Dregs (2 page)

The coffee machine gurgled faintly and shot out a cloud of hot steam. Wisting fetched a cup from the cupboard and helped himself. ‘It might not have been cut off by force,’ he suggested. ‘It’s not unnatural for arms and legs to get separated from a body that has been in the water for a long time.’

‘And just by chance it applies to a pair of left feet, wearing the same kind of shoe?’

Wisting shrugged his shoulders. He would not convince anyone by arguing against the facts, not even himself. He sighed. The fact was, they stood on the threshold of an extensive investigation.

Torunn Borg arrived at the door of the meeting room with a pile of papers in her hands. ‘Another shoe?’ she enquired.

‘Another left foot,’ Hammer corrected.

‘A couple of sizes larger than the first one,’ explained Wisting. ‘But the same make.’

‘A Scarpa Marco,’ Torunn Borg nodded and sat down. ‘A training shoe with laces,’ she continued, leafing through the papers.

Wisting sat beside her. Professionally skilful, efficient and motivated, Torunn Borg was one of the most competent investigators in the section. She had been given the task of tracing the shoe type. ‘Have you discovered anything?’ he asked.

‘It’s produced in China.’ Torunn Borg put down copies of order and production lists. ’
Europris
imports around 15,000 pairs a year. Since 2005 they have sold just over 50,000 of them throughout the country.’

Wisting’s telephone rang. Checking the display he saw that it was Suzanne. He switched the phone to silent and cancelled the call. She would want to talk about his doctor’s appointment.

‘The first shoe was size 43. 7,400 pairs of them have been sold.’

‘That certainly makes it easier,’ Hammer commented drily, biting into his paper mug. ‘Who actually buys training shoes at
Europris
?’

‘Sports shoes,’ Torunn corrected him and held out a brochure that explained the shoe was made of artificial leather and had a moulded sole of ethylene-vinyl-acetate, which offered good shock absorption.

‘Old people.’ Wisting replied. ‘My father shops at
Europris
. It’s reasonably priced, and he’s happy with the quality. The feet must belong to two of
The Old Folk
.’

The two others fell silent, knowing he was right.

The list of missing people during the past year was not a long one. It contained only four names. Wisting had them in front of him.

Torkel Lauritzen

Otto Saga

Sverre Lund

Hanne Richter

All four had disappeared within the space of a few days in September of the previous year.

The cases had caused a headache. Each year around fifty people were reported missing in the police district, but most were quickly located: teenagers who ran away from home, children who forgot the time and place, dementia sufferers who got into trouble, the mentally ill, berry-pickers and hunters. Usually these cases ended with happy reunions, although sometimes the missing persons were found as victims of an accident or with a farewell note. Only in a few exceptional cases did anyone disappear completely and without trace.

The first three names on the list were described by the division only as
The Old Folk
. Two of them lived in sheltered housing flats at Stavern nursing home in Brunlaveien. The third man was of the same age but still active enough to live at home in Johan Ohlsensgate in the middle of Stavern. Besides, his wife was still living.

The media had not been tempted to speculate about a connection, although they must surely have thought the same as the police.

Statistically speaking, these disappearance cases were practically impossible. There were about 6,000 permanent residents in Stavern. Barely four per cent of them were over 75 years of age and yet in the course of one and the same week, three had vanished.

The police had looked for connections and patterns in addition to age and residential similarities, but only discovered that the children of two of the missing were married to each other.

Torkel Lauritzen was a widower who had been head of human resources in the
Treschow-Fritzoe
group of companies. Two years earlier he had suffered a serious stroke. In the photograph that accompanied the case file, the corner of his mouth hung down on one side. The illness meant that he spoke indistinctly and in monosyllables, but rehabilitation at the nursing home had enabled him to manage by himself. He had partly regained the movement of his right foot and enjoyed going on short walks along the coastal path. Always precise and punctual, when he didn’t come home for dinner after a walk on Monday 1st September, the staff became worried. Despite his illness he had not stopped smoking and both his blood pressure and cholesterol levels were high. They feared that he had suffered another stroke, and searched for him throughout the walking areas. He was never found, neither living nor dead.

Three days later Otto Saga went missing from Stavern nursing home. A retired wing commander he had previously been head of the Air Force officer training school in Stavern. After his wife died he started to write poetry and had issued a couple of collections through a local publishing company. Three years previously his family had started to notice the first frightening signs of dementia. Repeated minor infarctions or haemorrages in the brain injured nerve cells, leading eventually to the impairment of his mental faculties so that he forgot things and repeated himself. The family had successfully applied for a place in an institution, and their experience was that the staff not only achieved good relations with the old man but also communicated with him better than they did themselves.

He disappeared after breakfast on Thursday 4th September. The staff searched throughout the buildings, eventually widening the search to the area of the old shipyards and the abandoned military barracks where he used to work, and the residential district of Agnes where he had lived. He had got lost before and not been able to find his way back. When the evening shift came on duty he had still not been found. The police were alerted and the search continued all night: in parks and private gardens, unlocked storerooms and outhouses, town centre streets and boat harbours. After twenty-four hours there were no more places to look and the search was called off. 79-year-old Otto Saga seemed to have been swallowed by the earth.

Sverre Lund was an old schoolteacher who had ended his professional career as the head teacher of Stavern primary school. He was reported missing by his wife, Greta Lund, on Monday 8th September at 17.32 hours, according to the documentation. After explaining to her that he had a few errands to run he had walked off from his home at around eleven o’clock. His errands usually comprised of a cup of coffee, a Danish pastry and an Oslo newspaper at Baker Nalum’s and, never far from home, he was usually back by one o’clock.

