Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery (Inspector Sohlberg Mysteries)
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SOHLBERG AND THE MISSING SCHOOLBOY:
AN INSPECTOR SOHLBERG MYSTERY
by
JENS AMUNDSEN
Published simultaneously in the USA and Norway.
Although inspired by real events, this book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any living person is purely coincidental except that specific references to real institutions and people (such as Norway’s serial predator Lommemannen The Pocket Man) are for historical purposes only.
SOHLBERG AND THE MISSING SCHOOLBOY: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery.
A Vik Crime/Blue Salamander Edition 2012
New translation with added material by the author.
Published in the United States by special arrangement of Nynorsk Forlag [Trondheim, Norway] with Nynorsk Forlag-USA/Blue Salamander [Seattle, WA]. Originally published as Death on Pilot Hill by Nynorsk Forlag in 2011.
SOHLBERG AND THE MISSING SCHOOLBOY. Copyright (c) 2012 by Nynorsk Forlag.
Translation copyright (c) 2012 by Nynorsk Forlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taking, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Author information:
www.deadlybooks.com
www.jensamundsen.blogspot.com
Book information:
www.deadlybooks.com
www.nynorskforlag.blogspot.com
Please send publisher and author inquiries to: nynorsk@ymail.com
Printed and Manufactured in the United States of America
Also by Jens Amundsen
[Inspector Sohlberg series]
White Death in Tromsø
Lost in Bergen
Skull Valley
The Trondheim Choir
ADVANCE REVIEWS FOR THE
INSPECTOR SOHLBERG SERIES
BY JENS AMUNDSEN
Inspector Sohlberg crime novels are thoroughly enjoyable police procedurals because they are suspenseful and realistic. Like John Le Carré, who captures the essence of spying, Jens Amundsen captures the essence of criminal investigations by police detectives. He also paints an honest and unvarnished portrait of Scandinavian society that is troubling because it will remind readers of their own countries.
— Alan Meade (U.S.A.)
Part murder mystery, part psychological novel Jens Amundsen’s novels deliver a unique voice that takes Nordic Noir to a higher level. What could be better than a juicy and thoughtful detective novel?
— Elise Palme (Sweden)
This fascinating homicide detective is brought to life by an accomplished author who’s no stranger to crime, criminals, homicide investigations, and the justice system.
— Lars Ødegård (Norway)
Compelling detective stories without page-filling fluff . . . language stripped to its bare essentials . . . real-life dialogue . . . each novel a psychological tour de force . . . Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men meets Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret meets Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me.
— Tim Hughes (U.S.A.)
Jens Amundsen’s crime novels are a compendium of the human condition . . . dealing with the difficult but important issues of life and death.
— Tatiana Defforey (Great Britain)
To his credit, Amundsen writes in a unique and captivating style that requires more than a 3rd grade reading level. I appreciate Amundsen and other authors who don’t dilute police procedurals with irrelevant literary devices, such as “character development”. Who would want Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe to develop? For Heaven’s sake, police procedurals are a sub-genre of crime and suspense novels. If you want artsy literary fiction, then get thee to Austen, Brontë, Cheever, Flaubert, Franzen, Hemingway, or Turgenev.
— Elizabeth Brennan (U.S.A.)
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Kyron Horman and all the other missing and exploited children who must be found and protected or given a full measure of justice.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Chief Inspector Harald Sohlberg returns to the Oslo police district where his career started and almost ended in disgrace and scandal.
Although he is experienced with hardened and heartless criminals, C.I. Harald Sohlberg has never met as devious and brilliant a criminal mind as when he is called to investigate an unsolved case in Holmenkollen, one of Oslo’s sleepy and boring suburbs.
C.I. Sohlberg meets his match amid the beautiful homes and gardens of Oslo’s well-to-do professional class. An elementary school—Grindbakken Skole, Pilot Hill School—becomes Ground Zero for the most shocking and unforgettable of crimes.
Confronted with his own difficult and controversial past, Sohlberg must now find a missing 7-year-old boy who vanished while he was inside his school, surrounded by classmates, teachers, and parents at a science fair. The case brings back memories of Norway’s worst serial predator, Lommemannen The Pocket Man, and his predecessor, The Smiley Face Killer.
