When It Grows Dark (William Wisting series)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  He wanted to ask whether she knew whose skeleton could have ended up in the barn, but restrained himself. The questions could wait.

  ‘There was a letter inside the rucksack,’ he said, and drew the envelope from his notebook.

  Anna Skaugen glanced at it. ‘From Kai?’ she asked in a voice that had grown unsteady.

  He did not understand. The Population Register said she had become a widow when Kai Skaugen died on 1 January 1979, and he wondered whether she had perhaps become senile, that her memory was failing her and she was not entirely abreast of current events.

  ‘We haven’t opened it,’ he said, pushing the yellowed envelope across to her.

  She sat gazing at it before picking it up, dropping her hands to her lap to conceal a slight tremor.

  ‘I can fetch a knife,’ he offered, so that she did not have to rip the envelope open. He got to his feet and headed into the kitchen, where washing up was drying on a dishtowel on the worktop. He brought a butter knife back to the living room.

  ‘Would you like me to do it?’ he asked, holding up the knife.

  She did not reply, but took the knife and slowly cut the envelope open. He took it back when she was finished, and sat down again. He would have preferred to leave her alone, but this was now a police matter.

  The letter lay in her hands. Her eyes had become distant. He had no wish to rush her.

  ‘Tell me about Kai,’ he asked after some time had elapsed.

  Anna Skaugen cleared her throat. ‘He disappeared.’

  He leafed through his notes. ‘But he died on 1 January 1979.’

  She shook her head. ‘That was simply to bring things to a conclusion. By then he had been missing for ten years. They never found him, but everyone assumed he was dead and they had to get everything sorted for the records and the system. “Presumed dead” is how they worded it in the papers. Then they decided on a date.’

  Fresh possibilities opened. Everything might well hang together in a different way from what he had first thought.

  Anna Skaugen withdrew the dry sheets of paper from the envelope. The music above them was turned up even louder, and water began to gush through the pipes.

  She read in silence. Blinking away a few tears, she put the first sheet behind the other and read on.

  ‘Thank you,’ she almost whispered when she had finished. ‘It’s from Kai.’

  He paused, waiting, but nothing more came. ‘What does he write?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s from 1973.’ She returned to the first sheet. ‘He wrote it on 25 July 1973.’ Swallowing, she folded the sheets together. ‘He says he can’t go on. That summer is ending and he doesn’t want to go into the dark time again.’ Anna Skaugen sat with the letter on her knee, as if trying to hold on to her husband. ‘Can I keep it?’

  ‘Sorry, but I have to take it with me. I need a copy,’ he told her, ‘but you’ll get it back again. It’s your letter.’

  ‘Where did you find him?’

  He repeated what he had told her about the barn. ‘It looked as though he’d been living there for a while.’

  ‘He was in Oslo,’ Anna Skaugen explained. ‘That was where he usually went, with no fixed abode. He loafed around and spent the nights in that kind of place.’

  ‘Did you tell the police he was missing?’

  ‘Not at once. He was often away for lengthy periods. Sometimes I heard from people who had seen him. One summer somebody thought they had met him in the railway station here in town. It might have been that year, in 1973. I thought he would come home, but I never saw him again.’

  She explained how difficult life had been with her husband. He had experienced periodic bouts of depression and had continually sailed close to the wind. He had been in prison on a number of occasions. The first time was in 1927, when she had given birth to their first child.

  He remembered how Ruth Skaugen and her husband had broken off contact with Anna and Kai. Now he could see why. In conversation with Ruth Skaugen she had not mentioned anything about how her brother-in-law had gone missing, just said he was deceased, and busied herself with the lefse and the coffee pot and continued the conversation. What he learned now, he could have found out the day before if he had framed his questions the way an experienced investigator would probably have done.

  ‘How did he die?’ Anna Skaugen asked abruptly. ‘Do you know?’

  The question took him by surprise. He was ill prepared for going into detail about the death. ‘We found a pistol,’ he said carefully.

