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

by Amundsen, Jens

  He had to find out who in Karl Haugen’s family mourned the empty spot left behind by Karl Haugen.

  Who was in grief over Karl Haugen?

  Who was not grieving over the missing boy?

  The one who was not grieving over the missing boy is the kidnaper and maybe even the killer of Karl Haugen.

  Was the Haugen home a house of mourning?

  ~ ~ ~

  The car’s rocking motion lulled Sohlberg into a deep sleep.

  He dreamed that he was locked inside a dank underground prison. Spiders skittered over him while he read a letter in a cell that he shared with Anton Rønning. The Smiley Face Killer began chasing him with a butcher knife. Sohlberg ran down the frigid and pitch-black corridors where other prisoners tried to pull him into their cells.

  The depraved inmates reached out to him with their clawing hands and their angry recriminations:

  “Hey cop . . . you put me in here. Now you die in here.”

  Sohlberg moaned loudly and woke up.

  “You okay Chief Inspector?”

  “Just a nightmare.”

  “I have those too.”

  “Sorry to hear that Constable Wangelin.”

  “I was warned before I joined the force. Some of us will sleep perfectly and peacefully. Some of us will have nasty dreams about all the toxic people and crimes that we come across.”

  Sohlberg nodded. “And for some of us . . . our dreams will get worse as we see more and more awful people and crimes as time goes by.”

  “A career hazard,” said Wangelin with a grim smile.

  “Yes. Few people understand what it’s like to have a first-hand look at evil.”

  “How true Chief Inspector. That’s why . . . in the short time that I’ve been in the force . . . I’ve come to one conclusion . . . there’s no God. None.”

  “I’m sorry that you feel that way Constable Wangelin.”

  “It’s not just that I feel that way . . . it’s a logical and very rational conclusion when you see the suffering and the evil that’s in the world.”

  “Like why do innocent children die . . . from accidents or from disease or from crime?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

  “You got it . . . . And if there is a God then I’m very angry at Him for letting horrible things happen to us down here.”

  “I don’t blame you for the anger . . . I also used to think that way until one of my Utah friends . . . Alec Mikesell . . . asked me a question that changed my thinking.”

  “What was the question?”

  “Have you ever considered the fact that human beings are not robots who are forced to do good and be good all the time? . . . We have free choice . . . free will . . . isn’t that God’s great gift to mankind?”

  “Well . . . but that means we have to suffer the evil and mean and dumb decisions of other people.”

  “Yes. Even our own bad decisions. We have to suffer wars and crimes and earthquakes and all the other good and bad things that mortal existence throws our way. . . . Otherwise how would we learn? . . . How would we progress beyond an innocent carefree childhood? . . .

  “We’re here to experience good and evil.

  “Happiness and grief.

  “Life and death.

  “Health and disease.

  “Without those polar opposites we’d know nothing. We’d appreciate nothing.

  “We would live and die as undeveloped or underdeveloped human beings. It would be like being stuck in kindergarten or the first grade the rest of your life. You’d never progress.”

  “I . . . I . . . well . . . I have to say there’s a strong logic in what you’re saying if there’s a God.”

  “Even if God does not exist you have to admit that life has a much greater meaning once you understand that human beings need to experience good and evil . . . joy and grief . . . health and illness . . . life and death.”

  Wangelin shrugged and fell into a moody silence. An overpowering slumber soon caught up with Sohlberg.

  ~ ~ ~

  The car stopped. Sohlberg opened his eyes and he was surprised that he had fallen deeply asleep.

  For how long?

  They had pulled into a Statoil gas station. His eyes popped wide open when he saw the $ 12 a gallon price on the digital display. That was 400% more than what he paid in the USA. He wondered why Norwegians put up with outrageous prices at home when their government-owned Statoil exported billions of dollars of oil to other countries where gasoline was far cheaper than in Norway.

  As soon as they got back on the road Sohlberg said:

  “Sorry I fell asleep. You must think I’m getting old. . . .”

  “No. I stopped back there at the gas station because I too was getting sleepy with the afternoon heat and that big sandwich I ate a couple of miles ago. Do you want some coffee? My thermos holds almost a gallon.”

  “No thanks. I no longer drink coffee . . . haven’t in years.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t drink coffee. All good Norwegians drink plenty of it. Why did you stop?”

  “We were living in the United States . . . in Utah where it was impossible to find good coffee.”

  “Why? Don’t the Americans have good coffee?”

  “They do but most of Utah is Mormon and they don’t drink coffee or black tea . . . or alcohol for religious and health reasons. Anyway . . . feel free to drink whatever you want from my case of Farris water.”

