The Cabin

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Wisting smiled, glad to see that Line was such a good mother.

  ‘Puss,’ Amalie said.

  ‘Puss?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘We’ve got a cat in our garden,’ Line explained.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ Wisting replied with a smile.

  ‘If you’re busy, maybe we should come back later this evening,’ Line went on.

  ‘Good idea – I’ll see you later, then. Thanks for the iced tea.’

  He waited in the doorway until they were back on the street before closing and locking the door.

  When Wisting was back in the cellar he and Mortensen pulled on latex gloves before he removed the protective packaging and opened the first cardboard box. Mortensen plucked out a few notes from the top layer with the intention of examining them for fingerprints.

  ‘They don’t seem to have been used much,’ Wisting remarked as he fed the first wad of dollar notes into the counting machine and watched as they rattled through the apparatus.

  Mortensen looked through the counted bundle. ‘They’re all from 2001 and 2003,’ he commented, stowing them in the empty box. ‘Notes usually circulate for ten years or so before they get too worn and have to be scrapped.’

  Wisting put on his reading glasses and looked through the next bundle, also more or less unused notes. ‘These are all from 2003,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that gives us an indication of how far back in time we have to go to unearth any answers,’ Mortensen said.

  Wisting was thumbing through another wad of banknotes. ‘From 2001 and 2003,’ he said. ‘There doesn’t appear to be any system in the serial numbers either. They’re not in numerical order and don’t come from a single consignment.’

  Wisting fed the counting machine with another bundle of notes as Mortensen sat down with his phone to research American hundred-dollar notes.

  ‘Their system is a bit different from ours,’ he said. ‘Two thousand and three is the year the note was designed. The 2003 series was printed through to 2006, when they changed the design,’ he said.

  ‘So even though it says 2003 on the banknote, it could well be from 2006?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Mortensen replied. ‘In May 2005, a new boss was appointed in the US Finance Department. They began to print notes with her signature on them, and continued with a 2003A series until the hundred-dollar bill was redesigned in 2006.’

  ‘Do we have any 2003A banknotes?’ Wisting queried.

  Mortensen shuffled a wad of notes through his fingers like a pack of cards. ‘Not yet,’ he answered.

  The manual checks meant the counting took longer than Wisting had anticipated, and three quarters of an hour had elapsed by the time they reached the bottom of the first box. The printout told them it had contained $2,480,000, divided into one-hundred-dollar and fifty-dollar notes.

  ‘The exchange rate is just over eight,’ Mortensen said, checking again on his phone. ‘Eight point one seven to be precise,’ he added, doing a mental calculation to convert it to Norwegian currency: ‘Sixteen point seven million kroner.’

  Wisting taped up the first box. ‘No A-notes,’ he summarized. ‘This means we will have to go back as far as May 2005, then.’

  Mortensen agreed. ‘Let’s find a box of euros,’ he said, removing the protective cover from one of the other boxes.

  This one had not been opened previously and Wisting had to fetch a knife to slit open the tape. ‘These are pounds,’ he said. ‘British fifty-pound notes.’

  ‘Is there a year on them?’ Mortensen asked, grabbing a wad to examine them for himself.

  ‘Nineteen ninety-four,’ Wisting read out.

  He delved further into the box to check another bundle and discovered something protruding between two layers of banknotes. A black cable.

  He used two fingers to fish it out. It was a severed length of cable with smaller red and blue wires protruding from the broken end and a tiny metal plug at the other.

  ‘A mini-jack,’ Mortensen commented. ‘For transferring sound files.’

  He produced an evidence bag while Wisting examined the small electrical component before dropping it inside.

  ‘Very widely used,’ Mortensen went on as he marked the bag. ‘On almost all headphones, radio transmitters and walkie-talkies …’

  Wisting nodded. It was too early to draw any conclusions or read anything into the case, but experience had taught him that it must have something to do with a secret operation where everything had happened quickly but something had gone wrong.