  The old woman shivered. ‘Ugh, that dreadful pistol.’

  The phone rang in the hallway and the music on the upper floor was turned down. He heard hurried footsteps on the stairs. ‘I’ll get it!’ her grandson shouted, and closed their door.

  As they waited impatiently for him to finish, Anna Skaugen fidgeted with the letter. It sounded as though her grandson was trying to keep his voice lowered. After a minute or so he climbed the stairs again.

  ‘We found something else in the barn,’ Wisting went on. ‘There was an old car in there, hidden underneath a tarpaulin. It belonged to the brothers Marvin and Martinius Bergan who ran a haulage company in Oslo in the twenties. The car and its driver went missing during a delivery of cash in 1925.’

  Anna Skaugen rose remarkably easily from her chair, and crossed the room to a sideboard and a collection of family photographs on the wall.

  ‘Do you know anything about it?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered. ‘The man who disappeared was related to Ruth, who was married to Kai’s brother. He was with them, and with the car, a few days before he went missing.’

  ‘You were there too?’

  ‘It’s so long ago,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘It concerns a criminal case.’ Wisting prepared to conduct the rest of their conversation along more formal lines.

  ‘I spoke to the police at that time,’ she said. ‘I remembered more then than I do now, but there was nothing to tell, really. I knew nothing. That’s how it still is.’

  She turned to the wall again, unhooked a photograph and brought it across to the coffee table. ‘There’s Kai,’ she said, handing him the framed picture.

  It was old. To judge from his age, it looked as if it had been taken some time before the war. He was wearing a suit with a waistcoat, white shirt and tie.

  ‘I talked to Ruth yesterday,’ Wisting said, putting down the picture. ‘Your sister-in-law.’

  Anna Skaugen resumed her seat.

  ‘She told me something different. She said that Marvin Bergan was going to Kristiansand to pick up a consignment of money, but that she and all of you had omitted to tell the police because the assignment was secret and he should not have said anything about it. Is that correct?’

  ‘It’s so long ago.’

  ‘Did you know that he was to pick up money?’

  ‘Probably,’ she said. ‘We didn’t mention it to the police, because we shouldn’t really have known anything about it.’

  He sat upright. ‘Whose suggestion was it to leave out that information?’

  Anna Skaugen shook her head dejectedly. ‘That was just how things turned out. We let it lie.’

  ‘You must have come to some agreement in advance, surely? You can’t all simply have thought the same thought. Someone must have taken the initiative.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  He did not want to tell her that whoever had put forward the suggestion could be the robber and had everything to gain by their silence. Instead he gave her time to think.

  ‘It must have been Ruth or Dagfinn,’ she said. ‘After all, he was their cousin. They would most likely have wanted to protect him.’

  ‘How did you get to know that Marvin and the consignment of cash were missing?’

  ‘Kai told me one day. He had been at Dagfinn’s to finish working on the new hayloft.’

  ‘Kai was at his brother’s every day that week?’

  She said yes.

&n
bsp; ‘What, apart from that, did he do on those days?’

  ‘Not much . . . nothing I can remember, anyway. We weren’t living together at that time, so I didn’t see him every day.’

  Wisting glanced down at the framed photograph of Kai Skaugen. Of the group gathered around the table at Brekke Farm in August 1925, he was the number one candidate to have been behind the robbery. His life was not well ordered at that time, and never came to be in the years that followed. If he had had anything to do with what had happened the woman facing him must know about it, or at least have some idea.

  He raised his eyes. He did not have enough experience to be sure whether a person was lying or telling the truth, but he thought he could discern a slight twitch around her right eye. A nerve that caused the muscle to move involuntarily, as a sign of something she was hiding. If not, then it was simply a twitch caused by her advanced age.

  He asked a few further questions about what Kai Skaugen had done on the day the robbery had taken place, and about his finances, balancing on the edge of accusation. He got nowhere.

