The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘It’s not in front of me, but I know the booklet you mean.’

  ‘Could you take a photo of the page listing private effects allowed in the cells?’

  The woman at the other end sounded bewildered but agreed to send him what he requested.

  The image file from Nils Hammer came in. He did not bother looking at it but called the operator again, this time asking to be connected to Steinar Vassvik in Kleiverveien.

  The phone rang for some time before Steinar Vassvik answered.

  Wisting sat down and focused all his attention on sounding as calm as possible. ‘It’s twenty-four years since Katharina disappeared,’ he said, grabbing a pen with his free hand. ‘I’ve been having a look at the files and gone through some of the old reports.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘A straightforward supplementary question has cropped up,’ Wisting told him.

  ‘I see,’ Vassvik said again.

  ‘It says in your statement that you borrowed some books from her the day before she went missing.’

  ‘I didn’t borrow them,’ Vassvik said. ‘She said I could keep them. I still have them, in fact, if there’s a problem.’

  ‘It says she was carrying a bag of books, but you chose five of them,’ Wisting continued, quoting from memory.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why precisely five?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘That was what was allowed,’ Steinar Vassvik answered. ‘I was going into jail, and that was all I was allowed. Five books.’

  ‘Did Katharina speak to you about it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Wisting glanced at the time again. It was now five to four. Martin Haugen could arrive at any moment. In order to obtain all the answers he needed, he would have to be blunt. ‘Did you receive a list from the prison of what you were permitted to take with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did Katharina see that list?’

  ‘I was in the middle of packing when she was here,’ Vassvik explained.

  ‘Did she see the list?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Wisting’s phone buzzed again. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That was all I wanted to know.’

  He rounded off their conversation and opened Nils Hammer’s message. On page six of the folder of illustrations there was a photograph of Katharina Haugen’s suitcase open on her bed. He zoomed in on part of the picture by dragging two fingers over the screen. The suitcase was meticulously packed. He recollected the description from the report. Ten pairs of socks, ten pairs of briefs, five bras, ten T-shirts, five pairs of trousers, five sweaters, five blouses and a tracksuit.

  He located the picture that had arrived from the women’s prison in Sandefjord. The total items of clothing on the list in the information brochure corresponded with the contents of the suitcase. True enough, the number of books was restricted to five. On the second-to-last line, moreover, Wisting spotted what finally convinced him of Katharina Haugen’s purpose in packing: it was permissible to bring one personal photograph, without glass or frame.

  Wisting returned to the picture in the folder of illustrations. On page seven, he saw a photo of the coffee table, where five books were stacked, and beside them lay a photograph of Katharina and Martin together with the frame in which it had been enclosed.

  Katharina had packed in preparation to go into prison.

  Initially, he felt confused by this breakthrough. One part of the mystery had been solved, but at the same time it unleashed a series of other questions. He knew with certainty that Katharina had not been convicted of any crime, and had to gather his thoughts to arrive at any understanding of how this all weaved together. But it did fit with the bigger picture. Her friends in the choir had said her personality had changed and she had become depressed, as if something were weighing on her mind.

  Before he could bring this train of thought to a satisfactory conclusion he heard an engine revving outside his house and a car horn blaring twice.

  52

  Martin Haugen had opened the tailgate of his pickup to let Wisting push his rucksack under the tarpaulin, along with his fishing gear.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Wisting said, as he hurried back to the front door and rushed inside.

  He had attached the recorder to the inside of his right jacket sleeve, in the same way that officers in the security service hid the microphones linked to their comms equipment. He simply wanted to satisfy himself it was in position before settling inside the vehicle. The little switch showed a green spot, and the spare recorder was safely tucked in his inside pocket.

  He dashed out again, this time locking the door behind him. ‘I just had to check I’d switched off the coffee machine,’ he said, smiling, as he clambered inside.

  Martin Haugen jumped in behind the wheel. He laughed off Wisting’s forgetfulness but, other than that, his face was difficult to read.

