The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  The car lights flashed orange as he remotely unlocked it. He hastily opened the driver’s door, and the headlights switched on when the engine fired up. The windscreen wipers pushed water from the glass, but it was still impossible to see the person at the wheel.

  He noticed Line at the window of Amalie’s bedroom, peeking out at the car.

  Wisting tried to read the registration number, but his eyesight was too weak in the darkness and the car disappeared.

  8

  It was a gloomy morning. Ducking his head into the wind and rain, Wisting tramped through the puddles in front of his house as he made his way to his car.

  He drove straight to the police station. En route he attempted to call Martin Haugen, but it again went to voicemail.

  He intended to drive to Haugen’s house that morning to have another look round the property in daylight before setting a formal missing-persons inquiry in motion.

  When he flopped down behind his desk he remembered he had a meeting with the investigator from Kripos. Hopefully this would not take longer than an hour. Whatever the subject matter, it was something he intended to delegate to Hammer.

  The log for the previous night showed there had been little to do for the patrols on duty. The rain had put a damper on everything. A break-in at an office block in Lågen, a minor road accident, and a boat on the verge of sinking at the quay in the inner harbour but pumped out and saved by the crew of the fire tender. In addition, the heavy downpour had caused a landslide that had closed parts of the main road north of the town. No major tasks for the criminal-investigation department to take on, and no reports that could be linked to Martin Haugen’s disappearance.

  Prior to the morning meeting, he looked up Haugen’s name once again in the police records. No information had been logged overnight.

  At five to nine Nils Hammer popped his head round Wisting’s office door. ‘He’s here,’ he said.

  Wisting glanced up from his paperwork. ‘Who?’ he asked, despite being well aware what Hammer meant.

  ‘Stiller,’ Hammer clarified. ‘The guy from Kripos.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ Wisting answered, looking down again at a circular from the police directorate. He could finish reading it later, but something made him want to give Hammer the impression that he was busy.

  ‘He’s from the CCG,’ Hammer added, before vanishing in the direction of the conference room. Wisting read another couple of paragraphs without taking in their meaning.

  CCG was the acronym for the Cold Cases Group, a newly established section for investigating old, unsolved cases in which inquiries had been scaled down or had ceased completely.

  He got to his feet and joined the others, to find that coffee cups had already been distributed. Christine Thiis sat at the end of the table with Nils Hammer at her side. Opposite was a slim man in a suit with short dark hair who stood up quickly when he caught sight of Wisting.

  Wisting held out his hand and introduced himself.

  ‘Adrian Stiller,’ the other man said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  Younger than Wisting had imagined, he was not much older than thirty-five, giving him, at best, twelve or thirteen years of experience as a policeman and a maximum of ten years as a detective, maybe not even that. Young investigators were turning up all the time, with various qualifications in addition to those obtained at police college. Credits and certificates qualified them for posts that had previously required experience of practical police work in order to advance through the ranks.

  He produced a business card from his inside pocket. Wisting accepted it and sat down beside Hammer, staring in anticipation at the man opposite him. Smooth-shaven and well groomed, he reminded him of a business lawyer, or an FBI agent in the movies.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice,’ he said.

  ‘How can we help you?’ Wisting asked.

  Adrian Stiller had a leather portfolio in front of him. He opened it and glanced down at his notes.

  ‘Well, I work in the CCG,’ he began. ‘As well as unsolved murder cases, we work with missing-persons cases that could possibly involve homicide.’

  As Wisting leaned slightly across the table, Adrian Stiller fixed his eyes on him. They were steely grey but rimmed with red, as if he had been reading a lot.

  ‘I’m here because of Martin Haugen,’ Stiller said. His eyes narrowed and he squinted at Wisting, as if trying to work out his reaction. ‘I understand you might be the person who knows him best?’

  ‘Are you going to reopen the Katharina case?’ Nils Hammer asked.

  Adrian Stiller shook his head, though his eyes did not waver from Wisting.

  ‘We’re working on another case,’ he eventually answered. ‘The Krogh kidnapping.’

  Wisting cleared his throat. Nadia Krogh had been kidnapped in the late eighties; it was one of the most notorious cases in Norwegian crime history.

  ‘What’s the connection?’ he asked.

  ‘Fresh evidence indicates that Martin Haugen was involved,’ Adrian Stiller replied. ‘We’ve reopened the inquiry and we’re treating it as a homicide with him as the main suspect.’

  9

  Adrian Stiller did not move a muscle as he sat with his eyes on them all. He regarded investigation as a game of strategy that depended on positioning the pieces in the correct places and playing the right cards at the right time – even when dealing with colleagues. He was satisfied with his opening gambit.

  He noticed a minuscule but distinct twitch on Wisting’s face. His hand reached out for his coffee cup. The experienced investigator’s hands were rough. His right thumb and forefinger were slightly discoloured, blue. He still wore a wedding ring. Through his preparation for this meeting, Stiller knew that Wisting’s wife had died seven years previously, but the ring had made a depression on his finger and would probably be difficult to remove even if he wanted to.

  Now Wisting drew his cup towards him and paused for a second before raising it to his mouth: clearly a diversion to conceal his surprise at the news he had just been given.

