Ordeal (William Wisting Series)

by Jorn Lier Horst

  The café was half-full, music subdued so as not to disturb the chatter at the tables. The customers were a mixture of young and old, locals and summer tourists. Suzanne stood at one of the innermost tables, talking to a young couple. She gave him a quick nod to show that she had seen him, before looking away. He found a table at the wall where not many could see him, but where he had a good view of the bar counter and the till. He put a newspaper on the table and hung his jacket over the back of the chair before approaching the counter.

  The girl who served him had a name badge with ‘Unni’ printed on it, the one Suzanne suspected of being the thief. Blond and cheerful, she wore her hair in a ponytail. Wisting asked for a cup of coffee and a slice of caramel cake and paid with coins. The girl picked them up, but before she had them in her hand, Wisting turned his back. He heard her ring up the till and the money being dropped into the drawer.

  Two other girls were working, in addition to Suzanne and Unni. All were kept busy, and it looked as if they stood at the bar, cleared tables and washed glasses without any fixed pattern.

  He felt uncomfortable in the role of undercover restaurant detective, but peeked up from his newspaper every time Unni took a new order at the counter. One time it appeared that she had rung up the wrong amount on the till. A grey-haired man had given her a two-hundred-kroner note for a glass of beer. The cash drawer opened and shut several times before she managed to give him his change.

  Suzanne swept past him a number of times without him looking up at her. His coffee had grown cold, but he gulped it down and began to read an article about the holiday habits of Norwegians. One of the other girls removed his empty coffee cup. ‘Nina’ was the name on her badge. She seemed more bashful than the other two, and smiled shyly as she moved off.

  When he finished reading the newspaper, he stood up and walked over to the bar, bought another coffee and lingered at the counter for a moment or two. Suzanne moved nimbly among the tables, smiling at her customers. She was beautiful, tall and slim, with silky coal-black hair.

  His mobile phone rang. It was Christine Thiis. ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘Were you expecting something?’

  ‘I’m really just passing on the question,’ she said. ‘I’m at the formal summer dinner with the Police Chief and the other police prosecutors.’

  Three men at one of the window tables turned round, their eyes on Suzanne as she walked past with her arms filled with empty glasses.

  ‘There’s no news. I’d have let you know.’

  ‘I know that,’ Christine said, hesitating momentarily. ‘He’s critical.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Police Chief. He took me aside and said he wondered whether you were up to leading the investigation.’

  Wisting took his coffee back to the table. Ivan Sundt was newly appointed to the post and came from a position as an Appeal Court judge, lacking experience and understanding of practical police investigative work. ‘Why does he wonder that?’

  ‘He’s caught up with that newspaper article, the one about Jens Hummel’s grandmother.’

  Suzanne passed his table. Wisting looked up at her and received a fleeting smile in return before she disappeared behind the bar counter.

  ‘What answer did you give him?’ he asked.

  ‘That I have full confidence in you. I have complete trust that you’ll solve this case.’

  Wisting thanked her for the support. When he had ended the conversation, he was left with a feeling that bothered him. He ought to be sitting in his office delving into piles of paperwork instead of playing private detective here, but stayed for another two hours. When he stood up to leave, he had spent almost two hundred kroner on coffees in the bar without observing anything to bolster Suzanne’s suspicions. He was in the midst of what was in all probability a murder investigation, and felt that his time had been wasted.

  He texted Suzanne from the car, promising to return another evening and wishing her good night. She responded with a brief Okay, thanks as he drove up in front of his house.

  19

  The morning meeting was informal and swiftly concluded. The night had not brought anything new to the case. The atmosphere was edgy, and those present were keen to make a start on the day’s work instead of sitting sharing thoughts and theories. Wisting spent the rest of the morning preparing a fresh round of questioning with Aron Heisel. If nothing new cropped up from any other source, Heisel was all they had to progress the case.

  Wisting did not like the psychological game involved in an interview. He had met the whole gamut of human emotions in the interview room, and knew to employ all of his knowledge of human behaviour as well as his professional expertise. It was a matter of being cunning, tactical and constantly retaining a good overview.

  Every interview was different. You could not simply sit down and start talking, or follow a list of set questions. The interview must be built around the topics on which you want to shed light. First of all: gathering information on the man provisionally charged with possession of amphetamines. What sort of background did he have? What kind of circle did he belong to? Where had he been? What had he done? Who had he met? Only when that picture had begun to emerge could the conversation trawl to where a link to Jens Hummel might be found.

  They had already discovered that Aron Heisel had both Norwegian and Spanish phone numbers. The Spanish number would take some time to access. The Norwegian number revealed nothing. They had also asked the Spanish police to search his flat in Marbella. The customs authorities had assisted by providing a record of his travels and the finance group had examined his personal finances. Simultaneously, they had checked his immediate family and other close relatives. Neither of his parents was living. He had an elder sister who was married and lived in Trondheim. His last registered employment was as a driver for a courier company in Oslo.

