The Hunting Dogs

by Jorn Lier Horst

  A lorry unleashed a spray of water ahead of her. She waited until she had overtaken it before tapping in the number for Directory Enquiries.

  Usually, when she was on the road, her colleagues in Editorial provided a kind of back-up service, a team that kept her informed about what the online media was reporting, checking on their own initiative but, at the moment, she did not want to speak to anyone inside the building.

  A woman’s sleepy voice asked how she could be of assistance. Line asked her to find the number for a petrol station in the Old Town of Fredrikstad. Rumours about what was happening in a small town had a tendency to spread fast, and she knew from past experience that late-opening petrol stations were places where most topics were discussed. She was transferred to the Statoil Østsiden station.

  Line introduced herself. ‘I work for VG and am on my way down to write about the murder in Heibergs gate,’ she explained, checking the street name on the slip of paper. ‘Have you heard about it?’

  She could hear the girl turning the chewing gum in her mouth before replying. ‘Yes, there have been a few people talking about it.’

  ‘Has anybody said who it is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s apparently a man out walking his dog.’

  ‘There’s plenty of people who go for walks there, you know, along the moats at the fortress.’

  ‘He has a long-haired dog,’ Line ventured. ‘Looks like Labbetuss. Maybe he has been in the petrol station?’

  ‘Labbetuss?’

  Line did not bother to explain. ‘The man who’s been killed is about forty to fifty years old,’ she added instead.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen him. Not today at least, but I can ask around.’

  ‘Great. Can you take a note of my number and phone me if you hear anything? We pay for useful information.’ Remuneration for tip-offs was not something she normally mentioned, but it could be a decisive factor in persuading people to phone back.

  ‘That’s okay,’ the girl replied. ‘Is it the number on the display here?’ Line rattled off her number to make sure it was correct and repeated the request for her to phone. ‘Strange weather to go out for a walk,’ the girl commented. ‘The rain’s lashing down. It’s been doing that all evening.’

  Line agreed with the girl, but did not think to consider it further. Her next call was to the Taxi Centre. The man at the switchboard spoke in a broad, slightly nasal but charming dialect. He could not help, but connected her to a car located in Torsnesveien, in the vicinity of the crime scene.

  ‘Have you heard anything about who it might be?’ she asked once she had introduced herself.

  The driver seemed eager, but could not provide any useful information. ‘A lot of foreigners hang out there at night,’ he explained. ‘One of our drivers was robbed and threatened with a knife at Gudeberg this summer.’

  ‘I think I read about that,’ Line said, without actually recalling the story.

  The taxi-driver promised to make inquiries. Line gave him her phone number and assured him that useable tip-offs would be rewarded. The clock on the dashboard read 22.19. For the time being, she had nothing to go on, and there were fewer than three hours to deadline.

  6

  By the time she drove over the arched bridge separating Fredrikstad town centre from the Old Town, her deadline was closer by another half hour. The GPS fastened to the windscreen guided her to Heibergs gate where, on both sides, villas were enclosed by white picket fences. The street was closed off at the entrance to a sports ground by a police patrol car, parked at an angle, and crime scene tape fluttering and twisting in the breeze. Several cars were parked close by, and a small group of people sheltered beneath an umbrella.

  Driving into the pavilion car park, Line pulled up and peered into the freezing, scudding rain, absorbing her first impressions. Two strategically placed floodlights shone on the crime scene. A sizeable tent was pitched above the walkway and cycle path, running parallel to the barricaded stretch of road. Crime scene technicians in white sterile overalls walked to and fro, placing all potential evidence in plastic bags while two men in raincoats with the NRK TV station logo on the back were packing their equipment into a white delivery van. Line rummaged through her bag for a rain jacket, struggling to wriggle into it before clambering out to the wind and weather.

  One of the other drivers flashed his lights. Line jogged over to find Erik Fjeld behind the steering wheel, and launched herself into the passenger seat. The mat was littered with empty bottles, hot dog wrappers, and other rubbish that rustled underfoot. ‘Any news?’ she asked.

