Dregs (30 page)

‘I rented a film,’ he smiled.

Line smiled back. He passed the box to her and fished a DVD out of his inside pocket. It was a romantic comedy of the type he knew she liked. She managed to give him a kiss on the cheek before he disappeared into the bathroom. She put the pizza down in front of the TV set and went into the kitchen, reluctantly closing the lid on her laptop.

CHAPTER 55

Nils Hammer was driving. Wisting leaned his head against the side window and studied the raindrops as they were forced against the glass as they travelled, running into long streams.

It felt good to get away from the station for a while. It gave a breather and the opportunity for reflection without continual interruptions. His thoughts had been circling obsessively round the five-man group and the reverberations their actions in the past might have caused in the present. Without having shared his thoughts with anyone, he had become convinced that the police murder in 1991 must also have been some kind of ripple effect from past events. Possibly he was affected by a sort of mental tunnel vision and allowing his intuition to rule too much.

The windscreen wipers swept from side to side in rhythmic movements as he concentrated on the major developments. His role as the leader of the investigation was to keep an overview.

They took an hour and twenty minutes to reach Hovik. P.A. Haugen lived in an old Swiss style villa that was situated at a vantage point some distance along a
cul de sac
, with an unimpeded view over Drobak Sound.

The old businessman was exactly as Wisting had imagined him. Apart from his hair now being completely white, he was just the same as in photographs in newspapers and magazines: medium build, suntanned, the top three buttons of his shirt unfastened. Around his neck hung two heavy gold chains that matched a solid gold wristwatch.

‘Usually I don’t talk to the police without my lawyer present,’ Haugen explained as he ushered them into the large house. High ceilings and double doors between the various rooms made it bright and airy.

‘But I became curious about what little you said on the phone,’ he continued. ‘Maybe that was your intention?’

‘We are at least hoping that you’ll be able to help us,’ Wisting replied.

P.A. Haugen threw open the doors leading to an office with red, plump leather furniture and a magnificent oak writing desk. The flooring was made of dark wood, and heavy, burgundy coloured curtains hung at the windows.

‘Can I offer you anything?’ he asked, opening the top of a patinated globe that camouflaged a drinks cabinet. ‘Mineral water,
Farris
, or something?’

They both accepted with thanks, and then sat down in the deep chairs facing the massive desk.

‘When you phoned, at first I didn’t understand at all,’ Haugen elaborated, handing each of them a glass. ‘But it seems you have found my fingerprints on old banknotes that were confiscated in connection with a murder inquiry?’

Wisting nodded, watching the man as he walked back to the globe and poured some whisky into the bottom of his own glass.

‘I’ve been following the case,’ Haugen went on, sitting down. ‘The newspapers are full of it, of course. Only grotesque murders can compare with sex when it comes to circulation figures.’

He laughed at his own witticism and Wisting put on a smile for the sake of politeness. P.A. Haugen appeared to be accommodating, and Wisting had no intention of destroying that illusion. In reality, he represented something that Wisting despised.

P.A. Haugen drank deeply from his glass.

‘It sounds completely unbelievable, but I think I can provide you with some answers.’

Wisting remained silent, waiting for the man to continue.

‘That said, I don’t think that what I have to tell you will help in your murder investigation,’ he added.

‘What do you know about the matter?’

The big man squinted at them.

‘Before I say anything at all, we need to talk about the conditions,’ he said.

‘What kind of conditions?’

‘I need to have a guarantee of no prosecution before I can tell you anything.’

‘What do you mean?’

P.A. Haugen leaned his head on the back of the chair.

‘This is to do with money,’ he said. ‘If I tell you what I know, I must have assurances that you can’t use what I have said against me.’

Wisting shook his head.

‘I can’t give such a promise, but in general terms I can say that most of the illegal ways by which you may have acquired the money will now be covered by the statute of limitations. It seems the money has been out of circulation for almost two decades.’

The man took another drink from his glass before dropping his hand and resting it on his stomach.

