Death on Pilot Hill (An Inspector Harald Sohlberg Mystery)

by Jens Amundsen

  “We’ll have more sunny warm days.”

  Sohlberg nodded but he wondered if his fellow countrymen felt as surprised as he was at how quickly the promise of summer had disappeared. Nature seemed intent on reminding him that the long grim dark days of winter would be back soon.

  Hairpin switchbacks led all the way to the top of Pilot Hill. The school’s one-floor red building seemed cheerful enough as did the surrounding playground ringed by grass and then forest.

  “Very nice school up here,” commented Sohlberg. “But I expected more rural surroundings. I remember this was all farms and ski slopes back when I was a kid.”

  “You had no idea the area was so built up?”

  “No. I can’t believe all these buildings have been put up here on top of the high hills of Holmenkollen.”

  “Well Chief Inspector . . . the Holmenkollen ski festival is still up here.”

  “Ja. But this urban sprawl is hideous.” Sohlberg looked sadly at another piece of Norway’s rural splendor chewed up by long rows of two- and three-floor luxury condominiums and apartments.

  “You can’t blame people for wanting to live up here . . . this suburb is very nice. I could never afford to live here.”

  “Let’s take a walk,” said Sohlberg. “I need to get a feel for the crime scene.”

  The school offered spectacular views of Oslo and Oslofjord. Sohlberg noted that the school sat between two dead end streets: Grindbakken and Måltrostveien.

  “What’s the street that passes below the school grounds? . . . I hear traffic on it.”

  “Oh that? . . . It’s Olaf Bulls vei.”

  “Could someone have parked down there and come up here to take Karl Haugen?”

  “Highly unlikely. They’d be blocking traffic even if they parked on the shoulder.”

  “Ja . . . I can also see why a stranger is unlikely to have walked or driven to the school to take the boy in broad daylight. Look at all these condos and apartments around us . . . anyone on a terrace or window on the second or third floor would’ve seen something suspicious.”

  “Chief Inspector . . . that’s why we interviewed every single person living within a half mile of here. And . . . nothing. Absolutely nothing. No one inside or outside the school that day saw anyone who did not belong here.”

  “What about Bogstad Lake . . . it can’t be more than a half-mile from here. I imagine Nilsen had the lakeshore searched?”

  “Ja.”

  “Was the lake dragged for a body?”

  “Ja . . . we sent in boats with sonar and scuba divers. Nothing. Not a shred of evidence by the lake or anywhere else.”

  “Interesting . . . if this abduction was for revenge then why not plant a false clue out there . . . place one of Karl’s belongings out by the lakeshore . . . a shirt or a toy . . . that would have thrown the investigation into confusing turmoil . . . and led us down a wild goose chase. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Ja . . . you’d think so,” said Constable Wangelin hesitantly.

  “And yet the criminal did not plant red herrings to shift the investigation in any pArcticular direction. How brilliant . . . and how cruel since those who love Karl are left permanently in a daily agonizing state of suspense as to whether he’s dead or alive . . . tortured or hurt.”

  “Diabolical.”

  “And . . . at the same time our criminal has been arrogantly confident that he or she will never get caught. . . . That’s the genius of this criminal. He or she tortures the family and stumps the investigators.”

  “What a monster.”

  A chill crept into Sohlberg. He had half-expected to find something unusual about the school’s location or something else that would explain how a child could vanish in the middle of school that was filled with more than two hundred adults and children that fateful Friday. But Grindbakken skole or Pilot Hill School at 106 Måltrostveien seemed no different than any of the other well-kept elementary schools in Oslo’s suburbs.

  They met Karl’s teacher at a conference room near the principal’s office. Karl Haugen’s 26-year-old teacher Lisbeth Bøe was no different than any of the other young elementary school teachers. She was caring and competent and supremely confident about her skills. The cares and disappointments of life had not yet aged her.

  Constable Wangelin made the introductions.

  “I hope this won’t take too long,” said the doe-eyed teacher. “School’s almost over and I have a lot to do to. I wish your people had paid more attention to what I told them. Your Inspector Nilsen brushed off what I said as if I was nuts or lying. You could tell a mile away that the man was stupidly infatuated with Agnes and Gunnar Haugen.”

  Sohlberg raised his hand and said, “How so?”

  “Your Inspector Nilsen believed everything that the Haugens said and he discounted everything I said. He and the parents made it look like I was careless about Karl . . . that is not true. And I resent how I was forced to waste a lot of time getting interviewed by that idiot Nilsen.”

  “Frøken Bøe,” said Sohlberg sternly, “I don’t waste my time and I promise you that I won’t waste yours. Alright?”

  “Alright.”

  “Now . . . what’s this business about the parents making it look as if you were careless about Karl.”

