Smoke Screen

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Blix poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at his kitchen table with one of the folders from the Patricia case. He had taken the box home and leafed through the old documents until he succumbed to the fatigue. It hadn’t taken him long to reacquaint himself with the key suspects. Blix and the other investigators had mapped out Knut Ivar Skage’s social circle extensively, in search of a man who had no young children among his immediate contacts, but they’d found no obvious contenders. Two years after Patricia’s kidnapping, all of the recorded telecoms data from Skage’s phone had been erased too, so they couldn’t even trace who had called him.

  As he ate breakfast, his thoughts alternated between Ruth-Kristine Smeplass and Christer Storm Isaksen. He had always wondered how two people as tremendously different as they were had managed to find each other, and have a child together. Their relationship had gone awry well before Patricia came into the world. At one time Blix had become fixated on why and how they hadn’t been able to work out their differences, and whether one of them had previously dated someone who might have been seeking revenge. The list of potential candidates had been substantial, but they had all checked out.

  Blix headed over to Kovic’s to pick her up for work just before eleven o’clock. It was a grey day. A light drizzle was slowly washing the snow away from the roads and pavements. There was hardly anyone out that morning, aside from one or two who had begun the New Year with a morning walk or jog. The remains of a few burned-out fireworks and other rubbish from the celebrations littered the pavements.

  He decided to call Nikolaj Smeplass as he sat waiting for Kovic outside her flat. Ruth-Kristine’s parents had been living in Spain for the past three years. They would have received a formal briefing about what had happened to their daughter at some point that morning, but Blix wanted to talk to them himself. He had been in regular contact with Ruth-Kristine’s father after Patricia’s disappearance, and he still had his number saved.

  He didn’t need to introduce himself when Smeplass picked up. He expressed his sympathy.

  ‘Thank you,’ Nikolaj Smeplass replied, his voice wavering slightly. ‘Do you know who did this?’

  ‘No,’ Blix replied. ‘Everything seems to suggest that she was an innocent bystander.’

  Kovic appeared at the car door and climbed in. Blix transferred the call to speakerphone so she could listen.

  ‘We’re trying to book tickets home,’ Smeplass said. ‘But there are a lot of people flying back to Norway at the moment. Looks like it’ll be Thursday at the earliest.’

  ‘I hope we have some better news for you by then,’ Blix replied.

  Smeplass sounded frustrated. Or maybe worn out.

  ‘Ruth-Kristine has an extraordinary ability to get mixed up in things she shouldn’t be involved in,’ he sighed.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It was always one thing or another. Always with the wrong men. Bad people. We tried to tell her that she was ruining her life, but then she would say that it was her life to ruin and we had to stop treating her like a child. She was right, of course, but … you never stop caring, no matter how old they are.’

  ‘Was Ruth-Kristine in a relationship that you know of?’

  Smeplass took a deep breath.

  ‘She’s had this friend for a few years. They’ve been on and off. A lorry driver who lives on Kolbotn.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘Haugseth. Svein-Erik Haugseth. We’ve never met him.’

  ‘What about her sister? Do you know if they were in touch?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Smeplass answered. ‘Britt and Ruth-Kristine are very different people.’

  Blix thanked him for the information and promised to keep him updated if there were any developments in the case.

  ‘Please send my regards to Sonja,’ he added, and hung up.

  He turned to greet Kovic: ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Hi.’

  She smiled weakly. She had deep bags under her eyes.

  ‘Did you get any sleep?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Kovic answered. ‘But I’m fine. I’m used to it. Thanks for picking me up though.’

  ‘No problem. Fancy a trip to Kolbotn?’

  She looked at him. ‘Shouldn’t we go to HQ first?’

  ‘You know what it’s going to be like there,’ Blix objected. ‘How investigations into bombings go. PST will sort through everything, and then all the irrelevant tip-offs, which are usually backed up by little more than unfounded suspicions, will be sifted down through the system and end up on our desks. So we’ll be left with the routine work that almost always leads nowhere – the only reason we have to carry it out is so the lead investigators can say that every single lead has been followed up.’

