Ordeal (William Wisting Series)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  He had worked with Christine Thiis for less than two years. She was fifteen years younger than him and had two teenage children. Following a divorce, she had left a well-paid job as a defence lawyer in Oslo and moved to Larvik with her offspring. Easy to work with, she was results-orientated, energetic and resourceful, and had a talent for making the right decisions at the right time.

  When they spoke it was always about work, and she was less than expansive when it came to her personal life. When they attended conferences together, she always went home or straight to her room once the professional side was over. She never showed up after work if someone suggested a beer, and had never been present at a Christmas dinner. So, Wisting had been taken aback when she had accepted an invitation to a summer party at his house.

  Her expression suggested she sensed his presence in the room. Wisting quietly re-closed the door and went downstairs to the living room. She needed to sleep it off. Nils Hammer had carried her up to bed, well into her second bottle of wine. The others had stayed until first light and the earliest birds began to sing.

  He folded the blanket he had used overnight and tidied the cushions, collected the glasses and took them to the kitchen, filled the dishwasher and stood at the window looking at the bend in the road and the brown-stained house where Line lived.

  Although not entirely comfortable with the reason for her moving back to Stavern from Oslo, and not best pleased that she had bought that particular house, he was glad to have her in the neighbourhood. The previous owner had been called Viggo Hansen and, eight months previously, he had been found dead in a chair in the living room. He had sat for almost four months without anyone in the vicinity registering the fact. Wisting felt that death pervaded its very walls.

  The thought of the dead man did not worry Line, which was actually typical of her. Fearless, she had a pragmatic disposition. Besides, it was a good buy. Circumstances meant that it sold for considerably less than its valuation, and when he visited yesterday he had seen few reminders of its past. Everything unnecessary had been torn down and thrown out. The kitchen, bathroom and one of the bedrooms had already been renovated. Now it was the living room’s turn.

  His mobile phone rang somewhere. He found it on the coffee table, too late to answer. It was Suzanne though, her number still stored. Even after several months, seeing her name affected him. For a while they had lived together, but she decided to move on. Losing her weighed heavily on him, though not as much as losing Ingrid, mother of Line and her twin brother Thomas. Ingrid was dead and gone forever. Suzanne, on the other hand, was not far off, running a gallery and coffee bar in Stavern and living in the flat above.

  He jumped when she rang again. ‘Hello,’ he answered, his mouth suddenly dry.

  ‘It’s Suzanne.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Are you at home?’

  Wisting surveyed the room. Someone had knocked over a dish of peanuts. Espen Mortensen had placed several layers of toilet paper on the carpet in an effort to soak up beer spilled from an overturned bottle. Christine Thiis’ handbag was underneath a chair, its contents strewn across the floor. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about, and I don’t want to discuss it on the phone. It’s to do with the Hummel case.’

  ‘The Hummel case?’ Wisting repeated, though he knew exactly what she meant. Jens Hummel was a taxi driver. Both he and his vehicle had disappeared on the night before Friday 6 January, more than six months ago. The last person to see him had been a passenger dropped off outside the Grand Hotel in Larvik’s Storgata at 01.23. The case remained a mystery.

  ‘I can call in later this morning, before there are too many customers in the café.’

  Wisting heard footsteps on the floor above. Christine Thiis must have wakened. ‘I’m on my way out,’ he said. ‘I can drop in on you.’

  ‘Before one o’clock?’

  He glanced at the time, calculating how long it had been since he stopped drinking. ‘I can be there in an hour,’ he answered, and knew from the way she thanked him that there was a smile on her face.

  He heard the sound of running water in the upstairs bathroom, crossed to the kitchen and took two cups from the cupboard. The coffee machine was humming faintly when Christine Thiis entered.

  ‘Hi,’ she said in a hoarse voice. Her chestnut brown hair was still dishevelled, but he could see that she had tried to tidy it. ‘Sorry, it . . .’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘That would be nice.’ They sat on either side of the kitchen table. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘That’s never happened before . . . I usually make my own way home.’ She drank from the cup and cleared her throat. ‘That is to say, I don’t usually go out. I’m not used to drinking alcohol.’

  ‘Then you needed it,’ Wisting said. He could see how uncomfortable she felt, sitting in the same clothes that she had worn when she went to bed. ‘You probably really needed to let your hair down. Totally relax and not think for a single minute about the children or work.’

  ‘But I should have made my way home.’

  ‘There was nothing waiting for you there anyway,’ Wisting said with a smile. He curled his hand round the coffee cup and appreciated again how good it is to sit with someone at the kitchen table. ‘I can drive you home later.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can take a taxi.’

  ‘I need to go out in any case,’ he said. ‘Something’s cropped up in the Hummel case.’

  Her eyes changed, shifting from slight embarrassment to total alertness. ‘Jens Hummel? We went over the whole case last week and agreed to shelve it. Is there something new?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’m going to meet someone who wants to talk.’

  Christine Thiis leaned across the table. ‘What they said in the newspaper was all wrong,’ she said. ‘We really have done everything we could in that enquiry.’

