The Cabin

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Hellevik rose from his desk and came forward to greet her. ‘I’ve started writing a eulogy,’ Hellevik said, gesturing to the desk behind him. ‘Someone else will probably speak at the church, but I wanted to write down some of my memories of him.’

  They sat down in a little seating area. ‘What do you remember best?’ Line asked.

  ‘His dry sense of humour, his warm-heartedness and our good conversations,’ Hellevik replied. ‘He was always so enthusiastic and interested.’

  ‘You were one of the people closest to him, weren’t you?’ Line asked.

  ‘Well, in the past, anyway,’ Hellevik said, nodding, as he went on to relate how they had met as shop stewards in the sixties and joined the labour movement together.

  Hellevik’s wife brought in coffee and buttered pancakes. Hellevik spoke about how Clausen had met his wife and what she had meant to him.

  He told Line anecdotes and stories about Bernhard Clausen as a politician and friend that supported the popular impression of him as a magnanimous, generous, outspoken and wise man, who had meant so much to so many people.

  ‘But then he changed,’ he added. ‘After all, he lost both his wife and his son within a short period of time. He took it badly. His wife’s death affected him more than people realized. From the outside, he seemed strong and steady, but it was terribly hard for him not to be able to help her. And when his son died, it all became too much for him and he was forced to take a break from politics.’

  ‘Were you with him much at that time?’

  ‘I should have been, but he wanted to be on his own. He wanted to go on walks by himself. He didn’t want anyone close to him then. He became a different man.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Guttorm Hellevik mulled this over. ‘He was always so enthusiastic and interested in people but, after Lisa died, he grew quiet and distant. Before that, he was usually one of the loudest voices around a table, but he turned silent and submissive. Withdrawn, lost in his own thoughts.’

  His description reminded Line of what Edel Holt had told her only a few hours earlier. ‘Did anything else happen at that time to affect him?’ she probed.

  Guttorm Hellevik did not seem to understand her question.

  ‘Something political?’ she added.

  Hellvik shook his head. ‘No, but he probably began to change his political views on many issues.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘The Labour Party stands for freedom, justice and community, but he began to have different thoughts about these terms. He did not feel free. He thought our society was too regulated, intruded too much on people’s private lives and put obstacles in the way of people who wanted to achieve things. He felt an increasing need to be independent, rather than part of a community.’

  Hellevik continued to describe the political discussions he had had with Bernhard Clausen. ‘To Georg Himle and other senior officials, he was starting to become something of a thorn in the flesh,’ he said. ‘He began to speak out against some of the Party’s fundamental ideologies.’

  ‘But he came back as Minister of Foreign Affairs, didn’t he?’ Line asked.

  ‘It took time for him to change his viewpoint,’ Hellevik explained. ‘This was later, towards the end of his political career, but I think he’d begun to think in other political directions when he was left to his own devices after the deaths of his wife and son.’

  Keen to home in on something that would shed light on the money, Line made an effort to steer the conversation away from politics. ‘Did you spend much time at his summer cabin?’ she queried.

  ‘Every summer,’ Hellevik confirmed.

  ‘Including the summer his wife died?’ Line added.

  ‘Yes,’ Hellevik said, nodding, and went on to talk about their fishing trips and late-summer evenings and about collaborating on different projects. He said that, near the end of the summer, Clausen’s mood had lifted a little, but then his son had been killed so tragically.

  After half an hour or so, Line wrapped up the interview and left.

  Back in the car, she went through her notes, ready to write a report of each interview for her father. For her, this was an unaccustomed method of working. She usually gathered her notes a little here and there, some from her notepad, some stored on her Mac and others simply kept inside her head. Then she would summarize everything in a final article. Now it would be her father rather than her who tied all the various strands together to tell the whole story.

  The notes from her conversation with Guttorm Hellevik drew a slightly different picture of Bernhard Clausen from the one she had formed earlier. Although it had afforded a fascinating glimpse into his political and personal life, she still did not feel she was any closer to what she was really after, some clue about the mysterious piles of cash left behind after his death.

  The most interesting assignment she had been given by her father was the scrap of paper with the phone number on it found in one of the boxes of money. She took out his note of the person’s name, address and date of birth. Gine Jonasen. It had not been possible to find much information on her. She lived alone, had no children and worked part-time in a bookshop.

  Line tapped the address into her GPS and found that it was twenty-six minutes away. She drove off and followed the directions, which led her to a basement apartment in Kolsås. When she arrived she saw a young woman, around her age, sitting at a table in the garden. She glanced up from her book and Line grabbed her notepad.

  ‘Hi!’ she said as she slammed the car door behind her. ‘Are you Gine Jonasen, by any chance?’

  The woman put her book down on the table. ‘Yes?’

  Line approached and introduced herself. ‘I’m working on a story about Bernhard Clausen,’ she said, explaining that she was a journalist.

  There was nothing other than bafflement to be seen on the other woman’s face.

  ‘I’d like to have a little chat with you about him,’ Line went on.

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Yes, you knew him, didn’t you?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘I think you must be mistaken,’ she said. ‘I know who he is, but I didn’t know him.’

