Closed for Winter

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘Then you don’t really know if the situation is as you believe. There could be quite a simple explanation.’

  ‘In any case, I ought to tell the others.’

  ‘What if you’re wrong?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be wrong about. Tommy and the car were here on the day of the murder. Only he can answer for what he was doing.’

  ‘Can’t it wait until you come back?’

  Biting his bottom lip, Wisting considered the compromise. ‘I’ll take the documents with me and read them on the plane,’ he said. ‘If nothing makes me see it differently, I’ll phone Nils Hammer from Vilnius.’

  38

  Sometime during the night the rain stopped, but it was still misty when Wisting left home early on Tuesday morning. The police station remained deserted, and he was undisturbed as he walked to his office.

  They had two systems for dealing with new documents in any case. In one all the reports were allocated successive numbers. In the other they were given special document numbers in accordance with a fixed system, depending on what type of information each document contained: witness interviews, technical reports, crime scene documents or information pertaining to the victim. The former was a practical work tool that was always kept up to date, while the latter was redrafted so that it could be presented to the state prosecutor and defence counsel when charges were brought.

  Wisting took a set of copies filed in successive numbers. They had already collected so much information it was divided into two ring binders marked I and II. He found room for them both in his hand luggage, but was afraid his suitcase would be heavier than his cabin allowance permitted. Before leaving, he checked his emails without finding anything of interest. He then switched off the light and let himself out.

  At nine o’clock, he drove into Grorudveien and, in a side street, saw the skeleton of the burnt out apartment building towering against the leaden sky. The street was still closed to through traffic. Driving up to one of the posts supporting the crime scene tape, Wisting climbed out of his car. A miasma of ash floated in the damp air.

  The firemen had gone away, leaving behind an eerie silence that had settled like a shroud. Crime scene examiners in white hooded overalls wore masks to protect them from the gases they stirred from the ashes as they worked. Another car pulled to a halt. The superintendent from the intelligence section at Oslo police district finished a telephone conversation before joining him. They shook hands briefly, silently, before crossing to the site of the blaze.

  Leif Malm waved one of the crime scene examiners across. As he approached, he tilted his particle mask onto his forehead. ‘Have you found anything?’ Malm enquired.

  ‘It takes time,’ the examiner replied. ‘We’re working our way down, layer by layer.’

  Wisting had not expected anything else. Fire examination was time consuming work in which the crime scene examiners excavated the remains of the fire, keeping their eyes peeled for patterns imprinted on what was left of the walls and floor. Everything gradually uncovered was photographed and recorded in sketches. Every soot deposit could provide information about the fire burning rapidly or slowly, whether it had burned high or low in a room, and whether the flames had leapt up or down. In certain circumstances, they could also work out the direction in which the fire had spread – upwards from where it had begun, downwards only when everything above had been consumed. This was a job that would take not hours, but days.

  ‘Any indication of the cause?’ Malm asked.

  ‘Given the intensity, it’s easy to conclude that it was started deliberately.’

  ‘If someone was inside, how much will be left of him?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Enough to tell us something about the cause or time of death?’ Malm asked.

  The examiner shook his head. ‘It depends on how much is left. Certain things can be deduced even from the most charred bodies, but the precise time of death is not usually one of them. That requires an investigation of the rotting process in muscle proteins, amino acids and fluid fatty acids, all of which are normally destroyed in a fire.’

  ‘What about ID?’

  ‘Identification of teeth is probably the simplest method. That gives us a swift answer as well. If we can locate the missing person’s dental records, it can be accomplished in a few hours, but first of all we need to find the body.’

  ‘What about DNA?’

  ‘That takes up to a fortnight. What’s more, we have to collect reference samples from the family.’

  ‘Will there be enough material to create a DNA profile?’

  ‘I would think so, but the easiest and quickest method is the teeth. If the heat was intense enough it’s not certain that there will be sufficient cellular tissue for DNA.’

