Wisting shook his head as he replied, ‘No, he has no close family.’
Stiller clicked his ballpoint pen twice in succession. His first reaction had been that a disappearance created complications, but then it struck him that, on the other hand, it brought with it a number of possibilities. The fact that Martin Haugen had gone missing gave them the opportunity to legally enter and search his home. Officially, they would be looking for something to indicate what had become of him, but at the same time they could search for evidence that he was behind Nadia Krogh’s kidnapping, without officially involving him as a suspect. It was doubtful whether they would find anything after so many years, but it was worth trying.
‘You should initiate an official investigation,’ he said, directing his remark to the police prosecutor, who would have to take the formal decision.
‘The Krogh case will have to wait until we know where he is, and why he’s disappeared,’ she said.
Wisting closed his notebook, ready to leave the meeting. ‘I’ll get an inquiry under way,’ he said, turning to Hammer: ‘Can you trace his mobile phone?’
‘Of course,’ he answered, noting the number Wisting gave him.
‘Christine can help you find a spare office,’ Wisting continued. ‘I expect you’ll be here for a few days.’
‘Who’s going to head out to his house?’ Stiller asked.
Wisting gave him a long, penetrating look. ‘I expect you’ll want to come with me,’ he replied. ‘We’ll leave in quarter of an hour.’
11
Twenty-five minutes passed before Wisting reached his car. Once Martin Haugen had been formally reported missing, he had made a hurried search on Adrian Stiller. He wanted to know who this Kripos investigator was and what he had done in the past. There was something about his manner that grated on Wisting. Stiller seemed preoccupied with being correct, and that gave him an overly stiff demeanour while he was also superficially pleasant and obliging. The overall impression was that there was something he was not giving away.
The records had not yielded much. Adrian Stiller was thirty-six years old and had been born in Oppegård; he now lived in Seilduksgata in Grünerløkka in Oslo. He was unmarried, with no partner registered at his address. His address history showed that he had lived in South Africa from his mid-teens until he moved home at twenty. Maybe he had acquired that golden tan down there.
The intranet gave the usual results. His name was mentioned in lists of participants in a number of different post-qualifying courses. It looked as if he had specialized in interrogation techniques and the management of investigations. The latest entry was connected with the establishment of the CCG. Wisting knew several of the other men in the group and thought it strange that they had chosen to allocate an entirely new, unfamiliar investigator to this case.
Stiller pushed back his seat before fastening his seat belt.
‘He lives five minutes from the town centre,’ Wisting told him as he exited the car park.
Stiller nodded, as if he already knew that. He probably did. Maybe he had also driven past Kleiverveien. This is what Wisting would have done if he were keen to familiarize himself with a suspect.
‘Have you been up there?’ he asked. ‘Driven by and taken a look?’
‘I’ve studied the map,’ Stiller answered.
Wisting glanced across at the policeman. That was not the question he had asked.
As he manoeuvred the car to one side to let a delivery van overtake, he decided not to pursue the topic.
‘I thought I’d go through the documents in the Katharina case this afternoon,’ Stiller told him. ‘But apparently the office staff couldn’t locate them in the archives. Do you know where they’re stored?’
Now it was Wisting’s turn to avoid the direct question. ‘There are three cardboard boxes,’ he replied, without adding any further details. ‘I’ll see that you get them.’
The traffic lights ahead in Stavernsveien changed to red, and Wisting stopped while the windscreen wipers cleared rainwater from the glass. A flock of nursery children in wellington boots and yellow reflective vests crossed the road in front of them.
‘What about the Krogh girl?’ Wisting asked. ‘Have you photocopied the case files for me to take a look at?’
‘They’re digitized,’ Stiller replied. ‘You can read them on your computer. I’ll make sure you get access.’
The lights changed to green and the car eased forward. They drove in silence until they left town.
Stiller straightened up in the passenger seat. ‘What’s he like?’ he queried.
‘Martin Haugen?’
‘Yes.’
Wisting gave the question some thought. ‘He’s a quiet man.’
‘Still waters run deep,’ Stiller commented.
‘Maybe reserved is more apt,’ Wisting went on. ‘Withdrawn. He still seems affected by what happened. At the same time, he’s very good-natured.’
‘Withdrawn and good-natured?’
Wisting agreed, adding, ‘It’s the best description I can come up with.’
‘Have you never thought about what that might mean?’
Wisting had given this a great deal of thought but left it to Stiller to draw a conclusion.
‘He’s hiding something,’ Stiller reckoned. ‘Something he’s trying to smooth over by being friendly.’
‘He’s a complex person,’ Wisting pointed out, without saying whether he agreed.
A spray of water from an oncoming car splashed the windscreen. At that same moment, Wisting’s mobile phone rang. Slowing down until the road ahead was clear, he answered the call.
Nils Hammer’s voice filled the car. ‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be there soon,’ Wisting responded, turning on to the gravel track leading to Martin Haugen’s house.
‘I’ve traced his mobile phone,’ Hammer told him. ‘It looks as if it’s in his house in Kleiverveien.’
Wisting mulled this over. He had tried to ring Martin Haugen on multiple occasions.
