At almost half past eight, Line stood and stretched. She photographed the contents of the room and arranged the items in the suitcase as they had been, before taking some close-up pictures of the names on the family tree. Closing the door behind her she hooked the padlock back on the hasp.
Outside, a wind had risen, a freezing, biting blast that cut to the bone. She walked with short, hurried steps along the street towards her home. She had done her shopping earlier and left the groceries in her car. Now she carried them into the kitchen.
Her father was not home yet, so she stowed the food before making herself a cup of coffee and taking it upstairs to her workroom. It had been a fruitful day, she felt, opening her laptop on the desk. Although she was unsure how to use all the information, she was at least making a picture of Viggo Hansen and his life in the shadow of his parents’ mistakes.
In the centre of a blank sheet of paper she wrote his name and drew a circle round it, jotting down the names of the people who in some way or other had found themselves in his orbit. She recorded the names of his parents closest to the inner circle with a cross at the end to show that they were dead. On the other side, she wrote the names of friends and acquaintances: Eivind Aske and Odd Werner Ellefsen from school, Frank Iversen from the prawn factory, German Ole, and Irene followed by a question mark. In a separate group, she listed the names of the neighbours, finally adding the public personages she could think of. She had already spoken to the clergyman, and really ought to contact the doctor who had declared him unfit for work. Perhaps she could also speak to someone who knew him when he had been admitted to the psychiatric unit. He must also have had a case worker at NAV, the Labour and Welfare administration.
The notes from her conversation with Annie Nyhus implied that Frank Iversen had moved to Langesund with his parents in the sixties, but no Frank Iversen was listed in Langesund, at least not in any register she could access. She sent what information she had to the fact-checking department to see if they could trace him elsewhere in the country.
Now it was time to think in earnest about starting to write. Instead of drafting a layout on the computer as she usually did, she printed out the photographs she had taken, pinning them to the cork board so that she could rearrange them at will and sort them in the order she felt best represented Viggo Hansen’s life. She hung photographs of the dark, gloomy house, of the damaged door, the TV magazine on the coffee table, the crime scene photograph showing the back of his head in the armchair in front of the TV, the Christmas cards, the family photographs, the padlock on the storeroom door, his father’s death certificate and the newspaper cuttings from the safe-blowing case in 1960.
Something like a film director setting up a storyboard, she thought, as she placed the old class photograph further down the row.
Finally she was left with two pictures she was not sure belonged in the story. The image of the two vacant armchairs in the living room and the coffee machine in readiness in the kitchen. Holding them in her hand, she wondered whether there was any chance that someone who had been inside Viggo Hansen’s house had taken his life. Now that she had gained some distance and perspective, the possibility seemed less likely. He never had visitors, and who in the world would want to kill him?
A car door slammed outside, immediately followed by her father’s footsteps in the hall. She put aside the last two prints and went downstairs to greet him, but could see that something was bothering him. He had dark rings under his eyes and looked very pale. The skin on his face was etched with fine wrinkles and crevices she had not noticed before, like an old oil painting.
‘I found the case notes for the suicide,’ he said, handing her a transparent plastic folder. ‘It’s true. He hanged himself in the basement.’
She took the file, surprised that he had remembered. ‘Thanks,’ she said, but decided to wait to look through the papers. ‘Hungry?’
He followed her into the kitchen, where she took out the frying pan, poured in some oil and let it heat while fetching a ready-made pack of hash from the freezer.
‘This was all I could think of,’ she said, holding up the packet.
‘I could eat anything at all.’
She poured the contents into the pan and let it sizzle. ‘Are you going to the funeral tomorrow?’ she asked, stirring the cubed vegetables and meat, but her father’s thoughts were elsewhere and he had no idea what she meant. ‘It’s Viggo Hansen’s funeral tomorrow. I thought I would go.’
‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Have you arranged for flowers?’
‘I phoned the florist and ordered a wreath. It says
A last goodbye from the neighbours in Herman Wildenveys gate
on the card.’
‘Have you spoken to the other neighbours?’
‘I took a chance. I don’t expect any of them will come tomorrow to see it.’
‘How much do I owe you?’ He took his wallet from his trouser pocket. ‘For the food and the flowers?’
‘Don’t think of it.’ She turned to the frying pan. ‘Have you spoken to Thomas, about whether he’s coming home for Christmas?’
Wisting crossed to the kitchen cupboard and took out two plates. ‘I can phone him tomorrow.’
Line wanted to tell him how her story about Viggo Hansen was taking shape, but decided against it. Her father was preoccupied by other things. The case he was working on was gnawing at him in a way she had never seen before and it seemed he was keeping something from her.
The news had already spread before the morning meeting. One of the locations had been identified. ‘Benjamin Fjeld has tracked down one of the smallholdings in the photographs,’ Wisting began. ‘Now we have to find what the well contains without the news getting out.’
