‘Good idea,’ Wisting said, without any special enthusiasm.
They sat chatting about everyday matters, such as when Line could come home and how she should decorate her bedroom. He told her that he had phoned Thomas, her brother, and that he would pay a visit the following day. ‘Have you told John?’ he asked, looking up from the baby’s face.
They rarely mentioned the baby’s father, but Wisting knew they had been in touch during the pregnancy.
‘Not yet. I’ll send him a photo tomorrow.’
They went on talking about other things before returning to the murder case. ‘Do you think he died of natural causes?’ she asked.
‘Who?’ Wisting moved the baby to his other arm.
‘Frank Mandt. Do you think he fell, or could he have been pushed?’
Wisting reflected on the report from when Frank Mandt had been found dead at the foot of the basement stairs. ‘There was nothing to suggest anything else,’ he said.
‘But what was he actually doing in the basement? There wasn’t much there apart from the old exercise room and the safe, and he wasn’t wearing a tracksuit or gym clothes.’
‘Perhaps he was going to the safe?’ Wisting suggested.
‘Maybe. I just thought it was such a remarkable coincidence. That he should fall downstairs at almost the same time as all the rest of this stuff he seems to have been slap bang in the middle of.’
Wisting handed little Ingrid back to Line. The movement made the child blink her eyes and make cooing noises. Something in what she had said had sparked a thought that turned over in his mind. He leaned across the bed, gave his daughter a hug and promised to return the next day.
85
Beside the driveway leading to the old detached house, the street lamp was surrounded by a faint orb of murky light. Wisting stood outside his car listening to the sound of grasshoppers in the trees, bushes and grass whispering their monotonous tune.
Klaus Wahl was the person who had found Frank Mandt at the foot of his basement stairs at the beginning of January. It had been a run-of-the-mill tragedy. Mandt was seventy-nine years old, had diabetes, and was dizzy and unsteady on his feet. Wahl had given the police a concise statement, but not all the relevant questions had been asked.
Wisting rang the doorbell. It took a while for the old man to answer. He was wearing the same clothes as last time, a pair of blue shorts and a checked shirt.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he mumbled, and stepped to one side as if Wisting was expected.
They sat at the kitchen table. ‘We’ve arrested a man for the murder of Jens Hummel,’ Wisting explained.
Klaus Wahl nodded. He had heard it on the broadcast news.
‘Does the name Einar Gjessing mean anything to you?’ Wisting asked.
‘I know who he is,’ Wahl replied.
‘I think he may have been one of the last people to visit Mandt at home. I think he may have brought him the murder weapon.’
‘I wasn’t at Frank’s house very often,’ Wahl said, busying himself with a pack of tobacco. ‘We usually met in cafés and suchlike.’
Wisting sat for a while observing the man facing him. ‘You may have been the person who knew Mandt best. What do you think actually happened? He had a lot of people under his thumb, and more than a few who had plenty to gain from his death. Do you think he fell, or was he pushed?’
Klaus Wahl swept flakes of tobacco from the waxed tablecloth into his hand and poured them back into the packet. ‘He fell,’ he answered firmly. ‘It was an accident.’
‘You seem very sure,’ Wisting said.
Klaus Wahl stood up, went over to the kitchen worktop and opened a drawer. Sitting down again, he placed a black notebook and a small cassette player on the table. ‘He fell. If not, the person who pushed him would have taken this.’
Wisting drew the notebook towards him and opened it at a random page. There were names, dates, sums of money and other key words.
‘This lay beside him at the foot of the stairs,’ Wahl said. ‘He must have been on his way down to the safe with it. I took it with me. Thought it was something the police shouldn’t get their hands on. Now I think differently.’
‘How’s that?’
Wahl put the cigarette in his mouth and cocked his head slightly as he lit it. ‘There’s somebody called Einar who speaks on that, in there,’ he said, pointing at the little cassette player. ‘And someone they call PG. They’re talking about Jens Hummel, among other things.’ Wahl inhaled and let the smoke trickle out through his nostrils. ‘That was how Mandt consolidated his position in the network. He had something on all of them, and got people to talk about one another behind their backs.’
Wisting lifted the cassette player and pressed the play button. The recording started in the middle of a conversation: ‘Listen to Einar for a minute, then,’ someone said.
‘Jens has become a problem.’ It did not require voice analysis to recognise Einar Gjessing’s husky south coast accent.
‘There must be ways of solving that, eh?’ a third person suggested.
‘Frank Mandt,’ Wahl said, using his cigarette to point at the miniature loudspeaker.
‘There’s only one permanent method,’ the voice belonging to Gjessing asserted. ‘We run far too much of a risk by letting him off the hook.’
‘You run a risk,’ Mandt corrected him. ‘This wouldn’t be a problem if they hadn’t picked up an innocent bloke.’
‘Who’s innocent?’ asked the voice that Wisting had not identified, but whom he assumed was Phillip Goldheim. ‘He may not have been the one who did it, but he’s not innocent. Nobody’s innocent.’
‘The problem is that if he starts to spill the beans, then we can’t be sure what will come out of that mouth of his,’ Gjessing went on. ‘It could be dangerous for all of us.’
