“Fru Sivertsen . . . I need some research done on the Mahar case.”
“What do you need?”
“Høiness found two ex-cons that look interesting. One raped a teenage girl a couple of years ago. But he got off on a technicality. The other one killed his neighbor’s daughter thirty years ago and did his twenty years. I need you to please find out who investigated those cases. I’d like to talk with them if they’re still around. Here are the case numbers.”
Fru Sivertsen reached for the documents that Sohlberg handed her. He stuck a small post-it note to the top page and it read:
Please get ASAP a copy of a Netherlands passport for HANS MULLER (in his 40s) and all its travel data the past 5 years incld trips to/from Cyprus, London, USA, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Brazil.
Underneath the first note was another note that simply read:
URGENT: please have one of your friends do a driver’s license record search and get me a picture of a Jakob Gansum. Also please find out from Hovdestøylen Hotel and Lodge in Hovden who is paying for the rooms for Gjertrud Isaksen and her boyfriend.
As soon as she read the notes Fru Sivertsen smiled and peeled them off and slipped them into her sweater pocket. She then handed Sohlberg a thick packet of mail that had come in for him during his absence.
“Thank you,” he said as he hurried off to his desk where he rummaged through the packet before finding Sivertsen’s note in an unmarked envelope. He looked forward to reading what she had discovered about the surveillance thrown around him.
A page listed the names of the car owners of the two vehicles that shadowed him. The names meant nothing. But they shared the same address in the northern Oslo neighborhood of Nydalen and that address he knew as belonging to private investigator Leif Noer. The former Oslo politiinspektor had left the force in disgrace after he was suspected of blackmailing the rich and the famous—and various political figures—through a devious campaign of illegal wiretapping and surveillance.
Fru Sivertsen also wrote down that current rumors in the Zoo had Leif Noer or his company working as a “consultant” on an exclusive basis for Kroll and its Ibas subsidiary in Norway. Ibas was a hi-tech “information management” and “data recovery” company located in Kongsvinger. The remote town was far from prying eyes—75 miles northeast of Oslo near the border with Sweden.
Kroll?
That’s spendy for whoever hired them to spy on me.
So someone is spending big bucks to watch me.
Who?
Why?
How does this tie in to Astrid Isaksen and her father . . . or the Janne Eide case?
Only the very wealthy or the biggest corporations and government agencies hired Kroll. The giant American company specialized in investigative consulting and business intelligence and risk consulting. In other words Kroll spied on anyone and everything for a hefty price. Sohlberg had come across Kroll and its lackey Leif Noer a few years back when Sohlberg had investigated the homicide of a shadowy Pakistani businessman who later turned out to be selling nuclear secrets to various governments—the CIA and North Korean intelligence among others.
~ ~ ~
Shortly after 2 P.M. Fru Sivertsen walked by Sohlberg’s desk. She handed him a color picture of Jakob Gansum from driver’s license records. The face matched the one for Patient # 1022 at the Dove Center. Sivertsen included a sticky post-it note in which she wrote:
Hotel in Hovden says that a tourism promotional company (Norge Tourist Now!) is paying for all costs of room+meals+lift tickets for Gjertrud Isaksen and her boyfriend.
A quick search of news reports and public records on the Internet revealed that Norge Tourist Now SA was indeed a company promoting tourism. An Internet search of the executives and board of directors of the company failed to turn up any interesting names or unusual connections to any suspicious persons or entities.
“Well,” said Sohlberg under his breath. He had walked into yet another dead end in the investigation. The company might or might not be legitimate. The company might or might not be fronting for someone who wanted—or needed—to remain hidden.
I wish I had the time to get to the bottom of this Norge Tourist Now! mystery.
Sohlberg reluctantly understood that he was not going to have the time to follow up on the Norge Tourist Now! lead because he had to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Patient # 1022 was Jakob Gansum.
Sohlberg shot off a quick e-mail to Constable Hanna Høiness to inform her that he was going to spend the afternoon following up on leads in the Mahar case. He didn’t. Instead he hopped on two different tram lines to shake off anyone following him before he boarded the # 12 line to the ritzy Aker Brygge neighborhood by the waterfront.
A cold blast stung the detective’s face as he hurried down Stranden all the way to the corner with Fjordalléen. Few pedestrians braved the frigid wind that always felt worse by the seaboard. It was almost as if the humidity empowered the cold wind with supernatural powers that allowed the wind to penetrate past clothes and flesh all the way into the bone marrow.
To distract himself from the miserable weather Sohlberg looked around at the buildings. He still could not get used to the area’s new-found wealth and fame. The detective still remembered that as a child and teenager he saw the Aker Brygge as a menacing if not downright dangerous pit to be avoided. Those memories clung to Sohlberg’s mind long after the former shipyards had been transformed and redeveloped in the 1980s from rusting blight to elegant stores and business offices and luxury condos.
