The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  The coffee was ready for drinking, and Wisting poured it into their cups.

  ‘Did it say anything about the mother?’ Martin asked, peering into his cup.

  Wisting put down the coffee pot. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘In Line’s newspaper article,’ Martin explained. ‘Did it say anything about Nadia Krogh’s mother? She must have the worst of it.’

  Avoiding eye contact with Martin, Wisting cast his mind back to the old newspaper interview Martin had saved, supposedly to copy her emotions. Something in it must have had an effect on him.

  ‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think she’s ever agreed to be interviewed,’ he added in an effort to provoke a reaction.

  Martin Haugen tasted the coffee.

  ‘Line told me Nadia’s father has a gift waiting for her if she ever returns home,’ Wisting went on when Martin said nothing further. ‘Her grandmother had bought it for Nadia in Paris. It was intended as a birthday present, but then she disappeared. Her grandmother left it for Nadia to open when she came back. She died the year her grandchild would have turned twenty-seven, and the gift is still there, waiting for her.’

  Martin put down his cognac glass and drew the coffee cup towards him. ‘Is Line writing about that?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s all part of the story,’ Wisting said.

  ‘What’s in the parcel?’

  Wisting took a piece of chocolate from the bag on the table. ‘No one knows,’ he answered. ‘I think the parcel is a sort of symbol of the entire case. The answer is inside, well wrapped up.’

  Martin exchanged his coffee cup for his cognac glass. ‘You investigators seem so certain that solutions exist,’ he said, his tumbler nestling on his lap. ‘But what if there are no longer any answers? What if all the people who knew anything are dead, like Nadia’s grandmother?’

  ‘There’s still somebody who knows, if only we dig deep enough,’ Wisting told him. ‘The shop assistant in Paris, the customer who stood behind her, a fellow passenger she chatted with on the plane, a friend she met when she came home and spoke about her trip. There’s always somebody who knows.’

  Martin took a generous mouthful of cognac. ‘Can we talk about something else?’ he suggested.

  Wisting had no desire to change the subject. Martin was beginning to feel the pressure. There was something in the air between them – it felt like when a balloon is blown to full capacity and could burst at any moment. He was keen to continue, but that would be lacking in respect. Moreover, it was difficult to know what would happen when Martin reached breaking point.

  ‘Of course,’ he said instead. ‘Let’s talk about something pleasant.’

  ‘What will you do when you retire?’ Martin asked.

  Wisting drank some of his cognac. ‘I thought we were going to talk about something pleasant!’ he joked, before taking another swig. ‘I’m going to work until I’m sixty. It’s another five years until then. After that, I don’t know. Maybe spend more time on things like this.’ He waved his hand expansively. ‘Fishing.’

  The conversation swung from politics to TV programmes to the weather. They worked their way down the bottle of cognac and soon it was half empty. Wisting began to feel intoxicated, and noticed the same in Martin. He was more loquacious and occasionally stumbled over his sentences.

  ‘I need to go out for a piss,’ Martin said.

  ‘I’ll come too,’ Wisting said.

  As they walked out together to the edge of the forest, silence closed in around them. A stream trickled somewhere in the distance, and a faint rustling swept through the treetops. When Martin began to take a leak beside him, Wisting threw his head back and gazed up at the night sky. A plane flying east blinked above them.

  ‘Have you heard of Charles Lindbergh?’ Wisting asked, in an attempt to turn the conversation back to its starting point.

  Martin seemed unsure.

  ‘American pilot,’ Wisting explained, as he relieved himself. ‘He was the first man to fly solo over the Atlantic, from New York to Paris, in 1927. It took thirty-three and a half hours. A hotel owner in London had promised a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars to the first man to achieve it. That’s around three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in today’s money, almost three million kroner. It made him both rich and famous. He earned just as much from the books he wrote, and even more for various personal appearances.’

  Fastening his fly, he took a few steps towards the cabin and wiped his hands on the dew-soaked grass.

