Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy: an Inspector Sohlberg mystery (Inspector Sohlberg Mysteries) (26 page)

~ ~ ~

“I want to see my Dad and Mom. Please . . . I have to see them.”

The man said and did nothing but the woman smiled.

“I wanna go back home!”

The woman shook her head.

Karl refused to believe that he could not go back home to his father or mother. He no longer got angry about not seeing his father or mother. But he got ever so sad whenever the woman hugged him and told him:

“It’s going to be alright.”

~ ~ ~

By the time they drove into Holmenkollen the entire Oslofjord had clouded up. A cold front moved in from the North Sea and furiously dropped an inch of chilled rain.

“This almost feels like autumn,” said Sohlberg. “I wish I’d brought my parka.”

“We’ll have more sunny warm days.”

Sohlberg nodded but he wondered if his fellow countrymen felt as surprised as he was at how quickly the promise of summer had disappeared. Nature seemed intent on reminding him that the long grim dark days of winter would be back soon.

Hairpin switchbacks led all the way to the top of Pilot Hill. The school’s one-floor red building seemed cheerful enough as did the surrounding playground ringed by grass and then forest.

“Very nice school up here,” commented Sohlberg. “But I expected more rural surroundings. I remember this was all farms and ski slopes back when I was a kid.”

“You had no idea the area was so built up?”

“No. I can’t believe all these buildings have been put up here on top of the high hills of Holmenkollen.”

“Well Chief Inspector . . . the Holmenkollen ski festival is still up here.”

“But this urban sprawl is hideous.” Sohlberg looked sadly at another piece of Norway’s rural splendor chewed up by long rows of two- and three-floor luxury condominiums and apartments.

“You can’t blame people for wanting to live up here . . . this suburb is very nice. I could never afford to live here.”

“Let’s take a walk,” said Sohlberg. “I need to get a feel for the crime scene.”

The school offered spectacular views of Oslo and Oslofjord. Sohlberg noted that the school sat between two dead end streets: Grindbakken and Måltrostveien.

“What’s the street that passes below the school grounds? . . . I hear traffic on it.”

“Oh that? . . . It’s Olaf Bulls vei.”

“Could someone have parked down there and come up here to take Karl Haugen?”

“Highly unlikely. They’d be blocking traffic even if they parked on the shoulder.”

“I can also see why a stranger is unlikely to have walked or driven to the school to take the boy in broad daylight. Look at all these condos and apartments around us . . . anyone on a terrace or window on the second or third floor would’ve seen something suspicious.”

“Chief Inspector . . . that’s why we interviewed every single person living within a half mile of here. And . . . nothing. Absolutely nothing. No one inside or outside the school that day saw anyone who did not belong here.”

“What about Bogstad Lake . . . it can’t be more than a half-mile from here. I imagine Nilsen had the lakeshore searched?”

“Yes.”

“Was the lake dragged for a body?”

“Of course . . . we sent in boats with sonar and scuba divers. Nothing. Not a shred of evidence by the lake or anywhere else.”

 “Interesting . . . if this abduction was for revenge then why not plant a false clue out there . . . place one of Karl’s belongings out by the lakeshore . . . a shirt or a toy . . . that would have thrown the investigation into confusing turmoil . . . and led us down a wild goose chase. Wouldn’t it?”

“Yes . . . you’d think so,” said Constable Wangelin hesitantly.

“And yet the criminal did
not
plant red herrings to shift the investigation in any particular direction. How brilliant . . . and how cruel since those who love Karl are left permanently in a
daily
agonizing state of suspense as to whether he’s dead or alive . . . tortured or hurt.”

“Diabolical.”

“And . . . at the same time our criminal has been arrogantly confident that he or she will
never
get caught. . . . That’s the genius of this criminal. He or she tortures the family
and
stumps the investigators.”

“What a monster.”

A chill crept into Sohlberg. He had half-expected to find something unusual about the school’s location or something else that would explain how a child could vanish in the middle of a school that was filled with more than 200 adults and children that fateful Friday. But Grindbakken skole at 106 Måltrostveien seemed no different than any of the other well-kept elementary schools in Oslo’s suburbs.

They met Karl’s teacher at a conference room near the principal’s office. Karl Haugen’s 26-year-old teacher Lisbeth Bøe was no different than any of the other young elementary school teachers. She was caring and competent and supremely confident about her skills. The cares and disappointments of life had not yet aged her.

Constable Wangelin made the introductions.

“I hope this won’t take too long,” said the doe-eyed teacher. “School’s almost over and I have a lot to do to. I wish your people had paid more attention to what I told them. Your Inspector Nilsen brushed off what I said as if I was nuts or lying. You could tell a mile away that the man was stupidly infatuated with Agnes and Gunnar Haugen.”