  ‘Nice to see you again too,’ he said. He had endured a long wait.

  ‘Can I see the photos?’ she asked.

  Turning his camera to display mode, Erik Fjeld showed her a better image than she had feared: the dead man covered by a pale blue blanket, only a pair of Wellington boots protruding, his dog sitting beside his head, wet, tousled coat glistening, its head tilted and a dejected, bewildered expression. She could almost hear it howl. It was a poignant photograph, and the black asphalt in the foreground could provide a perfect space for a caption and text.

  ‘Where’s the dog now?’ she asked, wiping condensation from the car window with her hand.

  ‘A Falck vehicle came to collect it.’

  ‘From Falck, did you say?’

  ‘They round up the abandoned dogs in this town. I think everyone was pleased when they took it away. It was awful to listen to.’

  Line opened the car door again to activate the interior light. ‘Where did they take it?’

  ‘The dog?’

  ‘Yes. Where is it now?’

  ‘At their depot, I expect. In Tomteveien near Lisleby.’ Line was out of the car before he finished speaking. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To have a look at the dog.’

  ‘Do you want me with you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Wait here. They’ll carry the body out soon. We should have photos of that. I’ll call if I need you.’

  Slamming the car door, she hurried back to her own vehicle and keyed Tomteveien into the satnav. The address, located on the opposite bank of the River Glomma, was directly outside the town centre. Eleven minutes away, according to the gadget. She got there in nine and a half.

  A breakdown lorry was idling outside the massive building when she arrived, the driver coiling and storing a cargo strap. He glanced up as Line parked beside him. She stepped out and flashed a smile. ‘Is this where stray dogs are brought?’ she asked, ruffling her already dishevelled hair.

  ‘Have you lost one?’ he asked, tugging off his work gloves.

  ‘I wondered if I could see the dog you just collected from Heibergs gate.’

  The driver looked at her in the powerful light of the building’s wall lamps, from the top of her blonde hair to the tips of her toes. On the return journey, his eyes lingered. ‘The dog belonging to the guy who was murdered?’

  Line told him who she was, where she worked and what she did. Experience told her he would either hold journalists in contempt or be one of those who read the paper avidly with a steaming coffee in his hand.

  ‘Do you want to come in with me and say hello to it?’ he asked, nodding behind him at the garage.

  Line followed him into a hall with rows of bicycles suspended from the ceiling.

  ‘Lost property,’ he explained. ‘Drillo’s in here.’ He pointed towards a door at the opposite end of the premises.

  ‘Drillo?’

  ‘That’s what we call him,’ the man confirmed. ‘It’s exactly the same kind of dog as Drillo’s.’

  It dawned on Line that he was right. The coach of the national football team owned a longhaired dog, just like the one she had seen in the photograph. He came from Fredrikstad too, if she remembered correctly. The town could claim another celebrity. Ahead of her, the man pushed open the door leading to the next room. Dimly lit, it comprised four cubicles with bars and wire mesh doors. The dog in the first cage was
a heavily built Schaefer with a grey snout and vacant eyes whose head slid back down onto its paws as they passed.

  Drillo was in the last cage. The dog’s sombre gaze seemed to look right through them as Line approached and placed the flat of her hand on the wire mesh.

  ‘Do you want to go inside?’ the driver asked. Without waiting for an answer, he withdrew the bolt that held the mesh door closed.

  Line entered and the dog sat down, watching her carefully. ‘Hi, there,’ she said, scratching under the dog’s chin before examining under its ears. ‘Do you know if it’s been chipped?’ she asked the driver.

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s got as far as thinking about that yet, but we’ve got the gizmo to do that somewhere here.’

  Before Line became a crime reporter she wrote an article about the ID marking of dogs. There were two methods: a tattoo inside the ear, or a microchip injected by a vet on the left side of the neck or just above the left shoulder. This electronic chip contained a registration number searchable on the internet.