  Wisting knew what heat could do to the human body. Rudi Muller knew it too. Some of what the crime scene examiner related was almost identical, word for word, to the contents of the internet pages he had perused. ‘Regardless, we need to have a DNA profile,’ he said. ‘It will give a direct link to our case and prove that Trond Holmberg was the person who was found murdered in Thomas Rønningen’s cottage. We need it to move the enquiry forward.’

  The man in white overalls gave him a nod before replacing the particle mask over his nose and mouth and returning to the site of the fire.

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ Leif Malm suggested, heading for his car.

  Wisting entered at the passenger side. ‘Any news?’ he asked, slamming the door behind him.

  Leif Malm lifted his folder from the rear seat. ‘Our source had a meeting with Rudi Muller late yesterday. He got the impression that Rudi himself had gone to Larvik on Friday with Trond Holmberg, and that Rudi himself drew the gun.’

  Wisting stared directly ahead. A gossamer veil of condensation had formed on the interior of the windscreen. ‘His car is not registered at any of the toll stations,’ he said.

  Leif Malm started the engine, fumbling in his efforts to locate the heating switch. ‘He may have used another car,’ he suggested, turning on the fan. ‘Send the material to us, and I’ll get one of the boys in the analysis team to cross check the lists with known vehicles in Muller’s criminal fraternity.’

  Wisting nodded. The condensation on the glass disappeared and he could see clearly. Dark smoke still rose from the ashes of the fire. ‘If he was with Trond Holmberg when he was killed I’d have a better understanding of the risks he’s taken. If we could have put Trond Holmberg on the dissecting table, then the searchlight would have been focused directly at Rudi Muller.’

  Leif Malm agreed and handed him a bundle of photographs. ‘Surveillance photographs from yesterday’s meeting at Shazam Station.’

  Wisting accepted the photos and leafed through them. The pictures were taken from a distance, but were sharp nevertheless. He recognised Rudi Muller, but not the two others.

  ‘That’s Tage Larsen,’ Malm said, pointing to a plump man with thick, curly hair sitting opposite Muller. ‘We don’t know the other guy.’

  Wisting squinted at the third man in the photo. He could not discern who it was, but at least it was not Tommy Kvanter. Returning the photographs, he realised that possibilities existed other than those he had imagined. All the same, if Malm and his surveillance team did not know him and his connection to Line, then their intelligence was useless.

  ‘My daughter’s former boyfriend works there,’ he said with a nod at the photos. ‘He’s one of the owners. Tommy Kvanter.’

  Leif Malm looked at him for a long time before speaking. ‘Isn’t their relationship over?’

  ‘Yes, it’s been limping along for a long time, but now it’s over. They’ve been living together in Line’s flat. She’s staying at the cottage now in the expectation that he’ll find himself somewhere else.’

  ‘I only understood it was some kind of break,’ Malm remarked.

  Wisting swallowed. It was obvious that the intelligence service was effective. There would certainly be s
urveillance photographs somewhere or other of Line and Tommy as well. ‘Is he involved?’ he asked bluntly.

  Leif Malm packed away the folder to signal that the meeting was over. ‘We don’t have any information suggesting that. But if their relationship is finished I think you should be glad. This environment’s not something you would want her to be part of.’

  Wisting opened the car door.

  ‘One more thing,’ Leif Malm said. Wisting remained seated with the door slightly ajar. ‘This is probably developing in a dangerous direction.’ Wisting closed the door again. ‘Muller is subject to extreme financial pressure. The European backers are holding him responsible for their loss and for the death of one of the couriers. They’re demanding five million kroner.’

  ‘What action is Muller thinking of taking?’

  ‘He’s mounting a robbery attempt. That was how he built himself up, with several robberies from security transport vehicles towards the end of the nineties. During the last decade he’s benefited to a greater extent from the proceeds of narcotics traffic, but he still has a network of contacts.’

