Ordeal (William Wisting Series)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘Yes,’ Wisting said.

  ‘Does that mean that you believe Dan Roger Brodin to be innocent?’

  Wisting looked across at Elise Kittelsen’s parents. Her mother was looking down at the table, but her father met his eyes. He knew that his answer would hurt them, but there was no other way. ‘That is correct.’ He looked up at the judge again. ‘I don’t think it was Dan Roger Brodin who shot and killed Elise Kittelsen.’

  A gasp from Elise Kittelsen’s mother was drowned by muttering in the courtroom. The Public Prosecutor got to his feet and directed himself to the judge.

  ‘We have heard three eyewitnesses here earlier today, who have all pointed out the accused and given very similar statements. Unless the witness has something more to offer than supposition and statistics, this is mere speculation that I can’t see any need for the court to waste time on.’

  The judge nodded, but appeared more interested in what Wisting now had to say. ‘Is this more than supposition?’

  ‘I have spoken to the eyewitnesses,’ Wisting said, explaining how the description given by two of the witnesses had been based on a description provided by the third and relayed over the police radio. ‘In reality we are dealing with only one witness description. When I spoke to them, both witnesses admitted they had not really recognised Brodin as the perpetrator, but took it for granted that it was him, since the police already had him in handcuffs in a patrol car.’

  He flicked through his notepad and referred to what Terje Moseid had said: ‘It’s only in the movies that police arrest the wrong person.’

  The Public Prosecutor rose from his seat again. ‘All three witnesses gave statements in front of this court earlier today. I request that their explanations are given credence, rather than Wisting’s interpretation.’

  The judge nodded but made no comment.

  Müller continued. ‘What about the technical evidence? Have you examined that more closely?’

  ‘The central piece of evidence is gunshot residue on the accused’s right hand. I don’t know how he has explained that in court, but when I spoke to him in prison three days ago, he came out with fresh information about his own movements on the evening of the murder. About why he ran away from the police.’

  Müller smiled. ‘The court has heard that he fled because he was under the influence of drugs and had therefore broken the conditions of his provisional release.’

  ‘He had another reason to run off,’ Wisting said. ‘And a reason not to want to tell the police about it.’

  The defence lawyer gave him a brief nod as a sign that he should continue.

  ‘Between Christmas and New Year, he committed a theft to order of fireworks,’ Wisting said. ‘A whole container with contents worth more than 100,000 kroner. He held back some to sell, but some he played about with himself. When he came across the police on the evening of 31 December, he had just blown up a rubbish container outside a Kiwi supermarket in the city centre. He ran so that he would not be caught and charged with vandalism and theft. When he was apprehended, his hands were covered in gunpowder from the fireworks.’

  The Public Prosecutor protested. ‘Should we not have heard this from the accused himself?’

  ‘It’s not the accused who is sitting in the witness box now,’ the judge pointed out. ‘But we could perhaps confer with him?’

  Dan Roger Brodin lifted his eyes from the table.

  ‘Is this correct?’ the judge asked.

  Brodin blinked. ‘What he says is true. All that about the fireworks. That’s how it was.’

  Wisting’s mobile phone vibrated again as the judge asked Brodin some supplementary questions. He had already moved it away from the microphone. This time it was a pre-arranged message from Nils Hammer. Okay, was all it said.

  The message led his thoughts back to Line, but he forced them away. He had not yet presented the most telling part of his testimony.

  Harald Ryttingen spoke for the first time. ‘This is all fabricated,’ he objected. ‘An attempt to make the facts fit. Why have we not heard all this about the fireworks before now?’

  ‘I visited this Kiwi shop last weekend,’ Wisting said, without waiting for the judge’s permission. ‘It turned out that they reported the vandalism to the police the following day, and that the incident was filmed.’ He produced the folded photo printouts from his notepad. ‘The case was dropped after a short time, but I have copies of the images here. They’re of poor quality and not suitable for the purpose of identifying the perpetrator, but they do document that there was indeed a fireworks explosion in the rubbish bin outside the Kiwi shop that very evening.’

