The time was 06.45, and the thermometer registered minus seventeen degrees Celsius. Through the darkness, Wisting could make out the contours of the motionless trees outside his window. There was no wind.
He had put on the turtle-necked sweater Line had given him for Christmas a number of years ago, but wondered about something more formal. The FBI would probably turn up in suits.
He had coffee and a slice of cold pizza for breakfast before heading for the bathroom where he scrutinised his reflection as he brushed his teeth: broad face with a sprinkling of grey in his hair, puffy eyes staring back at him. The lines around his mouth and furrows at his nose were sharper than before. The thought that he was growing old pricked him.
He kept the sweater and put on hat and gloves, buttoning his padded jacket before he left the house. The car started first time but he had to scrape the windscreen, the cold stinging his cheeks and nose. As he reversed from the driveway, he stole a glance at Viggo Hansen’s house before setting off for the police station.
This was the first time he had been unable to share his thoughts about an ongoing investigation with Line. He had always been mindful of his duty of confidentiality, but that had never prevented them from discussing current issues. What he was working on now, however, was a case of such dimensions that he could not expect her to refrain from passing it to her colleagues. If Robert Godwin was still alive and living somewhere in Norway, a leak to the press could impact badly on their enquiry. It would prompt a huge number of tip-offs, but it would also warn the killer. If he had lived here as a peaceful resident for more than twenty years it was not a risk he could take.
At 07.45 he hung his jacket behind his door and placed his hat and gloves on top of the shelf behind his chair.
The night had not led to any new developments, fresh reports or information. Wisting spent the morning making preparations. The FBI had a reputation for running roughshod over local police in the USA, exactly like
Kripos
in Norway. It was nevertheless the locals’ case, and although they were the ones who had taken the initiative for the meeting, Wisting intended to remain in charge.
He re-read all the documentation from the Americans but did not discover much he did not already know, although he managed to pick up some new American expressions.
Afterwards, he prepared for the meeting by producing a chronological list on which he recorded the development of their own case point by point and how he envisaged the way forward. These preparations were beneficial in other ways, giving him a more holistic overview as well as a reminder of what they had and what they lacked in the case.
Wisting was continually surprised and impressed by what could be deduced from even the tiniest scrap of material found at a crime scene. Forensic evidence had become increasingly important to an investigation and of major significance for the outcome of a case. However, clues were one thing, it was something else to interpret them correctly. The strands of a woman’s hair disturbed him.
In all the deaths he had investigated, he had only once worked on a case with a female murderer. There were a few of these in criminal history but, as a rule, they were the desperate actions of desperate people. He was not convinced they were looking for a woman of that type, but neither could he hit upon any other logical explanation for the six strands of female hair.
He marshalled his thoughts along a timeline that started in 1983 when Robert Godwin killed his first victim and extended to the discovery of the dead body in the trees three days ago. The distance between all known points was enormous and the information they had was full of holes.
Three faint knocks on his office door and Christine Thiis poked her head inside. ‘They’re here now,’ she said. ‘The FBI.’
When he got to his feet, his seat had a damp patch where his back had been.
The room was bathed in silvery morning light. Line lay in bed, studying the pattern on the wallpaper, recalling something that had struck her as she fell asleep. Too tired to get up and write it down she had hugged it close in her dreams.
It had come while she wondered what to wear for Viggo Hansen’s funeral, who would come to the church, and whether she should buy flowers. Perhaps she should take the initiative and organise a collection among the neighbours for a funeral wreath. These thoughts had led her to think about the clergyman who would deliver the eulogy. Her last thought before falling asleep had been that she ought to speak to him.
An hour later she was sitting in the church office. Jarle Lunden had both baptised and confirmed her, and had officiated at her mother’s funeral. Now he was a grey-haired man with heavy eyelids, though he retained the same gentle smile. He asked how she was these days and how her father was keeping.
‘I often see your name in the newspaper,’ he said. ‘It’s been exciting following your career.’
