The Caveman

by Jorn Lier Horst

  The post-mortem report supported that conclusion: There is nothing about the condition of the body to contradict the assumption that death occurred as long ago as 11th August, she read. The pathologist described how low humidity in the deceased’s house was the reason for the body being in such a good state of preservation. Dry air caused bodily fluids to evaporate and the rest of the corpse was conserved by being dried out instead of decomposing.

  The bundle of case documents also included results of various tests and analyses. Though the language was bureaucratic, Line understood that they dealt with DNA analysis. As there were no family members to use for comparison purposes, Viggo Hansen’s profile was compared with DNA retrieved from his toothbrush and hair from a comb found in a trouser pocket. By this means, his identity was established.

  The interview the police had conducted with his neighbour, Steinar Brunvall, provided answers to some of the things Line had speculated about her childhood sweetheart. The report recorded how he had grown up next door to Viggo Hansen, and that he had taken over his childhood home after his parents had moved to Spain three years ago. He worked as a teacher and had a partner called Ida. They had two small children together.

  Steinar had little to say about Viggo Hansen. He could not recall when he last saw his neighbour, but thought it must have been during the summer. On the few occasions he had caught sight of him, he was making his way home with a shopping bag in either hand. They had never exchanged a word.

  The conversation the police had with Greta Tisler, the other next-door neighbour, was not of much help either. She seemed most annoyed about the overgrown garden surrounding Viggo Hansen’s house. She had lived there with her husband since the early seventies. Half a generation older than Viggo Hansen, she thought that was why they had not associated with him. Her deceased husband had made contact with him in connection with a garden room they had built in the mid-nineties. They had required his signature on some papers. She described Viggo Hansen as a peculiar man who kept himself to himself. Line fancied that Greta Tisler probably would have said a great deal more about things that had no place in a police report, and entered her name on the list of people she wanted to talk to.

  In similar case folders she had seen, dealing with people’s identification, the investigators often included a passport photograph of the deceased, but she could not find any such portrait photo of Viggo Hansen. Probably no passport photograph of him existed at all. He had most likely never travelled anywhere.

  She had only a vague idea of what he had looked like and would have preferred to put a face to the story, but she would have to do without. One of the pictures from the living room, where Viggo Hansen sat with his back turned, could be printed, if the police would agree to give her the original picture files. The upper part of his head, tilted slightly to the left, was visible above the backrest of one of the chairs, and if you did not know any better, it might look like a picture of someone asleep in front of the TV. You could see the empty glass on the table. The walls, grey and cold, had no family photos, suggesting a solitary person and a lonely life.

  Gathering the papers together, she replaced them in the green folder before crossing to the window. The snow lay thick on the window sill. A man in a bulky quilted jacket, with a black cap and a scarf that covered most of his face, was walking up the street. A startled bird took flight from one of the trees in Viggo Hansen’s garden.

  Writing about his life might prove more difficult than she had imagined. For the time being, nothing indicated that Viggo Hansen had left any traces. His life appeared quite empty, so empty that it might be difficult to eke out the 12,000 characters she needed to fill six pages. All the same, she had to find something, had to get hold of someone who remembered him, someone he had made an impression on, even decades ago. She would have to try to create a picture of who he had been. The house he had lived in for so many years would certainly tell her something. Perhaps he had books on his shelves, or photographs in a drawer? What sort of clothes had he worn? Did he have any films lying about, or any old letters? What was the first thing he had seen when he opened his eyes in the morning? Aspects such as these could tell her something. Viggo Hansen must have possessed an internal world, even if closed to other people. She would make an effort to delve into that world.

  13

  Wisting sat behind his desk gazing at the logo of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the course of only a few minutes the investigation had been taken to an entirely different level.

  Robert Godwin was number four on the FBI list of the ten most wanted people in the USA. He was also known as the Interstate Strangler. Underneath his name, the reasons for him being hunted by the police were given as First degree murder (six counts). Six instances of premeditated homicide. Six women. In addition there were as many occasions of rape and kidnapping. The FBI offered a reward of up to one million dollars for information leading to arrest.

  In the centre of the sheet was a picture of the wanted man, a poor quality black and white image of a young man with a narrow face and thinning hair, smooth-shaven with a receding hairline. Nothing about his appearance suggested the kind of man he really was; on the contrary. And it must be many years old. According to the report, Robert Godwin had been on the wanted list since 1989.

  Nils Hammer sat on the edge of his seat opposite Wisting. Espen Mortensen sat beside him with a sheaf of papers on his lap, handing them one by one to Wisting as he read them. Wisting in his turn passed them to Nils Hammer.

  The final report from the FBI summarised the background. Robert Godwin had been born just outside Minneapolis, USA, in 1950. Wisting pictured the map in his mind’s eye and placed the city beside the Canadian border. Godwin had grown up on a farm where the family cultivated apples, but had gone on to higher education specialising in languages and art history, and becoming a lecturer at the University of Minnesota. Unmarried, he lived alone.