  Ryttingen whispered something to the Public Prosecutor, who stood up to protest. ‘This has not been cited as documentary evidence.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I am going to admit it,’ the judge answered. He held out his hand to indicate that the court official should give him the pictures.

  ‘I have copies for the others,’ Wisting said, handing them over.

  Ryttingen slumped in his seat, red in the face. The gunshot residue was one of the central planks of the indictment. He would know that when one plank failed, the rest of the framework would soon collapse. ‘This is out of order,’ he muttered.

  The judge looked over at him. ‘Is there something you want entered in the court record?’

  Ryttingen shook his head, but it seemed as if there was a sudden flash in his eyes. ‘No, your Honour,’ he answered, rising to his feet. ‘But if it is true that Wisting believes the wrong man is in the dock, then perhaps he can tell us whether he has suspicions of anyone else?’

  The judge agreed. ‘Do you have a suspect?’ he asked.

  Harald Ryttingen resumed his seat, folded his arms and leaned back.

  ‘Yes,’ Wisting said, moving his hand towards his mobile phone. ‘I’ve just received a message that my men have apprehended and charged a man for Jens Hummel’s murder. We also believe that he killed Elise Kittelsen.’

  The muttering among the spectators rose like a wave behind him. The judge gripped his gavel and asked for silence in court. ‘Who?’

  ‘We have charged the witness who was called before me,’ Wisting said. ‘The chief prosecution witness, Einar Gjessing.’

  The reply prompted another outburst in the court. The judge allowed both spectators and prosecution time to digest the information before he again requested silence. The buzz of voices subsided but even from the witness box Wisting could hear the fingers of the journalists as they raced over their keyboards.

  ‘You must explain this in more detail,’ the judge said.

  Wisting sat up straight. ‘As I explained earlier, I have examined both the case documents and the supplementary investigation material, and have found an unexplored avenue.’

  The judge sat with pen poised, making notes. ‘An unexplored avenue?’

  ‘It’s an expression we use in the police,’ Wisting said. ‘It has to do with an opening in the case that has been overlooked by the investigators or, as in this case, a direction in the case that the management in the enquiry have not wanted to see. A lead that they more or less consciously have chosen not to follow. Having Dan Roger Brodin pointed out as the perpetrator almost before the investigation had got properly started made them blind to other possibilities. At the same time it was extremely convenient for them. With the arrest as their starting point, they constructed a narrative that did not match the reality, and that meant they need not investigate how far the police themselves were responsible for the murder of Elise Kittelsen.’

  Ryttingen whispered something in the Police Prosecutor’s ear. He nodded and asked the judge for a recess.

  ‘I want to finish hearing this witness,’ the judge said. ‘I want to know how the police could have something to do with this murder.’

  The courtroom was filled with an attentive stillness.

  ‘Elise Kittelsen was a police informant,’ Wisting said. ‘She was centrally placed in an organised narcotics network that th
e police had tried to expose for a number of years. They were on the brink of a breakthrough when she was killed. She knew when and where the next consignment of narcotics would arrive. That knowledge was valuable to the police, but mortally dangerous for Elise. Quite simply, she knew too much, and someone knew that she was passing on information.’

  The Public Prosecutor made another effort. ‘This information has no place in an open court!’

  Olav Müller did not allow the judge time to answer. ‘This is absolutely essential information that the police have been sitting on all this time, but which they have withheld from me and my client.’

  The judge glanced at Wisting before turning to the prosecution. ‘Is this correct?’

  Ryttingen’s face was ashen as if he had suddenly grown several years older. ‘This is not relevant to the case,’ he replied, admitting nothing.

  The judge addressed Wisting again. ‘How have you come by this knowledge? And what relevance does it have for the case?’

  Wisting filled the glass in front of him with water. ‘The man we have arrested, Einar Gjessing, is one of the participants in this criminal network. So is Elise Kittelsen’s boyfriend, Julian Broch. It was first and foremost through him that she obtained information for the police.’

