Closed for Winter (2 page)

It had been a long day. William Wisting leaned forward on the settee, eyes fixed on the key lying on the table before him. Coated in verdigris, it had obviously not been used in ages.

Standing up, he crossed to the window to look through myriad droplets of rain onto the town of Stavern below. An emergency vehicle drove through the streets, its blue light slicing through the darkness, though it was impossible to tell whether it was a police patrol car or an ambulance. When it disappeared from Helgeroaveien he took a bottle from the corner cupboard; Spanish, with the date 2004 emblazoned on the label in gold lettering. He thought he remembered receiving it the previous autumn after delivering a lecture to the Trades Association. It looked expensive, and letting it sit there had probably done no harm. Though he was fond of wine, he never had enough time or interest to bone up on grape varieties, producers, wine growing areas, what suited food or which type of wine could be drunk on its own. It was enough to recognise a good vintage when he tasted one.

‘Baron de Oña?’ He glanced in the direction of the sofa.

Suzanne smiled, nodding towards him, and he returned her smile. She had entered his life a couple of years earlier, filling an immense void. The previous week, a water leak had sprung at her house, so she had arrived to stay with him and, though he had not told her so, he enjoyed having her here.

Picking up two wine glasses, he squinted through the window again but now caught sight only of his own reflection, a broad coarse face with dark eyes. Turning his back, he returned to the settee and settled beside her.

On the television screen, Thomas Rønningen’s studio couch was occupied by enthralling guests expressing a variety of viewpoints on a common topic. Wisting enjoyed this type of programme, in which serious subjects were mixed with light entertainment, and he particularly liked this presenter. With boyish charm, Thomas Rønningen created an intimate, personal and unassailable ambience in front of the studio lights. He had transformed himself into an investigator who always posed well-constructed, intelligent questions to his guests, and instead of boxing interviewees into a corner with critical probing, coaxed disclosures from them simply by allowing the conversation to flow.

Relieving him of the glasses, Suzanne placed them on the table as he went off to fetch a corkscrew. Before returning to his seat, he peered through the window once more. Yet another emergency vehicle was heading in the same direction. He glanced automatically at his watch, noting the time: 22.02.

‘Congratulations, then,’ Suzanne remarked, holding out her glass as he poured.

‘What do you mean?’

‘About the cottage,’ she smiled, nodding towards the key on the table.

Wisting plumped himself on the settee again. The day had started at a lawyer’s office in Oslo in the company of his uncle, Georg Wisting. Seventy-eight years of age, Uncle Georg had spent most of his adult life building an engineering firm that specialised in energy conservation. Wisting had never quite understood what this involved, but knew his uncle had developed and patented equipment for sterilising and purifying water and air.

Uncle Georg had also made it his life’s work to challenge the establishment, and his inbuilt aversion to rates and taxes had led to several rounds in the law courts, resulting in penalty taxes and suspended prison sentences.

The meeting in the lawyer’s office concerned Georg Wisting’s last will and testament, his final attempt at ensuring the state would not benefit in any shape or form after his death. The lawyer, a specialist in inheritance matters, had drafted a fairly complex scheme to organise Uncle Georg’s estate prior to his death.

Wisting’s involvement meant he became owner of a holiday cottage at Værvågen outside Helgeroa, valued at the most artificially low price permitted by the legal system and so reducing inheritance tax to a minimum. This had brought Wisting a degree of affluence, though in general money posed no problem. His earnings were satisfactory and the job did not allow time for much in the way of consumption. Moreover, there was the other money, the money from Ingrid. He and the children had received a million kroner in compensation when she died while working in Africa on an assignment for
Norad
, the Norwegian aid organisation, four years previously. Although that money was sitting in a special account, increasing each month, he could not bring himself to touch it.

When they were newly married, and Ingrid was expecting their twins, bills had piled up, and sometimes they had to collect bottles to redeem the deposits when wages did not stretch to the end of the month. Now he had stopped looking at prices when shopping for groceries.

Uncle Georg’s lawyer had offered to sift through his private finances to devise a plan to minimise his tax liabilities, but he had declined.

The celebrities on the television screen were laughing. ‘I envy people like that,’ Suzanne said, nodding in the direction of the television set. Wisting agreed, though he was not sure what kind of people she was talking about. He was content merely to sit with her on the settee. ‘People who do just whatever they want,’ she continued. ‘People who dare to take risks, breaking free from everything permanent and secure to do something new and exciting instead. Like that woman Sigrid Heddal.’

Wisting glanced at the screen, where a woman of around fifty was declaiming enthusiastically about something called
Safe Horizon
.

