The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  Martin emerged from his bedroom with two cans of beer and handed one to Wisting. ‘I suggest we light the stove and have something to eat first,’ he said, opening his can.

  Wisting agreed and accompanied him out to the woodshed. The axe lay on top of the chopping block, immediately inside the door. Martin put down his can of beer, picked up the axe and began to split some logs for kindling.

  Wisting remained outside. He stood back from the doorway to allow daylight in. The dense forest, looming silently around them, hemmed them in completely. When he turned to face the lake again he saw the still surface disturbed by a pair of ducks swimming side by side. Apart from the sound of axe blows in the woodshed, all was absolutely silent.

  When the noise stopped he went into the woodshed and picked up an armful of firewood, carrying the logs across the yard and loading them into the box on the kitchen floor. Martin was immediately behind him, holding a load of wood in one arm and a fishing gaff in the other. It resembled a hayfork, but the prongs had barbs to prevent the speared fish from slipping off. The tips of the three prongs were shiny, as if they had been recently sharpened.

  ‘We should launch the rowing boat as well, so it can swell a bit in the water,’ he said, setting aside the spear before dropping the logs into the firewood box.

  Wisting hunkered down and opened the door of the stove. ‘Is it a while since you had the boat on the water, then?’ he asked, as he threw in some wood chippings.

  ‘Last year,’ Martin answered, handing him a box of matches. ‘You’ll have to do some bailing.’

  Wisting lit the stove and the flames quickly caught hold. He waited until they had reached a sufficient pitch for him to throw in one or two bigger logs and then shut the door. They took their cans of beer with them down to the lake.

  The rowing boat was overturned on two tree trunks and covered with a tarpaulin. Dead leaves had collected in the folds.

  They tugged off the tarpaulin and stood gazing at the old rowing boat. The flat keel had been coated with tar and seemed intact. Together, they managed to tip it over. The water level was high after all the rain, and it was easy to push it out. Martin took the rope from the bow and tied it to a tree before heaving in the oars and throwing in a small red plastic bucket to be used as a scoop. Some drops of water trickled from a crack in the stern, but the timber would draw water and, in the course of a few hours, expand to block any small gaps.

  Dusk had crept up on them as they worked. When they returned to the cabin they could no longer see as far as the water’s edge.

  Martin threw a log into the stove before placing the frying pan on top.

  ‘Shall we just have some sausages?’ he suggested, as he dropped in a knob of butter that slowly began to melt.

  Wisting, happy to go along with this, lit a paraffin lamp. It shed a soft light into the room, causing the table and chairs to cast long shadows.

  Slowly but surely the cramped cabin became cosy. Wisting took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. He took the newspaper from the bag and sat down to read Line’s article. Martin put the sausages in the pan and flipped them over as they cooked.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ Wisting asked, looking up from the newspaper.

  Martin Haugen picked up his can of beer and took a swig. ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘To Nadia Krogh,’ Wisting explained. ‘It’s an unusual case.’

  Fiddling with the ring on top of the can, Martin raised one corner of his mouth into a smile. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he replied.

  Wisting held the newspaper page with the digitally manipulated picture halfway up to him. ‘I don’t think she’s still alive, at any rate,’ he said. ‘Something happened to her.’

  ‘She was kidnapped,’ Martin commented. He turned the sausages as they sizzled in the pan and said something about unpredictable people.

  Wisting asked him to repeat what he’d said.

  ‘It’s not easy to know when you’re dealing with unpredictable people,’ Martin said.

  ‘You’re right, in a way,’ Wisting agreed, folding the newspaper. ‘That is to say, I don’t think the person or persons behind it are unpredictable, in an unstable or mentally ill sense, or that their plan was for Nadia Krogh to die.’

  This was bait. Not something Martin would nibble at once but something that could wait, ripening, slowly sinking into his mind, something that in the end would make it easier for him to confess what he had done.

