The Caveman (28 page)

Everything else was set aside and, only a few minutes later, a picture of Frank Iversen was formed.

‘His address is Fyrrevænget 16,’ Torunn Borg said. ‘It’s a terraced flat. According to the Danish Population Register he lives alone. He’s never been married, and has no children.’

‘No mention in Norwegian criminal records,’ Espen Mortensen added.

‘Not in the Danish ones either,’ Leif Malm said. He was receiving information on his laptop from the intelligence section at
Kripos
. ‘The records say he is employed by Aqua Consulting of Denmark.’

Wisting looked up the company name on the internet. They had their own home page, and were involved in advice and consultation in fish farming. Frank Iversen was on the list of employees. Though there was no photograph of him, a mobile phone number was listed.

He turned the screen towards Leif Malm. ‘Can you do anything with that?’

‘We’re already on it,’ Malm said.

Wisting turned the screen back and clicked, slightly tentatively, on the other links. ‘Here’s something,’ he said, turning the screen to the others again. One of Aqua’s projects was a mussel-growing facility outside Stavern.

Wisting picked up the office phone, programmed so that his number was not shown. He tapped in Aqua’s number, connected the loudspeaker and asked for Frank Iversen. A woman answered.

‘He’s away at the moment. You can have his mobile number.’

‘Is he in Norway?’ Wisting asked.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘At the mussel farm in Stavern?’

‘Yes, but he’ll be back on Monday. Would you like his mobile number?’

‘Yes, please.’

Wisting jotted it down, confirming it was the same as on the web pages.

‘He’s here,’ he said, putting down the receiver.

Mortensen turned his laptop towards him, showing the results of an internet search. The key words mussels and chloroform had produced almost two hundred hits. One was on Aqua Consulting and had to do with checking the toxicity of the shells.

‘Looks like they use chloroform to control algae toxins in mussels,’ he said, reading aloud:
‘Toxins from mussels are extracted using chloroform and analysed in our advanced laboratory.’

Unable to sit still, Wisting walked over to the window. The weather had eased, and a helicopter was flying across the fjord in the direction of the discovery site at Halle. The area would be besieged by journalists.

‘That’s our people,’ Malm said. ‘I’ve told them to remain on alert. We may need them.’

Wisting nodded, but remained at the window, listening to his colleagues working. His office had been transformed into a command post: keyboards were tapping and conversations buzzing, investigators coming and going.

‘He’s been staying at the
Farris Bad
Hotel until today,’ Mortensen said. ‘Checked out at 08.53.’

‘Has the room been cleaned?’

‘Cleaned, but not re-used. I’ve asked them to close it off.’

Wisting turned to face the others. Donald Baker stood with his back to the wall, silently watching. Conversations were conducted in Norwegian now. Baker did not understand the language, but would appreciate that the investigation was escalating. Most cases were about finding the guilty party. This time they had known who it was almost from the beginning, but only now were the pieces falling into place.

Torunn Borg returned. ‘According to the
Color Line
passenger lists, he arrived on Monday and has a return ticket for the ferry leaving today at 17.30. On the boarding card, an Opel Vectra with the registration number XM43251 is listed. He’s probably in the ferry queue now.’

The crew on standby to go into action against Odd Werner Ellefsen were actioned, leaving only Leif Malm and Torunn Borg with Wisting.

‘Do they have any history for him on their passenger lists?’ Malm asked. ‘When was he in Norway last?’

‘I’ll check that out,’ Torunn Borg said.

The first observation post reported that Frank Iversen’s Opel Vectra was parked in lane four, waiting to drive on board.

Wisting was still at the office window. A blue-grey winter dusk was settling. The helicopter came in over the fjord and hovered. Over the radio he heard how the crew were positioning themselves, and then were told to maintain radio silence.

The crowd in his office had made the air stuffy, and he found it difficult to breathe. Seconds ticked by, slowly turning into minutes. Listening to Leif Malm’s laboured breath, he struggled to overcome his anxiety.

Torunn Borg returned. ‘Frank Iversen was in Norway twice during the summer,’ she said, glancing up from a sheet of paper with the ferry company logo. ‘First one week from 14th to 21st July, and then another week from Monday 8th until Sunday 14th August.’

‘The week Bob Crabb was murdered,’ Malm said.

‘Kikki Lindén went missing from Trollhättan on 18th July,’ Wisting reminded them.

The police radio crackled:
‘Man taken into custody.’

Confirmation that the short message had been received was relayed, before silence descended again. That was all.

Wisting clasped his hands, in furious need of action. He crossed to the wall where Robert Godwin’s wanted poster hung alongside pictures of the missing women. Staring at the dark eyes, he imagined a pale, quiet kind of madness in them. Turning on his heel he paced to and fro beside the desk. It was too simple, he thought, the way everything had fallen into place and they were able to pick him out of a ferry queue.

