Dregs (20 page)

‘This is the first time,’ Ken Ronny Hauge said, greeting him with an outstretched hand.

‘What is?’ Wisting asked, shaking his hand.

‘That I’ve had a visit from the police.’ He reached out for a white T-shirt and put it on. ‘I had expected to be pestered long before now.’

‘I hadn’t thought to pester you,’ Wisting said, attempting a disarming smile.

‘I know who you are,’ the other man smiled back, directing Wisting to a seat in front of the main house. ‘Your daughter was here on Friday, but that’s probably not why you’ve come.’

Wisting shook his head. He didn’t have any questions ready and had to feel his way forward.

‘We’re conducting an investigation,’ he commenced.

‘I’ve noticed that,’ the other man said, nodding in the direction of the previous day’s newspapers on the table. ‘But hadn’t expected to be part of it.’

‘And you’re not, but your grandfather has a peripheral role.’

They sat down. The dog came shuffling over to them and lay down in the shade beneath the table.

‘Grandfather died almost a year ago.’

Wisting nodded.

‘Three men whom we presume to be murdered disappeared just after that,’ he explained. ‘Three friends of your grandfather; Otto Saga, Torkel Lauritzen and Sverre Lund.’

‘I remember Lund,’ Ken Ronny Hauge said, looking past Wisting with thoughtful eyes. ‘He was the head teacher at the school. I know who the others were too.’

‘I understand that you visited your grandfather several times before he died?’

‘It was a kind of repayment,’ Ken Ronny Hauge nodded. ‘He was the only one who visited me in prison. Once a fortnight for as long as his health held out.’

Wisting turned the other man’s choice of word over in his mind. Repayment.

‘But he wasn’t lonely in the nursing home,’ he objected. ‘Two of his pals from the old times also stayed there.’

‘Yes of course, and I didn’t see it as a heavy duty either. It was enjoyable.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Everything and nothing. This and that. What about it?’

‘Did he ever talk about the other three?’

Ken Ronny Hauge understood where Wisting was going. ‘Not about anything that would explain what happened to them. They were a closely-knit bunch. It was their common background that created the strong solidarity.’ He came to a halt, glancing over at Wisting. ‘You know about it?’

‘The group that was in readiness for an occupation?’

‘No matter. It was a kind of solidarity that was passed on as an inheritance. We grandchildren became friends as well, although we probably didn’t stick up for each other in the same way as the old men.’

Wisting wondered what he actually meant by this, but didn’t ask. He thought he could detect a kind of bitterness in his voice, disappointment of some kind about how his old friends had betrayed him.

‘We never talked about that,’ Ken Ronny Hauge went on. ‘That grandfather had been a member of a military network was almost an open secret. It was in the newspapers of course and was something that everybody knew about, but all the same it was never talked about. Not then.’

‘Do you have any contact with the others?’ Wisting asked, naming Daniel Meyer as an example.

‘No,’ Ken Ronny Hauge responded. ‘I know Daniel and my brother has some contact with him. He’s apparently writing a book about the secret services. Grandfather told me that he had interviewed him about it, but I haven’t spoken to him. Daniel and his brother grew up in the same street as Rune and me, you know. His brother lives in Kongsberg, I think. Other than that, there aren’t so many others. I think Trond’s a boozer in Oslo.’

‘Trond?’

‘Trond Lauritzen. He’s Kristin and Mathias’ son, so he’s the grandson of both Otto and Torkel, of course. We went to school together, but I haven’t spoken to him for ages. Not to his sister either. She’s called Trine and she’s married with children in Bergen, I know that. Knut Lauritzen lives in Stavanger. Torkel Lauritzen is his grandfather too. His parents live in Stavern.’

Wisting nodded. He had written down all the names on his notepad and placed them in boxes with lines of connection between. Oddmund Lauritzen and his wife Marie were two names that were left on his list of relatives and the bereaved that he should talk to.

‘Head teacher Lund had no children,’ Ken Ronny Hauge rounded off.

He remained sitting, staring into space before he added: ‘I don’t really talk to anybody. The first person I’ve talked to properly since my release was your daughter.’

‘Do you have any contact with your brother?’

‘Rune?’ he asked, as he bent down to pet the dog. ‘How should I put it? He has of course been a kind of benefactor to me. I couldn’t have stayed here if it hadn’t been for him.’ He flung out his arms. ‘He’s the one who owns the place.’

Wisting posed a few more questions while he tried to read the man. Body language would often say more than words. He attempted to capture signals about whether Ken Ronny Hauge was deliberately keeping something back. He searched for hesitations in his responses, looked for physical uneasiness, evasive eye movements, or other signs of discomfort, but Ken Ronny Hauge appeared simply indifferent. There was nothing he managed to draw out, neither from his voice nor his eyes. His face was completely expressionless.

CHAPTER 37

Wisting drove back along the coast road. It took him a quarter of an hour longer, but he needed time to think.

He had thought that he would feel uncomfortable sitting face to face with a man who had taken the life of a colleague and left a mother on her own with two small children. However, he didn’t feel any kind of grudge, just a sort of emptiness. His years as a policeman had left their mark. At the beginning of his career it often happened that he became uneasy or unwell when meeting really brutal criminals. Now that felt like an infinitely long time ago. He wondered whether he should have asked about the police murder, but it would have been inappropriate, and he probably wouldn’t have received any proper answer. Many had tried before him. Line too, most likely, when she had visited him on Friday.

The air quivered over the outstretched rocky shore alongside the road. Circling seabirds flew by. White-painted wooden houses huddled beside stout pine trees in small coves.

Long breakers, the vestiges of a storm on the other side of the Skagerrak, caused the sea to swell and fall. A cargo ship was balanced on the horizon. There was not a cloud in sight.