  Naturally, Wisting had devised a strategy for the fishing trip, in just the same way as he would when entering an interview room. His hypothesis was that Martin Haugen had killed Nadia Krogh and a ripple effect had led to Katharina suffering the same fate. Everything Wisting said in their conversations would be rooted in this theory, and all the answers Martin gave would be interpreted in accordance with this theory. In his head, he had a whole list of topics he intended to raise to make Martin’s thoughts churn. Opening the possibility that Nadia Krogh’s death had not necessarily been a deliberate act was only an early ploy.

  ‘Very few murderers are like that,’ Wisting went on. ‘Very few I have met are cold, cynical or calculating. Hardly any of them ever imagined they would end up as killers, but that’s how things turned out. And they were not insane at the moment of committing the crime. Not before, or even after.’

  The smoke from the frying pan combined with the reek of paraffin. Martin turned his head away from the stove and waved his hand. Wisting could see his words had made some impact. Nothing that would be picked up on the recording, but something Wisting felt provided confirmation he was moving in the right direction. Martin Haugen was already demonstrating classic signs of insecurity. He avoided eye contact, smiled at inappropriate times and moved his hands constantly.

  ‘Usually it’s people who’ve landed in an extreme situation, totally on the edge of what they can control and tolerate,’ Wisting went on. ‘It ends by murder being committed in the heat of the moment, in desperation, or in rage.’

  Martin withdrew the frying pan from the stove. ‘I think they’re ready,’ he said.

  ‘They look tasty,’ Wisting replied.

  Martin pulled out a kitchen drawer, pushed it back again, opened another and took out a bread knife. Wisting found the loaf they had bought earlier and handed it to him. Martin put it down on the breadboard, cut two slices and laid a sausage on each of them.

  ‘There’s some mustard somewhere in here,’ he said, opening one of the cupboard doors.

  He found some and passed it to Wisting. He could not read the date stamp in the faint light but squeezed a ribbon of mustard out anyway before folding the bread around the sausage.

  They ate in silence as the wood crackled in the stove. Martin opened the door and pushed another couple of logs into the embers.

  57

  The figures were not good. The main article about Nadia Krogh had been on the Internet since twelve o’clock. There had been two separate references on the front page, but so far fewer than a hundred thousand had ventured to read it. The online newspaper had a daily readership of 1.5 million, which meant that fewer than ten per cent had been drawn to the story. The target was two hundred thousand – this would indicate a successful article. Hopefully, traffic would increase in the course of the evening.

  It would take longer to achieve high figures for the podcast. They could only measure the readers who had listened to it via the online newspaper pages, and that was barely twelve hundred. As a starting point, this was a catastrophically low figure but she had been prepared for that. The popularity of a podcast spread like ripples on water. The potential lay in more and more people discovering it and taking an interest, and eventually subsequent programmes would attract a host of listeners.

  Amalie sat in the playpen, but she was bored and had started whining for food. Line shot her a smile. ‘Okay, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and eat.’

  Perching on the edge of her chair, she picked up her mobile phone and checked Twitt
er. A surprising number of tweets had been posted about Nadia Krogh, but most of these were comments on the TV2 programme and from people who had shared the picture of what she would look like today.

  She laid aside her phone, took Amalie through to the kitchen and sat her in her high chair while she spread a slice of bread with liver pâté. Dividing it into four quarters, she tied a bib on Amalie before putting the plate down in front of her. Then she spread a slice for herself and ate with her.

  After they had eaten, she gave Amalie a bath and put her down for a nap. She fell asleep almost at once, and Line settled on the settee with her laptop again.

  The readership figures had grown by nearly ten thousand in the past hour. This was promising, but now she had to concentrate on the next article. Publishing the original letters from the kidnappers would certainly have an impact on the click statistics.

  She had the letters, as well as the interviews with the policeman who had monitored the ransom money and the Grey Panther whose name had been used by the kidnappers. But she would really like something more, something new.