  The first murder was committed as far back as 1983. The victim’s name was Lynn Adams, an eighteen-year-old student at the university where Godwin taught. She had intended to hitchhike home to her boyfriend one Friday afternoon, but never reached her destination. Her body was not found until six months later, in a drainage tank outside the town. A maintenance worker lifted the manhole cover to inspect drainage pipes and found her wrapped in a hessian sack. The murder was filed as unsolved until the FBI tracked Robert Godwin down six years later.

  All of the subsequent five victims were young women. In four of these cases, hitchhikers who had been picked up on one of the highways leading to North Dakota, Iowa or Wisconsin. The fifth was a woman whose car had broken down and the investigation was launched when her vehicle was found abandoned at a bus stop outside Billings.

  The FBI surmised that he had rendered his victims unconscious by anaesthetising them with chloroform stolen from the laboratories at the university’s Institute of Chemistry.

  Wisting glanced up. Chloroform? It was like something from an American film, but he did not voice his thoughts.

  For years these cases had been investigated as individual homicides, but experiments with DNA put the FBI agents on the right track. The technology was entirely new, and the researchers were allowed access to biological material collected in unsolved cases. They found traces of DNA from the same person in five unsolved murders across several state boundaries in northern USA. Moreover, the cases had a number of similarities: all were women who had been picked up along the motorway, raped, strangled and dumped in ditches.

  The revelation that the police were confronted by a serial killer was given prominence in the media. The press christened him the Interstate Strangler, from the name of the highway where he accosted his victims. Media reports forced the murderer to go to ground, and no further bodies were discovered.

  One year later, the police had a breakthrough. The Interstate Strangler struck again, but this time the victim survived her ordeal. In the heat of the struggle, she bit her assailant, drawing blood, and succeeded
in fleeing. She was a student at the university where Godwin was teaching, and was able to identify him by name. His blood DNA profile matched that of the Interstate Strangler.

  Robert Godwin disappeared before the police could arrest him and on 24th August 1989 was included in the list of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives. Simultaneously, the investigators began to examine other unsolved cases in which no DNA traces had been found. They also discovered that the hessian sack in which the first victim had been concealed was the same type and manufacture as those used in the family’s apple production, and Lynn Adams’ homicide was listed as the sixth count on his indictment. By that time, however, Robert Godwin had vanished from the face of the earth.

  Leaning back in his chair, Wisting gazed out of the window. It was growing dark; giant snowflakes were falling through the pale yellow light of the streetlamps. His throat was dry. He cleared it as if about to say something, but instead sat listening to the subdued silence.

  ‘There’s more,’ Mortensen said, handing him the final sheet, a comparative case analysis. In addition to the six murders of which Robert Godwin was formally charged, the FBI investigators had compiled a list of seventeen other possible victims.

  Wisting stole a glance at Mortensen before continuing. The seventeen cases were categorised as missing persons, all young women who travelled the motorway network where Godwin had been known to operate. They had been reported missing after the newspapers had mentioned the DNA profile that had put police on the trail of Robert Godwin, who was now a wanted man. The investigators had not drawn any conclusions, but it seemed obvious that the Interstate Strangler had not stopped killing, and instead simply ensured his victims were not found.

  Wisting passed across the final sheet and sat in silence as Hammer read to the end, watching a muscle twitch on the experienced detective’s cheek.

  ‘Do you think he’s the man we’ve found?’ he asked Mortensen.

  ‘The description matches the provisional autopsy report,’ the crime scene technician replied, picking up the document with the picture of Robert Godwin. ‘Normal stature, dark blond hair, sixty years of age, height six feet and weighing approximately eighty kilos,’ he read.

  Nils Hammer put down the last page of the report, shaking his head. ‘An American serial murderer ending up underneath a Norwegian Christmas tree?’

  ‘He’s been wanted for more than twenty years,’ Mortensen said. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time fugitives have hidden in Norway. There are people living here who have committed genocide and other war crimes.’

  Wisting rubbed his forehead. ‘How definitive is the fingerprint report?’

  ‘As clear as crystal. The print from Robert Godwin’s right thumb was found on one side of the brochure, and from his right forefinger and middle finger on the other.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean the fingerprints are from the man we found,’ Hammer said. ‘In principle, the brochure could have come from anywhere. For all we know, Robert Godwin could be on board that Jesus boat.’

  ‘Have the Americans been informed of our result on Godwin?’

  Espen Mortensen nodded. ‘It’s Kripos that’s responsible for international communications.’

  ‘Do we have a DNA profile from the body?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘It should be ready some time tomorrow.’

  ‘And when can we compare it with the sample traces from the USA?’

  ‘No doubt there’ll be some formalities to go through,’ Mortensen said. ‘But theoretically it could take place tomorrow.’

  Wisting got to his feet and crossed to the window, where he saw a man with a tractor clearing the car park in the back yard. The snowplough scraped the asphalt until it glittered.

  ‘The worst thing that could happen is that we discover it’s not Robert Godwin we’ve found,’ Hammer said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘We’ve found his fingerprints,’ Hammer said. ‘If he’s not the dead man, then he’s still out there somewhere.’

