Dregs (2011)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘A group of five?’ Wisting suggested. The man did not react to the suggestion. ‘Was Christian Hauge a member of the group?’ he went on.

  ‘Liv’s father? I don’t know, but it could well be. Dad and he had a lot of contact, but I don’t think they had much to say to each other after what his grandson did. He shot a policeman. You know about it?’

  Wisting nodded and rose abruptly from his chair. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you,’ he said. ‘I’ll just nip out to the car.’

  He walked towards the door, without either of the two residents bothering to accompany him. He went over to his car, got out the old photograph and returned directly to the living room.

  ‘Do you know anyone in this picture?’ he asked, placing it in front of them.

  They both leaned over. ‘That’s Dad,’ Kristin Lauritzen said, pointing to the man on the right of the middle step on the stairway. ‘That’s Mathias’ father sitting beside him. Where did you get this?’

  ‘I got it at the nursing home,’ Wisting said. ‘Do you recognise anybody else?’

  Kristin Lauritzen frowned, concentrating on the picture. ‘Is that Lund, the head teacher?’ she asked, pointing to the man at the very back on the right. ‘We had him at school, though he wasn’t head teacher then.’

  Wisting confirmed this. ‘Do you know who this might be?’ he asked, indicating the man with the pipe on the front step.

  They both scrutinised the picture, but finally shook their heads.

  CHAPTER 25

  Wisting studied the photo of the shoe and foot that had washed ashore at Blokkebukta cove. The wing-shaped Nike-logo was blurred by dried salt water. The picture made him think of Gary Gilmore. On the 19th July 1976, he had robbed a petrol station on the west coast of the USA and killed the man behind the counter. The next day, he did the same thing again at a motel. He was sentenced to death and, six months later, shot by a firing squad in the American state of Utah. With that he became the first person to be executed after the reintroduction of the death penalty in the United States by the Supreme Court earlier that year.

  Gary Gilmore asked to die. He refrained from all opportunities to appeal, and attempted to kill himself before the authorities did it. Since that time, over a thousand people had been shot, gassed, hanged, poisoned or killed in the electric chair in the USA. In the course of the same period, more than a hundred innocent people condemned to death had been released from death row. Among other things, new DNA evidence had demonstrated their innocence and rescued them from execution. How many innocent people were in their graves no one knew.

  Wisting saw before him the headlines that were spread out over the kitchen table at home where Line was working. A thousand executed criminals in just over thirty years was around the same number of people who had been sentenced for murder in Norway in the same period. History had taught them that, in Norway too, people had been wrongly convicted of murder. The difference was that in Norway none of the criminals convicted of murder had been executed. Eventually they were released into society again.

  A few years before, he had read a book about Gary Gilmore. For his last meal, he had eaten a hamburger, hard boiled eggs and baked potato. He ended the meal with coffee and three glasses of whisky. Then he got up, saying, ‘Let’s do it!’

  Wisting traced the line of the curved Nike-logo on the picture with his finger. It was part of the Gary Gilmore legend that his last words had led to the advertising people at Nike coming up with the advertising campaign Just Do It. The three syllables became a slogan that not only persuaded people all over the world to exercise more and become healthier, but also women to leave their rotten husbands, and young boys to pluck up the courage to ask girls out on a date.

  Just do it. Wisting leaned back, rubbing his eyes. It was not so easy. He was confused, and unsure of the way forward.

  ‘It’s false,’ Espen Mortensen said behind him. Wisting turned round towards the doorway, staring uncomprehendingly at the crime technician. ‘The foot,’ Mortensen continued explaining, pointing at the picture Wisting was holding in his hand. ‘It’s not real.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The foot doesn’t belong to anybody.’

  Nils Hammer popped his head round the door behind Mortensen. Wisting glanced at the photograph he had in his hand, in which fibres of flesh were sticking out of the shoe, and then back at the two investigators. He didn’t know how to form the thoughts that were racing through his head and turn them into a question.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hammer asked.

  Espen Mortensen entered the room.

  ‘I made further tests on the shoe in the lab and thought there was something strange,’ he said, sitting down on the visitor’s chair. ‘The skin was so sort of thick. On the inside, it was mostly fat and gristle, so I removed that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was a pig’s trotter and knuckle.’

  ‘A pig’s trotter?’

  ‘They sell them in the shops. They call it syltelabb - it’s a delicacy in Southern Norway. People eat it at Christmas time down there. They even have a world championship in eating syltelabb. I saw it on TV. Kristopher Schau took part, but came last.’

  Wisting held up his hand to call him to a halt. ‘I know what a syltelabb is,’ he said.

  ‘Has somebody played a joke on us?’ Hammer asked.

  Mortensen shrugged. ‘A practical joke. Quite a good one, obviously.’

  Hammer swore, pulling himself up onto the windowsill. ‘People are sick in the head. Here we have amputated feet getting washed ashore, the newspapers implying there could be a serial murderer on the loose, and somebody plays a trick on us?’