Both of the women behind the counter at the bakery shop knew Mr. Lund well, but neither of them had seen him that day. A chambermaid at the Wassilioff Hotel, who had been in the backyard having a cigarette, around twelve o’clock, thought she had seen the former head teacher getting into the passenger seat of a grey estate car outside the old post office. The driver had never contacted the police. All traces ended there and Sverre Lund was never seen again.

Hanne Richter was 34 years old, and had no connections to the others. Her case was different. A nursery teacher, she had been on sick leave for a long time before she vanished. For parts of that time she had been an in-patient at Furubakken, a regional psychiatric institution in Larvik. She was diagnosed with a paranoid schizophrenic psychosis, and had delusions that a foreign intelligence organisation was watching her and carrying out secret searches at her home, among other reasons to plant spying equipment. Anti-psychotic medicines suppressed her symptoms and allowed her to live independently in her rented house. When the community nurse visited on Wednesday 10th September, she was missing. The nurse had let herself in and searched through the house, noticing that the mail and newspapers from Friday 6th September had been taken in, but that the ones for the subsequent days filled the post box. She had expected to find Hanne Richter dead, either in her bed or in the bath, but couldn’t find her anywhere, neither in the house nor in the surrounding area. The police published the name and picture of the missing person in the media, but it produced no results. No one had seen Hanne Richter or knew what had become of her.

Work on the four missing persons had taken up a large part of the police station’s resources during the following weeks without leading to any explanation, and then they had had the case of the Night Man to deal with. Someone had decapitated a young girl and displayed the severed head on a stake in the middle of the town square, all their resources had been transferred and by Easter the four missing persons cases were deposited in the archives.

Wisting had taken them out again an hour ago.

CHAPTER 3

Wisting closed the office door and sat on the chair behind the desk. He pushed away the piles of paper that were waiting to be dealt with, and put the files concerning the three missing persons in the middle of the desktop with an involuntary sigh.

In recent years his workload had grown while, at the same time, resources had decreased. Cases were left lying or only superficially investigated before they were shelved, to the despair of both the investigators and the victims. It did not have to be like this, if they only had the time that was required. If only they had more staff.

Truthfully, the time was approaching when crime would begin to pay. Criminality in the country was growing more strongly than ever, and he saw no sign of effective countermeasures. On the contrary, police and courts of law continued to be disempowered. The forces of law and order were in the process of capitulating.

He took a blank sheet from the bundle on the shelf by the window and again listed the names of the missing men in slightly clumsy handwriting. He sat back to study the short list:

Torkel Lauritzen

Otto Saga

Sverre Lund

Behind each name lay the hidden concern of their relatives. Worry, despair and sorrow. A void. A puzzle - and a solution.

The disappearance cases had already been investigated. The family and acquaintances of the three men had been questioned and their last movements checked up until the day they vanished. The cases had dragged on without result. They had not been Wisting’s responsibility, but he had watched from the sidelines before having to contend with the Night Man. After that he had been instructed to take a few weeks’ holiday and, when he returned, the case files had been put away. Now he had to catch up with reading the extensive investigation material.

He was reorganising the folders, trying to take an overview of the three cases, when there was a knock at the office door. ‘Come in!’ he shouted.

Espen Mortensen stuck his curly head into the room. ‘I’m off,’ he said.

Wisting raised his eyebrows.

‘To forensics,’ continued the crime technician. ‘I’m running tests on the reference samples from the family members, so that we can identify the feet.’

Wisting nodded approvingly. He had not managed to gather his thoughts properly yet, but of course it was important to have confirmation that the severed feet belonged to two of the missing persons. ‘How have you done it?’ he asked.

Mortensen took a few steps into the room. ‘Of course, we’ve got Sverre Lund’s DNA profile,’ he explained.

Wisting pulled the top folder across the desk towards him and leafed through to a duplicate copy of the yellow ante mortem form. The old head teacher’s wife had handed in his toothbrush, so his DNA profile was secured for the future and stored in the register of missing persons. It had not been as simple with the missing people from the care home. By the time the investigators realised that the cases were not going to have a quick resolution their rooms had already been emptied to make way for new patients. The files contained the usual information about height, weight, eye colour, length of hair and so on, together with details about the state of their teeth and their general health, but no DNA profile. None of this information would be sufficient to identify a severed foot.

‘It went quite well, really,’ Mortensen elaborated. ‘Otto Saga’s daughter is married to Torkel Lauritzen’s son. I went to their home an hour ago, explained the situation and took saliva samples from both.’ He paused on his way out of the room. ‘In a couple of days we should know who the feet belong to.’

Wisting gazed after him. Coincidental snags in an investigation, such as that two of the missing people were related, could lead to something. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the case, but it was a kind of unevenness that created a type of routine suspicion.

He let his gaze wander in the direction of the window. The office faced westwards, and the sun hung high above the horizon on the sea. Small boats with hoisted sails were crossing the fjord. He fetched himself a cup of coffee before once more settling and starting on the mass of material.

To begin with, he found it difficult to concentrate. He ought to phone Suzanne, but postponed doing so. It would be too much of an effort to discuss his doctor’s appointment over the phone.

They had met just over six months previously. He had not thought to establish a new relationship after Ingrid died suddenly almost three years before, but the capricious accidents of life decreed otherwise when an unpleasant case involving two brutal murders brought them together. Without Suzanne it would not have been solved.

He fiddled involuntarily with his wedding ring, feeling the sense of guilt that always overcame him when thoughts of Suzanne mixed with memories of Ingrid. It came over him like a wave. The coffee in his cup was getting cold. He took a big drink and forced himself to become a policeman again.

In the course of several hours he went through the cases again, and by that time his body was filled with tiredness. The air in the office was clammy and close and the sweat from his armpits had spread across his shirt.