  ‘Five years later his son was kidnapped,’ Wisting went on, glancing again at the plane in the sky. ‘He vanished from his upstairs bedroom. The kidnappers left a letter demanding a ransom of fifty thousand dollars, and a ladder propped up on the outside wall. The money was paid, but they didn’t get their son back. Ten weeks later, he was found. The investigation concluded that he had died from injuries caused in a fall and that the kidnapper had probably dropped him from the top of the ladder when he climbed out of the window. Almost half of the ransom money was found in a German man’s home and, though he denied having anything to do with the crime, he was convicted and executed in the electric chair.’

  They walked together back to the cabin.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Wisting added. ‘If the German had just told the truth, he would probably have avoided the death penalty.’ He sat down at the table again. ‘I think something similar may have happened to Nadia Krogh,’ he said. ‘Something happened, something unplanned and irreversible.’

  Martin stood looking at him. Something of the tense atmosphere had returned. ‘You’re right,’ he said, lifting his cognac glass. ‘It was probably an accident.’

  ‘What kind of accident, though?’ Wisting quizzed him.

  Martin drained the cognac. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered, sounding unconcerned. ‘You’re probably right, but now I think I’ll hit the hay.’

  He put down his tumbler and headed towards the bedroom. ‘Good night,’ he said, as he closed the door behind him.

  Wisting could feel it too. It was late now and, what’s more, the combination of fresh air and alcohol had a certain effect on the body.

  He cleared the table, found his toothbrush and went outside to brush his teeth in the stream before going to bed.

  He lay stretched out on his back in an attempt to sum up the evening, but had made no progress when his mobile phone gave a loud buzz. A text message. Wisting reached for his trousers, draped over the chair, and dug out the phone. The display illuminated the room. It was from Line with a full stop.

  Just wanted to say goodnight. You’re so lucky with the weather. The starry sky must be really beautiful where you are.

  A weather report.

  Wisting switched off the sound on the phone and sent a brief text: Gone to bed.

  The next message arrived almost instantly: The electricity is off again. Can’t find it in the house.

  It was a half-coded message but perfectly clear to Wisting. Hammer and Stiller had entered Martin’s house again and the gun was not there. This meant he had brought it with him.

  He deleted the message. From the other side of the wall he heard a sound. Martin had obviously not yet fallen asleep. A door opened, and he heard footsteps on the floor. The door on the woodstove creaked metallically as it was opened, and logs were placed inside. He was again aware of the sound of a ladle in the water bucket, but also another sound he could not quite identify, before the padding footsteps returned to the bedroom.

  Wisting waited a while before crawling gingerly from his sleeping bag. He placed a chair in front of the door and dumped his rucksack on it to make sure he would wake if anyone entered.

  59

  Wisting tossed and turned in his sleeping bag and could hear Martin doing the same on the other side of the wall. The bed was hard, and narrower than what he was used to, but it was his thoughts that kept him awake. He began to feel increasingly positive about his theory that Katharina had been suffering from
a guilty conscience and had been preparing to turn herself in. The basis for this theory was that she had been responsible for Nadia Krogh’s death. He could get everything to fit, even the code on the kitchen table. Before she gave herself up she had written down reference points on a map that showed where Nadia Krogh’s body was hidden. One or two explanatory sentences from Katharina would probably make it easy to decipher all those lines and numbers.

  He was not entirely sure how all these thoughts stacked up, but suddenly the possible meaning of it all came to him in a flash.

  The bed creaked as he sat up, and he pulled the chair with the rucksack towards him and fumbled for the box of matches in the side pocket. He lit the candle and took out a piece of paper and a pencil.

  He had spent so many hours studying the sheet of paper with the code that he had no problem reconstructing it from memory. Once he had sketched it out, he grew utterly certain. He had found the solution.

