entered his office, still wet and bedraggled. The telephone on the desk rang again. He lifted the receiver, but put it down when he caught sight of Wisting.
‘Good grief!’
Wisting sat down. The phone started to ring again, but Dokken put the receiver to one side and lit a cigarette.
Wisting came straight to the point: ‘I found a body.’
Dokken swore and shook his head in consternation, as if faced with an impossible teenager.
Wisting, about to continue, was interrupted by a section leader speaking from the door. ‘We’re waiting in the conference room,’ he said.
Dokken looked at the clock and then back at his colleague. ‘Go on without me, I’ll come when I’m ready.’
‘The night safe robbery,’ Dokken said. ‘The Oslo police are going into action tonight. We’re contributing two men to the raid.’
‘A breakthrough?’
‘It’s a gang from Tveita,’ Dokken said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Tell me about the body.’
Wisting told his story and Dokken listened without interrupting.
‘Are you injured?’
‘Nothing serious.’
The section leader returned, but did not speak. Dokken got to his feet and stubbed out his cigarette before grabbing a bundle of papers.
‘This is how we’ll tackle it,’ he said. ‘Seal off the area around the barn. I’ll get hold of two men who can keep watch out there tonight, and we can dig out that skeleton of yours at first light. In the meantime, you can write a report that we’ll present to the Superintendent early tomorrow.’
Wisting was happy to go along with this.
‘Don’t do anything else,’ Dokken told him as he made for the door. ‘No more interviews or anything. Hold everything in abeyance until tomorrow.’
Pausing in the doorway, he watched Wisting as he rose from his chair.
‘The very first thing you need to do is get into some dry clothes,’ he said. ‘You can’t go home to your wife looking like that. You’d have to tell her what happened, and she’ll always worry about you when you’re on duty.’
Wisting descended to the changing room, where he stripped and took a hot shower. A scab had already formed on the cut and it now looked like nothing more than a scratch. He dropped his wet clothes into a rubbish bag before putting on the jogging gear he had left in his locker. Now clean and dry, he called in at the duty desk, updated them on what had happened, and took a cup of coffee and a roll of police tape out to his car.
It had grown dark by the time he returned to the barn. He no longer had a flashlight, but worked in the light from his car headlamps. Once he had cordoned off the area, he went back to see Knut Heian.
The tractor was gone, and it was his wife who answered the door. He avoided going into details about what had taken place, and simply told her that the barn had collapsed under the weight of snow and the area had been sealed off until the police could check it out the following day.
Ingrid was sitting in the living room, reading, when he arrived home. Line and Thomas lay on a blanket on the floor and he lay down beside them, letting Thomas grab hold of his index finger. He had his mother’s eyes. They both had. Bright, pale-blue eyes.
‘Have you been to the gym?’ Ingrid asked.
‘I had to change.’ He told her about the skeleton and the barn that had caved in, but said nothing about being trapped for more than an hour.
Line watched him with her big blue eyes while he talked. Kneeling up, he lifted her and rubbed his unshaven chin against her soft skin. She laughed uproariously and began to explore his nose with her tiny fingers.
‘I wonder what will become of her,’ Ingrid chuckled. ‘She’s so inquisitive.’
‘Maybe she’ll become a researcher,’ Wisting said. ‘Or an investigator?’
‘She can be anything she wants to be.’
Arms outstretched, Wisting held his daughter in front of him. She was at the very beginning of life and no matter what direction she eventually wanted to take, he knew he would follow her willingly.
He laid her down and hoisted Thomas up. He was determined not to treat either of them differently, but it was easier with Line, he had to admit, because she was so responsive. She kicked about, laughed and waved her arms. Thomas was quieter. There was nothing wrong with that of course – they were just different.
He carried his son across to the settee and sat with him on his knee. ‘I need the car tomorrow. Is that okay?’
‘If you do some shopping before you come home. There’s a list in the kitchen.’
After an hour or so chatting to Ingrid, he changed the twins and put them to bed, sat at the typewriter he had borrowed from his father-in-law, and started his report. He was aware there were a lot of balls in the air, but he tried to summarise things as he had learned to do at Police College: easily understood, clear, serious and matter-of-fact, and in chronological order. It was past midnight by the time he had written a satisfactory version.
Ingrid had fallen asleep. He checked on the twins before he undressed and lay down beside her. One of the last things that passed through his mind was how many sleepless nights this job was going to give him.
24
Wisting arrived early at the police station, while Dokken was chairing the morning meeting of section leaders and local investigators.
Once again, the woman in the records office brought him a cup of coffee and smiled at him as she had before. This time he remembered her name, Bjørg Karin, and he used it when he took the cup and thanked her.
She handed him a sheet of paper. ‘I thought you’d be interested in this,’ she said, before returning to her desk.
It was a copy of a letter to Norsk Lysingsblad, the government publication with lists of job vacancies in the public sector, requesting the placement of an advert. From 1 March, there would be a vacancy for an investigator in the Criminal Investigation Department at Larvik police station. He read the description through twice before folding the paper and tucking it into his back pocket.