  The female police prosecutor at the end of the table had no wedding ring. She sat with a blank notepad and pen pedantically aligned in front of her. A furrow had formed on her forehead, and she gazed across at Wisting with a look of concern.

  The younger detective who had received him initially was less proficient than his two colleagues at hiding his incredulity. His eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped, revealing a row of teeth stained with coffee and snuff.

  ‘Are you familiar with Martin Haugen’s background?’ he asked. ‘You know that his wife went missing?’

  Adrian Stiller rose from his chair and moved to the little kitchen counter at the far end of the room, where he helped himself to a glass.

  ‘That happened two years after the Krogh case,’ he told them as he filled the glass from the tap.

  Wisting put down his coffee cup and leaned further across the table. Stiller had seen his face many times before, in newspapers and at press conferences broadcast on TV. It was a memorable face, rugged, with pronounced cheekbones. His greying hair was longer than it should be and fell over his large forehead. If he were married, his wife would have told him he needed a haircut.

  ‘What sort of fresh evidence are we talking about?’ Wisting demanded.

  Stiller liked that question. It was straight to the point. Nevertheless, he avoided answering. Instead he wanted to run all three of them through the case.

  Carrying his glass of water back to the table, he pushed aside the coffee cup the police prosecutor had laid out for him and resumed his seat.

  ‘Nadia Krogh was the daughter of the multimillionaire Joachim Krogh,’ he said, even though he was aware all three of them knew the man he was referring to. ‘On the night of 18 September 1987, she disappeared after a teenage party in Porsgrunn and her boyfriend was promptly charged. They had quarrelled before she left the party, and he had gone after her. But three days after she vanished, a letter from
the kidnappers turned up.’

  ‘They demanded three million kroner for her,’ Nils Hammer recollected.

  Stiller produced a copy of the first letter the kidnappers had sent. He pushed it across the table, wondering which of his three colleagues would pick it up. As Wisting peered obliquely down at it, he almost imperceptibly raised his eyebrows and a tiny furrow appeared on his forehead.

  The letter was like something out of a TV thriller, Stiller had thought when he saw it for the first time three weeks earlier. Letters and words cut out of a newspaper and pasted together to form sentences. It seemed childish, but the truth was that many threatening letters handed in to the police were fashioned in this way. The letter writers must all have watched the same films or read the same books. However, no matter how amateurish it appeared, there was something terrifying about it.

  The communication method used by the kidnappers had never been revealed in the newspapers. Wisting seemed taken aback at its clumsy style as he gazed down at the letter, his eyes filled with astonishment and curiosity.

  ‘The family received it on Tuesday 22 September,’ Stiller explained. ‘Three days after her abduction.’

  Hammer was the one who drew the letter towards him, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘She was never found,’ he reminisced, running his tongue over his upper teeth as he studied the sheet of paper.

  The missive comprised twenty-one words, ninety-seven letters. Its message was simple: We have Nadia. You can get her back. The price is three million kroner. Further instructions to follow. The brief communication was signed The Grey Panthers.

  Hammer handed the letter to Wisting.

  ‘What makes you suspect Martin Haugen now?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘The letters,’ Stiller said, producing another document. ‘Another blackmail letter arrived, two days after the first one. They were both cut from the same edition of VG.’

  He put it down without saying anything else. The detectives who had originally worked on the case had tracked down the edition: it had been published on Thursday 27 August 1987 and it emerged from the report that 332,468 copies had been printed.

  Wisting picked up the other letter and sat with a sheet of paper in each hand.

  The second letter was devised in the same way, but this one was shorter: Put the money in a black plastic bag behind the kiosk at Olavsberget. This time the letter was signed The Grey Ones.

  ‘The family was willing to pay. They followed the instructions, but the money was never collected. The pick-up point was under surveillance for six days.’

  ‘You think Martin Haugen made these?’ Wisting asked, putting down the letters. ‘What have you found that the investigators didn’t at that time?’

  ‘Fingerprints,’ Stiller told him. ‘The technology has advanced. We’ve found concealed prints which we didn’t have the equipment to identify then. Also, new computer programs and more powerful data technology have improved our search methods. The prints were crosschecked with the records, just as we do when biological traces are analysed again using new DNA procedures. This produced a match with the Katharina case, with prints found at her home. A manual search showed they belonged to her husband, Martin Haugen.’

  Silence filled the room. Stiller could almost feel the authority invested in the senior detective. It caused the others to remain quiet to avoid hindering his judgement.

  ‘Do you have grounds for believing these to be genuine?’ Wisting asked. ‘That they were written by whoever actually abducted Nadia?’

  Stiller nodded but allowed Wisting to complete his objections: ‘Kidnapping with a ransom as its objective is a carefully planned action. Little thought seems to have gone into these letters. Usually such letters turn up less than twenty-four hours after the abduction. They normally contain a warning not to involve the police, threats about what will happen if the kidnappers’ demands are not met, and also more specific details with regard to handing over the money. Finally, it seems as if they just gave up their plan and didn’t do anything more about it – apart from getting rid of Nadia.’

