The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  The screen burst into life with video images from the helicopter. After some interference, they were looking down at an angle into a forest. Rain covered the picture with shades of grey and details on the ground were difficult to make out.

  When Stiller’s phone rang with a call from the helicopter he switched to loudspeaker.

  ‘We’ll be above the subject in around two minutes,’ the pilot clarified, speaking above the constant buzz of background noise in the cockpit. ‘Approaching from south-south-east, at a height of six hundred metres, going down to five hundred, but we have to maintain that altitude to avoid being identified. I’m assuming that’s a factor?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Stiller confirmed. ‘Can you zoom in closer with the camera?’

  ‘We’ll lock the camera on to the target when we have it in our sights,’ the pilot explained. ‘Then we’ll zoom in closer.’

  The phone line was momentarily disturbed by electrical interference before the pilot returned.

  ‘Sixty seconds,’ he announced.

  The camera image rotated vertically to point ahead of the helicopter.

  ‘Forty seconds.’

  A long lake appeared at the right-hand side of the picture as a target sight swept across the land.

  ‘Do you have visual?’ the pilot asked. Stiller answered in the affirmative.

  When a building appeared in a forest clearing, the camera image latched on to it, and zoomed in closer. The rain made the surroundings blurred and grey.

  ‘Looks like movement on the roof,’ the pilot reported.

  ‘That’s him!’ Hammer exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

  The picture became a close-up. They could see a ladder propped up against the cabin wall and someone standing on the roof. He stopped what he was doing to raise one hand to his forehead and peer up at the helicopter.

  The picture grew smaller and smaller and, ultimately, both man and cabin were swallowed up by the spruce trees.

  ‘Would you like one more fly-past?’ the pilot asked.

  Wisting shook his head. Stiller thanked the helicopter crew for their help and hung up.

  Hammer rewound the recording to freeze the image of the man on the cabin roof.

  ‘That wasn’t very exciting,’ he said.

  ‘It depends how you look at it,’ Stiller told him.

  Wisting agreed. ‘He claimed he’d repaired the roof last week,’ he said. ‘We know that wasn’t true.’ He pointed at the still image. ‘He’s trying to cover his tracks, to make sure he’s not caught out when I go with him to the cabin at the weekend.’

  34

  Line had kitted out a workroom for herself in the basement, but she rarely used it, preferring instead to lie on the settee with her laptop on her knee and her notes spread out across the table and the floor. When curled up there, she had no need to use the baby alarm in case Amalie woke up.

  Thomas was sitting in an armchair watching a documentary on TV. This did not disturb either her or Amalie, who was sleeping with the bedroom door open.

  Work on the podcast and the series of articles had progressed both faster and more smoothly than she had envisaged. Tomorrow she was going into Oslo to interview Adrian Stiller at Kripos, and then she would visit her editors to present her work. After which she had only one day left to perfect everything.

  In front of her was the material on Nadia’s boyfriend, Robert Gran. Adrian Stiller had sent her an email with contact information and background details, probably more than the police should hand over, but she was grateful, as it was verified information which would save her time.

  As Geir Inge Hansen had told her, Robert Gran lived at home with his mother. The address was given as Slottsbrugata, a mere stone’s throw from the centre of Porsgrunn. He hadn’t always lived there, however, and had two children with two different women he had lived with at various times. Names, dates of birth and addresses were given for them too. According to the final change of address, it looked as if the last relationship had ended three years earlier and he had subsequently moved to his mother’s home.

  His parents had separated a couple of years after the Krogh kidnapping and his father had remarried. His name and address were also listed. However, his mother had remained single.

  Robert Gran was one year older than Nadia. They had been together since she had enrolled at upper high school when he had been in the second year. Now he was forty-four and worked as a logistics operator in a building-supplies firm. His annual income was also listed.

  The police had interviewed him for the first time on the Saturday afternoon at 1.45, about fourteen hours after Nadia had left the party. He explained that he had been drunk and had not taken in much of what had happened. Nadia had been annoyed because he had been talking to another girl, and he eventually realized that she had walked out. He was questioned again at eight o’clock in the evening and confronted with the information that people had seen him standing in the hallway arguing with Nadia. They said the altercation had ended with her turning her back on him, grabbing her jacket from a peg on the wall and storming out. Several people had seen him rush out after her only a few minutes later. He denied he had followed her and said he had been too intoxicated to remember anything. Other partygoers, however, insisted that he had drunk next to nothing. By the end of the interview he had gone from being a witness to being charged with having given false testimony and taken into custody. On Monday morning he was brought before the court for a remand hearing. He now changed his story, claiming he had pursued Nadia to talk to her but had not succeeded in catching up with her. Instead of returning to the party, he had headed for home.

  Thomas rose from his chair at her side and padded through to the kitchen with an empty glass. ‘Would you like anything?’ he asked, but she shook her head.

  Adrian Stiller had attached a recent photograph to his email. It was marked not for publication, and probably intended to help her recognize Robert Gran when she met him. He was a good-looking man, even though his expression in the picture seemed morose and serious. There was something about his eyes. They were dark and gave the impression of hiding something.