Mortensen called up an aerial photo of the abandoned farm, now so overgrown it was difficult to pick out the buildings.
‘The farm is approximately three hundred metres from the main road,’ Nils Hammer said. ‘I got a friend of mine with a tractor to clear the path as far as he could. After about two hundred metres there’s an old landslip, which means we’ll have to cover the last stretch on foot.’
Wisting looked out of the window. About seventy centimetres of snow must have fallen before the weather changed and the temperature dropped.
‘To attract least attention, we’ll cram the maximum people and equipment into one vehicle,’ Hammer went on. ‘I’ve acquired a civilian delivery van with four-wheel drive. It’s waiting in the garage.’
‘Have you spoken to the landowner?’ Christine Thiis asked.
Hammer shook his head. ‘The property was purchased by Bertram Nalum in the eighties. He was probably most interested in the forest and arable land, but in 2000 he landed a substantial sum of insurance money after the barn burned down.’
Benjamin Fjeld’s hand shot into the air. ‘There’s a link here! When I interviewed Jonathan Wang about Halle farm, he told me he had worked on Bertram Nalum’s farm before he bought his own smallholding.’
‘Wasn’t he originally from Austria?’ Wisting asked. ‘When did he come to Norway?’
‘At the beginning of the nineties.’
Wisting noted the name of the man with the facial scars before waving Nils Hammer on.
‘I’ve called in four men from the Emergency Squad, trained in abseiling, to investigate the bottom of the well. They’ll report here at ten o’clock. Of course, we don’t know what conditions will be like down there, or how big a task will face us. If there’s water in the well, it will be frozen solid.’
‘What will we do with whatever we find?’ Torunn Borg asked.
‘The crime scene technicians will have to go down and take over.’
Espen Mortensen gripped his coffee cup. ‘If we find what we fear, then it could turn into a major job.’
‘We can assist,’ Leif Malm of
Kripos
said. ‘The team can be here at two hours’ notice if required.’
Wisting nodded. ‘Have you produced that list of names, possible victims?’ he asked.
Leif Malm cleared his throat and took a set of stapled sheets from his folder. ‘It’s shorter than I hinted yesterday. That means, if we confine the search to women aged between eighteen and twenty-five, the age of Robert Godwin’s victims in the USA, we’re left with a total of fourteen. If we allow that he may also have chosen older victims in line with becoming older himself, then the list is almost three times as long.’
‘How long?’
‘Forty-six missing without trace. Assumed suicides and women missing on hiking trips in the forest or mountains have been deleted. Also deleted are a number of cases where the victim has not been found but a prosecution has been brought against the husband.’
Donald Baker of the FBI had so far remained silent, listening intently. ‘What about proximity to main roads?’
Leif Malm replied, ‘Twelve of the fourteen women disappeared from major towns and cities linked by the European road network.’
‘Is it possible to read anything else into these lists?’ Wisting asked.
‘There does appear to be a certain regularity,’ Malm said. ‘The first case is from 1991, and thereafter a new name is added around every other year, but there are gaps that mean it can’t exactly be called a repeating pattern.’
‘When was the last case?’ Christine Thiis asked.
‘Two and a half years ago.’
‘What about the other lists?’ Wisting enquired. ‘Those of men in the appropriate age group who live in this area?’
‘I’m working my way through them,’ Torunn Borg said.
‘What approach are you taking?’
‘I’m trying to identify the most likely candidates with regard to change of address notifications, family circumstances and other relatives, so we’re left with a shortlist we can use as a starting point. For example, it’s less likely we’re looking for a public person or someone with a management position in industry.’
Donald Baker agreed. ‘He probably leads an isolated life.’
‘As soon as we have a limited selection, we can run a face recognition program to compare the old photograph on the wanted poster with passport photos or photos from other registers,’ Torunn Borg continued.
‘Do we have access to passport photos?’ Wisting asked.
Six months earlier, a new regulation had denied investigating police access to the Passport Register.
‘It’s really more a question of how many results we can expect,’ Torunn Borg said, without specifying how she might bend the law. ‘It’s one thing what age may have done to alter his appearance, another is what he may have done.’
‘Age progression software?’ Espen Mortensen suggested. ‘A data-manipulated image could show us what Robert Godwin looks like today.’
‘We have people working on that,’ Donald Baker said. ‘These programs are no more than qualified guesswork, but it might be useful.’
Benjamin Fjeld raised his hand again. ‘Didn’t he use chloroform on his victims? If he’s using the same method here, he must have access to it somehow, but sales here are strictly regulated.’
‘That’s right,’ Donald Baker said. ‘A relatively large wastage rate was recorded at the Chemistry Institute at the university.’
‘What is chloroform actually used for?’ Hammer asked. ‘Apart from anaesthetising people in the movies?’
‘The chemical industry,’ Mortensen said. ‘It’s a solvent.’
