The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘They’ll have a look at where his pickup’s parked, but it’s the best opportunity,’ Stiller said. ‘At home he keeps his vehicle parked in the garage. Anyway, it only takes a second. It won’t be easy for anyone to spot it or know what’s going on.’

  Wisting agreed. ‘And once it’s done?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve legal permission to conduct a covert search,’ Stiller told him. ‘The technicians are coming here with equipment to read Haugen’s hard drive.’

  ‘How will we get inside?’

  ‘We’ve got that sorted,’ Stiller assured him. ‘It won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ Wisting said, before returning to his own office.

  Covert searches were not an everyday occurrence. As a rule, the police visited the person concerned with a warrant and then the search took place in the accused’s presence. Or else it was done after the person had been remanded in custody. Only twice before had Wisting taken part in a clandestine house search.

  At six minutes past twelve Adrian Stiller poked his head round Wisting’s office door.

  ‘We’re all set,’ he said. ‘We’re swinging into action now.’

  This was short notice, but Wisting stood up and followed Adrian Stiller down to the police garage, where a grimy white delivery van with a Lithuanian number plate was parked. A magnetic sign with a hammer-and-saw logo was displayed on the side.

  ‘Creative,’ Wisting commented.

  Presuming the man behind the wheel to be one of the technicians, he greeted him with a nod. Nils Hammer was already seated behind him in the cargo hold. Wisting clambered in and said hello to the other colleague from the Kripos technical section. Adrian Stiller jumped in after him and drew the sliding doors closed before the van drove from the garage building.

  ‘Did it go okay?’ Wisting asked them, referring to the tracker they had attached to Martin Haugen’s pickup.

  ‘No problems,’ the technician answered, holding up a tablet with the image of a map displayed on it. In the centre was a red dot at the far edge of an open area Wisting understood to be a car park.

  ‘I’ll set it up for you in the comms room afterwards, so you can keep a close eye on him,’ the technician said.

  The smoked windows in the rear of the van made the grey skies look even darker and more threatening.

  Everyone in the vehicle jolted forward when the driver dropped the van into a lower gear to drive up the steep ascent to Kleiver. Adrian Stiller was on his phone and exchanged a few brief words with someone before wrapping up the conversation. He lifted his right arm to his face.

  ‘All set,’ he said into a tiny microphone on his wrist.

  The man behind the wheel adjusted the almost invisible plug in his ear and gave a thumbs-up to the window separating the cabin from the cargo space.

  ‘We’ve switched off the electricity,’ Stiller explained. ‘So the cameras won’t work.’

  As the wheels gripped the gravel track leading to the house, grit rattled in the wheel arches. The van tilted, and Wisting planted one hand on the roof to keep his balance.

  The driver swung into the extensive yard and parked side on to the house. Wisting moved position to peer outside. Without electricity, Martin Haugen’s home looked even more desolate than when he had been here the previous week.

  They remained seated and let the driver go out and up to the front door. He rang the doorbell and took a step back.

  ‘You need repair?’ Stiller joked, in broken English.

  No response from the house. The driver stepped up to the door and produced something resembling a cup from his jacket pocket. He placed it over the cylinder lock and, in less than a minute, the door was open.

  ‘Is there any movement on his part?’ Wisting asked, glancing at the technician. He checked the tablet. ‘Cooling his heels.’

  Drawing open the side door, Adrian Stiller handed out gloves and rubber overshoes. The technician who had picked the lock on the door trudged through the house while the others were still waiting in the hallway.

  ‘All clear,’ he said, in final confirmation that the house was empty.

  Wisting let the others go in front. The floor in the passageway creaked under their feet.

  ‘Two computers,’ said the man who had already scouted through the house. ‘Desktop computer in the guest bedroom, laptop in the living room.’

  He pointed at the latter, on the coffee table in front of the TV set. The other technician sat down and opened a suitcase. He took out his own laptop, an external hard drive, a battery pack and various cables.

