Dregs (9 page)

Her sister stood on the steps, twisting her fingers round a key. Wisting stepped out, greeted her with a nod and stepped towards her. Espen Mortensen followed. ‘Did the police come here when she was reported missing?’ Wisting asked.

‘Yes indeed.’ She turned the key in the lock. ‘They went through all the rooms, the cellar and the sheds. They also went up into the crawl space in the loft. It was as if they thought she’d hidden there.’

The house met them with a warm, close smell. The sister of the woman who had lived here remained standing, allowing Wisting to take the first step over the threshold.

‘Sorry it’s so untidy,’ she called after him. ‘My sister was a bit special. She had a lot of strange whims and ideas. She’s been admitted to hospital, but of course you know that.’

Shoes were lying out on the floor in the little hallway. A coat and two jackets were hanging on a coat stand. Wisting entered further. The hollow sound of his footsteps on the parquet flooring testified to the room’s emptiness.

‘It’s just as it was when she vanished,’ her sister explained, following him in. ‘We haven’t done anything, just taken out the rubbish and food waste that had begun to smell.’

Wisting studied several photographs of two little girls that were hanging in the corridor. They were posed photographs taken by a professional photographer, first in a nursery and later at school as the girls eventually became older. ‘They’re my daughters,’ the woman behind him explained. ‘Hanne didn’t have children.’

‘So the house has remained empty since she disappeared?’ Mortensen asked.

‘We have sort of … just waited. But now we’ll need to pack everything up and tidy it all away. The rental agreement comes to an end in August.’

‘Was she renting?’ Wisting asked.

‘What shall I say? We haven’t done anything about it. I mean, she just completely vanished. Her benefit payments have gone into her bank account every month, and she had a direct debit for her rent. Things have taken their course, so to speak.’

In the living room Wisting stopped and looked around. Sparsely furnished, it had a dining table at one end and a group of seats round a low table in front of a television at the other. A large plant that resembled a palm, with brown, withered leaves stood in front of the patio doors. Despite the simple furnishings, chaos reigned within the four walls. It looked as if whoever lived here was about to redecorate, or preparing to spring clean.

A previously well-filled bookcase had been emptied of books, which were stacked in huge piles on the floor, on the table and on the chairs. The bookcase had been pulled from the wall. Wall panelling had been broken off and lay scattered across the frayed, worn carpet. A couple of wall lamps had been unscrewed and taken to pieces. All the electric plugs had been pulled from the walls and a portable radio taken apart.

‘That’s the illness,’ Hanne Richter’s sister explained. ‘Persecution mania; she thought that someone was watching her and controlling her life through radio waves. She took everything apart.’

‘Who was it she thought was after her?’

‘Some mafia organisation or other. They got into the house when she was sleeping or away from home. Moved things or took them away. Knocked her out with drugs and carried her off.’

‘Carried her off?’

‘It’s a part of the delusions. She thought the mafia abducted her and surgically inserted a radio transmitter in her body, so they could control her by satellite. At regular intervals, they collected her to change the batteries.’

Wisting picked up a mobile phone that had been taken to pieces. ‘It can’t have been easy,’ he commented.

‘Not for any of us,’ the sister admitted, looking around the room. ‘The doctor thought that she must have deteriorated before she disappeared.’

‘Did she have any visitors here?’ Wisting asked.

He put down the phone, went over to the row of windows and looked out over the orchard. Dead flies were lying on the window ledge. The curtains were faded by sunlight. He drew them aside. Behind the garden there was a dense forest of spruce trees.

‘No.’ Her sister came up beside him. ‘The community nurse came here, of course, but her old friends and work colleagues broke off contact. That applied to us in the family as well. She became too tiresome and unpleasant to deal with.’ Wisting let go the curtain again. ‘They searched through the forest with dogs,’ the sister went on, nodding towards the window. ‘They were afraid she might have hanged herself or something in there.’

‘Was she suicidal?’

‘No, but you could well understand it if she just couldn’t take any more.’

