The Hunting Dogs

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘The dog owner.’

  ‘The murder victim?’

  ‘Very likely. He lives in W. Blakstads gate.’

  ‘That’s close by. Are you going there?’

  ‘I’m on my way now.’ The windscreen wipers toiled against the rain. Line crouched forward, peering at the blurred road ahead, anxious to know if the police had discovered the name and address. ‘What’s happening at your end, Erik?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. Do you still want me to wait for the hearse?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll phone you if I need any photos.’

  As she wound up their conversation, a text message arrived from the news editor. When will you have the story? This was followed by, Have booked a room for you at the Quality Hotel in Nygata. She had not thought of a response when he sent another message: Everything okay with you?

  An hour. Approx., she replied, before adding another message: Can you check out a Jonas Ravneberg? Family, job …

  The route recommended by the GPS was still blocked by the police crime scene technicians. She backed onto the main road and drove the roundabout route to W. Blakstads. A row of white clad terraced houses lined one side of the road and an expanse of open ground stretched out to a moat running parallel with the road. Between the bare branches of the trees Line could look across to the lights at the crime scene she had just left. Number 78 was last in the row; no one from the police was here. That could mean either that she was on the wrong track, or she was ahead of the game.

  She turned on a gravel area at the end of the road. Above her, on a hillside plateau, an ancient fortress was silhouetted against the night sky.

  The terraced house was two-storeyed, and all the windows were lit, even the tiny ones in the basement. It seemed well maintained and tidy, with its own frame around the rubbish bins. A red Mazda was parked directly across the road. Line watched for any sign of movement as she drove slowly past, memorising the registration number. She texted it to the Vehicle Licensing Agency and the reply arrived as she returned to the patch of gravel and parked: Jonas Ravneberg.

  She sat for a few minutes. Through one window, most of a landscape painting was visible on the living room wall; through another, parts of the kitchen. The simple wrought iron gate in the fence fronting the house swayed to and fro in the wind and the house appeared totally deserted.

  As she opened the car door, a response arrived from the news editor. Unmarried. No children. Parents deceased. In receipt of Social Security. Nothing in the text or photo archives. Murder victim?

  Unconfirmed, she replied, before leaving the car. The rain was now a fine drizzle, but the temperature had dropped. A blast of wind swept through the black, bare trees. Line shivered. The victim having no relatives simplified the story but, at the same time, she felt even more inquisitive about him. He seemed fairly insignificant. At the moment, the homicide appeared to be a random occurrence, the result of an unprovoked attack, which could provide a useful angle. It crossed her mind that she needed to do three things before she started to write: take a quick look at the house, confirm the victim’s identity, and talk to the neighbours.

  A sign with the words I’m on guard here and the picture of a dog was attached to the gatepost but she entered anyway, stepping on paving slabs so uneven they were difficult to walk on. She halted at the foot of the steps. The light from the exterior lamp cast only a faint glimmer over the entrance. All the same, the signs of forced entry were obvious.

  Rooted on the bottom step, she took out her mobile phone, called the police and introduced herself. ‘Have you identified the dead man yet?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t comment on that.’

  Line looked around before climbing the stairs to the front door. ‘Wasn’t he carrying a wallet or anything like that to show who he is?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? We don’t have any comment on that.’

  ‘I think I know who he is.’ Silence fell. ‘Jonas Ravneberg, aged forty-eight. Lives at W. Blakstads gate 78.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re at that address now?’

  ‘Yes, but someone’s beaten me to it …’

  She stopped in mid-sentence as a shadow flitted across the textured glass panel on the front door.

  9

  Suzanne slipped behind the serving counter. Producing a half-filled bottle of wine, she took down a glass and glanced enquiringly at Wisting. When he nodded she took down another glass.

  The dark red wine sparkled as it poured in the candlelight. Wisting cradled his glass with both hands and remembered how he had pressed the play button on Cecilia Linde’s Walkman, hearing it crackle as the tape stretched.

  ‘It began in the middle of a song,’ he said. Seal’s Kiss from a Rose was in the Top Ten at the time. He still sometimes heard it on the radio and that gruff, velvety voice always took him back. ‘Then the music was cut off and Cecilia’s voice was speaking,’

  Shutting his eyes, he remembered the raw despair in her voice although, at the same time, she sounded resourceful and clear-headed. He and Frank Robekk listened together. After that, Frank grew increasingly withdrawn.

  ‘She said her name, where she lived, who her parents were and what day it was,’ Wisting went on. ‘Monday 17th July.’

  ‘Monday?’ Suzanne asked. ‘Didn’t she disappear on Saturday?’

  ‘When she was found on the twelfth day, she had only been dead a few hours.’

  Suzanne nodded: ‘Held prisoner.’

  ‘He may have moved her around several locations, but Cecilia somehow found a way to deliver her message.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  Wisting recalled it almost word for word. Methodically and seriously, she had explained what had happened.

  ‘On Saturday 15th July a man kidnapped me while I was out running. It took place at the crossroads beside Gumserød farm. He had an old white car. I’m lying inside its boot right now. It all happened so fast. I didn’t manage to get a good look at him, but he had a foul smell, of smoke, though something else as well. I’ve seen him before. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. Dark hair. Small dark eyes and bushy black eyebrows. A crooked nose.’

