Dregs (15 page)

‘Is this Carsten Meyer’s?’ he asked.

The man facing him nodded.

‘He’s in the living room,’ he explained, taking a couple of steps back to let Wisting enter.

‘Is it about the feet?’ he asked when Wisting was inside.

‘How …?’

‘I know who you are,’ the man continued, leading Wisting in. ‘I’m from Stavern.’ He turned round and held out his hand. ‘Daniel Meyer,’ he introduced himself. ‘Carsten is my grandfather. I’m visiting him for a couple of days. He’s been waiting for you.’

Carsten Meyer was sitting in a winged armchair by the window. The chair was upholstered in green, with carved arms and legs. The old man lifted his eyes and tightened his grip on the armrest as they entered. Age had left its obvious mark on him. His veins were like blue lines beneath his parchment thin skin.

‘A visitor for you,’ his grandson explained in a loud voice.

The old man leaned his head against the back of the chair, squinted at Wisting and nodded.

‘Did you ask him to come?’ he asked his grandson.

Daniel Meyer shook his head.

‘He found his way on his own.’

A glass of water was sitting on a side table with, beside it, a newspaper opened at the crossword, a bowl with an old pipe and a brown tobacco pouch. Carsten Meyer leaned forward slowly and reached for the glass of water, his hand shaking a little as he lifted it to his mouth. His larynx moved up and down beneath the loose old man’s skin while he drank and some of the water ran down his chin. He put down the glass, drying his face with the back of his hand.

Wisting sat down, placing the picture of the five-man group on top of the newspaper on the table.

The old man bent forward, studying the photograph without picking it up.

‘There you have us,’ he said with a smile.

‘You’re the only one left,’ Wisting said.

The man in front of him became serious again, leaning backwards in his chair.

‘We’ve almost been waiting for you to get in touch,’ he said, nodding in the direction of his grandson, his ally. ‘But I’m afraid you’ve come a long way to no purpose.’

‘Can you tell me about the five-man group?’ Wisting enquired.

‘How much do you know?’

‘That you were members of a force that was preparing for an invasion.’

The old man reached for his pipe, putting it in his left hand as he helped himself to a pinch of tobacco from the pouch.

‘The assignment was to stay behind as agents and saboteurs in the event of a Soviet invasion,’ he explained. ‘Initially, personnel with experience from World War II were recruited, but we were too young to have taken part in that. After the war, we enlisted and became members of the Norwegian occupation forces in Germany.’

His hand fumbled at his breast pocket, returning with a matchbox. He put the pipe in his mouth and opened the small box. His hands were steadier now, as though these were customary and practised gestures. His face shone behind the lit match.

‘Otto returned home as a lieutenant,’ Carsten Meyer continued, sucking life into his pipe. ‘We others began our civilian life.’

The sweet smell from the pipe tobacco spread through the room. The old man put the spent match into the bowl, coughed and remained sitting with his pipe on his lap.

‘I of course became a semi-civilian and got to take part in the development of new weapons,’ he went on. ‘But Otto became a trusted officer. He had a military background that gave him a key role in the organisation. He was the one who brought us others in. The nationwide alert force required Norwegian citizens with a variety of professional and environmental backgrounds. It involved finding reliable people with morality, motivation and integrity.’

The pipe found its way to his mouth again.

‘It was a serious undertaking, but in those days we still had a spirit of adventure and accepted when we were invited.’

The old man’s eyes became evasive, as though they were filled with old memories.

‘The network consisted of small action groups spread over the whole country,’ he continued. ‘No one knew about each other. We were given lessons in sabotage campaigns with explosives, conducted shooting training, and were given responsibility for storing weapons, ammunition and other equipment. Eventually we got other assignments. Sverre Lund was appointed to the education department, and Torkel Lauritzen became head of personnel at
Treschow-Fritzoe
. These were posts that enabled them to pinpoint communist sympathisers and those who might be suspected of that. Daniel can probably tell you a lot more.’ He pointed with the mouthpiece of his pipe towards his grandson. ‘He’s writing a book about it.’