  As Wisting put down the letters, he added: ‘These letters appeared after Nadia’s boyfriend was arrested. They created enough doubt about what had happened to shift suspicion away from him. I would think this was a diversionary manoeuvre, and the letters were written by someone keen to help the boyfriend.’

  Stiller produced yet another document and laid it on the table, picture side down.

  ‘The investigators in Telemark also thought along those lines after the first letter arrived, but this was enclosed with letter number two.’

  He turned the paper and pushed it across the table, though his colleagues had to stretch forward to see it properly.

  It was a photocopy of a passport photograph. Stiller had seen the original. Stored among the case documents in his office in Brynsalléen, it was dog-eared and torn. Two children were depicted in the photo.

  ‘Nadia and her little brother,’ he explained. ‘She had it in her purse. If the letters were sent by someone who wanted to help her boyfriend, then it must have been someone who was an accomplice or somehow implicated in the kidnapping.’

  Wisting reclined into his chair, his jaw working as if chewing on something. Stiller watched him struggle to find alternative explanations for the picture.

  ‘What about the envelopes?’ Wisting asked. ‘Did they give you anything?’

  Stiller took two more photocopies from his file. ‘They were quite ingeniously addressed,’ he said, putting down the pictures produced by the crime-scene examiners.

  Each of the white envelopes had an adhesive address label attached.

  ‘It’s the address of Krogh’s company,’ Stiller elaborated. ‘The sender has cut them out of a telephone directory.’

  He saw how Wisting held the picture of one envelope up to the light and studied it intently.

  ‘As you see, both envelopes were franked locally, as was the practice in those days. The investigators travelled throughout the entire region, checking telephone kiosks. In Vallermyrene, they found a phone book with the page listing the letter K torn out. The other directory was never tracked down.’

  ‘Prints?’ Hammer queried.

  ‘Lots, on the phone directory, the phone box and the envelope. Three of the prints on the phone book produced results matching petty criminals living in the vicinity. They were all eliminated from the inquiry. One fingerprint on the envelope belonged to an employee in the firm who attended to the post.’

  ‘Where on the letter was Martin Haugen’s fingerprint found?’ Wisting quizzed him as he picked up one of the blackmail letters again. ‘On the actual sheet of paper, or on the newspaper cuttings?’

  Stiller smiled. He liked this older investigator’s ability to home in rapidly on the most essential aspects of the case.

  ‘On the cuttings,’ he answered. ‘Three instances on the first letter. Letter number two has no prints at all.’

  He displayed another copy of the same letter, with spots and lilac patches resulting from the chemical process it had undergone. Three points were marked in pencil where fragments of a fingerprint had been found. Above the dia in Nadia. At the end of the word million, and above the two final letters of Panthers in the signature.

  ‘So this means he had read the newspaper but not necessarily constructed the letter?’ Hammer said.

  Stiller agreed. ‘If we had a direct link between him and the letters, we’d have brought him in. We’ve chosen a slightly more tentative approach.’

  His eyes latched on to Wisting and he tried to make his gaze seem amicable. It was common knowledge even outside the local police station that a friendship had developed over the years between Wisting and Haugen. Their close connection baffled him. Wisting had more than thirty years’ experience in the police force. This ought to have taught him to recognize most types of people. If, through his friendship with Martin Haugen, he had failed to realize that he was a man living a lie, then this would be cause for concern. Nor
mally he would have voiced these misgivings, but now he held them back. It would not be a wise introduction to what was likely to become a lengthy investigation with Wisting. If he were to succeed in persuading Wisting to do what he wanted him to, he should really exercise restraint.

  ‘We need your help,’ he went on instead. ‘You’re already close to him.’

  Wisting placed both hands on the table in front of him and intertwined his fingers. No reluctance was visible, just a professional understanding emphasized by a brief dip of his head.

  ‘There’s only one problem,’ he said. ‘Martin Haugen has gone missing.’

  10

  Adrian Stiller had to admit to himself that he was not prepared for this. He sat still, watching how the two others at the table turned in amazement to face Wisting, and left them to ask him what he meant.

  Wisting glanced at the calendar on the wall. ‘Katharina Haugen disappeared on 10 October, twenty-four years ago,’ he explained. ‘I’ve made a habit of visiting Martin Haugen on the anniversary every year since then. I think he has appreciated that. He’s always been expecting me, with coffee and cake ready. But yesterday he wasn’t at home.’

  ‘He may have forgotten about it,’ Stiller suggested.

  ‘He hasn’t been at work either,’ Wisting continued. ‘I’ve tried to phone him, but he’s not responding, and now it seems as if his phone has run out of charge. I visited his house a few times yesterday and tried to call him again this morning. He’s gone.’

  ‘Have you checked the records?’ Hammer asked.

  Wisting responded: ‘There’s nothing there. The hospitals don’t have him either.’

  Christine Thiis turned to face Stiller. ‘Is it possible he’s got wind of these fingerprints and knows that the case has been reopened?’ she asked. ‘And he’s done a runner?’

  Stiller shook his head emphatically. ‘This has been kept within the CCG,’ he replied, turning towards Wisting. ‘Has he been formally reported missing?’