The Katharina Code

by Jorn Lier Horst

  ‘You have to go now,’ he said, once he had got it all off his chest.

  ‘Let’s do this the proper way,’ Wisting requested.

  Martin Haugen lifted the pistol from his lap and flicked his wrist as if to wave Wisting away.

  ‘Out!’ he ordered.

  82

  Adrian Stiller stood with arms crossed and legs straddled, feet planted in the middle of the floor in the cramped CS room. He enjoyed the feeling when everything he had mobilized gradually intensified in pace, as well as the pressure and sense of responsibility for something important.

  Hammer placed his mobile phone on the desk in front of him. ‘He’s probably run out of battery power,’ he said.

  Stiller rubbed his eyes. Kaleidoscopic patches flickered on the inside of his eyelids. The red dot was still on the same spot when his gaze returned to the screen.

  ‘Can we send out an unmarked car?’ he asked.

  Hammer picked up his phone again. ‘I’ll try Telemark,’ he said. ‘They’re nearest.’

  ‘What about the additional manpower?’

  ‘They’re assembling down in the garage as we speak.’

  Stiller listened as Hammer talked to his colleagues in Telemark, explaining the situation and giving them the position of Haugen’s vehicle.

  ‘To begin with, all I want is for you to drive past and observe,’ Hammer concluded.

  Stiller wondered whether lack of sleep was playing tricks on him. It looked as if the dot on the screen had moved off again. He forced his eyes shut and opened them again, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen so that he could be certain.

  ‘They’re moving again!’ he said.

  The red marker continued onwards, into Porsgrunn town centre, following the same route Haugen and Wisting had driven when they had travelled to the cabin two days earlier.

  There was a tap on the door behind them and Stiller opened it wide. Christine Thiis had returned with the arrest order.

  ‘Any news?’ she asked.

  Stiller pointed at the screen. ‘They’ll be here in half an hour,’ he told her.

  As he said this, the red marker turned to the left and took a different road.

  ‘Where are they going now?’ Christine Thiis asked, but she received no answer.

  ‘We can’t just stand here,’ Stiller said, grabbing Hammer’s arm. ‘We’ll have to go out in the car.’

  83

  Wisting was left standing at the roadside, watching the pickup disappear in a cloud of dust.

  It took ninety seconds before a car arrived. Wisting stepped into the middle of the road and waved his arms frantically. The car slowed down before sounding its horn, swerving to one side and driving past.

  He produced the police ID from his wallet and tried to stop the next car with his arm outstretched and his palm in the air, as he had learned on his basic police-training course almost thirty-five years ago.

  A young woman was behind the wheel. She too reduced her speed and Wisting made eye contact with her through the windscreen. She looked terrified, and he made no further effort to detain her when the car moved out to overtake him.

  The next car came from the opposite direction: an old dark-blue Volvo. Wisting got the driver to brake and the car stopped beside him. The driver was a boy in his late teens, with a baseball cap and shoulder-length blond hair. He rolled down the window and scouted around, as if searching for a broken-down car or one that had driven off the road.

  Wisting held out his police badge, explaining how urgent the situation was, and that it had to do with a kidnapping case.

  ‘The Krogh case?’ the young lad asked.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Wisting queried.

  ‘It’s all over the news,’ the boy explained.

  Wisting skirted round the car and jumped in. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Even.’

  ‘Well, Even, I’d like you to turn round.’

  ‘Turn round?’

  ‘Yes. Did you pass a pickup?’

  ‘Yes, it was driving like a bat out of hell.’

  ‘Then I think you should get a move on and turn round,’ Wisting told him.

  The boy turned the steering wheel and made a U-turn. ‘We’re never going to manage to catch up with it,’ he said.

  ‘I can find out where it is,’ Wisting said, fastening his seatbelt. ‘I just need to borrow your phone.’

  Even reached into the inside pocket of his open leather jacket, pulled out a mobile phone and handed it to Wisting.