  ‘What’s the target of the robbery?’

  Leif Muller shrugged his shoulders. ‘We don’t know yet. Our informant is working on it, but there have been rumours circulating for a long time about plans for a major heist, something like the NOKAS security firm.’

  Wisting shut his eyes. It was a vicious circle. The criminals were sucked into a spiral of increasingly serious activities and, the deeper they went, the more difficult it became for the police to stop them.

  39

  The direct flight to Vilnius took off precisely on time. Wisting and Martin Ahlberg sat in the tenth row with a vacant seat between them.

  The plane was no more than half full. Most of the passengers were Lithuanian guest workers on their way home, but there were also a handful of Norwegian businessmen in suits and with financial newspapers on their laps.

  On the row of seats diagonally opposite, a young woman flicked through the latest edition of Se og Hør magazine. She stopped at a large photograph of Thomas Rønningen. Wisting could read the headline from where he was sitting. Unknown man found MURDERED AT COTTAGE. Some of the photographs used were archive images from the summer article about Rønningen in company with well-known colleagues from NRK television.

  He leaned back and contemplated what he knew about Lithuania. Only a few days ago he couldn’t have placed it on the map. He was shamefully ignorant of the country, although it was less than two hours by air from Oslo. The previous evening, he had leafed through the encyclopedia and read that it bordered Latvia in the north, Belarus in the east and Poland in the south. Once it had possessed an impressive empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, but now the former superpower was smaller than the area of Østland county in Norway.

  It had surprised him to learn that there were no more than 3.6 million inhabitants, since Lithuanians comprised a disproportionately large proportion of the total number of foreigners in Norwegian crime statistics. Poland, with almost 40 million inhabitants, provided only half the ­number of criminals in Norway. The extent of criminality in Lithuania became even clearer. Unemployment of almost twenty per cent and a large number of people living under the poverty level had to take a great deal of the blame.

  The capital city, Vilnius, with 580,000 residents, possessed a wealth of history, but he had never heard so much as a mention of the Lithuanian president. He had skimmed over the encyclopedia’s information about the system of government and the country’s economy, but had taken a particular interest in how the police force was organised. It was not especially different from Norway.

  ‘We have an appointment with the Chief of Police at two o’clock,’ Martin Ahlberg said, when they reached cruising height. ‘We’ll check in at our hotel afterwards.’

  ‘How will we go about this?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘I’ve sent them information on the case and explained that, in connection with a murder enquiry, we wish to speak to the family of Darius Plater and three other Lithuanian citizens: Teodor Milosz, Valdas Muravjev and Algirdas Skvernelis. I’ve already received a list of addresses and information from the official records.’ He produced a bundle of printouts with photographs of the three surviving members of the Paneriai Quartet.

  ‘You said that Valdas was sentenced for robbery,’ Wisting remarked, pointing at the man who had attacked him.

  Ahlberg let his finger slide along the text underneath the picture. ‘Assault and robbery in 2006,’ he read. ‘Six months’ jail time.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  Martin Ahlberg traced his finger along the page before shaking his head. ‘No convictions,’ he said, handing over the printed pages.

  Wisting put on his glasses to read. Darius Plater was the eldest of five siblings and his address was listed as at his mother’s home in Šeše˙liu gatve. There was no father listed. ‘Has the family been informed about his death?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve asked them to wait until we’ve spoken to the men he came to Norway with. It’s not a problem as long as we don’t have any more formal identification than the Norwegian fingerprint register.’

  Wisting nodded and continued to study the printouts. One of the other men lived in the same street as Darius, also with close family. His assailant lived on his own, but had the same postcode, as did the fourth man. ‘How do we manage with the language?’ he asked.

  ‘The Lithuanians will provide an English interpreter.’

  Wisting stacked the papers so that his attacker’s photograph was on top. ‘I’d like to start with him,’ he said. ‘Valdas Muravyev.’