  A few minutes later they both stretched to shake off their grogginess. Wangelin drove expertly at high speeds on the highway.

  “Constable Wangelin . . . tell me about the Haugen family. Tell me everything. I’m meeting the father and stepmother tomorrow.”

  “I’m looking forward to that. We interviewed them five times each but they gave jumbled confusing explanations that only made sense when you heard them and no sense at all after you left the parents and had time to think about their statements. In hindsight . . . they bamboozled us.”

  “Let’s start with the biological mother.”

  “I feel sorry for her and what she’s going through but she’s a bit of a flake.”

  “How so?”

  “She’s not crazy but somewhat slightly unbalanced.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ll notice that her hair style and hair color change radically and constantly. One day it’s straight black-hair . . . the next day frizzy blond-ish hair . . . a week later she has dreadlocks and a month later she has bleached spiky hair. . . .”

  “Come now Constable Wangelin. Surely her hairstyle is not that important.”

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no. Why does she do it? I can’t even imagine the amount of time she puts into fixing her hair.”

  “You should’ve asked her. . . . Why do you change your hair style and hair color so frequently? . . . How much time does it take? . . . Her answers truthful or not would’ve been revealing.”

  “I should’ve asked.”

  “You’ll see as you get more experienced how those little open-ended questions add up . . . the innocent little questions about so-called meaningless or trivial or irrelevant matters almost always bring you tremendous insights into the person’s mind . . . that’s what you have to do . . . ask ask ask . . . dig the truth out.”

  “You’re right Chief. We tend to quit too early. We’re too busy. We want to move on to the next witness or the next to-do chore.”

  “Constable Wangelin . . . you have to ask questions even when it feels very uncomfortable. Sometimes the stress in awkward personal interactions will break down the walls and let you take a peak inside.”

  “But it feels so awkward to ask personal questions of a stranger.”

  “I know it goes against our famous Norwegian reserve. But you have to do it to be an effective police officer. You have to put aside our Viking tradition of living in extreme isolation because of the steep mountains between each fjord . . . you have to get past the ingrained mind-
set where everyone from the next isolated fjord is a total stranger who speaks a totally different dialect.”

  “I never saw it that way but it’s so true.”

  “Tell me about Maya Engen. Start with her reaction to Karl’s disappearance.”

  “In a nutshell . . . she’s a woman with a guilty conscience . . . for abandoning Karl Haugen when he needed her the most.”

  “How so?”

  “In her mind she brought Karl into the broken home of a failed marriage . . . she separated from Karl’s father less than two years after marrying him. The marriage went bad shortly after the first year anniversary . . . if not beforehand.”

  “What caused the breakup?”

  “She says he cheated on her. The father refuses to admit this . . . he’s vague on the reasons but he insists that he and his wife led separate lives while living together as husband and wife.”

  “Interesting . . . a man who insists that things are one way under his roof when things are in fact another before the eyes of the law. In other words he was married in the eyes of the law to Maya Engen but in his eyes he’s not married to her under his own roof. The man seems to live in his own universe . . . his own version of reality no? He is married but insists he is not. Interesting. A man who denies reality . . . or creates his own reality.”

  “He says that their separate lives were the reason for why he started dating Agnes Haugen then known as Agnes Sørensen . . . her maiden name.”

  “What’s his first wife’s version of the breakup?”

  “According to Maya Engen their marriage ended because of his adultery with Agnes. Of course he continues insisting that by the time he met Agnes the marriage was on the rocks and that they were already separated. I checked and found out that really was not true . . . he was still living with his wife in the same house when he began a relationship with Agnes.”

  “That was gutsy of him.”

  “Or cowardly. Anyway . . . they got a divorce when Maya Engen was eight months pregnant with Karl. And by the time Karl was born the father had his new woman Agnes living in the house with him.”

  “How convenient.”

  “It gets more convenient for him as you’ll see in a few minutes. Gunnar and Maya have Karl on April . . . they file for divorce in May . . . and the divorce is final five months later in October . . . just two years after they got married.”

  “He’s a fickle man,” said Sohlberg who detested uncertain men. “The wishy-washy sort who change wives like they change shirts or shoes. A fickle man would explain why Karl’s mother is always changing her hairstyle and colors.”

  “How so Chief Inspector?”

  “She does that to keep a fickle man happy . . . the constant hairstyle and hair color changes mean that he has a new wife to look at every day.”

  “Very good Chief Inspector. That fits perfectly with her behavior. Also she was briefly married before she met and married Karl’s father.”

  “So the Haugen marriage was her second marriage by age thirty?”