  Wisting pushed the wine glass back and forth between his hands without drinking. The deliberation in Cecilia’s whispered voice had made the recording seem staged, almost as though she was reading from a script. Only towards the end did she break into sobs, before the recording ended, just as abruptly as it had started. An enthusiastic presenter shouted, Hey hey hey! and Balalaika! before introducing the next record.

  ‘Was that all?’

  ‘No. The recording lasted for one minute and forty-three seconds. You can’t say very much in that time. She said the vehicle had driven around for an hour or so before stopping, but that she had been left lying in the boot for several hours. When the man finally opened it again, they were inside a cavernous, gloomy garage. His flashlight blinded her and he forced her to pull a hood over her head. Then he ordered her out of the garage, across a farmyard and into a cellar. She stayed there for two days before she was taken out in the car again. She could see his feet through an opening in the hood and believed she was on a farm.’

  ‘How did she manage to record the message?’

  ‘Her Walkman was in the boot and she took her chance to make the statement. We don’t know where he was taking her or how she managed to drop the Walkman.’

  ‘Had he done anything to her, down there in the cellar?’

  ‘He only stared at her.’

  ‘Stared?’

  ‘The cellar she was in had white walls and a powerful light on the ceiling. There was a narrow peephole high on the wall, and he stood there looking at her.’

  The candle flame flickered before the wick drowned in liquid wax. Blue smoke drifted erratically towards the ceiling. What kept Wisting awake at nights was not just the idea of what Cecilia Linde had endured in the course of those twelve days, but also the thought of the other girl, Ellen. The one who had disappeared the year befor
e.

  10

  The shadow had a human shape. Line took a step back just as the front door at W. Blakstads gate 78 was thrown against her face, sending her tumbling down the steps, warm blood running from her nose. Her mobile phone slid across the paving stones.

  The figure in the doorway stormed out, tripped on her legs and fell across her. Dressed entirely in black, he had a balaclava pulled over his head. Line grabbed one of his legs and held on as he desperately tried to shake her off, pummelling her with clenched fists. Line wriggled and turned so that the blows fell on her back. He hauled himself upright, dragging her with him along the path, hampered. She looked up and saw him grab a garden rake that was propped against the gable wall. He swung it over his head and brought it down on her, the prongs striking her on the thigh and buttocks. She screamed in pain and let go. Flinging the rake at her, he ran through the gate.

  Line stumbled to her feet, watching him run towards the old fortifications and vanish into the darkness. Drawing herself into a crouch, she rested her arms on her knees, her heart hammering in her chest and the taste of blood in her mouth. On the ground in front of her something reflected the faint streetlight, a blue toy car with a black roof, about the same size as a matchbox, a model with moveable parts. She closed the open boot lid with her index finger and placed it in her pocket before wiping the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. A number of single-track, rational thoughts took shape.

  VG journalist assaulted by presumed killer.

  That was a story. A major story. If it didn’t belong on the front page, all the same, they could not really print her father’s story in the same edition. That would be a peculiar form of double exposure. Frost would be forced to drop his headline, perhaps for long enough.

  Her mobile phone lay on the path, and she saw by the timer that her call to the police was still active. ‘Hello?’ she said. Police sirens were sounding in the distance.

  ‘Are you there?’ the man asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was here,’ Line said, beginning to shake.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The murderer.’

  At the same time, it dawned on her how dangerous the situation had actually been. The man who attacked her had killed another person only hours before. She glanced at the time: 23.55. Eight minutes till deadline.

  11

  Wisting checked the time on the clock above the counter: five to twelve. He did not know what the following day had in store, only that he needed to be well rested. On the other hand, going to bed was not such a great idea when his thoughts would keep him awake.

  Suzanne was tired, but not uninterested, as she sometimes was when he was talking about his work.

  ‘The perpetrator’s name was Rudolf Haglund,’ he said. ‘He got the maximum sentence, twenty-one years.’

  ‘Did he not confess?’

  Wisting shook his head.

  ‘Is he still in jail?’

  ‘He was released on parole six months’ ago and wants the case reopened.’

  ‘On what basis?’

  ‘He claims that the evidence against him was false, fabricated by the police. VG is going to cover it tomorrow,’ Wisting said, and went on to tell her about Line’s phone call.

  Suzanne leaned back in her chair, cradling her glass in her lap. ‘How was he caught? Didn’t you have DNA?’

  Wisting took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled slowly. ‘Cecilia Linde was naked when she was found.’

  ‘Had she been abused?’

  ‘No signs of that nature.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Smothered, most probably by pressing a pillow over her face. She had acute lacerations in her mouth and eyes and fractures of the small bones in her neck. The first tip-off came in about Rudolf Haglund on the day that Cecilia was found. We had put out an alert based on the description given by Karsten Brekke, the guy on the tractor. We were looking for a Norwegian man, aged around thirty, about five foot nine tall, dark hair and with a conspicuous break in his nose, and were inundated with ninety-three names. Thirty-two of those owned a white car, and fourteen lived locally. Three of them were already known to the police.’