  They heard a noise on the stairs again. The grandson popped his head round the living room door. His hair was damp and he was wearing a black leather jacket. His gaze lingered for a moment on Wisting before shifting to his grandmother. ‘I’m heading out.’

  The old woman nodded, and the grandson took his leave.

  Wisting stood up. He could not make further progress. ‘Have you ever met Ragna Bergan?’ he asked.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘I spoke to her before the weekend,’ he said. ‘She was married to the brother of Marvin, the driver. She’s been like you since 1925, with no answers.’

  The old woman’s eyes changed. He did not know if he had sowed the seeds of something he could steer forward but, before anything came of it, they were interrupted by the grandson.

  ‘You’ll have to move your car. If you’re the owner of the Volvo. It’s parked in front of the garage.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Wisting said.

  Anna Skaugen got up stiffly. Taking her hand, Wisting thanked her for seeing him and turned towards the door.

  ‘The envelope,’ he remembered just in time. ‘I really must take it with me. You’ll get it back again.’

  She peered in bewilderment at the envelope still lying on the chair. ‘Of course,’ she said, and picked it up for him.

  He thanked her again.

  The grandson stood on the pavement going through the post in the mailbox. When Wisting emerged, he put it all back and moved towards the garage. Wisting got into his car and drove forward a short distance. In his rear-view mirror, he saw a car reverse out of the garage. He waited until it had left, and opened the envelope to read the letter.

  There had been two sheets of paper, he was sure of that. Now there was only one. The other must be inside with Anna Skaugen. The letter he held opened with the words Dear Anna, and was signed Your Kai. A complete letter, but all the same he was certain that she had pulled out two sheets.

  He put the letter back and felt the envelope. It seemed thinner than it had done before it was opened.

  He retraced his steps and rang the doorbell. Anna Skaugen came to the door, now wearing a knitted woollen jacket.

  ‘I think I left one of the sheets of paper from the envelope,’ he said.

  The old woman shook her head. ‘There was only one sheet.’

  ‘I’m pretty certain there were two. Can I come in and look? Maybe it slipped to the floor.’

  She moved aside and let him pass.

  He lifted the cushion on the chair where the old woman had been sitting, and moved the framed photograph of her husband, but found no trace of the missing sheet.

  ‘There was only one,’ she repeated.

  Wisting studied her. The twitch in her right eye was back. He was sure she was lying.

  27

  Ove Dokken was far from pleased, having read through the report of the meeting with Anna Skaugen. Finn Haber was seated on the settee by the window in his office. Wisting sat on a wooden chair intended for visitors.

  Wisting was still certain that there had been two sheets of paper in the envelope, but had omitted any mention in his report. Instead he had given a verbal account of that detail.

  ‘I think she’s hiding something,’ he said.

  ‘It’s no use thinking that,’ Dokken snapped, lifting the copy of the letter. ‘It tells us nothing. There’s nothing of any interest here. Just that he’s depressed. It doesn’t even say that he intends to kill himself, only that life is difficult.’

  ‘She should never have been given the letter,’ Haber said. ‘We need a definite ID. Kai Skaugen still features in the fingerprint records, even though he’s dead. We could have checked the prints against the letter.’

  That thought had never even entered Wisting’s head.

  ‘Is it too late?’

  ‘Maybe not, but to be honest, it was unnecessary to meddle.’ The crime scene technician leaned forward. ‘Did you ask her if she had anything handwritten by her husband? Something with his signature that we could use to compare with the letter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the watch?’ Dokken asked. ‘Did you ask whether she could recognise the watch we found?’

  Wisting shook his head. He had not thought of that either.

  ‘Even better,’ Haber said, ‘did she have a photo of him wearing the watch?’

  ‘She showed me a picture.’

  ‘Was he wearing a watch?’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘What about her father’s rucksack?’ Dokken continued. ‘Did she confirm that her husband used it? Had he commandeered it when his father-in-law died or something?’