At quarter to nine, the door to the Chief Inspector’s office opened and the team of investigators, all in shirts and ties, marched out, leaving Ove Dokken sitting at his desk with the Superintendent.
Wollert Hagen was a heavy-set man with a grey complexion and bags under his eyes. Wisting had worked at the police station for six months but had not yet formally met him.
Dokken called him in. Wollert Hagen looked up from his papers and rose slightly to shake his hand.
He sat down. ‘How did things go in Oslo?’ he asked Dokken.
The Chief Inspector took another cigarette out of his packet. ‘Four men were arrested. They have a good case against them for a robbery in Ski and another in Mysen, so we’ll see what comes of that.’ He squinted as he lit his cigarette.
Wisting produced a plastic wallet from inside his notebook. He handed Dokken the three copies he had made of his report.
Behind him, the crime scene technician entered the office and closed the door.
‘I asked Finn Haber to join us,’ Dokken said, waving the newcomer into a chair.
Wisting spent almost an hour going through his account. Finn Haber interrupted a few times, but Wollert Hagen listened in silence.
Dokken lit yet another cigarette when he finished. ‘What do you think we ought to do now?’
Wisting was unprepared. He had anticipated that he would give a report about what he had done, and that Dokken and the Superintendent would decide the way forward.
‘We should get the body out and identify it,’ he replied, ‘and then we must speak to Anna Skaugen.’
Dokken glanced at the Superintendent.
‘Agreed
,’ he said. ‘The veteran car also needs to be removed from the barn. As I understand it, there are almost fifty years between the two incidents. The car has been there since 1925, while the body has probably lain since 1973. Nevertheless, there could be a connection, at least if this Anna the letter is addressed to is the same one who learned about the consignment of cash in 1925.’
‘Shouldn’t we open the letter?’ Haber asked.
‘Yes, I think so,’ the Superintendent answered. ‘Where is it?’
‘I have it in my car,’ Wisting replied, ‘but could I make a suggestion? Anna Skaugen is possibly the only person who can provide us with answers about what happened in the barn. I was thinking of using the letter as an opening gambit. If it is in fact a farewell letter from her father, it would be more respectful for her to receive it unopened. It might be easier to get her to talk. Otherwise it could turn her against us.’
‘Good thinking,’ Haber commented.
‘The letter has been lying in the barn for years, so we can wait a few more hours to find out about the contents,’ Wisting added.
‘Fine,’ Dokken said, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Let’s get cracking.’
25
Work had been going on at the barn for some time when Wisting arrived. A group of policemen in overalls were shovelling snow and removing the remains of the rubble, creating a broad path inside, towards the spot where the skeleton was situated.
Finn Haber stood beside his car, pouring coffee from a thermos into a cup and watching the men at their labours.
Wisting parked some distance away before approaching. The temperature had dropped as the morning progressed. Snow crunched under his boots and his breath trailed as a white cloud.
Haber took out another cup and handed it to him. ‘I’ve tried to cast my mind back,’ he said, as he poured the coffee. ‘I was here in 1973.’
‘Here?’
‘Not exactly here,’ Haber admitted with a smile, pointing the hand holding the coffee cup towards the collapsed building. ‘I had been working in Oslo for a couple of years and came here in the spring of 1973. Not as a technician, I didn’t go in for that until later. I worked with the dog patrol and was posted here. I’ve tried to recall whether anyone was reported missing that summer.’
Haber broke off and took a mouthful of coffee. ‘And I’ve got a good memory,’ he added, tapping his forehead with one finger. ‘There wasn’t.’
‘Are you certain?’
Haber nodded. ‘There would have been a fuss. If a man were reported missing a search would have been organised and I would have been called out with Jack, my dog. Then the disappearance would have moved into an investigative phase. It would have been an unsolved case that haunted the department for weeks and months to come. I would remember a case like that.’
Wisting glanced across at the digging men. ‘Maybe he was never reported missing? Or maybe we’ve got the year wrong?’
One of the men in overalls raised his hand and shouted. Haber tossed the rest of his coffee on the snow. ‘Well,’ he said, screwing the lid back on the thermos flask. ‘It’s that sort of thing we’re here to find out.’
Wisting knew he should have investigated more thoroughly before presenting his report. Bjørg Karin had access to all the old records. It would probably have been an easy job for her to look up a missing person case from 1973. Information about whether anyone had been reported missing in the relevant period ought to have been included in his report.
His coffee had gone cold. He put it down and followed Haber into what was left of the old barn.
His colleagues from the uniformed branch stood resting on their shovels. They had reached the horse-drawn carriage. The top layer of snow had been removed, and they had taken away the hood and other parts of the vehicle. A bone was poking out of the snow.
‘Okay,’ Haber said, setting down his case. ‘Take a break.’
The men went off to have a coffee break. Haber took out a small spade and began to work around the bone protruding from the snow. Eventually other fragments were uncovered, and he stood back to take a photograph before collecting them in a plastic container.
Wisting watched as the cold penetrated the soles of his boots. He had thought that the crime scene technician’s work would be more laborious, but he was quick and efficient. Twenty minutes later, he had dug his way through to the gun.