‘I hear what you say. I just don’t want my name mixed up in anything. The newspapers are trying to outdo one another in this business, and I’ve no desire to become a part of it.’

‘This is not something that we’ve any intention of serving to the press,’ Wisting assured him, ‘but you know just as well as we do that the press will write whatever they want to.’

‘Okay,’ P.A. Haugen said abruptly, slamming his glass down on the desk. ‘May as fuckin’ well. This has been a mystery to me for nearly twenty years. I’ve got over the financial loss and would have been willing to pay it twice over to get to know who was behind it.’

He got up, went over to the wall unit and brought out a thick, hardback ring binder.

The rain was pelting against the large windows, sounding like restless fingers drumming on a tabletop. The enormous fruit trees outside were swaying in the wind. The branches were whipping against each other, the leaves turning inside out in the gusts.

P.A. Haugen laid the binder on the desk and leafed through to one of the last pages. Wisting got up and approached to have a look.

It was a yellowed newspaper cutting from
Verdens Gang
. The date in the right-hand corner stated that it was from Thursday 24th September 1991. The headlines were in two layers:

MILLION KRONER PROCEEDS FROM BANK SAFETY DEPOSIT BOX HAUL

There was something timely about the printed words. It was almost as though he felt it physically. A pressure disappeared from behind his forehead. These were the pieces they needed to bring forth the whole picture.

During the weekend and the night before Monday 23rd September 1991, thieves had broken in to the premises of
Den Norske Bank
at Bryn in Oslo through scaffolding and a window at the back. They had drilled through the floor and down to the vault in the basement, lowered themselves down a hole 40 centimetres wide and cracked open 658 safety deposit boxes. No one was sure how much money they had got away with. The newspapers speculated that it might have been as much as ten million kroner.

‘I had just over two million in that vault,’ P.A. Haugen explained. ‘The only thing I can imagine is that you’ve come across the proceeds of that robbery with my fingerprints on them.’

The big man went round the desk and sat down again, resting his forearms on the tabletop.

‘The case was never cleared up,’ he went on. ‘It was professionally carried out with military precision. In and out, without leaving a trace.’

Wisting leafed through the pages and found a couple of clippings in which the case was followed through subsequent days. A few witnesses had seen two men wearing boiler suits on the scaffolding, but had not reacted to it. All traces of the culprits stopped at the hole in the ceiling. The drill that had been used had been stolen from a building site in the vicinity. When the perpetrators had been satisfied with their haul, they had pulled down a fire hose and turned on the tap. By the time the break-in was discovered on the Monday morning the bank was full of water that had run down the drilled hole and washed away all traces.

In one of the articles, an Assistant Chief of Police had used the same words that P.A. Haugen had quoted to illustrate how difficult the task of investigating was. At the same time, there was little sympathy available for the many people who had found their safety deposit boxes emptied. One article described how the culprits had left family heirlooms and other valuable items of sentimental value to their owners untouched, while huge sums of money that had been kept hidden from the tax authorities had been taken. Speculation about who was behind the crime was directed towards established, criminal circles in the capital city. Simultaneously, journalists portrayed the unknown culprits in a way that was reminiscent of the glorification in history of the old master robbers Ole Hoiland and Gjest Baardsen.

Wisting closed the binder and sat down. He was in agreement with P.A. Haugen. The money that the old men had exchanged came from the safety deposit box haul.

The net of connections was becoming entangled. The safety deposit box robbery had taken place the same night that Ken Ronny Hauge shot and killed a policeman at Eikeren. That was his motive for choosing to shoot his way out and later keep silent about everything that had to do with the case. Ken Ronny Hauge was one of the men behind the bank raid. The E18 was the quickest route out of the capital, but the main road through the countryside was a natural choice to make if you wanted to avoid the busiest traffic. Chance events caused it to go wrong, and the young policeman was murdered so that another crime was kept hidden.