  ‘We didn’t go into that.’ Wisting said apologetically.

  ‘The pistol, then?’ Dokken blew out smoke. ‘Did she know whether her husband had a Luger?’

  ‘It appeared so.’

  ‘But you didn’t ask her?’

  ‘I can phone and ask for further information,’ Wisting suggested.

  ‘Do that.’ Dokken pushed the report across the desk. ‘Talk to her again and write a fresh account.’

  Wisting took back the deficient report. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, as he got to his feet.

  ‘I shouldn’t have sent you there on your own,’ Dokken sighed. ‘You should have had an experienced investigator with you. Then she wouldn’t have been able to trick you about that sheet of paper.’

  Wisting made for the door.

  ‘Ask her whether her husband ever broke his arm,’ Haber added. ‘The left forearm on the body in the barn shows traces of a pretty nasty fracture.’

  Wisting subsided into the chair at the desk in his borrowed office. His meeting with Anna Skaugen would not exactly benefit his application for the vacant post in the Criminal Investigation Department.

  He found a pencil and jotted down all the supplementary questions he needed to ask, lifted the receiver and dialled the number.

  It was the grandson who answered. ‘It’s Jens,’ he said. ‘Jens Brun.’

  Although his voice was brisk, it was difficult to make out whether the parody of James Bond was deliberate, or whether the introduction had just turned out that way.

  Wisting identified himself but did not add that he was calling from the police. ‘Could I speak to Anna Skaugen, please?’

  It took some time for her to come to the phone.

  ‘I have a few extra questions,’ he explained.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you know if your husband ever broke his arm?’

  ‘Yes, at some time in the mid-sixties. He fell off a ladder. Why do you ask?’

  Wisting explained that this was with a view to identifying the body they had found in the barn. ‘Do you remember whether it was his right or left arm?’

  Anna Skaugen had to give this some thought. ‘The left,’ she said.

  Wisting pressed on. ‘We’ve found a wristwatch. Do you remember what kind of wat
ch Kai wore?’

  ‘It was pale brown, or copper coloured. Some sort of Japanese make that he didn’t need to wind.’

  ‘It was battery operated?’

  ‘No, it was some kind of modern watch that wound itself just by the movements of your arm.’

  He made a note.

  ‘You showed me a photograph,’ he continued. ‘Is he wearing the watch in that?’

  ‘I’ll have to go and look.’ She put down the receiver and Wisting waited. His thoughts went walkabout and, without knowing why, he wrote down the name Brun in his notebook before Anna Skaugen returned to the phone.

  ‘It’s impossible to see,’ she answered. ‘Not in that picture.’

  Wisting pulled himself together to concentrate on the list of additional questions. When he had gone through them all, he changed the subject. ‘Was that your grandson who answered the phone?’

  ‘Yes, why do you want to know?’

  ‘His name is Brun?’

  ‘My daughter’s married name is Brun,’ Anna Skaugen said. ‘Things are not too good at home, so he moved in with me a few years ago. Now he’s looking for his own apartment.’

  Wisting flicked through to the notes he had taken about the holiday cottage where he thought the night safe raiders had taken refuge. ‘Is Jens related to Vivian and Roger Brun?’

  ‘They’re his aunt and uncle,’ Anna Skaugen explained. ‘Roger is his father’s brother.’

  He returned the focus to her husband to avoid her asking why he was so interested in her grandson. ‘There was a pair of boots near where your husband was found. Do you recall what size he used?’

  ‘Forty-five,’ she answered swiftly.

  He was keen to wrap up the conversation, but Anna Skaugen also had questions. She had begun to think about practical things, such as what would happen to her husband’s remains and what she should do about any eventual funeral. Wisting promised to find out for her.

  When the conversation was over, he took out the copy he had inserted at the very back of his notebook, the note with the name and phone number that had been found inside Simon Becker’s apartment. Anna Skaugen’s number was 32082. He found it beside the initials J B. Jens Brun.