The Caveman (23 page)

Line showered and chose an outfit appropriate for the bar in the
Farris Bad
Hotel, actually a dress she had intended to wear on Christmas Eve. Before she dressed, she sat at the computer in bra and pants, uploading new photographs from her camera and printing the picture of the four boys who had prevented the fire at Reimes prawn factory in 1967.

She called up the old tax lists she had used when she embarked on this story, naming everyone in the local authority area of the same age as Viggo Hansen. She could not find anyone called Cato Tangen. On the internet, she found several people with that name, but no one whose age matched the man lounging over the handlebars of the old moped.

Her father had still not arrived home by the time she left, leaving a note for him on the kitchen table to say she might be late.

She had no expectations of the meeting, other than that it would be uncomplicated. There was something attractive about going out with a man she was not going to bump into in the canteen the next day or encounter in a coffee bar the following week. Now and again she missed being in a long-term relationship, and the stability and security of that. However, at present it was delightful to escape any serious entanglement, and equally delightful to be embarking on a non-committing adventure.

She had not had very many boyfriends, her longest relationship being with Tommy Kvanter. One of the things she had fallen for had been his energy. Never at rest, he had tremendous strength and charisma. When his enthusiasm was directed at her, as it had been in the beginning, it had felt absolutely marvellous, jolting her out of her trivial everyday problems. After a few months though, Tommy started to focus on things other than her, spending his weekends white-water rafting, mountain climbing and in other extreme sports. He lived so completely in the moment, and extreme sports demanded such concentration that it was impossible to think about the past or the future. And that was the way he preferred it.

She left early, intending to revisit Odd Werner Ellefsen in Torstrand before heading for the hotel. He was at the back of his parked car in front of the open garage door as she drew to a halt, lifting two carrier bags, advertising a department store on the other side of the Swedish border, from the boot of his vehicle.

‘Hello again,’ Line said, ‘been on a shopping trip?’

‘In Sweden,’ he answered, setting down the shopping bags and slamming the boot lid.

It dawned on Line that she was not really dressed for an outdoor conversation. ‘I have a photo I’d like you to look at,’ she said. Odd Werner Ellefsen cocked his head. ‘I’m trying to find Cato Tangen.’ She showed him the picture from the fire at the prawn factory.

‘Can’t help you,’ he answered, pulling down the garage door.

‘You don’t know where he lives now?’

He nodded at the picture in Line’s hand. ‘That’s a long time ago,’ he said, picking up his shopping bags. ‘It’s chilly,’ he said.

Line watched his retreating back as he closed the door behind him; she returned to her car, started the engine and adjusted the heater to direct hot air on her feet.

At quarter to nine she parked in the long-stay car park close to the hotel, feeling slightly too early, although she had not arranged a specific time to meet the American. Sitting with the engine running she looked out Annie Nyhus’ phone number. Remembering the prawn factory and Frank Iversen as she did, she must have a good recollection of the fifties and sixties.

The old woman answered after two rings and Line introduced herself. ‘Can I help you with something?’ she asked politely.

‘I’m trying to find somebody called Cato Tangen. I’ve come across an old photograph of him with Viggo Hansen at the time of the fire at the prawn factory in 1967.’

‘But, my dear, Cato Tangen is dead. He died in a motorbike accident in the summer of 1968.’

Line picked up the picture lying on the front passenger seat, thinking it strange that Odd Werner Ellefsen had not known that. ‘There’s another boy in the photograph. Do you know someone called Odd Werner Ellefsen from that time?’

‘The Ellefsen boy, yes. Nora and Peter took him in some time in the mid-fifties. They both worked at the match factory in Agnes, and didn’t have any children of their own.’

‘He was a foster child?’

‘Yes, his mother died a few months after he was born. His father was Peter’s brother. Sigurd, he was called, a well digger, but he drank himself out of a job and the child. He couldn’t take responsibility, so Nora and Peter took Odd Werner for their own. He was a peculiar child, in every way, but of course he hadn’t had the best start in life. He was the one who set fire to the prawn factory, though it never came out at the time.’

