The Caveman (11 page)

Line started the car, revving the engine and leaving it idling while she scraped ice from the windscreen. Her fingers were frozen, and it dawned on her that she had left her gloves in Viggo Hansen’s hallway. She would leave them until later, as she was already late for her appointment with Eivind Aske.

She drove east along the main road to Helgeroa, through a winter landscape devoid of colour, undulating white fields with snow-laden trees stretching out to a pallid sky.

Eivind Aske lived on a smallholding near Hummerbakken, where the barn had been converted into a combined gallery and studio. Beside the road, a sign on stakes above the snow had his name written in bold letters. Underneath, a smaller sign declared that the gallery was closed. Gusts of wind swung it back and forth.

Line turned off the main road and drove into the extensive farmyard. The windows of the main house were dark, but light shone from his workroom in the barn. Eivind Aske appeared at the door and waved her over.

Line slung her bag over her shoulder as she approached him. Out on the main road, a bus rumbling past on its way to Nevlunghavn disappeared in a cloud of snow. ‘So good of you to make the time,’ she said, tramping snow from her feet on the steps.

Inside was warm and cosy. Detailed pencil drawings of people and animals were displayed on the walls. In the centre of the room stood a tilted drawing board with a sketch of a boy carrying a pair of skis over his shoulder. A variety of pencils, charcoal sticks and chalks was scattered across a work table.

They crossed to a sofa unit at the far end of the spacious room. Eivind Aske had cut out the newspaper article Line had written about him when she worked for the local paper and hung it in a frame above the sofa together with reviews of exhibitions and other events. Line leaned forward to re-read the text. Parts of it were printed in question and answer format.

Q - ‘Have you always liked drawing?’

A - ‘Always
. From before the time I started school, but it was only as an adult that I appreciated I had to make more of it. I travelled abroad and studied image communication and graphic techniques. Five years later, I came home again, bought an old smallholding and realised my dream of being an artist.’

The accompanying fact box told her he was born in 1950, was unmarried and had set up more than fifty separate exhibitions in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and France. His works had been purchased by art associations, municipal collections, regional administrations and companies such as
Statoil
and
Telenor
.

‘Viggo Hansen, yes,’ Eivind Aske said as he sat down. ‘It’s a long time ago. I had completely forgotten the boy but, after you phoned, I started to do some thinking.’

Line sat opposite him.

‘I looked out an old class photograph,’ Aske continued, sliding out a black and white photograph from a buff envelope. ‘This is from our primary seven class in 1964.’ He handed the group photo to Line. The pupils were arranged in four rows, boys and girls in home-knitted sweaters and cardigans. Most of the girls had woollen skirts. The boys had short haircuts. Under the photo, the names of all the children were listed.

‘There were twenty-eight of us in the class. Viggo Hansen is standing on the far left in the second row.’

He put his finger underneath the face of a puny little boy with skinny arms and legs and a blank expression.

‘And that’s me,’ Eivind Aske said. He was smiling broadly in the front row.

Line glanced from the picture to the man facing her. He had changed a great deal during the years that had gone by, and she had difficulty recognising his features, perhaps with the exception of the smile. ‘Could I borrow this?’ she asked. She could scan it and use the picture in her article.

‘Be my guest.’

Line studied the other faces, halting at a grown man in a suit and tie. Number one in the back row.
Arne Lorentzen
, she read. ‘Was that your teacher?’

‘Lorentzen, yes,’ Eivind Aske rose to his feet. ‘He’s dead now.’

He went over to a small kitchen worktop and returned with a coffee pot and two cups. ‘Coffee?’

Line accepted with thanks. ‘Viggo Hansen had one of your pictures on the wall in his home,’ she said, as he poured.

A fleeting jolt passed through Eivind Aske. The stream of coffee jerked to the outside of the cup and onto the tabletop. ‘Apologies,’ he said, putting down the pot and rushing to fetch a cloth.

‘
Boy Fishing,’
Line added.

Aske wiped the table. ‘That’s an old one. Three hundred prints were made.’

‘What do you think of that? That he had one of your pictures, I mean?’

Eivind Aske responded with a shrug. ‘Lots of people have it, I’m sure.’

‘Don’t you think he may have been proud to know you? That he had gone to school with a well-known artist?’

‘The person you really should speak to is Odd Werner Ellefsen,’ Aske said, changing the subject. ‘They hung out together.’

‘Is he in the class photograph?’

‘They’re standing beside each other.’

The boy next to Viggo Hansen was heavier built, his features more distinct, and he had a tentative smile on his lips.