  ‘What previous convictions did he have?’

  ‘Indecent exposure. He’d been fined a year or two earlier. In addition, there were a couple of cases that hadn’t been pursued, in which he was suspected of voyeurism. The other two were family men who had been convicted of theft and embezzlement. Rudolf Haglund lived on his own, had never been married and had no children. His social circle was very limited. He worked at a furniture warehouse. A loner was how people spoke of him.’

  ‘But it wasn’t it a sexually motivated murder?’

  Wisting shrugged his shoulders. ‘What purpose could there be for keeping a young woman prisoner for days on end, if it wasn’t sexually motivated?’

  ‘Financial blackmail?’ Suzanne suggested. ‘Her father was wealthy.’

  ‘No demand for money ever arrived. That was what we were expecting. We connected a listening device to the telephone, monitored post boxes, placed surveillance on the summer house and their private residence. Nothing arrived.’

  ‘What caught him out in the end?’

  ‘The day after we publicised the sighting of the man and car at the intersection beside Gumserød farm, he reported his car stolen, but it was some time before we discovered that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He reported it to the police in Telemark district. He said his car had been parked in Bjørkedalen, just on the other side of the district boundary. It was only when we received the tip-off and began to investigate that we found out.’

  ‘Did you find the car?’

  ‘Never. It was an old white Opel Rekord. The same type that had been spotted near Gumserød farm. Most stolen cars are found fairly quickly, if we’re not talking about the expensive vehicles that are smuggled out of the country. This one wasn’t.’

  ‘Do you think he got rid of it to dispose of evidence?’

  ‘Yes. The point is that he went to the police and reported it stolen on Wednesday 19th July. He had parked it beside an old load of timber on the afternoon of Friday 14th and had taken a rucksack, fishing rod and tent with him into the woods. When he returned on the Sunday, it was gone.’

  ‘Why hadn’t he reported it missing immediately?’

  ‘He had to get home first, and claimed that he had walked all the way.’

  ‘Walked?’

  ‘He lived at Dolven, a distance not more than twenty kilometres, even less if you go through the forest. When he arrived home, he heard the news about the girl’s disappearance and didn’t want to bother the police. After a couple of days, he took the train to Porsgrunn and reported it there. After all, it had been in their police district that the vehicle had been stolen.’

  ‘You believe he was lying?’

  ‘Not one of the ten-man jury believed him.’

  ‘But what proof did you have?’

  ‘The grounds for his arrest were slim,’ Wisting admitted. ‘An old man who lived beside the level crossing in Bjørkedalen was in the habit of walking his dog in the place where Haglund told us he had parked. He couldn’t remember seeing any white car. That meant we could charge Haglund with giving false information. When the man on the tractor also recognised him in a photo lineup, we had enough to remand him.’

  ‘You were sure it was him?’

  Wisting’s dead certainty had diminished with the passage of time, but he had been certain then, even prior to the positive results from the DNA examination of the cigarette butts. There was something unmistakably evil in those tiny, unfathomable, dark eyes. Also, he had a smell about him, exactly as Cecilia said on the tape. Foul cigarette smoke, yes, along with something else.

  ‘There were aspects that pointed against it being Haglund,’ he said. ‘Cecilia said in the recording that she lay in the boot of the car for an hour before it stopped. The trip from the crime scene to Haglund’s home takes fift
een to twenty minutes, but of course he didn’t necessarily drive straight there. Again, Cecilia could have been mistaken about the length of time. But the most important objection was that he didn’t have a cellar. Cecilia said that she was held captive in a cellar with white walls, a powerful light and a slit in the wall. There was nothing like that at Haglund’s house. However, the sum total persuaded us that he had transported her to a different place, some other building.’

  ‘Did you find any such place?’

  ‘No. That was a loophole in the investigation, but it paled into insignificance once the analysis results came in. We found Rudolf Haglund’s DNA profile in the saliva on one of the cigarette ends that the killer had discarded while waiting at the Gumserød intersection.’

  Lifting his glass, he stared at the contents, recalling how great their relief had been when that telephone message arrived. There had been tremendous urgency to clear up the case. For every day that the media demanded fresh leads, progress and a breakthrough, and every day they were unable to provide satisfactory answers, accusations of inefficiency, negligence and incompetence grew more intense. These allegations came not only from the press, but also from politicians. It had been liberating when the DNA result arrived from the Forensics Institute, proving not only that Rudolf Haglund was the right man, but also that the police tactics had been justified.

  However, Haglund’s lawyer was now maintaining he could prove the DNA evidence was faked. The clock above the counter showed past midnight. In only a few hours he would have to confront the allegations.

  12

  Line explained everything that had happened, but the man at the police switchboard continued to pose questions, repeating what she had said and asking again about details she had already given.

  ‘I��ve got another call,’ she said at length, putting him on hold as she keyed in Erik Fjeld’s number. ‘You have to come,’ she told him. ‘W. Blakstads gate 78. The killer has just been here.’