Ordeal (William Wisting Series)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Aron Heisel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I think maybe he stores things there.’

  Wisting picked up a ballpoint pen and slumped back in his chair. The discovery of taxi Z-1086 inside the ramshackle barn had certainly raised the Hummel case from ‘held in abeyance’ to a new level of complication. Through Aron Heisel, the disappearance had now linked to the network in which Frank Mandt had operated. It was therefore imperative to gain an overview of the different participants in that arena as well as their activities and roles. A real challenge, he mused, twisting the pen between his fingers. The intelligence dossier showed that this was a closed world which no one had managed to penetrate.

  Aron Heisel tugged at the sleeves of his sweater.

  ‘How did you know Frank Mandt?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘Through mutual acquaintances.’

  Wisting sat up straight and threw the pen down on the desk. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘We know the farm’s been used for storage and transfer of spirits, but that’s not what we’re interested in right now. We want to know how Jens Hummel’s taxi ended up there. If you can’t answer that, then you’ll need to cough up the names of other people who’ve had access to the barn.’

  A gust of wind made the curtains at the window billow out. ‘I think I might be better to talk to a lawyer,’ Aron Heisel said.

  Wisting pushed the office telephone across the desk to him. That Heisel wanted to talk to a lawyer did not necessarily mean he knew something or would come out with any confessions about the Hummel case. More likely he wanted to guard against incriminating others.

  The defence lawyer’s name was Reidar Heitmann and he arrived an hour later. He conferred briefly with his client in private before Wisting got a chance to ask further questions. Aron Heisel gave a detailed statement about when he had arrived in Norway and what he had been doing while in the country, but shied away from everything to do with Frank Mandt and his operations. Finally Wisting led him back to the cells, no wiser about Jens Hummel’s fate.

  11

  One of Wisting’s duties was to keep the Assistant Chief of Police up to speed about developments in major cases. After locking Aron Heisel into his cell and accompanying his defence lawyer out of the building, he took his notepad and a cup of coffee into Christine Thiis’ office.

  A shaft of evening sun shone through the window, catching the right side of her face as she glanced up. Wisting drew up a chair and sat down. The heat in the room pasted his shirt to his clammy back.

  ‘The media know we’ve found the taxi,’ she said.

  This was to be expected as a tow vehicle had transported the missing taxi through half the town. Also, detectives were making door to door enquiries in the vicinity of the smallholding.

  ‘What did you give them?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘A brief comment confirming that the car been found but Jens Hummel is still missing, and that a man living at the smallholding is helping police with their enquiries.’

  Wisting’s thoughts turned to Line. He had been abrupt when refusing her dinner invitation, saying nothing about what he was working on. Now she would read it for herself in some online newspaper or other. ‘Somebody needs to talk to his grandmother,’ he said. ‘So that she doesn’t learn about it from the newspapers.’

  ‘I’ve told Torunn Borg to do that,’ Christine Thiis said.

  Torunn Borg had been appointed as family contact when Jens Hummel was reported missing. Wisting was happy to avoid continuous contact with families in criminal cases. The delicate balance between the formal police role and the need to present a human face was demanding. You had to offer a great deal of yourself, and it shifted focus from leadership of the investigation. It was a distraction.

  ‘Did anything emerge from the interview?’ Christine Thiis asked.

  ‘No, and I don’t think Aron Heisel knows anything about the disappearance.’

  ‘We’ll have to let him go.’

  Wisting looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘I’ve booked transport to the remand centre.’

  ‘His lawyer was on the phone before you arrived. We don’t have any reason to hold him.’

  ‘Can’t we keep him until we’ve concluded the examination of the barn and the smallholding?’

  Christine Thiis sighed, and Wisting could see from her expression that she was weighing up the legal arguments against the tactical considerations, the formal guidelines against his preferences and requirements. ‘The most interesting thing about Aron Heisel is his connection to Frank Mandt,’ he explained. ‘It points in the direction of some kind of showdown in criminal circles.’