  Kovic stared at him.

  ‘Now, I usually don’t mind chasing down every potential lead, no matter how small,’ he continued. ‘Someone’s got to do it. Before we do end up doing that though, I want to have a look into something that might be a little more interesting.’

  ‘You don’t think we should talk to Christer Storm Isaksen first? Wouldn’t that be more interesting?’

  ‘Christer isn’t going anywhere,’ Blix said. ‘Anyway, Kolbotn is closer.’

  Kovic had no further objections and spent a few seconds searching for Haugseth’s address. She typed it into the sat nav – it would only take them fifteen minutes to get there.

  ‘I’ll see if he’s home,’ she said.

  She dialled his number. She didn’t introduce herself when he answered, simply asked if he was at home.

  ‘Yes. Why?’ he asked cagily. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Kovic said. ‘I think I’ve got the wrong number. Sorry for bothering you.’

  She hung up. Blix sent her a quick look.

  ‘He might search for my number online and find out that I work for the police,’ she said. ‘If he does, and then runs off before we get there, we’ll know that he doesn’t want to talk. He might have plenty of reasons for doing that, of course. If he stays though…’

  ‘Then we won’t have gone over there for nothing,’ Blix concluded.

  Kovic shrugged.

  ‘Smart plan,’ Blix said.

  Kovic smiled.

  Blix put the car into gear and set off.

  ‘Fosse is going to wonder where we’ve gotten to,’ she said.

  ‘Fosse has more important things to worry about than the two of us,’ Blix replied.

  They drove in silence for the next few minutes. Blix glanced over at her occasionally. Kovic seemed to be staring off into space.

  ‘Everything alright?’ he asked.

  Kovic gave a start. ‘Oh. Sure, yes. I’m just a bit…’

  Blix looked down at her hands. They were shaking. Kovic had noticed too and placed one hand on top of the other. She paused for a moment, before explaining:

  ‘What happened last autumn … the explosion at the TV studios, where your daughter…’ Kovic stared out of the window again for a few seconds. ‘It had a bigger impact on me than I’ve been willing to admit. And then last night, everything just…’ She took a deep breath.

  ‘Everything came back,’ Blix said, finishing the sentence for her.

  ‘It did. And I wasn’t even in the damn building when it happened.’

  Blix nodded. ‘Have you spoken to anyone about this? A therapist?’

  ‘A few times. And everything’s fine during the day. But then the night comes. I wake up with this intense pounding in my ears, as if my whole head is shaking. And then I have to get up and go for a walk. Get some fresh air.’

  Blix pulled out into the left lane, overtaking a car that had a bed wrapped in plastic tied to the roof.

  ‘Do you get that?’ Kovic asked. ‘Do you ever wake up and…?’

  She stopped herself.

  ‘Forget it,’ she said after a while. ‘I know how you reacted afterwards, of course…’ She made a dismissive gesture with her free hand.

  ‘It t
akes time,’ Blix said. ‘I don’t think it helps if you try and speed up the process. It’ll work itself out in its own good time.’

  Kovic nodded slowly.

  ‘But it does help to talk through it though, from what I’ve heard,’ Blix continued, thinking back to the time he had shot and killed Emma’s father.

  ‘That was probably one of the many mistakes I made after the Teisen tragedy. I couldn’t let go, and I thought I had to fix the problem by myself.’

  ‘Men,’ Kovic said. ‘Hopeless.’

  Blix smiled. ‘But I’m fine now,’ he said. ‘Finally. I’ve just started to get the feeling back in my lips. Christ, that water was cold.’

  He let his tongue glide over them. It made Kovic laugh, before she sank back into her seat.

  Svein-Erik Haugseth’s house looked as if it had been built in the seventies and hadn’t been decorated again since. The grey coating on the walls was flaking away, and parts of the tiled roof looked like it had been ripped off and then chucked carelessly back into place. The garden was completely buried in snow.

  Kovic and Blix parked next to a lorry that had HAUGSETH TRANSPORT plastered onto the side.