  60

  The light in the hotel room was switched off. Adrian Stiller lay on his back in bed with his hands folded over his chest. He concentrated on his breathing, how the quilt rose each time he inhaled and fell when he exhaled. How the air moved in through his nostrils and out again. His thoughts drifted until he found something to focus on, a word he could repeat to himself, over and over again. On this occasion he ended up with Tugela Falls in South Africa, picturing in his mind’s eye the waterfall with its nine-hundred-metre drop from Mont-Aux-Sources.

  Tugela.

  In the innermost recesses of his mind he pronounced the name the way the local inhabitants did, deep and resonant, almost like a mantra.

  A kind of self-taught meditation, without incense, tinkling bells, flickering candles or spiritual music, it brought him some sort of inner peace and sometimes helped him to sleep.

  The phone rang on his bedside table.

  Stiller stretched out to grab hold of it. The time was 2.37 a.m., he noticed, and the caller was Nils Hammer.

  ‘Were you asleep?’ Hammer asked.

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Wisting thinks he’s solved the Katharina code,’ Hammer continued. ‘He knows where Nadia Krogh is.’

  Stiller sat bolt upright. ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘He sent me a text message,’ Hammer explained without answering the question. ‘He believes that Katharina Haugen, though not necessarily Martin Haugen, killed Nadia. The code refers to a map showing where the body is buried. She sketched it out to make it easier to explain things when she handed herself in.’

  ‘Where?’ Stiller repeated.

  ‘Somewhere along the E18,’ Hammer replied. ‘The new motorway was being constructed when Nadia disappeared. Katharina worked in the planning office. Wisting is convinced she had drawn a stretch of the road. The number eighteen is the road number. European route eighteen.’

  Stiller got up and walked to the desk. He flipped open the lid of his laptop, where he had a digital copy of the Katharina code, but could already picture in his head how the number eighteen was inscribed twice, with a square drawn around it.

  ‘What about all the other numbers?’ he asked.

  ‘They are sign numbers.’

  ‘What kind of sign numbers?’

  ‘Every sign is allocated its own number. The number 362, for example, is the speed limit. Katharina worked on sign plans. She knew all these numbers.’

  Stiller now had the code on his screen, and the parallel lines looked like a stretch of road. On either side there was a circle with the number 362 inside, just as a motorway would be marked with speed-limit signs.

  ‘What is 334?’ he asked.

  ‘No overtaking,’ Hammer answered.

  ‘And 701?’

  ‘All signs beginning with seven are directional signs.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Signs with information about place names, giving notice of exit roads and suchlike. The square yellow signs.’

  Stiller mulled this over as he stared at the cross at the side of the road. ‘How long is the stretch of road that was being built when Nadia went missing?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe ten kilometres.’

  ‘And somewhere along that road there’s a combination of signs that will tell us where Nadia Krogh is.’ He glanced at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. It was now almost three. ‘Can we meet up at nine o’clock?’ he asked.

  ‘Nine is perfect.’

  They rounded off their conversation. Stiller sat for a while in front of the computer screen before standing up to pull on his trousers and the rest of his clothes. He headed down to the basement car park, and five minutes later he was sitting in his car en route west along the E18.

  61

  Wisting must have woken up at daylight. There were no curtains at the window, and the sun was rising above the forest. The rays hit him directly in the face.

  His body was stiff and uncooperative. He wriggled about to catch hold of his mobile phone. No new messages. It was quarter to nine and there was fourteen per cent battery charge left.

  He switched it off completely to save power.

  The solution to the Katharina code felt just as clear as it had done during the night. Immediately before he had fallen asleep it had occurred to him that Line’s parking tickets were what had been gnawing at the back of his mind. The sign she had contravened had been quoted by number. He wondered whether he should come up with a pretext to cut short the fishing trip and go home, but he had an objective to fulfil that weekend. The Katharina code had remained unsolved for twenty-four years. It could wait another two days.

