The Cabin

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘A Citroën Berlingo or a Peugeot Partner,’ Mortensen said. ‘I can find out for sure.’

  Line began to clear the table. Wisting got to his feet, found a toothpick in the kitchen drawer and pressed it pensively between his front teeth.

  12

  The cabin ruins were still smoking when Wisting and Mortensen parked at the end of the track later that afternoon. Only the chimneystack was left. Bernhard Clausen’s car had also sustained extensive damage. Only the garden furniture down among the trees on the seaward side was unscathed.

  A policeman stepped from a patrol car and walked towards them. As news of the fire had gradually spread, a lot of curious onlookers had come to gawp at it but, apart from that, he had nothing to report.

  When Wisting and Mortensen ducked beneath the police tape, the acrid smell of smoke wafted towards them. The roof tiles and charred timbers were piled up, and here and there mattress feathers and scraps of metal were scattered about.

  ‘The crime scene investigation will have to wait until tomorrow,’ Mortensen said, moving around to the rear of the site of the fire.

  Wisting followed him. Nothing was left of the room where the money had been stored. The side of one of the propane canisters deposited inside the cupboard was torn open and it had come to rest in a clump of raspberry bushes a few metres from where the cabin wall had stood. The other canister was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Where did he moor his boat?’ Mortensen asked.

  ‘Are you asking me if Bernhard Clausen had a boat?’ Wisting asked as he looked down towards the jetty, where a man in a green windcheater was loitering.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Wisting replied. ‘You’re thinking of the petrol tank on the bunk bed?’

  ‘And the two petrol cans under the bed, as well as spray cans and propane canisters in the cupboard,’ Mortensen said, nodding. ‘When the fire first took hold, it would have accelerated like a streak of lightning.’

  Wisting glanced down at the jetty again. The man in the green jacket was on his way up towards them, but he stopped at the police cordon. ‘That’s him,’ Wisting said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Director General, Johan Olav Lyngh.’

  The police officer on guard duty was making his way from the patrol car. Wisting signalled that he would take care of this.

  They greeted each other with a silent handshake. Wisting lifted the police tape to let the Director General duck inside before introducing him to Mortensen.

  ‘Have you made any inroads as yet?’ Lyngh asked.

  Wisting gave an account of the discoveries they had made in the boxes of cash and the results of their fingerprint investigations so far. ‘Would you be aware if the Security Service or the Emergency Squad were in the picture here?’ he queried. ‘Or the national security authorities?’

  ‘I’ve conferred with them,’ Lyngh replied. ‘None of the secret services has actively worked on Clausen. There’s no information either to suggest that any officials or politicians of Clausen’s stature have behaved in a disloyal manner or to benefit foreign powers.’

  A gust of wind set off a wind chime hanging in one of the nearby trees and rattled the chains on a hammock.

  ‘Arson?’ Lyngh asked, taking a few steps towards the ruins.

  ‘Yes,’ Wisting confirmed, and he went on to explain about the alarm and the vehicle in the security footage.

  The Director General stood lost in thought. ‘There’s one more thing I should have informed you of during our meeting yesterday,’ he said, turning to face Wisting. ‘It only struck me later that Clausen’s name had cropped up once before.’

  A nod of Wisting’s head suggested that they should sit around the garden table on the paved barbecue area. The Director General pulled out a chair and sat down with his back to the evening sun.

  ‘A great deal of post comes into my office,’ he began. ‘I’m not thinking just of mail relating to cases, but letters from people who’ve had bad experiences with the police or with the prosecution service. People who feel they’ve been unreasonably treated and approach me to complain or to seek support. Then there are cantankerous folk and conspiracy theorists. People who are delusional or have personality disorders and come out with fantastic solutions to criminal cases they’ve seen covered in the media. Many of these letters come from the secure wards of psychiatric hospitals.’

  Wisting nodded. He, too, had received a number of crank letters from people keen to explain away serious crimes as conspiracies by secret alliances between leading figures in society.