Sohlberg raised his hand and said, “How so?”

“Your Inspector Nilsen believed everything that the Haugens said and he discounted everything I said. He and the parents made it look like I was careless about Karl . . . that is not true. And I resent how I was forced to waste a lot of time getting interviewed by that idiot Nilsen.”

“Frøken Bøe,” said Sohlberg sternly, “I don’t waste
my
time and I promise you that I won’t waste yours. Alright?”

“Alright.”

“Now . . . what’s this business about the parents making it look as if you were careless about Karl.”

“If the parents had not tricked me then I would have reacted differently at roll call when I saw that Karl was not in class and marked him absent. You see . . . I would have immediately called the administration and told them to look for Karl or call Karl’s home because I had indeed seen him earlier at school during the parent and family portion of the science fair.”

“Okay . . . so what was the parents’
trick
to not arouse your concern or alarm?”

“Simple. Both parents told me several times . . . in the two to three weeks before the science fair . . . that Karl had a doctor’s appointment on the Friday morning right after the science fair. They said that he would only come in early to school to drop off his exhibit . . . and then leave at nine to go visit the doctor . . . who needed to run several tests on him.”

“Isn’t it normal for the school to require written notice from the parents if a child is absent?”

“Oh yes we do. But here’s the cute and sick part of their trick. They turned in a written notice to the administration on Tuesday . . . and that signed piece of paper only said ‘
Karl will be out on a doctor’s visit on Friday.
’ At no time did they specify which Friday. The Haugens later claimed that they clearly told me many times that the excused absence for the doctor’s visit was for the following Friday. They told everyone that I had obviously gotten
confused
.”

“Who signed the note?”

“The father.”

“Do we have a copy of the note Constable Wangelin? . . . I’d like to get the original if possible.”

“I think we have the original back at headquarters. If not then I’ll get the original from the school later today.”

“Frøken Bøe,” said Sohlberg. He almost always used the formal address that most Norwegians dislike and rarely use because almost everyone in Norway likes being on a first name basis to show off Norway’s so-called social equality. “Can anyone testify that
before
Karl disappeared you actually mentioned or told them about Karl Haugen being pulled out of class by his parents on Friday June fourth because of a doctor’s visit.”

“Oh yes. I told eight . . . maybe nine colleagues here at the school . . . all of them will testify that I complained
before
Karl disappeared about his parents wanting him excused from school on June fourth . . . and not on Friday June eleven as the parents later claimed.”

“What was your complaint to your colleagues?”

“I told several teachers earlier that week that it was unfair for the Haugens to take Karl out of school on the day of the science fair when he was probably going to win a special award for his excellent project on red-eye tree frogs. . . . I can give you a list of five teachers and three administrators that I complained to after Karl put so much work into a project that his parents shoved on him.”

“What do you mean by
shoved on him
?”

“Karl wanted to do a project on icebergs. That’s all he talked about that year. He loved how icebergs float around before melting. He was fascinated by the fact that icebergs are mostly hidden under the surface . . . and how an iceberg sank the Titanic. But his parents forced him to change his project to frogs.”

“In a nutshell . . . are you telling us that
both
parents misled you into believing that Karl would only attend the science fair from eight to nine in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“And . . . you’re telling us that both parents misled you into believing that Karl would take an excused absence and leave school at or a little before nine in the morning to be at a doctor’s appointment that Friday June fourth?”

“Exactly.”

Sohlberg smiled and said, “Please write your witness list now.”

Frøken Bøe wrote furiously on a notepad while she frowned and said:

“Also . . . I didn’t like them pulling Karl out of school because I don’t think Karl really had anything wrong with him that needed a doctor visit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They made up his symptoms. They kept saying he had seizures during those two to three weeks before June fourth. That’s a lie. I never once saw him have seizures. At most he was a little space-y the two weeks before he disappeared. He looked sleep deprived . . . if not stressed. I asked him what was wrong and he just shrugged.

“I then asked the parents why Karl looked so stressed. That’s when they told me they had called a doctor . . . and that she had told them that he was having seizures and needed to come in for an examination.

“But then I thought . . . what doctor would diagnose seizures over the phone? And since when can you talk to a doctor over the phone just like that? . . . You’re lucky if you get to talk to a nurse on the phone.”

“Do you know the name of the doctor?”

“Julie Heldaas. She’s a pediatrician. A lot of children in the school go to her.”

Sohlberg nodded and rubbed his cold hands. He knew that he would solve the case quickly if he could find out whether the father or the stepmother was the source of the clever trick to mislead the administrators and teachers into believing that Karl was leaving school to visit a doctor that fateful Friday June fourth.