The Hunting Dogs

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Four hours later he completed the interview and entered a silent conference room. The entire department had gathered. ‘Done?’ Nils Hammer asked.

  Wisting pushed the interview report across to Christine Thiis.

  He had persuaded Haglund to tell the whole story from the time he met Jonas Ravneberg while fishing and the two men developed a kind of reticent, tacit friendship. The interview concluded when he confessed to killing Ravneberg and breaking into his house to search for the video tape, ending up in a brawl with Line as he fled.

  ‘He was practically living at Ravneberg’s farm the summer Cecilia went missing,’ Wisting said. ‘Secluded and out of the way, it was exactly what he needed. Also, he had it to himself since Ravneberg stayed mostly at his girlfriend’s house. He repaired the roof, did joinery work in the barn and undertook the kind of tasks Ravneberg couldn’t do for himself. He fished in the river, used the smokehouse and looked after a few pigs.’

  ‘And kept Cecilia Linde captive in the cellar,’ Hammer said.

  ‘During Ravneberg’s few visits, which were at specific times, he gagged her and drove her about until he could shut her in again. That was when she smuggled out the Walkman. When his car was highlighted in the media, he hid it in the barn. His intention was to get rid of it permanently but he was arrested first.’

  ‘But Ravneberg must have found it. Why did he never say anything?’

  ‘He discovered the car, the clothes and the video camera, and even the initials of the two girls on the cellar wall, and he got scared. Haglund had used his cellar. The year before, it was his car Haglund used when he snatched Ellen Robekk. He guessed, and eventually knew, that Haglund was going to be convicted, at least for the Cecilia case. He chose the solution he had always chosen. He left the car there and fled from his problems.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Haglund knew the cigarette butts found by the police couldn’t be his. He had smoked at the Gumserød crossroads while he waited for Cecilia, but he hadn’t thrown away his cigarette. When the case was reopened, there was only one thing standing between him and a million kroner compensation claim: the video film. He tried to persuade Ravneberg to hand it over. We know how that ended.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, getting to his feet, but he could tell they wanted more. ‘Everything is in these papers. All the details.’

  Hammer accompanied him to the door. ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Which one of us did it? Who planted the false evidence?’

  The silence following his question was almost combustible, every eye was on him, and the name he gave was as devastating as a bomb blast. He left the conference room, closing the door behind him, and drove home without really feeling anything, neither satisfaction nor anger.

  The paved courtyard in front of his home was scattered with twigs and rotten leaves. No one was waiting inside now that Suzanne was on her way out of his life. Again he would have to face going to bed alone and getting up alone in the mornings. Solitary meals. Why in the world should it be so difficult to share his life with another person? Was there no room for more than the police?

  He stood for a few moments in front of the empty house, thinking about all he had endured. Not only his break with Suzanne, but also how it felt to be investigated himself. It had been degrading for him and those around him, but it had been instructive too. Its lessons would be with him the next time he sat on the safe side of the table in the interview room.

  He skirted round the car, opened the boot and took out a football. With slightly more force than intended, he threw it over the hedge.

  83

  The double newspaper stand in the reception area of the VG building was almost empty. The editor had crammed as much information as possible into two lines of front-page caption. Murderer charged again. Kept third kidnap victim alive. Different sizes of font had been used so that alive was what caught the eye. The familiar photograph of Linnea Kaupang was placed so no one could be in any doubt about who was alive. In the main picture she had her back turned, blankets round her shoulders, on her way into an ambulance, the camera flash bright on police uniforms. Line’s name was printed in small letters under the lower edge.

  The editorial office hushed when she entered. Journalists who seldom lifted their eyes from their computer screens turned towards her. The news editor at one end of the room began to clap. The applause spread, followed by whistling and cheers. Joakim Frost came out from his glass office and stood with his hands by his side, smiling broadly. More from satisfaction at the circulation figures than recognition, Line suspected.