  ‘Jens Hummel isn’t a criminal. He’s got a clean sheet.’

  ‘So had Frank Mandt, but he’s probably one of the people who’ve smuggled most of the spirits and narcotics to this country.’

  Christine Thiis moved to avoid having the sun in her face. ‘Have you heard anything from the technicians?’

  Wisting glanced at his watch. Espen Mortensen had said that he and the other crime scene technicians would finish in and around the barn before eight o’clock. Now it was quarter past and he had still not returned. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘They’ll phone me if they find anything of interest.’

  ‘And the door to door enquiries?’

  Wisting shook his head. ‘The smallholding is out of the way. Mandt and his people have stored, divided and transported spirits from there for years without anyone noticing anything. It’s not to be expected that someone has spotted a taxi out there.’

  His phone rang: Nils Hammer. He fixed a quizzical look on Christine Thiis’ dark eyes and let it ring.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll let him sit it out until the morning.’

  With a smile, Wisting answered the call. ‘The dogs have found something behind the barn out here,’ Hammer advised. ‘Are you coming out again?’

  ‘What have they found?’ Wisting asked, glancing across at Christine Thiis.

  ‘I don’t know yet. There’s an old potato cellar here that the dogs have shown interest in. Mortensen and the technicians are going in now.’

  Wisting got to his feet. ‘We’re on our way,’ he said.

  12

  The police guard had been moved to the main road, and a recording van from the local office of the national broadcaster, NRK, was parked behind two other cars at the verge across from the weed covered track. Several journalists huddled together. Wisting dropped his speed, recognising one of them as the journalist who had penned the critical article about police work on the missing person case. A photographer raised his camera and directed it at him but Wisting looked away, gesturing towards an officer who was standing with his arms crossed. The policeman lifted the red and white plastic tape that blocked the turn-off and let them pass.

  Wisting parked in the same place as before and stepped out. Christine Thiis shut the door on the passenger side and surveyed her surroundings. Hammer waded towards them through the tall grass beside the barn. Wisting looked at him enquiringly. Somewhere behind Hammer, a dog barked.

  ‘We thought he might have been in there,’ Hammer said, sounding discouraged. ‘The dogs went completely crazy, but we were wrong.’

  Christine Thiis stared past him to the trail through the high grass. ‘Completely empty?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Hammer said. ‘Follow me.’

  The sun had vanished behind the forest fringes in the west, but the air was still warm. The back of Hammer’s shirt was soaked with sweat and the damp patch between his shoulders changed shape as perspiration ran down his spine. The trail skirted the barn. Approximately one hundred metres out in the meadow, several people stood in a semi-circle and a police dog jumped as they drew near.

  The potato cellar was a slight elevation in the otherwise flat landscape and almost impossible to see, its entrance in a hollow, a rotting door with rusty hinges and fittings held open with a stick.

  ‘This has probably been a potato field,’ Espen Mortensen said, using his right hand to indicate its scope
. ‘Before the refrigerator was invented, crops were stored in cellars like this. Moisture from the earth made it cool in summer and frost-free in winter. It would have been fortunate for us if a corpse had been hidden in here. It would have been like keeping it in a large fridge.’

  Wisting hunkered down and peered through the dark opening. ‘What did you actually find in there?’

  Mortensen fetched a hefty flashlight from the equipment case and used it to point at the aperture. ‘Take a look.’

  Wisting crouched and entered and Christine Thiis followed in his wake. The air inside was pleasantly cool, and he was aware of the raw smell of earth from the floor as his eyes gradually became accustomed to the dim light. The walls were lined with stone, and there were timber beams in the ceiling. At the far end, the wall had collapsed and stones were lying in a heap.

  ‘Over there,’ Mortensen said, pointing with the flashlight. ‘Just be careful where you put your feet.’