  There were three bin bags full of empty Swedish beer cans piled up outside the front door. The charred base of a firework was sticking out of the snow beside them, along with a bunch of burned out sparklers.

  Blix rang the doorbell, and accompanied it with a knock. A man appeared at the door about a minute later, dressing gown wide open and wearing a pair of grey woollen socks. His thin hair was sticking out in every direction. He looked as if he had only just woken up, or was still in the middle of hosting a sleepover.

  Blix introduced himself and Kovic, holding his police ID up as he did so.

  ‘Svein-Erik Haugseth?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. What’s this about?’

  ‘It’s about Ruth-Kristine,’ Blix said. ‘Your … girlfriend?’

  Haugseth rested a hand on his hip. ‘Not anymore. Or, well, I don’t think we are anyway. Why?’

  Blix and Kovic looked at each other.

  ‘Can we come in?’ Blix asked. ‘It’ll be easier to explain inside.’

  Haugseth looked at them as if he thought they were having a laugh.

  ‘By all means,’ he said, opening the door fully to invite them in.

  They manoeuvred their way through the piles of newspapers, bottles and old pizza boxes and sat down opposite Haugseth on a leather sofa that had so many cracks in it, it was only just possible to tell that it had once been black. The TV was on – a programme about restoring old cars. The residue of old cigarettes and dregs of spilled beer plastered the table between them. Haugseth didn’t bother cleaning any of it up. Instead, he rubbed his face slowly, which didn’t seem to revive him as much as he might have hoped it had. There was an open beer can in front of him.

  Blix informed him that Ruth-Kristine had been one of the injured in the explosion the night before, and explained her condition.

  ‘What kind of relationship did you have with Ruth-Kristine?’

  Haugseth took a moment to work out what was going on. He blinked a few times.

  ‘We’ve been together for a few years now,’ he said slowly, swallowing. ‘She lived here with me, for the most part,’ he added.

  Blix glanced around the room quickly, but couldn’t see any clothes or other items that would indicate that a woman had lived there.

  ‘But I haven’t seen her since…’ he thought about it; ‘…the day before New Year’s Eve,’ he concluded. ‘No wait. The day before that.’

  ‘The twenty-ninth of December,’ Kovic clarified.

  ‘Yeah. I think so.’

  ‘Can you think of any reason why she would have been down at the harbour last night?’

  Haugseth shook his head. ‘In all the time we’ve been together, she’s never spent New Year’s Eve there. She wouldn’t. She doesn’t like crowds. Doesn’t like fireworks either. She’d always stay inside when we’ve…’ He made a gesture as if he needn’t explain.

  ‘Did she have any close acquaintances that you know of?’ Blix asked. ‘Anybody she could have been there with, or someone she trusted?’

  Haugseth took a moment to think it through.

  ‘That would be Nina.’

  ‘Nina who?’

  ‘Nina Ballangrud,’ Haugseth answered. ‘They’re always together.’

  Blix jotted the name down on his notepad.

  ‘Do you have a phone number or address we could contact her at?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, I’ve got it written down here somewhere,’ Haugseth said.

  ‘You said you didn’t think you were together anymore,’ Blix pressed. ‘What makes you say that?’

  Haugseth sighed. ‘She changed, out of nowhere. Decided she didn’t want to party, drink, things like that. She borrowed some money and left with my car just after Christmas. Didn’t come back until a few days later. And then she was quiet, closed off. Wouldn’t spend time with us, wouldn’t drink or do anything. She wasn’t herself.’

  ‘Do you know where she went when she left?’

  ‘Didn’t say. I thought she’d gone back to her own place.’

  Kovic looked through her notes.

  ‘In Holmlia?’

  ‘She’s got a two-bedroom flat there,’ Haugseth nodded. ‘I’ve only been a few times. Not a fan of tiny flats with low ceilings myself.’

  Haugseth picked up the beer can and raised it to his mouth, thought about it for a second and lowered it.

  ‘I sent her a text yesterday morning,’ he continued. ‘Asked if she wanted to come to the party I was having here, since it was New Year’s Eve and all, but she said she couldn’t.’