  The door out to the corridor was still open. Audun Vetti walked by, but stopped and came back into the doorway. ‘Any news?’ he enquired, studying their faces.

  ‘Apparently not,’ Wisting replied. ‘The foot from Blokkebukta is a dead end.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Espen Mortensen explained: ‘Someone’s been having some fun with us. The shoe contained a pig’s trotter.’

  ‘It was false,’ Hammer added, with the Assistant Chief of Police looking as though he did not quite understand. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the case.’

  Vetti sat down on the empty chair in front of the desk. His tongue went in and out of his mouth. ‘But I’ve already confirmed it to the media,’ he said, smacking his lips. The chirruping of birds in the tree outside reached them when silence descended on the room.

  ‘You had to say something,’ Hammer commented drily, but it didn’t look as though Vetti understood the irony.

  ‘I require, in fact, that the information I issue to the press is quality assured,’ he said, getting up.

  Wisting opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again, biting his tongue until the Assistant Chief of Police had left the room.

  CHAPTER 26

  Wisting let himself into the house in Herman Wildenveysgate and went inside to the kitchen. Line’s papers were still lying across the kitchen table, sorted into piles so that they didn’t take up the entire space. He ought to talk to her about Gary Gilmore, he thought. The dilemmas surrounding the American death penalty could put Norwegian sentencing practices into perspective. Show how the price Norwegian prisoners paid for the people’s feeling of security and sense of justice was, despite everything, small.

  He put his own notes on the kitchen worktop and opened the refrigerator. Line had been there too, filling it with fruit, yogurt cartons, several bottles of Farris mineral water, and various cheese spreads. He took out an apple and entered the living room, opening the doors to the verandah. The evening air was full of the sound of insects. A neighbour had visitors, and he heard laughter and talk.

  He breathed in the scent of flowers, grass and the warm walls of the house on which the sun had been shining throughout the long summer day. Leaning on the railings he gazed over the town. The sultry, still heat dampened all sound. On the sea, the boats
had lit their lanterns and were either on their way back to harbour or had dropped anchor.

  Something about sailing boats fascinated him, how they slide forward majestically. Whether the fjord lay like a sheet of beaten copper in the sunset, or frothing in protest against the whiplashes of an angry gale, the sailing boats maintained their course and their dignity. Straightening up he took a bite of the apple. It struck him that the most important aspect of a sailing ship was what could not be seen. The secret of its steadiness lay in the heavy keel, and that was what he lacked in this investigation - a staunch and stabilising keel. The investigation was being tossed hither and thither, without them knowing what lay at the bottom of it all.

  In his neighbour’s house, someone brought out a guitar and several of the guests sang along. Wisting ate the rest of his apple, throwing the core over the grass to bounce over the cliff and down towards the town.

  The cat came dashing out from the bushes in the back garden. It gave out a few painful whimpers, ran across the lawn on speedy paws and jumped on the verandah.

  ‘Hello there, Buster,’ Wisting smiled, bending down. ‘Are you hungry?’

  The cat miaowed its response, rubbing its head against his leg. It followed him closely into the kitchen, purring when Wisting opened the cupboard door and brought out a tin of cat food. He tipped the contents into a bowl on the floor. Buster butted his head against Wisting’s hand, starting to eat before he had finished serving.

  He threw the can in the rubbish, sat down at the kitchen table and brought out the working notes he had taken home with him. They were mainly printouts from the internet. In 1948, the Defence Department had established an operation to carry out evacuation, sabotage and surveillance on Norwegian soil in the event of an invasion. Based on the experiences of the Second World War it would be organised in networks with key personnel within the various areas.

  He recalled the case being raised in the media in the autumn of 1977, the same year that Wisting had started at the police training college. When the police took action against an illegal distillery on a holiday property at Langesundsfjorden they discovered a bunker filled with weapons, equipment and ammunition enough for more than a hundred men. The ship owner who owned the property claimed that he was storing the weapons as a member of a secret organisation under the control of the Defence Department’s intelligence services. As Mathias Lauritzen recalled, there had been a tremendous uproar in the media. In the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, the Minister of Defence at first denied that the ship owner had any connection to the intelligence services. He later had to correct this reply and confirm that there was talk of a weapons store belonging to a paramilitary network going under the name Stay Behind, and subject to the Defence Department’s intelligence services. Their assignment meant staying behind in the occupied area and taking action behind enemy lines.

  The revelations about the secret network had been more than thirty years previously. Wisting was unsure whether this had any link to the investigation, or if it was the sort of thing that simply comes to the surface when they started to dig.

  Buster was full up. He stretched out his long cat body and shuffled off into the living room. Wisting glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was after eleven o’clock and it was Friday night - he did not expect Line to come home.

  He got up, wondering what Suzanne was doing. She had entered his life less than a year before and filled a void. Ingrid would always be the most important woman in his life. That could never be changed, but he had discovered that a new love could be something completely different.