Torunn Borg nodded, noting it as another parameter against which to check the lists of names.
‘What will we say if the press ask what we’re working on?’ Christine Thiis asked.
‘Good question,’ Leif Malm said. ‘When this gets out it’s going to explode in the media like nothing we’ve encountered before. CNN will be standing outside reporting live.’
Wisting passed the question over to Nils Hammer who had a background in the Drugs Squad and experience of using untraditional methods and measures.
‘As little as possible,’ Hammer said. ‘If they get close, we’ll let them believe we’re working on a narcotics case and searching for a drugs drop. The journalists usually take a low profile in those circumstances. No one wants to wreck an ongoing drugs enquiry.’
‘How will we manage that?’
‘The easiest way is to transfer all queries to the Drugs Squad and let them say we do not wish to comment on an ongoing enquiry.’
‘Good plan,’ Wisting said, and wound the meeting down.
Donald Baker stayed behind in the conference room after the others left. He stood up and crossed to the window. Outside, morning light glittered on the snow. ‘I hope everyone understands the importance of keeping this whole operation secret,’ he said. ‘Robert Godwin is here somewhere, and we have to just circle round him until we can close in, but if it leaks that we’re on his trail he’ll slip through our fingers again.’
He turned to face Wisting. ‘Every alternate year he needs a fresh victim. He’s sixty-one years old now, so he has perhaps fifteen or twenty years of life left. That means eight to ten more victims if we don’t catch him.’
Line’s phone rang as she parked outside the church. It was
Knut A. Sandersen, Chief News Editor
in her contacts list. ‘I’m on my way into church for the funeral,’ she said.
‘Who’s dead?’
‘Viggo Hansen, the man in the chair in front of the TV. Remember?’
‘Yes, how’s the story going?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I know what he was watching when he died.’ She heard the sound of the coffee machine in the background and visualised the news editor with his mobile tucked between chin and shoulder.
‘Hope it was a talk-show or something like that,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll be invited into the studio.’
‘He was watching the Discovery Channel.’
‘Alone at home, discovering the world from his armchair, that’s a great angle for portraying a lonely person.’
‘He was watching a programme about famous FBI cases,’ Line said.
‘How do you know that he was watching precisely that programme?’
‘He had planned his television viewing and asterisked it in a TV magazine that was lying open on the coffee table showing the listings for Thursday 11th August. Later that evening he had highlighted a programme about elk in Alaska on NRK2, but the television was still on the Discovery Channel when he was found.’
‘What photographs do you have?’
‘I’ve pictures of the empty house, but some of the police crime scene photos can also be used in print.’
‘What about a portrait photo?’
‘The most recent I’ve seen of Viggo Hansen is a class photograph from 1964.’
‘That won’t do.’
‘I think it could work,’ she insisted. ‘It says something about how little people bothered about him. That nobody took a single photograph of him for the last forty-seven years of his life.’
The news editor agreed she had a point. ‘Do you need much more time until you’re done? I may need you for another story.’
Line leaned over the steering wheel and peered at the flags hanging at half mast on either side of the churchyard gate. ‘What kind of story?’
‘Last Friday another body was found down there, in a felling area outside the town.’
‘I saw that,’ Line said.
‘I’ve put Morten P and Harald Skoglund onto it, but they may need you as well. For your local knowledge.’
‘What makes you think there’s a story there?’
‘We’ve had a tip-off that DNA samples have been sent to Interpol.’
Line’s curiosity was aroused. ‘That’s only natural if they think he might be a foreigner.’
‘I think there’s more to it,’ Sandersen said. ‘They called in a pathologist on overtime and performed an autopsy on the body as early as Saturday. Normally they leave them over the weekend. They employed extra staff at the lab as well. Our man over there says they were told to put everything else on the back burner.’
‘What are the police saying?’
‘We haven’t asked; we’re doing a scoping exercise first. But a technical team at
Kripos
is apparently on standby, ready to travel down to Larvik.’
‘Where did you get that from?’
‘Police sources.’
Line smiled to herself. Police sources did not necessarily mean any more than that one of the crime scene technicians had mentioned at home that he would be away for a few days, and his wife had dropped it into conversation with a friend who had passed it on. However, regardless, it was an interesting snippet of information, and she understood why Sandersen was interested.
The other end had gone quiet. She could hear the news editor drinking and swallowing. ‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked, when she did not say any more.
‘I’ve been preoccupied,’ Line said.
‘But is there anything to suggest something’s afoot?’
‘Wouldn’t it be best for Morten P to make direct contact with the police? If they can’t give an answer, then that’s an answer in itself.’
‘Yes, yes, we’re making the usual approaches. I just wondered if you had heard anything.’
‘I see.’
‘Keep your feelers out, then, and phone me if you pick up anything. Before we go to print, I need to know who the dead man is. That should give us some juicy headlines.’