  ‘A lot to do at work today?’ Martin Haugen asked.

  ‘No more than usual,’ Wisting answered. ‘We’re about to go through another reorganization.’

  He explained about the merger of police districts and what it would mean for his own day-to-day work. Martin Haugen listened without showing any particular interest. As they sat in silence, Wisting felt anxiety creep through his body. He would have liked to have reported his discovery and how it shed light on Katharina’s disappearance.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, taking his mobile phone from his pocket. ‘I just need to send a message to someone at work.’ He located Hammer’s number. ‘Something slipped my mind,’ he excused himself. ‘It’s always a bit stressful on Friday afternoons.’ He held the phone in such a way that Martin could not possibly catch sight of his writing.

  Sitting in the pickup with MH, he began, even though Hammer was probably ensconced in the comms surveillance room following the red dot on the onscreen map. Check the pictures you sent me and compare them with this, he ended, attaching the list of permissible belongings when going into prison.

  Then he began another message: I think Katharina had decided to turn herself in to the police. She was preparing to go to jail.

  He sat with the phone in his hand, waiting for a response. The asphalt on the motorway to Telemark was rough, and the vibration it created was transmitted through the springs into the seat.

  ‘Are you going to lay new asphalt here anytime soon?’ he asked.

  ‘Next summer,’ Martin replied.

  ‘That’s your job, isn’t it?’ Wisting quizzed him. ‘You decide when it’s time to lay new asphalt.’

  ‘I’m not really the one who decides,’ Martin told him, ‘but I report wear and tear.’

  ‘How often do you have to lay it?’

  ‘It depends entirely on the weight bearing,’ Martin said. ‘The amount of heavy transport, studded tyres, and things like that.’

  Wisting glanced down at his jacket sleeve where the recorder was concealed. For an outsider listening to the recording, this would seem a trivial conversation, but he had a direction and a motive for asking.

  ‘Does it also depend on the asphalt?’ he asked, with the VG newspaper article of 27 August 1987 at the back of his mind, the one in the newspaper used by the kidnappers to make the ransom letter.

  ‘That’s obvious. There have been huge improvements in road surfaces as well,’ he replied, launching into an explanation of alloys and durability.

  Wisting wondered whether he should pursue this line of discussion but decided to leave it. That was enough for the moment. He had planted something in Martin Haugen’s mind that would pop up in his thoughts again on the day they confronted him with the evidence that his fingerprints had been found on the letter from the kidnappers.

  His phone buzzed again: a message from Hammer. In that case I can only think of one crime she might have committed, he wrote. Nadia Krogh.

  Wisting switched off the display as soon as he had read it so that it turned black. Hammer had put his own thoughts into words. In the course of the last hour he
had formed a hypothesis that Katharina and Martin Haugen had worked together on the abduction of Nadia Krogh but something had gone wrong. Conscience had eaten away at Katharina and in the end got the better of her. She had decided to give herself up to the police and was ready to go to prison for what she had done. However, this also meant dragging Martin Haugen down with her. That was where the motive lay. The only chance of ensuring that Katharina did not expose them was to make sure she disappeared. There was only one problem with this theory. Martin Haugen had an alibi – Wisting had checked it countless times. Martin Haugen had been on a construction site eight hours away when Katharina had vanished.

  ‘Bad news?’ Haugen asked from the driver’s seat.

  Wisting peered down at his phone. ‘Nothing I can help with at the moment,’ he replied. He leaned forward to the windscreen and looked up. The sky above them was almost completely blue, with only a few scattered clouds. ‘We’re lucky with the weather, at least,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll be too late to lay nets tonight,’ Martin pointed out. ‘But I thought we could try to spear some fish – there’s a couple of fishing gaffs at the cabin.’

  Wisting had never tried that before but knew you had to row out in darkness to a shallow spawning ground with a powerful lamp in the bow and impale the fish that were paralysed by the light. The method was apparently so effective it was prohibited by law in order to conserve fish.

