The Cabin
Page 32
Kerr placed the toe of one trainer on the heel of the other and flipped it off.
‘I’ve been inside for four years,’ he said, stepping out of the other shoe. ‘Do you really think I’ve found something in here I’d want to smuggle out?’
Without answering, Stiller picked up the shoe and stood with his back turned slightly from the camera as he examined it.
Line looked up, her eyes on Stiller’s back and the taut muscles beneath his thin shirt.
‘OK,’ he said, placing the shoes in front of the prisoner. ‘Not counting the driver and camerawoman, we’ll be six persons in the minibus, in addition to you.’
Wrenching off the latex gloves, he cast around for a rubbish bin, but found none.
‘Sergeant Gram will be responsible for security during the operation,’ he said, pointing at a police officer in a protective suit.
Line brought him into the picture.
Gram stood ready with handcuffs and leg irons, an additional precaution when transporting prisoners. He approached Kerr and indicated that he should hold out his hands.
Kerr turned to speak to Stiller. ‘Do I need to have leg irons as well?’ he asked, sounding dismayed.
‘He’s the one to decide,’ Stiller replied, gesturing towards Gram.
‘You’ve been assessed as an escape risk,’ he stated brusquely.
The defence lawyer intervened, ‘You’re eight against one, and that’s only in the vehicle.’ He argued further: ‘Probably even more of you on site. Is this really necessary?’
‘It’s not up for discussion,’ Gram answered. ‘You submitted a letter of complaint to the National Police Directorate and received approval for this site visit to go ahead without our officers being armed.’
‘You know very well why that’s the case,’ the lawyer went on. ‘Two officers fired shots during his arrest, entirely without justification. It was sheer chance that he wasn’t wounded.’
Ignoring him, Gram eyeballed Tom Kerr. ‘Loosen your belt,’ he said.
Kerr complied. Line held her focus on the image, documenting how Gram led a chain with a ring attached down the inside of one trouser leg and locked it around his ankle. The other end was fastened securely to the handcuffs.
There was a real danger that Tom Kerr would attempt to escape. He had been sentenced to twenty-one years in custody with a minimum term of fifteen years. This meant that his sentence could be extended by up to five years at a time if there was a considerable risk he would commit further crimes upon release. In reality this sentence could entail a lifetime in custody. He had nothing to lose by trying to escape.
‘Are we ready?’ Stiller asked.
With a nod, Gram barked an order over the police radio. One of the waiting prison wardens unlocked the next security door, letting them through to the minibus parked outside.
Line had kept her distance, only approaching Tom Kerr by means of her camera lens. Now he walked towards her. The handcuffs and leg irons caused him to take short steps and slowed his gait. As he passed Line, he turned and looked straight into the camera, so close that she could smell him. A dank, stale odour reminiscent of the interior of a house left empty for a long time.
2
‘Over there,’ Hammer said, pointing.
A police car blocked the gravel track. Slowing down, William Wisting switched on his indicator and drew up at the verge.
The other vehicle reversed out to make room. A side window rolled down and a young policewoman stuck her head out. She was one of the new recruits in the patrol section, but he could not recall her name.
Driving forward, Wisting stopped alongside and lowered his own side window. It came to him that her name was Marlene. Marlene Koht.
‘They haven’t arrived yet,’ she told him.
‘We’re a bit early,’ he said. ‘Has there been any traffic?’
Marlene Koht shook her head. ‘We’ve been parked here for three hours,’ she replied, lifting a clipboard from her lap. A sheet of paper with a short list of names of those who had driven in or out was attached with a steel clip. ‘We’re only talking about a handful of locals,’ she explained.
Hammer leaned forward from the passenger seat and looked across. ‘No press?’ he asked.
‘No press,’ Marlene Koht assured him.
Wisting thanked her. A scatter of pebbles struck the wheel arches as he started up and drove on.
The black fields flanking the car were freshly ploughed and the bumpy track eventually led into dense, deciduous forest. At this point in the middle of September, some of the trees had already begun to shed their yellowing leaves.
The track followed a low dry-stone wall. Here and there, narrow access tracks led to the occasional summer cabin. After driving for a couple of minutes, they arrived at an open space where the ruins of an old sawmill stood beside a meadow.
Wisting turned and parked the car, making sure not to block access for the others when they arrived.
It was 10.50 a.m.