  He took a drink and cleared his parched throat, noticing that Elise’s mother had taken hold of her husband’s hand.

  ‘When the police began their investigation into this scene, they started the way we usually do. On the fringes, working inwards. You start at the bottom with an addict, and persuade him to tell you who sold him the drugs. Via the seller you find the supplier, and in that way you climb higher into the hierarchy. Right on the periphery of this case they came across Elise Kittelsen. Undercover detectives apprehended her one morning as she was making her way to college from her boyfriend’s. She had a couple of grams of hash in her possession that she had promised to a friend, and a few more in her locker at college. An insignificant charge, but her entire future lay in ruins. A drugs conviction would destroy her professional ambitions as a teacher, and bring shame to her and her parents. The detectives gave her a chance. They could forget the whole business in exchange for information. She chose to betray her associates, to betray her boyfriend and friends to save herself.’

  Ryttingen had not given up trying to force Wisting into silence. ‘The witness has no first-hand knowledge of this. He was not present, and this is at best pure guesswork.’

  The judge turned to him with the same irritated manner he had shown when Wisting entered the witness box. ‘Do you deny that Elise Kittelsen was operating as a police informant?’

  Ryttingen shook his head. ‘No, but this . . .’

  ‘Continue!’ the judge demanded, with a nod in Wisting’s direction.

  ‘The informant’s handler is now serving abroad, but I spoke to him by phone late last night. He explained that they used Elise in an attempt to approach the main man, whom the police have given the nickname Mister Nice Guy. In the process of the operation, Elise began to feel nervous. She was afraid that her boyfriend had seen through her. Her handler used an anonymous phone, that is to say a random phone with a subscription, borrowed from the police evidence room, but Elise still did not feel safe. The last time her contact spoke to her was only a few hours before she was killed. She was at that point scared of what might happen.’

  ‘This can’t be right,’ Olav Müller said, riffling through his papers. ‘We have Elise Kittelsen’s call data and there were no such calls on the day of the murder.’

  ‘They were deleted on the orders of the investigation’s management team to avoid creating any unnecessary interference in this case,’ Wisting said. ‘So that no one would open the door leading to that unexplored avenue.’

  ‘Which member of management?’ Müller asked.

  ‘Harald Ryttingen.’

  A camera clicked behind Wisting. One of the photographers had broken the embargo on photographs when Ryttingen collapsed in his chair. Several others followed.

  The Public Prosecutor pushed his chair slightly away, as if wanting to distance himself.

  ‘We must have a more complete picture of what you believe happened on New Year’s Eve,’ the judge said.

  ‘It is partly hypothetical,’ Wisting warned. ‘But Elise Kittelsen had become a threat to the central players in the narcotics market. They had to get rid of her. Julian Broch could not do anything, even though, strictly speaking, he was the leak. Suspicion would fall on her boyfriend if anything happened to her. He had to make sure that he had an alibi, so the assignment was given to Einar Gjessing, who was already in debt to Mister Nice Guy. Documentation exists to show that Gjessing had lost money on a joint business venture after he was declared bankrupt.’

  The mobile phone on the shelf in front of him vibrated again. It was Line. Where are you?

  Wisting mustered all his determination before he continued. ‘The killing of Elise Kittelsen also provoked the killing of Jens Hummel,’ he said. ‘Hummel operated as a courier in this network. He conveyed large consignments of narcotics between the regions of Østland and Sørland in his taxi, from Frank Mandt to Mister Nice Guy. It’s our hypothesis that on New Year’s Eve he delivered a consignment to his usual contact, Einar Gjessing, but on this particular evening something else happened. Gjessing got Jens Hummel to drive him so that he could intercept Elise Kittelsen on her way to the New Year party. It was also his intention to flee the crime scene in the taxi that would be waiting round the corner. The man the other two witnesses saw running from the scene of the shooting was therefore not Dan Roger Brodin but Einar Gjessing.’