The Jacob Aall restaurant appeared forlorn if not abandoned. Few patrons peopled the pricey brasserie. He looked around to see if one or both of the Falkangers were in the restaurant since his early morning Internet research into the Falkangers had struck gold. An Aftenposten article had mentioned that the Falkangers and other wealthy socialites frequently ate at “the favorite restaurant of Oslo’s rich and famous.”
A public record search for Norwegian lawyers named Falkanger revealed that one Baldur Falkanger—age 54—lived in Oslo and Gothenburg and London. He was married to 28-year-old Oda Falkanger. She was his fifth wife. Newspaper articles revealed that the Falkangers maintained an enormous pied-a-terre penthouse at a luxury building near Stranden in the Aker Brygge where they entertained high-powered corporate CEOs as well as Norway’s Crown Prince and other royalty. The racy Norwegian tabloid Se og Hør lived up to its name (Look and Listen) with pictures and video that showed topless royalty cavorting in the summer with the Falkangers on their 135-foot yacht Big Bertha. Warm weather allowed the Falkangers to dock the boat on the waterfront next to their apartment building. Pedestrians strolling on Stranden often assumed that the boat was a cruise ship for tourists.
A breathless article in the Danish Berlingske newspaper in Copenhagen described Baldur Falkanger as having plenty of money to burn. He had inherited a substantial fortune thanks to his grandfather who had taken shares of SKF stock as his payment in 1907 when SKF could not pay him for his legal work due to temporary cash flow problems. Until that lucky moment Old Man Falkanger had been laboring as an obscure patent lawyer hired by the founder of the ball bearing company SKF (Svenska Kullagerfabriken). The founder—Sven Wingqvist—had invented the self-aligning ball bearing that protected machinery from undue wear and tear. Falkanger’s misfortune in receiving unwelcome SKF stock payments eventually turned into a windfall. SKF became one of the world’s largest manufacturers of ball bearings and it then transformed itself into a worldwide industrial colossus that made and sold $ 10 billion U.S. Dollars worth of bearings and seals and lubrication products and power transmission systems.
With his police uniform Sohlberg caught the immediate attention of the maitre d’ of the tony restaurant.
“The manager please.”
“Of course,” said the head waiter. “Would you like to wait in the back . . . in the offices.”
“No,” replied Sohlberg because he might need to put public pressure on the manager if no cooperation was for
thcoming. “Please tell the manager that Chief Inspector Sohlberg is here.”
“Yes . . . yes,” said the waiter as he shot off to the backroom office.
Sohlberg smiled. He had yet to meet a manager at a restaurant or hotel who wanted the police asking loud questions among nervous patrons.
The manager came out five seconds later. “How may I help you?”
“I need to confirm if you or your staff know a Baldur Falkanger and his wife Oda.”
“They are long time clients.”
“Have you ever delivered food to them?”
“Many times. Catered events and they’re one of the few on a select list of clients who are allowed to call us any time for take-out and delivery.”
“Here,” said Sohlberg. He pointed at a piece of blank paper that he pulled from his inside coat pocket. “Please write down their address and phone number.”
“I don’t know it by memory. I’ll have to go back to the office and get it.”
Sohlberg nodded and followed the man to the back of the restaurant. They passed through the kitchen where tempting smells of food brought pangs of hunger to Sohlberg. Once inside the dimly-lit and cramped office the manager offered Sohlberg a chair which the detective declined.
“Ah . . . here it is. I have a nearby street address and a landline phone number and a cell phone number. Which do you want?”
“All of them.”
The manager wrote down and then handed the information to Sohlberg who in turn handed him the picture of Jakob Gansum.
“Seen him?”
“No. Don’t think so. But I’ve only been working here for six months.”
“What about your waiters?”
“Just what I was thinking. Let me call Irene. She’s been here the longest.”
A smartly dressed waitress in her mid-fifties immediately recognized Jakob Gansum. “Yes. He was here a couple of years ago. He came with her . . . Fru Falkanger.”
“How can you remember?” said a skeptical Sohlberg.
“Easy. He made a pass at me when she went to the restroom. Grabbed my thigh under the table. Even gave me his phone number. He was a fresh punk. Made me an indecent proposal. Obscene rudeness doesn’t begin to describe it. I almost slapped the pig. But who am I? . . . He on the other hand was one of the many men friends that she brought here. If I slapped him then I’d be out of a job that has great tips.”
“I’m sorry about that experience,” said Sohlberg with embarrassed sincerity. “I greatly appreciate your kind help. It is extremely valuable. Extremely. This is a very very important case and your cooperation has been critical. Of course . . . I want neither of you to mention a word of my visit to anyone . . . especially the Falkangers.”
The manager nodded grimly while the waitress beamed brightly in the dark office.
“I’ll leave through the back door,” said Sohlberg who still worried about being followed.