  “Yes Chief Inspector. She had a son with her first husband and that boy has always lived full-time with the father.”

  “Huh! So she too changes husbands as frequently as her hair style and color. Think of it. She’s now on husband number three by the age of thirty-eight. Or an average of one husband and one child per decade. . . .”

  “That’s how it is nowadays . . . not unusual,” said Constable Wangelin. She gave Sohlberg a look that made him feel like some old-fashioned prude.

  “What else?”

  “After the divorce Maya Engen the mother has primary custody of Karl and the father Gunnar has visitation rights. He always pays the child support on time and in full. Gunnar and his live-in woman Agnes pressure Maya Engen to let Karl spend more time with them.

  “Maya Engen doesn’t want Karl to have an absentee father and she has to work and needs someone to watch the baby in the afternoons after daycare. So Maya and Gunnar reach an agreement. Karl stays nights with his mother Maya after he spends two to three hours every afternoon with Gunnar and Agnes . . . and Thor who is Agnes’s nine-year-old son by another marriage.”

  “What a cozy family. The father . . . the mistress . . . and the son of the mistress. I don’t see Karl fitting easily into that cozy family.”

  “Karl had to fit in because a year later his mother Maya gets very sick with liver disease . . . hepatitis B . . . she is forced to go to Sweden for life-saving treatment.”

  “What? I’ve seen her on television and the newspapers and she looks like a picture of perfect health!”

  “The fact is that she had to go to Sweden for treatment.”

  “Sweden? . . . Don’t we have good doctors in Norway?”

  “I—”

  “What’s wrong with Norwegian medical care?” shouted Sohlberg. He was extremely sensitive about Norway’s humiliating subjugation until 1905 to Denmark and Sweden which had respectively conquered Norway in 1536 and 1814.

  “Chief Inspector . . . we checked and her doctors confirm that only Sweden offered her an innovative drug treatment that attacked the virus.”

  “I don’t see why she couldn’t have gotten just as good care in Norway.”

  “Maybe it’s because Norway sometimes doesn’t have everything we need.”

  “Norway has everything Norwegians need.”

  From her pitying looks Sohlberg could tell that Wanglein found his patriotism touching if not quaint and old-fashioned.

  In high school Sohlberg had joined Ny Norge. The nationalist group advocated eliminating Norway’s monarchy because the king came from a line of Danish royalty that had served as puppets for Denmark. Sohlberg like most other Norwegians felt that Denmark had ruthlessly ruled Norway as a colony to be exploited. Ny Norge also advocated moving the capital out of Oslo and back north to Trondheim the old Viking capital. And Sohlberg like most other Norwegians was perfectly aware of the fact that Denmark and then Sweden had kept Oslo as the capital in southern Norway in order to control and keep tabs on Norwegians. The Ny Norge group also pushed hard for nynorsk or “New Norwegian” to be the only official Norwegian language to the exclusion of bokmål or "book language" which is a Danish bastardization of the Norwegian language.

  “Chief Inspector . . . regardless of how you feel about Sweden . . . the fact remains that Karl’s mother went to Sweden . . . where she got the medical treatment that successfully controlled her hepatitis. She was forced to let Karl live with his father and Agnes the stepmother when her Swedish doctors informed her that she would not be able to care for the child while she got the debilitating treatments.”

  “So just like that she left Karl with the father and stepmother?”

  “Yes. . . . Maya Engen came back a year later and she was still too weak to care for Karl. The father made it clear that Maya should spend her time and energies on recovering and not on Karl since he and Agnes were already raising him. Because of her illness Maya reluctantly agreed.”

  “I can see why Maya Engen has a guilty conscience. First she brings her son into a broken marriage. Then she dropped the boy off with those two odd ducks because she was sick . . . and then she was maybe too lazy to care for the boy during her recovery.”

  “Could be . . . but who knows what she was really going through during her recovery period. Regardless . . . time passes and the father and stepmother kept finding excuses to keep Karl away from Maya. Three years later they flat out refused to return Karl to her because . . . according to them . . . Karl had already bonded with Agnes the stepmother . . . apparently Karl was already calling her ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mama’.

  “The father and stepmother insisted that the proposed change in living arrangements would be too disruptive for little Karl and that any judge or social worker or psychologist would see it their way.”

  “Did they actually state that or is the birth mother making that up?”

  “I’ve look at e-mails and they actually did say that.”

  “How convenie
nt for the father. He has no more child support to pay now that the boy lives with him . . . and his live-in sex partner serves as a free nanny for the boy. How very convenient eh?”

  “Without a doubt.”