‘When was it last active?’ he asked.
‘It’s active now,’ Hammer said. ‘It’ll take some time before I get the data from the past few days, but the phone company has tracked it in real time, and it’s either in or near his house at the moment.’
‘Are you saying it’s in use?’
‘Not necessarily in use, but it’s connected to the network.’
As the car bumped along the gravel track it was obvious that the rain had washed away any possible traces of other vehicles.
Wisting thanked him and hung up.
They turned into the empty yard, where Wisting sat for a minute behind the wheel before switching off the engine. The house looked just as deserted as the previous day. Or was there a change? From where he sat it looked as if the light in the extractor fan above the cooker was on. He was not sure but did not think it had been the previous evening.
He opened the car door and stepped out. Adrian Stiller did likewise. Although the rain had eased, it did not seem as if it would stop completely any time soon.
‘Was this how things looked here twenty-four hours ago?’ he asked, leaning over the open car door.
‘More or less,’ Wisting told him.
He took a couple of paces towards the garage, where there seemed to be fresh tyre tracks in the gravel in front of the door.
At that moment the front door opened and Martin Haugen emerged on to the steps. The cat shot out between his legs.
‘Hello,’ he said, gazing from Wisting to Adrian Stiller.
Wisting greeted him with a nod of relief.
‘We were just calling round,’ Wisting explained. ‘I wanted to see if you were at home.’
‘I’ve been at the cabin for a few days,’ Martin Haugen explained. ‘I was trying to do something with the roof down there. It’s leaking.’
‘I came to see you yesterday,’ Wisting went on. The cat rubbed against his legs.
They both knew this had been in co
nnection with Katharina’s anniversary, but neither of them mentioned it.
‘I saw you had phoned,’ Martin said. ‘Do you want to come in?’
Wisting shook his head. ‘We were just passing,’ he said, heading back towards the car. ‘I can come round again this afternoon, if that suits?’
‘Fine,’ Martin answered. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Stiller closed the car door behind him as Wisting waved goodbye and settled into the driver’s seat. Martin Haugen stared at them from the door for a moment before moving inside, shutting the cat out in the rain.
12
The garage door opposite slid up as Wisting turned on to the asphalt road.
‘Steinar Vassvik,’ he said, waving to the man who stood there holding an oily rag. ‘You’ll come across his name when you read the case files. He lived there at the time of Katharina’s disappearance too.’
‘Does he have an alibi?’
Wisting shook his head. ‘The problem is that we don’t know exactly when Katharina disappeared, but according to our timeline Vassvik was the last person to see her alive. Two days later he showed up to serve his sentence for a violent crime. He was inside for three years.’
Stiller took out a packet of Fisherman’s Friends, ripped off a corner and tipped a cough lozenge into his hand before tossing it into his mouth.
‘Tell me about the cabin,’ he asked, replacing the pack in his pocket. Wisting understood where he was heading.
‘Haugen’s cabin?’ he asked all the same.
Stiller nodded.
‘It’s in Bamble, bordering on Skien, an hour’s drive from here,’ Wisting told him. ‘An old smallholding situated in an isolated spot deep inside the forest. No running water or electricity. His grandfather renovated it during the fifties.’
‘I assume you searched for Katharina there?’
‘Yes, but there was no reason to believe she might be there. She didn’t like the place and, anyway, both her car and motorbike were still at home. To reach the cabin you have to drive several kilometres along a closed forest track, beyond a barrier. Then it’s fifteen minutes’ walk to the cabin. The key for both cabin and barrier were still lying in a drawer in the house.’
‘But you did go there?’
‘I wasn’t there at that time, but I’ve been there on fishing trips with Martin Haugen a couple of times.’ He felt Stiller’s unspoken criticism.
Stiller crunched on the cough lozenge.
Wisting nodded pensively. ‘It would be a very suitable place for holding someone captive,’ he said.
The idea that Martin Haugen had been behind the Krogh kidnapping still seemed remote but, if it were true, then the cabin at Langen would have been an ideal spot to keep her hidden. Little more than half an hour from the place where Nadia Krogh was last seen, it was well off the beaten track.
‘Do you have a theory?’ he asked. ‘About what happened to Nadia? Why did the kidnappers go quiet?’
‘Something went wrong,’ Stiller answered. ‘Maybe she tried to run away and was killed in the attempt. Maybe the kidnappers lost their nerve when it came to going through with the transaction and left her sitting somewhere to starve to death.’
‘Like the Charles Lindbergh case,’ Wisting commented.
The Lindbergh kidnapping was one of the most notorious of all time. In 1932 a two-year-old boy was taken from his bedroom on the first floor of the family home. The kidnapper left a letter with a demand for fifty thousand dollars. The money was paid, but it did not bring about a resolution. Two months later the boy was found dead. The post-mortem showed that he had died of injuries sustained in a fall, and that the kidnapper had probably dropped him from the top of the ladder used in the abduction.
Stiller shifted in his seat. ‘Whatever happened, we need you to get to the bottom of it,’ he said.
Wisting swerved to avoid a man walking his dog in the rain. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘You’re the one who knows him best,’ Stiller replied. ‘We want you to try to get even closer to him. Gain his confidence and engineer a situation that encourages him to confide in you.’
