Smoke Screen

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘Of course you can,’ he said, popping the chunk of bread into his mouth.

  Her face lit up. ‘You don’t have to change anything for me,’ she said eagerly. ‘I can shop and sort … things for myself. And I won’t be home much. I’m sure I’ll stay over at Toralf’s a lot too, so you won’t see too much of me anyway.’

  ‘Stay over…?’

  Iselin sent him an exasperated look. ‘Are you surprised to find out that I occasionally spend the night with my boyfriend?’

  Blix didn’t have a chance to respond.

  ‘Even if you refuse to believe it, I’m not Dad’s little girl any longer,’ she finished.

  Blix took a sip from his glass of water.

  ‘I know that,’ he said quietly.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  He thought about how he should reply, about how he, himself, had never been particularly good at living with other people.

  ‘Have you already packed?’ he asked, glancing down at her bag again.

  ‘A little,’ she replied.

  He nodded, smiling at her.

  ‘So that’s all sorted then?’ she asked. ‘I can stay with you, at your place? Just for a while, at least?’

  Blix raised the spoon to his mouth, hiding his moment of hesitation. He had actually been planning on driving out to Haslum once they finished, to see if Sophus Ahlander were back home, but that could wait until the morning.

  ‘You are always welcome, my darling,’ he said with a smile. ‘Any time.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ she said, returning his smile.

  28

  The way Blix had reacted when she mentioned Sophus Ahlander had convinced Emma that there was something more going on, something related to Ahlander. She tried looking him up, but couldn’t find him on social media or in the newspaper text archives. The only result she had actually managed to find was the document that proved he had inherited his mother’s house and cabin.

  She looked at the notes she had jotted down while on the phone with Blix, the doodle she had drawn of a small cabin with a chimney on the roof. Maybe Sophus Ahlander was at his cabin? The neighbour hadn’t seen him for days.

  She checked the inheritance document again. Ahlander’s cabin was in Undrumsåsen, Vestfold county. The document included an address. Emma highlighted it and copied it into Google. It was located in a particularly isolated area, north of Tønsberg. With a few more clicks, she found that it would only take about an hour to drive over there.

  The company car was parked outside. Anita insisted that she was starting a new and healthier chapter of her life, which entailed walking to and from work instead of driving there and back. It might be worth a try, Emma thought. She would get there before it got too late, before nine o’clock at least. On the other hand: if Ahlander wasn’t there, she would have wasted a good two hours. And if it turned out that he was there, she wasn’t even sure what she would ask him. What she did know though, was that the police had been to his door, and that they had left with no answers.

  Emma pushed the idea aside, grabbed her iPad and started to read the information she had collected about Christer Storm Isaksen instead. She had called the prison and spoke to one of the officers. He had agreed to pass her request on to Isaksen, but couldn’t promise that she would hear back from him.

  She scrolled past the parts she had already read. It looked as if he hadn’t agreed to any interviews after his sentencing. It certainly couldn’t have been the case that no one had asked. If her request to interview him in prison was accepted, it would make for a rare and interesting article. His situation was unique. He had been convicted of murdering the only person who knew something about his daughter’s disappearance. If he did agree to meet her, she would have to have something to offer him. Something that would make telling his story worthwhile.

  Her thoughts strayed back to Sophus Ahlander and the cabin in Undrumsåsen. Blix had said that Ahlander was a person of interest in the Patricia case. The silence of the flat, the thought of spending the rest of the evening wallowing in it, thinking of Kasper, prompted Emma to grab the car keys.

  The display on the sat nav showed that the drive would take one hour and seven minutes. She was six minutes away from her destination when it told her to turn off the main road and onto a gravelled lane that wound its way into a dense forest.

  There was less snow in the south than there was in Oslo. Just the occasional mound dotted along the side of the road. After a few hundred metres, the road veered right and up an icy incline. The rear wheels started spinning about halfway up. The car struggled, jolting back and forth. The tyres managed to grip an exposed patch of gravel, gaining traction and pushing her forwards momentarily, only to slide backwards again. The car gave up altogether, forcing her to slam her foot onto the brake pedal to stop it from sliding all the way to the bottom of the slope.

  The sat nav indicated that she was only 320 metres from the cabin.

  She let the car roll smoothly back into the dark, reversed a short distance and thought about trying again. Deciding not to, she pulled over onto the verge and got out.

  It was dark outside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. Over to the east, she could hear the distant sound of the traffic on the E18. The stars were scattered across the sky above her.

  She tugged a knitted beanie out of her coat pocket, pulled it down over her ears and wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck before setting off on foot. Once or twice she thought she glimpsed the tyre tracks of a car other than her own.

  The lane led to a small, brown cabin. There was a car parked out front. Lights were on in a few of the windows. She could smell the smoke billowing out of the chimney.

  Emma hesitated. She stood there for a few seconds, before continuing on towards the cabin.

  It had been built on top of white foundations. The paint was flaking off the walls in some places, and there were clumps of green moss growing out of the ground near the foot of the cabin. It was right in the middle of a large area of rugged terrain. Boulders were scattered across the landscape and trees surrounded it, shielding the cabin. A cloth rag was hanging from a cord that stretched between two trees. Three empty bottles stood on a homemade wooden table, with four tree stumps placed around it like stools. A dark-grey satellite dish was fastened to the wall.

