Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery (Inspector Sohlberg Mysteries) (15 page)

“Where is he now?”

“We don’t know.”

“What? . . . No arrest?”

“No.”

“How can that be?”

“I don’t know. I was not here then. You’d have to check with Commissioner Thorsen.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“It’s . . . well . . . between you and me. . . .”

“Yes?”

“The talk I heard among the older investigators was that Commissioner Thorsen got orders from the higher-ups to
not
investigate too thoroughly . . . or make an arrest.”

“What? . . . Why not?”

“The suspect was a dark-skinned man. That was the summer when anti-immigrant feelings started running high and boiling over.” Wangelin noticed a blank look on Sohlberg’s face so she filled him in on the details. “That was the summer when two Pakistani drug gangs had a shoot-out in Aker Brygge . . . in the cross-fire they killed a tourist from Sweden and a grandmother from Trondheim.”

“Are you kidding me? A shoot-out in Aker Brygge? . . . Where they have a Prada boutique and an Ermenegildo Zegna store?”

“Used to . . . Chief Inspector. Prada closed the store and the men’s clothing store with Zegna products moved to Bogstadveien . . . where it splits into Valkyriegata . . . a very exclusive neighborhood as I remember.”

“Criminal gangs shooting away at Aker Brygge? . . . That’s like a gang shooting in Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills . . . or Fifth Avenue in New York. Hard to believe. Norway certainly isn’t the cozy little isolated spot of paradise it once was . . . eh?”

Sohlberg could not accept that a shootout was possible in Aker Brygge which is an elegant and pricey urban redevelopment zone in what used to be the derelict eyesore of the old and abandoned shipyards of downtown Oslo.

“Alright. What else do you have for me Constable Wangelin?”

“Agnes Haugen the stepmother . . . she’s a volunteer at the school . . . she went back with Karl Haugen to the boy’s classroom at about eight forty-five. The mother and the boy’s teacher agree on that fact. However the teacher says that a few minutes later something or someone in the hallway caught the boy’s attention and that he then walked out of the classroom as if someone was waiting for him or wanting to talk to him. Another teacher declared that she saw Karl Haugen leave his classroom and walk down the hallway more or less at the same time.”

“With his stepmother or alone?”

“Alone.”

Sohlberg took the cap off his Waterman fountain pen and drew a rectangle around the words ‘volunteer’ in the summary. “What is the relationship between the stepmother and the teacher?”

    
“Not good. The stepmother Agnes Haugen often volunteers at the school and works closely with the boy’s teacher Lisbeth Bøe . . . a little too closely according to the teacher.”

“Oh? . . . What does that mean?”

“The stepmother is a frustrated teacher. She has a bachelor and master’s degree in education and a teaching license but no longer works as a teacher. The school has three more volunteers just like her. The teachers appreciate the help from the volunteers . . . but the teachers don’t like the second-guessing that goes on from fellow professionals who make impossible demands because their own children attend the school.”

“I see.”

“There’s more. At the end of each week the school sends the children home with a colored paper slip that has their name on it. Green means that they behaved and learned well. Yellow means they have some issues with behavior or learning. And red means they had problems with behavior or learning.”

“I see,” said Sohlberg. After living abroad for a long time Sohlberg now found it bizarre as to how the Japanese and Norwegians teach school children to conform socially and always act and think as part of a closely cooperating team working for the common good. “I see the old Norwegian principal of
Dugnad
is alive and well.”

“I think the Americans call it barn-rising? . . . Like the Amish people?”

“Barn
raising
. . . . Yes. . . the Mormons in Utah also practice that . . . their state symbol is the beehive . . . everyone working together.”

“That’s where you investigated and solved the case of some murders tied to a lot of missing nerve gas at a military base . . . right?”

“No,” he said surprised at her knowledge of his career—including his time in Utah solving the Dugway Proving Ground murders.

“No?”

“I only
helped
others investigate and solve the case of the missing nerve gas. How very
dugnad
of me . . . aye?”

She nodded and continued reading the executive summary. “Anyway . . . the stepmother demanded daily not weekly color slips. That meant much more work for the teacher because Agnes Haugen would then call her every Monday and have long conversations to find out exactly why the boy had been tagged with a yellow or red slip.”

“So there’s no love lost between teacher and stepmother.”

“None.”

“But Constable Wangelin . . . it seems to me that at least the stepmother involved herself in the boy’s life and education. I see so many mothers and fathers nowadays . . . they have zero interest on what goes on in the lives of their children.”

“True.”

“Keep on.”