  He picked up another wad of notes and checked through them. ‘Nineteen ninety-four here, too,’ he said. ‘On all of them, as far as I can see.’

  He changed the currency setting on the counting machine and fed in the first bundle. Mortensen read up on British pounds on the Bank of England website.

  ‘Looks, again, like the date follows the design,’ he said. ‘A new fifty-pound note was introduced in 2011. All the notes printed between 1994 and 2011 are marked 1994.’

  After another three quarters of an hour, they had counted £186,000. ‘Just over 1.9 million Norwegian kroner,’ Mortensen calculated.

  The paper dust in the air had given Wisting a dry throat. He had put the jug Line had brought on a shelf by the front door and the ice cubes had melted. Heading for the kitchen, he collected two glasses and poured the iced tea.

  ‘We need something to eat,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone for a pizza.’

  They embarked on the next box while they waited for the food to arrive. This one contained euro banknotes of various denominations.

  ‘When was the euro actually introduced?’ Wisting asked, changing the currency setting on the machine once again.

  Mortensen checked on his mobile. ‘The notes first went into circulation in January 2002,’ he answered.

  ‘That narrows things down a little,’ Wisting said. ‘So far the money comes from a period of time between January 2002 and May 2005.’

  ‘But that doesn’t tell us anything about when they came into Clausen’s possession,’ Mortensen objected. ‘The earliest it could have been was in 2003, when the dollar notes were printed.’

  They went on working in silence. After half an hour they heard a vehicle stop outside. ‘Grub,’ Wisting said.

  At that moment the counting machine gave a signal he had not heard before and stopped in the middle of a bundle.

  ‘What’s up?’ Mortensen asked.

  Wisting investigated. ‘A scrap of paper,’ he said, removing the offending article from the machine. ‘It must have been between the banknotes.’

  The piece of paper was the size of a matchbox and had two straight and two torn sides, as if it had been ripped from the corner of a larger sheet of paper. On one side, something was written in blue ballpoint pen.

  The doorbell rang. Wisting handed the note to Mortensen, pulled off his rubber gloves and went upstairs to fetch the pizza.

  ‘Looks like a phone number,’ Mortensen told him on his return.

  ‘Norwegian?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘Eight digits, without a country code,’ Mortensen answered, and immediately looked it up. ‘Registered to Gine Jonasen in Oslo.’

  ‘Let’s eat outside,’ Wisting suggested.

  Mortensen put the scrap of paper into a plastic bag and sealed it. They then activated the alarm, locked the room and stepped out on to the terrace on the other side of the house.

  They ate straight from the box and drank cans of cola. Faint noises from the town below drifted up to them from time to time and Wisting fixed his gaze on a yacht making its way into Stavernsodden.

  ‘Any inkling of what this is all about?’ he asked.

  ‘A secret hoard of money comprising international currency,’ Mortensen replied. ‘As I said before, this could be cash that the authorities have kept aside to buy their way out of tricky situations.’

  The same thought had already struck Wisting. ‘Clausen was Foreign Minister in the Himle government,’ he said. ‘Georg Himle
must have known if there was a huge stash of money somewhere. If that were the case, surely the Party would have swept it under the carpet rather than approach the Director General.’

  Mortensen reached out for another slice of pizza. ‘I don’t know much about politics,’ he said. ‘Nor about money either.’

  ‘I’m not so sure the answer lies in politics,’ Wisting said. ‘If we’re to find the answer, we’ll have to talk to people who knew him.’

  ‘It’ll be difficult to combine that with a covert investigation,’ Mortensen pointed out. ‘Besides, it would be too much for just the two of us.’

  ‘I’ve got free rein to take on whatever personnel we feel we need,’ Wisting said.

  ‘Do you have anyone in particular in mind?’

  Wisting nodded, without disclosing anything further.

