The Caveman

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘Follow this up,’ he said, returning to Torunn’s documents. ‘Forensics will need something to identify him beyond any doubt: a dental report, something of that nature. The Minneapolis police have to be told.’

  Torunn Borg agreed. She had already made a start and was irked that Wisting felt the need to tell her.

  ‘Then we have to check out everything they have on his connection to Robert Godwin,’ Wisting said. ‘Were they close colleagues at the university? Did he know any of the victims? How on earth did he discover that Robert Godwin had fled to Norway, of all places in the world?’

  He exhaled slowly. The pulse in his neck was racing, his temperature rising.

  ‘Robert Godwin has been on the run for more than twenty years,’ he said, looking them in the eye one by one. ‘The trail led Bob Crabb to search here for nearly four weeks, but Robert Godwin has maybe been living here for years without anyone knowing. For God’s sake, he may even have become one of us.’

  ‘You mean he settled here after escaping from the USA,’ Mortensen said, ‘that he’s adopted a new name and started a new life?’

  ‘What will we do?’ Hammer asked.

  Wisting had no answer. He turned his attention to the newspaper clippings on the worktop. ‘Is there really not a single note in here?’ he asked. The faces of the girls who had disappeared sometime in the eighties shone up from the yellowing, faded newspaper pages. ‘Couldn’t he have written an address or something? Something to help us pick up the scent.’

  ‘The woman who let the apartment to him said he had a shoulder bag with a laptop,’ Hammer reminded them.

  Wisting remained on his feet, reading a cutting that described twenty-two-year-old Marie Gesto, who disappeared while hitchhiking to Duluth in 1988. He put it down again and picked up a similar cutting with a picture of Isabelle Pierce from Milwaukee. None of the words in the text were underlined, and nothing jotted in the margins. Bob Crabb must have kept his working notes on his laptop, or in a notebook his murderer had most likely destroyed.

  ‘Let’s establish a direct link with the FBI,’ he said. ‘They have to search Bob Crabb’s house over there. He must have left something to say why he came to Norway. That story about relatives in Toten was just a cover for what he was actually up to.’

  Standing by his side, Hammer picked up a clip with a photo of a young woman with long blond hair: Police search for Angela Olsson. Last seen on Friday.

  ‘Where’ll we start looking for him?’ he asked. ‘He may have changed his appearance, perhaps he’s married and has children. Even grandchildren, for that matter. There’s . . .’

  ‘When did it say Robert Godwin was born?’

  ‘In 1950 . . .’

  Wisting began pacing the room. ‘I want lists,’ he said to Nils Hammer. ‘Lists of all the men born between 1947 and 1953, with their address history, so that we can separate out the ones who immigrated or moved into this area after 1989. That’s a start.’

  ‘We must be talking about several thousand.’

  ‘Any better ideas?’

  They all fell silent until Espen Mortensen approached the examination bench and picked up the camera. ‘Let’s take a look at these photographs,’ he said.

  22

  They huddled behind Mortensen’s office chair. Flipping open a cover on the underside of the camera housing, he teased out the memory card, inserted it into a card reader, and uploaded the contents. Eight photographs appeared as tiny icons on the screen, taken during the summer in the middle of a forest. Ten or twelve slender birch trunks stretched into an azure sky.

  ‘What’s that?’ Torunn Borg asked, pointing to something between the trees. A brown building.

  ‘A summer cottage?’ Wisting suggested. ‘Look at the next picture.’

  It had been taken in the same location, but from a slightly different angle. The foreground was an overgrown rocky slope. The tree trunks in the centre of the image were in focus, but it was difficult to make out what lay further back.

  In the next photograph the subject was sharper, a farm with several buildings: a grey barn and a white farmhouse.

  ‘Where the hell is that?’ Hammer asked. ‘Somewhere near here, don’t you think?’

  Mortensen shook his head. Not because he did not agree, but because he was not sure.