“According to the stepmother the bell rang at quarter to nine and she then walked with her stepson down a hallway toward his classroom and the boy told her '
I'm going back to the classroom Mom
' and he took off in the direction of the classroom while she waved at him and she left the school through another hallway thinking that he was safe at school just like he is everyday.”

“But it wasn’t just any day . . . was it? . . . This science fair . . . it was the perfect cover for the boy’s disappearance unless the boy left on his own . . . and then something or someone happened to him. I know about this Hasidic boy who got lost in New York on his first day walking home alone from school without his mother and a predator found him and took him.”

“Horrible. What happened?”

“A lucky break in the case led to the suspect a day later . . . but it was too late. They found the boy cut up in garbage bags . . . in the man’s refrigerator.”

“Awful!”

“Can you imagine? . . . What are the chances of that . . . one in a million? On the one day of the year when the little eight-year-old boy asks to be allowed to walk home alone from school without his mother he meets a murdering predator. What a disaster.”

“Yes.”

“Anything pointing to that happening here?”

 “Not really. In this case Chief Inspector Sohlberg it’s not likely at all that Karl Haugen took off on his own. The father and everyone we’ve talked to insists that he was afraid of the woods and being alone. He was shy and afraid of strangers.”

“What does the stepmother say?”

“Only that he had been acting oddly a few weeks before he vanished . . . he’d stare off into space like a zombie . . . was very distracted at times.”

    
“True?”

    
“Apparently. The father attributes it to the baby crying at night and keeping them awake. I guess that babies cry a lot when they’re nineteen months old.”

“Hhhmm. Wouldn’t you think Karl Haugen had his own room in the house since his father’s a well-to-do Nokia engineer?”

“Yes.”

“And wouldn’t you think that Karl’s parents would close the door to his room if and when the baby cried?”

“That crossed my mind.”

“By the way . . . have you ever come across a seven- or eight-year-old who was not able to sleep because of background noise? . . . I’ve seen some children sleep in the noisiest of trains or airports with no problem at all. I saw some kids sleeping right in the middle of a loud party that my wife and I attended for St. John’s Eve.”

“I saw my own little nephews and nieces in that age group at Sankthans . . . they slept soundly through all the loud music and talking.”

“Continue please.”

“At nine o’clock the children were supposed to report to their classes where they’d be divided into small groups . . . of a couple of students each. A volunteer was to chaperone each group during a tour of the science fair in the auditorium. Of course all of the teachers made sure that all of their little groups stayed together from the minute they left the classrooms to the minute that they came back to the classrooms. A half hour later they all returned to their classes for roll call and Karl Haugen wasn't at his class with Frøken Bøe. She marks him absent.”

“So we have a half-hour window for him to walk out or be taken out of the school?”

“Actually less than a half-hour. No one remembers seeing him go on the tour of the science fair with the chaperones and teachers.”

“Really?”

“We’re highly confident that he never went to the auditorium with a chaperoned group of classmates because more than twenty of us spent two weeks interviewing and re-interviewing
all
the teachers and chaperones and students and administrators . . . . And no one remembers seeing him at the auditorium from nine to nine-thirty . . . or anywhere else in the school after nine in the morning.”

“So Karl Haugen disappeared in that fifteen minute time frame . . . from eight forty-five to nine o’clock . . . when his mother let him walk to his classroom?”

“Yes.”

Sohlberg closed his eyes as he tried to comprehend the mind-boggling implications of the place and time of the little boy’s disappearance. He rubbed his eyes with his fists as if he could squeeze an image into his eyes that would explain the mystery.

“Fifteen minutes?”

“Yes Chief Inspector.”

“And no one remembers seeing any stranger or anyone who did not belong at the school that day?”

“That’s correct. No strangers. Everyone recognized everyone else. Also . . . extensive fingerprinting of all bathrooms and door-handles and rooms and desks and playground equipment etcetera . . . revealed no prints for anyone who should not have been there that day. We also questioned and verified the whereabouts of all known sex offenders in a ten mile radius and none were near the school that day.”

“Thank God the team
at least
did the fingerprint dusting . . .
and
they rounded up and ruled out the usual suspects. Well . . . the case is half-solved.”

“How so Chief Inspector?”

“First of all . . . remember to always work smart and not hard.”

“That sounds good . . . in theory . . . does it work in practice?”

 “Yes. You see we could waste time and resources and exhaust our mental energies by going the hard route and calling in half the Oslo police force to look for someone who hid inside the school or slipped into the school to take Karl Haugen. But at this point there’s only one logical path to follow based on the evidence . . . and only two people . . . you and me . . . are needed to crack this case.”

“How can just the two of us solve a year-old case that more than forty investigators could not?”