  Ahlberg agreed. ‘Just remember these are only witness interviews. If we’re thinking of accusing them of housebreaking or theft we have to initiate completely different formalities.’

  The flight stewardess arrived with coffee. Wisting handed back the papers and lowered his flight tray. Martin Ahlberg exchanged the papers for a laminated collection of documents which he handed to Wisting.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s a comparative case analysis of the aggravated thefts in Eastern Norway we suspect the Paneriai Quartet of committing,’ Ahlberg explained. ‘Each individual crime scene is described.’

  He thumbed forward to one of the last pages where a row of red dots was drawn on a map of Østland county, mostly concentrated in clusters along the Oslo fjord. ‘Sixty-eight cottages,’ he said.

  On the next page there was a fine blue line drawn through the red dots along the same stretch of coastline. ‘We’ve tracked Teodor Milosz’ mobile phone on the Norwegian telephone network.’ Martin Ahlberg indicated with his finger how the blue line started at the Swedish border and reached as far as Larvik before traversing in a loop to return by the fastest route along the E18 to Oslo and the E6 back to Sweden.

  ‘It was his phone number they gave when they booked their ferry tickets. We received the telephone information yesterday and plotted the locations on the map.’ Self-explanatory, the map showed how the group of Lithuanian travellers had left behind them dozens of burgled crime scenes.

  ‘That’s how we work,’ Ahlberg continued. ‘It’s what’s led to our success. We don’t investigate the crimes, but the people, and see what pops up. If we find DNA or fingerprints at any of these crime scenes, then all the other cases with the same modus operandi fall like dominoes.’

  ‘Do you have the telephone information for Friday evening?’ Wisting asked.

  Martin Ahlberg flicked to one of the final pages. A detailed printout showed an overview of incoming and outgoing telephone numbers, with date and time of day, duration of call and the location of the phone apparatus. ‘They arrived in Larvik on Thursday afternoon. There’s little phone activity until late on Friday evening. Then all hell breaks loose, but you know all about that, of course. We’re carrying out a closer analysis of the phone numbers Teodor Milosz has been contacting.’

  Wisting noted that the same numbers recurr
ed time after time. He commented that several were Norwegian.

  ‘They obtain Norwegian pay-as-you-go subscriptions and use them to communicate with each other for as long as they’re in Norway,’ Ahlberg said. ‘So far it doesn’t look as though they’re in touch with any external Norwegian numbers.’

  ‘What about Spanish or Danish?’

  ‘I don’t think so. There are calls to and from Lithuania and among the quartet themselves.’

  Wisting riffled through the analysis material while he drank his coffee, realizing this was an important case document that pursued the Lithuanian men through place and time. After reading the papers, he laid the folder aside and produced one of the two ring binders he had packed into his hand luggage.

  The regular humming of the aeroplane engines made him feel sleepy, and he had not browsed through many pages before he leaned his forehead on the window. Outside, the clouds were grey and impenetrable.

  40

  The arrivals hall at Vilnius airport was more modern than Wisting had anticipated, with enormous glass facades and inviting restaurants. After twenty minutes, they had collected their luggage and were strolling to a queue of waiting taxis, without having to show either passport or any other ID papers. After the Schengen agreement, the strict border controls in and out of the former Soviet state had come down. Passengers from other Schengen member countries travelling by car, boat, rail or air had no need to identify themselves by means of passport or visa when crossing the borders.

  This same agreement had imported crime to the Nordic countries. The extension of the EU in 2004 provided criminals with a huge market, and after the East European countries joined the Schengen cooperation in 2007, there had been a dramatic increase in crimes against property.

  The driver of an ancient but spacious Opel took their luggage and welcomed them to Lithuania. Martin Ahlberg sat in the front passenger seat beside the driver and showed him a note with the address of the main police station. The driver bowed, thanking him for the directions, before heading out of the terminal precincts and keeping scrupulously just below the speed limit on the motorway leading to Vilnius.