  ‘Is that legal?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you in the fisheries police now?’ Martin asked, laughing. ‘I just thought we could catch a couple of fish so we have something for supper. It would be fun to try. I haven’t done it since I was a young lad.’

  Wisting joined in the laughter as he agreed, and Martin changed the subject by pointing out a road sign. ‘Katharina set that one up,’ he said.

  Wisting glimpsed it just before they passed by. It read Porsgrund, with directions to take the next exit road to the right.

  ‘It’s still there,’ Martin Haugen said, with a smile. ‘I laugh every time I see it. Katharina wasn’t so good at spelling. There was a Swede working in the signs workshop and he didn’t notice the mistake either. When it was discovered, they both protested and insisted it should be like that. All the sanitary-ware in the toilets had Porsgrunds Porselænsfabrik on them, after all. The sign stayed put. Now it’s been there for more than twenty-five years.’

  Wisting had driven this stretch of road many times. He had noticed the spelling error but hadn’t given it much thought. Porsgrund was the old way of writing the name.

  Martin Haugen followed the sign’s directions and turned off from the E18. ‘Shall we do some shopping over there?’ he asked, pointing at a Meny supermarket.

  Wisting nodded. ‘What do we need?’ he asked.

  ‘Eggs and bacon, at the very least,’ Martin replied.

  53

  Stiller watched as the red dot on the map moved into a retail park and drew to a halt.

  ‘Stocking up on provisions,’ Hammer told him.

  Stiller turned back to the screen of his own laptop, which was perched on his knee. ‘I’ve received the traffic data from his phone,’ he said, ‘for the past ninety days. There’s nothing out of the ordinary to notice about who he’s been speaking to – he uses it mostly in connection with his work – but it does tell us where he was last week.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘In Malvik,’ Stiller clarified. ‘He has three unanswered calls in that period. All three from Wisting, and all three bounced off a base station in Malvik.’

  ‘The weather forecast,’ Hammer commented. ‘He checked the weather forecast for Malvik a number of times. The rain had caused flooding up there, and parts of the E6 collapsed. Maybe he wanted to go up and take a look. After all, he was one of the ones in charge when the road was built.’

  Stiller had come to the same conclusion. ‘But why lie about it?’ he wondered. ‘He must have had a reason for going up there.’

  ‘Are there no phone conversations that can be linked to his trip? No appointments or anything like that?’

  ‘He sends a text message to a work colleague when he passes Lillehammer just after eight o’clock in the morning of 10 October, and after that it’s only Wisting trying to get in touch with him.’

  ‘Lillehammer at eight o’clock?’ Hammer reiterated. ‘He must have left home in the middle of the night, then.’

  Stiller passed no comment. Instead, he scrolled up and down the list of calls on Haugen’s mobile phone, as if it might contain something revealing. Lack of sleep had made him lose focus and he had difficulty collecting his thoughts. Excusing himself, he got to his feet and walked to the door. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He descended the stairs to the office he was using and took out a packet of caffeine powder, something he had got hold of when he was living in South Africa. It was not sold in Norway, but he had brought some back with him the last time he had visited his father.

  He carried the empty glass on his desk through to the toilet and filled it with water, then tore open the packet to pour the powder straight into his mouth before washing it down with cold water.

  He did not consume the powder to stay awake – he would do that anyway – but lack of sleep affected his concentration. He stood waiting for the stimulant to take effect, aware it would happen gradually.

  His phone rang, and he saw that Malm was calling. He was probably in his office in Oslo, keen for an update on the situation prior to going home for the weekend. Stiller drained the glass before answering.

  ‘How are things?’ Malm asked. This was how he began almost every phone conversation.

  ‘Going according to plan,’ Stiller replied. ‘They’re on their way to the cabin, but we don’t have any surveillance on them and probably won’t hear how things have worked out before Sunday.’

