Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery (Inspector Sohlberg Mysteries)

by Amundsen, Jens

  “That was rather incompetent of Nilsen.”

  “I know. But he was in charge and that was his decision. Of course. . . if Karl’s parents been very poor . . . or blue collar types . . . Nilsen probably would’ve arrested them or at least suspected of them of lying.”

  “What a clown. How could he take what these people said at face value just because the father makes a lot of money as a Nokia engineer?”

  “Well . . . Inspector Magnus Matningsdal was part of the team for a couple of weeks and he thought that Chief Inspector Nilsen was taking the stepmother too much at her word. As the investigation progressed all of us noticed that Nilsen began to believe everything that she said as true while suspecting everything the father said as a lie.”

  “Really?”

  “Well . . . I think Nilsen. . . .”

  “What? C’mon . . . say it.”

  Constable Wangelin looked away from Sohlberg. Her averted gaze alerted him to the fact that she was very embarrassed. Since arriving in Oslo he had come to appreciate all over again how Norwegians as a rule always look the other person straight in the eye when speaking to them. He was happy that the old Viking tradition still prevailed because the Vikings knew that the eye was not only the window to the soul but also the ultimate lie detector. Sohlberg fondly remembered unnerving his law enforcement colleagues in other countries and all the people he interviewed with his dead-on stare.

  “I’m sorry Chief Inspector . . . I meant no disrespect,” said Constable Wangelin who gathered her composure and looked Sohlberg again straight in the eye.

  “I understand. Go ahead . . . tell me about Nilsen.”

  “He liked her . . . Nilsen really liked the stepmother . . . lusted after her. He stared at her chest all the time.”

  “Why?”

  Steeling herself Wangelin said, “The stepmother has enormous breasts. Nilsen stared at her every time he saw her. You could see his eyes undressing her.”

  “He’s fifty-two . . . a little old to get distracted by such teenage boy nonsense.”

  “Ah . . . it was repulsive . . . her breasts are obvious fakes. Even Nilsen knew it . . . he took down bets as to whether she had silicone or saline implants.”

  “Ridiculous. I can see why this investigation went nowhere. Anyway . . . keep reading me your summary.”

  “After buying the baby’s medicine the stepmother said the baby was irritable and crying and so she drove around for ‘a few minutes’ to get the baby to sleep with the rocking motion of the car.”

  “Wait a minute . . . what car? . . . The white pickup or the red sports car?”

  “She took her husband’s white pickup. She says that driving around always calmed the baby into sleeping. The father says that was news to him. I think that’s the first and only time that the father contradicted the stepmother.”

  “Interesting,” said Sohlberg. “Proceed.”

  “The stepmother then drove to the gym where she arrived at eleven-twenty. That’s when the main desk has her signing in. She leaves the gym an hour later at twelve-twenty. She then—”

  “Stop. So her baby is sick and she goes to the gym with the baby.”

  “Yes. She dropped the baby off in the gym’s daycare room.”

  “Unbelievable.” Sohlberg shook his head in amazement at the selfishness of Norway’s newest generation of parents. “Then what does she do after the gym?”

  “She says that she drove around with the baby . . . to calm her down . . . and finally arrived home at about one forty-five . . . almost two o’clock. Says her husband was not there and that he left her a note saying he went to pick up some takeout food for lunch. He arrives back in her red Audi sports car at around two in the afternoon. But she’s not sure exactly when he arrived because she took a shower and a nap.”

  “So basically he’s all alone on the day that his son disappears . . . six hours . . . from nine to three.”

  “Yes. It’s almost as if he used the need to buy the baby’s medicine as an excuse to get rid off his wife and the baby.”

  “Call the pharmacy and see if it’s true that they were out of the baby’s medicine when Agnes Haugen went to buy the medicines.”

  “Actually we did that a few months ago.”

  “And?”

  “They had the medicine in stock.”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “That the pharmacy must’ve been confused and thought she asked for another medicine.”

  “How convenient for the father and stepmother . . . to have her driving around looking for the baby’s medicines while he’s all alone. Keep on. . . .”

  “Karl Haugen was to have taken the school bus home. But he was not on the bus at three-thirty when the stepmother walked to the bus stop near their driveway. The bus arrived and another child from next door got off but not Karl. That’s when the driver told her that Karl had never gotten on the bus.

  “She ran back home and called the school to tell them that the driver had just told her that the boy had never gotten on the bus. The school informed her that her stepson had been marked absent for the day by his teacher as soon as roll call was completed at about nine-fifteen. The stepmother dialed one-one-two and we immediately got involved. Nilsen ordered an inch-by-inch search of the school and the school grounds and the parent’s home and their one-acre property.”