‘He was the one?’

‘German Ole got the blame, but it wasn’t him. There wasn’t much damage done, but a lot of people had their own thoughts when Odd Werner’s father, Sigurd, burned to death in his house four years later.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nobody really knows. He lived in one of the workers’ houses at Agnes, and one night it caught fire and he was killed. That was in 1971. Odd Werner was twenty-one at the time. He hadn’t had any further contact with his father after he’d been given away, until the evening before the fire. The neighbours heard them quarrelling.’

Line put the picture of the four boys down. Maybe not so strange, she thought, that Odd Werner Ellefsen had been so uncommunicative, if he was the one who had started the fire at the prawn factory. ‘Are Nora and Peter still living?’

‘No, that was tragic as well. Peter drowned while out ice fishing the same year as his brother burned to death. Nora took ill and died the following summer.’

‘So Odd Werner was left on his own?’

‘By that time he was grown up, but I don’t think he’s ever had a girlfriend or anything. At least not while he was living here in Stavern. Later, he moved to Larvik but, as I said, he was a peculiar lad.’

Thanking her for the information, Line switched off the ignition and walked to the ticket machine. She inserted thirty kroner, enough to park until 00.53. Instead of pressing the button to print the ticket, she dashed back to her car and returned with all the coins stashed on the mid-console. Once she fed them all in she had permission to park until 09.55.

John Bantam stood up when she entered, took her hand and gazed intently into her eyes before leaning forward to give her a hug, leaving a faint masculine scent of after-shave in his wake. ‘Eaten yet?’

Line shook her head. She was actually feeling quite hungry.

The head waiter found them a window table and John Bantam held out a chair for her and waited until she was settled before sitting down himself. Line could not remember the last time she had been out with someone who did that. He opened the menu. ‘I’m so glad you agreed to come,’ he said. ‘It’s pleasant to spend time on something other than work.’

‘What work do you do?’ she asked.

‘I’m an analyst’,

‘What do you analyse?’

‘Information. I work mainly on gathering knowledge and information for public authorities, and trying to look at things in context.’ He smiled. ‘But now I have some time off.’

Line returned his smile, not wanting to discuss her work either. That would be the empty chitchat of a first date, like talking about the weather.

He recommended she order baked halibut for starters and duck for her main course. ‘You’re not driving?’ he asked, looking at the wine menu. She shook her head.

‘Good,’ he said, and ordered a bottle of white wine from Argentina. ‘That has travelled almost as far as I have.’

He talked entertainingly about everything from music and films to American politics, with amusing anecdotes about people he had met and places he had been. After their main course he ordered chocolate mousse for them both and another bottle of wine. Two hours later they were in his room on the top floor with windows overlooking the sea. Outside, it was a cold moonlit night and she could make out the contours of an uneven line far out on the horizon where dark clouds were gathering.

‘The weather’s going to change,’ he said. ‘It’s getting milder.’

A note of hesitation had entered his voice, as if he felt less self-confident in this situation, but he approached her and laid his head in the crook of her neck. She put her arms around him, pulling him even closer. He pushed her away and gazed at her for a few moments, with moonlight shining in his eyes. ‘I’ll get us something else to drink.’

It was unnecessary, but she did not protest and paid a visit to the bathroom while she waited. She took out her phone and sent a quick message to her father.
Caught up in something. Coming home tomorrow.
She did not have to let him know, but liked to do so when staying under his roof. She knew he would worry if she didn’t, and he obviously had enough worries.

Wisting’s mobile phone signalled as he drove into the courtyard in front of the house. He switched off the ignition and fumbled to see who had called. It was a message from Line saying she would not be home until tomorrow. He replied
OK
before opening the car door and stepping into the completely silent neighbourhood. A full moon shone in a sky strewn with stars and snow-laden trees cast pale shadows.

Letting himself into the empty house, he hung up his jacket, took off his shoes and made for the kitchen. In the fridge he searched for something to stave off his hunger without having to do any cooking. He decided on a wheat bran yogurt and an apple.

