Ordeal (William Wisting Series)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘A criminal alibi!’

  Wisting agreed. It had happened before, that an accused was acquitted of one offence because he had committed another at the same point in time. ‘It’s not an alibi though,’ he said. ‘He had time and opportunity to do both.’

  ‘But do you believe him?’

  ‘If we had found the rest of the fireworks where he said he had hidden them, then that would have supported his story.’ Wisting shrugged the way Dan Roger Brodin had done for the entire duration of their interview. ‘Either somebody has found them, or his story doesn’t add up.’

  ‘But it does add up that the theft was committed in the way he said?’

  ‘He said it had been in the newspapers. He could have hit on the idea there, but I don’t see any reason for him to come up with a yarn that doesn’t place him farther away from the crime scene.’

  Christine Thiis turned to her laptop and tracked down the online version of the local newspaper. Wisting read over her shoulder as he ate. Fireworks worth more than 100,000 kroner had been stolen from a container in Lund. It had been parked with no identification marks or direct access, so the police assumed that the perpetrators had known where it was and what it contained. ‘Have you seen the map?’

  ‘What map?’

  Wisting wiped his fingers and leafed through the documents. ‘Ryttingen stated in a newspaper interview that the attack on Elise Kittelsen had probably been carefully planned. Brodin had a map of the crime scene in his trouser pocket.’

  He found what he was looking for, an evidence report with a list of the items the accused had on his person at the time of his arrest. Map of crime scene was entered as evidence item A-3, found in the accused’s right back pocket. ‘That map.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It must be in this ring binder here,’ she said, pulling out a slim green folder marked Evidence – copies.

  The folder functioned as a practical reference book for the investigators. All the documents were copied so that the personnel working on the enquiry had no need to sign out evidence from the store room every time they wanted to look again. The same applied to receipts, memos and keys or other small articles that could be placed on the glass plate of a photocopy machine.

  Christine Thiis thumbed through to the map, the kind you came across in hotel receptions and could tear off a pad. The copy had obvious creases and stains where it had been folded.

  ‘Is anything marked off?’ Wisting asked, studying the grid pattern of streets with her. The original had presumably been in colour and A3 format. The map they were faced with was in black and white and had been scaled down to A4 to fit the size of the folder.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  Wisting removed the map. ‘It says in the report that it’s a map of the crime scene, but this is of the whole city.’

  He folded the sheet in the same way that the original must have been folded. On the part that was turned out, the streets ran parallel to one another, and the site outside the disused school where Elise Kittelsen had been murdered lay roughly in the middle. When he turned it the other way round, the district of Lund, where the fireworks had been stolen, was approximately in the centre. ‘This could be the map he got from Stikkan.’

  ‘Stikkan?’

  ‘The guy who gave Dan Roger the job. He pointed out the location of the container on a map for him.’

  ‘What does he say about the map in his interview?’

  Wisting took out the ring binder with the case documents and flicked through to Brodin’s statement.

  ‘The accused was shown the map found in his right back pocket, evidence item A-3,’ he read aloud. ‘He explains that he has had it for a while, but had forgotten about it. Does not know where he got it.’

  ‘It does actually seem more logical that someone has pointed out a burglary site for him on the map rather than that he has used it to plan an attack,’ Christine Thiis said.

  Wisting closed the ring binder in front of him and sat absorbed in his thoughts.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  He hesitated before answering. At the back of his mind he had held a thought for some time that he had been afraid to share with others. Now the time was ripe.

  ‘I think Dan Roger Brodin is innocent,’ he said in a subdued voice, gazing at Ivar Horne in his office across the corridor. ‘I think they intend to send an innocent man to court.’

  It looked as though Christine Thiis was in two minds whether to believe that he meant what he said, or that he was joking.

  ‘The map may prove nothing,’ she said. ‘But there are three eyewitnesses, and he had residue from the murder weapon on his hands.’

  ‘Did he?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, it says so in the reports.’

  ‘It doesn’t say that it’s from the murder weapon.’

  ‘No, of course not. But gunpowder residue is gunpowder residue.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Wisting agreed. ‘I think the gunpowder on Brodin’s hands could have come from the fireworks, and not from the murder weapon.’

  She sat with her mouth half-open. As the logic of this alternative explanation dawned on her, she slumped in her chair and exhaled slowly. ‘Wouldn’t there be different chemical components and compounds in gun residue as opposed to the gunpowder used in fireworks?’

  ‘Probably,’ Wisting replied. ‘But that hasn’t been checked. Anyway, they didn’t have the gun to take reference samples from. Until now.’ He stood up. ‘Have you heard of ordeal by fire?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, though she did not understand what he meant. ‘It’s a tough, difficult trial.’

  ‘But do you know where the expression originates?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s from an ancient Babylonian legal system. Ordeal by fire was a technique for establishing guilt. The accused person had to lick a red-hot spoon that had been drawn out of the fire, and the priest would examine the tongue for signs left there by the gods. Guilty or innocent? The wounds on the tongue were what decided, and that differentiated between life and death.’