This investigation was like the waves out there, he thought, impossible to catch hold of. It was like something that lay amongst the pebbles, washed in to land and then dragged back out again.

He left the coast and drove through the agricultural landscape tightly packed with farms, past roadside stalls offering strawberries, potatoes and other vegetables. He parked in front of one of these on an impulse and approached a young girl with a long, red plait reading a magazine behind a deal table. She put it down and smiled.

The punnets of strawberries in front of her bulged with enormous, ripe berries. He bought two punnets to pop in and surprise Suzanne with during the day.

He put one strawberry in his mouth before placing the bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat, glancing at the clock and deciding to call on Rune E. Hauge before driving back to the police station.

The successful businessman lived in Rekkevik, on the eastern side of the Larvik fjord in a modern house built in a style and materials that suited the location, a large, sunny property with its own jetty.

In the cove at the other side Colin Archer had built the polar ship Fram, which almost a hundred years before had carried his own great-grandfather, Oscar Wisting, together with Roald Amundsen, to the South Pole.

Wisting parked outside the house, went up to the door and rang the bell. A slightly built woman with a fizz of blonde curls opened up. Wisting introduced himself and enquired after Rune Hauge.

‘He’s sitting at the front of the house,’ she explained, making a sweeping arch with her arm along the wall of the house. ‘Just go round.’

Wisting walked along the path to the other side of the house. He heard voices from the spacious outdoor sitting area beside the water. When he approached, he saw two familiar faces. Rune Hauge, whom he had seen in the newspaper article Line had shown him, and Daniel Meyer, whom he had met in Kongsberg the previous day. They were sitting in deep garden chairs with a glass each on the table in front of them. Both fell silent when they saw Wisting.

‘Am I disturbing you?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ Daniel Meyer assured him. He got up and stretched out his hand. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ he said, introducing Wisting to his companion. ‘I was just going.’

He finished what was left in his glass and put it back down.

‘We’ll talk later,’ he said, nodding to Rune Hauge before walking along the same path on which Wisting had arrived.

‘You know each other?’ Wisting declared, sitting down.

‘We grew up together,’ Rune Hauge nodded in agreement. ‘Can I offer you anything?’

‘No thanks,’ Wisting responded, taking out his notepad.

He began in the same way he had with his brother, telling about how three of their grandfather’s old friends had disappeared and that it was presumed that they had been victims of a crime.

‘Daniel and I were just talking about it,’ Rune Hauge explained, becoming serious. ‘And about what could be the motive for such a thing.’

‘Did you come to any conclusion?’

He shook his head.

‘Nothing other than that it could have a connection to what the old men got up to during the post war years.’ He leaned over the table. ‘What kind of theory do you have?’

‘In the meantime, we’ve conducted the investigation on a broad front,’ Wisting explained. He had no wish to give an account of the police’s operational theories to the man sitting across from him at the table.

‘But since you’ve come here talking about grandfather that means, of course, that you’re also looking at the past?’

Wisting nodded.

‘There’s something else that’s bloody strange,’ Rune Hauge said, leaning over the table. ‘Have you looked at the connection with Hanne Richter?’

‘What do you mean?’ Wisting asked, not giving a direct answer. They hadn’t gone public with the information that one of the feet that had been found belonged to the mentally ill woman.

‘She disappeared at the same time as Otto Saga, Torkel Lauritzen and Sverre Lund, you see,’ Rune Hauge elaborated, putting his elbows on the table. ‘And she was staying at grandfather’s house.’

‘We’re looking at that,’ Wisting confirmed.

‘There must be a pattern, to be sure,’ the other man thought. ‘Some kind of network or other that they’re entangled in. A connection.’

‘They all disappeared several weeks after your grandfather died,’ Wisting asserted. ‘Did anything in particular happen during those days?’

It looked as though Rune Hauge was thinking carefully.

‘I was away when he had the last attack,’ he explained. ‘I was attending contract meetings in Finland, but managed to arrive home before he died. I can’t think of anything special.’

‘Do you know Camilla Thaulow?’ Wisting continued to question him.

‘Yes, bloody hell,’ Rune Hauge replied, snapping his fingers, as though he had suddenly thought of something important. ‘She’s gone too, of course.’

‘You know her?’

Rune Hauge got up and walked backwards and forwards on the terrace.

‘I don’t know her,’ he explained. ‘But she was certainly one of the nurses who looked after grandfather. She was even at his funeral.’

As brothers, Ken Ronny and Rune Hauge didn’t resemble each other, Wisting thought. Where Ken Ronny seemed indifferent, his brother appeared enthusiastic. The muscles in his face contracted, he gesticulated with his hands, and his eyes narrowed or opened wide as he spoke.

Rune Hauge sat down again, and remained talking for half an hour. When Wisting got up to go, he had an impression that he had answered far more questions than he had asked. The successful businessman answered questions by asking counter questions. There was actually only one thing he had said that Wisting had latched on to: all those who had disappeared were entangled in a network. It was a summary of Wisting’s own thoughts.

CHAPTER 38

Even arrived at four o’clock. Erling Tunberg had spent the last few hours lying on his back on the grass above the beach with a long straw of dried grass in his mouth, gazing at the twisted branches on the huge pine tree over his head.

He watched every car that drove down the road from the barrier at the top of the hill until the large Chevrolet belonging to Even’s father finally arrived. The sound of the powerful engine was so loud he heard it before he saw the car.

At the roadside he stood waving, and then followed the car over to the campsite.

Even had grown taller, almost a head taller than Erling, and leaner. They remained standing, looking uncertainly at each other.

‘Is the water good, eh?’ Even asked, nodding towards the beach.

‘Brilliant,’ Erling confirmed. ‘24 degrees. Want to go in for a swim?’