  Line looked down at the note her father had written for her. Gine Jonasen had been born in 1988. ‘But maybe you knew his son?’ Line asked on the spur of the moment. ‘Lennart Clausen?’

  The woman laughed. ‘I think you must have the wrong Gine Jonasen,’ she said.

  Line read out the phone number and date of birth from the note.

  ‘That’s me,’ the other woman confirmed.

  ‘And there’s nobody else who uses your phone?’

  The woman leaned down and grabbed a bottle of water from underneath the table. ‘No,’ she said, twisting off the lid.

  A sudden thought struck Line. ‘How long have you had that phone number?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Since I got my first phone when I was sixteen.’

  ‘So, in 2004?’ Line calculated.

  ‘That’s probably right,’ Gine Jonasen said, nodding. ‘Nowadays, youngsters get mobile phones when they go to nursery, I guess.’

  Line smiled. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I think this must be a misunderstanding, after all. Sorry for disturbing you.’

  She returned to her car and sat inside. She looked up to see that Gine Jonasen had risen from her chair and was beckoning to her. Line rolled down the passenger-side window and leaned across the seat.

  ‘There’s one thing,’ Gine Jonasen said as she approached. ‘It just dawned on me that someone called a few times when I first got the phone. I think he was looking for the person who had the number before me.’

  Line nodded. So that was it. Numbers that had been out of use for a while were allocated to new customers. ‘Do you know who was calling?’

  ‘No, but he was asking for someone called Daniel.’

  ‘You can remember that?’

  ‘Yes, because my father
’s name is Daniel. I thought he meant Dad. It caused a bit of confusion.’

  ‘So the person who used the number before you was probably called Daniel?’

  ‘Yes, but that was ages ago.’

  Thanking her, Line bit the lid off her pen and jotted down the name on a blank sheet of her notepad. Daniel.

  11

  Wisting opened two tins of stew, poured the contents into a pan and turned the hotplate up full blast.

  Four people were seated around the kitchen table. He shoved some of the papers into the middle, put a plate down in his own place and set the table for Mortensen, Line and Amalie.

  ‘I’m not sure he was exactly like this,’ Line said, casting aside Bernhard Clausen’s obituary. ‘The Party describes him as a monolith. But Guttorm Hellevik told me he changed his political outlook on a number of topics. Apparently, they no longer used him as a speaker on 1 May, Labour Day.’

  Wisting reflected on how this contradicted what he had been told at the Party office earlier that day.

  ‘No one wants to speak ill of the dead,’ Mortensen commented, continuing to type on his laptop.

  ‘Two of the fingerprints on the cardboard boxes have already been identified,’ he said, without looking up from the screen.

  Amalie picked up a fork and started banging it on the table. Line grabbed it out of her hand.

  ‘Whose?’ Wisting asked, moving back to the stove.

  ‘Bernhard Clausen and Walter Krom. They’ve been identified from the reference samples. Clausen’s seem to be on all the boxes, whereas Krom’s are only on some of them. But they’ve also found some unidentified prints which they’re running through the records.’

  ‘When will we get the results of that?’ Line asked.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Do they say anything about the note with the phone number?’ Wisting asked as he stirred the stew.

  Mortensen shook his head. ‘This looks like it’s just the preliminary feedback,’ he said. ‘But if they’d found something, they would have said so.’

  ‘There are four people named Daniel in Clausen’s address and phone book,’ Line told them. ‘But none with a phone number matching the note.’

  ‘He must have been allocated a new phone number,’ Wisting reminded her.

  ‘One of them is the number for Daniel Nyrup, the Danish politician,’ Line said, laughing. ‘Another one belongs to Daniel Rabe, Aftenposten’s political journalist.’

  The stew began to bubble and Wisting set the pan down on the table. Line tied a bib on Amalie, ladled out a portion for her and used a fork to mash the chunks of meat.

  ‘Do you think the phone company will have a list of the people previously allocated that number?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve come across this before,’ Mortensen said, pushing his laptop away. ‘They don’t have historical data so far back, but I’ll check, to be on the safe side.’

  The phone rang just as Wisting was about to help himself.

  ‘Jonas Hildre from Dagbladet newspaper,’ the caller introduced himself. ‘What can you tell me about Bernhard Clausen?’

  The question was sudden and unexpected. ‘What are you referring to?’ Wisting asked, returning the ladle to the pan.

  ‘An investigation is under way,’ the journalist said.

  ‘There’s been a fire at his summer cabin,’ Wisting replied. ‘Christine Thiis, the police prosecutor, is dealing with that,’ he added. ‘You can speak to her about it.’

  ‘I’m just after some background information to start with,’ the journalist insisted.

  Wisting did not want his name in print but, if he gave the journalist the brush-off, it would place Christine Thiis in an awkward situation. She had no knowledge of his investigation and would not be able to provide any explanation for it.

  ‘OK,’ Wisting replied, anxious to end the conversation, ‘but I don’t want to be quoted or named.’