  He wanted to phone her, but decided to call his father first. It was really too late, but he knew that the old man liked to sit up watching television. He keyed in the number, and his father answered almost immediately - he could hear dull voices from the television in the background.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine, thanks. It was just as I thought - a cataract.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘They’re arranging an operation for me. Apparently it’s a simple matter.’ Wisting heard the TV being turned down at the other end. ‘The whole thing is over in twenty minutes and, next day, your sight is back.’

  ‘That’s great, of course. When is it to take place?’

  ‘They’ll send an appointment letter, but it won’t be until after the summer.’

  ‘How did you get home?’

  ‘I got a taxi requisition. I could have got that to get there too, but it was good that you drove me.’

  Wisting went to the fridge, studied the contents and chose a yogurt.

  ‘Have you managed to do your shopping?’

  ‘No, but Line dropped by. She phoned first and bought me a few things. I’ve been enjoying some fishcakes.’

  Wisting opened the fridge once more, checking whether she had left some fishcakes for him too, but found none.

  ‘How’s the investigation going?’ his father wanted to know. ‘It was on the news. A foot was found out at Blokkebukta cove too, I understand. I just saw a picture of you as well, but it didn’t look as though there was anything much that was new.’

  Wisting explained that the last foot had been a counterfeit.

  ‘It might of course be that it was the culprit you’re looking for who put it there all the same,’ his father suggested. ‘As a diversionary tactic.’

  ‘It’s more likely to be a crude joke. What else would it be good for?’

  ‘To spoil your calculations. I understood that this oceanographer could calculate the place where the feet come from. If he had included that foot in the calculation, the answer would be wrong.’

  ‘You’ve got that right, but I think all the same that there would have had to be two calculations. The other feet had been in the water longer. Time is a factor he uses in the calculations.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s easier to calculate where the false foot came from. It certainly can’t have been in the water for many days.’

  Wisting agreed. The difference between the two calculations, however, was that as far as the false foot was concerned, they would probably not find anything at the other end. As far as the other three were concerned, the calculation could lead them to three corpses.

  ‘By the way, I thought of who the man in the photograph is,’ his father said abruptly. ‘Him on the step with the pipe.’

  Wisting tightened his grip on the phone and breathed in, letting the breath remain in his chest.

  ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Carsten Meyer. He’s a few years older than me. A really intelligent chap. Got a job at the Defence Department’s research institute at Karljohansvern in Horten after his national service here in Stavern, but later he began working at the weapons factory in Kongsberg. He was involved in making the Penguin rockets, I know that.’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for several decades. He moved to Kongsberg, of course. It could well be that he still lives there, if he’s still living.’

  Wisting finished the conversation with his father and remained with the phone in his hand, wondering what he should do with this new information. Then he keyed in Suzanne’s number.

  ‘Have you gone to bed?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost,’ she replied in a hoarse voice.

  ‘Is it okay if I come over?’

  ‘That would be fine.’

  CHAPTER 27

  Wisting was one of the first at the police station on Saturday morning, but someone had already managed to leave a package wrapped in grey paper on his desk. Delivered by messenger, it had been accepted down at the desk and carried up to his office. He knew what it contained, but pushed it to one side, deciding to wait to open it up. Other tasks had higher priority.

  On the desk in front of him were several phone messages the girls in the criminal proceedings office had taken the previous day. Most of them were from journalists who wanted him to phone, but among them was a message from Doctor Hardberg who wanted to tal
k to him. Wisting thought back to the doctor’s surgery four days earlier and all the tests he had carried out. Some of the results might have arrived. Probably it was not important, as then he would have phoned him on his mobile. In any case, today the surgery was closed. He placed the message in front of his desk calendar, threw all the other notes down into the box for paper recycling beneath his desk and switched on the computer.

  He found Carsten Meyer in the data from the national register. 79 years old he had lived in Kongsberg for the last 35. The screen showed that he was a widower, had one son now living in Horten, and two grandchildren, one of whom lived in Kongsberg while the other lived in Stavern.

  Meyer was the last surviving member of the five-man group. Wisting had no idea what he might have to say, but a drive to Kongsberg would take no more than an hour and a half, and he would be back in town by twelve o’clock.

  The main road wound its way northwards along the Lagen river, which ran quiet and shallow beside him. The morning dew still lay like a veil of grey over the undulating agricultural landscape. He passed potato fields, spruce forests, small farms and enclosures of frightened pigs that ran round in circles.

  He pulled out the map printout when he drove into the old mining town where many of the country’s high tech industries were located.

  Carsten Meyer lived in the old area of workers’ houses on the west side of the river. The house looked as though it had been newly renovated and extended.

  Wisting parked on the street. The entranceway opened directly on to the narrow pavement. He rang the bell, then stood and waited.

  The door opened almost immediately. A man in his thirties stood scrutinising him. He was of middle height with light brown hair parted in the middle and falling into his eyes. He looked tired and had dark rings under his eyes. There was something familiar about his face, but Wisting couldn’t remember where he had seen it before.