The Hunting Dogs (6 page)

‘Shall we go?’ Wisting asked. Their glasses were empty.

‘’If you want,’ Suzanne smiled.

After taking the glasses and bottle to the counter, Wisting held her jacket open for
her before putting on his own.

Suzanne locked the door behind them. Rain was still in the air, and it was colder.
A taxi pulled up, but Wisting waved it on. The stroll home to the house in Herman
Wildenveys gate took no more than ten minutes, and they both liked to walk. They enjoyed
the silence of the streets.

Suzanne opened a small umbrella, which he ducked under beside her. ‘Have you had any
contact with Cecilia’s family since then?’ she asked.

‘A little,’ he said, thinking of how a murder always had a number of faces. In Cecilia’s
case, there were five: her mother, father, brother, boyfriend and her own cold, blue,
impassive, dead face. ‘Her mother sends me a Christmas card every year.’

‘What does she write?’

He shrugged, as though he was not quite sure. ‘Happy Christmas.’

He was well aware of what she wrote. All the cards were lying in the bottom drawer
of his desk. The same words every year:
I wish you
and yours a very merry Christmas and happy new year
. With gratitude, Nora Linde and family.
He had always felt this to be generous of her, but that was what she had been like.
Not a single time in all their conversations during the search for Cecilia had she
made a critical remark or negative comment.

‘How are they doing?’

‘Fine, I think. Even if they won’t ever get over it, at least they’ve managed to move
on.’

‘Johannes Linde has done well for himself since then. So I’ve heard.’

He agreed. When Cecilia disappeared, her father had been embroiled in a conflict with
a previous business partner over ownership and rights to a number of trademarks and
run the risk of losing a great deal of money. The legal decision had gone in his favour,
the company had grown and his son Casper had taken over at the top.

‘What does her boyfriend do now?’

‘Danny Flom is a photographer. That was how they met, when he took photos for the
advertising campaign. Now he runs a photographic studio in Oslo.
Flomlys
, it’s called.’

‘Good name. Danny Flom,
Flomlys
. Did he find himself another girlfriend?’

‘I think he’s been married a couple of times.’

A flurry of wind blew an old newspaper towards them. Wisting drew his jacket more
snugly around his neck.

‘Perhaps you ought to talk to Thomas,’ Suzanne suggested. ‘So that he knows what it’s
all about. They read newspapers down there too, you know.’

Thomas was Line’s twin brother who was serving for periods of six months at a time
as a helicopter pilot with the Norwegian forces in Afghanistan.

‘It’s the middle of the night right now,’ Wisting said. ‘Besides, he’s not so easy
to get hold of. I really depend on him phoning me.’

‘What about your father?’

Wisting would have to call his father. Eighty years of age and a widower for the past
twenty-four, he had been a hospital doctor. He was a sprightly old man who always
followed the coverage of Wisting’s cases.

They walked on in silence, eyes on the ground. The sound of their footsteps combined
in an uneven rhythm, hers slightly faster, shorter; his longer, heavier.

The dashboard clock read 00.16. Line heard fleeting messages on the radio transmitter
with updates on the progress of the dog handler’s team, as well as directions relayed
to patrol cars. The plain-clothes police officer in the front passenger seat turned
down the volume and twisted round to face her. ‘Is that your blood?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, opening her laptop on her knee.

‘Are you sure none of it came from him?’

‘He would have to have injured himself.’

‘We’ll have a doctor take a look at you.’

The clock display changed to 00.17. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she said. ‘I can arrange
that afterwards.’

‘What happened?’

She glanced up from the image on her screen. ‘Listen. I’ve explained this over the
phone and then to the first patrol that turned up. After they’re all done with me,
I have to explain it all again to you?’

‘It’s important that we know exactly what took place. If I know whether he struck
you in the head or the abdomen, then I’ll know where to look for fibres from his gloves.’

Line logged into the newspaper’s data system. ‘He punched me on the back while I was
holding his leg,’ she said. ‘After that, he walloped me with a metal rake. It’s lying
in front of the house.’

‘What about all that blood on your face?’

‘A nosebleed. The door hit me when he burst out.’

‘Are you related to William Wisting?’ the driver asked. Older than his colleague,
he was thickset and wore a beard.

‘He’s my father.’

‘I seem to recall that his daughter worked for
VG
.
I was at Police College with him.’

‘Mhmm.’

‘Tell him Jan Berger was asking for him.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Line said, without really catching the name. She was casting about
for her opening words. Only a few minutes ago, she had known how she was going to
express herself. Now her mind was in chaos. Instead of beginning, she phoned the photographer.

‘You look bloody awful in these photos,’ he said.

‘Thanks a bunch.’

‘You really ought to go to Accident and Emergency.’

‘Later. You need to send those pictures to the news desk. Both the one of me and the
one with the dog. Tell them I’ll get the text to them in ten minutes.’