‘Just think, she’s more than fifty, yet she leaves a secure job as a project manager in industry to travel to Addis Ababa and undertake voluntary work with orphaned children. That takes courage.’ Wisting nodded, warming to this facet of Suzanne. ‘Tommy’s like that too.’

She was referring to Wisting’s daughter Line’s Danish boyfriend, Tommy Kvanter, who had resigned the year before from his steward’s job on a factory trawler, selling his flat and moving in with her. In partnership with a few friends, he had invested the money from the sale in a restaurant in Oslo. Wisting agreed that Tommy was a dreamer, not adding that this was not necessarily a quality he appreciated.

Following the meeting with the lawyer, he and Suzanne had dined with Line at Tommy’s restaurant, Wisting’s first time. Now he understood that it was more than an eating place: a restaurant building on three storeys called
Shazam Station
with a nightclub in the basement, a coffee bar at street level and the restaurant on the top floor.

Tommy, who had responsibility for the kitchen and restaurant, had been unable to eat with them, but ensured they were served a substantial four-course meal. The food was delicious, that was not the problem, but where were all the customers on this busy Friday afternoon? Only a handful of tables were occupied. If this was the case every day, it did not augur well.

He had never really understood what his daughter saw in Tommy. It was true he could be thoughtful and talkative, and even Wisting could see how charming he was. He did not trust him though, and not simply because he had a drugs conviction. Not even because he was obstinate and egotistical. Wisting simply felt that he was not the kind of character on whom his daughter should hazard her future.

Sometimes he wondered whether his scepticism stemmed solely from Line being his daughter. He did not really think so but, on the last few occasions he had seen them together, it did seem that Line had begun to notice some of Tommy’s shortcomings. He seemed to irritate her, and Wisting had to admit ruefully to himself that he was delighted.

‘If you don’t take the chance to try something new, you can’t expect to achieve anything,’ Suzanne went on. ‘What have you got to lose? No matter how many times you go wrong, you always learn something new each time. All experience is valuable, both good and bad.’

One of the guests on the TV show had been asked a question he could not answer immediately, and in the ensuing silence Wisting could hear the sound of a distant police siren.

He clutched his glass in his hand. ‘Would you think of starting up a restaurant?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she replied, surprised but smiling back at him. ‘Not exactly a restaurant, but perhaps a little café with an art gallery. Life is too short to continue the way things are. Turning up at the office every morning. Meetings, budgets, cutbacks, projects.’

Suzanne was a child welfare officer who had worked for years with young, single asylum seekers. Recently her job had become increasingly administrative, and now she spent the majority of her time sitting in an office.

‘What would you call it?’ he asked, replacing his glass without drinking a drop.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you’ve dreamt about opening a café, you must have thought of a name for it.’

She shook her head.

‘Maybe something different from
Shazam Station
?’

She smiled.

‘In fact, that’s an amusing name.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘
Shazam
’s a magic word. It’s Persian. “Sesame” in English. Open sesame.’

‘Sesame Station?’

She laughed and a gossamer web of fine wrinkles radiated from her eyes and the corners of her mouth across her temples and cheeks. Her walnut brown eyes took an entirely individual, luminous glow from the candles on the table.

The telephone rang.
OPERA
, the internal abbreviation for the police centre of operations, appeared on the display. Wisting answered briefly, and the operator introduced himself in similar style. ‘Several holiday cottages out at Gusland have been broken into,’ he said. Wisting understood there was more to come. ‘A dead body has been discovered in one of them.’

Slamming the car door behind him, William Wisting tugged his jacket lapels together against the cold sea breeze. His breath formed a delicate, pearly haze around his face. Already two police patrol cars and an ambulance were installed on the narrow parking spot, as well as two civilian vehicles.

At the far end of the parking area a path led into the undergrowth, and fifty metres later the coastal vista opened up, its rocky edge merging into the murky ocean. The lighthouse beam glittered on the restless surface of the water.

Immediately beside the sea he could make out the outline of a cottage, a faint light visible at a few windows, flashlights flickering in the darkness. An electric generator rumbled into life and the front section of the house was suddenly bathed in light. Red and white crime scene warning tape fluttered in the wind, reflective tape twinkled on police uniforms. The muffled sound of radio transmitters, telephones and subdued conversations mingled in the cold, starless, autumn night.

Wisting dipped into the bitter wind. He had been summoned to similar assignments countless times before but the first encounter with any crime scene was never routine, and he never became immune to the sight of lacerated skin, dead human beings, and the bottomless despair of relatives. All too often he had seen the consequences of senseless violence that seemed more brutal and ruthless each time. The recurring thoughts made him irritable and withdrawn.

