Ordeal (William Wisting Series)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Christine Thiis appeared when he was nearing the bottom of the pile. ‘Thanks again,’ she said, smiling with a hint of shyness in her eyes. ‘For driving me home.’

  Wisting brushed it off.

  ‘Did you find out anything about the Hummel case?’ she asked, taking a seat.

  ‘That remains to be seen.’ He explained about the bank terminal and the unknown card owner’s reaction to what had been printed in the newspaper, without mentioning Suzanne’s name. She had not asked to be kept out of it, but he had not told Christine who he was going to meet and saw no reason to do so now.

  Christine Thiis stood up. ‘You’ve got a white spot here,’ she said, pointing at the side of her cheek.

  Wisting touched his face. ‘Painting,’ he explained, showing off his hands. ‘I’m probably going to look like this for a few more weeks.’

  She smiled again and closed the office door behind her when she left.

  He returned to his notes. The door did not open again for nearly two hours when Hammer entered carrying printouts. He sat in the vacant chair.

  ‘The bank card belongs to an Aron Heisel,’ he said, putting one on the desk.

  Wisting drew the sheet of paper towards him. In addition to the account number, the date of birth was printed, but no address. Wisting calculated that Aron Heisel must be forty-eight years old. ‘Who is this Aron Heisel?’

  Hammer showed him a photo from police records, taken from front and side, a younger version of the man Suzanne had described, with narrow shoulders, flat nose, a suggestion of dark rings under his grey eyes and a gap between his front teeth. Wisting asked how the man in the picture had come to be registered with the police.

  ‘He was found guilty of being the linchpin when the police uncovered a big spirits factory outside Drammen in 1997. In 2002 he was arrested again and sentenced for smuggling alcohol and he was a suspect in another case in Østfold three years ago, but not convicted.’

  ‘Where does he stay now?’

  ‘His last place of residence is near Marbella in Spain.’

  Wisting was familiar with the city, having once been there on police business with Torunn Borg.

  ‘He’s in Norway now,’ Hammer continued, and set down a closely written list of transactions. ‘The card’s been used in different places in Spain,’ he said, running his index finger down the list. ‘The last time was at the airport in Malaga on 12 July. Then, as you can see, he’s in Norway.’

  Wisting squinted at the printout. The card had been used the previous day, at the REMA 1000 supermarket in Holmejordet. The shop was located beside the main road into Stavern. Wisting himself stopped there now and again to buy groceries on his way home from work.

  He searched for his glasses, but could not find them. Instead he continued to study the list with his eyes screwed up. The card had been used for purchases at builders’ merchants, to pay for a meal at one of the restaurants at the inner harbour, and a larger sum had been paid out at the Elkjøp electronics retailer. He found several visits to Suzanne’s café, The Golden Peace. With the exception of the last visit, he always paid his bill just after midnight. The subsequent transaction was always charged to the Vestfold Taxi Company.

  ‘We can track him down,’ he said, pointing at the line noting one of the taxi trips. ‘Someone drove him home.’

  5

  It took Hammer three hours to find a taxi driver who remembered driving Aron Heisel. The first two he had spoken to did not recollect either passenger or trip, but the third recognised him from the photograph and told Hammer that he had driven him two nights in a row. Both times the passenger had been dropped off at Huken.

  The journey from the police station took ten minutes. For Wisting, Huken had never been more than a place name on the inland main road that meandered out to Helgeroa.

  Hammer reduced his speed as they approached, and Wisting leaned forward in his seat, studying his surroundings. Potato plants grew tall on either side of the road. They arrived first at a modern house that looked as if it had been built on former farmland. Children were jumping on a trampoline in the garden, and two older boys stood repairing a moped. Beside the road was an old workshop or garage for heavy goods vehicles, and behind that a number of red-painted outbuildings. No barn.

  ‘Drive on,’ he said.