  She was referring to a newspaper article of the previous week. The disappearance had generated headlines in January as well, but not such enormous public interest. Jens Hummel had no close family to push the police and the press. Only a grandmother left alone with her loss.

  When the media grew interested again, Wisting had hoped that the publicity would lead to fresh information. The time factor did not necessarily reduce the likelihood of a successful enquiry. In fact, it could allow rumour and gossip to spread in ever-increasing circles until it reached someone willing to talk. Fresh reporting could act as a trigger.

  However, it had been angled extremely negatively against the police in general, and Wisting in particular as leader of the investigation. Nothing emerged about what specifically the police could have done differently, but the article gave a picture of low interest and substandard work. The lack of results spoke for itself. They had not even managed to locate Hummel’s car, and recently published statistics on increased traffic control operations were used to support assertions of poor judgment and wrong priorities. Their sympathies in the case did not lie with the police who were faced with such a difficult task, but with the grandmother who had lost her only grandchild.

  Wisting was used to criticism and normally it bounced off, but this time he felt differently. It was a reminder of their failure, and how the Hummel case had originally made him feel anxious, creating a nagging sense of inadequacy.

  ‘Disappeared without trace has rarely been a more appropriate expression,’ Christine Thiis said. ‘You’d think with all our telecommunications networks, toll stations, taximeters and on board computers that we would be able to find something to tell us what became of him and his vehicle.’

  Wisting agreed. He thought of the time spent investigating the Hummel case as days with no content. They had assembled a packed timeline for the twenty-four hours before the man vanished, but nothing pointed to his present whereabouts. In parallel, they had tried to form an impression of Jens Hummel as a person; it was a complex picture. He was thirty-four years of age and lived alone. He had worked in a v
ariety of casual jobs until the age of twenty-five when he had started to drive a taxi. Five years ago, he had obtained his own licence and vehicle. Spending almost ten years behind the wheel had given him a wide network of contacts with very different people, most of whom they had interviewed.

  Disappearance cases were always difficult, not only because there was no crime scene to examine, but also because it was difficult to unify a sprawling investigation.

  They lingered over their coffee, discussing some of the most interesting theories. One posited a confrontation over narcotics. It was rumoured that Hummel had acted as a local courier and used his taxi to transport drugs. It was also suggested that he had picked up and delivered prostitutes, which had more or less been confirmed but had not led them any further.

  Wisting looked at his watch. It was time to leave. In the car, their conversation turned to other topics, about the summer and their holiday plans.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Christine Thiis said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ve promised to help Line with her renovations. She thinks I’m good at wallpapering.’

  Christine Thiis looked pensive. ‘My children are going to spend four weeks with their father; it’ll be strange to be on my own for such a long time.’ Wisting turned the car into the kerb outside her house. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said, ‘and apologies again for not making my own way home last night.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘You must phone me,’ she said, placing her hand on his arm.

  He met her gaze. She blinked both eyes before withdrawing her hand. ‘If anything comes of it, I mean. If you get an answer to what happened to Jens Hummel.’

  3

  The day was hot and oppressive with no breath of wind. Wisting found a vacant parking space beside the steamboat quay and stepped from the car. Two little boys stood at the quayside, each with a fishing rod. Seagulls flew above them in lethargic circles.

  The streets were unusually crowded. Wisting nodded occasionally to familiar faces as they passed by.

  Most of the small tables outside The Golden Peace were already occupied. Wisting hesitated at the door until his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he saw Suzanne seated at the far end of the premises, waving him across. She was wearing a white summer dress, her black hair drawn back in a ponytail. She stood up and gave him a hug. The skin round her eyes wrinkled when she smiled. ‘Would you like anything?’ she asked. ‘Coffee?’

  Wisting’s head felt heavy. ‘I’d like a Farris,’ he said, clearing his throat.

  She disappeared behind the counter and returned with a bottle of mineral water and a glass filled with ice cubes. ‘I didn’t know who else to talk to,’ she said.

  Wisting poured water into his glass. ‘You said it was to do with Jens Hummel.’

  ‘I don’t really know if there’s anything in it,’ she said, ‘but there’s been a man in here on a few evenings recently. He sits at the bar, reads the newspapers and doesn’t say much, but I’ve picked up that he’s been living abroad for a while.’

  Suzanne moved an unaddressed envelope that lay between them on the table before continuing: ‘Last week, you said in the newspaper that you were going to shelve the Hummel case.’

  ‘Hold in abeyance,’ Wisting corrected.

  ‘Is that different?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘in connection with their outline of the case, among other things they printed a photograph of Jens Hummel’s taxi.’

  Yet again Wisting was reminded of their unsuccessful media strategy.

  ‘It was quiet here that evening. I noticed that the man’s reaction was really strange when he read it.’

  ‘How was that?’

  Suzanne lowered her voice, even though there was nobody nearby to eavesdrop: ‘He grew restless. He glanced up from the newspaper and looked over his shoulder before he went on reading. Afterwards, he stood up, went outside and waited for a while before coming back to read the article again. I went over to collect empty glasses and he said something odd.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘First of all I made a comment about the article, something about it being a peculiar case. Then he looked at me and said it’s sitting in the barn.’

