‘That was a long time ago,’ Line reminded him. ‘We’ve been given copies of all the police documents, so they have in a sense lifted the confidentiality rule.’
‘So you know about the Grey Panthers?’
‘That’s why we’ve come,’ she said.
‘Well, at that time I’d just joined a few other pensioners and started up an organization for old people, to improve pension rights. Our name was the Senior Association, but we were known as the Grey Panthers, exactly the same alias that Nadia Krogh’s kidnappers gave themselves.’
‘What did the police want?’
‘They came to me because we had been mentioned in the press but, after all, grey panthers is a common expression, a description used for old people who are still healthy and active. We didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping, and the police were well aware of that.’
Line glanced across at Daniel. So far it was a short story, briefly told, and she was unsure whether it was suitable for use. It was rather lacking in content.
‘Could you tell us what happened when they turned up?’ she asked, in an effort to approach it from a different angle.
‘Nothing more than that happened,’ the old man answered with a shrug. ‘There were two of them. They arrived and asked me if I was Vidar Arntzen and showed me their ID. Of course, I’d read about Nadia Krogh in the newspapers. Most people had, but I had no idea what the police wanted with me. It was a shock, I can tell you.’
‘Why was it secret, what they were talking about?’
‘Because of the Grey Panthers,’ Arntzen explained. ‘They didn’t want journalists or anyone else to know that pensioners were behind it all.’
It took some time for Line to understand his reasoning. She herself had thought it was a random nickname cut out of a news article about the Senior Association. But it dawned on her that Vidar Arntzen probably knew nothing about how the letters had been pieced together and that he had placed more significance on the signature than she had and interpreted it differently.
‘Did they show you the letter from the kidnappers?’ she asked.
Vidar Arntzen shook his head. ‘They didn’t tell me what it said, only that it was signed The Grey Panthers.’
‘I’d like to show it to you,’ Line said, taking out her laptop, on which all the case documents were stored.
His curiosity roused, the old man leaned across the table. Line spent some time logging in. There was a police report stating that the newspaper used by the kidnappers was the edition of VG for Thursday 27 August 1987, and The Grey Panthers had been cut out of an article on page eleven.
Locating the correct picture file, she brought the first letter up onscreen and turned the laptop towards Vidar on the opposite side of the table. He fumbled to take out a pair of glasses and moved his lips as he read it.
‘They’ve cut the words The Grey Panthers out of a newspaper interview with you,’ Line told him.
Vidar Arntzen sat deep in thought. ‘So that was why they were so interested in the newspaper,’ he said, taking off his glasses again.
‘What newspaper?’
‘I had saved the newspaper,’ Arntzen explained. ‘I had it lying out when the police paid me a visit. It was open at the page with the interview because I’d been showing it to Aspaker from the local council – he’d been with me the day before.’
Line closed her laptop.
‘But then they saw that my copy of the newspaper was intact,’ Vidar Arntzen went on. ‘So there must have been someone else who’d saved the same newspaper.’
Line mulled over what he had said. This was a point she had not considered and not seen mentioned in the police documents. Nadia’s family had received the letter from the kidnappers on 22 September, while the newspaper used had been dated 27 August. Someone had saved it for some reason.
Daniel wrapped up the interview. He switched off the recorder and tried to explain to the old man how he could listen to the finished programme, but Vidar had difficulty grasping what he was saying.
Line thanked him for the interview and told him it would also be printed in the newspaper.
Outside, it was still raining, and the wind had picked up.
27
The wind blew the rain sideways against the office window and reverberated through the room. A steady beat.
Wisting was bowed over his desk. He had located a map on which Martin Haugen’s cabin was marked and was struggling to match the numbers in the code to various points on the terrain. He managed to get two of the numbers to tally with two mountain peaks, but that meant next to nothing. This was not where the solution lay.
Adrian Stiller arrived to speak to him. ‘I’m bringing down a technician tomorrow who’ll attach a transmitter to his car,’ he said, referring to Martin Haugen. ‘It’ll be more stable and precise than following his phone. As soon as it’s in place and we’re sure we know where he is, we’ll go in and search the house.’
‘A clandestine search,’ Wisting commented.
‘He’s hiding something, and I want to find out more about him before you start to apply pressure,’ Stiller explained as he sat down. ‘If he gets the slightest whiff of suspicion that we’re after him, he would have time to dispose of evidence. I don’t want that to happen.’
‘What do you think he might have at home that would give him away?’ Wisting asked.
‘I want to look at his computer and see what he has saved there,’ Stiller answered.
‘That’ll be a challenge,’ Wisting said. ‘He has CCTV installed.’
Stiller raised his eyebrows as Wisting went on to tell him about the two cameras.
‘That makes it even more interesting,’ Stiller said. ‘What about an alarm?’
‘No alarm.’
‘Good. The cameras suggest he does have secrets in there.’
Although Wisting had come to the same conclusion, he made no comment. Martin Haugen clearly felt he had to protect himself from something other than Lithuanian migrant workers.