Chief Inspector Sohlberg has spent decades investigating Norway’s most devious criminals as a Police Chief Inspector in Oslo. Sohlberg has also hunted some of world’s most violent and ruthless criminals as an adviser to Interpol. Years of working abroad for Interpol have made him a stranger to his own country and people. Rumors of his wife joining a religious cult in America certainly don’t help.
The Harold Sohlberg crime novel series by Jens Amundsen joins Norway’s best crime detective series, including the Inspector Konrad Sejer series by Karin Fossum, the Inspector Gunnarstranda series by K. O. Dahl, and the Detective Harry Hole series by Jo Nesbø.
Dark undercurrents of Norwegian and modern society pull this classic of Nordic noir into new and uncharted waters that are as terrifying as they are thrilling. It’s time to enjoy Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy, the debut novel of Jens Amundsen. His novels on Chief Inspector Harald Sohlberg masterfully blend the psychological novel into the crime, suspense, thriller, and detective genre.
Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy introduces the characters and situations that explode in White Death in Tromsø, the sequel to Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy.
This book includes the first chapter of White Death in Tromsø.
PART ONE: DEAD END
Chapter 1/Én
MORNING OF THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 2/To
AFTER THE SCIENCE FAIR,
FRIDAY JUNE 4 AND SATURDAY JUNE 5
Chapter 3/Tre
SEPTEMBER 4, OR THREE MONTHS
AFTER THE DAY JUNE 4
Chapter 4/Fire
MIDSUMMER’S EVE, OR
THE LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR, OR
1 YEAR AND 19 DAYS AFTER THE DAY,
FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 5/Fem
1 YEAR AND 22 DAYS AFTER
THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 6/Seks
1 YEAR AND 23 DAYS AFTER
THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
PART TWO: THE INVESTIGATION
Chapter 7/Syv
MORNING OF 1 YEAR AND 24 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 8/Åtte
AFTERNOON OF 1 YEAR AND 24 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 9/Ni
HALDEN PRISON, AFTERNOON OF 1 YEAR AND
24 DAYS AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
PART THR
EE: DOORS OF PERCEPTION
Chapter 10/Ti
MORNING OF 1 YEAR AND 25 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 11/Elleve
AFTERNOON OF 1 YEAR AND 25 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 12/Tolv
INTERROGATION OF GUNNAR HAUGEN,
AFTERNOON OF 1 YEAR AND 25 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 13/Tretten
INVESTIGATION FOLLOW-UP,
EVENING OF 1 YEAR AND 25 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 14/Fjorten
INTERROGATION OF AGNES HAUGEN,
MORNING OF 1 YEAR AND 28 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
Chapter 15/Femten
INTERROGATION OF OLAV TVIET AND
INTERROGATION OF DANICA KNUTSEN,
AFTERNOON OF 1 YEAR AND 28 DAYS
AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
EPILOGUE: HOMEWARD BOUND
PART ONE: DEAD END
A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
— Ernest Hemingway
Chapter 1/Én
MORNING OF THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4
The world promised much to Karl Haugen, a shy 7-year old. He knew a lot for his age. He knew from first-hand experience that the world promised good and evil and that the world delivered good and evil in unexpected and unequal amounts. Life despite its shortness taught him that nothing was what it appeared to be. That’s why he liked to study icebergs.
In the school gymnasium he turned to his school friend Einar Lund and said:
“I wanted to do my project on icebergs . . . not on red-eye tree frogs.”
Icebergs reminded him of the people in his life. They appeared to be one thing above the surface but deep below they were quite different if not dangerous. He knew all about icebergs and how one iceberg had ripped open the thick steel hull of the Titanic before sending it and more than 1500 passengers to a frigid and watery grave. He definitely wanted to do his science fair exhibit on icebergs. After all the floating blocks of ice have always been an important part of the north Atlantic Ocean that his Viking ancestors sailed on for centuries. But his father and stepmother Agnes stopped him.
“No . . . don’t be silly,” said his stepmother a month ago when he first proposed a science project on icebergs. “Do it on frogs. Everyone in Norway prefers a science fair exhibit on something warm and cute from the tropics.”
“Icebergs?” said his father later that evening. “No. It’s best to do it on the red-eye frogs that we have recently read about in the newspaper. They’re real cute . . . like Agnes says. Don’t forget my boy . . . people always like cute living things like frogs and not dead cold things like icebergs.”