  Wisting looked down, avoiding the white patches of plaster poured into footprints on the ground and now hardening. He had an idea what the dogs had found. The ceiling was lower in the farthest part, and he had to walk with his head bowed. Here, the wall had totally collapsed, but the stones were no longer lying where they had fallen. Instead, they had been piled up to form a cave concealed by a stone slab.

  ‘One of the dogs is licensed as both a patrol dog and a narcotics dog,’ Mortensen said, directing the beam at stacks of pale brown packages inside the hidden space.

  ‘Narcotics?’ Christine Thiis asked.

  ‘Hammer thinks they’re amphetamines,’ Mortensen said.

  Supporting himself on a stone, Wisting crouched in front of the hiding place. Each of the packages was the same shape and size as a pack of cigarettes and sealed with tape. If these were amphetamines, then each might weigh a quarter kilo. He tried to count them and arrived at a total of seventeen, but there were probably more, further back among the stones. In any case, it was one of the largest narcotics hauls they had made.

  Retracing his steps, he squinted in the daylight. The discovery of narcotics was confirmation of a picture, the shadowy outlines of which he had begun to discern in the course of the day. Jens Hummel had disappeared in the fallout from other criminal activities.

  13

  His mobile phone rang as soon as he opened the front door at home. It was Suzanne. ‘Did you find the taxi?’ she asked.

  ‘We found the barn,’ Wisting replied. ‘The taxi was there, just as your customer had said.’ He flipped off his shoes. ‘I’m glad you called,’ he added, though he wasn’t entirely sure whether this was because of locating the taxi, or just hearing from her.

  ‘Are you still at work?’

  ‘Just home.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, though that had been some time ago.

  Suzanne paused for a moment before continuing: ‘I wondered if I could pop in to see you, if that’s convenient?’

  ‘That would be fine.’

  The atmosphere inside the house was stuffy after the long summer’s day. He opened the terrace doors wide and managed to air the room before she rang the doorbell. It was strange. She had lived with him for more than a year, had her own key and come and gone as she pleased. Now she was a visitor.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, touching the wound on his forehead.

  ‘It’s partly your fault,’ he said, describing the arrest of Aron Heisel while leading her through the house.

  She was wearing a dark green dress, loose on her slim figure. She stood at the terrace railings looking out over the town and fjord with anxiety obvious in her eyes. An enormous sail boat was making its way into the guest harbour. ‘I was twelve years old when I saw the sea for the first time,’ she said. ‘We visited relatives in Karachi and they took us to the coast. The beaches had brilliant white sand, the water was completely clear and a shade somewhere between green and blue.’

  Rarely did Wisting dwell on the fact that Suzanne came from a different country, with a very different background from his. ‘For me, it’s always just been there,’ he said. ‘Big and blue. I learned to swim the summer I was five.’ A sea breeze rustled the leaves on the old fruit trees. ‘I’ll get something for us to drink,’ he said, but all he could find was a half carton of apple juice. He poured it into a glass jug and filled it with ice cubes.

  Suzanne had taken a seat by the time he returned. ‘Did you find anything else?’ she asked.

  Wisting remained silent as he poured juice into a glass. ‘I don’t think he’s alive, anyway.’

  Suzanne picked up the glass but did not drink. ‘Doesn’t it affect you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘“That he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”’

  ‘That’s from Nietzsche,’ he said. ‘“And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.”’

  ‘It must affect you, standing face to face with death and evil as often as you do.’

  Wisting knew that he was a different person now from when he first encountered death as a young constable. He had seen some of the worst aspects of human nature, but also some of the best. His job as an investigator had actually taught him very little about death, but he had learned a great deal about life.

  ‘If it has affected me, then it’s made me understand how fragile life can be. Death, pain and sorrow put things in perspective. We can become grievously ill, be injured in a car accident, or at worst fall victim to a serious crime. Life isn’t just joy and happiness. Life is both good and bad, and sometimes it’s hard and brutal.’