  ‘Will this take long?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘It depends,’ he replied. ‘First we have to link up, and then it’s a matter of how much data he has stored. It can easily take an hour or so.’

  ‘An hour,’ Wisting repeated, glancing through the window. Although it was no longer raining, water dripped steadily from the trees.

  One corner of the living room was used as a home office. A few invoices and bundles of papers were stacked on the desk, and several ring binders marked by years were arranged on a shelf on the wall. Adrian Stiller began to skim through them, while Hammer disappeared into the bedroom.

  Wisting made for the kitchen, where a chest of drawers was positioned against the wall by the window. It was behind Martin Haugen’s usual chair, and he could reach it by twisting round.

  On top of the chest of drawers was a radio, beside a number of advertising leaflets from various supermarket chains and a few copies of Vi Menn, a popular lifestyle magazine for men. Wisting knew Martin kept his wallet and keys in the top drawer. He opened it and peered inside. On one side lay an old mobile phone and charger, several ballpoint pens, a mini-stapler, a tube of superglue, a pair of scissors and a notebook containing no notes.

  ‘We’ve got something here!’ Nils Hammer shouted from elsewhere in the house.

  As Wisting padded into the living room Hammer emerged from the bedroom brandishing an old newspaper. Wisting recognized the story. It was the VG interview with Nadia Krogh’s mother, in which she talked about the loss of her daughter.

  ‘Isn’t this a bit unusual?’ Hammer asked.

  Stiller agreed. ‘Photograph and document it,’ he instructed.

  ‘It was at the bottom of a drawer,’ Hammer told them.

  ‘Put it back in the same place.’

  Hammer nodded and returned to the bedroom. Wisting resumed his search of the chest of drawers in the kitchen. In drawer number two he found a bundle of letters. Wisting lifted them up and discovered a passport underneath. He put the bundle of letters aside on the kitchen table and picked up the passport. It belonged to Martin Haugen and had been issued on 10 October. That was only five days ago, and coincided with the anniversary of Katharina’s disappearance. The passport application had been speedily processed. This meant he had applied at the beginning of the previous week and probably had the passport sent yesterday or just before the weekend. He had not mentioned any travel plans.

  Wisting returned the passport to the bottom of the drawer and riffled through the bundle of letters. There were letters from the tax office, the insurance company and the bank. He thumbed through them systematically to ensure he did not tamper with the order in which they had been filed.

  At the bottom of the bundle was a white envelope with no recipient’s name or address.

  Wisting laid the other letters to one side, opened the unmarked envelope and drew out the sheet of paper from inside. Even before he had withdrawn it completely, adrenaline was pumping through his body. The sight of the contents made him breathless, hitting him like a hammer blow to the chest and making him feel dizzy.

  ‘Stiller,’ he said, with a gulp, but he had not spoken loudly enough. He steadied himself by taking a step to one side, using the chair back for support, and called out again. ‘Stiller!’

  When Adrian Stiller arrived, Wisting held out the contents of the envelope, four words on one sheet.

  I know about it.

>   Each letter of the short message was cut from a newspaper and pasted in place like the letters from Nadia Krogh’s kidnappers. The similarity was impossible to ignore. Someone knew about Martin Haugen and Nadia Krogh.

  ‘It was in the drawer,’ Wisting explained, pointing at the chest. Stiller asked to see the envelope.

  ‘Unaddressed,’ Wisting told him.

  Stiller held the envelope up to the light from the window. ‘There’s a tiny hole in it,’ he said.

  Wisting peered at the sheet of paper in his hand and found a corresponding pinprick-sized puncture in it. Both drew the same conclusion that the anonymous letter had been pinned to the door.

  ‘It doesn’t look very old,’ Stiller said.

  ‘Difficult to say,’ Wisting responded, though he did agree. ‘This could have something to do with his CCTV cameras. He probably put them up after he received this.’

  Hammer also entered the room. He swore aloud when he saw the letter.

  Wisting struggled to collect his thoughts. The sender obviously wanted Martin Haugen to understand that someone knew what he had done.