  A grasshopper began to sing somewhere in the garden and the two men finished their meal in silence.

  Wisting stood up. ‘Shall we continue, then?’ he asked.

  Mortensen, keen to resume, followed him back down to the basement.

  Wisting continued with the money count while Mortensen concentrated on the fingerprints. He folded out the old boxes so that they were flat and sprayed every surface with a chemical, leaving it for a few minutes to dry. Then he placed a special cloth on top and used a steam iron to recover latent fingerprints.

  Each fingerprint was photographed, registered and prepared for inclusion in a search through the records.

  ‘There are both old and new prints,’ he commented. ‘The most recent ones are probably from the Party Secretary, who found the boxes. Some of the faintest prints are most likely from Clausen himself. They appear to be years old.’

  They continued working without making conversation, and at just before 10 p.m. they were almost finished. Wisting was nearly at the bottom of the last box when he discovered something sticking out between the banknotes.

  ‘A key,’ he said, holding it up. It looked like the key to an external door and the metal was corroded in several places.

  Mortensen took it from him. ‘It’s not a regular key,’ he said. ‘There’s not even a maker’s mark.’

  ‘A copy that’s been filed down?’ Wisting suggested.

  Mortensen nodded. ‘There’s no way it can be traced.’

  He produced another evidence bag, dropped in the key and sealed the bag, before placing it on the table beside the scribbled telephone number and the metal plug.

  Wisting counted up the rest of the cash. The task had taken them almost six hours. After adding up the printouts from the counting machine, Wisting made a clean copy on a fresh page of his notepad.

  $5,364,400

  £2,840,800

  €3,120,200

  Converted to Norwegian currency, the total value was indeed more than 80 million kroner.

  5

  Once Mortensen had left, having agreed to return early the next morning, Wisting was ready for refreshment and relaxation. There was still some iced tea left in the jug Line had brought. Wisting added a few more ice cubes and carried it out to the verandah. The daylight had gone. He pulled a chair under the exterior light and sat down with his notebook and the iPad he had received from Line at Christmas.

  Through a number of articles on the Internet, he gained a rapid overview of Clausen’s political life: he had grown up in a working-class family in Oppegård, Akershus, immediately after the war. As a teenager he began working for a construction company that was erecting apartment blocks in Groruddalen. Through trade union involvement he obtained a job with LO, the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, and became active in the movement, supporting Norwegian membership of the EU. In 1975 he was elected to the local council in Oppegård, and in 1981 he was voted into Parliament after being a deputy representative for two periods of four years.

  Following several years on the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Health and Care, he became a member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs and the Constitution and later the Defence Committee. At the change of government in 2001 he was appointed Minister of Health. His wife died one year later. In 2003 his son died in a road traffic accident. Clausen withdrew from government at a Cabinet reshuffle but was back on the election campaign trail in 2005 and, that same autumn, he entered government again, this time as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his capacity as Norway’s Foreign Minister, he was for a period also Chair of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. In the wake of the general election in 2009, he was chosen as President of the Norwegian Parliament and continued in this role until he officially retired. The most recent articles reported that he was still politically active and poised to contribute to the general election campaign that autumn.

  A movement at the extreme perimeter of the garden made him look up and Line, having skirted around the house, appeared in the gloaming.

  ‘How’s the little thief doing?’ Wisting asked, putting his papers aside.

  ‘She’s fast asleep,’ Line answered, showing him her mobile phone screen. A camera in the child’s bedroom meant she could see and hear her daughter wherever she went, and in such a quiet neighbourhood she did not feel anxious.

  Wisting thought of making a comment about sleeping soundly with a clear conscience but let it drop. Instead he went inside and brought her a glass.

  ‘I thought I might write an article about children and stealing,’ Line said when he returned.

  ‘Good idea,’ Wisting replied as he filled her glass.