‘They were neighbours, I think. They lived beside Larviksveien, beside the pea canning factory.’

Line did not quite know where he meant.

‘Where the
Meny
supermarket is today. I lived on the other side of town and didn’t have anything to do with them, apart from being in the same class. I don’t think either of them had an easy upbringing. Perhaps that’s why they found each other.’

‘Does Odd Werner Ellefsen still live in Stavern?’

‘No, I think he stays in Larvik.’

Line reached for the coffee cup. ‘Have you ever had any class reunions or anything of that nature, in more recent times?’

Eivind Aske shook his head. ‘Not that I’ve gone to, anyway. An invitation came for one a few years back, but I was abroad then.’

Line took out her press notebook. ‘Do you recall any incidents from your schooldays that Viggo was involved in?’

Eivind Aske shook his head again. ‘No, he was fairly anonymous. He probably was his entire life. Someone who doesn’t want to get in the way of other people. He never said much, barely answered when the teacher asked him anything. I can’t remember him telling us anything about himself. He had a sort of secret life.’

‘What kind of secrets?’

‘Well, that’s what they were, secrets,’ Aske said with a smile.

‘Did you know his family?’

He shook his head.

‘There was a rumour his father had been in jail,’ Line said.

‘That’s more than I can remember. If there’d been any truth in that, I think we children would have talked about it.’

Line lifted the class photograph again. ‘Was there anyone called Frank in your class?’ she asked.

‘Frank? No.’

‘Do you know anyone called Frank?’ Someone Viggo Hansen might have kept in touch with?’

‘Off the top of my head I can’t think of anybody at all called Frank.’

‘What about Irene?’

‘No, not that name either.’

They sat for another half hour before Line stood up. She had tried to get him to remember more, an everyday story from their schooldays or some particular episode, but there was nothing more. The visit had not been a complete waste of time, however. She had obtained a class photo and a new name on her notepad. Odd Werner Ellefsen.

The snow crunched under her shoes as she returned to the car. A bluish-black winter darkness had fallen as they spoke and it had become even colder. Line drew her jacket collar more snugly round her neck.

The investigators assembled in the conference room.

Wisting asked Espen Mortensen to describe the results of the forensic tests. Mortensen switched on the projector and began with his conclusion. ‘The hairs come from a female.’

An image of the dead man’s clenched hand appeared on the screen, a few blond hairs protruding between the fingers. The next photo was taken during the post-mortem when the hand was opened, showing the strands of hair stuck with crusted blood.

‘That’s the victim’s blood,’ Mortensen said, ‘but the hairs actually come from a woman.’ eHe picked up the forensics report. ‘The hairs do not contain sufficient material for a full DNA profile, but mitochondrial DNA was found, and the sex-typing markers show they come from a female.’

‘Might the tests have been contaminated in some way?’ Hammer asked. ‘Cross-contamination from one of the women working in the lab, perhaps?’

‘Each of the six hairs was tested separately, and they all produced the same result.’

‘How do you explain that?’ Wisting asked.

‘The way I see it, there’s only one explanation,’ Mortensen said as he handed across the report. ‘The victim has been in hand-to-hand combat with a woman.’

‘And the woman won,’ Hammer said wryly.

Wisting glanced doubtfully at the report. So much jargon, so many abbreviations. ‘Does the analysis tell us anything more?’

‘The woman’s of European origin.’

‘That’s something,’ Hammer said. ‘Already we are down to only 350 million suspects.’

‘Do we know any more about who this man is?’ Christine Thiis asked.

‘Until now we had every reason to believe he was a missing American called Bob Crabb,’ Wisting replied. ‘Now we’re not so sure.’

‘Could it be,’ she went on, ‘that the remains actually belong to Robert Godwin and the strands of hair are from an assault victim who got away? The scenario ends with her killing him, and instead of reporting it to the police she hides the body.’

‘I was wondering that too,’ said Wisting.

‘When can we have an answer?’ Benjamin Fjeld asked.

‘Hopefully, when the FBI arrive tomorrow,’ Mortensen replied. ‘The comparison of the DNA profiles is proceeding over there.’

Wisting still found the whole thing bewildering. There was too much missing information.

The remainder of the meeting was spent covering old ground. When they finished it was dark outside. Wisting scanned the faces of his colleagues around the table. There wasn’t much more he could do other than send them home, since they had to be rested and ready to confront what lay ahead.

Line put the pizza box on the overcrowded desk in her mother’s study, opened the lid and helped herself. While she ate, she jiggled the memory card out of her camera, inserted it in her laptop and transferred the pictures to the folder entitled
Viggo Hansen.
Eating as she looked through the images, she deleted those she had no use for.