  The fourth photo had been taken somewhere else entirely, a place that was totally uninhabitable. In the foreground was an old farmhouse with a sagging roof. Paintwork was peeling from the timber walls, the porch was askew and several of the windowpanes broken. A rusty plough was propped against a well in the centre of the farmyard. On one side of the house stood the remains of a barn destroyed by fire. Fragments of the rear wall were still standing, but only black, charred planks of wood. Beside the barn were a couple of collapsed and decayed outhouses.

  ‘He might have lived there,’ Wisting said. ‘We need to find out where that is and who owns it.’

  ‘Who could tell us that?’

  ‘There must be somebody in a local history association. Something along those lines? Some local historian? What’s the name of the guy who sometimes writes in the local newspaper? Thorvik? Bjørn Thorvik. We can speak to him.’

  The next two photographs were taken at the same place, but nothing suggested where these dilapidated buildings were located.

  Two final images had been taken in an open field. No buildings, only the edge of a forest and a tractor track emerging from the trees.

  ‘Was that all?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘That was all,’ Mortensen said. He clicked on one of the picture files to display the embedded information. ‘This one was taken on 7th August, but the time of day can’t be right. It says it was taken at 05.40, early morning. The clock on the camera must be set wrongly.’

  ‘American time,’ Hammer said. ‘He hasn’t changed the settings on the camera. We’re seven hours or so ahead.’

  ‘That would make it about midday,’ Mortensen said, examining the other picture files. All had been taken on the same day, over a period of just under two hours.

  ‘So, here you are.’ Benjamin Fjeld stood in the doorway. ‘I’m finished with Jonathan Wang,’ he said, waving a DVD.

  ‘Has he left?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘He’s at least on his way out.’

  ‘Ask him to hold on for a minute. There’s something I want him to look at.’

  As Benjamin Fjeld left, Wisting asked Mortensen to print out a picture of the ramshackle farm. ‘He works as a temporary relief farmhand,’ Wisting explained. ‘Maybe he’ll know where the photo was taken.’

  He took the printout to reception where Jonathan Wang was waiting. The farm worker was older than Wisting had envisaged, certainly over sixty, but nimble on his feet when he jumped up. He was wearing work clothes: a stained overall and red check shirt. The left side of his face was disfigured by deep scars.

  ‘Was there something else?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve a photo here I’d like you to look at.’ Wisting held out the print, unable to take his eyes off the scarring.

  Wang squinted as he studied it closely.

  ‘Do you know where this is?’

  ‘No,’ Wang said, biting his lower lip. ‘Can’t say that’s a place I’ve been. Dreadfully run down, anyway.’

  Wang had a certain inflection in his speech, an almost imperceptible trace of an accent. Something made Wisting regret showing him the picture.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Wang asked, returning the photograph.

  Wisting shook his head. ‘Well, I just thought, since you work on a number of farms, that you might have an idea where it was.’

  ‘Sorry, but no. Can I go now?’

  Wisting made his way back to the office, took out Robert Godwin’s photograph and noted that his appearance was extremely ordinary, with no special facial features. On a report form, Wisting would have crossed the box for normal with regard to a description of his chin, mouth, nose and ears. His forehead was rather high, but that was probab
ly because of his receding hairline. In fact, he looked Nordic.

  He keyed in Benjamin Fjeld’s number on the intercom and asked him to come through.

  Godwin’s picture was more than twenty years old, but there was nothing Wisting recognised as similar to Jonathan Wang. However, neither was there anything to suggest that the temporary farmhand and the fugitive killer could not be the same person.

  Benjamin Fjeld entered and took a seat.

  ‘What did Wang say?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘I was in the middle of writing the report,’ Fjeld replied. ‘He confirms Per and Supattra Halle’s statement that they were in Thailand, and that he didn’t see anything he thinks might be connected to the murder. At least nothing he can remember.’

  ‘Is he Norwegian?’

  ‘No, he’s originally from Austria and came here in 1994. Before that, he worked for a few years on a farm in Denmark. When he first arrived in Norway, he worked at one of those big farms at Nalum. Ten years ago, he bought himself a smallholding.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did he get those scars on his face?’