  ‘Should we have bugged the cabin?’ Malm asked.

  Stiller began to climb the stairs to the third floor. ‘It was a judgement call. The plan was to have one in Wisting’s car, if nowhere else, but it wasn’t suitable for driving on the forest track. He does have a recording device to make sure we secure any evidence.’

  He knocked on the door of the CS room for Hammer to open up from the inside.

  ‘And the last risk assessment?’ Malm asked.

  ‘It’s still estimated to be low,’ Stiller assured him.

  Hammer opened the door. The red dot on the screen was still in the same place.

  ‘Have a good weekend, then,’ Malm said, ending the conversation.

  Stiller sat down, now aware of the caffeine flooding his bloodstream. He closed his eyes for a second to compose himself. ‘Can you check criminal records for Emil Slettaker?’ he asked when he opened them again.

  Hammer turned towards him. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The guy Haugen bought the air pistol from.’

  Nils Hammer nodded as if he remembered the name and put his hands on the keyboard. He searched for an address in the Population Register to find the date of birth and ID number for the correct Emil Slettaker before copying and pasting the eleven digits into criminal records and pressing Enter.

  ‘There are a few things here,’ he said. ‘But only minor offences.’

  Stiller craned his neck forward to the screen, where he saw several traffic violations, a few minor drugs infringements, a couple of cases of common assault and two breaches of the gun laws.

  He did not like what he saw.

  ‘What about the first guy Haugen called about the air pistol?’ he asked.

  Hammer returned to the log and located the name and phone number of all the people Haugen had contacted in his pursuit of an air pistol.

  ‘Gunnar Fischer,’ he said aloud before looking Fischer up. ‘The only thing I can find is that he reported a break-in two years ago. Looks like it had to do with Sandefjord Paintball Club. He’s listed as the chairman there.’

  Stiller screwed up his eyes and blinked once or twice at the screen. ‘Okay,�
�� he said. ‘Find Emil Slettaker’s phone number in his advert.’

  Hammer passed it to him.

  As Stiller dialled the number, he switched the phone to loudspeaker. They sat listening to the ringtone.

  ‘Emil Slettaker,’ they finally heard from the other end.

  ‘Stein Arnesen here,’ Stiller bluffed, glancing at the screen. ‘I’m phoning about the Walther air pistol you have advertised online. Is it still for sale?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He and Hammer exchanged looks.

  ‘I can give you a thousand for it,’ Stiller offered.

  ‘Fifteen hundred,’ the other man said, in an effort to meet him halfway.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve the option of another one,’ Stiller said, disconnecting the call before the other man had time to lower his price any further.

  Hammer stared thoughtfully at him. ‘I thought Haugen had bought that pistol,’ he said.

  Stiller made no response. ‘Let me see the advert from the guy at the Paintball Club,’ he said. ‘Gunnar Fischer.’

  Hammer did as requested and Stiller dialled the number. When the man answered immediately, Stiller assumed an authoritative voice.

  ‘Am I speaking to Gunnar Fischer of the Sandefjord Paintball Club?’ he asked. The other man confirmed this, and Stiller gave his name.

  ‘I’m calling from the special section at Kripos,’ he said, well aware that this sounded extremely formal.

  ‘We’re investigating the man who visited you yesterday around five o’clock to purchase an air pistol you have advertised on Finn.’

  A brief pause ensued before the man at the other end verified this. ‘That’s possible,’ he answered.

  Stiller remained silent in an effort to coerce information from him.

  ‘He was here yesterday afternoon,’ Fischer continued. ‘I don’t know his name, but I have his number stored on my phone.’

  ‘Can you tell me about your meeting?’ Stiller asked.

  ‘He actually wasn’t interested in the air pistol,’ Fischer explained. ‘When he turned up here, he wondered if I had any other guns. Real guns. He probably thought I was interested in weapons, since I have a few adverts online, but I told him in no uncertain terms that this was far from the case. I don’t have any guns of that nature either.’