  ‘I read all of them,’ the Director General continued. ‘The ones that are signed receive replies, at least the first time they write to me. They’re all filed and we have an efficient system for retrieving all previous inquiries.’

  He thrust his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a brown envelope, folded in two. ‘This is a copy,’ he said, handing the envelope to Wisting. ‘The original’s in my car.’

  Wisting took it, opened the envelope and withdrew a typewritten sheet of paper. It was a letter dated 11 June 2003, addressed to Director General Johan Olav Lyngh. No sender’s name. The letter itself comprised only one line.

  Check Health Minister Bernhard Clausen re: the Gjersjø case.

  ‘The Gjersjø case?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘A twenty-two-year-old youth disappeared near Gjersjø lake in 2003,’ Lyngh clarified. ‘Simon Meier. He was reported missing on 31 May, when he hadn’t turned up for work for two days in succession. He lived alone and went missing after going on a fishing trip.’

  ‘Gjersjø lake?’ Wisting repeated. ‘That’s in Oppegård, isn’t it? Clausen’s home district.’

  The Director General nodded. ‘His fishing gear was located on the eastern side of the lake. The young man himself was never found.’ He held back for a moment before continuing: ‘There was no substance to it,’ he said, indicating the letter in Wisting’s hand. ‘But just the same, it’s an anonymous tip-off. We have procedures for such things. The contents were relayed to the local police station.’

  ‘What happened in the case?’

  ‘It was recorded as a drowning accident, but there’s also a possibility that something else occurred. A similar letter arrived six months later.’

  He waved his hand to indicate that it was also in his car. ‘It’s obviously from the same sender and we immediately put it on file,’ he went on. ‘The content was the same, but a cutting from the local newspaper was also enclosed. The family were not satisfied with the police’s efforts. They felt that the search had been called off too early and there were circumstances that meant they could never feel at ease about it. The fishing rod and rucksack were found on the path leading from the fishing spot, together with the day’s catch, about twenty metres away from the water’s edge.’

  ‘Do you think there’s anything in it?’ Wisting asked, reading the line of text in the letter one more time.

  ‘Well, these are at least circumstances you ought to know about,’ Lyngh answered as he stood up. ‘I tried to requisition the case files for you, but they’re not in the archives.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘They’ve been sent out to the Cold Cases Group,’ the Director General explained. ‘They’re evaluating them with a view to reopening the case.’

  Wisting had previous experience of working with this new group at Kripos, a team tasked with investigating old, unsolved cases. ‘Which investigator has responsibility for it?’

  ‘Adrian Stiller,’ the Director General replied.

  ‘I know him,’ Wisting said.

  ‘Is he someone you might consider involving in the case?’

  Wisting’s gaze shifted towards the distant horizon. ‘Not really, to be honest,’ he said. ‘Not if I’m to retain overall control. He’s a bit of a maverick and not entirely to be trusted, if my experience is anything to go by. I’ll try and find another way to access the files.’

  The D
irector General was on his feet now. Wisting and Mortensen accompanied him to his car, which was parked in an open space further along the track. Johan Olav Lyngh opened the boot and took out a small package wrapped in grey paper.

  ‘Both the envelopes and the letters are in here,’ he said. ‘The material hasn’t been tested for fingerprints or undergone any other technical examination but I’d really like to know who wrote those letters and why.’

  13

  The spot where the vehicle was caught by the security van’s camera was a patch of gravel at the roadside occupied by mailboxes and rubbish bins for the use of cabin owners.

  Wisting parked his car and got out with Mortensen. ‘It’s about fifty metres from here down to the cabin,’ he said. ‘Five or six minutes’ walk. Faster, if you run.’

  ‘The guard said it took him around four minutes to get here after he received the message about the fire alarm,’ Mortensen recalled.

  Wisting surveyed the scene, wondering if anything could have been dropped on the gravel. He saw a crumpled beer can, chewing-gum wrappers, cigarette ends and some discarded snuff sachets. Nothing that looked recent.