  84

  Stiller was driving. Hammer sat beside him with the tablet on his lap. The red marker was moving through the streets of Porsgrunn town centre, now travelling at a considerably reduced speed.

  The mobile phone rang and an unknown number appeared on the dashboard screen. Stiller answered from behind the wheel. The voice that filled the car was remarkably steady.

  ‘It’s Wisting.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In a requisitioned car with a borrowed phone,’ the chief inspector answered. ‘Where’s Haugen? Are you tracking him?’

  ‘He’s on the move,’ Stiller replied, leaving it to Hammer to give an exact position. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘My cover’s blown,’ Wisting explained. ‘I was ordered out of the pickup. He has that gizmo you couldn’t find when the electricity was cut off.’

  Stiller realized he was speaking in riddles to avoid his driver understanding the reference to a gun. ‘Did he say anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Wisting confirmed. ‘It all came spilling out.’

  Stiller took one hand from the steering wheel and raised his clenched fist in a gesture of triumph.

  ‘He’s stopped,’ Hammer said from the passenger seat.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He’s just turned and is now heading in a different direction,’ Hammer reported.

  ‘Where is he going?’ Wisting demanded.

  Glancing down at the tablet on Hammer’s knee, Stiller followed the red dot, but waited for a moment to be sure before responding. ‘It looks as if he’s on his way to the discovery site.’

  The phone line crackled. ‘Where exactly?’ Wisting asked.

  ‘The E18,’ Stiller told him. ‘Where we dug up Nadia.’

  85

  They kept the phone line open.

  Wisting asked the boy behind the wheel to accelerate. ‘We’re going out on the E18,’ he explained, estimating it would take them eight or nine minutes. He shifted the phone to his other ear. ‘Do we have any patrol cars in the vicinity?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re closest,’ Stiller replied. ‘Less than six minutes.’

  ‘What about Martin Haugen?’

  This time Hammer answered: ‘Two minutes.’

  They drove on without a word. The young driver pulled out and overtook a taxi.

  ‘Which way?’ he asked, as they approached a roundabout.

  It dawned on Wisting that they could drive via Herøya and reach the E18 south of the discovery site while Hammer and Stiller closed in from the north. It would probably also be quicker.

  ‘To the right,’ he ordered, pointing.

  A man in a black BMW gave a loud blast of his horn as the young lad squeezed his car in front of him.

  ‘He’s getting closer,’ Hammer said. ‘Less than half a minute now. Do we have a plan for this?’

  Neither Wisting nor Stiller made any response.

  Through the phone connection, Wisting could hear the police radio in the other car, with various patrol vehicles reporting their positions, and sirens in the background.

  ‘Two hundred metres away,’ Hammer announced.

  Wisting moved the phone to his other ear again.

  ‘One hundred metres,’ Hammer continued.

  Something was said on the police radio that Wisting could not catch. ‘He’s not stopping!’ Hammer exclaimed. ‘He’s driving past.’

  Stiller swore. His voice was louder on the phone, close to the mi
crophone of the hands-free set.

  ‘What’s he up to?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s driven this route before,’ Wisting said. ‘His courage failed him last time. He’s going to Hannah and Joachim Krogh’s house to tell them what happened to their daughter.’

  Stiller swore again.

  Wisting could hear him banging on the steering wheel. ‘He’s armed and mentally unstable,’ he reminded them. ‘Don’t we have any units to cut him off?’

  ‘Turning off towards Heistad now,’ Hammer updated them. ‘He’ll be there in two minutes flat.’

  Various announcements were broadcast on the police radio. Wisting realized he was in the best position to stop the pickup, but he would not be able to arrive there in time.

  86

  Wisting was first to get there. It had taken four minutes and eleven seconds.

  He directed the driver to move slowly past the grandiose house belonging to the Krogh family. The wrought-iron gate was open and Martin Haugen’s grey pickup was parked inside. There was no one to be seen.

