Death on Pilot Hill (An Inspector Harald Sohlberg Mystery)

by Jens Amundsen

  “Dusting everywhere possible for fingerprints in the school . . . checking out the whereabouts of known sex offenders.”

  “I pushed hard for a deep look into the S.O. population . . . I’m sure you know by now that a young pervert had previously trespassed in that same school and molested some girls.”

  “Wangelin told me. But that’s not who did it.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not telling you more.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know you’re here fishing for information that you can pass on to the higher-ups . . . who will then interfere with the investigation . . . or screw it up. But that won’t happen on my watch.”

  “Oh?”

  “I already instructed Wangelin not to leak or disclose any information on the investigation to anyone . . . including you . . . unless I tell her to do so.”

  “Breaking the chain of command so early in the investigation?”

  “Quite the opposite Thorsen. I’m following it. She reports to me and I report to you.”

  “Make sure you do a lot of that. I need to hear from you twice a day. In the morning just before noon and in the afternoon no later than three-thirty.”

  “Of course. Heaven forbid that you . . . like everyone else in Norway . . . be one minute late getting out of the office after four o’clock.”

  “Sohlberg you’ve forgotten your own country . . . haven’t you? We’re efficient here in Norway. There’s no need for overtime.”

  “I’m sure you need to get out at four so you can hit the links during the summer.”

  “Who told you I play golf?”

  “Word gets around.”

  “Well . . . it’s outdated gossip. I no longer play golf.”

  “Oh?” said Sohlberg who enjoyed his turn to act coy.

  “I bowl.”

  “Bowling?”

  “Ja. I’m sure you’ve heard of it Mister International Traveler.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m taking lessons and getting quite good at it.”

  “I’m sure you are. I wonder . . . who else bowls in the department . . . or in the Ministry of Justice?”

  “None of your bee’s wax!” Ivar Thorsen jumped up and left. He almost slammed into Constable Wangelin and her giant coffee mug which offered third degree burns in any spill.

  “What’s bothering him Chief Inspector?”

  “His new hobby.”

  “Hhhmm. Weird. Shall we continue with the summary?”

  “Ja. Read on.”

  “Agnes Haugen left the school no later than nine and went about her regular day doing errands and household chores.”

  “What errands? What chores?”

  “She went back home to pick up the baby and post pictures that she took of Karl Haugen at the science fair . . . she uploaded the pictures into Facebook and other social network websites on the Internet.”

  “Wait a minute . . . did she leave the baby alone at home?”

  “No. Her husband stayed in that day.”

  “What? Wasn’t he at work?”

  “No. He called in sick. We confirmed this from Nokia. We also found out that he was logged into his company’s computers from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon. There’s no doubt it was him because the work involved is highly specialized design engineering on computer chips. According to his boss at Nokia only someone with his expertise and experience could have made the entries found that day in Nokia’s design systems.”

  “But why was he working on his work computer if he called in sick that day?”

  “Nokia told us that he called in sick for himself and not because his kids or wife were sick. He was very vague when we pressed him for details on his sickness and whether he had gone to a doctor or told anyone else that he was sick.”

  “What did the team finally find out?” said Sohlberg who grew increasingly curious as to the little boy’s father.

  “Gunnar Haugen admitted that he should not have called in sick but rather . . . should’ve taken family leave because his daughter was sick and crying all night long and keeping him awake.”

  “And yet he was wide-awake enough to work for hours on complicated engineering and computer chip design.”

  “Now that you mention it . . . his statement is nonsense if he worked all day on his computer and yet claimed to be kept up the previous night.”

  “Did Nokia ever give you a minute-by-minute record on what he was doing on the computer? Is there a chance he could’ve just logged on and then walked away?”

  “Oh boy . . . we sure didn’t get any information like that from Nokia.”

  “Get it. Also . . . did he or his wife take the baby to the doctor or call a doctor?”

  “No. They did not take the baby to a doctor . . . or call a doctor for the baby.”

  Sohlberg rubbed his chin. “Strange.”

  “You’ll see just how strange Chief Inspector. The boy’s father is an odd duck. Very intelligent and yet seems oddly detached . . . almost absent-minded . . . even dumb and naive on some things.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Ja. I always remember how strange it was to hear him repeat things that his wife had previously mentioned to us . . . his eyes always got a glassy look whenever she was around . . . it was like he was a zombie robot repeating verbatim whatever his wife wanted him to say to us.”