  A car turned in and a woman in her fifties got out, carrying a bag of rubbish. She threw it into the garbage container before checking her mailbox. After dropping a bundle of advertising flyers into the recycling bin, she returned to her car and drove off.

  On an impulse, Wisting walked across to the row of mailboxes and located the one marked B. Clausen. Lifting the lid, he peered inside. Two copies of the Dagsavisen and Aftenposten newspapers were stuffed inside, along with some flyers. No personal post.

  When he closed the lid his eyes fell on the adjacent mailbox: Arnfinn Wahlmann was written in faded letters. Cabin K622. Clausen’s mailbox, meanwhile, was labelled with his correct postal address, Hummerbakken 102.

  ‘What’s Clausen’s cabin number?’ Wisting asked, wheeling round to face Mortensen.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he replied. ‘That’s the old numbering method. All the streets have now been given names instead.’

  ‘Do you have your laptop with you?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘In my briefcase,’ Mortensen answered.

  ‘Can you find the pictures you took in the back room?’

  They sat in the car as Mortensen located the photos from the previous day. ‘What do you have in mind?’ he queried.

  ‘You were the one to mention it,’ Wisting told him. ‘You wondered whether Clausen had a boat.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Find the pictures of the lower bunk,’ Wisting said. ‘The ones with the petrol tank.’

  Mortensen browsed through the images, selecting a picture that showed the red petrol tank. K698 was written on it in black permanent marker. ‘It’s marked with a cabin number,’ Mortensen said.

  ‘But is the cabin number Clausen’s?’

  ‘It must be possible to find that out,’ Mortensen replied, logging into the police computer system, where he would have access to the property register.

  Wisting got out of the car again and began to search among the mailboxes. Many had been there for years and were still marked with the old cabin numbers in addition to sticky labels noting which newspapers should be delivered. ‘Here!’ he yelled. ‘It’s Gunnar Bjerke’s cabin.’

  Mortensen was hunched over his laptop. ‘That’s two cabins further along the track,’ he said.

  Wisting looked down into the empty mailbox. ‘It’s possible he’s there right now,’ he said, returning to the car.

  Settling inside again, he made a U-turn and drove back down the road to the cluster of cabins.

  Mortensen still had his laptop on his knee. ‘It should be that red cabin over there,’ he said, pointing as they turned a corner.

  Wisting drew up behind a Volvo parked outside the cabin. A man of Wisting’s age rose from a chair on the verandah and put down a book.

  ‘Gunnar Bjerke?’ Wisting asked as he shut the car door.

  ‘Jan Vidar, actually,’ the man replied. ‘Gunnar’s my father – why do you ask?’

  They strode up to him to explain that they were from the police. ‘We’re investigating last night’s fire,’ Wisting told him.

  The man nodded. ‘It woke me up,’ he said. ‘The police who were here earlier have already interviewed me. Have you discovered how it started?’

  ‘We won’t start the technical investigation until tomorrow morning,’ Mortensen said.

  ‘But you suspect it was started deliberately?’ the man said, nodding in the direction of the patrol car beyond the police cordon.

  ‘There are certainly circumstances we have to look at more closely,’ Mortensen agreed.

  ‘Are you missing a petrol tank, by any chance?’ Wisting asked.

  The man gazed at them in astonishment.

  ‘For a boat,’ Mortensen added.

  ‘Well, yes, in a sense,’ the man answered, returning to his seat. ‘But it was a few years ago. I’ve replaced it since.’

  ‘What happened when it went missing?’

  The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘It just vanished,’ he said.

  ‘From the boat?’

  ‘No, I had it lying in there.’ He pointed at a shed outside with a wooden bar for a door latch. ‘Probably some teenagers at one of the cabins further along took it,’ he went on. ‘We were bothered by that kind of thing for a while. They took the gas canister for the barbecue as well, but we didn’t get round to reporting it.’

  Wisting gave Mortensen a meaningful look. ‘What do you mean, you were bothered by it?’ he asked.