  They passed a paddock where horses were grazing. A man stood on a ladder painting the stable wall. In an open space, a tractor with a log splitter attached was parked beside a pile of wood. In the distance the sun reflected off the remaining panes of glass in an old market garden. They spotted a milk churn shelter in a layby and a blue sign indicating it was a bus stop.

  ‘Here,’ Hammer said, pointing. ‘He dropped him off here.’ Behind a dry-stone wall a narrow almost overgrown track led into the woods.

  Hammer turned in. A flock of birds took off from a leafy tree, like a swarm of insects. The car bumped slowly over potholes and clumps of grass. A wide ditch filled with stagnant water, covered in unsavoury green slime, ran the length of the left side of the track. Only intermittently could Wisting see patches of black water.

  The woods grew denser around them before the landscape opened out again, and the track ended at an abandoned smallholding, with a tumbledown barn situated at the edge of the woods. Half the roof tiles were missing, so it looked like a skeleton picked clean by vultures.

  Hammer stopped the car in front of the farmhouse. Two outbuildings with corrugated roofs were located between the house and barn. Wild roses and clusters of purple foxgloves surrounded them.

  Wisting stepped out, slamming the car door. Hammer left the driver’s door open. A summery buzz of insects gyrating above the tall grass was the only sound. Once, the farmhouse had been painted white. Now it was grey and neglected. The downpipes hung broken at the corners, there were no curtains at the windows, and a wooden board replaced a broken pane.

  Wisting approached the door and knocked. Without waiting for a response, he put his hands to the glass of the nearest window and peered inside: a blue-painted kitchen with plates, cup and glasses piled up in the sink, plastic bags, empty bottles and empty pizza cartons on the worktop. An ant trail led from one to the wall trim. On the kitchen table, a newspaper was spread out beside a coffee mug.

  ‘No one home?’ Hammer asked.

  ‘No, but someone’s living here,’ Wisting replied. He rapped the glass with his knuckles and shouted before retracing his steps to the door and rattling the handle. ‘Locked,’ he said, and turned to face the barn. ‘We’ll see if we can get in there instead.’

  They strode through the long grass to the double doors in the middle of the barn wall and a plank of wood that was tilted against them to hold them shut. Hammer kicked it away. The doors slid open a few centimetres, but they were still held closed by a bolt on the inside.

  A door further along the wall was also locked. There were latticed windows on either side. Most of the glazing putty had crumbled away, but the panes were held in place by little staples bent towards the glass. ‘We can’t leave here without checking,’ Hammer said, poking at the frame with his fingers.

  Wisting nodded and stood in silence as Hammer went back to the car to fetch an ice scraper. He pushed it down behind the staples, forced them out and soon was able to lift out one of the panes. He thrust his hand inside and unhooked the catches.

  Wisting held the window open while Hammer crawled inside. From the outside he could hear Hammer swearing and something scraping along the wall before falling to the floor. The bolt was drawn back and the double barn doors slid open. Throwing them wide, Wisting looked inside the barn’s enormous interior. The smell of dry straw billowed towards them. Strips of light forced their way through cracks in the timber.

  After a short delay, their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and the room took shape: two doors on one of the gable walls, a cargo trailer with two axles and four wheels, behind that a stack of hay bales and a pallet of white plastic containers, and along the walls hung ha
yforks, spades, rakes, a scythe and other tools. Various tractor attachments were scattered in a corner along with old milk churns.

  There was a vehicle in the centre of the barn, covered in a grey tarpaulin that did not quite reach the floor. Wisting marched over, his feet stirring up fine dust that made his nose itch.

  Hammer took hold of the tarpaulin and yanked it off, revealing a black Volvo V60 with a taxi sign on the roof. Taxi number Z-1086. Jens Hummel’s car.

  Wisting leaned over the windscreen and peered inside without touching anything. It was empty. The key was in the ignition. A half-empty bottle of cola sat in the centre console. On the passenger seat were a pair of leather gloves and a shrivelled, half-eaten mouldy baguette wrapped in plastic.