  She had noticed two things in particular in the material she had collected. One was the explanation the Senior General gave about ‘Grey Panthers’ referring to older people who were still fit and active. The other was what the Porsgrunns Dagblad journalist had mentioned about the possibility of revenge as a motive for the kidnapping. Nadia’s father had just closed down the timber factory when she disappeared. Many people had been laid off, people who had worked there all their lives. Old folk.

  The theory was far-fetched – she should really forget about it and instead focus her attention on Robert Gran, who had been Nadia’s boyfriend. She would have to prepare for their interview tomorrow but, nonetheless, she sat browsing through the digital edition of the newspaper the kidnappers had used. She stopped at the page with the picture of Vidar Arntzen. He had pointed out that the paper had been a good three weeks out of date when the ransom letter had been contrived and she sat mulling over why someone had used that specific edition of the newspaper.

  The most obvious answer was that it was a random paper that the kidnappers had plucked out of a bundle. In all likelihood, she would have asked herself the same question if it had been the copy from the day before or the day after and the kidnappers had called themselves the Red Dogs instead, or the Black Cats, for that matter.

  She scanned through the pages, back and forth, but in the end she changed the image on the screen.

  58

  Martin Haugen pushed another two logs into the stove before grabbing the fishing gaff. ‘Shall we give it a go?’ he asked.

  Wisting lifted his jacket from the back of the chair and shrugged it on. ‘I’ll take the light,’ he said, taking hold of the paraffin lamp.

  Outside, it was a starry night and the moon was rising above the treetops. Now and again, water squelched beneath their boots as they trudged towards the boat. The air was cold and damp.

  The bottom of the boat had taken in surprisingly little water after having been kept dry for a year or so. Wisting clambered on board and sat down on the stern thwart with the paraffin lamp by his side. He then began to bail, while Martin untied the mooring rope and pushed the boat out.

  Water lapped against the hull. Martin Haugen and Wisting were now face to face. Haugen braced his feet, arched his back and rowed away from shore. In the faint glow of the paraffin lamp, he looked emaciated and old.

  For a second Wisting felt he could see himself in the man sitting opposite him. He too had been worn down by the passage of time. Years had gone by while he was absorbed in his work, and he wished he had experienced more days like this. He knew the contentment it brought, taking part in the simple pleasure of fishing: the silence, the darkness and the anticipation.

  ‘There’s a spawning stream on the other side,’ Martin said, rowing a few strokes with one oar to turn the boat round.

  The boat glided slowly forward, water dripping from the oar blades each time Martin Haugen raised them to make another stroke. From time to time he twisted round to check his direction in the darkness.

  As Wisting went on bailing, his thoughts turned to the night Katharina Haugen had disappeared. They possessed very few facts, but they did provide Martin Haugen with an alibi.

  When the scoop scraped the bottom of the boat, Wisting threw out the last splash of water and put it aside.

  ‘How deep is it?’ he asked, peering down into the murky depths.

  ‘About sixty metres at the deepest point,’ Martin told him, ‘but not here in the bay. It’s no more than ten or twelve metres.’

  They were approaching the edge of the forest on the opposite side, silhouetted against the clear, starlit sky.

  Martin raised the oars and they listened intently as the boat drifted slowly onward. They could hear water trickling in a stream slightly to their left.

  The oars broke the surface of the water when Martin dipped them again and adjusted his course.

  ‘Go to the bow,’ he whispered, as if his voice might scare off the fish.

  First picking up the paraffin lamp, Wisting slipped past Martin and crouched in the bow of the boat. They had almost reached the shore by now. The forest was particularly dense here, all the way down to the water’s edge, making the darkness close in tightly around them.

  The paraffin lamp had a metal shield to direct the light straight down to the water and avoid dazzling him.

  ‘Do you see anything?’ Martin asked.

  Wisting turned up the wick to expand the flame and stretched out towards the water to hold the lamp just above the surface. ‘Just the sandy bed,’ he reported.