  ‘Some teenage boys stayed on at the cabins out here after their parents’ holidays were over. There was a lot of partying, all week long, and they drove the boats around like lunatics. They took a petrol tank from the Jansens, too.’

  Wisting pivoted round as Jan Vidar Bjerke pointed at a cabin on the opposite side of the track, where the shutters were in place on the windows and the garden furniture was packed away in plastic covers. ‘Do you know for sure that it was teenagers?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but it was natural to draw that conclusion. After all, they needed fuel for their boats. The same thing happened to several other people.’

  ‘When was this?’

  Jan Vidar Bjerke took some time to think. ‘The summer of two years ago,’ he finally decided. ‘Or the year before that. I doubt it has anything to do with the fire.’

  Wisting let the subject drop. ‘Did you know Bernhard Clausen?’ he asked instead.

  ‘We had a nodding acquaintance,’ the man replied. ‘But I didn’t vote for him. Not my Party.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘Before the weekend, I think. I gave him a wave from the verandah here when he drove past.’

  ‘Did you notice whether he had any visitors lately?’

  ‘Not really, but well-known politicians do come here from time to time.’

  Wisting took hold of the bannister and began to descend the steps from the verandah. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t much, I’m afraid,’ the man replied with a smile.

  Wisting returned to the car and reversed out.

  ‘You think it was Clausen who took his petrol tank?’ Mortensen said.

  ‘Well, it ended up in his back room,’ Wisting said, glancing in the rear-view mirror towards the cabin ruins. ‘That room was set up as a fire trap.’

  A branch scraped along the side of the car when he was forced to swerve to avoid an oncoming patrol car, probably the relief shift for the police officer on guard duty.

  ‘The holes in the wall,’ Wisting added. ‘I don’t think they were peepholes. I think they were drilled to ensure a flow of oxygen so that a fire would take maximum hold.’

  ‘They would certainly have that effect,’ Mortensen confirmed.

  Wisting turned in and stopped at the mailboxes. ‘That fire was all about clearing up after Bernhard Clausen,’ he continued, glancing at Mortensen. ‘Everything was made
ready to obliterate what was found in the cabin. All it needed was a match.’

  ‘In that case, it lifts the arson investigation on to a completely different level,’ Mortensen said.

  Wisting agreed. ‘Take out your phone,’ he said.

  Mortensen did as he asked.

  ‘Do you have a stopwatch on it?’ Wisting queried.

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘I want to find out how long it takes to drive from here to the nearest toll station.’

  Mortensen smiled as he opened his phone. It would not be the first time a criminal had been identified through the automatic tollbooths.

  They drove the first ten minutes to Stavern in silence, following the main road further towards Larvik.

  ‘Who would be behind it, then?’ Mortensen asked. ‘The Director General has consulted the secret services. They would have let him know if they were implicated, surely? Then we’d just have been told to pull out and drop the case.’

  ‘Probably,’ Wisting replied. ‘If any of them were behind it.’

  ‘Do we have other covert services?’ Mortensen asked. ‘Beyond the Director General’s control?’

  ‘Not in Norway,’ Wisting answered.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ Mortensen swore under his breath.

  They were forced to lag behind a car with a horse trailer until Wisting moved out on to the motorway heading for Oslo. After a few minutes, they passed the automatic toll station on the district border between Larvik and Sandefjord. A signal flashed green and Mortensen stopped the clock. Wisting drove on to the hard shoulder and switched on his warning lights.

  ‘Twenty-four minutes and seventeen seconds,’ Mortensen told him.

  Wisting glanced in the mirror. Almost 25,000 vehicles passed this tollbooth every twenty-four hours. The drivers were not photographed, but all the car numbers were registered and a precise time given.

  ‘Do you have the exact time the van started up?’

  Mortensen took out his laptop and located the freeze frame of the grey van. ‘Five twenty-four,’ he read out. ‘So it should have passed here around 5.48. There’s not much traffic at that time of day.’