He encountered two paramedics on the descent to the crime scene. Empty-handed, they approached him with sombre expressions, greeting him with nothing more than a brusque nod as they passed. The policeman in charge of crime scene operations raised the warning tape to let him pass.

The front door of the holiday cottage was wide open, exposing the splintered frame damaged in the burglary. Inside he could see the corpse’s legs, with lumps of clay clinging to the soles of its boots. He was given a concise update which added nothing to the resumé he had heard over the phone twenty-five minutes earlier.

Espen Mortensen, the young crime scene technician, was already donning a white overall. ‘Are you coming in?’ he asked.

Wisting nodded, but contented himself with pulling on rubber overshoes before following his colleague upstairs.

Conspicuous damage had been inflicted on the area surrounding the lock, with wood shavings strewn in all directions and the striking plate torn loose . Blood was splattered over the stone steps, and above the door skewed smudges were visible, as though someone had supported himself there with a gory hand.

Espen Mortensen took a couple of establishing pictures before progressing further, with Wisting following him along the narrow hallway, while the policeman who had greeted him remained outside.

The male victim was sprawled on his stomach in an oddly contorted position, one arm beneath his body, the other pointing directly to the side, the hand in a thick, black, heavily blood-stained glove. Wearing dirty boots reaching almost to his knees, his upper body was clad in a black jumper, and a black balaclava covered his head.

Wisting took a few steps around the body.

A pool of blood spread underneath the corpse, flowing over the timber floor, forcing him to take long avoiding strides.

The victim’s head was turned to one side, the balaclava showing a perpendicular tear at its front edge, about the middle of the forehead, where pale folds of skin hung down at each side and splinters of skull protruded from the open wound.

Outside, one of the police dogs was barking keenly, eager to start the search. Wisting hunkered down, resting his hands on his knees.

The eyes looking out from the mask were open wide, eyeballs bulging, the lips retracted as though gasping for air.

Wisting contemplated the death for almost a minute before standing to survey the scene. Blood had sprayed along the panelled walls. The remains of a bloody handprint were visible in a number of places, as on the door. It appeared the victim had tried to support himself before keeling over.

A pair of sticky footprints led from the pool on the floor to the doorway. Whoever had been here had trampled through the blood before fleeing.

‘Who found him?’ Wisting shouted the question to the policeman standing at the foot of the stairs.

‘The neighbour.’ The policeman pointed towards a cottage further up the hill. ‘There had been a break-in there too.’

‘Did he come inside?’

The uniformed policeman shook his head. ‘He didn’t go any further than the top of the stairs.’

Wisting remained standing, silently trying to form an overall impression, at the same time attempting to fix details in his mind that could prove crucial for their subsequent investigation. This was normally something he excelled at. First impressions of a crime scene could, aided by his years of experience as a detective, often lead to the construction of a slender framework which would eventually underpin a theory. A crime scene resembled a work of art where every tiny detail in the picture, from a single brushstroke to the finished painting, reveals something about the artist.

The summer cottage was stylishly furnished with a combination of contemporary and antique furniture, the colours sharp, bright and tastefully coordinated. Evidence of burglary was obvious. Drawers and cupboards lay open, loose wires hung from a low corner table where the television set had been located, and pale patches showed along the walls where paintings had hung.

Sighing and shaking his head, Wisting returned to the corpse. He could not make sense of all this, but neither could he pinpoint what did not tally. ‘Has the weapon been found?’ he asked.

Espen Mortensen shook his head, relaying the question to the policeman outside. ‘The dog patrol is searching now,’ he clarified.

‘What about the housebreaking tool?’ Wisting asked, indicating the damaged doorframe.

Mortensen shook his head. ‘That might be the murder weapon. The forensic specialists will probably have more to say, but it looks like a heavy blow from a sharp instrument, a crowbar, for example.’

‘Don’t you think he’s the burglar?’ Wisting asked, nodding at the body.

‘Perhaps he was surprised and the crowbar was taken from him?’

Wisting shook his head doubtfully. There was nothing to suggest there had been any kind of struggle, apart from the fatal blow. Two small paintings were hanging neatly on the wall, a pair of training shoes was positioned methodically at the door, two windcheater jackets were hanging tidily from a row of coat-pegs, and further inside the house no damage was evident other than what Wisting had witnessed previously at countless burglary scenes.

‘Where are the stolen goods?’ he asked, taking a few steps further inside.

‘Maybe he returned for more?’ the policeman standing outside suggested. ‘Came back to pick up some more stuff?’

‘Maybe,’ Wisting muttered, deep in thought. ‘Who actually owns the cottage?’

‘Has nobody told you? It’s Thomas Rønningen.’

‘The TV celebrity?’

His colleague nodded.