In the bathroom he undressed, brushed his teeth, and appraised his naked body in the mirror, momentarily pulling in his stomach to see if he could detect traces of his younger and more athletic self. With a sigh, he switched off the light and crept upstairs to bed. He was almost asleep when the phone rang:
Morten P, VG
.

‘Sorry for calling so late,’ the journalist said.

Wisting grunted a response.

‘We’re going to press in an hour and something’s cropped up that I wanted to run past you. We’ve been in touch with the police in Minneapolis, where Bob Crabb came from. They confirm he’s the man who’s been found, and that they’ve searched his apartment following a request from the Norwegian police.’

‘I see.’

‘What’s behind all this, Wisting? Our information suggests that this case has been given top priority from every quarter: our local police,
Kripos
, Interpol and the police at 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis but, according to what we’ve discovered, this Bob Crabb is just a retired university lecturer from Minnesota.’

‘Professor,’ Wisting corrected him, pleased that the journalist had not yet learned about the FBI.

‘An enormous operation has been initiated. I could understand if he was a high-ranking government official or something along those lines, even a Hollywood star, but a pensioner on holiday in Norway?’

Wisting’s thought processes were sluggish. He had been on the receiving end of many such phone calls from journalists, confronting him with information the police would prefer to hold back for tactical reasons. He was used to improvising, parrying questions with off-the-cuff remarks so rounded at the edges they were bordering on lies, but now his brain was dead and he could not utter a word.

‘After the coverage in today’s paper, we’ve come into contact with a high school teacher called Endre Jacobsen. He and his son were the ones who found the body when they went to fetch a Christmas tree. He’s quite certain that the body was pushed under the branches, that the dead man could not have lain down like that by himself or had any kind of accident.’

‘I see,’ Wisting said again.

‘I appreciate you can’t say much, but can you confirm whether you’re treating this as murder, or not?’

Wisting cleared his throat to give the journalist the standard response: they were keeping all possibilities open, but then his brain began to function. The reporter had been in touch with the American police. No matter what, they were going to print a follow-up to today’s story. He had an opportunity to steer the information.

‘We’ve instigated a murder investigation,’ he confirmed, thinking this might be something to drive the enquiry forward. All they knew about Bob Crabb’s stay in Norway was what they had learned from the woman who had let her apartment to him. They needed more. Somewhere or other was a point of contact between the American professor and Robert Godwin.

‘The last confirmed observation we have is around dinner time on Wednesday 10th August at the
Skipperstua
restaurant in Stavern,’ he said. ‘We’re working on charting all his movements during his stay in Norway.’

‘Have you any theories about what might have happened?’ The journalist sounded enthusiastic.

‘Nothing specific.’

‘Why have you waited so long to make this statement?’

‘We wanted to be certain.’

‘So you’re not holding anything else back?’

‘In an investigation such as this, we always keep something back. What makes our work difficult is that four months have elapsed since the homicide, making it more challenging for both the forensic scientists and crime scene technicians to draw conclusions. Now we hope someone can provide information to help us find out what happened.’

The reporter had several more questions, but was impatient to conclude the conversation and meet his deadline.

After he hung up, Wisting stretched out on his back and looked at the shadow patterns cast by the moonlight on the wall. He felt sure the case was about to accelerate, and then the room darkened as a blue-black cloud covered the moon.

Overnight the weather became milder. As Wisting parked in the backyard of the station, the first snowflakes fell. He met Christine Thiis on the way into the building, carrying a copy of
VG.
‘Shouldn’t we have discussed this?’ she asked, holding up the folded newspaper.

As police lawyer, she had responsibility for the legal aspects of the case. All media contact, strictly speaking, should be conducted through her, or at least cleared with her first.

He admitted she was right, but that there had not been time. ‘They were going to write about it anyway,’ he said, holding the door open for her, ‘one way or another. I thought we should try to make them do it our way.’

Christine Thiis nodded. She had been in the police force for only a couple of years and was wary of criticising experienced investigators. Moreover, she was not the type to be overly concerned with principles and formalities.