  Removing the tarpaulin, Hammer went behind the car to open the boot lid. ‘Empty. Totally empty.’

  Wisting felt a tingling sensation; the Hummel case was opening up again. He took out his mobile phone to call Mortensen and arrange for a technical examination of the car and the barn. Then they would have to organise a search. Since Jens Hummel was not inside the taxi, it was fairly unlikely that he would be found anywhere else in the barn, but the smallholding would be the starting point for a search. They would have to dredge the streams and riverbeds, probe crevices, gravel pits and drained wells, everywhere that a body might possibly be hidden.

  Before he managed to tap in the number, the phone rang: Suzanne. He answered by giving his name, and heard himself how curt and dismissive he sounded.

  ‘He’s here now,’ she whispered into the receiver. ‘The man who said that Jens Hummel’s taxi was in the barn. He’s in the café now.’

  6

  Taking two steps back, Line used her hand to sweep her fringe from her forehead and surveyed the living room ceiling. The newly painted surface was gleaming, and the room looked more spacious now that it was white. She glanced at the yellowish-brown pine panelling in the hallway. That could wait until tomorrow; she had earned a break.

  Cleaning the brushes, she packed away the painting equipment and pulled off her white overalls. Her father had promised to paint the ceiling that afternoon and would be annoyed that she had already done it. Not really angry, but he wouldn’t be pleased, given her condition. But she was looking forward to being finished and, besides, the paint did not contain any harmful solvents or gases.

  Her hand automatically moved down to her large stomach; soon it would be eight months. Even before the baby was born, it had already changed her life. She had lost her taste for big city life and moved home to familiar and safe surroundings. Left an exciting job as a journalist where the pace was too fast and expectations too high to combine with life as the mother of a young child. Maybe it would have been different if she had someone to share the responsibility, but it wasn’t like that.

  She headed for the fridge, took out a bottle of tap water and, as she drank, stood in the living room doorway. She ought to give the window frames another coat now that she was started, but it would have to wait.

  There was very little left of the living room she had taken over with the house, though she would probably never manage to free herself entirely of the man found dead in his chair, or the man who had hanged himself in the basement in the late sixties, just after the house had been built. She shuddered at the idea and placed her hand protectively over her bump. It still felt quite strange that it was so huge, but she had been lucky. She had not put on much weight and was fighting fit. At present she was mostly aware of it in her back, mainly because of the painting. Apart from that, she had more energy now than she’d had in ages.

  She returned the water to the fridge and went to the bathroom. She had no regrets about spending money on renovations before she moved in. The house was a good purchase, and with the sale of her flat in Oslo she actually had a generous budget.

  She stripped off and scrutinised her belly from various angles. It had never been as tight as now, so tight she could feel the baby’s movements when it changed position. She held her hand over a minuscule hard bulge that pushed the skin out on her stomach. Was it a hand or a foot?

  She did not like to think about the actual birth, which was only four weeks away, and she dreaded it. She had done some reading, but did not know whether that was helpful. She would just have to take it as it came, she mused, shifting her attention to her face in the mirror. There were two white spots on her right cheek and another on her throat. She rubbed them off, washing her hands clean of paint, before stepping into the shower.

  Half an hour later she was sitting in her car en route to the town centre. It was not easy finding clothes to fit her steadily increasing bulk. As a rule she wore tracksuit trousers or a tunic, but for now she had put on a light and comfortable dress with a high drawstring waist and a loose skirt.

  The traffic moved slowly towards the centre where most of the narrow streets were closed, transformed into a pedestrian precinct for the summer. Usually she could find a parking space in one of the less congested side streets, but today she ended up parking in the fee-paying area set up in the old tennis courts.

  She was hoping to find a spare table outside The Golden Peace or one of the other cafés now serving on the pavement, but first she wanted to go into the little interior décor shop with such a pleasant atmosphere on the corner of Skippergata and Verftsgata. Every time she went inside she gleaned fresh ideas about how to decorate her home. In addition to a great deal of elegant interior decorations, they also stocked jewellery and clothes.