  ‘Here it is!’ The driver hauled out an apparatus that resembled a barcode reader in a shop. When he moved the reader up and down the dog’s neck a fifteen-digit number appeared on the display. 578097016663510.

  7

  ‘Leave it,’ Wisting said. Suzanne was about to snuff out the last candle. She looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Sit down for a moment,’ he said. Suzanne looked at him uncomprehendingly, but she sat down.

  The flinty grey specks around the pupils of her walnut-brown eyes captured the light like quartz crystals. Wisting had to pull himself together before sitting opposite.

  Wisting felt she was sailing away from him. After she opened the café it was as if she had become a different woman. For one thing, they were hardly ever together. The café had become the most important thing in her life, demanding six days a week for twelve or fourteen hours every day. She had invested most of her money after selling her own house and moving in with Wisting, but time was the most important investment. She employed some casual staff, but undertook most of the work herself, including cleaning and accounts.

  When she first moved in she had filled the void Ingrid left when she died, but now that emptiness had returned. He stretched his hands across the table and entwined his fingers with hers, uncertain where to begin. The Cecilia case was still capable of giving him sleepless nights, but he rarely talked about it. ‘Seventeen years ago, a girl called Cecilia Linde disappeared,’ he said.

  ‘I remember,’ Suzanne interrupted. She looked around the deserted café; impatient, it seemed. ‘I had just moved here. She was Johannes Linde’s daughter.’

  Wisting nodded. Johannes Linde had become famous when he founded his own fashion label in the mid-eighties. Every second teenager sported a baggy Canes sweater at that time, and Cecilia had posed as a photographic model.

  ‘They had a country house out at Rugland,’ Wisting continued, ‘where they stayed every summer. Johannes and his wife, and their children Cecilia and Casper. Cecilia was only twenty. On the afternoon of Saturday 15th July, she vanished.’

  The candlelight flickered restlessly and a slender trail of wax flowed down the candlestick to form a solidified puddle on the tablecloth. Suzanne’s gaze did not waver.

  ‘She went for a run directly after two o’clock,’ Wisting said. ‘Just before seven her father reported her missing. We had a heat wave that summer, but Cecilia ran almost every day. She took fairly lengthy routes, but never a fixed circuit; there was a labyrinth of walking trails and gravel tracks that she liked to explore. She could be away for a couple of hours at a time, which made the search more difficult. The family thought she had sprained her ankle or fallen and hurt herself. Remember, this was before everyone had mobile phones.

  ‘The family scoured the paths closest to home and, when they didn’t find her, alerted the police. I was the first in the investigation team to meet them, and finding her became my mission.’

  He closed his eyes momentarily. Seventeen years ago, he had worked closely with Frank Robekk. One year younger than Wisting, he had graduated from Police College after him. They had collaborated constructively, but something happened during the Cecilia case and Robekk withdrew. Neither Wisting nor any of the others had criticised. They knew what weighed him down and that Cecilia’s disappearance must have been a source of personal agony.

  ‘We searched long into the evening and through the night. More and more volunteers arrived: dog handlers, civil defence forces, Red Cross, Scout groups, people from neighbouring houses, and all sorts. When daylight broke, a helicopter was deployed. Sometimes Cecilia had rounded off her run with a dip in the sea, so the search area was extended to include the water.’

  ‘You found her a fortnight later.’

  ‘Twelve days. She had been dumped in a ditch beside the woods at Askeskogen but, long before then, we realised that she had met with foul play.’

  ‘How was that?’

  Wisting withdrew his fingers from Suzanne’s. ‘No one just disappears like that.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Lots of people had spotted her. As the news spread, witnesses came forward. Hikers, summer cottage residents, children and farmers. First of all, she had run in a westerly direction, down to the beach at Nalumstranda. Then she followed the coastal path east and up towards Gumserød farm where all the leads came to an end.’

  Wisting pictured the map that had hung on the wall in his office, covered in red dots marking the sighting locations, remembering drawing a line through them, almost like a join-the-dots puzzle in a children’s book, to follow her fateful run.