  ‘It’s a confirmation,’ Stiller said, fixing his eyes on Wisting. ‘Don’t you think he would have told you about this letter if he were innocent?’ he asked. ‘If he had no idea what it was all about?’

  Wisting agreed.

  ‘We have a dilemma,’ Hammer said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘The sender clearly knows what Martin Haugen has done,’ he began to explain. ‘There could be fingerprints or biological traces on the letter that will allow us to discover who the sender is, but in order to do that we’d have to take it with us. And then Haugen would realize somebody’s been here.’

  Wisting let Hammer hold the letter as he disentangled an evidence bag from his pocket. ‘We’ll take it with us,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ll take the risk that he has no intention of removing it from the drawer for a while, and if he does take it into his head to look for it, we’ll just have to hope he thinks he’s mislaid it.’ He took out another evidence bag for the envelope.

  ‘It raises a few questions, though,’ Hammer commented. ‘How the letters from the kidnappers were pieced together is something that hasn’t been made public. In other words, only the police, the kidnapper and whoever sent this letter know.’

  ‘Nadia’s family knows too,’ Stiller reminded him. ‘In the course of the twenty-odd years that have gone by, it could have been discussed, and last week VG were told of it.’

  ‘But none of them knows Haugen has cropped up as a suspect because of fresh fingerprint tests,’ Hammer persisted.

  Adrian Stiller shrugged. ‘It’s possible we’re drawing too hasty a conclusion,’ he said. ‘The note could be about something else entirely. Perhaps the sender knows about something else. Or it could even be that Haugen has concocted it himself, that he’s got a new plan on the go.’

  Wisting did not believe any of these options. ‘I saw a man here last week,’ he said. ‘I was here late one evening, on the anniversary of Katharina’s disappearance. He tried to hide but retreated into the forest when he clocked that I had spotted him.’

  ‘Did you notice if there was an envelope on the door?’

  Wisting shook his head doubtfully before heading out into the hallway again. He opened the front door and stood in front of it. In the middle, beneath the small pane of textured glass, he found a tiny hole made by a drawing pin or something similar used to affix the letter to the door.

  ‘It wasn’t here on Thursday,’ he decided.

  ‘Fine,’ Stiller said, taking charge of the two evidence bags. ‘I’ll get the boys to take these in with them and deposit them at the lab, and then we’ll see if they give us anything.’

  Wisting returned to the kitchen, replaced the remaining letters in the drawer and opened drawer number three, which held magazines and a pile of Christmas cards. Wisting flicked through them. They were from Martin Haugen’s aunt and uncle in Porsgrunn, and said the same every festive season: a few brief words and wishing Haugen Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. In between, there were also a few envelopes with birthday greetings from them. They bore silent witness to the limited circle of Martin Haugen’s friends.

  The further down the pile he went, the stiffer and more yellowed grew the papers. Towards the bottom of the pile he found an envelope different in style from the others, almost entirely square. When he took out the card, he found himself standing with a picture of Line and Thomas in his hand. It was a thank-you card for the money he had given them for their confirmation. This had been fifteen years ago, but it was lying in a hoard that had barely increased with each passing year.

  It suddenly felt extremely invasive to be rooting around in another person’s kitchen drawers. Line and Thomas had received presents from family and friends on the occasion of their confirmation. Martin Haugen had gained a place in that circle.

  He replaced the bundle of greetings cards and slid back the drawer.

  Wisting spent the next half-hour delving into all the other drawers and cupboards, laboriously examining the contents of a blue jug on the windowsill and a bowl on top of the fridge. The technician in the living room finished working on the laptop computer and headed into the guest bedroom to copy the data from the desktop machine in there.

  On top of the row of cupboards above the kitchen worktop six large porcelain mugs decorated with wise and witty mottos were displayed. Wisting stood on his tiptoes and lifted down one with the text Your best time is now – remember to enjoy your coffee. It left a greasy layer of congealing dust that fell into the kitchen sink. He pushed the gunk into his back pocket to avoid leaving any traces.