Wisting nodded. That had been the police’s theory too. ‘She didn’t have a boyfriend or anything like that?’

The woman shook her head. ‘Not that I know of. Of course, she made new friends while she was an in-patient.’

‘Did they visit her?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘How long has she stayed here?’

‘Four years. The man who owned the house moved into a care home for the elderly.’

Surmising a line of connection Wisting felt a shiver run through his body, almost pinning him to the floor. It was thin, but could be followed up. ‘Care home for the elderly?’ he repeated.

‘Yes, but he’s dead now. He died just before Hanne disappeared. The whole thing has become so problematic. The house rental goes into the estate of the deceased person, but it can’t be settled as long as the tenancy isn’t clarified. I think the heirs want to sell the house.’

‘Which care home?’

The woman stared at him. The expression on her face changed, and he realised that she was following his thoughts. ‘In Stavern,’ she replied. ‘At Stavern nursing home.’

CHAPTER 16

The house owner was called Christian Hauge, and he had died, aged 80, on Sunday 10th August, three weeks before the first disappearance. The death had not been reported to the police, so Wisting would probably have to talk to the staff at the care home to find out about the circumstances.

Wisting leaned back in his office chair, staring at the computer screen. Although there was no reason to believe that there was anything unnatural about the death, he had discovered something he did not like.

Christian Hauge had only one child, a daughter who had died in 1992. Two grandchildren were left behind as lawful heirs. One was Ken Ronny Hauge, who had been found guilty of killing a policeman.

He had never believed in coincidences. There were always explanations, patterns, threads and logical connections. He grabbed his coffee cup and drank down a gulp. A question Line had asked him yesterday evening had made him uneasy: whether a murderer would be able to kill again, in the same way burglars or other criminals fell back into their old bad habits.

The telephone rang. It was Line. ‘Hello,’ she said happily. ‘I just wanted to say that I won’t be home tonight. I’m staying at Tommy’s.’

‘Is he home?’

‘He’s landing in a couple of hours.’

Wisting had not quite understood the relationship between Line and her Danish friend, and was not quite sure whether he liked it. ‘Tell him I was asking for him,’ he managed to say.

They chatted a little before they finished their conversation. Wisting became thoughtful, and sipped at his coffee again. Perhaps Ken Ronny Hauge’s name had only popped up in the case in the same way that Line by chance had phoned him when he was thinking about her?

Ken Ronny Hauge had been born and brought up in the area, as both his mother and grandfather had been. It was not a coincidence that his grandfather should have spent his last days at the nursing home in Stavern. Rather, it was the way of the world. The coincidence was that his picture had been lying among Line’s notes on the kitchen table at his own home less than twenty-four hours before. He rubbed his eyes and pushed the thought away. Perhaps he had to accept nevertheless that there was a place for coincidences in life, beyond the set of rules that nature brought into being, and that science described.

The coffee in his cup had gone cold. He took it with him into the conference room, rinsed it in the sink, and refilled the cup. His stomach protested against the first mouthful. He went to the window and looked out. An outside broadcast vehicle from TV2, complete with roof aerials, was sitting outside the police station. A camera lamp was directed towards Audun Vetti, who was standing stiffly in his uniform with a microphone passing back and forwards between him and a reporter.

Wisting fumbled, turned on the office TV by remote and scrolled to the news channel. The Assistant Chief of Police filled the television screen. ‘… we have also appointed an oceanographer from the Meteorological Institute who will report how the feet may have drifted with the tides,’ he explained.

‘What will you achieve with that?’ the reported asked.

‘We hope to work out a possible point of origin.’

Wisting alternated between looking out the window and at the screen, shaking his head. The television journalist ended by thanking Audun Vetti for the interview and returned to the studio with a promise to report on developments.

He switched off and threw the remote control onto the table, hitting a half-empty paper cup that someone had left behind after the meeting earlier. Wisting swore and cleared away the nearest papers before fetching a cloth to soak up the spill. Small things had begun to irritate him, he noticed.