Wisting glanced towards his grandson on the settee. Only now did he notice that the low coffee table was covered in notes.

‘There are still many stories that haven’t been told,’ Daniel Meyer said. ‘I’m a war historian. It’s mostly a hobby, but I’ve written several articles for
Vi Menn
magazine and the newspaper supplement
A-magasinet
. I’m interested in crimes that were committed during the war and in the post-war years.’

‘War crimes?’

‘No, but crimes that were committed under cover of being part of the war. How the home front carried out almost accidental liquidations, for example.’

‘Did the alert force commit such crimes?’

‘No, but it’s an exciting part of the post-war period that interests me.’

‘Is the organisation active nowadays?’

‘Of course,’ Daniel Meyer nodded. ‘Not in the same form as when grandfather was active, but if Norway should be occupied once more, we have a system that would gather information and intelligence from the occupation force for the Norwegian authorities. It’s integral to the operation that the organisation should and must be secret.’

‘Daniel interviewed them before they disappeared,’ Carsten Meyer continued. ‘But I think you have to look in other places than the alert organisation to find any connection with the disappearances.’

‘You talked to them?’ Wisting asked, turning to the young writer.

‘Several times with all of them - Torkel Lauritzen, Otto Saga, Sverre Lund and Christian Hauge. They were a tight-knit team, even though it’s many years since they operated together.’

‘When was the last time you were in touch with them?’

Daniel Meyer considered carefully.

‘Last summer. The last time was a few weeks before Christian Hauge died. We talked about the old days. There was nothing in what they said to suggest that they knew that something might happen to them. I’ve got sound recordings. Naturally, you can have access to both them and my notes, but I don’t think you’ll find anything.’

Wisting didn’t reply. He wanted to accept the offer, but although the solution might have its roots in the past, the actual answer had to lie in the present.

He turned to the old man again: ‘Did you have any contact with them?’

The pipe had gone out. Carsten Meyer took out his matches and lit it again before he responded.

‘Fellowship was important to us,’ he nodded. ‘We were a tight-knit bunch. Although I moved away, we kept in touch, but we haven’t seen so much of each other for the past twenty years. Something was broken by the police murder.’

The police murder again, thought Wisting.

‘Maybe you remember that?’ Daniel Meyer asked. ‘It was Christian Hauge’s grandson who shot him. He used his grandfather’s gun.’

‘Are you writing about that too?’ Wisting enquired, nodding towards the piles of paper on the table.

‘No. That had nothing to do with the organisation.’

‘Do you know Ken Ronny Hauge?’

‘We’re the same age and from the same place.’ He leafed through his papers. ‘Grandfather commuted backwards and forwards between Stavern and the research institute in Horten, but moved here to Kongsberg together with grandmother when he got a job at the weapons factory in 1974. I was only two years old then. My parents lived in the same street as Ken Ronny’s mother.’

‘Were you as tightly knit as your grandparents?’

Daniel Meyer shook his head.

‘What happened with the policeman was as much of a surprise to me as to everyone else.’

‘You know he’s moved back?’

Daniel Meyer didn’t seem surprised, but replied in the negative: ‘Actually, I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know that he’d been released. I see his brother occasionally. He’s done quite well, but I haven’t spoken to Ken Ronny since that day the police came for him.’

CHAPTER 28

Line flicked through the photographs of Ken Ronny Hauge stored on her computer. He was a different man from the one she had seen in the archive pictures.

She had photographed him in segments. A hand clapping the dog. His dirty fists in a rag. An index finger placed thoughtfully at the far corner of an eye. Pictures that could not identify him, but that told a great deal about who he was. She had taken other photographs as well, whole portraits in high definition from which she could pick out elements to make good illustrations.

He somehow looked different when she thought of him as Ken, instead of Ken Ronny. In fact, he resembled the doll she had played with as a child. It was difficult to imagine him as a murderer.

In a couple of the pictures that could have gone straight into an advertising campaign, he was raising a cola bottle to his mouth with a tanned and sinewy arm.