  “Like what?”

  “I just can’t put my finger on it. He was . . . an echo chamber of his wife.”

  “And he’s a scientist type?”

  “Ja Chief Inspector . . . he’s definitely Mister Cold Logic . . . a science and math guy.”

  “People like that think the world is just about plugging numbers into some magical formula here or there. . . . Or is he a business type? . . . They think everything in life is profit or loss or that life is all about good or bad management or advertising.”

  “Ja! He’s an egghead . . . and a businessman’s . . . a pointdexter.”

  “A what?”

  “You know . . . book smart but not street smart.”

  “Ja! This is a man whose naive or stupid enough to lie to his employer about being sick. Then he lies to us about being kept up all night by a sick baby and yet he puts in a day’s work the following day at his home computer and does not call or visit a doctor for his sick baby.”

  “Like I said Chief Inspector . . . he’s an odd duck.”

  “Did the baby’s mother Agnes call or visit a doctor for her sick baby daughter?”

  “No. She took the baby and left her husband alone for a couple of hours . . . from eleven in the morning to two o’clock in the afternoon . . . she drove around with the baby to get the baby’s medicine at a pharmacy. She then went to her workout at the gym . . . with the baby.”

  “She took the baby and left him all alone?”

  “Ja.”

  “Why would you take a sick baby in your car to go buy the baby’s medicines when one parent is already staying at home and not going to work? . . .Why would anyone take a sick baby to a gym . . . and drop off the sick baby at the gym’s daycare?”

  “I . . . well at the time no one thought it strange. They both made it sound so natural. Now that you mention it . . . it does sound strange indeed.”

  “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “True. We found that she did indeed drive around with the baby looking for medicines.”

  “What’s the proof?”

  “At nine-twelve in the morning we have a credit card purchase by her for candy at a SPAR neighborhood supermarket that is three miles from the school. She claims that the Apotek One pharmacy next door did not have the baby’s medicines. She says that she then drove another four miles and at ten-fifteen we have her credit card purchase for baby diapers at one of the EUROSPAR mega-supermarkets. Fifteen minutes later at ten-thirty she buys the baby’s medicine at a nearby Apotek One with the same credit card.”

  “This sounds to me like proof that she was busy establishin
g an alibi for herself.”

  “Ja Chief Inspector. There’s too much time that’s unaccounted for her and him. Except for the three credit card purchases at nine-twelve and ten-fifteen and ten-thirty we really have no idea where the stepmother was at . . . especially from noon to one-thirty. The father is even worse since we’re still unsure if he really was on his computer.”

  ”So neither the father or the stepmother can really prove exactly where they were from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon expect for some scattered drugstore purchases she made that morning . . . and whatever occasional computer entries he may have made on his computer throughout the day.”

  “Unfortunately that is the situation Chief Inspector.”

  “Why didn’t Nilsen call a press conference and ask for the public’s help that very same day and the next day . . . to ask the public whether they had seen the parents anywhere that Friday or whether they had seen the white pickup or the red sports car at the stores or the school or elsewhere that Friday.”

  “We did ask the public for help . . . but that was three months later . . . when the investigation was stalling.”

  “Nilsen is such a moron! That delay made the request for the public’s help practically worthless. How stupid. People would forget such things three months after the fact . . . and their memories would be suspect even if they said they remember seeing so and so at a certain day and time.”

  “That was a problem throughout the case. Nilsen always took the parents at their word. He never wanted us to verify or check their statements because ‘They’re good people’ according to him. He called them ‘solid simple folk’.”

  “That was rather incompetent of Nilsen.”

  “I know. Had 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 Sivertsen 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. It was almost as if Nilsen believed everything that she said as true while suspecting everything the husband said as a lie.”

  “Really?”

  “Well . . . I think Nilsen. . . .”

  “What? C’mon . . . say it.”

  Constable Wangelin looked away from Sohlberg which move alerted him 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 liked the stepmother. He stared at her chest all the time.”

  “Why?”

  Steeling herself Wangelin said, “The stepmother has enormous breasts. Nilsen ogled 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.”

  “Ja. 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.”

  “Ja. 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.”

  “Ja Chief Inspector.”

  “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."