Karl hated switching from icebergs to frogs. But orders were orders at the Haugen household and now that his science project was done the thin little boy with glasses looked forward to spending most of the summer with his mother and her husband up in Namsos a small town north of Trondheim. Only three more weeks of school remained before school ended for eight weeks of heavenly summer vacations.
“Karl . . . you made a very good project,” said Inga Lund the mother of his friend and classmate Einar.
“Thank you Mrs. Lund,” he said pleased but not surprised that everyone seemed to like the science project that his father and stepmother had chosen for him.
Mrs. Lund smiled and pulled out her camera. She waved at them so that she could take a picture of him and Einar next to the pictures and drawings and written information that Karl and his stepmother had carefully glued to a tall poster. The poster and dozens of other exhibits rested precariously on a long table. Mrs. Lund aimed the camera and said:
“Move a little to the right Karl so we can see the mini-jungle you made in the shoe box . . . it looks so real with the trees and the river and the frog! Very good!”
Karl Haugen smiled confidently as the flash came on for his picture. He felt happy at how the adult guests (almost 200 of them) had stopped to look at his exhibit and comment favorably on his project. Teachers and fellow schoolmates also reacted well to his red-eye tree frog project at the annual science fair that Grindbakken Skole always held toward the end of each school year. The second-grader wondered how long his happiness would last.
“Thank you for coming,” shouted the principal at exactly 8:40 AM. “Five more minutes! Parents . . . family . . . and friends . . . please say your goodbyes and get ready to leave in five minutes . . . we want to begin our first class at nine o’clock sharp.”
Everyone smiled and laughed and hugged and took pictures that would soon be posted on Facebook and other websites on the Internet. Everyone looked so happy and healthy and prosperous and loved. But the little boy knew that no life is perfect even if it seems to be so.
Chapter 2/To
AFTER THE SCIENCE FAIR,
FRIDAY JUNE 4 AND SATURDAY JUNE 5
On Friday June 4th at nine in the morning the old man prepared his coffee. He looked out of his living room window and he noticed the white pickup parked for a third time in as many days where his street Orreveien curled into a dead end.
His family had lived for five generations on one of the many hills around Lake Bogstad. As an only child he inherited the large farm from his parents in 1952 when his widowed mother died. At the time the remote wooded hills northwest of Oslo felt like the end of the world.
Holmenkollen was the nearest village and it was as close as he got to a city when he was a child. He and his parents never ventured into Oslo. They only watched the distant city lights at night from their vantage point on the “roof of Oslo”. The farms around Holmenkollen stand over Oslo at 500 meters (1640 feet) above sea level. Over the decades the farmers watched with jealousy and fear as the night lights of distant Oslo slowly came closer and closer to them. The forest-clad hills of Holmenkollen were now merely suburbs of Oslo and highly desirable locations in the wealthy Vestre Aker borough of the city as a result of being less than 10 miles from downtown Oslo.
The old man whispered to himself. “Why is that strange car parking there? . . . Why do I have to be surrounded by all these professional people pretending to be rich people? Engineers . . . lawyers . . . strange people with too much money and time on their hands . . . up to no good.”
He deeply regretted his decision to sell large chunks of land to developers who had built luxury homes and condominiums all around his farm. In hindsight his worst decision was selling 40 acres in 1980 to the Norway Medical Association which then built the Soria Moria Hotel and Conference Center in 1983 at the site of the old Voksenkollen Sanatorium for rich people.
The NMA’s modern luxury hotel complex was less than a half-mile northeast from his home and hotel guests frequently trespassed on his land and they enraged him whenever they went “exploring” in the woods that surround his modest cottage. The old man did not like anyone parking on Orreveien because it reminded him that he had sold off most of his inheritance. He was now surrounded by noisy and nosy neighbors and way too much traffic.
Why had the mysterious driver parked the pickup truck for a third time that week on the circle of the dead end street? What was the driver doing there?
Two days ago the driver had stopped at the same spot and let the engine run on idle for more than an hour. Who would waste precious gasoline like that?
“What is that idiot doing?” he said loudly to himself. “Damn nuisance!”
Dag Svendsen yelled as if his strong manly voice could magically carry itself over the air to the nearest police station. He always shouted when he realized that he really should have a telephone.
But who could afford a telephone?
He had never owned a telephone or other such luxuries. Never. He did not even own a phone in the 1990s when he and his late wife made a bundle selling off most of the farm. The Svendsens did not even own a car until 1971 and then they only bought a dilapidated 1939 Mercedes Benz sedan.