  Line had trained as a journalist while working in the profession. After having Amalie, she had moved home to Stavern from Oslo, and after two periods of leave she had taken a severance package from the national Verdens Gang newspaper. Now she was a freelance journalist who worked on interviews and articles for various magazines. She also had a weekly column about life as single parent to a young child.

  ‘It would be the closest I’ve come to crime journalism for a long while,’ she said, tongue in cheek.

  ‘Do you miss it?’ Wisting asked.

  Line refrained from answering. ‘What have you and Mortensen been up to, anyway?’ she asked instead as she took a drink.

  Wisting was twirling his own glass in his hand. ‘Counting money,’ he replied.

  Line looked at him as Wisting left his words hanging in the air.

  ‘We’re working on a case where it would be best for the police not to be the ones asking the questions,’ he told her.

  ‘What kind of case?’

  ‘A case in which I need an in-depth personal portrait of a well-known person in order to bring out fresh, previously unknown aspects of his character.’

  ‘Who are we talking about here?’

  Wisting swatted a midge that flew past his ear. ‘Perhaps you could help?’ he asked.

  Line smiled. ‘I’m not in the police force,’ she answered, knowing that her father usually liked to keep her journalism at arm’s length from his work.

  ‘I can get authorization for you,’ Wisting told her.

  Line laughed but quickly realized he was being serious. ‘It’s not on, really,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘I can’t pass myself off as a journalist in order to obtain answers for the police.’

  Wisting leaned back in his chair, listening to the grasshoppers sing. ‘Of course, you’ll be able to publish whatever you dig up, and there’s nothing to prevent us from exchanging information, surely. Additional information. The info you get from me can’t be published without prior clearance, but it will be a scoop for you all the same. The police and press enter into that kind of agreement all the time. What’s more, you won’t have an editor to answer to.’

  Although he was posing his daughter an ethical journalistic dilemma, in that her interviewees would believe she was working for a newspaper rather than the police, he could see that she was interested.

  ‘What does getting authorization involve?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll be given police authority, limited in time and applying only
to this specific case, and financial remuneration.’

  ‘I thought this case was confidential?’

  Wisting reflected on this. ‘It’s a case that might turn out to be damaging to the public interest,’ he answered. ‘If that proves to be the case, you can’t write about it. But if not, the police won’t be concerned about keeping anything secret, as long as it doesn’t undermine an ongoing investigation.’

  ‘So I can write whatever I want once the case has been fully investigated?’

  ‘As long as the information isn’t classified as confidential,’ Wisting told her.

  Line sat staring out to sea, where the Svenner lighthouse beam swept lazily across the water. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Who’s it about?’

  ‘Bernhard Clausen.’

  ‘The politician? But he’s dead! Are there suspicions that …’

  Shaking his head, Wisting interrupted her. ‘He died of a heart attack,’ he clarified. ‘But he left behind an unlikely fortune. I’m investigating where the money came from.’

  He watched as Line tried to gather her thoughts. ‘How much are we talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘It’ll make a good story,’ Wisting said with a smile. ‘He had just over 80 million kroner stashed in his summer cabin at Hummerbakken.’

  Wide-eyed, Line repeated the figure aloud. Wisting went on to explain how it was divided into different currencies and the work he’d undertaken to count it all.

  ‘He’ll be buried some time next week,’ he added. ‘That gives us a window of opportunity when it’ll be quite natural to talk to people about his past.’

  ‘And if he won the money on the lottery, then I’ll be allowed to write about it?’ Line asked. ‘But if it comes from something like American war operations, then it’s confidential?’

  Wisting drained his glass and crunched the last ice cube between his teeth. ‘More or less. In either case, it’ll be a matter of finding the truth,’ he said. ‘Let’s start with that.’

  Line’s phone buzzed. Amalie was awake. ‘I have to go home.’

  Wisting got to his feet, too, and collected the glasses. ‘There’s a meeting here tomorrow morning at eight,’ he said, pointing into his kitchen.