  “Who else was called in to help?”

  “Of course Nilsen got KRIPOS involved . . . they sent a crime scene investigator squad that arrived at eight-thirty in the evening.”

  “But that was almost twelve hours after the boy disappeared.”

  “True but Nilsen thought the boy had just wandered off or left with another family and that we’d find him before nine at night. Commissioner Thorsen got extra help for us from nearby districts that sent officers and two dog-sniffing teams . . . we carefully searched the school and the hilly wooded area immediately around the school. We even searched the school’s roof.”

  “Any videos . . . close circuit cameras at the school?”

  “Not in this school. Only in the newer schools.”

  “Explain something to me.”

  “Go on Chief Inspector. Ask me.”

  “What’s the school’s procedure for visitors? . . . What did the school do that day to accommodate all the visitors for the science fair?”

  “The standard procedure is for all adult visitors to check in at the main office and receive a badge. But not everyone got a badge the day of the science fair.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the huge crowds . . . the science fair had to start before the official school hour of eight in the morning since a lot of parents came to help their children set up the exhibits before the parents rushed off to work. The school’s principal called the science fair a ‘semi-public’ event. She said the building was packed with more than two hundred adult visitors who went from classroom to classroom with their children and to and from the auditorium."

  “Fascinating,” said Sohlberg as he massaged his increasingly tense neck muscles. Joint pain and muscular spasms plagued his neck whenever he was confronted with a complex case.

  “What’s fascinating Chief Inspector?”

  “The father and stepmother. They have six hours that are . . . for the most part . . . unaccounted for. . . . And the father seems to have a lot more unaccounted for time than the stepmother. He literally has a lot of explaining to do. At least the stepmother has some proof to establish some of her whereabouts when she went out on that medicine-buying trip. He on the other hand has little or nothing to show as to exactly where he was that day and exactly what he was doing those six hours.”

  “Keep in mind Chief Inspector that her medicine-buying trip itself is a mystery. Why would she go to a second store when the first store had the medicine?”

  “Another contradiction . . . maybe even a lie. By the way . . . what type of baby medicine are we talking about here?”

  “I . . . well . . . here’s anothe
r strange thing that this couple made sound so natural when we first interviewed them.”

  “Together or separate?”

  “Both . . . together and separate.”

  “Not good. Interviews must always be separate.”

  “True . . . but in the rush to get basic information Nilsen and the first responding constables took statements from them in each other’s presence.”

  “A huge mistake in this investigation.”

  “Sorry. But as I was saying . . . the Haugens took their sweet time to finally reveal . . . four months after Karl disappeared . . . that the baby’s prescription medicine was for colic and that any over-the-counter remedy would’ve been easy to find and a far cheaper substitute.”

  “What did they say when confronted with this information?”

  “That they do not buy cheap things . . . least of all generic drugs. That they buy only the very best for their children. She even made the very arrogant statement that they don’t eat leftovers.”

  “Interesting. Unfortunately I know people like that.”

  “Wait till you hear this . . . we calculated her total mileage that Friday for her shopping expedition for the baby’s medicine . . . almost forty-five miles for a medicine that she could’ve bought for less than five dollars had she gone for the less expensive over-the-counter substitute.”

  “Whose idea was it for her to go on that crazy shopping trip?”

  “The father and stepmother both take responsibility for it.”

  “Not his idea?”

  “No Chief Inspector. She’s adamant about going through all the motions to establish to the world that they have money to spend. Of course the weird thing is that the father and stepmother dress like high school kids . . . they mostly wear t-shirts and blue jeans and tennis shoes . . . every time I saw him he was in long baggy shorts and sandals.”

  “By the way . . . what role did they take in the search for Karl that Friday and in the weeks that followed?”

  “Again Chief Inspector . . . they are strange people . . . an odd family. Everyone on the force made comments about how the Haugens are the first family that did not participate in the search for their missing child.”

  “That is unusual . . . the father or the mother or both or other relatives always get involved in the search . . . they go on television and ask for the public’s help. They walk the streets and they hand out flyers with pictures. Matter of fact . . . I’ve always looked carefully to see who in the circle of family and friends was not participating in the search for a missing person.”

  Constable Wangelin nodded. “People don’t look if they think . . . or know . . . that the missing person is dead.”

  “What about the biological mother?”

  “Maya Engen . . . she lives in Namsos . . . north of Trondheim . . . married to Police Inspector Arvid Engen of the Sør-Trøndelag district.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you know him Chief Inspector?”