  At eleven o’clock Wisting put the papers aside to go out for something to eat. Barely on his feet, he received a text message from Suzanne, short and to the point: Shrinkage of 8 dl vodka yesterday. 2,000 kroner.

  It must have happened before he arrived, he thought. He had watched every single transaction across the counter. Every single sale had been rung up on the till. He was about to phone her, but an unknown number filled the display.

  ‘This is Wisting,’ he said.

  ‘Reidar Heitmann here.’ It was Aron Heisel’s defence lawyer. ‘I’ve just had a meeting with Heisel in prison and, as the situation stands, I’ve advised him not to give a statement.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘Heisel is charged with a crime he knows nothing about. Besides, you’ll have a hidden agenda in any conversations you have with him.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Give over!’ the lawyer fumed. ‘Both you and I know that the narcotics case is not the most important issue here. Jens Hummel is what this is really all about and my client has already told you what little he knows.’

  ‘We’d like to talk to him again.’

  ‘That’s out of the question as long as he has a charge hanging over him.’

  ‘What are you telling me now, in actual fact? That he’ll give us information about the Hummel case if we drop the drugs charge?’

  Heitmann brushed him aside. ‘You don’t really have a case against him. What I’m saying is that as things stand, he doesn’t want to answer any of your questions.’

  Aron Heisel had every reason not to answer the police’s questions. Seen from his standpoint, it was a wise decision as he would quickly become entangled in inconsistencies and discrepancies. There was little else that Wisting could do.

  He put down the phone and sat slouched with his elbows on the desk. An accused person who would not give a statement could render the investigation totally passive. There was a long, hard road ahead.

  20

  Recently, Line had been waking increasingly early in the mornings. She had read that it was normal to experience sleep di
sruption during the last stage of pregnancy, but this was the first time she had seen the number five on the alarm clock on her bedside table. It was difficult to find a comfortable position, and a creeping restlessness in her legs made her get up and walk about.

  When the baby was born it would be the end of late mornings in bed, so it was just as well to grow accustomed to sleeping less. She fetched the newspaper and began to read about the Hummel case. It was two days since his taxi had been found, but there was nothing new. The man staying on the smallholding had been arrested on a narcotics charge. He had been remanded for four weeks, but refused to give a statement to the police.

  At seven o’clock she saw her father reverse out of his driveway and drive to work.

  The next few hours she spent painting the last of the frames in the living room and, when she finished, the sun broke through the morning mist. Daylight had been transformed from dull to brilliant.

  She showered, drank a cup of tea and headed for the interiors shop where she had ordered wallpaper. On the return journey, she bought some fresh bread rolls. Her father had promised to help this week. She had wallpapered once before, and knew it was a huge advantage to have two people when the dangling lengths of wallpaper were pasted to the wall, but it was actually a job she could tackle herself. Looking forward to the renovation of the living room being over and done with, she decided to make an attempt.

  The old wallpaper had been removed and cracks and holes had been filled and sanded so that the surface was even and smooth. She began at the corner behind the door where any unevenness in the join would be hidden anyway. The first few lengths went well. She had chosen self-coloured wallpaper with a pale brown sheen, so she did not have to worry about the pattern matching at the joins. When she reached halfway along the wall, she saw that it had gone awry. The wallpaper had wrinkled and, in a number of places, tiny air bubbles had formed. When she finished the first wall, she had to admit that the result was not particularly successful.

  She felt annoyed that she had embarked on the project on her own. Her father was more meticulous and had greater patience for such things. She made up her mind to wait with the remainder and was about to put the lid back on the bucket of paste when the doorbell rang. It was the first time she had received a visitor, and she assumed it was someone wanting to sell something or who had gone to the wrong address.

  It was Sofie, rocking a pram in which Maja was sleeping soundly. ‘Hello,’ she said, with a broad smile. ‘We were just out for a walk and thought we’d see if we could find where you lived.’

  Line smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘That’s lovely! I need a break right now.’ She leaned over and peered into the pram. ‘We can wheel her round to the terrace at the back,’ she said, taking hold of the handle. ‘Then we’ll hear her more easily if she wakes.’

  She pushed the pram through the untidy garden to the rear of the house. ‘Do you want to have a look?’ she asked, opening the terrace door. Sofie followed her inside.

  Line showed her round, both in the rooms that were finished and those that still had to be decorated. Afterwards they sat outside.

  ‘I was actually on my way to the post office,’ Sofie said, nodding towards a parcel wrapped in brown paper in the tray under the pram. ‘It’s the money. I decided to send it to an organisation that does preventative work against drugs.’

  ‘You’re walking around with one and a half million kroner in your pram? That you’ve decided to send in the post?’

  ‘There’s not more than one million. I only took the notes that were coloured. I read on the Internet that people who have accepted coloured notes can apply to Norges Bank to have them exchanged.’

  ‘Someone’s going to get a great surprise when they open their mail,’ Line said. ‘Have you had a look at any of the other things in the safe?’

  The expression on Sofie’s face changed. ‘Not very thoroughly. Mostly letters and documents from lawyers and the police, but I did find this.’ She produced an envelope from her bag.