  He picked up the map and unfolded it.

  ‘You would think that the judicial system had changed in that time, but it’s still about interpreting signs and assigning meaning to what we see. It’s not just a matter of police work. We judge and evaluate all the time, assess other people according to the kind of clothes they wear, what sort of car they drive, where they live, what level of education they have and their employment. Sometimes we’re right, and other times we’re wrong. Maybe we’re wrong when it comes to Dan Roger Brodin.’

  Christine Thiis got to her feet and took the ring binder of tip-offs from one of the boxes on the table.

  ‘Then maybe this will be of interest,’ she said, flicking through to the appropriate page before presenting it to Wisting. It was a form for telephone tip-offs, dated 2 January. In the column for name, Anonymous was entered, but in the next column, a phone number was listed. In the field for tip-offs there was only one sentence: You have arrested the wrong man.

  It was inane, an empty assertion, and most investigators would not even have gone to the bother of jotting it down, far less holding on to it. Probably it had been a conscientious office employee who had taken the phone call, or an inexperienced police trainee.

  ‘It was phoned in from Larvik,’ she said, pointing at the column with the phone number, a landline.

  ‘Have you checked it?’ Wisting asked.

  She returned to her laptop and keyed in the eight figures. ‘Unlisted.’

  ‘Put Hammer on to it.’

  ‘But we still have three eyewitnesses,’ she said.

  Wisting pulled out a chair and flopped down in front of the boxes of case papers.

  ‘I know that,’ he sighed. ‘But if we’re going to solve our own case, we’ll have to solve this one first.’

  56

  With a dull headache grumbling behind his eyes, Wisting pushed the papers aside, crosse
d over to the worktop and took a glass from the cupboard and turned on the tap.

  False testimony could be found in every case, was what ran through his mind as he let the water flow. Not because anyone consciously wanted to lie to the police, but because someone thought they had seen something they actually had not. Witnesses confused imagined events with factual ones. The memory was affected by previous experience, what other people said and the way questions were asked. Even if you were present, important things could have slipped your attention. It was normal. The human brain was not designed for detailed recollection, and in an interview situation you were usually faced with unrealistic expectations of what you had committed to memory.

  As an investigator, it could often be difficult to know what to believe. The witnesses who were most credible were usually the ones who spoke well for themselves and appeared certain. Poor vocabulary and incoherent presentation had a certain effect on trustworthiness, but trustworthiness was not the same as reliability. He filled his glass and drank deeply, the cold water clearing his head.

  Christine Thiis peered up from the bundle of papers facing her.

  ‘Have you seen that film with the gorilla?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘King Kong?’

  He laughed. ‘No, I’m thinking about witness psychology. There’s a film of a basketball court with five players in each team. They showed it at a course I was on. Before they start the film, you are told to count how many times the players in white throw the ball to one another. In the middle of the game, a man in a gorilla costume comes on to the pitch. Afterwards, there are no questions about how many passes there were, but whether anyone noticed anything else. Very few people have spotted the gorilla.’

  Christine Thiis was unsure why he had told this story.

  ‘It demonstrates how unobservant we are. That something quite crucial can be missed because we are engrossed in something else.’ He sat at the table again. ‘And that’s mainly how it is when we are preoccupied.’

  She put the end of her pencil in her mouth. ‘People have sharp memories when it comes to dramatic situations. I don’t think the witnesses in this case were concentrating on anything other than what was happening right in front of their eyes.’

  Wisting did not respond.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

  ‘About a mail coach that was robbed in France at the end of the eighteenth century. There were dozens of eyewitnesses, and seven people were recognised. They were convicted and hanged for the robbery, all of them, even though none of the witnesses had seen more than five perpetrators.’

  Christine Thiis shifted the pencil to the other corner of her mouth. ‘You mean that all three witnesses in this case could be mistaken?’

  Wisting placed the three witness statements side by side on the table in front of him.

  ‘They’re too alike,’ he said, lifting the picture of Dan Roger Brodin when he was arrested. A skinny, ungainly young man with scared eyes.

  ‘All three witnesses have described him in almost identical fashion,’ he went on. ‘If it’s the same interviewer who is talking to all the witnesses one after another, then he might transfer aspects and descriptions from one witness to another, but these three have been interviewed by three different investigators. Nevertheless, the descriptions agree.’

  ‘From my point of view in the courtroom, that’s a dream situation.’

  ‘But what you dream of is not normally true. Even if three people have seen the same incident, they have three different experiences of it.’

  She stood up, skirted the table and stood by his side while she read the descriptions given by the three eyewitnesses. Wisting knew them by heart. The perpetrator had a Nordic appearance, was about twenty-five, approximately five foot nine, slim with short, blond hair and dressed in a black, turtle-necked sweater with writing on the front, a grey windcheater, dark trousers and blue trainers.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘The two friends had time to talk to each other before they were interviewed. They were seated in the back of a police car and could have influenced each other.’