Line smiled.
‘That’s what’s fascinating about a long professional life in the same place,’ he said. ‘Seeing what direction the lives of the people you’ve met have taken. I’ve baptised infants who’ve grown up to be famous politicians, actors and renowned artists, but also children who’ve become drug addicts, bank robbers and murderers. I’ve confirmed girls who’ve become some of the best handball players in the world, boys who’ve turned into famous authors, and I’ve married couples who later came to hate each other so much that one ended up killing the other.’
Line was tempted to ask what decided the eventual course of such lives, accident or fate, or God’s will, but let it drop. Instead she told him about the article she was working on and how she was trying to familiarise herself with Viggo Hansen’s background.
‘I only met him once,’ the clergyman said.
‘When was that?’
Jarle Lunden shifted in his seat, making it creak slightly. ‘Forty-two years ago, when his father died. I probably wouldn’t remember if it hadn’t been my first funeral service. Since then, I’ve officiated at more than a thousand, and Viggo Hansen will be one of the very last. I’m retiring at New Year.’
He shifted position again. ‘It was a difficult task for a young, newly ordained clergyman. Fortunately, the ceremony was attended by only the closest relatives.’
Line took out her notebook and leafed to a blank page. ‘What was so difficult about it?’
‘It’s always difficult when people take their own lives, and this was the first time I had to deal with the relatives.’
‘Viggo Hansen’s father committed suicide?’
Jarle Lunden nodded. ‘I was called to the house after they cut him down. Viggo Hansen was a young man, eighteen or nineteen at that time. He sat at the kitchen table, not moving a muscle, and I don’t know if he heard a word I said. His mother was pacing the room, talking the entire time.’
‘He hanged himself?’
‘In the basement.’
Line pictured the chilly basement. The ceiling was so low she had been forced to crouch to avoid the rafters. She could not imagine how anyone could hang himself there.
‘Why did he do that?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t leave a letter, but I remember the mother blamed her son. It’s your fault, she said. Over and over again.’
‘What did she mean by that?’
‘I don’t know. She said so many things, she was out of her mind with grief. In situations like that, it’s natural to try to find someone to blame, but her own son . . . it was painful to hear a mother say something like that.’
‘Did the police investigate?’
‘The police were there when I arrived. They were the ones who cut the body down. I’ve no idea what they did about the actual incident.’
Line jotted a note to ask her father to find the old case in the archives. ‘Do you think anyone will come to the funeral tomorrow?’
Jarle Lunden shook his head. ‘He had no family, and no work colleagues or friends. Maybe some of the neighbours will come or someone who knew him from their schooldays.’ The clergyman clasped his hands on the desk. ‘I have to admit his loneliness distresses me. It’s awful to think that it took four months from when he died until anyone bothered about him. That’s perhaps the greatest loneliness of all, not even to exist in anyone else’s thoughts.’
Line noted the sentence. The quote, prominent in italic print, would enhance her story. ‘What were you thinking of saying in your eulogy?’
‘I had in mind to use the words of a Chinese poet as my starting point,’ he said, producing a sheet of paper covered in notes. ‘It says that a person has not lived in vain if he has heard birdsong in spring, grasshoppers in summer, insects in autumn, and the sound of falling snow in winter.’
Line canted her head as she glanced out the window, where a cold mist enveloped the streets. ‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Can I use it?’
‘Of course. You can have the whole speech after the funeral tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll find something more. God’s word contains a great deal of comfort for the lonely. Most powerful of all are Jesus’ own.’ He held up his working notes and read aloud, ‘
‘
My God, my God,’ Jesus cried out in a loud voice. ‘Why have you forsaken me?’’
He put down the sheet of paper. ‘It tells us how Jesus has experienced being alone and abandoned.’
Line scribbled some notes, mainly to be polite, not thinking she would make any reference to the Bible. She thanked him for meeting her as she got to her feet.
‘There’s just one more thing,’ Jarle Lunden said, accompanying her to the door. ‘A woman phoned last Friday and asked when the funeral was.’
