The Caveman (30 page)

The heat was too ferocious. Wisting struggled out of the barn and skirted the building to find Line on the ground just as the explosion ripped through the yard. She was lying prone with Robert Godwin straddling her, but the pressure wave from the detonation lifted him into the air and flung him sprawling onto the ground. He disappeared in a hail-storm of burning wood splinters.

Hit by the same blast, Wisting, struck between the shoulder blades by something heavy and hard, staggered and fell, but managed to scramble to his feet. Behind him the internal barn walls collapsed.

He rushed forward to Line, put his arms around her and, with flames mirrored in her moist, red-ringed eyes, held her tightly until she carefully extricated herself from his embrace. Blood dripped from a cut above her eye. ‘He fell,’ she said. ‘He slipped into the well.’

The Swedish police arrived at full pelt, armed with guns and flashlights. Wisting directed them to the well and assisted Line to the edge. A rancid stench rose from the depths as three torches trained their powerful white lights on the bottom. The well was dry, and Robert Godwin lay six or seven metres below on bundles wrapped in grey canvas. One leg projected at an unnatural angle from his knee, but he had survived the fall. Grimacing with pain, he pushed against the well wall to put his head back and peer up. The dark lustre in his eyes had been extinguished.

Not until she was lying in hospital in Gothenburg could Line fully assemble the story, as her father slept in a chair at her bedside.

The extra bulletins on the TV above her bed had continued all night, repeating the press conference in Norway with representatives from the Swedish and American police forces present. Sixty-one-year-old Robert Godwin from Minnesota was charged with twenty-three homicides in the USA, ten in Norway and five in Sweden.

The picture transferred to the forest outside Hamburgsund and footage of firemen coiling their hoses. A reporter explained that several bodies had been removed from the property behind. Subsequently, a taciturn police officer took questions, confirming that the case involved a joint action in which Norwegian police had participated, leading to the arrest of the wanted American.

Her father moved in his sleep in the chair. She changed the channel to watch CNN and Sky News. In both instances, the sensational arrest in Sweden was the main news item. The American channel showed archive photographs from when Godwin had been nicknamed the ‘Interstate Strangler’.

On the Swedish channel, a burly criminologist and author was interviewed by a reporter who wanted to know how Robert Godwin had managed to avoid police attention for so many years. The expert pushed his glasses over his forehead onto his thick grey hair before embarking on a lengthy response. He reckoned there were probably as many as fifty thousand people living illegally in Sweden. The authorities had no clear picture of who they were. The only thing known for certain was that they financed their existence and residence through criminal activities.

Line switched off the television. At present she was not part of the news story, but that would come later. She pulled aside the quilt and, studying her ankle encased in plaster, reached for a pencil and the bundle of writing paper that one of the nurses had acquired for her.

Twenty years ago, Viggo Hansen had been regarded as crazy and was admitted to hospital when he thought one of his few friends was no longer the person he purported to be. Now he had become part of an international news story, though that did not change the principal fact. His life had been spent in loneliness.

We will never really know how he lived, she wrote, nor will we ever know how he actually died. We only know that he was alone. Alone in every respect.

Line’s article about Viggo Hansen was published the day after Boxing Day.

Wisting slept late before getting up to go to the local shop, where he bought a couple of freshly baked rolls and returned home with the newspaper. Line had gone back to Oslo and the house was empty.

He switched on the radio, relishing the company of a morning discussion programme as he made himself a cup of coffee. He cut the rolls open, spread jam on two halves and herring on a third. Breaking the last half into pieces, he opened the kitchen window and put them on the bird tray outside.

Robert Godwin was still all over the front pages.
VG
’s journalists had travelled to the USA to interview the families of several of the American victims, who thanked the Norwegian and Swedish police for finally catching the murderer. Now they could move on with their lives.

Godwin had been released from hospital and placed in the secure unit at Tidaholm Prison. According to the newspapers, he was willing to give a statement to Swedish police, but demanded guarantees that he would not be handed over to the US authorities. Many questions had not been answered, and Wisting anticipated they never would. That was how it always was. In every investigation, a number of elements sank to unfathomable depths.

Two red-breasted birds with blue-black hoods and grey body feathers appeared outside the window, as they had every day throughout the Christmas period, helping themselves to crumbs from the tray.

He read Line’s article twice. The frame was still the story of a lonely man, but it had gained another dimension and another context. She drew a portrait of a man no one would miss, but who had occupied his place here on earth. Afterwards Wisting crossed to the window to stare at the empty house further down the street. It had started snowing again, as forecast. Large feathery flakes swirled through the air, obscuring his view, until at last a grey wall divided him from the world.

Returning to the kitchen, he rinsed his plate and placed it upside down to drain, before carrying the newspaper to the living room. As he located the TV listings on the back pages, he picked up the remote control and chose a film about a boy alone at home when burglars tried to break into the house.

He leaned back in his chair and it took only ten minutes for him to fall asleep. Outside, fierce gusts of wind whipped snow along the street, obliterating all traces.