  He crept out of his sleeping bag and planted his feet firmly on the floor. The room was chilly and he hauled on his socks, trousers and shirt, with a sweater on top. Then he headed for the kitchen to fire up the stove before taking the bucket out to the stream for fresh water.

  He heard his own footsteps on the grass, as well as the stream gurgling and the occasional chirping of birds. Apart from that, the place was silent, a type of silence quite different from a total absence of sound. The noises he heard did not disturb him. It was the human-made hubbub of civilization that was truly disturbing. This kind of stillness sharpened his wits and clarified his thoughts.

  He felt twinges in his back when he crouched down to fill the bucket. Somewhere in the forest on the other side a branch snapped. He stood waiting to see if an animal would emerge, but saw nothing so turned on his heel and returned to the cabin. Smoke from the chimney was drifting slowly down to the lake.

  When he entered, Martin Haugen was also up and about. ‘Good morning,’ Wisting greeted him with a smile.

  Martin reciprocated in similar style. ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Wisting admitted. ‘I’m not used to that hard foam mattress.’

  He rinsed out the coffee pot and filled it with clean water as Martin cleared the top of the stove.

  ‘It’s going to be a lovely day,’ Martin said, peering out of the window. ‘We’ll be able to lay the nets sometime this morning.’

  They ate breakfast and drank their coffee. Wisting put everything to do with Katharina and Nadia to the back of his mind. The night before, the momentum had been with him, in the flickering glow of the paraffin lamp. But Martin had been on his guard. He was probably well aware of the fates that had befallen Nadia and Katharina and had been living a lie for the past twenty-six years. Every encounter with Wisting must have involved uneasy play-acting, like walking through a minefield. Martin Haugen had remained single after Katharina’s disappearance, and his life was focused on avoiding a misstep. It was difficult to maintain really close contact with anyone when, all the time, you had to make sure you did not give yourself away.

  After breakfast they rowed out and laid two nets, one by the mouth of the stream and the other immediately ahead of the nearest promontory. When they returned ashore they filled a Thermos and brought their fishing rods down to the lake. They followed an overgrown path until they found
a rocky headland, where they positioned themselves at some distance from each other.

  Martin Haugen was first to cast his line. It drew an arc in the air before breaking the surface of the water.

  Wisting took out a seven-gram Toby, a light, silver lure with dark patches and a touch of red. He loosened the hasp on the reel, held the line firmly with his index finger as he guided the rod diagonally behind him and cast his line. It swished through the rod rings, and the lure followed the direction of the fishing rod, soaring obliquely until it reached the zenith and curved down to the water surface, like a swooping insect.

  He let it settle a little before reeling in and casting the line again.

  They fished in silence. Neither of them was rewarded with as much as a nibble.

  After half an hour Martin Haugen reeled in again and changed his lure. Wisting followed suit.

  The sun rose higher in the sky and started to radiate heat. Flies and other insects began to stir. Suddenly the silence was broken by a fish leaping: Wisting caught the gleam of the brass-coloured belly before ripples spread through the water.

  Martin reeled in quickly and flicked his silver lure in the direction of the leaping fish, but the fish refused to bite.

  After another half-hour without a nibble, Martin Haugen slung his fishing bag over his shoulder and grasped his rod. ‘I’m going to try a bit further along,’ he said.

  Wisting gave him a nod. Martin disappeared into the forest and emerged at a point fifty metres away, on the other side of a shallow inlet dotted with rushes and water lilies.

  This gave Wisting the chance he had been waiting for. He laid down his fishing rod and motioned to Martin that he would be back soon before trekking through the forest to return to the cabin.

  Martin’s rucksack was propped up against the wall beneath the window in his bedroom. Wisting squeezed it in an effort to identify the hard contours of a gun. However, he could not feel anything and took the rucksack into the living room to keep an eye on the field down by the lake as he went through it more systematically. Removing the clothes one by one as he placed them on the table, he quickly ascertained there was no gun inside, or anything else of interest.