  The mug contained a handful of foreign coins. He put it back and carefully brought down mug number two. Life is long – happiness is coffee. A key lay at the bottom of this mug, and Wisting used two fingers to retrieve it. The metal was sticky and attached itself to his disposable gloves: it had obviously been there for ages, gathering grease from cooking fumes. Although it bore no marks, its shape and size suggested it could be for a door or a large padlock.

  He put it back in place and looked inside the next mug. This one was empty, as were the remaining three.

  ‘On the move!’

  He heard a shout from the guest bedroom.

  The investigators gathered round the man who held the tablet. Wisting watched as the red dot moved south along the E18.

  ‘The connection is down,’ the man with the technical equipment told them. ‘He started driving seventeen minutes ago.’

  Wisting glanced at his watch. Martin Haugen still had two hours left of his working day, but the red dot on the screen was heading in their direction.

  ‘Then he’ll be here in less than ten minutes,’ Hammer reckoned.

  The image on the technician’s laptop showed it was busy transferring data from Martin Haugen’s computer.

  ‘How much time until you’re finished?’ Stiller asked.

  ‘I need those ten minutes,’ the technician answered.

  ‘Okay,’ Stiller said. ‘Is your tracking data secure? Are we one hundred per cent in real time now?’

  The technician confirmed this.

  ‘Then you stop when the vehicle turns off from the E18.’ He wheeled round to face Wisting and Hammer. ‘We’ll make sure everything’s exactly as it was when we arrived, and we haven’t left anything behind – gloves, evidence bags or anything else. Then we’ll move out to the van.’

  Wisting returned to the kitchen and took a look around. Everything appeared undisturbed. He went out to the van and sat inside with Hammer, leaving Stiller standing in the doorway. When Wisting checked the time, four minutes had elapsed. The next minute moved at a snail’s pace, and then another. After seven minutes the driver showed up at the door. He strode across the yard, sat behind the wheel and started the engine before returning with the device for locking the door. At last the man with the suitcase and computer equipment emerged.

  A dark
shadow slid across the house wall. ‘The cat!’ Wisting groaned.

  It crept up the steps and sneaked in just as the door was closing. Wisting leapt from the van and dashed across to the house.

  The cat had left wet pawprints, as had the technician who chased after it. Wisting followed them into the living room. ‘Puss, puss, puss,’ he called, without seeing anything of the cat.

  He crouched down, inspected underneath the table and caught sight of a pair of eyes behind the settee. The cat slipped out as he approached and dashed into the kitchen.

  Wisting and the technician followed. The cat did a round of the chair legs before settling in the middle of the space beneath the table.

  Wisting tried to coax the cat towards him, but it seemed uninterested. The technician moved quietly towards it, but it proved impossible to catch and darted out into the living room again.

  They carried on chasing him until Wisting managed to launch himself at the animal. The cat thrashed about in his arms as he carried it outside. The technician knelt down to wipe the damp patches on the floor in the hallway with his jacket sleeve. Then he shut the front door and used his device to lock it. Wisting let go of the cat and jumped back into the cargo hold, letting the side door slam shut. With Stiller now in the passenger seat, the driver leapt in behind the wheel and got the van moving.

  ‘Position?’ Adrian Stiller asked.

  ‘Still on the E18,’ replied the man with the tracking equipment. ‘He hasn’t turned off but is continuing along the road.’

  ‘So he’s not on his way home, after all?’

  The technician shook his head. ‘He’s on his way to Telemark.’

  As the van juddered on to the main road, Wisting cast a glance at Steinar Vassvik’s house, but saw no sign of the neighbour.

  ‘Did we get everything we needed?’ Adrian Stiller asked.

  The man with the IT equipment confirmed this. ‘Two hard drives. I’ll set up copies this afternoon that you can all access and have a look at.’

  When Wisting asked to see the tablet tracking Martin Haugen’s pickup, the technician handed it to him. The red dot had passed the regional boundary between Vestfold and Telemark.