  He described what he was seeing over the open phone line and asked the young driver to turn and park his car at the kerb fifty metres below the house.

  ‘What shall we do?’ he asked.

  ‘Wait for reinforcements,’ Wisting told him.

  The boy nodded, as if the answer was exactly in line with his expectations.

  Three minutes later Adrian Stiller and Nils Hammer appeared. Wisting thanked the teenager and opened the door to leave the car.

  ‘You can go now,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t I stay?’ the boy asked.

  ‘You can do whatever you like, but don’t come any closer than this.’

  Wisting hopped in beside Hammer and Stiller. Hammer was on the phone providing details to the operative crew when Wisting joined them.

  ‘Her poor parents,’ Stiller commented. ‘They should have been spared this.’

  Wisting made no comment.

  ‘Do you really think he’s sitting in there telling them all about it?’ Stiller asked.

  ‘With a gun!’

  ‘They’re not at home,’ Hammer said. He lowered his phone and peered up at the house. ‘They’ve gone as far away as possible from the media and all the fuss.’

  Stiller leaned forward to the windscreen. ‘Is he in there on his own?’

  Three uniformed police patrol cars swept into the street. One of them passed the house before drawing to a halt. Three armed officers stepped out, forced their way into the next-door garden and took up position at the rear of the house. The leader of the operation approached the vehicle in which the three investigators were seated.

  ‘We don’t want to end up with a situation where he barricades himself in,’ he said. ‘Can we phone him and try to talk him out?’

  The two detectives in the car turned to Wisting. ‘I’ll have to borrow a phone,’ he said. Hammer handed him his: Wisting looked up the number and rang it but found it unavailable.

  ‘Shall we go in, then?’ the leader asked.

  ‘Check the pickup first,’ Wisting told him.

  Adrian Stiller started the engine and drew a bit closer so that they could more easily follow what was going on. The armed unit’s leader gave a few short instructions and four officers moved forward. Two of them covered the others with guns trained on the house, while the other two closed in on the pickup. One cast a rapid glance into the driver’s cab before opening the door.

  ‘Empty,’ he reported over the radio.

  ‘The cargo bed,’ Wisting suggested.

  He caught sight of his fishing rod propped up against a large flowerpot – only the top was visible – with his rucksack beside it. Martin must have removed both.

  ‘He’s lying under the tarpaulin,’ he added.

  Fresh instructions were conveyed by radio. The security cordon round the house was maintained as the two police officers walked behind the pickup. One took a couple of steps to one side and directed his weapon at the tailgate as his colleague prepared to open it, with one hand on his pistol holster.

  They exchanged brief nods and the tailgate was flipped down.

  From the car, Wisting and his fellow-officers could see the soles of a pair of boots. Wisting opened the rear passenger door and stepped out. The policeman who had opened the tailgate had drawn his gun again.

  ‘Come out!’ he ordered, but there was no response.

  Wisting moved slowly towards them. Pink liquid flowed along the joints of the cargo bed, streaming towards the opening – a mixture of blood and brine.

  The policeman took hold of one foot and dragged Martin Haugen closer to the opening. He hunched over him, but soon wheeled round to face the unit leader, gesturing across his throat. Dead.

  Wisting stepped forward to confirm Martin Haugen’s identity.

  The shot had entered his head at the right temple and exited again on the opposite side, shattering the bucket of salted fish.

  Stiller arrived alongside him. Wisting turned towards him without uttering a word. He speculated about what kind of person Stiller was, when push came to shove. Whether he was someone who ran away or someone who went on the attack in a threatening situation.

  ‘Did he really confess?’ Stiller asked.

  Slipping his hand into his jacket sleeve, Wisting unhitched the tiny recorder and handed it to him.

  ‘It’s all there,’ he said, ‘if your technology has worked.’

  Stiller took the chip as if it were something rare and precious.