  Line took it and opened it. It contained a small bundle of photographs.

  ‘They are of Mum and me,’ Sofie said.

  Line browsed through them. There was a photograph of a new-born Sofie in her mother’s arms, one of her mother caressing Sofie’s hair, and another in which they had their arms round each other. There were also photos of her first day at school, of birthdays and Christmas.

  ‘Maybe he did care after all?’ Line suggested, as she handed them back.

  ‘Maybe,’ Sofie said. ‘There’s a lot about him we don’t know.’

  ‘What about all the ring binders and papers? Maybe it will be possible to find out who he was and what he did if we read them?’

  ‘I don’t know if I want to or can be bothered,’ Sofie said.

  Line felt inquisitive all the same; it was the journalist in her. Sofie had offered her everything inside the old safe, but she could not bring herself to ask. ‘Don’t throw anything away. You might feel differently one day.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ Sofie said, nodding. ‘And just leave it in the meantime.’

  21

  At half past two on Wednesday 25 July, work on the technical examination of the smallholding at Huken was concluded.

  Wisting brought Nils Hammer with him when he returned to conduct a tactical search, because while the crime scene technicians had looked for fingerprints, footprints, hairs, fibres and other physical traces, it was the investigators’ task to search for notes, papers, documents containing names or other details, that could provide clues about who had spent time there and what they had been up to. It was possible that they might find something they could use in their next interview with Aron Heisel.

  The place looked different, no longer so uninhabited and abandoned. The tall grass was trampled and flattened by vehicles, and tattered remains of crime scene tape fluttered in front of the wide barn door. Wisting stopped the car and stepped out. The silence was as before, with just a faint chorus of insect sounds in the warm air.

  Hammer rattled a bunch of keys and let them into the main farmhouse.

  The crime scene technicians had left their obvious marks behind: remnants of fingerprint powder on door handles and other natural points touched by human hands, and little notes were also dotted around, covered in letters and numbers.

  The kitchen was unchanged: painted blue and messy with used plates, knives, forks and dirty glasses filling the sink. Empty bottles and other clutter were strewn across the worktops. The low, sleepy sound of flies buzzing as they circled the room. Wisting opened drawers and cupboards and riffled through the pile of papers on top of the fridge, but found nothing of interest.

  The sparsely furnished living room lacked any personal touches: a worn settee and a coffee table, a dining table with matching chairs and a cabinet with a TV set. No pictures on the walls or books on the shelves. He went into the adjacent bedroom while Hammer examined the living room cupboards. The quilt lay crumpled at the end of the bed, and there were a few magazines and dirty socks and T-shirts lying on the floor. What seemed most interesting was a suitcase that had been pushed underneath the bed. Wisting hauled it out and opened it, but all it contained was clothes.

  He opened the drawer on the bedside table as Nils Hammer called from the living room. The drawer was empty, but something in Hammer’s voice meant he did not take time to close it again. Hammer was at the living room window. ‘Someone’s in the field,’ he said.

  Wisting could not see anything apart from metre-high weeds.

  ‘It could have been an animal,’ Hammer said, ‘but it looked like a man walking in a crouched position in the long grass. He’s gone now.’

  They stood scanning what had once been a cultivated field, and suddenly a blond head popped up, just beside the elevation that marked where the potato cellar was located. Hammer swore and wheeled round. Wisting followed him out the door.

  They took the path that had been trampled flat by the investigators in recent day
s, Hammer two metres ahead. The man they had spotted was heading for the edge of the forest. He stumbled but did not fall. ‘Stop!’ Nils Hammer shouted, following the drill. ‘Police!’

  The man continued for the trees, the vegetation so dense that he had to clear a path for himself. A flock of small birds, startled, flew off in all directions. It was the second time in a few days that someone had tried to flee from them.

  Wisting was gasping for breath and felt his pulse rate soar. Twigs scratched at his face, making it difficult to see. After fifty metres, the terrain opened out among tall pine trees. The man they were pursuing increased his lead and found a path. Farther ahead, Wisting could make out the main road. A lorry slowed down and moved out to overtake a car parked on the hard shoulder.

  Hammer increased his speed, leaving Wisting further behind until he tripped over a fallen pine tree and fell spread-eagled on the ground. As he lay, he watched the man launch himself into the waiting car. The wheels spun on the gravel, hurling tiny stones into the ditch as he took off.

  Wisting scrambled to his feet and brushed down his clothes as Hammer sauntered back. ‘Did you get the number?’ he asked.

  ‘Just saw that it was a Norwegian plate. PP-registered, I think.’

  ‘Did you see what kind of car it was?’

  Hammer shook his head. ‘Some kind of silver-grey Asian model. They all look the same, you know.’

  Neither of them spoke on the way back, both understanding what had slipped through their fingers. The narcotics find had not been released to the newspapers. Someone out there knew about the potato cellar and had visited the old smallholding after the police had finished their investigations to see whether they had found the hiding place. Whoever knew about the farm and the potato cellar might also know something about Jens Hummel.