  “If the parents had not tricked me then I would have reacted differently at roll call when I saw that Karl was not in class and marked him absent. You see . . . I would have immediately called the administration and told them to look for Karl or call Karl’s home because I had indeed seen him earlier at school during the parent and family portion of the science fair.”

  “Okay . . . so what was the parents’ trick to not arouse your concern or alarm?”

  “Simple. Both parents told me several times . . . in the two to three weeks before the science fair . . . that Karl had a doctor’s appointment the Friday morning right after the science fair. They said that he would only come in early to school to drop off his exhibit . . . and then leave at nine to go visit the doctor . . . who needed to run several tests on him.”

  “Isn’t it normal for the school to require written notice from the parents if a child is absent?”

  “Oh yes we do. But here’s the cute and sick part of their trick. They turned in a written notice to the administration on Tuesday . . . and that signed piece of paper only said ‘Karl will be out on a doctor’s visit on Friday.’ At no time did they specify which Friday. The Haugens later claimed that they clearly told me many times that the excused absence for the doctor’s visit was for the following Friday. They told everyone that I had obviously gotten confused.”

  “Who signed the note?”

  “The father.”

  “Do we have a copy of the note Constable Wangelin? . . . I’d like to get the original if possible.”

  “I think we have the original back at headquarters. If not then I’ll get the original from the school later today.”

  “Frøken Bøe,” said Sohlberg. He almost always used the formal address that most Norwegians dislike and rarely use because almost everyone in Norway likes being on a first name basis to show off Norway’s so-called social equality. “Can anyone testify that before Karl disappeared you actually mentioned or told them about Karl Haugen being pulled out of class by his parents on Friday June fourth because of a doctor’s visit.”

  “Oh yes. I told eight . . . maybe nine colleagues here at the school . . . all of them will testify that I complained before Karl disappeared about his parents wanting him excused from school on June fourth . . . and not on Friday June eleven as the parents later claimed.”

  “What was your complaint to your colleagues?”

  “I told several teachers earlier that week that it was unfair for the Haugens to take Karl out of school on the day of the science fair when he was probably going to win a special award for his excellent project on red-eye tree frogs. . . . I can give you a list of five teachers and three administrators that I complained to after Karl put so much work into a
project that his parents shoved on him.”

  “What do you mean by shoved on him?”

  “Karl wanted to do a project on icebergs. That’s all he talked about that year. He loved how icebergs float around before melting. He was fascinated by the fact that icebergs are mostly hidden under the surface . . . and how an iceberg sank the Titanic. But his parents forced him to change his project to frogs.”

  “In a nutshell . . . are you telling us that both parents misled you into believing that Karl would only attend the science fair from eight to nine in the morning?”

  “Ja.”

  “And . . . you’re telling us that both parents misled you into believing that Karl would take an excused absence and leave school at or a little before nine in the morning to be at a doctor’s appointment that Friday June fourth?”

  “Exactly.”

  Sohlberg smiled and said, “Please write your witness list now.”

  Frøken Bøe wrote furiously on a notepad while she frowned and said:

  “Also . . . I didn’t like them pulling Karl out of school because I don’t think Karl really had anything wrong with him that needed a doctor visit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They made up his symptoms. They kept saying he had seizures during those two to three weeks before June fourth. That’s a lie. I never once saw him have seizures. At most he was a little space-y the two weeks before he disappeared. He looked sleep deprived . . . if not stressed. I asked him what was wrong and he just shrugged.

  “I then asked the parents why Karl looked so stressed. That’s when they told me they had called a doctor . . . and that she had told them that he was having seizures and needed to come in for an examination.

  “But then I thought . . . what doctor would diagnose seizures over the phone? And since when can you talk to a doctor over the phone just like that? . . . You’re lucky if you get to talk to a nurse on the phone.”

  “Do you know the name of the doctor?”

  “Julie Heldaas. She’s a pediatrician. A lot of children in the school go to her.”

  Sohlberg nodded and rubbed his cold hands. He knew that he would solve the case quickly if he could find out whether the father or the stepmother was the source of the clever trick to mislead the administrators and teachers into believing that Karl was leaving school to visit a doctor that fateful Friday June fourth.

  “Frøken Bøe . . . would you say that Karl was a happy boy?”

  “Over all yes . . . but you know . . . children from divorced homes have a lot of stress . . . I noticed he got very sad whenever he came back from visiting his mother up in Namsos . . . I figured he wanted to stay up there and not come back to his father and stepmother.”

  “Did he say anything in pArcticular about wanting to live with his mother?”

  “No . . . he wouldn’t talk a lot about his home situation . . . I always felt that someone at home had told him not to talk with me or other teachers . . . I did notice that he seemed distressed during the two or three weeks before he went missing . . . he could not focus on class assignments . . . he forgot everything he had to do . . . he would stare out into space. . . .