  Her initial impression had been that the photo was taken from passport records, but there was something about the height and width that did not tally, and it dawned on her that it was most probably obtained from police photo files but trimmed to exclude the file number in the bottom corner.

  35

  Stiller opened the balcony door in his hotel room to let in some fresh air. The extra hard drive linked to his laptop had made the room stale and stifling.

  He hovered in the doorway as the brisk sea air wafted over his face.

  The hard drive contained two folders, mirror images of Martin Haugen’s computers. The laptop in the living room was the one most in use, but it contained no personal files. The desktop computer, connected to the two CCTV cameras, was far more interesting. Haugen had installed the cameras on Monday of the previous week and had set them up in such a way that the recorder switched on as soon as movement was detected. Occasionally the cat triggered the recording, but once Stiller had managed to sort through them they showed brief film sequences of Martin Haugen coming and going. On Thursday there were recordings of William Wisting. He had been there three times in total and had been filmed at both the front and rear of the house. The next sequence was of Martin Haugen returning home. The time in the top right-hand corner showed that it had been 3.47, early on Friday morning. Thereafter it showed himself and Wisting when they had visited later that day.

  He retraced his steps to the desk but left the door open a crack. The red dot of the tracker on Haugen’s vehicle was moving again. He had been at the cabin until after dark and then the marker had slowly begun to travel along the forest track and back towards Larvik. For the past half-hour it had been at a standstill in Vallermyrene outside Porsgrunn. The map showed a snack bar located there. Martin Haugen had stopped for something to eat and was heading for home.

  The surveil
lance cameras had helped them draw a simple timeline. Martin Haugen had left his house on Wednesday at 11.23 and returned home in the small hours of Friday, forty hours later. Before he left he had ordered a new passport and bought CCTV cameras. It was easy to draw the conclusion that the anonymous letter had provoked all this. I know about it. Clearly this had terrified Haugen. Stiller revelled in that thought. Frightened people did irrational things.

  He rubbed his eyes, aware of how exhausted he was. Last night he had slept for three hours, and he doubted he would manage more tonight, even though his eyelids were heavy. It was a long time since he had discovered that being tired was not the same as being sleepy.

  He sat looking at the tablet and the moving red dot. After twenty minutes or so it stopped outside the house at Kleiver.

  Stiller took out his mobile phone and sent a message to Wisting, informing him that Martin Haugen had arrived home.

  36

  His mobile phone buzzed again and Wisting picked it up: yet another message from Adrian Stiller, slightly longer this time. He had examined the mirror images of Martin’s computers, and the most interesting aspect had been the surveillance cameras, which showed Martin had been absent from the house for forty hours.

  Wisting gave a brief OK in reply and rose from his chair in the living room to head for the kitchen. He felt restless and began to clear the kitchen worktop, where Thomas had forgotten to put away the breadboard and knife.

  Martin Haugen had left his house for reasons he was unwilling to share with anyone, and had lied about the reason for his absence, both to his work colleagues and to him.

  The surveillance gave them a complete overview of where Martin Haugen was at any time but did not tell them where he had been last week. However, there was one way to find out.

  Pulling his phone from his pocket, he wrote a message to Stiller: Traffic data from last week.

  Stiller was bound to understand this simple message. The historic traffic data on the mobile phone would be able to tell them who Martin had been in contact with and where he had been during that day and a half.

  The response was rapid: I’m on it.

  In all likelihood, those four little words had compelled Martin to act. I know about it. The anonymous message was similar to the ones in the Krogh kidnapping and must have been troubling to receive.

  But who sent it and what did they know?

  Wisting returned to the living room. He had brought the ring binder marked Inger Lise Ness home from work with him. She was perhaps the person who had known Martin Haugen best. They had lived together for a number of years before Martin met Katharina, but everything she had said to the police had been assessed in the light of her mental condition.

  One of the things that had caused the greatest problem for Katharina and Martin was that she stole their post. This meant that they had neglected to pay bills and led to payment defaults and debt-recovery proceedings. Wisting picked up the document listing the various belongings of Katharina that were found in the chest of drawers at Inger Lise Ness’s home. There was a letter from their insurance company, dated 21 September 1987, the Monday after Nadia had gone missing. This suggested that Inger Lise Ness had been rummaging in Martin Haugen’s mailbox while the kidnappers held Nadia.

  When questioned, she admitted the harassment and police believed her actions had been motivated by anger and frustration towards Martin Haugen. You don’t know what he’s really like, she was quoted as saying. You don’t know what he’s done. You don’t know what I know. At the time, these statements were seen as attempts at self-justification and shifting blame. Now there was reason to wonder whether she really had known something.

  37

  The section for old, unsolved cases was situated on the sixth floor of the Kripos building in the east end of Oslo. Adrian Stiller had not yet managed to furnish his office. It was empty, apart from a few shelves with individual ring binders on them, an office desk with a computer and an office chair.