Stiller stood up abruptly and crossed to the window. ‘I’m staying down there,’ he said after a while, pointing down to the new hotel at Sanden. ‘The Farris Bad.’ Then he changed the subject. ‘Have you had any contact with Katharina’s family?’ he asked, his back turned to Wisting.
‘In Austria?’
‘Yes.’
‘I spoke to her sister a few years after her disappearance,’ Wisting said. ‘In connection with Katharina being formally declared dead.’
Stiller swivelled round. ‘Are they alike?’ he asked.
‘I’ve only seen photographs of her,’ Wisting told him. ‘They don’t have the same father, but they look similar. Why do you ask?’
‘I’ve hired a firm in London to create an illustration of what Nadia Krogh might look like today,’ Stiller said. ‘You know, based on biometric facial data and suchlike.’
Wisting nodded. He was familiar with the technology but had never used it before.
‘The idea is that we’ll use it on Crime Scene Norway on Thursday,’ Stiller added. ‘But I’m not certain it will be a true likeness. No matter what data programs they use, in the end it’s only an approximation. It would have been easier with Katharina. We’d have had something more specific to go on.’
‘Have you seen the sketch?’ Wisting asked.
‘I’ll receive it tomorrow.’
Wisting leaned back in his chair. ‘Does that mean you think Nadia may be alive?’ he asked.
‘No,’ was the forthright response. ‘It’s just to have something to show on TV, to generate interest. VG will have the ransom letters and the TV will have the face.’
He headed for the door. ‘Katharina is different from Nadia,’ he said. ‘She seems competent. She’d broken with her family before and travelled to a new country to start a new life. She could have done so again. Wiser and more resourceful than the first time she left.’
28
Line enjoyed the final hours of the day, when Amalie ha
d sunk into a deep sleep. Usually she spent them reading or working on family-history research, but now she was seated on the settee with her laptop perched on her knee, writing. Now and then she stopped to listen for sounds from the child’s bedroom, but all that could be heard was the constant rain.
In her text, she alternated between the content of the police documents, the contemporary newspaper accounts from 1987 and her own notes from the interviews she had conducted in tandem with Daniel. He had sent her the sound files but was now in Oslo editing the content for the first podcast.
She was on a roll. In the opening article it was a matter of presenting the facts, briefly and concisely, but in a compelling way, to make the reader want to follow the story over the next few weeks. What she lacked was a slightly authoritative view of the case. She had arranged an appointment with a journalist on the Porsgrunns Dagblad newspaper who had covered the whole story at the time and was still working at the newspaper. The problem was that he wanted to write about the story before hers had gone to print. This was not ideal, but a local newspaper such as Porsgrunns Dagblad was not a serious competitor and the journalist did not have the same access to material that she had.
She read through what she had written, even though it provisionally comprised fragments to be fleshed out later. As things stood, she was simply a tool of the police and all the information had been collected in advance. In order to intrigue readers and podcast listeners, she would have to make something more of it, something that would create momentum and involvement. She would have to try to find some aspect the police had overlooked or had interpreted incorrectly. A clue she could follow up, perhaps. From experience, she knew something usually cropped up once a story had gone to print. Readers sometimes preferred to speak to the press rather than the police about what they knew, but she felt impatient and restless.
29
Wisting reheated the leftover pizza in the microwave. It had been stored in the fridge since Friday evening, but it looked fine.
‘Would you like some pizza?’ he called through to Thomas in the living room.
‘I ate at Line’s,’ he answered, walking through to the kitchen.
Wisting took out the pizza and sat down, with Thomas in the seat opposite him.
‘Why do you do it?’ Thomas asked.
Wisting laid his fork down on the slice of pizza. It had gone soft in the microwave. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, cutting off a piece.
‘Working on these cases, the very worst cases. Murder and so on.’
Wisting reflected on this as he ate his pizza. He was occasionally faced with this question. People wondered whether he lay awake at nights because of his job. Sometimes he had sleepless nights because a case was weighing heavily at the back of his mind, but then that was for professional reasons. He would run through details in pursuit of something that had been overlooked.
‘I enjoy it,’ he replied. ‘I like to think I contribute to bringing about justice. When someone takes another person’s life, they have to know someone will come after them and hold them accountable. If no one did this job, then we’d have a society where the rights of the strongest would prevail.’
Thomas listened without making any comment.
‘What’s more, I think it’s exciting,’ Wisting added. ‘I could easily have said I became a policeman because I wanted to make the world a better place, to make a difference, but when all is said and done, it’s really because of a fascination with serious crimes.’
‘Isn’t that …’ Thomas was searching for the right word. ‘… callous, in a way?’
‘I could have become a traffic cop,’ Wisting said, smiling, ‘but I didn’t want that. I wanted to try to understand the incomprehensible. How one human can take another human’s life. It’s a bit like a clergyman who ends up working in a hospital, among the dying. He could have chosen to work with weddings and christenings instead. Or why some doctors choose to work in a unit with children suffering from cancer. It’s difficult and painful, but maybe that’s where they find some meaning in what they do.’