  Wisting looked again at the statement given by Terje Moseid, of the two friends the one he had not made contact with. ‘I think I want to talk to him as well, before we pack it in for the day.’

  ‘Shall I come with you?’

  ‘Please do.’

  Wisting took another slice of pizza on the way out. Ivar Horne glanced up from his desk on the opposite side of the corridor.

  ‘We’ll be back,’ Wisting told him. ‘Will you be here until late?’

  ‘Just call me when you want in again. We’ve got a surveillance operation on a mutual acquaintance of ours, so I’ll be here until he’s gone to bed for the night.’

  ‘Phillip Goldheim?’

  ‘The very one. Mister Nice Guy himself.’

  Wisting was going to ask what it was all about, but was interrupted by Christine Thiis’ mobile phone.

  ‘Hammer,’ she said, looking at the display.

  They walked towards the lift. She answered in monosyllables and ended the conversation as the lift doors opened. ‘He’s traced that 331 number. The phone box at the railway station.’

  Wisting gazed at the ceiling as the lift descended. ‘So somebody phoned from a phone box in Larvik to tell the investigators in Kristiansand that they’d arrested the wrong man,’ he said, unsure how much weight they should attach to that.

  ‘I didn’t think there were phone boxes any longer.’

  The lift stopped and the doors slid open. Two uniformed policemen stood discussing something with a bare-chested man in the corridor. They walked past them in silence and headed for the car. When they were seated inside, Christine Thiis voiced what they were both thinking. ‘If Brodin is the wrong man, then who is the guilty party?’

  Wisting cast his eye over the huge police headquarters. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But we don’t have much time to find out.’

  58

  This time Wisting phoned first, to make an appointment with the third witness. The number was listed among the personal details given on the interview form. Terje Moseid answered after the third ring, wind and engine noise in the background. Wisting introduced himself and explained that it had to do with the court case starting next week. ‘Do you have time to meet me for a brief chat?’

  ‘I’m on my way in with my boat now.’

  ‘Where are you tying up?’

  ‘In Tresse.’

  Wisting knew where that was. Tresse was the city’s party locale, in the middle of the Strand Promenade.

  ‘We can be there in ten minutes.’

  ‘That’s not actually very convenient,’ Moseid said.

  ‘It’ll be quickly over and done with. I’ll meet you at the harbour.’

  Before Moseid had time to protest, Wisting had turned on the ignition and moved off.

  The sun was low in the sky, and the shadows of the boat masts stretched far inland. Wisting drove to the quayside and stopped the car. Four or five young people were on their way ashore from a V-shaped boat with a massive engine. Christine Thiis put on her sunglasses. Wisting followed her out of the car and went to meet the group.

  ‘Terje Moseid?’ he asked, looking at a young man with whitened teeth and suntanned complexion.

  ‘That’s me.’ Moseid moved his bag to his left hand to facilitate a handshake.

  Wisting introduced himself and presented Christine Thiis. Moseid asked the others to go over to the car and wait.

  ‘The murder weapon has turned up,’ Wisting said, ‘which opens up a lot of new questions.’

  ‘I saw that in the newspapers.’ Moseid put down his bag.

  ‘I wonder if we could go through it all again. If you can tell me what you saw and did that evening.’

  Moseid glanced at his friends. ‘I don’t know anything about the weapon,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see anything other than that he ran off with it.’

  ‘Can you take it from th
e beginning?’

  Moseid sighed and began a well-practised statement. He had apparently not only repeated it to the police in his hometown, but also to his family and friends. Wisting listened without interrupting. The statement was detailed when it referred to the blood and what he and his friend had done to try to save the life of the woman who had been shot, but vague about the perpetrator and the direction in which he had fled. ‘Most of my attention was on her,’ he said.

  ‘Can you describe him?’ Christine Thiis asked.

  One of the boys over at the car shouted a message. Terje Moseid used his hand to indicate that he had heard it. Then he rattled off the same description that had been written on the interview form. ‘Afterwards they drove him over,’ he concluded.

  ‘You recognised him? Can you confirm that?’ Christine Thiis asked.

  ‘Of course it was him. It all went so fast, all of it. But it was him. The police had caught him, you see. He sat there in handcuffs and all that. Tall and thin, with the same clothes.’

  ‘Did you talk to each other when you sat waiting in the back of the police car?’ she asked. ‘Did you discuss what you had seen and experienced?’

  ‘Of course, but we mostly sat listening to the police radio. They were chasing the guy through the streets.’

  A mild sea breeze sent ripples over the water, making the tall oak trees whisper as the leaves rustled.

  A thought occurred to Wisting. Terje Moseid’s description of the perpetrator had been given according to the formulation used by police when reporting a missing person. He was described by gender, ethnicity, age, height, body type, hair and what he was wearing. The clothing was described from the inside out, from top to bottom, completely according to the textbook, with the clothes underneath before the outside layer, and the clothes at the upper part of the body before the lower part, down to the footwear. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Did you recognise him when the police drove there with him?’