  He had not spent very many hours in that chair. His work in the CC group mainly took place out in the police districts, where these unsolved cases had taken place. If it had not been for his interview appointment with Line Wisting, he would not have been here today either. Naturally, it would have been easier and more practical for them both to meet in Larvik, but it was best that she remained unaware of his presence in the town.

  At five to twelve a call came from reception to say Line had arrived, and he went down to meet her. She stood with a bag slung over her shoulder and a recording device in her hand. Although he knew it was switched on, he ignored it as he greeted her and welcomed her to Kripos.

  She held the recorder in front of her to allow it to catch the sound of his pass being swiped through the reader and the code being keyed in. When the door shut behind them she paused the machine.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked, as they waited for the lift.

  ‘Fine,’ Line assured him. ‘Most of it’s in place. I just need a few words from you about the reasons for reopening the Krogh case.’

  The lift doors slid open and they stepped inside. He stood so close to her that he could smell her faint, slightly sweet fragrance, which automatically turned his thoughts to summer.

  On the way to his office he fetched a carafe of water and two glasses from the kitchenette. He offered her coffee, but she declined. They continued to his office and sat down.

  She seemed efficient: her notepad was out and the recorder running again even before he had managed to fill the glasses.

  ‘Why have you decided to reopen the Krogh case?’ she asked.

  Although Stiller was prepared for this question, he was loath to disclose the real reason: that they had found Martin Haugen’s fingerprints on the letter from the kidnappers. This was a card he was disinclined to play until a later stage in the game.

  ‘The Krogh kidnapping is unusual,’ he said instead. ‘It’s a case without parallel in Norwegian criminal history, and has been an unlanced boil for the police, the relatives and an entire local community.’

  This was claptrap, a politician’s answer, words of the type rattled off by police chiefs before him, and Line Wisting was obviously far from satisfied.

  ‘What makes it unusual?’ she pressed him.

  ‘Kidnapping cases of this kind are out of the ordinary,’ he replied. ‘Rare. We have to go to other countries and other continents to find anything comparable.’

  ‘Could that be the reason it hasn’t been solved?’ Line ploughed on with her questions. ‘That the police here don’t have the competence to deal with it?’

  Stiller now had to tread warily. Regardless of his own opinion of the work previously undertaken, the head of Kripos had made it clear that the CC group must never criticize colleagues for their efforts in these old cases.

  ‘The Krogh inquiry had top priority when it took place,’ he reassured her. ‘The most competent officers were assigned to it. The challenge was the same as in all missing-persons cases – that there is no crime scene to examine.’

  The conversation continued. He explained how the Cold Cases Group had been formed and organized, and how the police were now in possession of constantly improving techniques and tools to help them solve difficult cases.

  ‘But even though scientific evidence and DNA are important, it’s often fresh information from somebody who knows something that leads to a resolution,’ he pointed out. ‘The right person might start to talk.’

  This seemed a suitable concluding remark. He was happy with it himself and motioned towards the recorder to signal that she should switch it off.

  ‘Do you know who that person is?’ she asked, with the recorder still running.

  He said nothing. Line let the silence build for a few seconds for dramatic effect, before she turned off the recorder and replaced it in her bag, as if to indicate that his answer, if forthcoming, would be off the record, quite literally.

  ‘You must have something more,’ she went on when he did not res
pond. ‘Waiting for the right person to start talking sounds like a flimsy investigation strategy.’

  ‘It’s maybe more a matter of persuading the right person to talk,’ he corrected her, flashing a smile.

  ‘Do you intend to speak to Robert Gran again?’ she asked. ‘Her boyfriend?’

  ‘We already have done.’

  ‘I’ve an appointment to interview him on Saturday,’ Line told him.

  ‘Yes, I was the one who arranged it,’ Stiller reminded her.

  ‘I know,’ Line replied. ‘I was wondering whether there’s anything about him I should be aware of.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Well, does he have a criminal record?’

  Stiller nodded.

  ‘What has he done?’

  ‘Things that weren’t very honourable.’ Reluctantly, he told her: ‘He’s been convicted of assault.’

  ‘Who did he assault?’

  ‘His ex-partner. There’s a restraining order in force at present.’

  He watched as thoughts raced through the journalist’s head, as if she were now forced to sort through surfacing questions and choose what to say first.

  ‘Doesn’t that cast the whole case in a new light?’ she asked. ‘I mean, violence against his partner. What he has done surely turns him into a prime suspect?’

  She was pointing out the obvious, but this was not where their focus lay. The investigation was aimed in an entirely different direction.

  ‘You have to remember you’re wading through troubled waters,’ he said. ‘The guilty party is out there somewhere. You must be aware that the job you’ve taken on could mean that one day you’ll be standing face to face with him. I’ll understand if you’d prefer to withdraw from the interview.’

  Line Wisting shook her head. ‘I don’t want to do that,’ she answered. ‘I just want to know as much as possible in advance.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up but did not move from the spot. ‘Is he your suspect?’ she demanded. ‘Is he the target of the new investigation?’