There was something about him that roused her curiosity. Thinking how his story could become a report in itself, she realised that she was looking for an excuse to visit him again, to find new, unanswered questions for her report.

Hearing Tommy come out of the bathroom she clicked the photographs away. He came in to her wearing jeans, but with a bare chest and a bath towel over his shoulders.

‘Any news?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of the computer.

Line shook her head as she updated the browser. There were no developments in the case of the amputated feet. Her own newspaper had a spread with an actor who was well known from a soap series on TV. He had a summer cottage in Ula, and expressed the opinion that what had happened was both terrifying and sinister, according to the introduction.

Tommy threw the towel down, pulling a T-shirt over his head.

‘When will you be finished today?’ he wanted to know.

She was to meet the double murderer that day, Age Reinholdt, who had settled on his grandparents’ smallholding near Gusland after his last sentence.

‘I don’t know, but I need to write out a lot while it’s still fresh in my mind.’ She folded the laptop closed and glanced at him with a look of guilt in her eyes. ‘I’d thought I would travel directly home afterwards. Sit there and get on with my work.’

‘That’s fine with me,’ Tommy smiled. ‘I was thinking of having a couple of beers with some pals this afternoon. We could meet up this evening if you manage to get finished.’

She sent him a grateful smile.

‘Phone me when you’re finished with that bloke,’ Tommy added. ‘So I know that you’ve survived the experience.’

CHAPTER 29

Wisting received the phone message as he swung out from the Esso station in Kvelde. He had filled the tank, bought a hot-dog and was caught up in thoughts about Carsten Meyer and his grandson. Had it led to something? He had gained insight into the lives of the men who had disappeared, but nothing more. Like most things in this investigation - everything they did brought them one step further into what appeared to be a closed book. The disappearances of Hanne Richter and Camilla Thaulow did not seem to fit with any theory about a mysterious something that might have happened in the post-war era.

It was Nils Hammer calling. It was a short message - they had found another new foot.

Twenty-five minutes later, Wisting was standing once more with fine-grained sand in his shoes, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand.

This shoe had not been washed ashore like the others, but was found out in the water beside a floating pontoon outside Solplassen campsite. No one had wanted to touch it, but eventually the warden of the site had waded out and caught it with a net borrowed from some children who were fishing for crabs.

By the time the warden returned ashore an enormous crowd of spectators had gathered on the beach. Wisting reckoned that they were well over a hundred. Several people from the press had also arrived, but the editors of the major newspapers had probably received MMS-photographs that were already on the internet.

The shoe had been placed in a white plastic box. Wisting bent over it - a left shoe.

He peered up at Mortensen.

‘Is it real?’

The crime technician nodded.

‘It’s been in the water a long time,’ he said, hunkering down beside Wisting. ‘Exactly like the others.’

Wisting nodded. It was a leisure shoe from Nike, but appeared to be the cheaper type. It was white with an orange insert on each side, the material bleached by seawater and the enamel round the lace holes rusted. Parchment-like skin, tanned by its time in the water, was hanging out in loose fibres. The torn up network of tissue inside had clotted together and looked tough and slimy.

‘Sverre Lund?’ Hammer suggested.

Wisting agreed. They had most likely found the left foot belonging to the old head teacher.

‘It does at least match the description his wife gave of the shoes,’ he said. ‘She bought them for him.’

‘We should have the results of a DNA test at the beginning of the week,’ Mortensen said.

Someone in the group of journalists shouted down to them. The first television camera had also appeared. Two policemen, standing with their hands at their backs, marked how close they were permitted to approach. Wisting didn’t catch what was being shouted, but chose not to do anything about it. Audun Vetti had still not corrected the information about the discovery of the previous day, and would probably not turn up today.

‘Let’s pack up,’ he proposed, shifting his gaze to the holidaymakers. He saw a couple of video cameras among them too, and had to accept being captured on their holiday footage. Several men had lifted their children up on their shoulders so that they had a better view. A light-haired boy eating an ice cream said something that caused the others to laugh.