She closed her eyes for a few seconds to collect her thoughts, before her fingers
started moving. She began with the most dramatic element, how the presumed murderer
had attacked her. Afterwards she would go back and write the introduction. The most
significant and central information took only three sentences. The radio cut through
her concentration.

‘
We
’
ve lost the scent at the Europris central warehouse
.
He may have had a vehicle parked here.
’

‘
Fox
3-2 take position on main highway 111 at the Torsnes
exit.
’

When her phone rang she answered, cradling it between her neck and shoulder as she
continued to write.

‘Hi, it’s Nina.’

‘Who?’

‘Nina Haugen, from the Statoil Østsiden service station. You phoned me earlier tonight.’
The girl with her mouth full of chewing gum.

‘With you,’ Line said.

‘I know who the man with the dog is. He comes here regularly to buy tobacco.’

‘I’ve found out who he is as well.’

‘It’s a Schapendoes, a Dutch Sheepdog.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You mentioned a
Labbetuss
, and I didn’t know what that was, but it’s a Schapendoes.’ Concentrating on her writing,
Line deleted two sentences and replaced them with one. ‘It’s the same kind as Drillo
has.’

‘I know. I’ve seen it.’

‘It was Fredrik who realised. He’s found the pictures on the CCTV camera, if that’s
of any interest.’

Pictures were always of interest. It wasn’t anything they would publish at the moment,
but maybe later when the identity had been disclosed or in connection with the court
case.

‘Can you send them to me?’

‘Fredrik can do that.’

‘Excellent,’ Line passed on her email address.

‘How much do you pay?’

‘I’m not the one to decide, but write down your name, date of birth and bank account
number and I’ll pass them to the people who arrange those things.’

The laptop emitted a signal as a dialogue box popped up to warn her the battery was
running out of charge.

‘By the way, it’s called Tiedemann.’

Line clicked away the warning.

‘Who?’ she asked, saving what she had written.

‘The dog. I’ve heard him calling it Tiedemann. It’s probably named after the tobacco
brand. He always buys Tiedemann’s Gold Mix number three and cigarette papers.’

Line peered into the night. The police car had arrived outside a yellowish-brown brick
building with an enormous glass façade. Fredrikstad Police Station. ‘Okay, thanks,’
she said.

‘Do you know what’s going to happen to it?’

00.25

‘No.’

‘Since its owner’s been killed, I mean.’

‘I’ve no idea, Nina. I really have to go now.’

‘Okay. Bye then.’

Line disconnected the call. ‘Can I have quarter of an hour?’ she asked, looking at
the driver who knew her father.

‘We have to go back,’ he replied. ‘We’re setting up road blocks.’

‘There’s a technician in an examination room in there waiting for you,’ the other
man said. ‘As soon as he’s finished, he’ll go back to the crime scene too.’

Line slammed the lid of her laptop shut at
00.26.

The examination room at the police station was cold, with bare walls and a fluorescent
ceiling tube. The man waiting for her held a camera. Old and silver-haired, with heavy
eyelids, he explained that he would document her injuries with photographs, and asked
her to stand with her back to the wall. After each picture, he scrutinised the result
on the tiny display. They followed this procedure with both profiles.

‘Where did he hit you with the rake?’ he asked.

‘Here,’ Line said, twisting her hip towards him and pointing.

The crime technician looked at the tears in her trousers where the rake tines had
dug in. He crossed to a drawer and rummaged for a photo ruler. ‘Can you hold this?’
he asked.

Line held the ruler against her thigh as he hunkered down, placing the camera at right
angles to her injuries. He took one photo that he examined closely before coming in
closer and taking another. Then he straightened up. ‘I wonder if we should take one
without your trousers on as well,’ he said.

Line set down the ruler and gazed at the man. These were photos that would be studied
by investigators, defence lawyers, judges and jury when that time eventually arrived.
She did not take exception to them seeing her in her underwear, but they had already
taken more time than she could spare. She would not finish writing her story before
the deadline, even though most of it was already inside her head. ‘I have to make
a phone call first.’

The digital clock on her mobile display read 00.44. She cleared it by pressing the
speed dial key for the news editor. ‘Did you receive Erik’s photos?’ she asked.

‘Yep. The one with the dog is a prize winner.’

‘Are we in time to use it on the front page?’

‘We won’t be using it, Line.’

‘What do you mean? There’s half an hour to go.’

‘Frost has decided. The front page spread stays. We’ve put the murder on pages ten
and eleven. The picture of the dog with its dead owner takes up most of the space.
Then we’ll run the story about the attack on you in the online edition right after
our competitors have gone to press.’

‘But …’

‘Frost has made up his mind. The front page is settled.’

She said nothing. Swallowed. It felt as if something had crumbled away, the ground
beneath her feet, and disappeared. ‘How does it look?’

‘To be honest, Line, it looks dreadful.’

‘The headline?’

‘That’s a quote from Rudolf Haglund’s lawyer –
Planted the
crucial evidence
. I can send you the whole story as a PDF file.’