‘He’s my man,’ Mandt objected. ‘He’s invaluable to me.’
‘You’ll get compensation, of course, and we’ll find a replacement. But Einar, after all, is willing to get rid of a risky character for us. It’ll be . . .’
The voice was cut off and changed to a hissing sound, as if someone had deleted the rest of the conversation. It was not difficult to understand what they were discussing, but it was not incontrovertible evidence either. The conversation could be interpreted in different ways and the content could be twisted.
Wisting let the tape run. The silence on the recording changed. He heard voices that were far away, but grew louder as they moved towards the room where the microphone was located.
‘Have you come here now?’ Frank Mandt said, clearly irritated.
‘I just wanted to tell you that the problem’s been solved,’ Einar Gjessing said, his words followed by the sound of something metallic being placed on a table surface.
‘Fuck!’ Mandt protested. ‘Have you brought that here?’
‘It’s yours, after all.’
‘That’s the hottest gun on earth right now!’
‘Well, I’ve eliminated the problem, so you can make sure you lose this.’
A scraping sound followed as something was shoved across the table where the two men were sitting.
‘I don’t want to know any more about this,’ Mandt warned.
‘There’s something you should know,’ Gjessing said. ‘I had to leave his taxi in the barn.’
‘In my barn?’
‘You don’t use it anyway. I’ll move it later, but the more time that passes before anyone finds it, the better it’ll be.’
‘What about the body?’
‘It’s not there. Take it easy.’
‘Is anybody going to find it?’
‘Not anytime soon.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Maybe in the spring, when the dung’s spread on the fields,’ Gjessing explained without going into further details.
Frank Mandt’s voice seemed morose: ‘All the same, you shouldn’t have come here. Not now.’
Chair legs scraped on the floor.
/>
‘I thought you’d want to know.’
‘I want to know as little as possible about it.’
The voices grew more distant.
‘Give PG a message that from now on he’ll have to get somebody to come and collect.’
The tone of annoyance continued until the voices dwindled. Then there was another pause before the recording stopped. Smoke from Klaus Wahl’s cigarette rose from his hand, drifted past his face, and left it enveloped in grey billows. ‘I thought you would want to hear that,’ he said.
86
The custody sergeant pushed a cup of coffee over to Wisting. Only then did he appreciate how tired he was, struggling to shake off the exhaustion and gather his thoughts. Facing the bank of TV screens in the duty room he found the picture of Einar Gjessing, pacing to and fro on the cell floor, dressed in the same clothes he had worn in the courtroom earlier that day. It felt like a very long time ago.
‘The defence lawyer was here a couple of hours ago,’ the sergeant said. ‘He was told there wouldn’t be another interview until tomorrow.’
‘I just want a few words,’ Wisting said.
‘I don’t think he’s very interested in talking.’
The man in Cell 3 sat on the bed. Wisting lingered for a while longer, drinking his coffee, before putting down the empty cup and making his way along the corridor.
Einar Gjessing looked up as Wisting carried in a chair, doing his best to conceal his own uncertainty. He could feel the resentment from the man on the bed, his disquiet and anxiety.
‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ Gjessing said.
‘I’ve already heard you talking.’ Wisting sat on the chair.
He took the little cassette player from his document case and played the recording from the point where Gjessing was talking about the taxi left in the barn. The voices sounded tinny as they bounced off the cell walls. There was an immediate physical transformation in the man facing him. His face turned ashen, and he collapsed like a burst balloon.
Wisting stopped the player. ‘Did you know Frank Mandt made recordings of all the conversations that took place inside his house?’
Gjessing sat in silence.
Wisting opened his document case and took out a plastic bag filled with cassettes. ‘I haven’t listened to all of them yet, but I assume that much of it deals with the same things as he wrote in his notebooks, even though I haven’t read them either.’
Gjessing opened his mouth, but closed it again.
‘As far as you’re concerned, it doesn’t mean a lot,’ Wisting said. ‘You’ll probably not be able to receive a harsher punishment than you’ll get for two murders, but you can spare others.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t need to listen to these tapes or read his notebooks. What I need is a confession from you.’ He stood up. ‘You’ll have everything to gain from that. A confession will be the only mitigating circumstance to get you a reduced sentence. I start work at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. The offer stands until then.’
Einar Gjessing continued to sit on the edge of the bed when the cell door slid shut. Wisting trudged slowly back to the duty room where he picked up a yellow Post-it note and scribbled down Nils Hammer’s phone number.
‘If he wants to talk to anybody, then he can call this number,’ he said. ‘Anytime.’
87
The confession was on Wisting’s desk at 07.00. The written statement had commenced at 03.15 and was signed by both Nils Hammer and Einar Gjessing at 05.50. Eight pages of the most salient details.
He read through it, feeling some of his tension dissipate. There were no surprises, a few blank areas were filled out, but none of the details were out of kilter with how they had envisaged the sequence of events.
Wisting took it to Christine Thiis. He could see how the past few days had drained her. She stood between a rock and a hard place, between conscientious investigators and pragmatic managers. It had given her dark circles beneath her eyes that made her look older.