  “No. But that’s another interesting twist in this case. Did Karl’s biological mother . . . this Maya Engen . . . look for her missing son?”

  “No. Physically and mentally she could not. She was devastated. . . . She fainted at the news of his disappearance. She collapsed several times after she and her husband came down here the night of June fourth. Maya Engen suffered a great deal . . . unlike the father and the stepmother who seemed rather cool if not lackadaisical about the whole thing.”

  “You’ve personally seen the father and the stepmother after Karl disappeared . . . right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which one of them would you say was angry or in mourning . . . or grieving over Karl?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  “What?” said a surprised Sohlberg. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “I . . . I can’t describe it . . . when you’re with them you feel everything is normal but when you leave them you realize something’s not quite right in that family.”

  “That’s why I’m very interested in focusing on Karl Haugen’s family and friends. Are we done with the first page of your summary?”

  “I’m ready to start going over the second page.”

  “Good. But we’ll have to do that in the car.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Halden Fengsel. I understand Norway's newest prison is something to behold.”

  “I’ve seen it on television . . . quite luxurious . . . but I’ve never been there.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Are we taking the train or a car?”

  “Thorsen is lending us a marked car for today. He already made arrangements for our visit.”

  “Who are we seeing?’

  “The Smiley Face Killer.”

  Chapter 8/Åtte

  AFTERNOON OF 1 YEAR AND 24 DAYS

  AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4

  Traffic was relatively light before the lunch hour. Normally Sohlberg would have taken the super-fast NSB train down to Halden. The trip would have been a quick one hour forty-five minute ride in pure comfort and a local police constable would have picked them up at the station and taken them to the fengsel. But Sohlberg needed to be free from nosy eavesdropping passengers and more important he needed to spend as much time as possible discussing the investigation and the second page of the summary with Constable Wangelin. Sohlberg had to be fully prepared before he interviewed the family and friends of Karl Haugen.

  “At least we got out before the rush hour traffic,” said Wangelin.

  She put the large Volvo crossover SUV on cruise control at 90 mph as soon as they left the Oslo suburbs behind. They shot down the E-6 highway out of Oslo which runs 352 miles south all the way down towards the lovely twin cities of Malmö in Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark. Less than ten miles separate Halden Prison from the border with Sweden.

  Sohlberg sipped his favorite Farris mineral water. He had an entire case in the backseat. “Ever hear about the Smiley Face Killer?”

  “Vaguely. . . . No. Not really Chief Inspector.”

  “He was active in the seventies and eighties . . . he began killing when he was real young . . . in the late sixties . . . kept right up until captured in eighty-nine. He was Norway’s worst. Then came the Lommemannen . . . the Pocket Man. Heard of him?”

  “Oh him? Yes. I’ve heard about the Pocket Man . . . molested an estimated four hundred boys . . . raped dozens over a thirty year period before his capture in two thousand eight. But the Smiley Face Killer . . . he doesn’t sound familiar at all. That was so long ago. I wasn’t even born in the seventies.”

  “Well . . . I wasn’t in the force until April of eighty-nine . . . the Smiley Face Killer was captured in October of that year. But I still knew about the Smiley Face Killer.”

  “Sorry Chief Inspector but that’s ancient history.”

  Sohlberg grew depressed over Constable Wangelin’s blank look and comments. He suddenly felt old and tired. He was only 20 years older than Wangelin but she made him feel like an outdated relic of the past. Sohlberg had a hard time being told that his frame of reference belonged to ancient history.

  “Are you alright Chief Inspector?”

  “Just thinking. . . . Interesting how time fades the public’s memory as well as that of the police force . . . at one time the Smiley Face Killer was big news . . . as big as Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer in America or the Butcher of Rostov in Russia.”

  “Who?”

  “Andrei Chikatilo . . . the Smiley Face Killer’s counterpart in Russia from seventy-eight to ninety. . . both killers would move their rape-and-kill frenzies to different and faraway locations whenever they sensed that they had stirred up a hornet’s nest of investigators with their spectacular murders. . . . They both got very good at switching back and forth from local murders to faraway atrocities. Even at the height of the repressive and all-controlling Soviet police state Chikatilo would find clever ways to travel to Moscow and distant Russian Republics on his state factory jo
b to kill dozens of women and children whenever he got the police and public riled up in Rostov over his killing sprees.”

  “He was able to move around so freely . . . to kill in a dictatorship like the old communist Russia?”

  “Yes. . . .”

  “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” said Constable Wangelin while shaking her head.