  Emma stopped. On the drive down, she had wondered how she would start the conversation, and she still wasn’t sure of what to say, or how to introduce herself. She walked to the foot of the front steps, running through the options in her mind, only to stand there, feeling a sudden, deep discomfort. Ruth-Kristine and Patricia had been her reason for coming here. Patricia could have even been transported to the very place where Emma was standing right now, kept here, hidden away while everyone was looking for her, ten years ago. The man inside the cabin might have played a part in that. The thought had started to turn her discomfort into fear.

  She registered a faint sound coming from inside the cabin. She was about to take a step backwards when the front door flew open. It happened so abruptly and with such force that it hit her square in the face. She was knocked over, landing on her back. A man was standing in the doorway, brandishing a fire iron. The light from the solitary bulb above the porch fell over the large, round face and the wild, grey beard.

  ‘Get out of here!’ he shouted, raising the rod.

  Emma crawled backwards as she heard the sound of the iron slashing through the air. She tried to push herself up, but slipped.

  ‘Leave!’ he roared. ‘I want nothing more to do with you!’

  Emma managed to get to her feet and ran. She could hear the man as he chased after her.

  29

  ‘I should have tidied up earlier,’ Blix apologised. ‘But I’ve had a lot on with work recently.’

  Iselin hung her jacket on one of the hooks in the hallway and kicked off her boots.

  ‘Will you catch him?’ she asked.

  ‘Who?’ Blix replied, picking up a pair of his socks
from the floor.

  ‘The bomber,’ Iselin said. ‘Isn’t that what everyone’s working on?’

  They had made it through dinner without talking about it.

  ‘I’m working on another lead,’ Blix replied, clearing some of the junk mail off the cabinet as they passed through the hallway.

  ‘What kind of lead?’ Iselin pressed.

  ‘Something to do with one of the people injured in the explosion,’ he answered.

  ‘The one you rescued from the water?’

  Blix smiled. ‘You’ve read about it?’

  Iselin nodded. ‘Do you think she has something to do with it? A suicide bomber, or something like that?’

  Blix opened the door to the spare room. ‘No, not like that,’ he answered.

  Iselin walked in. The walls were bare, and the room was empty, except for a desk, a cupboard and a bed with a bare mattress.

  ‘There’s some bedding in the cupboard,’ Blix said, pointing at it.

  Iselin took the bag off her shoulder.

  ‘This is great,’ she said.

  Blix paused on his way back to the living room and turned to look at her. ‘You need to let your mum know that you’re here,’ he said.

  ‘She knows,’ Iselin said. ‘I sent her a text.’

  ‘Good,’ Blix nodded, looking at his watch. It was already eleven o’clock. ‘I’ll call her tomorrow.’

  He walked into the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher and turned it on, then got started on cleaning up the living room.

  Iselin disappeared into the bathroom with her toiletry bag. Blix slumped onto the sofa and turned on the TV, only to get back up again to check what was in the fridge. A few eggs, a tube of cheese spread and an unopened jar of raspberry jam. That was it. He had a few bread rolls in the freezer.

  He sat back down and flipped through the channels. Iselin finished in the bathroom and joined him in the living room, wearing just her shorts and a baggy T-shirt.

  ‘Do you have a spare key?’ she asked, sitting down.

  Blix jumped up and went to get the spare key from the cabinet in the hallway.

  ‘What are your plans for tomorrow?’ he asked as he handed it to her.

  ‘I was thinking of going to see Toralf.’

  ‘Do you need help picking up more of your things from your mum’s house?’

  She nodded. ‘But I can get Toralf to help me with that.’

  ‘I can help a bit after work tomorrow,’ Blix offered.

  Iselin smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said, standing up. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Goodnight, darling.’

  She kissed him on the cheek and left.

  Blix sat there for a while, paying no attention to what was happening on the screen, until he got up and went to bed himself.

  At quarter to five, Blix was woken by a phone call. He blinked a few times, fumbled about, trying to find his phone on the nightstand, and answered it. The woman on the other end introduced herself as Ada Haugen, the operations manager for the south-eastern police district.

  Blix cleared his throat. ‘Okay,’ he croaked.

  ‘We have a note here that you wanted to be contacted immediately if we came across Sophus Ahlander,’ the woman explained.

  ‘That’s right,’ Blix said, sitting up.

  ‘Sophus Ahlander was arrested following an incident outside Tønsberg at 01:23 this morning,’ she continued.

  ‘So you have him in custody?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘What was the reason for the arrest?’

  ‘It’s a bit complicated,’ the operations manager replied. ‘A recovery vehicle was called out because a woman, a journalist, had driven off the road near Sophus Ahlander’s cabin.’

  ‘A journalist?’

  Blix felt an uncomfortable tightening in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Yes, an Emma Ramm,’ the operations manager clarified. ‘She works for news.no. Do you know her?’