Leif Malm had given them prior warning that he would arrive at ten o’clock with a detective from Sweden’s National Bureau of Investigation. Wisting kept the morning briefing short, informing them of the latest news from the Swedish side of the border, and asking Nils Hammer and Espen Mortensen to stay behind for the meeting with the Swede. He related the background to the coverage in
VG
, which had published a picture of Professor Bob Crabb and quoted Wisting.

The younger FBI agent had not appeared, but he could see from Donald Baker’s face that he did not like what he was hearing. ‘We’re in danger of pushing him away,’ Baker said, without introducing any direct criticism.

‘The police in Minneapolis had already confirmed most of the story,’ Wisting said. ‘This turns it to our advantage.’

Hammer held up the article with the picture of Bob Crabb. ‘It’s doubtful whether anyone will remember him from a busy summer’s day four months ago.’

Christine Thiis drew a line under any further discussion. ‘I agree with the decision taken. We can’t fool the press forever. This has been well handled and could be to our benefit. Meanwhile I plan to invite our communications adviser to handle the media and control the flow of information.’

Though grateful for her support, Wisting would have preferred to do without the newspaper coverage. Others would make approaches now, and it was only a question of time until the presence of the FBI became known, as well as what they were actually dealing with.

‘We have a lot to do,’ he said. ‘Torunn has come up with forty-six possible names and it’s about time we made use of them. We’d do well to take a photo of Bob Crabb, knock on doors and ask if anyone remembers seeing him last summer. Make it look like a general door-to-door operation, a plausible enquiry. Then we’ll just feel our way forward and see who we might want to check out.’

He passed the practical implementation details to Torunn Borg. ‘Just remember, though,’ he said, ‘you go in pairs. Anyone you meet might be the killer.’

Wisting returned to his office, where he had been burning the midnight oil after his colleagues had gone home, closely reading the documents on the twelve missing persons. Not contenting himself with the investigation reports, he had dug down into the bundles of paper for particulars and details that might form a pattern. Checking whether observations of the same make of car had been reported, or repeated similar descriptions.

What alerted the American investigators to a pattern when they arrested the notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, was that witnesses at several crime scenes had noticed a young man with his arm in a sling. Under the pretence of having injured his arm, Bundy had asked for help to do practical things, such as lifting shopping into his car. At the same time, the sling made him appear harmless.

Wisting leaned back in his chair. This type of work could not be left to a computer. It meant absorbing every tiny detail to isolate the one element that would slot everything into place. The problem was, though, he had no idea what that detail could be, was not even certain that it existed. Even if it did, there was no guarantee he would appreciate it first time, but the information would be retained to gnaw away at him, until a single sentence from some report or other allowed him to see everything, the whole picture.

All he had found in these piles of papers, however, was a tremendous degree of variation. All the women had gone missing during the summer months, but on different days of the week, at different times of day and from different places. Some had been on their way home from work, others were on their way to college, or to meet friends. The only common denominator was that they had been in the vicinity of a motorway with a huge volume of through traffic.

He peered at the map with the women’s faces, having removed the picture of the dark-haired girl from Oslo with a pierced eyebrow and Diana from Drammen, leaving ten blond women.

Beside the overview of the assumed victims hung a map of the police district. It bordered Telemark to the west, to the north Lardal and the inner part of Vestfold region, and to the east the towns of Andebu and Sandefjord. Around five hundred square kilometres. Approximately 43,000 inhabitants.

Identifying the farm where they had found the skeleton at the bottom of the well, he drew a circle around the spot, and put crosses where they had found the two empty wells, and something in his subconscious began to surface.

All the farms probably had a well, as Espen Mortensen had pointed out before they identified the three places Bob Crabb had photographed. Something fell into place when he recalled that sentence, as if a lamp had gone on in a corner of his mind.

He returned to his desk and took out the statement given by Per Halle, owner of the forest of Christmas trees where the body was found, and located his phone number among the personal details at the top of the interview form. ‘Just a quick question,’ he said, after introducing himself. ‘Is there a well on your farm?’

Per Halle hesitated before giving his answer. ‘Not one in use nowadays.’