The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Martin came to stand by his side. ‘I think it was just something he made up,’ he said. ‘There have never been Vikings here, but I remember I was shocked by the story. I was probably only five or six, and that sort of thing can terrify a youngster. I had nightmares about it. The idea that someone could more or less voluntarily throw himself off a precipice was totally inconceivable at that time.’

  Wisting peered over the edge again. ‘There are certainly better ways to die,’ he commented.

  ‘Do you remember what I told you about my ashes?’ Martin asked, taking a step back. ‘This would be an excellent place to scatter them.’

  There was a disquieting tenor to the whole conversation.

  ‘Write it down,’ Wisting said, trying to dismiss his seriousness with a smile.

  Martin lingered for a while, also with a smile on his face. ‘What are you going to do when you get home?’ he asked.

  ‘Line and Amalie will probably come and visit,’ Wisting answered, aware of an anxiety that made him step away from the edge. ‘She’s growing up so fast now. She’s standing and walking and jabbering away.’

  His thoughts suddenly turned to Ingrid, who had died whilst working for an aid organization in Zambia.

  ‘She’s called after her grandmother, you know,’ he continued. ‘Ingrid Amalie, but we only use Amalie. I often think of Ingrid when I see her, and how she didn’t live to see her granddaughter. But it’s good to know she was where she wanted to be in her life when we lost her,’ he added, in an attempt to bring the conversation back to Martin. ‘She was so happy when I spoke to her on the phone for the last time. Delighted at what they had achieved and the possibilities that lay ahead.’

  Martin was silent. Wisting prepared to ask what he and Katharina had talked about before she had disappeared but did not get that far.

  ‘Katharina was pregnant,’ Martin told him. His eyes were fixed on the horizon.

  ‘When she disappeared?’ Wisting asked, taken aback.

  ‘Long before that,’ Martin replied. ‘She lost the baby.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Wisting said, adding how sorry he was.

  Martin Haugen turned his head the other way. Dark clouds were gathering in the west. ‘It’s going to rain again,’ he said. ‘Shall we head back?’

  76

  Adrian Stiller knew he could sleep, if he had the chance to lie down, but there was no possibility of rest now.

  The motor-vehicle records stated that Martin Haugen had driven a Nissan King Cab at the end of the eighties. There had been several owners after him, before the vehicle was de-registered in 1996.

  He swung in and parked in front of Steinar Vassvik’s house, stepped out of the car and approached the front door. It opened before he had even rung the doorbell, and he recognized Steinar Vassvik from the day he and Wisting had driven past.

  Vassvik made no move to invite him in when Stiller introduced himself. ‘I’m working on old, unsolved cases,’ he said.

  Steinar Vassvik’s only response was a brief nod.

  ‘One of the cases we’re looking at now is the Katharina case,’ he went on. ‘I’m trying to plug some gaps in the old inquiry and wondered if you could help me?’

  Another nod of the head, but they still remained standing outside the house. That suited Stiller. He had not intended to stay long.

  ‘What sort of vehicles did Katharina have access to?’

  ‘Isn’t that in the file?’ Vassvik asked.

  ‘It’s my job to verify old information,’ Stiller replied.

  ‘Can’t Martin explain all that?’ Vassvik asked, casting a glance at the gravel track opposite them.

  ‘Probably,’ Stiller said, leafing through some paperwork he had with him. ‘I’ve been told she had a Golf and a Kawasaki Z650: is that right?’

  Vassvik answered with another brief nod.

  ‘What kind of vehicle did Martin Haugen have at that time?’

  The response was rapid. ‘A pickup. He’s always driven a pickup.’

  ‘Did Katharina ever use it?’ he asked, in an effort to camouflage the information he really sought.

  This time Vassvik shook his head.

  ‘Can you recall whether any of the vehicles were damaged in a collision at any time?’

  Steinar Vassvik moved his head from side to side thoughtfully. ‘No,’ he said, in the end.