  He flashed a look at the defence team. Brodin appeared confused, as if he did not understand what was going on in the courtroom.

  ‘When Gjessing returned to the taxi, he was forced into a sudden, audacious change of plan. His assignment was not only to shut Elise Kittelsen’s mouth, but also to find out how much she knew. He needed her mobile phone and had to go back. He handed the murder weapon to Hummel and returned, claiming that he had pursued the killer, but had to give up the chase. In the chaos, as they tried to revive Elise Kittelsen, he found her mobile phone and, when the police turned up, and he was asked to describe the perpetrator, he described a random person whom he recalled having seen earlier that evening: Dan Roger Brodin.’

  Wisting noticed that he was beginning to feel impatient. He wanted to finish and was no longer expressing himself with his usual accuracy and precision.

  ‘Jens Hummel, in many ways, was an innocent person drawn into this business,’ he said. ‘He could have kept quiet and let Elise Kittelsen’s killer go free, but the idea of an innocent person being convicted of her murder was too much for him. He tried to tell the police that they had arrested the wrong man, but the tip-off was not followed and, as far as Einar Gjessing and the others were concerned, he became another security risk. What actually led to Hummel’s murder is something we don’t yet know, but we do know that Gjessing was one of the last people to enter his taxi. A number of partial fingerprints were found on the roof of the car. Fingerprints that wind and weather hadn’t completely erased. They were too fragmentary to be used in an automatic search of the fingerprint records, but manual comparison has established that they belong to Einar Gjessing.’

  He was nearing the end of his testimony, and this part had more loose threads and unanswered questions.

  ‘Maybe Jens Hummel and Einar Gjessing met up on the pretence of Gjessing wanting Hummel to return the gun,’ Wisting continued, flinging out his arms in an expression of uncertainty, demonstrating that the suggestions he now made were merely theories in an unfolding police investigation. ‘Perhaps Hummel demanded money in exchange for his silence? All we know is that he did not get the opportunity to tell anyone what he knew about Elise Kittelsen’s murder. He was shot and killed, and the murder weapon ended in Frank Mandt’s safe.’

  Wisting was aware that there were still many questions and that they were facing an eno
rmous challenge in the forthcoming investigation. However, his job in the courtroom was done. He had presented an alternative explanation.

  ‘Has defence counsel any further questions for this witness?’ the judge asked.

  Olav Müller seemed disconcerted. ‘Not now,’ he replied. ‘But I reserve the right to recall this witness if it proves necessary.’

  The judge nodded and turned to the opposing side. ‘Prosecutor?’

  The Public Prosecutor shook his head.

  ‘Well,’ the judge said. ‘You can have your recess now. Court is adjourned until tomorrow at ten o’clock. By that time the prosecuting authorities should have decided whether they want to continue.’

  He struck his gavel on the block, rose and went out through the side door, the two associate judges following in his wake. As soon as the door closed behind them, all hell broke loose. The journalists pressed forward and divided into two flanks, one group flocking round the prosecution while the other surrounded Wisting.

  Wisting grabbed his mobile phone, squeezed forward and headed as fast as possible to the exit without answering anyone. Before he left the courtroom, he threw a backward glance to see Ryttingen also trying to make his escape, but being physically detained. The journalists were all over him and refused to give up. Wisting could not do anything other than feel for him. He had seen it all before, and it was always unpleasant when one of their own crossed that thin blue line and perpetrated an injustice.

  78

  His phone rang before he reached the car, unknown numbers probably belonging to news editors. He dismissed the calls and keyed in Line’s number before sitting behind the wheel.

  It rang for a long time with no response. He texted that he had been occupied in court, but was now on his way. As he manoeuvred out of the car park it dawned on him that he had no idea which hospital she was in. She had talked about the hospitals in both Tønsberg and Skien, and he thought she had decided on Skien. In any case, it was the nearer of the two, though it was at least two and a half hours away.