  The streets were swarming with people as usual. At one of the market stalls, she stopped to look at some handcrafted jewellery, but walked on before the stallholder engaged her in conversation.

  She took off her sunglasses when she stepped inside the interiors shop. Here too there were lots of people, but the air was cooler, and every metre of shelving was filled with marvellous things: scented candles, mirrors, frames, clocks, decorative boxes, jars, pictures, cushions, rugs, cups, dishes, lamps, blackboards, hooks, signs, candlesticks, wooden boxes, pots, buckets and small items of furniture.

  Tired of the trend for nostalgia in which every piece of furniture was required to look old and shabby she aimed for a cleaner and more modern style, but it was also important to put her own personal stamp on the final look. She would hang her own pictures on the walls. She was skilled with a camera, just as much a photographer as a journalist. What she looked forward to most was kitting out a workroom in the basement. She envisaged a rough unpolished design with rustic lamps, well-worn filing cabinets and the front-page stories on which she had worked framed and displayed on grey brick walls.

  She stopped at a trendy wall clock with Roman numerals. As she lifted the price ticket, someone bumped into her.

  ‘Sorry!’

  A woman of her own age with a child on her arm and sunglasses on her head put her hand tentatively on Line’s bump. ‘Are you okay?’

  Line smiled, nodding. She stretched out her hand to the clock again, but her eyes returned to the woman with the child. There was something familiar about her face.

  ‘You’re Line, aren’t you?’ the other woman asked. ‘Line Wisting?’

  Line smiled in confirmation before she cocked her head and frowned in an effort to recall who the other woman was.

  ‘I’m Sofie. We went to primary school together. It’s not so odd that you don’t remember me, but of course I’ve read about you in the newspapers. Or at least, I’ve read a lot of what you’ve written.’

  The name and face fell into place. ‘Sofie Mandt,’ Line said. ‘You moved when we were in year seven, or something like that.’

  ‘Year five. My name is Lund now. And this is Maja.’ She tickled her daughter under the chin, producing a gurgling burst of laughter and two deep dimples.

  ‘You’re married?’ Line asked, caressing the child’s head.

  ‘No, Lund is my grandmother’s maiden name,’ Sofie explained. ‘It’s just Maja and me.’

  Line wanted to tell her that she was
alone too, but left it unsaid. ‘Are you here on holiday?’ she asked.

  Sofie Lund shook her head. ‘I’ve just moved back.’

  ‘Me too! I’ve lived in Oslo for five years, but that’s enough now.’ Line laid her hand on her stomach. ‘I’ve bought a house in Varden in the street where I grew up. I’m doing it up now.’

  ‘When are you due?’

  ‘At the end of August.’ Line concentrated on the child on Sofie’s arm. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘She was one in May.’ Sofie put the child down on the floor, where she took several unsteady steps before grabbing her mother’s leg and holding on tight.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘In the centre,’ Sofie nodded in the direction of their house.

  Line crouched down and chatted to Maja. After moving to Oslo she had gradually lost contact with her old friends, but gained new ones among her work colleagues. She was prepared to take time to build a new circle, and this could well be a start. ‘Would you like to go for coffee?’ she asked.

  Sofie Lund did not answer immediately. She was studying a little sign stating that life was like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. ‘Yes, please,’ she eventually replied and put the sign back on the shelf.

  Line smiled and checked the price of the wall clock: nearly twelve hundred kroner. If they still had it at the end of the summer, she could probably buy it for half that price.

  A young couple got up from one of the tables outside The Golden Peace, freeing a place for them, and a man with a skip cap at an adjacent table moved aside to make space for Maja’s pushchair. Line went inside and bought the coffees. Suzanne was behind the counter, but one of the young girls took her order. When she came out again, she had bought two slices of cake as well as two lattés.