‘A woman?’
‘I didn’t speak to her myself. Our secretary took the call, but she came to see me afterwards. Mostly to tell me there would be at least one person attending the funeral.’
‘Do you know her name?’
‘No, I asked that too. I would have liked to speak to people who knew Viggo Hansen to get some input for the eulogy, but her name hadn’t been recorded.’
‘Who could it have been?’
The clergyman shrugged as he held the door open. ‘Maybe we’ll get the answer to that tomorrow.’
A platter laden with buttered bread rolls and a variety of toppings, bottles of mineral water, a pot of coffee and cups were all laid out on the table in the conference room.
Christine Thiis must have had arranged this, Wisting thought, easing out one of the roast beef rolls and rearranging the others to make it impossible to detect that someone had already helped himself.
He ate as he skimmed his notes one last time, underlining the most important points and circling individual key words, so that he could refer to them more easily.
His own team filled the seats on one side of the table: Christine Thiis, Espen Mortensen, Nils Hammer and Torunn Borg. Mortensen would report the technical results and project the images. Nils Hammer and Torunn Borg were mainly included to even up the numbers.
Wisting moved from the top of the table when their guests arrived, Christine Thiis opening the door, stepping aside as she ushered them in. A round of introductions and handshakes followed.
One of the FBI agents was a woman called Maggie Griffin, aged about forty, formally dressed in a black suit, with cropped dark hair and a firm handshake. One of her colleagues, Donald Baker, about ten years older, was a man with deep, solemn creases at either side of his mouth, whilst her other colleague, John Bantam, from Minneapolis, was several years younger. Slim and muscular with short black hair, he introduced himself as an analyst.
‘Good to see you again,’ Leif Malm said, introducing Wisting to the other woman in their company. ‘This is Police Inspector Anne Finstad from the international joint operations section.’
She was the only one wearing uniform. It hung loosely from her shoulders. Her face was narrow and her complexion pale.
Wisting spoke first, in English. He invited them to sit down, thanked them for coming and encouraged them to help themselves to food and drink.
The FBI agents filled the room with a kind of authority he was unaccustomed to. He cleared his throat, but waited until the coffee cups had been distributed and the coffee pot passed round before speaking. ‘Three days ago, the body of an unidentified man was found in a forested area, approximately ten kilometres from the centre of town,’ he said, before handing over to Mortensen.
The image of the dead man lying underneath the fir tree at Halle filled the screen.
‘The forensics team estimates he had been lying there for approximately four months,’ Wisting went on.
The FBI special agents nodded, giving their full attention as the images were shown. They were already familiar with the facts of the case from the briefing material, but the photos were new to them.
Wisting gave an account of the contusions on the skull, the height and weight of the cadaver and the manufacturers’ labels on his clothing. ‘He had a sealed plastic bag in the inside pocket of his jacket.’ He paused while Mortensen located the appropriate picture. ‘It contained a brochure that was handed out in Stavern on 9th and 10th August. On that brochure, we found Robert Godwin’s fingerprints.’
Wisting paused again, this time to allow the FBI agents to say something. The oldest of them, Donald Baker, cleared his throat. ‘Well, it ain’t Godwin’s body,’ he said, opening his document folder with an unruffled motion. ‘We’ve compared his DNA profile with the reference samples you gave us. There isn’t a match.’
Wisting took the papers, annoyed that the Americans had not sent the test results in advance of the delegation’s arrival. ‘That’s not quite what we expected,’ he commented tersely, calling on Torunn Borg to speak.
‘In that case the body is most likely to be a sixty-seven-year-old widower from Minneapolis,’ she told them, explaining Bob Crabb’s background. ‘We’ve been in touch with investigators from the 3rd Precinct of the Minneapolis police, requesting that they visit his apartment and search it thoroughly.’
Espen Mortensen supplemented this by showing pictures of the newspaper cuttings about the Godwin case found in Bob Crabb’s luggage.