  Blix swallowed hard. ‘I know who she is,’ he replied. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine, I think,’ she answered. ‘She has a few grazes and some minor injuries. We took her to the emergency room. Ahlander chased her with a fire iron, and she sustained the injuries when she slipped. She got to her car and out onto the main road, but ended up skidding on the ice and driving into a ditch. It was the vehicle-recovery company who alerted us, actually. When we found out what had happened, we decided to bring Ahlander in.’

  ‘Good,’ Blix commented.

  ‘And when we went to arrest him, we discovered some drugs at the cabin,’ she continued. ‘So he’ll have to answer for both the drugs and the incident. Is there anything you want us to do, seeing as you asked to be notified?’

  ‘I’ll drive down to you,’ Blix replied, thinking quickly about the meetings he had that day. The first was with Ruth-Kristine’s parents at the hospital.

  ‘How long can you hold him for?’

  ‘As long as you need to get here.’

  30

  The door to Anita Grønvold’s office was closed. Emma shuffled a little in the hard visitor’s chair. Both her hip and arm were sore after her encounter with a ditch in Undrumsåsen the previous night.

  ‘I’m really sorry about what happened to your car,’ she said. ‘I’ve filled out the damage report. The workshop said it should be ready in a week.’

  Anita dismissed it with a wave.

  ‘He came after me,’ Emma continued. ‘I thought he was going to follow me in his car as well. I panicked. The road was just sheet ice. Everything went wrong.’

  ‘What were you doing there in the first place?’ Anita enquired.

  ‘I went on an impulse,’ Emma began. ‘I had a feeling that Sophus Ahlander had something to do with the Patricia case.’

  ‘What made you think that?’

  Emma raised her hand to touch the plaster above her eye, covering the place where the door had hit her. She told Anita about how she had followed Blix and Kovic, and had then gone to Undrumsåsen to find out who Sophus Ahlander was and what he knew.

  ‘At night, in the dark, alone?’

  Emma didn’t try and justify what had turned out to be a complete lapse in judgment.

  ‘But I didn’t have time to say who I was or what I was there for,’ she explained. ‘He just charged at me. I think he thought I was someone else.’

  Anita stared at her. A long, scrutinising stare.

  ‘Do you think we should cover it?’ she asked. ‘It’s not often that journalists are threatened in such a way.’

  Emma shook her head. She wasn’t interested in that kind of attention.

  ‘We’ll publish your article about Patricia anyway, and the one about Ruth-Kristine being one of the injured in the City Hall explosion,’ Anita said. ‘So at least we’ve got our bases covered if it does turn out that Ahlander is involved in some way.’

  She put the papers she was holding aside, as if to say that they were finished talking about it.

  ‘Have you slept?’ she asked.

  ‘A few hours,’ Emma answered. ‘I had planned on talking to Patricia’s father today.’

  ‘In jail?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve already spoken to the prison. They were fine with it, but I’m waiting for a reply from Isaksen.’

  Her phone started to ring before she could finish telling Anita about her plans.

  ‘It’s Blix,’ she said, frowning. It was rare that he would call her first, and so early in the morning.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll have found out what happened by now,’ Anita said, gesturing to Emma that she should answer.

  Emma stood up, but didn’t leave the room.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ Blix asked.

  ‘No, no,’ Emma replied. ‘I’m at work.’

  ‘I heard you had a rough night. How are you?’

  ‘Fine … or just about,’ Emma said, feeling the plaster above her eye again.

  ‘What happened?’ Blix pressed. ‘What did you talk to him about?’

  �
��I didn’t talk to him,’ Emma explained. ‘I didn’t even get that far.’

  Emma looked up and met Anita’s gaze.

  ‘Do you know if he’s been questioned yet?’ she asked. ‘If he explained why he reacted as he did?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’m going down to Tønsberg sometime this morning.’

  Emma paced restlessly over to the other side of the room, turned around and walked back.

  ‘How is he involved in all this?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s one of the last people Ruth-Kristine Smeplass spoke to,’ Blix explained.

  ‘But what does that have to do with the investigation?’ Emma asked. ‘Why is it so important for you to talk to him?’

  ‘It’s just routine questioning,’ Blix replied.

  Something about his tone made Emma question whether he was telling the truth.

  ‘Maybe it’s all related to Patricia,’ Emma suggested.

  Blix remained quiet for a moment.

  ‘She might be a part of it,’ Blix conceded. ‘I’ve got to go now. I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.’

  Emma wanted to continue the conversation, but could tell that Blix’s mind was on something else.

  ‘I’ll call you this afternoon,’ she said. ‘After you’ve spoken with Ahlander. You know, it’s really down to me that you have him in custody.’

  There were a few seconds of silence, as if Blix were taking a moment to think about what she had said.

  ‘Sure,’ he eventually replied. ‘But I can’t promise that I’ll have any more answers for you.’

  31

  ‘Any news?’ Kovic asked.

  She sat a fresh cup of coffee on the table in front of him and nodded at his phone, before taking a seat behind her own desk.

  Blix shoved the phone back into his pocket and told her how he had been woken that morning by a phone call from the operations centre in Vestfold. How Emma had gone looking for Ahlander at his cabin.