  ‘I didn’t ask him that.’

  Wisting pushed the photo of Robert Godwin across the desk, placing his hand on it so that half of his forehead and hair was hidden.

  ‘Imagine he’s wearing a wig,’ Wisting said. ‘Does it look like him?’

  Benjamin Fjeld leaned forward to study the photograph before shaking his head. ‘Not really. Do you think so?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Wisting drew the photo back again. ‘It was just the manner of his speech, and that he seemed to be from a different country.’

  ‘Do you want me to follow it up?’

  Wisting considered for a few seconds before agreeing. ‘Find out why he left his homeland.’

  23

  The patrolmen spent less than half an hour investigating the break-in at Viggo Hansen’s house. Line spoke to them when they arrived and watched from the window of her upstairs workroom. One of them took photographs of the entrance and brushed the surfaces with fingerprint powder, but it did not look as if he found anything. The other officer stood, notebook in hand. She took a photo of them using her telephoto lens.

  When they had completed their external examination, they went inside the house, where they stayed for a quarter of an hour before re-emerging to sit in their car until a tradesman arrived to repair the damaged door frame.

  Line watched both vehicles disappear along the snow-covered road, picked up the key and her bag and returned to the house.

  The door was dusty with fingerprint powder. She removed her gloves, took out her camera and snapped another photograph. The black powder over the door created a dramatic effect.

  The key turned easily in the lock. She removed it again as she pushed the door open and stepped inside, this time noticing how cold the place was. Probably around fifteen degrees Celsius, she thought, and decided to keep her jacket on, but the cold lessened the oppressive atmosphere, and she quickly grew used to the slightly sweet odour that permeated the walls.

  Putting her bag on a stool in the hallway, she took a quick look inside every room before embarking on a more thorough examination. There was a bedroom behind the door on the left: flowery wallpaper on the walls, rag rugs on the floor, a wide bed and two small bedside tables with identical reading lights. An old wedding photograph hung on the wall.

  His parents, she thought, entering to take a closer look. There was dust on the glass and frame, and the picture itself had faded with the passage of time. The bride wore a coloured dress with no veil, held a lavish bouquet of flowers, and looked up at the groom. The man wore a grey suit.

  She could see no similarity between them and Viggo Hansen, at least not as she recalled him. This man was tall and well-built, his face round with a flat nose and sharp chin. His age was difficult to estimate, but he had to be about twenty-five years old. The bride was skinny with a delicate bone structure that made her look girlish and frail, with tiny hands, slim wrists and breasts barely noticeable under her clothes. Her face was round with a broad mouth, small nose and high cheekbones.

  As she closed the door behind her it occurred that there might be a photograph album somewhere. She could use photos from the time when Viggo Hansen had a family.

  The bathroom needed to be cleaned. The walls were mouldy and a stiff towel hung beside a ceramic wash-hand-basin speckled with yellow stains. The mirror was mottled. A slatted clothes pulley was suspended from the ceiling above the bathtub. Line tugged at the cord and the frame creaked as it swayed precariously.

  The kitchen was equipped with the basic necessities: cupboards, worktops, cooker, fridge and a deep enamel sink. The linoleum on the floor was broken at the seams, and the edge of the worktop was damaged with the chipboard visible beneath the layer of plastic. An empty coffee cup sat on the Formica of the table at the window. A dead fly was spread-eagled on the window ledge.

  She opened the fridge but the stench hit her so forcefully she immediately regretted it, stepping back, holding her breath as she shut the door again. It contained food coated in greenish fur and a carton of milk, a good image to capture with the milk out of date so long ago.

  From the living room she entered a narrow corridor. The door to a bedroom was ajar. One bed stood against the wall, with the quilt in disarray. A pair of glasses sat on the bedside table beside a reading lamp and an alarm clock. The hands on the clock were stopped at 7.42. This must be the room Viggo Hansen had used.