  ‘A smashed windscreen, or anything?’ Stiller added helpfully.

  ‘There was something,’ Vassvik came up with eventually. ‘But it was long before Katharina disappeared.’

  ‘What was that?’ Stiller queried.

  ‘Martin had driven into a lorry.’

  Adrian Stiller had to drag additional information out of him.

  ‘He had damaged parts of the bonnet and the right side,’ Vassvik said. ‘It was Larsen who fixed it up.’

  ‘Larsen?’

  Steinar Vassvik gestured in the direction where Stiller had earlier spotted an old vehicle workshop by the roadside. ‘He’s dead now,’ he added. ‘But I don’t think you’d have found any paperwork for it, if that was what you were looking for. Larsen wasn’t very fussy about receipts and that kind of thing.’

  Stiller envisaged how easy it would have been for Martin Haugen to drive a different car to cover up the damage sustained when he had knocked down Nadia Krogh.

  ‘But you’re sure there was substantial damage?’ he pressed him.

  Before he had dragged out a positive answer, they were interrupted by his phone. Nils Hammer was ringing.

  ‘I had a phone call from the police in Trøndelag,’ he said brusquely. ‘The cadaver dog has identified a spot on the hard shoulder, right beside the landslip area.’

  ‘I’m coming in,’ Stiller said, and ended the call.

  He thanked Steinar Vassvik as he made for his car. They were closing in on something. Now he was on tenterhooks to know what Wisting had uncovered during the fishing trip.

  77

  The first light raindrops pattered on the pickup’s windscreen when they clambered inside.

  ‘Just in the nick of time,’ Martin said, turning the ignition.

  Wisting leaned forward to look up at the dark sky and narrowly avoided hitting his head on the glass when one of the front wheels bumped into a big pothole.

  The pickup jolted forward. Wisting fastened his seatbelt and held tightly to the handle above his window as they lurched along the track.

  At last they reached the barrier. Wisting jumped out into the drizzling rain and opened it. Martin passed through and turned out on to the asphalt of the main road before Wisting closed the padlock and hopped back inside.

  The tyres turned steadily on the smooth surface. As Martin switched on the car radio, Wisting searched the dashboard for a clock. He discovered it was three o’clock at the very moment the news was announced on the radio.

  Martin turned up the volume. Although he was completely unprepared for it, the information made sense to Wisting as soon as he heard it:

  ‘Police sources confirm that human remains were found last night beside the E18 in Porsgrunn which are believed to be of missing Nadia Krogh. The search was initiated after the investigation into the twenty-six-year-old case was reopened earlier in the week. The E18 was closed all night while the work was carried out …’

  The newsreader continued speaking about the kidnap case, but the words were lost on Wisting. He took a deep breath. The small compartment felt airless. Now the confrontation would come. A cramping pain pounded his chest, like the onset of a heart attack.

  He twisted his head warily to the side. Martin Haugen’s demeanour had grown surly and his face wore an obstinate expression.

  ‘They’ve found her,’ Wisting said, in an effort to continue the pretence.

  Martin did not utter a word. His eyes narrowed and he kept his eyes focused on the road ahead.

  Wisting was unsure whether he would be able to keep this up any longer. They had circled around each other for three days, both
sensing something lurking beneath the surface. Now the pressure had become too intense.

  ‘You must stop,’ he said, his throat dry. ‘Pull in to the verge. We need to talk.’

  He could not trace any discernible reaction in Martin, apart from the vehicle speeding up.

  78

  In the course of a few hours, over a million people had read the news story about the remains which had been found, probably belonging to Nadia Krogh. Interest in the story had also caused a meteoric rise in the number of podcast listeners. Almost two hundred thousand had heard the first podcast.

  Line had put Amalie to bed and allowed her to take a bottle of warm milk with her. She knew this was a bad habit, but she needed peace and quiet to work.