The Assistant Chief of Police was walking along the corridor as Wisting went back to his office. The serious expression he had worn in front of the television camera was transformed into a broad grin. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked. ‘Anything new?’

‘Why did you tell them about the oceanographer?’ Wisting questioned.

‘I had to give them something,’ Vetti explained, ‘to show that we’re making progress.’

‘We could surely keep some cards close to our chest?’

‘It doesn’t make any difference to the investigation, does it? What are you afraid of? That the perpetrator will turn the tide to hide his traces?’

Wisting shook his head, feeling no need to respond to biased arguments. A large part of his work as an investigation leader was to have an overview of what details were issued to the media. If someone or other were to make a confession they could be dependent on holding information only a guilty person would know. The history of crime was full of false confessions.

‘Since you haven’t managed to come up with any results I have to give them something,’ the Assistant Chief of Police continued. ‘Or have you some progress to report at last?’

Wisting felt his face redden, but managed to bottle up his irritation and temper. ‘The poor man won’t get a moment’s peace to work,’ he pointed out. ‘He’ll be overwhelmed by phone calls from journalists.’

‘I didn’t mention who he was,’ Vetti said dismissively.

‘How many oceanographers do you think they have at the Meteorological Institute?’

The Assistant Chief of Police was spared having to answer by Nils Hammer running from his office at the end of the corridor. ‘They’ve found Camilla Thaulow’s car!’

CHAPTER 17

The police helicopter was still hovering above the discovery site, the downdraught from its rotors twisting and fluttering the crime scene warning tape.

Hellerod was situated west of the 302 main road between Larvik and Helgeroa, just before Tveidalskrysset and the old connecting road to Telemark. An uneven road penetrated the forest for five hundred metres. It was a long time since any cars had used it and it was lined with overhanging deciduous trees. At its end there was an open space in front of a small lake.

Wisting manoeuvred his car right up to the dense edge of the forest to make room for the recovery vehicle and fire service divers. The car was not visible in the dark, still water. The crew of the helicopter had spotted its red roof through the surface.

‘One thing is sure,’ Hammer said, closing the door of their car. ‘This is no accident.’

‘If it’s the correct car, true enough,’ Wisting commented. He looked around and called to a uniformed police officer: ‘When will the divers be here?’

‘Soon.’

Hammer picked up a straw and put it in his mouth. ‘It’s her car,’ he said. ‘Who else’s could it be?’

Wisting nodded. Whoever had driven the car here had done so to hide it. He glanced at the helicopter, which had increased its height and was flying in wide circles. Obviously the pond was shallower than the perpetrator had expected, or the car might have remained here for years without being found. This spot was hidden away and people seldom came, as the overgrowing trees and bushes showed. That probably meant that the culprit was familiar with the area. He might, of course, have found the dumping ground by chance, but it was more likely that he was a local.

The ground sloped gently down towards the water’s edge with enough of an incline for the car to be pushed and gain sufficient momentum to disappear into the water, or the accelerator and clutch pedals could have been be fixed up with sticks or stones. Wisting had seen that before in insurance fraud cases.

They walked over to the lake. Very little sunlight reached between the trees, but out in the middle of the water it reflected enough to dazzle. Wisting screwed up his eyes but could not see anything of what they knew was lying down there.

‘There are a couple of tyre tracks here,’ explained the police constable on guard. Pointing, he said, ‘Someone has tried to cover those marks over, but they’re obvious tracks.’

Wisting looked at the two rows of compressed grass leading down into the water. A few dry branches had been laid over them, not enough to hide them.

Another car came jolting down the road, Espen Mortensen in the crime scene vehicle. Wisting glanced again at the branches. There could be some crucial traces on them. Every time someone takes a grip of an object he leaves behind small, invisible skin cells. The introduction of new DNA legislation the previous autumn had given the police wider powers to obtain reference samples from suspects, and to record convicted criminals in the DNA register. It had been explained how everyone loses a certain number of skin cells each day and how, in the course of a month, we each renew our entire epidermis. Human debris is worth its weight in gold to the police.