  When the spontaneous ovation from her colleagues subsided, she sat down behind a desk. Frost approached her. ‘I’m pleased the news about your father didn’t get in the way of the journalist in you,’ he said. ‘Fresh newspapers come every day. Readers soon forget. What we wrote about yesterday, no one remembers tomorrow; by then there are new villains or heroes on the front page.’

  He made the accusations against her father sound trivial.

  ‘Now we need a follow-up,’ Frost continued. ‘Everyone’s trying to get hold of Linnea Kaupang, but you were the one who rescued her from the cellar. Line, can you take Harald or Morten with you and do an interview?’

  Line shook her head. ‘I’m busy with another story. Morten P and Harald are busy too.’

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand,’ Frost said. ‘This is the story.’

  ‘No, it’s not! Morten P has just received confirmation that the Ministry of Justice is about to bring a summary dismissal case against a chief constable. I’m going to write about the reasons …’ She produced an old-fashioned cassette tape from her bag. ‘… And this will be a story that isn’t based on speculation and assumption.’

  84

  The sky had been clear since early morning, but grey clouds had formed and it was now overcast and dark. William Wisting left his car and gazed up at the autumn sky and a large, black bird that wheeled repeatedly before landing on a mountain ledge, screeching hoarsely. A raven in the mountains had given the little smallholding the name Ravneberg.

  Frank Robekk was already standing beside the turf house situated where the river curved past what had once been pasture. The tiny building was a small smokehouse with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, almost like a Sami lavvo. Rudolf Haglund had built it. Above the fireplace he had hung eels and fish to absorb the taste of smoke from burning juniper bushes.

  Wisting opened the narrow door. The acrid smell of smoke permeated the walls. This was what Rudolf Haglund had smelled of at their first meeting in the interview room. Exactly as Cecilia had described on the tape: an unpleasant smell came from him, of smoke, but also something else.

  The crime scene examiners had been busy for several hours following the directions Haglund had given Wisting during their interview. It was too cramped to hold them all. The men in white suits left to make room for Wisting and Frank Robekk.

  Where the fireplace had been, a pit had been dug. Gradually, the remains of the young woman buried there had been unearthed: brittle knucklebones, a cracked skull. Fragments of fabric and remnants of a shoe had been placed in a plastic bowl.

  ‘How long …?’ Robekk asked, clearing his throat. ‘How long did he hold her prisoner?’

  ‘Seven days,’ Wisting said.

  The muscles in Frank Robekk’s face contracted. He picked the remains of what looked like a belt buckle out of the plastic bowl.

  ‘He used a pillow,’ Wisting explained quietly.

  ‘It would have been better if he had thrown her into a ditch,’ Robekk said, brushing earth from the buckle belonging to the young girl whose uncle he had been. ‘Like Cecilia. Then we would at least have known where she was.’

  ‘That was different for him,’ Wisting said, using Haglund’s own words. ‘Letting us find Cecilia was a diversion to stop us looking for the hiding place.’

  He stepped outside, giving Robekk time on his own. An unmarked police vehicle parked beside h
is own car at the farmhouse and Christine Thiis and Nils Hammer trudged down the grassy slope, Hammer carrying a folded newspaper. Wisting could see part of the front page where Audun Vetti’s face was splashed.

  ‘The investigators from the Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs picked him up for interview this morning,’ Christine Thiis said. ‘The public prosecutor has charged him.’

  Hammer walked towards the crime scene technicians. Christine Thiis put her hand into her coat pocket. ‘You should have this back,’ she said.

  He accepted his badge, turning it over in his hand, noticing how worn it was at the edges, how it had come unglued at one corner. For four days, he had not been a police officer. He had not only lacked his accustomed authority, he had also been accused of breaking the law. He had always thought what made him a good detective was his ability to see more than one side of a case. This was the first time he had actually been there. On the other side.

  He ran his thumb over his picture, feeling the scratches on the little plastic cover. The photograph was old. He had looked better then. His hair had been thicker and darker, and his cheeks fuller, but he was a better policeman now. His hand closed tightly round it.