  She linked the recorder to her phone and sat down at her writing desk. ‘This is an interim podcast while the story develops,’ she began. ‘It’s just over twenty-four hours since I last spoke to Robert Gran, but a great deal has happened since then. Six hours ago I left the location where police believe they have found the remains of his girlfriend, who went missing in 1987. Now I am going to try to call him.’

  She dialled the number and heard it ring in her earphones before Robert Gran answered.

  ‘Hi, Robert,’ Line said, leaving an eloquent pause. ‘I assume you’ve heard what happened last night?’

  The phone crackled as he took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Has anyone given you official notification?’

  ‘Nobody’s told me anything,’ he replied. ‘I don’t have a part in this, as her parents do. I only know what I’ve seen on the Internet.’

  ‘I was there,’ Line told him.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘What are your thoughts on it?’ Line asked, in the hope of eliciting an emotionally charged response. ‘Now that she’s been found?’

  ‘It’s a bit strange. Unreal, in a sense. I’ve waited for this, for this to happen, but at the same time it’s come out of the blue.’

  He inhaled noisily and continued: ‘I hope they find out something more. Who did it, and how it happened.’

  Unable to draw much more out of him, she ended the conversation and rang Liv Hovet for her reaction.

  ‘I was down there having a look this morning,’ Liv Hovet told her. ‘It’s just down the road from here. It’s spooky to think she’s been lying there all this time because it implies that the kidnapper must be from around these parts too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Line asked.

  ‘Well, she must have been kidnapped and killed here, since her body was hidden close to where she disappeared.’

  Line passed no comment on this theory but no longer believed that this was a case of kidnapping. It had been a fabrication to cover up what had taken place and to remove suspicion from her innocent boyfriend.

  She wrapped up the conversation and saved the file, together with the other two interviews, to allow Daniel Leanger to start editing them without delay. She then sat down to read out some concluding remarks, without a script but using a few keywords on the notepad in front of her.

  ‘In this episode you heard the kidnappers’ demands and how only now, after twenty-six years, Nadia’s body has in all likelihood been found. What actually happened? Was this a kidnapping that went wrong, or is the whole Nadia Krogh mystery about something else entirely?

  ‘We, the makers of this podcast, believe we know what occurred and, although the story is bigger than anyone imagined, the solution is simpler. What we know and who we believe to be responsible for Nadia Krogh’s death are theories we will explore in the next episode.’

  She stopped the recorder and sat mulling things over for a while before reading out a new version in which she did not promise any disclosures. She uploaded both versions and left it up to Daniel Leanger and the editors to choose which one to use. Her own preference was the first.

  79

  ‘Was it Katharina who ran her over?’ Wisting asked.

  Slender tree trunks hurtled past on either side of the pickup. Martin did not answer, but Wisting noticed a slight head movement, an almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘You just helped her to conceal the body? Cleared things up?’

  The vehicle tilted as they rounded a corner, but Martin did not reduce his speed.

  Wisting accepted his silence as confirmation, but this was not something that would register on the hidden recorder in his jacket sleeve.

  ‘Do you remember how I told you that she might have packed her suitcase for going into prison?’ Wisting went on, but still received no answer. ‘I think she wanted to take responsibility for what she had done. For Nadia’s death.’

  He questioned how far he should go in confronting Martin Haugen at this precise moment. No matter what he did or said, Martin was the one in charge. He was the one in the driving seat.

  ‘The code on the kitchen table,’ he said. ‘It was a sketch that showed where Nadia Krogh was hidden.’

  In a sense, Katharina had solved the case for them by leaving that note. Martin could have removed it when he returned home to the empty house twenty-four years ago, but he couldn’t touch anything. He himself had sent his neighbour up to the house, to reinforce his alibi, which had also constrained him. Steinar Vassvik would tell the police he had seen a handwritten message on the kitchen table, and it would seem suspicious if it had vanished.

  The pickup veered to one side again. Martin did not say anything but simply increased his speed yet another notch.