Donald Baker exchanged a look with John Bantam. ‘They went in three hours ago,’ he said. ‘The apartment shows signs of being vacant for some considerable time. Our people are going through his papers and belongings. We’re also expecting to find material to use for a DNA profile, with the intention of conclusively establishing identity.’
‘Robert Godwin and Bob Crabb taught at the same university,’ Torunn Borg said. ‘We’d like to know as much as possible about what specific connections there were between the two of them.’
‘Our people are on the case,’ Donald Baker said. ‘From the initial feedback we’ve received, it does seem that Bob Crabb showed a great interest in Robert Godwin.’ The FBI agent nodded in the direction of the screen. ‘He has a workroom where they found similar news cuttings.’
Wisting filled his coffee cup before continuing. ‘So, we can also consider it probable that Bob Crabb, through his own investigations, had come to believe that Robert Godwin had fled to Norway and taken up residence here. Then he himself travelled here in an attempt to find him.’
‘A great deal suggests that he managed to do so,’ Police Inspector Anne Finstad commented. ‘That he found Godwin, I mean, and that it was Godwin who killed Bob Crabb.’
‘That’s the most obvious theory,’ Wisting agreed. ‘But we have contradictory forensic evidence.’
Espen Mortensen showed a picture of the strands of hair in the dead man’s hand.
‘This hair belonged to a woman,’ Wisting said, watching as Anne Finstad’s mouth snapped shut.
‘Are these test results absolutely watertight?’ the female FBI agent asked.
‘Incontrovertible,’ Mortensen said. ‘A mitochondrial DNA analysis was carried out. The sex-typing markers prove a very clear female origin, but we have asked that the samples be analysed again.’
Leif Malm straightened up. ‘Do you have anything more?’
Wisting gave an account of the more traditional elements of the investigation, explaining how they had lost out on potential electronic evidence because the body had not been found until long after death.
Donald Baker had taken notes while Wisting was speaking. Now he put down his pen. ‘What we can conclude with certainty,’ he said, ‘is that Robert Godwin has been here, and he’s probably been here for some time. What steps have you taken to find him?’
‘This information is only a few hours old,’ Wisting replied, aware that he was adopting a defensive position. ‘Until this meeting, there was a theoretical possibility that it was Robert Godwin we had found dead.’ He cleared his throat and continued. ‘At present we’re in the process of extracting lists from the Population Register in an effort to chart men in the relevant age group who live in this area.’
‘Do you think he’ll have registered as an immigrant?’ Anne Finstad asked, a faint smile playing on her lips. ‘Is it not more likely he’ll be living here illegally?’
‘It’s still a job that has to be done.’ More than 25,000 people in the country were not recorded in any registers, and preferred to remain under the radar. ‘Our greatest hope, all the same, is that the police in Minneapolis will find what set Bob Crabb on the right track and made him travel here.’
‘The lists from the Population Register are a good idea,’ Donald Baker said. ‘It’s possible that he’s registered there, but he could still be difficult to track down.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’ll need to go through the lists person by person, but I do think he’ll be listed there.’ The experienced FBI investigator leaned across the table. ‘I’ve come across this sort of thing before,’ he said. ‘The way this case is looking, there’s every reason to assume that Robert Godwin has become a
Caveman
.’
‘A caveman?’ Nils Hammer repeated. ‘What does that mean? That he’s hidden himself in a cave somewhere?’
‘That’s what we call them,’ Donald Baker explained. ‘People on the run who eventually find an empty life. They take over the identity and the anonymous existence of a person no one will miss. In a sense they fill an empty space and continue to live, just as isolated and lonely as the person whose place they have taken.’
‘What happens to the other person?’ Torunn Borg asked. ‘The one they replace?’
Donald Baker shrugged, but they all knew the answer.
Wisting leaned back in his chair. A caveman, he thought. Someone who has crept inside the life of another person. That was what they were searching for. A demon who had taken up residence in another person’s life.