  ‘It’s sitting in the barn?’ Wisting repeated.

  ‘I didn’t get to ask him more. “It was just sitting there one day,” he said, pointing at the picture of the taxi in the newspaper. Then he folded the paper, took it with him and left.’

  ‘What barn was he talking about?’

  ‘I don’t know any more than what I’ve told you, but I’ve thought a lot about it and felt it important enough to phone you. That man knows something.’

  ‘Has he been here since?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Was he with anyone when he was here?’

  ‘No, I’ve spoken to the staff. Nobody knows who he is.’

  Wisting reeled off a list of questions about what the man looked like, what he had been wearing, what dialect he spoke, and whether he had any other distinguishing features.

  Suzanne fiddled with the envelope in front of her. ‘He paid by bank card,’ she said. ‘I checked the till roll and worked out approximately when he must have paid. Presumably you can use the transaction number to find out who he is.’

  Wisting smiled and took the envelope. This could be a breakthrough in the Hummel case. Among the detectives, various theories had circulated about what had become of the car. Some thought that Jens Hummel had driven out of town of his own free will, others believed that it was lying somewhere at the foot of a precipice after an accident or at least off road having been dumped. Wisting was among those who felt that it must have been stashed in a garage or somewhere similar after Jens Hummel had fallen victim to a crime.

  Police patrols had explored all the side roads in the area. A helicopter had searched over increasingly extensive territory. Divers had scoured along the edges of piers and jetties. Multi-storey car parks had been inspected. It had all been futile, so it was not unlikely that the car had been deposited in a barn.

  Suzanne got to her feet. ‘I need to start work,’ she said. ‘How’s Line getting on?’

  ‘Fine,’ Wisting said. ‘I think she’s doing very well.’

  It looked as if Suzanne wanted to say something further, but she let it drop. Wisting was grateful. What had happened to Line was difficult to talk about.

  Suzanne took a few steps over to the counter. ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘With everything. Say hello to her from me.’

  ‘Call me if he turns up here again,’ Wisting asked, remaining seated. He opened the envelope and took out the slip of paper. The numbers on the printout from the point of sale terminal told him nothing. They would have to ask the card company for the name of the person behind that combination of digits. He had waited a long time for some sort of breakthrough in the Hummel enquiry. Now he was going to have to wait a bit longer: until Monday.

  4

  Wisting let himself into the police station as early as quarter to seven on Monday morning, flecks of white paint still on his hands after helping Line to paint skirting boards. On his way up to the criminal investigation department he nodded to the tired officers slumped over their computers, writing the final night-shift reports.

  He spent the time until the other investigators showed up on trawling through the Hummel case once more, scraping the white paint off his hands with his nails as he read. A new piece of information could make him view the case from a different angle, and what had previously seemed insignificant could become extremely important in the light of a new hypothesis. He leafed through the case documents searching for something that had been left unexplained, chance events that might turn out to conceal significant connections.

  One distinctive aspect of the case had been Jens Hummel’s long distance drives. At least once a week he had gone on trips lasting hours to Kristiansand or Oslo. It could be sheer chance and, as a matter of fac
t, these were nothing more than statistics. What made Hummel’s trips special were that they were paid for in cash, and were not booked through the taxi headquarters. Hummel had joked to his colleagues that he drove a rich old lady who was visiting relatives on the south coast, but no one had ever seen her and the police had not succeeded in tracking her down.

  He found nothing new in the files. An electronic search through the list of tip-offs for the word barn did not yield anything specific either. His office door was open and he listened every time someone entered the department. At ten to eight he heard Nils Hammer’s footsteps as he shuffled to his office at the end of the corridor.

  Hammer had become proficient at finding and following electronic traces, mostly due to his excellent ability to adapt. Investigation methods and possibilities that had not existed when they started their careers had now become crucial.

  Wisting got up from his desk and went to see him. The burly police officer had brought a plastic beaker of coffee from the duty desk and sipped from it as he logged into the data system. Wisting placed the printout from the POS terminal on the table. ‘How fast can you find out who paid with this card?’ he asked.

  Hammer put aside his coffee cup, picked up the slip of paper and gave it a quick once over. ‘How urgent is it?’

  ‘The person who used this card may know where Jens Hummel is.’

  Nils Hammer sat up straight. ‘Give me a couple of hours,’ he said, draining his cup in one swallow.

  Wisting turned to go back to his office.

  ‘How did it go with her, by the way?’ Hammer asked his retreating back.

  ‘Who?’ Wisting asked, wondering if he meant Line.

  ‘Our Assistant Chief of Police,’ Hammer said, grinning. ‘She flaked out completely.’

  ‘She was fine. She probably needed to wet her whistle.’ He headed for his own office, smiling at the memory of morning coffee shared with Christine Thiis.

  Routine tasks were next in line. He worked his way through the bundle of reports and notifications from the weekend. It looked as if the summer hiatus also affected the crime statistics. With the exception of some disturbances in restaurants, a few drunk drivers and a fire on a boat, there was little of note.