‘I met a girl a couple of months ago,’ Thomas said. ‘It was getting serious.’
Wisting resumed eating. Thomas had not said anything about a girlfriend.
‘At first she didn’t appreciate what my job involved. When she did, she couldn’t understand how I could do such a job. In her eyes I was still part of the military and mixed up in brutal wars. I tried to tell her what motivated me, but I couldn’t do it.’
Wisting was lost for words.
‘I tried to tell her it was about keeping the world safe and secure,’ Thomas went on. ‘But it’s just like what you were saying. I enjoy it, both in an everyday sense and in contributing to something greater. I can’t imagine ever doing anything else – flying commercial flights, for instance.’
‘Maybe it’s just something that’s part of our make-up,’ Wisting suggested. ‘I think your sister has it too.’
Thomas stood up.
‘Are you leaving tomorrow?’ Wisting asked.
‘No,’ Thomas replied. ‘Line’s working on a major story. I’m going to stay here all week to look after Amalie.’
30
The hotel was partly built over the shore and the sea. Stiller had been allocated a room overlooking the water with a small balcony. He stepped outside and stood, inhaling the tang of seaweed and salty air. In the inner part of the harbour a man was out walking a big black dog. He saw them in the light of a streetlamp. Cold, frothy white surf pitched against the jetty on which they were standing, showering them in sea spray.
He lingered on the balcony until the man and his dog disappeared, moving beyond the yellow circle of lamplight.
He had put a bag with six cans of beer in it down on the balcony floor, and there were three left. The air temperature kept them relatively cool. He cracked open another can and carried it in with him to his computer. Hopefully, it would help make him sleepy. He slept badly, and even worse in a hotel.
The new face of Nadia Krogh filled the computer screen. The drawing had arrived just before nine o’clock. Admittedly, it was no later than eight in London, but this probably meant someone had spent a lot of time reaching the best possible result.
He opened his can of beer and settled into the seat. As far as Stiller was concerned, it was immaterial what Nadia looked like. Some computer nerd or other could almost certainly have come up with a passable likeness in his teenage bedroom for a far cheaper price.
He poured the contents of the can into a glass and glanced up at the screen again.
This could well be what she would have looked like if she were still alive, he thought as he took a gulp from his glass. However, he had no confidence that making it public would bring them any benefit. The sketch was simply a prop to help move the case forward.
He shifted his gaze to the mirror on the wall above the writing desk. His eyes had started to become puffy and he could see a spatter of red specks on the whites.
The first time he had experienced problems sleeping had been while he was living with his parents in South Africa. The reason was not difficult to trace. It had been because of Julie Ann. But regardless of whether he could link it to what had happened there, it did not cure his insomnia.
In the beginning, he had simply tossed and turned for an hour or two after going to bed, but eventually the insomnia developed and deteriorated. He had tried various medications that had given him a few hours of sleep but did not leave him feeling rested. Then, after six months or so, it had all passed and he was sleeping normally once more. Since then, insomnia had overtaken him at regular intervals. Now it had been more than six months since he had slept all through the night.
He closed the image of Nadia Krogh and sent it to the chief editor he had been in contact with about Thursday’s programme. Then he concentrated on Martin Haugen, a man he could not quite fathom. There was nothing in the old investigation documents to indicate what sort of person he really was. He appeared to be a
fairly anonymous character, living alone and not socially active. His circle of acquaintances seemed restricted to work colleagues and a few elderly relatives. In time, the comms surveillance would possibly help to sketch out a better picture of who he was, as would the search of his home. But, in the meantime, it seemed as if something overshadowed his existence, holding him back and preventing him from living life to the full.
Adrian Stiller took another swig of beer. He was familiar with that kind of person, people with secrets darker than the deep sea. These were the secrets he liked to unearth.
31
‘Anything new?’ Wisting asked as he closed the door of the CS room behind him.
‘Porn,’ Hammer answered, pointing to the screen. ‘Looks like he subscribes to something. He was looking at it last night. We can’t pull up the mirror images of the pages behind the pay wall, but the log-in page tells you all you need to know.’
‘Extreme XXX,’ Wisting read aloud. The pages appeared to cover topics such as restraint, sadism and masochism.
‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ Hammer said.
‘It makes you think, anyway,’ Adrian Stiller commented, rubbing his eyes. He seemed tired and out of sorts.
‘Any phone calls?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What about emails?’
‘Only incoming spam.’
‘Anything else?’
‘It’s possible he’s planning to go on holiday. He’s been browsing through expensive, exotic travel destinations, but hasn’t booked anything.’
Stiller looked at the time. ‘The technicians are on their way,’ he said. ‘They’ll drive into the roads department offices in Tønsberg and fix a tracking device to his vehicle. Then we’ll be able to track him on a screen as well.’
‘Isn’t that risky?’ Wisting asked. ‘In broad daylight, in an open car park outside his work?’
The Katharina Code Page 14