  He took her hand, intertwining their fingers and holding tight. Her hand in his made him feel sentimental for a moment. He glanced at her encouragingly and shook their joined hands. Suzanne smiled but freed herself. ‘I think one of the girls in the café is stealing from the till,’ she said.

  Wisting straightened up. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Something in the accounts doesn’t add up.’

  ‘Is there cash missing?’

  Suzanne shook her head. ‘I think she’s smarter than that. The past few nights, there’s actually been too much money in the till.’

  Wisting nodded thoughtfully. He knew how it went. Customers who wanted to pay cash usually stood with their money ready while their drinks were mixed. Then it was a simple matter for the staff to pretend that the money had been rung up on the till but take it for themselves. The staff member would normally do a mental calculation of what he or she had omitted to ring up in the course of a shift, and remove the excess near the end of the working day. In that way, there would often be a positive difference in the cash.

  ‘On Saturday there were forty-two vodkas rung up,’ Suzanne continued. ‘That’s nearly two and a half bottles of vodka, but the stock had reduced by five bottles. That would tie in better with the same Saturday last year, when there were almost a hundred vodkas through the till.’

  Wisting did the sums in his head. ‘That’s nearly five thousand kroner,’ he reckoned. ‘Do you know who it is?’

  ‘I know who I trust and who I don’t, but I think it’s difficult.’

  ‘You’ve got a suspect?’

  ‘It’s someone called Unni. She’s cheerful and smart, but she makes a lot of mistakes in ringing up and returns, and it’s always when she’s on duty that it happens.’

  Wisting sat deep in thought. It was always difficult for a boss to deal with a member of staff who was stealing. It was a minefield, both legally and emotionally. ‘What sort of contract do you have with her?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s one of the permanent employees. In autumn and winter she works every alternate weekend, but in summer she works almost more than a full-time post. I can’t give her the sack on the basis of just a suspicion.’

  ‘I know somebody who runs a security firm,’ Wisting said. ‘He has inspectors who can conduct a shrinkage check. You’ll receive a profess
ional report and help with any dismissal. You’ll save the cost in a couple of evenings.’

  Suzanne had already considered that. ‘I’d hoped you could help me,’ she said. ‘You probably don’t have time now, but I’d appreciate it if you could sit for an evening or two beside the bar and keep an eye on things, so that I can be quite certain before I take things further.’

  ‘She most likely knows who I am. She won’t try it while I’m there.’

  ‘You’ve worked on surveillance. You can sit at one of the nearest tables and pretend you’re busy reading a newspaper or something.’

  Wisting put his hand round his glass, now damp with condensation, and raised it to his mouth. Suzanne did likewise and gazed at him over the rim. The fine laughter lines were gone from the corners of her eyes. She has no one else, he thought. A few friends, but no family or anyone who knew her as well as he did. No one she could go to with distressing or difficult problems. ‘I can pay a visit tomorrow evening,’ he said.

  Something glinted in her nut-brown eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  They remained there until dusk, when the boats still out on the water lit their lanterns. He accompanied her to the door and stood gazing after her as she drove off. It was now three minutes past midnight, and a chilly breeze stirred the air.

  14

  Line sat at the kitchen table with tea, toast and jam. The radio played light summer music and the local paper was open in front of her. The headline was yesterday’s news, that the police had located Jens Hummel’s taxi. There was nothing more than what she had read online the previous evening, but they had used different photographs. One of them was of her father with a uniformed police officer lifting the crime scene tape to let him through to the track and the smallholding where they had found the taxi. According to the newspaper, the police had searched the area until late evening.

  She leaned towards the window and peered up at her father’s house. He had arrived home late. She had not seen his car until she had gone to the toilet around two o’clock. Now he had already driven away. She opened her laptop to see what VG had written about the case: a brief report that referenced the local paper. In addition, they had spoken to Assistant Police Chief Christine Thiis.