Nils Hammer appeared in the doorway. ‘They’ve got him.’

Wisting nodded in the direction of the police radio on the desk, as if to tell him they had already learned of the arrest.

‘He was alone,’ Hammer explained as he entered the room. ‘They’ve brought him in so we can question him as quickly as possible.’

‘Good.’

‘I found this,’ Hammer continued, placing a photograph printout on the desk.

Wisting stooped over it. A grey-haired man with a slightly crooked nose and deep-set eyes.

‘Who’s that?’ Leif Malm asked.

‘This is Frank Iversen’s passport photograph.’

The man in the photograph bore no resemblance to the wanted serial killer.

Wisting stood in front of the TV screen to watch the video footage from the interview room. Nils Hammer sat in the chair opposite Frank Iversen. No one any longer believed him to be Robert Godwin, and it was only a question of minutes before his fingerprints confirmed that. From a purely practical point of view, they had fabricated a charge of falsifying documents and use of false identity papers. The grounds were flimsy, but it meant they could hold him and conduct an interview.

Hammer went through the formalities and Iverson freely explained how he had been born in Norway in 1949, grown up in Stavern but moved to Langesund when his father was appointed master of the ship pilots’ guild in the neighbouring district. Both his parents died young. He had studied as a marine biologist, and during a research project in Denmark had met a woman who attracted him there. The relationship did not last, but by then he had a job at Aqua Consulting and decided to stay.

‘What’s this actually all about?’ he asked.

Hammer produced a photograph of Bob Crabb and pushed it across to the man on the other side of the table. ‘It concerns this man,’ he said.

‘The American?’ Frank Iversen asked, picking up the photograph.

‘Do you know him?’

‘I don’t know him, but he visited me last summer.’

Wisting took a step closer to the TV screen, watching Hammer straighten in his chair.

‘Did he visit you?’ Hammer asked. ‘At your house in Denmark?’

‘Yes, it was actually quite peculiar. Has he done something wrong?’

‘What did he want?’

‘He wanted to talk about the old days in Stavern.’

‘Why was that?’

‘He was searching for an old friend he had lost contact with. I answered as best I could, but don’t remember much about my childhood years.’

‘Was there anything or anyone he was particularly interested in?’

‘He was very interested in Ole Linge.’

‘Who’s Ole Linge?’

‘Someone I knew when I lived in Stavern. He asked probing questions, and I answered as best I could.’

Wisting left the room and walked rapidly back to his own office for the relationship chart. Then he returned and opened the door to the interview room.

The men sitting at the table turned towards him.

‘Ole Linge,’ Wisting said. ‘Was he known as German Ole?’

Frank Iversen looked across at Hammer in confusion. Nils Hammer nodded, inviting him to answer.

‘It was said that his father was German,’ Frank Iversen explained. ‘He was a few years older than us, born right after the war.’

Line had used that nickname on her chart. Wisting looked again at the man in the interview seat. ‘What do you know about him?’

‘Nothing, really. I tried to explain that to the American as well. He wanted to know about his family and that sort of thing, but there was only Ole and his mother.’

Wisting nodded in thanks and left the interview room. In the video room, Torunn Borg was already working at the computer.

‘Ole Linge,’ she said, reading from the screen. ‘Born 1946. His mother died in 1972, and he has no other family registered. Last employment was in 1984. Now on a disability pension. Lives at Brunlanesveien 550.’

‘That’s just a couple of kilometres from Halle farm,’ Espen Mortensen said. ‘Could he have dumped the bodies in his own backyard?’

‘Why hasn’t he appeared on any of the lists?’ Leif Malm asked.

‘Too old,’ Torunn Borg explained. ‘He’s four years older than Robert Godwin, and we worked on parameters of plus or minus three years.’

The communications adviser entered the room. ‘Press conference in fifteen minutes,’ he reminded.

Wisting ignored him. ‘Do we have a photo?’ he asked.

Torunn Borg returned to the computer screen. A couple of keystrokes later Ole Linge’s passport photograph filled the screen.

‘That’s him!’ Donald Baker whispered. ‘We’ve found him.’

The narrow face shone from the computer screen, its dark eyes hidden behind thick glasses. It was him. Wisting felt perspiration break out on his entire body. His mouth became dry as dust, and a nerve vibrated in his face.

For the third time the Emergency Squad drove out of the police garage but, on this occasion, Wisting sat in the passenger seat.

Tactically, their subject was in a challenging position, under a rocky ridge with open terrain to the front, and would probably see them approach. In a planned action, the crew would normally inch towards the rear of the building under cover of vegetation, but the officer in charge decided instead to launch a sudden attack. They would drive to the house at top speed, storm out and enter the building. Simultaneously, the police helicopter would shine its searchlight on the house from above, watching for any attempt to flee from the back.

‘Suspect uses a grey Mercedes E220, 1993 model, with registration number AX81212,’
was relayed over the police radio while they drove.