A sudden rage erupted within her, a reaction to everything collapsing around her,
but she managed to maintain a steady voice. ‘No thanks,’ she said.

‘Can we do anything for you? I mean, about what has happened to
you
. We’ve got people you can talk to in the occupational health service.’

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘Go back to your hotel and try to relax,’ he said. ‘That photo of the dog is bloody
brilliant, by the way, did I tell you? We’ve squeezed it in at the corner of the front
page.’

‘Tiedemann.’

‘What?’

‘Tiedemann. The dog’s called Tiedemann, just like the tobacco.’

The coffee machine was a Christmas present from Line, hi-tech and easy to use. All
he had to do was make sure there was enough water in the container, insert a capsule,
and the cup filled at the touch of a button. The aroma was richer than from his old
machine.

He drank a cup of coffee at seven o’clock every morning, with the local paper in front
of him and the news on TV. Today it was ten past seven before the coffee had finished
trickling through the machine. Suzanne was upstairs asleep. Outside, it was still
dark and windy. Raindrops dripped down the windowpane.

He glanced up at the blank television screen, hesitating before lifting the remote
to switch on TV2. The two presenters, one male, one female, on Good Morning Norway
stood at one end of a table with a sheaf of daily newspapers before them. Wisting
curled his hand around his cup without picking it up.

‘
Dagbladet
features the murder in Fredrikstad where one of
VG
’s reporters was assaulted, as we heard in the news,’ the female presenter said, holding
up the front page, ‘while
VG
runs with a different story.’

‘That also has to do with a murder case,’ the man explained, ‘but this one is seventeen
years old.’

‘The Cecilia case?’

‘Yes, we all remember that one. Seventeen years ago, a thirty-year-old man was convicted
of kidnapping and murdering Cecilia Linde. Now the case has been referred to the Criminal
Cases Review Commission on the basis of complaints that the police planted a vital
piece of DNA evidence.’

He held up the newspaper’s front-page spread.
Planted
the crucial evidence
was emblazoned in bold letters above a picture of Wisting, together with a smaller
insert of Cecilia Linde. The camera zoomed in.

He liked that photo, aware he looked good in it. It had been taken for a television
programme he had been persuaded to appear on, speaking about his work as a detective
and a case in which the host had been one of the suspects.

‘A serious case,’ the presenter concluded, before moving to one of the business papers.

Wisting was startled when he heard Suzanne’s voice. ‘What’s up now?’

He turned. She was leaning against the doorframe in her dressing gown.

‘I’m just finishing my coffee,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll be off to work.’

‘In the case, I mean.’ She nodded in the direction of the TV.

Wisting wasn’t sure himself. He had no idea how anyone could establish that the cigarette
evidence had been planted, or how such a plant was even possible. The crime technicians
who had searched the intersection at Gumserød had returned with a box full of evidence
bags: empty bottles, chocolate wrappers, plastic beakers, apple cores, everything
you might find at a roadside, among them three cigarette ends. Everything had been
stored at the crime technology lab until Rudolf Haglund had been captured, and had
been sent for analysis in conjunction with a reference sample from the accused. There
hadn’t been anything disquieting about the gathering or handling of the evidence.
He had been responsible for the investigation, and had not even set eyes on the cigarette
butts except in photographs.

‘I trust the Commission. They’ll get to the bottom of it all,’ he said. ‘They’ll send
us a copy of the application and ask for our comments. Then we’ll have a better idea
of what this is all really about.’

Suzanne moved over to the coffee machine as Wisting turned down the volume on the
TV.

He had always thought of his job as difficult and demanding, but he enjoyed its challenges.
At times he had felt he did not have control or an overview, and had often experienced
doubt and uncertainty, but he always dealt with things from a conviction of what was
right, and had always been able to defend his decisions. At the moment, he could not
see what he could have done differently in the Cecilia case.

‘They said something about a
VG
journalist being hurt in association with a murder in Fredrikstad,’ he said.

Suzanne sat beside him. ‘How did that happen?’

‘I didn’t catch all of it.’ He grabbed the remote again and switched on the teletext
function.

Accused of faking
evidence
was the main story. On the line underneath:
Murder
in Fredrikstad
. He tapped in the accompanying number and waited as the TV picture counted its way
to the right page.

A 47-year-old man was found murdered at
Kongsten in Fredrikstad around nine o
’
clock last night. A
female journalist from VG was attacked by the presumed killer
when she visited the murder victim
’
s home. Police prosecutor
Eskild Hals confirms that the perpetrator had broken into the
deceased
’
s residence but had been interrupted by the journalist
who arrived on the scene before the police. It is
understood the journalist was not seriously injured.

‘Sounds like something Line might have done,’ Suzanne remarked.

Wisting drained his coffee. The same thought had struck him. Line was capable of discovering
the address of an unidentified murder victim before the police. ‘She’s on leave,’
he commented, but had already picked up his mobile phone. He rang her number but there
was no response.