  ‘That’s fine with me,’ the journalist replied. ‘As I said, I’m just looking for some simple facts. For example, have you discovered the cause of the fire?’

  ‘No,’ Wisting answered.

  ‘But arson is suspected?’

  ‘We have to identify the cause first.’

  ‘I have information suggesting there was an intruder in the cabin just before the fire started.’

  Wisting regretted having accepted the call. The journalist was well informed. He must have received a tip-off from someone in the alarm company, which made the information difficult to deny.

  ‘That’s something we’re looking into,’ he said. ‘The security company has reported that they received a number of different alarms and signals.’

  He stood up and moved some distance from the table. ‘We’re expecting a report from them,’ he added, in order to insinuate that the various alarms could have been a matter of technical failures.

  ‘Do you regard Clausen’s death as being linked to the fire?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Wisting asked, in an attempt to fluster the journalist.

  ‘Could there be a connection between his death and the fire?’

  Strictly speaking, the answer was yes. In Wisting’s eyes, the former had triggered the latter. ‘And what might that connection be?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the journalist replied. ‘But is that something you’re looking into?’

  Wisting had to weigh his words carefully to avoid saying something that might lead to headlines and attract media attention. ‘We’re talking here about a death from natural causes following a verified history of illness.’

  ‘Could someone have broken in because it was known he was dead and the cabin was lying empty?’

  ‘I don’t want to enter into any kind of speculation.’

  The journalist was obviously preparing to draw the conversation to a close. ‘When will you know more about the cause of the fire?’

  ‘The cabin is completely demolished,’ Wisting told him. ‘It’s not certain that the investigations will lead to any definite answers.’

  ‘But you will find out if there are traces of a flammable liquid?’

  ‘That’s a routine part of the investigations,’ Wisting confirmed.

  The journalist had not received the answers he wanted to hear but expressed thanks before ringing off.

  ‘Jonas Hildre from Dagbladet,’ he said, glancing at Line.

  ‘Political journalist,’ she told him. ‘It was probably just an initial inquiry to sound out the situation. He won’t give up, though.’

  Wisting was about to store the number when he was interrupted by a text message. He had to put on his glasses to read it, and it took some time before he realized it was the security guard who had been called out to the fire at the cabin in response to the alarm. A link in the message led to a site where he could download the film from his dashboard camera.

  ‘Can you access this?’ he asked, holding up the phone to Mortensen.

  Mortensen took the mobile and forwarded the message to himself before placing his laptop in the middle of the table so that everyone could see. Soon an image from the cab of the security van appeared. Wisting recognized it immediately. The security vehicle drove down the street past the Wassilioff Hotel in the centre of Stavern and turned to the left at the deep-water quay. The video quality was surprisingly good. A strapline at the foot of the picture showed that the time was 5.14, and faint music played from the car radio.

  While Wisting chewed his food, he registered that the stew was almost tasteless. A ringing noise sounded from the screen. Wisting understood that this had to do with an alarm being triggered and listened as the address in question was given.

  The RPM were ratcheted up as the vehicle moved out of the town centre. The streetlamps disappeared and the headlights lit up a dark country road with fields on either side. A sign cancelled the speed limit and they could hear from the engine noise that the vehicle’s speed was stepped up considerably.

  At the end of a straight stretch, the headli
ghts from an oncoming vehicle appeared. They approached quickly and passed by. The front lights blinded the camera, making it impossible to see the number plate.

  The journey continued. Yet another oncoming car came into sight. Here, too, it was impossible to make out the registration number, but the taxi sign on the vehicle’s roof was clear.

  The phone in the security van rang again. Mortensen turned up the volume. It was the alarm company’s central switchboard warning that the fire alarm had also been set off at the address he was heading towards.

  The guard reported that he would be on the scene in approximately four minutes.

  The Hummerbakken turn-off was now close and they could discern the bright glow of the fire in the night sky.

  Amalie twisted and turned in her seat, desperate to leave the table. Line lifted her out and set her down on the floor.

  ‘Stop!’ Wisting shouted. ‘Wind it back.’

  ‘I saw it,’ Mortensen said as he pressed a key that made the recording jump back fifteen seconds.

  As the guard slowed down to turn off from the main road, a pair of headlights lit up in a small layby at the side of the road. The guard’s headlights swept over a grey van starting up.

  Mortensen grabbed a pen and noted the exact time.

  It was impossible to see the registration number or the person behind the wheel, but the images were good enough for someone with a knowledge of cars to identify the make and model of the vehicle.

  The security van continued on to the narrower road and the image began to shake as the road surface deteriorated. Soon the flames appeared.

  ‘It’s burning most fiercely at the back,’ Mortensen said, letting the recording run on. A few rubberneckers turned up, moving in and out of shot.

  ‘OK,’ Wisting said, putting down his spoon. ‘Can you find out what kind of vehicle that was, parked up on the road? It seems odd for anyone to be hanging about there at that time of night.’

  ‘I thought it looked like a Berlingo,’ Mortensen said, rewinding the video. When the grey van appeared on the screen again, he paused the recording and saved a freeze frame.