Leaning forward, the officer in charge picked up the microphone. ‘Received,’ he said. ‘Arrival in approximately one minute. Initiating immediate action.’

The driver dropped his speed and, swinging off the main highway, advanced along a bumpy side road. Wisting held tightly to the handle above the door. Lights were showing in the house but no one appeared at the wide panorama windows to take a closer look. They could see no car parked in the yard, and there was no garage on the property, only an open carport where outdoor furniture was stored for the winter.

They stopped a few metres from the entrance, the side door slid open, and the armed officers piled out in a carefully practised manoeuvre. Two of them carried a crowbar, while a third wielded a sledgehammer. The crowbar was inserted between door and frame and splinters flew as it broke open.

They entered the house in a snaking line, commands shouted and answered. Wisting knew that the leading officers would break to right and left as they encountered doors and rooms, while those bringing up the rear would continue into the house. Through the windows he could see sweeping flashlights and the narrow beams from red dot machine gun sights. The police helicopter hovered overhead, shedding its powerful floodlight in expansive circles.

‘All clear,’
was the report. The house was empty.

Two other cars drove up. Nils Hammer emerged from one in company with the Swedish detective, while Leif Malm and the two FBI agents stepped out of the other. ‘We’ll have teledata on him in less than ten minutes,’ Malm said.

Wisting entered the house, keen to discover how the serial killer lived. The smell of paint hit him as he entered a basement room. Apart from this renovation, little had changed since the house was built. It was furnished with moulded plastic chairs and rosewood veneer furniture, everything durable and easily cleaned, and a yellowish-brown colour scheme repeated on wallpaper and rugs.

The Emergency Squad crew conducted a thorough search, looking underneath beds, rummaging through cupboards and storerooms while Wisting stood in the centre of the living room to survey the scene: furniture along the walls made the room seem more spacious, and a shelf unit was crammed with books. A book collection expresses the owner’s personality. Titles and authors speak of character and individuality.

This collection had a preponderance of American writers: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill and William Faulkner. Some books were present in more than one edition, both English and Norwegian. Apart from these books, he noted a total absence of personal touches. No ornaments or pictures.

His mobile phone rang: Torunn Borg. ‘I’ve spoken again to Odd Werner Ellefsen,’ she said. ‘It turns out that Bob Crabb visited him in the summer as well. Wanting to talk about Ole Linge.’

Wisting nodded. Bob Crabb’s behaviour had been that of an investigator, interviewing people and gathering evidence, such as the flyer from the
MS Elida
with Robert Godwin’s fingerprints, photographing and documenting. Probably he had been on the brink of contacting the authorities when Godwin realised what was happening.

Leif Malm shouted to him from further inside the house. Wisting ended his conversation with Torunn Borg to find Malm in a room equipped as an office, its shelves stacked with books, ring binders and boxes of periodicals. On the desk sat a laptop computer, and beside it a camera with a powerful lens. Malm held a blue passport in his hands.
United States of America.
He raised it to Wisting’s eye level:
Bob Crabb
. These were the American university professor’s passport and missing belongings.

‘Godwin must have felt extremely safe here,’ Malm said, ‘leaving all this in plain sight. Or perhaps he thought he could somehow make use of it in some way.’

Wisting lifted the camera and located the on-button, but nothing happened. It must have run out of battery power.

Replacing it, he contemplated how the man who had once lived here, the original Ole Linge, had probably lain at the bottom of a well with two eels for company for the past twenty years. Since then, Robert Godwin had lived in his stead, until Bob Crabb arrived. Crabb had talked to the same people as Line when she was familiarising herself with Viggo Hansen. In Bob Crabb’s case, that had cost him his life.

His train of thought was broken by Leif Malm’s mobile phone. Malm answered in monosyllables before disconnecting. ‘Ole Linge’s phone is somewhere in Sweden. The police there are collaborating with the
Telia
phone company to locate it.’

‘Sweden? What’s he doing there?’

‘He may have gone on the run. If so, he’ll probably try to travel farther, over the Øresund Bridge to Denmark or on one of the Baltic ferries.’

Ingemar Bergquist bounded upstairs two at a time, with Nils Hammer following.

‘He’s in Sweden,’ Malm told them.

‘I know,’ the Swedish investigator replied. ‘We’ve run his name through our records, and it appears the real Ole Linge owned a smallholding in Tanum district. He inherited it from his father in 1982.’

‘His father was German,’ Wisting said. ‘At least he was rumoured to be.’

‘According to our records, his father’s name was Olle Fredriksson and he came from a small place called Vremmen.’

‘Whereabouts in Sweden is that?’

‘In Western Götaland.’

Wisting conjured up a mental map of that part of Sweden, remembering how the E6 motorway stretched from the border to Gothenburg. He glanced through the panorama window to the helicopter still hovering above.

‘Can you get that to land?’ he asked.