  “Karl even got into a fight with another boy . . . that was a first for Karl since he was a very sweet and good natured boy. The even more weird thing about the fight was that he kept screaming at the other boy, ‘I hate you. I hate you.’ Now that was very very unusual for Karl . . . it was almost as if he was a little tape recording that just kept repeating something he heard at home . . . I’ve seen that before with my children. They repeat what they hear at home from the adults.”

  “Any signs of physical abuse?”

  “No. Had there been I would’ve immediately called the police . . . especially with his stepmother pestering me every single day to let her know exactly how Karl was doing at school as far as his academics and behavior. It’s no secret . . . Chief Inspector . . . that I found Agnes Haugen a little too much to handle. But . . . I must admit that I have two other former elementary school teachers who also go nuts in micromanaging their children and their education.”

  “One last thing Frøken Bøe.”

  “Ja?”

  “Did Karl Haugen usually bring his lunch from home?”

  “Ja. Agnes always packed his lunch.”

  “Did he have a separate lunch box or did he carry his lunch in his backpack?”

  “Let me think . . . Karl . . . in his backpack. He had small plastic tubs . . . like tupperware . . . that held his food. So the answer is no . . . he did not have a separate lunch box or pail . . . he took his lunch straight out of his backpack.”

  “Thank you Frøken Bøe. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Oh . . . I almost forgot.”

  “Yes?”

  “During the first few weeks after Karl disappeared we found out that Karl’s parents . . . especially the stepmother Agnes . . . had made an outrageous statement to the newspaper and televison reporters.”

  “What statement?”

  “Agnes Haugen insisted that she saw Karl talking to a science fair volunteer who was monitoring the children when she left the school that morning after the fair ended.”

  “Ja,” said Sohlberg. “I read somewhere in the files . . . that the school had several parents who volunteered to watch over the children in the hallways and the auditorium.”

  “That part’s true. The lie is that Agnes Haugen insists that the volunteer was a man wearing a volunteer badge. That’s simply not true . . . there were no male volunteers at the science fair that day.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. It was the first time that had happened in several years . . . we’ve always had male volunteers at the science fair . . . but not last year when Karl disappeared . . . all the teachers and administrators made comments about that.”

  “Could anyone sneak in wearing a badge?”

  “Not really. Inspector . . . don’t forget . . . I was there. I never saw a man posing as a volunteer . . . or wearing a volunteer badge. Trust me . . . all of us teachers would’ve noticed that immediately.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Karl didn’t know how much longer he could hold out. He desperately wanted to see his father and mother. A few days ago he had fallen asleep and suddenly he had woken up and heard his mother’s voice calling him with wild despair:

  “Karl! . . . Karl! . . . My son!”

  She was after all still looking for him!

  But she could not see him. Eventually her voice and her presence faded away and so did his hopes of ever seeing his beloved mother. His father had stopped looking for him. That made him even sadder. How could his father have given up so easily!

  “Dad! . . . Mom!”

  ~ ~ ~

  Wangelin drove four miles southeast to the giant Rikshospitalet National Hospital campus of Oslo Universitessykehus University Hospital. Dr. Julie Heldaas was on the last of her late morning rounds. She had agreed to meet them as soon as she was finished.

  Sohlberg and Wangelin waited for the doctor at her small office. Sunlight poured in through the window now that the rainstorm had passed.

  “This is quite a view,” said Sohlberg. He was surprised that although the hospital was at a much lower altitude than Holmenkollen the hospital still had lovely views of the broad Oslofjord which looked more like a vast lake surrounded by low mountains.

  “It’s nice isn’t it?” said Constable Wangelin. “What with all the sunshine and the water sparkling like that. I wish I could be out there today.”

  “Do you—” Sohlberg interrupted himself. He was about to ask her if she liked water sports but that would have breached Norwegian office etiquette which meant avoiding friendships at work and not sharing any confidences or personal information. He missed people’s overall friendliness in Canada and the USA as well as the meaningful work friendships that he had made in those countries. Prosecutors and law enforcement officials in Mexico and Latin America had also befriended him to a degree unheard of in
Norway.

  “Do I what . . . Chief Inspector?”

  “Do you think the doctor will be here soon?”

  “Ja. She told me to be here at five minutes past noon.”

  A minute later at exactly 12:05 PM the doctor walked in and shook hands while Constable Wangelin made the introductions. The petite 60-year-old doctor invited them to sit down.

  Sohlberg started off with:

  “Thank you for meeting us Dr. Heldaas. We have a few questions about your patient . . . the minor Karl Haugen.”

  “Has he been found?”