It was such a logical chain of events that he wondered why none of the investigators in the two cases had seen the potential connection before. They had probably been reported side by side in the newspapers, but without the information Wisting now possessed there had been no apparent correlation. Without something to link them, there was very little to suggest that these two serious crimes might be connected. They took place miles from each other. The investigators in the bank robbery were looking for a professional gang, and the police murder appeared to be an isolated action by a young, confused man who had never been arrested previously.

P.A. Haugen interrupted Wisting’s train of thought: ‘Who was it?’ he asked. ‘Who was it who emptied the safety deposit boxes?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Wisting replied, getting up from his seat. ‘But I think we’re close to finding the answer.’

‘When can I have it back?’

‘Do you mean the money?’

The other man nodded.

‘I don’t think you should count on getting it back.’

‘What do you mean? It’s my money, isn’t it, with my fingerprints on it.’

‘You were the one who didn’t want your name mixed up in anything,’ Hammer reminded him.

‘But that’s something different.’ P.A. Hauge frowned. ‘What are you planning to do with it? Take it yourselves?’

Wisting gazed at the big man for a long time in silence before quietly explaining that they were only talking about a small sum of money that they had, as a matter of fact, come across.

‘We’ll have to come back to a possible distribution when the case is solved,’ he concluded, mainly so that the other man would drop the subject.

P.A. Haugen gestured with his hand as though to signify that the money meant nothing to him.

‘Did you find anything other than money?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

The man at the desk exposed a gold tooth at the back of his mouth when he grinned.

‘I had some pictures lying in that safety deposit box too,’ he laughingly responded. ‘Of a private nature, if you understand what I mean.’

‘I understand,’ Wisting replied, shaking his head. ‘We haven’t come across anything like that.’

P.A. Haugen got up and walked round the desk to accompany them out.

‘I’m almost more interested in getting the pictures back than the money,’ he said, walking ahead of them to the doorway with rolling movements.

‘You’ll be hearing from us,’ Wisting rounded off the discussion, thanking him for his assistance without offering a handshake.

Outside, the wind had become stronger, whipping the rain against his face. Wisting lowered his head between his shoulders, pulling his jacket tightly round him. For the first time in this investigation, he felt that he could see the outlines of a solution.

CHAPTER 56

Neither of them spoke for the first two minutes back in the car as curtains of rain drummed on the roof and blurred the windscreen.

‘The police murder,’ Nils Hammer said abruptly, ‘took place at the same time as the bank safety deposit box robbery.’

Wisting nodded and repeated the theory he had reasoned out during the meeting with P.A. Haugen.

‘I’ve read up on the old case,’ he rounded off, explaining how he had requisitioned the documents dealing with the police murder. ‘I think that Ken Ronny Hauge is covering up more than that other crime.’

‘That one or those ones that he’s taken part in,’ Hammer added.

Wisting nodded again, becoming thoughtful. In its character and execution, the bank raid resembled the crimes that the five-man group had carried out during the post-war period, punishable offences that
might
be morally defensible. The culprits had helped themselves to money that was probably the proceeds of other punishable activity, leaving behind valuable jewellery and personal possessions.

‘Military precision,’ Hammer remarked, as though reading Wisting’s thoughts. ‘That’s what it said in the newspaper cuttings. The raid was carried out with military precision. How old were Torkel Lauritzen and the others in 1991?’

‘About 60 years old,’ Wisting answered. ‘Lauritzen was still working as the personnel manager at
Treschow-Fritzoe
.’

‘And Otto Saga was still head of the Air Force officer training school in Stavern,’ Hammer went on, gripping the steering wheel more tightly. ‘It wasn’t closed down until 2002. And Sverre Lund was still the head teacher at Stavern school. They were all still working.’

Wisting bit his bottom lip. The chaos of possibilities that had opened up made him feel faint. He suddenly felt unbearably tired and exhausted, and realised that he had forgotten to phone the doctor that day as well.

‘How much did it say that the haul from the safety deposit box robbery was?’ Hammer continued. ‘Up to ten million? That fits well with the money that the old men exchanged. It’s their share of the haul!’