  ‘So she had something else planned?’

  ‘I mean, most people have something planned on New Year’s Eve don’t they? So yeah, that’s what I figured.’

  ‘But she didn’t say what she was doing?’

  ‘I asked; she didn’t reply. I thought that was it then, it was over. When she didn’t even want to spend New Year’s Eve with me…’ He let the sentence trail off. Took a swig.

  ‘Do you know if she had any enemies?’ Blix asked.

  Again, Haugseth considered the question.

  ‘There was this one guy.’ He scratched at the thick stubble on his chin. ‘Or at least I think it was a guy,’ he added. ‘She was arguing with someone over the phone anyway.’

  ‘When was that?’ Blix straightened up.

  ‘The last time I saw her,’ Haugseth said.

  ‘The twenty-ninth,’ Kovic added.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were they arguing about?’ Blix asked eagerly.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I just walked in here, and she was stood over there, talking on the phone. Stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her. All I could hear was that she was angry. Or she was being aggressive anyway.’

  ‘But you couldn’t hear what she was saying?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And you didn’t ask who she was talking to?’

  ‘I did, but I was told that I could go fuck myself. Then she went out again. And that … that was probably the last time I saw her.’

  Blix and Kovic took turns asking a few more questions, but the fact that she had been arguing with someone over the phone remained the most interesting piece of information.

  ‘We need to get a copy of her phone records,’ Blix said as soon as they were back in the car. ‘Find out who she was arguing with.’

  ‘And we should have a look at her flat too,’ Kovic suggested.

  Blix put the car in reverse. His phone pinged twice. The same notification appeared on Kovic’s phone. She opened it.

  ‘They’ve found a photo of someone who they think might be the bomber,’ she said quickly, holding up her phone to show him an image of a man in dark clothing. The picture was grainy and blurred, but it looked as if he was carrying a green-and-white shopping bag, one you would get from the supermarket Kiwi. Kovic
swiped to the next photo, this time showing the man standing next to the rubbish bin. In the next picture he was walking away, without the bag.

  ‘At 11:32 last night,’ Kovic read aloud.

  ‘Do they not have any photos of his face?’ Blix asked.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll get one soon,’ Kovic said. ‘They’re probably trawling through the whole city to find more footage of him.’

  Blix pulled out onto the main road.

  ‘Ruth-Kristine’s flat can wait,’ he said. ‘I want to see the photo for myself. On a better screen.’

  9

  Emma was curled up under a blanket on the sofa. The TV was on – a programme about a lioness and her fight to protect her new-born cubs. There was a cup of ginger tea on the table in front of her. She hadn’t touched it yet, even though it had been well over half an hour since she had put the bag in to brew.

  The screen on her phone lit up from time to time, but she didn’t check to see who was messaging her. She had sent Anita a brief text that morning to explain why she hadn’t posted any articles last night. And to say she wasn’t sure when she would be coming in to work. Anita had sent three texts in return. Emma hadn’t read any of them.

  She thought about what she would say to Jakob and Asta, Kasper’s parents. She had only met them the one time, in Copenhagen last November. They had met for a far-too-expensive dinner at Kiin-Kiin, an Asian-fusion restaurant in Nørrebro – an evening that Jakob had insisted on paying for. Two lovely people who were about to be so utterly, irreversibly crushed, all because she had been so stupid. So unbelievably, bloody stupid.

  She wondered what Jakob and Asta were doing at that moment. They must have been informed by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs by now. Perhaps the whole family had come together, to comfort one another – a family Emma barely knew anything about. It was something she now regretted, not having asked about them more often. She knew that Kasper had a younger brother. Emma couldn’t even remember his name.

  Ritzau, the news agency he had worked for, had probably held a memorial ceremony too. Perhaps the editor-in-chief had delivered a thoughtful, touching speech about how great Kasper was, how much they were going to miss their warm, kind, caring colleague. They had likely honoured him with a minute’s silence. There were certain to be hundreds of people at the funeral.