  ‘On Tuesday morning, three days after she disappeared, a man called Karsten Brekke turned up at the police station. He had read about the Cecilia case in the newspapers, just like everyone else. They used the photo for the Canes sweater advertisement when they reported her missing on the front pages.’

  ‘Had he seen her?’

  ‘No, but he saw someone who could be the murderer. Driving a tractor along the main road leading to Stavern, at the intersection where the Gumserød farm track reaches the Helgeroa road, he spotted a rusty white Opel Rekord with its boot open and a man pacing on the gravel track.’

  Wisting could still remember the description: white T-shirt and blue jeans; dark hair thick at the sides; broad face with a strong chin; eyes close set; forehead furrowed as if something was worrying him. Two simple details were of greatest significance. His nose looked as though it had been broken at some time, and a cigarette was hanging from the corner of his mouth. Sitting on the seat of the tractor, Karsten Brekke had plenty of time to study the stranger.

  Wisting had sent the crime scene technicians to comb the intersection and among the items they brought back in evidence bags had been three cigarette butts.

  ‘Something else was found as well,’ Suzanne said. ‘A cassette player, or something like that?’

  ‘Her Walkman,’ Wisting nodded, thinking about how greatly times had changed. At that time, people played cassette tapes. ‘We collected that the same afternoon. Cecilia always listened to music while she was running, as had been mentioned in the newspapers. Two little girls found it in the ditch beside the 302 road, near to the Fritzøe house driveway.’

  ‘That’s almost the opposite side of town.’

  ‘Not quite the opposite side, but not a logical position considering the route of her run and the Cigarette Man.’

  ‘The Cigarette Man?’

  ‘That’s what the newspapers named him. Of course, we called him that as well.’ Wisting ran his hand over the table surface. ‘But, enough of that. There was no doubt it was Cecilia’s Walkman.’ It had contained a yellow AGFA recordable tape. 90 minutes. ‘She had written her initials on it. CL, and the name of the programme she had recorded from the radio. Poprush.’

  Wisting noticed that Suzanne was restless in her seat and guessed she must remember the next part of the story. The newspapers had been full of it. ‘The crime scene technicians still didn’t have much to go
on. They examined the Walkman for fingerprints, but only found Cecilia’s own. The cassette player lay on my desk for three days before it dawned on me that I should play the tape.’

  8

  The men’s overalls were pungent with oil and metal and all were as eager as Line to discover the identity of the dog’s owner. She glanced at the time: 23.27, and gave herself an hour to gather information before contacting the news desk. By then she would have barely half an hour to write the story.

  One of the younger men knew how to log onto an internet page listing domestic pets with ID chips. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Have you got the number?’ He used one finger to type in the digits as Line read it out. Seconds later the answer appeared.

  Jonas Ravneberg

  W. Blakstads gate 78

  1630 Gamle Fredrikstad

  There was nothing familiar about the name. Line jotted the address down before glancing again at her watch, twenty-seven minutes gone. ‘Do any of you know who he is?’ she asked. As the men shook their heads, her hopes of hijacking the headlines sank.

  Outside again, she held her jacket above her head and raced towards the car. Soaked to the skin she flung herself behind the steering wheel, turned the ignition and keyed W. Blakstads gate 78 into the GPS. While the device searched for satellite coverage, she googled Jonas Ravneberg. The only results were in the tax lists: no property; modest income.

  W. Blakstads gate was located thirteen minutes away, a stone’s throw from where the body had been found. She called Directory Enquiries while driving. Was there a wife, children, a live-in partner?

  ‘Can’t find anyone listed at W. Blakstads gate 78 in Fredrikstad,’ the operator said.

  ‘What about Jonas Ravneberg?’

  ‘No Jonas Ravneberg.’

  Line disconnected and located Erik Fjeld’s number among her recent calls.

  ‘Erik here.’

  ‘Have you heard of a Jonas Ravneberg?’

  Erik repeated the name and paused before answering, as though keen to be of assistance. ‘No … Entirely unfamiliar. Who is it?’