  In the centre of one bare wall hung a framed picture, a pencil drawing of a boy with a fishing rod, wearing a sou’wester and a pair of oversized Wellington boots. Line thought she recognised the fine details and drew closer to read the title Boy Fishing in the right-hand corner, and the name Eivind Aske, the artist she had arranged to meet in a few hours’ time. He and Viggo Hansen had been in the same class at school fifty years before. When Line phoned, he had hardly remembered Viggo Hansen’s name, but the dead man had a signed picture on the wall of his bedroom.

  A desk was placed in front of the window, and the wall beside it had an embroidered landscape picture of white mountains with a deer grazing beside a lake. The only other furnishings were a chest of drawers and a brown armchair with worn armrests.

  Line opened the drawer on the bedside table, where she found a packet of paper handkerchiefs, a box of throat pastilles, a ballpoint pen and an old paperback book entitled Eight Black Horses. She opened it at random. The pages were brittle and dry and she was surprised to see that the text was in English.

  Two more doors remained. One led to the basement stairs; an icy blast smacked her face when she opened it. The grey concrete steps ended in darkness. She located a light switch and a solitary light bulb shed its light on the room below.

  Her footfall on the stairs echoed off the walls and the ceiling was so low she had to stoop to avoid hitting her head on the pipes that ran along the roof lining.

  At the foot of the staircase she found a spacious open room equipped with a washing machine and a utility sink fixed to the wall. In the centre was a kitchen chair with a length of coiled rope hanging from the back, coarse rope with thick brown fibres. Line picked up one end and ran her thumb over its frayed edge before letting it fall.

  A hot water tank was situated in one corner; beside this was a shelf with various boxes and an open door leading to a storeroom. Inside were shelves piled with empty jam jars, boxes of old magazines, used paint tins and a variety of tools, as well as a pair of skis and poles propped against the wall in a corner.

  Retracing her steps, she lifted the lids of some of the boxes on the shelves. They mainly contained the same sort of junk. An old tea service, candlesticks, old curtains packed away, and worn shoes. A teddy bear’s head popped out from one. Line lifted down one of the boxes for a closer look. It held old-fashioned baby clothes, a pair of tiny shoes and a few toys. From the time Viggo Hansen was a toddler, it dawned on her, as she returned
the box to its place.

  She noticed something behind the shelf and all these boxes, a door into another storeroom. She took down all the boxes and stacked them on the floor behind her, before pushing the shelf unit aside. The door was similar to the one leading into the other storeroom, an ordinary wooden door, but this one was padlocked. Line studied the lock. Old and coated in verdigris, it did not appear to have been used for a long time. She was tempted to find a screwdriver to break it open, but decided to wait. Instead she climbed back upstairs to investigate the last room.

  This door had been kept closed, there was no heating of any kind, and it appeared to be the room where Viggo Hansen stored everything he had no space for elsewhere. The windows sparkled with ice crystals.

  A Santa Claus figure stood on the floor, and fragments of a Christmas garland dangled from a cardboard box. Old magazines, instruction leaflets and brochures lay on a wall shelf. There were books, an old radio, ornaments and a pile of clothes. On the top shelf she spotted the heads of two display mannequins, both sporting wigs. One had straight hair, the other curly, almost exactly like his mother’s hairstyle in the wedding photograph. Line reached for one and lifted it down. Using both hands she turned it this way and that, before replacing it on the shelf.

  After she had closed the door behind her, she headed for the living room where she examined the two armchairs in front of the coffee table. One had a dark stain, all that was left of Viggo Hansen. He had sat there, night after night, she thought, beside an empty chair. Never anyone to listen to his opinion on a news item; no one to talk with about a TV programme. She took a picture of the two vacant chairs.

  A dining table was placed against the wall at the other end of the living room. One of the chairs had been pulled out slightly and playing cards, worn at the edges and most lying face-up, were laid out for a game of solitaire. A card game for a solitary person. Line had spent hours playing it on her first computer. She snapped a photo of the cards that must have been dealt a thousand times.