‘You were right. It’s a Luger.’
He pulled it out of the snow, clicked on the safety catch, and dropped it into an evidence bag. In the same way, he jiggled loose the wristwatch and the leather belt, which was still intact.
Wisting took the bag, held it up and scrutinised the watch through the plastic. It was an ordinary Seiko model, with no engraving.
Two of the overalled policemen began to dig where Wisting had said the rucksack was located. The others began to clear a path to the vintage car.
Haber found the skull and took out a little brush to sweep away the snow around it.
‘How long do you think it’s been here?’ Wisting asked.
‘Difficult to say. There are too many variables. It could well be ten years, but it could also be twenty.’
Wisting turned when he heard a car approach. It drove all the way up to the crime scene tape before drawing to a halt. Ove Dokken alighted and zipped up his jacket before joining them. He grunted something about how cold it was before producing a packet of cigarettes and fishing out a smoke. He was about to put the packet back, but changed his mind and offered Wisting one. Wisting shook his head.
Straightening up, Haber grabbed the camera and pictured the skull from various angles.
‘Who is it?’ Dokken asked, blowing smoke on the fragments of bone.
Wisting turned his gaze to the men searching for the rucksack.
‘Best guess is Alfred Danielsen. At least, it’s his rucksack that was lying here.’
‘It’s not him,’ Dokken said, pushing his hands into his jacket pockets. ‘Alfred Danielsen is lying in Tanum churchyard. He died in 1968. I knew him. Caught him red-handed when he tried to break open the municipal treasurer’s strongbox sometime in the fifties.’
Wisting let the information sink in. ‘Have you spoken to Bjørg Karin? Was anyone reported missing in the relevant period?’
‘No. That’s why I asked. Who is it?’
Haber lifted the skull and placed it in a separate cardboard box. The cranium had numerous fractures in every direction from a cleft at the back of the head. Wisting harboured some thoughts about who it might be, but chose not to share them.
Haber went on gathering the bones. Dokken pinched his cigarette between two fingers. ‘Do you still have the letter in your car?’ he asked, returning the half-smoked cigarette to the packet.
Wisting nodded.
Dokken thrust his hands into his pockets again and hunched his shoulders. ‘You need to get a move on.’
26
Wisting phoned the Population Register offices for her address. Anna Skaugen lived in Bugges gate in Torstrand. Born in 1907, she had been listed as a widow since 1 January 1979.
Icicles hung from the eaves of the two-storey building. Several of the asbestos cement tiles on the exterior cladding had loosened and hung askew. The windows were grey with dust and bird droppings, and it was impossible to see either in or out.
He parked in front of a dilapidated garage. Two mailboxes on the fence by the pavement were almost buried in snow. The name Anna Skaugen was written on the lid of one and a narrow, well-trodden path led to the steps. He followed the tracks and saw two doorbells: Jens Brun and Anna Skaugen. He pressed the lower of these.
Nothing about the plump, elderly woman who opened the door reminded him of the eighteen-year-old, smiling girl he had seen in the photograph at Ruth Skaugen’s home. Her hair was silver, and the curls were gone. A large liver spot had formed on her forehead, and deep furrows ran from her nose down to the corners of her mouth. Beneath her chin, a fold of skin made her mouth look even weaker. She
was seventy-six, but looked older.
‘Anna Skaugen?’.
She cocked her head, as if her hearing was weak. ‘Who is asking?’
He gave his name. ‘I’m from the police.’ He raised his voice. ‘I’ve brought a letter that I believe may be addressed to you.’
‘A letter?’
‘I need to explain,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’
She looked at him for a few moments. In the end she shivered and took a step back, as if the cold had forced her to let him enter.
He followed her into the hallway, past the staircase leading to the upper floor and a telephone table, through a half-open door until he stood in a small living room with closed curtains. It was dark and smelled nauseatingly of dusty, dead air and potted plants with damp earth.
A door opened elsewhere in the house. ‘Who is it?’ called a male voice. She turned to face the staircase in the hallway. ‘It’s for me!’ she replied. ‘My grandson,’ she told Wisting. ‘He doesn’t have a job.’
Walking towards a three-piece suite, she took hold of the backrest on one chair, and stood until Wisting had sat down.
He placed his notebook on the coffee table and waited until she was also seated. Music boomed from the floor above: loud, insistent vibrations.
‘I’m afraid I’ve come with bad news,’ Wisting began, explaining that they had found a dead man in a barn at the entrance to Tveidalen.
She listened intently.
‘The barn has been more or less unused since the mid-fifties,’ he said. ‘The man we’ve found has probably been lying there for a long time, and not been discovered until now.’
She nodded, as if she had added up the information in her head and had managed to get it to tally.
‘Inside the barn, we also found a rucksack. There was a name written on it: Alfred Danielsen.’
She gasped for breath and was overcome by a fit of coughing. ‘My father,’ she said. ‘Alfred Danielsen was my father.’
When It Grows Dark (William Wisting series) Page 12