  14

  Line stood at the window, pondering whether to walk to the bend in the road and let herself into Viggo Hansen’s house. Now that it was dark outside, she could not see much more than its outlines. In addition to the outside light at the front door, a light was shining inside, from what had to be the kitchen.

  A car drove along the street, its headlights casting moving shadows from the crooked trees onto the snow.

  The house seemed not merely empty but deserted. Something about it robbed her of the desire to venture inside on her own, at least in the dark. Sinister was not the right word. It was more that it held something ill-fated in a way that made it frightening. She decided to wait until the next day, and instead descended to the kitchen for something to eat.

  Only a couple of packs of processed food and a few sausages were stored in the fridge. Tinned food in the larder did not tempt her. She wondered whether to go out and do some shopping, but the snow enveloping her car made her drop that idea. Anyway, she was far from certain it would start.

  Instead she fried two eggs, laying them on top of two slices of dry bread, and took them through to the television in the living room. Eating as she flicked through the channels, she located CNN. The wintry weather dominated the news coverage In America as well. A reporter stood in front of a snow-covered road sign welcoming drivers to Minnesota, snowflakes sweeping almost horizontally across the hill behind him. The text in the bottom corner of the screen stated that he was in Fargo on the border of North Dakota. Snow clung to his clothes and shrouded his eyes as he spoke. One metre of snow had fallen in the past twenty-four hours, he explained, and more was expected. The snowplough drivers were struggling to keep the roads open. Suddenly a weather warning was announced and Line switched to a documentary channel.

  Dust had collected on the TV screen; she took her dirty plate through to the kitchen and returned with a duster and spray can from the utility room. The television set was not the only thing covered in dust: a fine layer coated the sideboard, picture frames and the rest of the furniture. She filled a bucket and began to wipe the surfaces, fetched the vacuum cleaner for the floors before washing them, and spent almost two hours cleaning the house.

  Afterwards, she found the box in the loft where the Christmas decorations were stored. She placed an Advent candleholder on the window ledge in the kitchen and hung a star in the living room window. While she kept busy she hoped her father would not arrive, but at almost eight o’clock asked herself whether she ought to phone him. A car door slammed outside and he appeared at the door.

  She rushed to meet him. ‘You’re late,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, without saying what had detained him. ‘Have you eaten?

  ‘I had a couple of eggs. I thought I’d do some shopping tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll fix myself something simple too,’ he said, accompanying her into the kitchen.

  Line sat at the kitchen table while her father threw three sausages into the same frying pan she had used for the eggs. ‘Have you made a start?’ he asked. ‘I heard you’d been in to collect the documents.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read through them,’ Line said. ‘There wasn’t actually much to say who Viggo Hansen actually was. I thought I’d speak to some of the people who went to school with him so I’ve made an appointment to see Eivind Aske.’

  ‘The artist?’

  ‘Yes, I’m seeing him tomorrow.’

  Wisting turned the sausages and switched on the extractor fan above the stove. ‘Have you been inside the house?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll do that tomorrow.’ She remained seated as he took potato salad from the fridge. ‘What do you know about him?’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t know him.’

  ‘What about his family? I remember rumours that his mother was in a psychiatric hospital, and his father had been in jail.’

  ‘Yes, now you come to mention it,’ Wisting replied, pushing the frying pan aside. ‘Both his parents were dead before we moved here, and ther
e was talk about it not being so strange that Viggo turned out the way he did. I don’t recall what the problem was, but his mother had gone through some kind of mental breakdown.’

  He transferred the sausages onto a plate and sat opposite her.

  ‘What about his father?’ Line asked. ‘Why was he behind bars?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Who do you suggest I should speak to about that?’

  ‘If he was sentenced to a prison term you should get hold of the court judgment. You’d best speak to someone at the National Archives. Of course, it must have been more than forty years ago.’

  ‘I was really thinking about someone who might be able to tell me something about him. Someone who knew him.’

  ‘That would have to be Greta. She’s his next-door neighbour and was living there for a long time before we arrived.’

  ‘She didn’t have much to say to the police.’

  ‘It may be that she knows more about what happened forty years ago than about Viggo Hansen at the time of his death.’ He put a piece of sausage into his mouth, but stopped chewing. ‘Did you put up the decorations?’ he asked, pointing at the Advent candles in the kitchen window.

  ‘It’ll soon be Christmas, you know,’ Line reminded him.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. What do you want for Christmas?’

  She didn’t really know, and could not give an answer. ‘It said on the internet that a body had been found at Halle,’ she said instead. Nodding, her father took his time chewing his food. ‘Is that why you got home so late?’

  ‘We’re working on identifying the body,’ Wisting answered. ‘We don’t have anyone reported missing who fits.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘It’s probably a foreigner.’

  ‘A tourist from last summer?’

  ‘That’s entirely possible.’

  Line noticed he had retreated into his professional role and did likewise, asking questions like a journalist. ‘Have you discovered the cause of death?’