A blast of icy wind greeted Sohlberg as soon as he opened a door that led directly into Fjordalléen. Wet snow started falling on the street. Sohlberg hurried to an imposing granite-clad building. Enormous windows jutted over the street from the higher floors where homeowners lived above businesses on the lower floors.
Sohlberg went inside a small coffee shop located next to the Falkanger’s building. He ordered a steamed milk and while he warmed up with his drink he searched www.skattelister.no on his personal cell phone to find out the annual income of Baldur Falkanger. Nothing turned up.
Perhaps Falkanger earned no income in Norway where he owns a luxury home. Maybe there’s some tax evasion going on.
At the Falkanger building the lobby receptionist looked startled when Sohlberg entered and said in a loud voice:
“Please call the Super. We have a report of an alarm that I need to investigate.”
Within 3 minutes the building’s superintendent ran out to the lobby to escort Sohlberg up to the top floor. The super answered all of Sohlberg’s questions about the layout of the apartment:
“Every unit takes up the entire floor . . . we have no two-floor units . . . and no sir . . . the units do not have any entrances or exits other than the front door by the elevator.”
“No kitchen doors? . . . Or doors for maids and servants?”
“No. There’s a service elevator that opens directly to the kitchen area.”
“Call your people and have them disable that elevator right now.”
The building’s administrator did just that with his walkie-talkie.
A long hallway lit with tiny halogen lamps in the ceiling and lined with tasteful modern art paintings and thick carpeting led Sohlberg and the superintendent straight to the Falkanger’s residence.
The detective frowned. He had expected an easy look inside an unoccupied dwelling. Instead loud music thumped against the front door. The vibrations ran along the walls. He had expected no one to be inside since this was one of many homes owned by the Falkangers.
“Do you know who’s inside?”
“No. We don’t keep track of the residents. They come and go as they please. They have their own security cards to swipe to get inside the building and the elevators.”
Sohlberg had planned on dismissing the super once the man used his master key to open the door to an empty apartment. Now he had to change strategies.
“I’ll take care of this,” said Sohlberg. “They probably set off the alarm by accident. I still need to check on them.”
“We’ve never ever had a break-in here. No crime. None at all.”
“So . . . there’s no need to say anything more about this to anyone. Right? . . . I’ll take care of this myself . . . if you don’t mind.”
The super nodded and left immediately.
As soon as the building superintendent entered the elevator Sohlberg took a deep breath. The elevator doors closed. He pounded on the Falkangers’ door and yelled:
“Police . . . open up!”
The music died. A long silence followed. He heard scurrying about and then a muffled man’s voice and maybe even a child’s voice.
Sohlberg kicked the door hard and screamed:
“Open up or the door comes down!”
The door’s peephole darkened as someone watched him. He heard the click of a turning door bolt. The door had barely cracked open before Sohlberg abruptly slammed his entire body weight on the door and the door’s security chain snapped and the door flung open. The overpowering stench of marijuana competed with the acrid chemicals of crack and meth. White powder and glass pipes covered a glass coffee table next to a brick of pungent cannabis from Turkey.
“Good afternoon . . . Officer,” said the naked man with a hairy potbelly and bald head. He spoke in the same bland and matter-of fact tone that he would have used if he had been caught taking an extra serving of caviar and crackers at an art gallery opening.
“Move back.”
The man’s red-rimmed blue eyes and runny nose and sparse red beard completed the repulsive appearance which reminded Sohlberg of a wild pig on crack.
Sohlberg took out his handcuffs. “Baldur Falkanger. . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’m here because of a disturbance call. Your loud music was bothering your neighbors.”
“Oh well.”
“Oh well?”
“You are breaking into my house. This arrest won’t stand up in court. You’ll never even get to a trial. I was only going to talk to you through a crack in the door. I never let you in voluntarily. You kicked your way in. My lawyers will flush you down the toilet.”
“Really? . . . When I came here to investigate a disturbance I saw that the door was already busted open. I only went inside for your safety . . . to investigate a break-in. I was worried someone had broken in and hurt you. Imagine my surprise at then seeing you buck naked with all these drugs laying about.”
“My lawyers will squash you like a cockroach.”
“Is Oda Falkanger here?”
“You seem to know my fami
ly well.” Falkanger studied Sohlberg’s epaulettes and with utter disdain added, “Chief Inspector.”
“Is she here?”
“Do you have a gangbang tonight with her at seven o’clock . . . or are you coming to the club with us at midnight? . . . You swing too Chief Inspector?”
Falkanger screamed when Sohlberg grabbed Falkanger’s left wrist and slapped one handcuff on that arm. Sohlberg then swung the sweat-drenched arm up the man’s hairy back so as to force the wrist all the way up towards the man’s neck while practically dislocating the shoulder.
“Listen good,” said Sohlberg. “Who else is in the apartment . . . where . . . what’s their name?”
Sohlberg and the Gift Page 20