Pushing open the car door, he grabbed the frame with both hands to haul himself up and out. It was a mild autumn day with full sun. For a moment or two he stood listening to birds chirping somewhere nearby. Then he closed the door behind him, moved round to the front of the car and leaned back on the bonnet.
Hammer stood beside him with his hands deep inside his trouser pockets.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘It’s possible,’ Wisting replied, squinting at the woods on the far side of the meadow.
He and Hammer had been here four days earlier and walked along many of these narrow tracks. They were familiar with the terrain. Eftangland was a peninsula comprising almost 1,250 acres of rolling countryside filled with forest and agricultural land. To the east lay a marshy area before the road at Ulaveien formed a natural border. In every other direction the landscape ended at a coastline that alternated between smooth rocks and shallow sandy coves.
She could lie somewhere out here.
Taran Norum.
The young woman had been nineteen years old when she disappeared on her way home from a party with some classmates at Bekkelaget, less than 600 metres from her own neighbourhood. The search had started at around 2 p.m. the next day. All that had been found was her phone and one shoe.
Nothing connected Tom Kerr to her disappearance, but two months earlier, Thea Polden had gone missing in the same way from a residential area at Stovner. Someone had pointed out the similarities, but serious speculation had not begun until Salwa Haddad had vanished on her way home from her boyfriend’s house in Hellerud. Three girls, all of the same age, had disappeared in similar circumstances.
The badly beaten corpses of Thea Polden and Salwa Haddad were later found near Nøklevann Lake. Taran Norum was the second girl to disappear, but as the case unfolded, and subsequently in court, she became referred to as ‘the third victim’, the one who had never been found.
‘But the dogs should have detected something when they were here,’ Wisting pointed out.
Removing a sachet of snuff from beneath his lip, Hammer tossed it on to a heap of grey sawdust.
‘It was nearly five years ago,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how efficient they are, really. Anyway, it’s not certain that her whole body is all in one place. After all, the others were dismembered.’
Deep in thought, Wisting drew the toe of his shoe across the ground. It was five days since they had been informed that Tom Kerr’s third victim might be hidden in their police district. A fellow prisoner had contacted the prison authorities and told them that Kerr had confessed to him about Taran Norum’s murder. Confronted with this allegation, Kerr had surprisingly admitted this to the investigators in the Cold Cases Group at Kripos, the National Criminal Investigation Service, and expressed his willingness to show them where he had buried her.
‘I don’t know what Tom Kerr is up to,’ Hammer went on. ‘But I don’t entirely believe that he wants to cooperate with the police.’
‘Strategy,’ Wisting said.
Kerr had requested a move from the penal institution, where he was currently held, to the less draconian conditions at Halden Prison in return for his confession. This would also give him greater educational opportunities. A full confession would be regarded as settling up with the past and also demonstrate the kind of changed behaviour deemed necessary for later assessment of parole.
Wisting had no confidence that, in the long run, this would help Kerr leave prison. The man’s crimes were so brutal that it would take far more than this to warrant releasing him back into society.
The negotiations with Kerr had involved both the Director General of Public Prosecution and the National Police Directorate and had continued for several weeks. Wisting himself had never had any dealings with Kerr, as Oslo Police District had investigated the killings. Kerr had no connection to Wisting’s police district, but now he had named Refsholt Sawmill as the assembly point for him to show them the burial site of his third victim.
He had obviously been there, as he had given a detailed description of the meadow, the old sawmill and the remnants of machinery left there. But he had failed to explain why he had chosen that particular spot.
The police radio on Hammer’s belt crackled into life. The prison transport with Kerr in custody announced its arrival on the main road.
When Kerr had named the assembly point, the area surrounding the sawmill had been searched with cadaver dogs in the hope of beating him to it. This had failed to yield results, reinforcing the arguments of those who felt that the site visit itself was being arranged as cover for an escape attempt. In the early hours of the morning, a checkpoint had been set up at the end of the approach road, and several undercover vehicles had been placed at strategic intervals on all the surrounding roads. They had taken every precaution.
THE BEGINNING
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First published in Norway as Det innerste rommet 2018
First published in Great Britain as The Cabin by Michael Joseph 2019
Published by agreement with Salomonsson Agency
Text copyright © Jørn Lier Horst, 2019
English language translation copyright © Anne Bruce, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover design by Alex Murray Studio
Cover images © Shutterstock
This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA
ISBN: 978-1-405-94162-4
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