Wisting looked at him but did not say anything. This was what Stiller had been holding back at the meeting. Stiller and the other members of the Kripos team had dreamed up a plan in which he would play an important role.
‘We’ve had good results in other cases,’ Stiller went on. ‘Infiltration combined with surveillance, wire-tapping and traditional investigation is an effective mix.’
‘He knows I’m a policeman,’ Wisting said. ‘It’s not the same as sending in an agent.’
‘But he doesn’t know you’re aware of Nadia Krogh,’ Stiller protested, smiling for the first time. ‘That gives you an advantage. You can say the right things in the right places. Plant some thoughts. Press the appropriate buttons. That’s something you’re good at anyway. Getting people to give themselves away.’
Wisting gently shook his head. He had been allocated a role he had no wish to assume. It was different in an interview room. There, you put all the facts on the table, but what Adrian Stiller was suggesting was some kind of undercover assignment that entailed misleading and deceiving someone he knew well. Someone who had almost become his friend.
‘It’s been cleared with your police chief,’ Stiller added. ‘I suggest you start this evening, when you’ve already arranged to visit him.’
Wisting stopped the car outside the main police station entrance. ‘Were you given your own pass?’ he asked.
When Stiller patted his breast pocket, Wisting motioned towards the swing doors.
‘I’ve some business to attend to before I come in,’ he said. ‘You can tell the others Martin Haugen is no longer missing.’
Stiller hesitated before putting his hand on the handle and opening the door slightly. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘We can discuss that when I get back,’ Wisting responded.
Stiller nodded and stepped out into the rain. Veering away from the pavement, Wisting put his foot down on the accelerator.
13
Stiller was left standing in the rain, watching as the car drove off. He took shelter under the overhang above the main entrance and brought out his phone.
Leif Malm was leader of the newly established CCG section. His number was at the top of Stiller’s speed-dial list, and he answered after the first ring.
‘How’s it going?’ he demanded.
‘We got off to a bit of a bad start,’ Stiller replied, explaining that Martin Haugen had just turned up after being AWOL.
‘Is Wisting going along with it?’ Malm asked.
Stiller chewed his lozenge. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he answered. ‘He doesn’t seem to like us having planned this behind his back.’
‘He’s a sensible man,’ Leif Malm said. ‘He’ll understand.’
The doors into the police station slid open in front of Stiller and he entered the reception area, where he nodded to the policeman on duty before swiping his pass.
‘Anyway, he’s too committed,’ Malm went on. ‘He can’t say no. He’d rather be involved than stand on the sidelines.’
Stiller looked around to make sure he was on his own.
‘What’s the status with the comms surveillance?’ he asked softly as he began to ascend the stairs.
‘We’ve been allowed a fortnight,’ Malm replied. ‘It’s in force from 15.00 hours.’
Stiller used his pass to go through the next door. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone you this afternoon.’
Stiller returned the phone to his pocket, standing deep in thought for a few moments. If the phone-tapping were to give them anything, Martin Haugen would have to have acted with someone else in the kidnapping and feel compelled to make contact with the other accomplice or accomplices once Wisting pressed the right buttons.
Full comms surveillance meant they had an overview not only of who Haugen was in contact with and what he said over the phone but also via e
mail and other electronic means of communication. Moreover, his mobile phone would function as a tracker so that they always knew exactly where he was. At least, as long as it was switched on.
Nils Hammer approached him with a mug of coffee in one hand and a bundle of papers in the other. ‘Back already?’ he asked.
‘Martin Haugen hadn’t gone missing after all,’ Stiller said. ‘He’d just been at his cabin.’
The burly policeman broke into a smile. ‘So what happens now?’ he asked.
‘I’d like to assemble the investigators who can be allocated to the case and hold another meeting this afternoon,’ Stiller answered.
‘For the moment it’s just Wisting and me,’ Nils Hammer replied.
Stiller considered two operatives very sparse provision. However, it would have to do until they got a break in the case. He was the only one from the CCG and he could not expect more in a case that, strictly speaking, was not under the jurisdiction of this police district.
‘Before that I’d like to read up on the Katharina case,’ he went on. ‘Have the documents been located?’
Hammer took a slurp of coffee before shaking his head. ‘Ask Bjørg Karin if she’s found them,’ he suggested, pointing towards the admin office. ‘If she can’t find them, they’re not in the archives.’
Stiller approached the triangular-shaped office. He had introduced himself to a cheerful woman at a nearby desk prior to the meeting earlier that day.
‘Hammer said I should speak to you,’ he said. ‘I want to have a look at the Katharina case files.’
Bjørg Karin shook her head and offered him an amiable smile. ‘I was down there this morning,’ she explained. ‘There’s not room for a case like that in an ordinary archive box. It’s probably somewhere with the other cases that get taken out now and again. I’ll ask Wisting to find it for you.’
Stiller was unimpressed but returned her smile.
‘It’s urgent,’ he said, heading for the office placed at his disposal.
It was the standard government-issue size with pale grey walls and an angular desk made of ash veneer with a computer on it.
The Katharina Code Page 7