  Martin rowed another stroke, steering them closer to the course of the stream. A shadow flitted past along the lake bed.

  ‘Fish!’ Wisting exclaimed.

  Martin guided them even closer to land. The sandy bed rasped against the keel, but the current from the stream rapidly pushed them out into deeper water again.

  ‘We’ll have to tie up,’ he said.

  Wisting set the paraffin lamp down on a thwart before taking hold of the rope and jumping ashore as soon as Martin had manoeuvred them alongside. He moored the boat and leapt aboard again. The rowing boat drifted a couple of metres from land until the rope tightened when it came to rest.

  Martin drew in the oars, picked up the fishing gaff and got to his feet. As the boat rocked, Wisting grabbed the paraffin lamp to avoid it toppling.

  Martin moved forward in the boat, knelt down and hung over the gunwale with the gaff raised, ready to strike. Wisting stretched out beside him with the lamp. The bed, less than half a metre below them, comprised sand and pebbles. The current from the stream agitated a number of brown aquatic plants.

  At the outermost edge of the circle of light something stirred. Wisting leaned further forward but his movement frightened off the fish.

  They lay quietly, side by side. Martin lowered the fishing gaff a bit further, with the three prongs poised underneath the water. When the dark body of a fish came gliding into the circle of light and then stopped Martin struck without hesitation. The water was too turbulent to see if he had speared the fish but when he pulled back the fish was thrashing about on the gaff. Its belly was reddish-orange, while its back had a greenish glimmer.

  Martin quickly tugged it off, snapped its neck and lobbed it to the bottom of the boat. ‘Five hundred grams,’ he reckoned, wiping fish blood from his hands. ‘We’ll need another couple before we have enough for supper.’

  He leaned out over the gunwale again. It did not take long for another fish to appear. This time he missed. The same happened with the next one, but then he achieved success and pulled up another Arctic char almost one and a half times the size of the first one.

  He pulled it off the gaff, broke the neck and threw it beside the other fish before directing the gaff at Wisting. ‘Would you like a go?’

  Wisting took the gaff and handed Martin the paraffin lamp. For a while Wisting forgot ev
erything else as he concentrated totally on what was happening on the lake bed.

  The snout of a big Arctic char appeared, sliding slowly towards the centre of the light. Holding his breath, Wisting’s grip tightened on the gaff in his hand. He thrust it forward. His hand and arm disappeared under the water until he felt the gaff hit the bottom. When he pulled it out he realized he had missed.

  Martin chuckled and encouraged him to try again.

  The churned-up silt from the sandy bed quickly settled again. The unsuccessful attempt had left Wisting wet to the top of his arm. Although he was dripping and disturbing the clear surface, it was not enough to frighten the fish. Fairly quickly, two small char appeared. Their blank, black eyes stared up at the light, and then they scurried off and disappeared, as if something had alarmed them.

  Another fish made an appearance from the shadow cast by the boat, its slim body gleaming in the light. Curling its tail, it slithered under the gaff.

  Wisting lost no time striking, and this time knew he had nailed it. He pulled up the gaff and saw the fish caught on one of the prongs. This one was bigger than the other two, and its belly was even redder.

  He swung the gaff up towards Martin, who jerked the fish off, snapped its neck and threw it on to the bottom of the boat.

  They continued for a while longer, hauling up another couple of Arctic char ready to spawn before they agreed to call it a day.

  As Martin picked up the oars it dawned on Wisting that the arm that had been in the water was the one with the recording equipment.

  Cautiously, he used his fingers to feel the inside of his jacket sleeve. The little chip was still attached to the Velcro, but he doubted whether it would still be working. Thankfully, their conversations had not contained anything that could be used against Martin. He would have to activate the other recording device as soon as he had the chance.

  When the boat reached the shore Martin drew in the oars and jumped out, dragging the boat further up and mooring it before Wisting followed him.