  Wisting peered forward. A long, flat expanse stretched out before them, and a timber lorry was approaching from the other end.

  80

  ‘The vehicle’s on the move,’ Hammer reported, his eyes nailed to the computer screen.

  The red dot indicating the position of Martin Haugen’s pickup was in motion.

  ‘They’re on their way home,’ Adrian Stiller concluded.

  Hammer’s phone rang. He answered, listened and made an arrangement to have pictures and documents from the dig in Malvik sent over. Then he turned to face the others.

  ‘That was from the police in Trøndelag,’ he said. ‘They’ve found something in the collapsed area of the E6. Bones and other remains, enough to ascertain that they’re human.’

  ‘Katharina Haugen,’ Stiller decided, turning to Christine Thiis. ‘It’s time you wrote out an arrest order.’

  Acquiescing, the police prosecutor disappeared from the room.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Hammer asked. ‘Where should we apprehend him?’

  ‘Somewhere along the road,’ Stiller replied. ‘Once he has dropped Wisting off but before he reaches home.’

  Hammer looked at the screen. ‘We’ve got forty minutes or so,’ he calculated, starting to search for a number on his phone. ‘We’ll need reinforcements. He’s probably armed.’

  Stiller stood with his eyes on the red dot on the computer screen. It was no longer moving. ‘Do you need to refresh the image, or something?’ he asked, remembering how the surveillance picture had frozen earlier.

  ‘Not usually,’ Hammer replied. ‘The movements are in real time.’

  Nevertheless, he pressed a key. The onscreen image disappeared for a brief second before reappearing. The red dot was still motionless in the same spot, in the middle of a long stretch of road.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ Hammer said. ‘Something’s happened.’

  81

  The side draught from the massive timber lorry made the pickup sway as the two vehicles passed.

  Martin braked hard and swung into a lay-by at the roadside. The vehicle skidded into the gravel on rigid wheels. When it had come to a halt, he turned to face Wisting. ‘You need to get out,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Wisting insisted.

  Martin shook his head.

  ‘No matter what happened, we can resolve things,’ Wisting continued. ‘It might look hopeless right now, but that’s what my job is – finding a solution to these matters.�
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  Martin leaned forward and rested his head on the steering wheel. He looked resigned for a moment, but then pulled out something concealed beneath his seat. The pistol. It had been in the pickup all the time.

  ‘I want you to get out,’ he said, cradling the pistol on his lap.

  Wisting grabbed hold of the door handle. ‘I’d like to know what happened first,’ he said, opening the door a crack.

  Martin gulped. ‘It was my suggestion,’ he began.

  The rest of his explanation came in stops and starts, more or less in words of one syllable, as if he were short of time. ‘We’d been in Heistad. With friends from work. Katharina was driving. She was pregnant. I suggested we should drive along the new road. It wasn’t in use yet. The asphalt had been laid that same day. It was totally black. No road markings. No street lights. I didn’t see her at all. Not until her face was on the front windscreen.’

  ‘An accident,’ Wisting said, to soften what had happened. ‘She was wearing dark clothes. No reflective strips.’

  ‘There was an excavator nearby,’ Martin went on. ‘After fifteen minutes every trace was gone. The only thing left on the road when we made to leave was her purse, so we took that with us. Everything went smoothly, but then they arrested her boyfriend and Katharina took it into her head to fake a kidnapping.’

  His words were coming faster now. Everything he had held inside. It was like a dam bursting. He related how he had crashed his pickup to camouflage the damage caused by knocking her down and how everything had affected Katharina. She had lost the baby and slid into a depression. She had wanted to turn herself in and, in the early hours of 10 October 1989, had visited him in an attempt to persuade him to do the same. It had ended in the worst possible way. The flood of words came as confirmation of everything Wisting had already figured out. All they had talked about during the fishing trip had built a foundation for an admission. Martin had been drawn into Katharina’s psychological drama until he reached breaking point. Now he pushed all the blame and responsibility on to her.