‘It’s over now,’ he said, placing the confession in front of her. He remained on his feet as she read it, and saw that it seemed to lift her spirits too. ‘You can break the news to the Police Chief and the Public Prosecutor.’
She nodded, now with a softer expression on her face, and he realised that the task he had given her was one she relished.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
He glanced at the clock. ‘I’m going to Kristiansand again. There are a few practical things that have to be cleared with the investigators down there. Besides, the court case resumes at ten o’clock. I’d like to be there.’
88
Courtroom 5 was full to capacity when Wisting arrived at the Justice Building a few minutes before ten. Several spectators and journalists were huddled in a semi-circle round the doorway, but the official who turned them away spotted Wisting and beckoned him over. He sneaked past the others and took up position just inside the door.
Olav Müller, the trainee defence counsel, was now accompanied by his boss, Gisle Kvammen. On the opposite side sat the Public Prosecutor on his own, with the counsel for the victim a few metres away. Neither Ryttingen nor Elise Kittelsen’s parents were present.
The door behind the judge’s table opened at ten precisely. All the people in the room stood and the judge in his robes emerged followed by the two associate judges. They sat down, the judge asked everyone present to follow suit and declared the court in session.
‘As planned, today we shall continue to hear the witnesses. Do any of the parties have anything to say before we continue?’
The Public Prosecutor rose slowly. ‘Your Honour. In light of new developments that have emerged during the court proceedings, the prosecution authorities wish to desist from further presentation of evidence and propose that the accused be acquitted.’
The judge let his eyes linger on him. ‘What basis do you wish to cite for the acquittal?’
The Public Prosecutor cleared his throat before answering briefly. ‘Not guilty.’
A wave of astonished whispering swept through the courtroom.
‘Are there other factors apart from what emerged yesterday that form the basis for this conclusion?’
‘We received supplementary information in the early hours of this morning.’
The judge waited in silence for him to elaborate.
‘Another person has confessed to the murder of Elise Kittelsen,’ he said finally.
Fresh mutterings rose from the rows of spectators and spread through the courtroom, echoing off the walls, but fell silent when the judge raised his gavel. ‘Is this a statement in which you have full confidence?’
The Public Prosecutor answered only with a nod of the head, but the judge did not let him off with that. ‘Is it?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed.
‘Thank you.’
The judge took his time making some notes before directing his gaze at the female counsel for the victim. ‘Have the relatives any comments on what has come to light?’
The counsel for the victim stood up. ‘Numerous, your Honour. But nothing that has direct relevance to the recommendation for acquittal.’ She scowled at the Public Prosecutor.
She resumed her seat and the judge addressed himself to the trainee defence lawyer, Olav Müller. ‘What about defence counsel?’
It was Kvammen who spoke up. ‘We request that the accused be acquitted,’ he said.
Dan Roger Brodin seemed perplexed.
‘Has the accused anything he wishes to add?’ the judge asked.
The room fell silent. Brodin leaned forward to the microphone: ‘I didn’t do it.’
‘Nobody any longer thinks so,’ the judge said, as his eyes shifted back to the Public Prosecutor. ‘Judgment in this case will be given at three o’clock this afternoon,’ he informed them, adjourning the court with a bang of his gavel.
Wisting leaned against the wall. In practice, this meant that Dan Roger Brodin would be a f
ree man before the day was over.
89
Wisting sat in the chair by the window with his five-day-old grandchild on his lap. He had sat in this same place and in this same way with Line almost thirty years earlier, and it was wonderful to let his mind fill with good memories and thoughts about the future.
It was raining outside, just as it had been that first summer with Line. It had begun at five in the morning and continued all day, a chilly rain that fell obliquely from an iron-grey sky.
He glanced down at Ingrid’s head with its downy black hair. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks round and fresh, the mouth tiny, pink and soft. Ingrid. The little face moved almost imperceptibly each time she drew breath.
Line came in from the hallway with a large parcel tied with pink ribbon in her hands. Behind her came Sofie with Maja on her arm. Wisting smiled in welcome. Sofie stroked the baby’s cheek before sitting down.
Line opened the present. It was a pink sleep suit and other baby clothes. Before she had time to settle she had to answer the doorbell again, returning with Nils Hammer, Torunn Borg, Espen Mortensen and Christine Thiis. Hammer had brought a bouquet of balloons and an enormous teddy bear that he laid on a chair, while Christine Thiis had wrapped a play mat with music activated when you pressed different figures.
Coffee and cake appeared on the table.
Ingrid looked as if she was thinking of starting to cry, but instead lay with what seemed to be a smile playing round her mouth.
‘Can I hold her?’ Hammer asked.
‘I want to take a photo,’ Line said, picking up her camera.
She crouched in front of her father while Hammer stood behind her making strange noises to attract Ingrid’s attention.
‘Take one with my phone too,’ Wisting asked, coaxing his mobile carefully out of his trouser pocket. It rang just as he was about to hand it over. Ingrid began to cry and Line lifted her out of his arms, passing her across to Hammer.
Wisting took his phone to the kitchen and answered in the doorway.
Ordeal (William Wisting Series) Page 31