  As Wisting turned once again to Martin Haugen’s dead body, it crossed his mind that this was not a matter of fight or flight. Martin Haugen believed he had an inherited instinct to resist but, really, he had been on the run for the past twenty-four years. It was all over now.

  87

  Amalie was sitting on the settee playing with an iPad while Line was curled up with her laptop when Wisting arrived to see them. Both seemed equally engrossed.

  ‘It was Thomas who taught her that,’ Line said, without looking up from her computer.

  Laughing, Wisting whisked Amalie on to his lap, though she still kept a tight grip on the iPad.

  ‘It’s probably safer than playing with ballpoint pens,’ he said, with a chuckle.

  Line barely looked up from her machine.

  ‘I thought you’d finished writing,’ Wisting said.

  ‘This is something else,’ Line explained.

  ‘I listened to the last podcast episode,’ Wisting told her. ‘It’s a shame there won’t be more.’

  He knew six had been planned but, in the end, there had been only three, and by the time the final episode was released the case had already been solved.

  ‘What are you working on now?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of the laptop.

  ‘Family-history research,’ Line said, glancing up at last. ‘We do have a Stiller in our family, and I thought maybe we were related to Adrian Stiller, far back on the family tree somewhere. But we’re not. A bit of a shame, really,’ she added, with a smile. ‘Because he’s rich and has no heirs.’

  Wisting returned her smile.

  ‘It seems Stiller isn’t his real name, though,’ Line went on. ‘None of his relatives is called that. His parents use the surname Palm. They live in South Africa. That’s Adrian’s name too, but he changed it when he was twenty and returned to Norway to start at police college.’

  Line turned to face the computer screen again. ‘But there’s something else, something very interesting about him,’ she added. ‘His girlfriend disappeared and is presumed dead.’

  Wisting’s eyes widened.

  ‘In South Africa, when he was eighteen,’ Line continued. ‘I’m looking into it now. She was never found, and the case remains unsolved. Now, eighteen years later, he’s working in the Norwegian Cold Cases Group. Do you think he’d be interested in talking about it in an interview?’

  ‘I don’t know him very well,’ Wisting replied, ‘but I doubt it. I haven’t heard of th
is story, and it’s most likely not something he’d be keen to talk about.’

  ‘Is he still in town?’

  Wisting nodded. ‘I’m meeting him later. There’s some paperwork to clear up.’

  Line looked pensively at the screen, where images of English-language newspaper pages were displayed.

  ‘I must find out a bit more before I ask him,’ she decided.

  88

  It was time to clear his desk. Wisting sorted out work notes and sheets of scrap paper, some more than twenty years old. There were still unanswered questions about Katharina and Nadia, but now the cases had been closed these less significant mysteries would, regrettably, remain unsolved.

  He stood with a note in his hand, reading it several times over before bringing it through to Adrian Stiller’s office.

  Stiller was also clearing up. He placed ring binders in an empty cardboard box and threw loose sheets of paper in a recycling carton. His pass lay on the corner of the desk, ready to be returned.

  He seemed in better shape than he had in recent days. Rested. Wisting’s thoughts turned to what Line had told him about his girlfriend, and the motivation he clearly had to work on unsolved cases.

  ‘I know about it,’ he said, advancing further into the room.

  Stiller removed a note peppered with phone numbers from the noticeboard. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, turning to face Wisting.

  ‘I know you were the one who wrote the anonymous message to Martin Haugen,’ Wisting explained, holding up a copy of the four words. I know about it.

  Stiller broke into a smile. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘It can’t have been anyone else,’ Wisting told him. ‘No one apart from Martin Haugen knew what had happened to Nadia. Besides, I’ve learned about the way you work.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘You use provocation as a method and always have a hidden agenda.’

  Stiller smiled again. ‘Haugen needed a little push,’ he said. ‘To start the ball rolling.’

  ‘Was it you I saw outside his house, on the evening of 10 October? On the anniversary of her disappearance?’