She had persuaded Eivind Aske to pose for a photograph, remembering how difficult it had been the last time when he had been keen for his art to be highlighted, rather than him as a person. He had kept himself fit and hardly changed in the eight years that had passed. His hairstyle was identical, dark and wavy, and seemed thicker than in his old school photograph. She might almost suspect that he wore a
toupee
. His reluctance to let her take a photo was rather strange. His complexion was tanned and taut across his cheekbones, as if he had undergone plastic surgery, and he really seemed extremely vain.

Among the items she had brought from home was the portable colour printer she used on long trips. She connected it and chose the few pictures she wanted in hard copy. Once they appeared in the paper tray she pinned them to the cork board her mother had used for children’s drawings, invitations and other domestic business.

She created a timeline of Viggo Hansen’s life on the pinboard. On the far left she wrote the date he had been born on a yellow post-it note. She had photographed the pictures in the album she had found in his house, and now printed and placed them in chronological order together with the class photograph borrowed from Eivind Aske.

She added the dates when the family had moved into Herman Wildenveys gate, when his father died in 1969, and when his mother passed away five years later. That was the year before his first Christmas card from Frank. The last had arrived in 1988. In the following year something must have happened to stop Frank sending them. She took another post-it note and wrote the year 1989 beside a question mark.

She picked up another pizza slice and stared at the pinboard as she ate. Giving structure to the material provided a sense of being on top of the assignment. Alphabetical order, dates in chronological order, papers in ring binders, facts and documents, almost how a detective would do it.

She sat at the desk. The person Viggo Hansen had been closest to during his schooldays was a boy called Odd Werner Ellefsen. There was indeed an Odd Werner Ellefsen in the list she had extracted of taxpayers born in the same year as Viggo Hansen, but she could not locate an address or phone number. He was not listed in the phone directory either, and an internet search yielded nothing.

She sent an email to one of the researchers in the newspaper’s fact-checking department who could obtain information from the Population Register.

Next, she opened Word. She wanted to start writing. In her head she had an outline, but she did not bother about that now, as she wanted to express her feelings and thoughts from the day. The words were difficult to find and the sentences tricky to compose, but she managed to formulate a few paragraphs about an unassuming life and a person who had not left any traces. Someone forgotten by everyone.

Half an hour later the door opened downstairs and she heard the familiar sound of her father dropping his keys into the bowl on the hallway table. ‘Hello?’ he shouted.

She answered, closed the lid of the pizza box and carried what was left downstairs.

‘I brought home some pizza,’ he said.

‘Snap.’ Line placed her box beside his.

Wisting took a bottle of beer from the fridge and held it up to her invitingly.

She shook her head and sat at the table. ‘Long day?’

Wisting nodded before opening the bottle. ‘I read the report of the break-in at Viggo Hansen’s,’ he said, helping himself to a slice of pizza. ‘It didn’t look as if anything was stolen.’

‘I went in afterwards,’ Line told him. ‘It didn’t look as though anything had been touched, but there probably weren’t any valuables to attract a thief.’

‘What else did you do today?’

Line related her conversation with Greta Tisler and her subsequent visit to Eivind Aske’s studio. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Have you discovered any more about that dead man?’

‘Not really, but I checked Viggo Hansen’s father in the criminal records.’ He used his pizza slice to point to a buff envelope on the kitchen worktop. ‘It was true. He had been in prison.’

‘What was the reason?’

Wisting wiped the greasy crumbs from his fingers before opening the envelope. ‘Aggravated theft,’ he said, withdrawing a sheet of paper. ‘This is an extract from the records.’ There were only a few lines at the top of the sheet. ‘He was convicted in Bergen City Court on 9th September 1960 for breaking paragraph 258 of the Criminal Code and sentenced to prison for three years and ten months.’

‘Viggo Hansen was ten years old,’ Line calculated. In her mind’s eye, she placed the prison sentence in the timeline on the workroom wall. ‘He was in jail until his son was fourteen.’

‘That’s a harsh punishment,’ Wisting said, stowing the rest of the pizza slices in the fridge.

‘What did he steal?’

‘You’ll have to get hold of the court judgment to find that out. This is just an extract from the records.’

‘Where can I get hold of it?’

‘It should be listed in the National Archives in Bergen.’

The timbers on the terrace outside creaked in the cold. Line leaned back in her chair, aware that the unanswered questions fed her thoughts, certain she would have a sleepless night.