Sohlberg and the White Death (14 page)

Rasch grunted. Over the years he had heard a lot of gossip about Per Moen. But now he knew for a fact that Moen was a man obsessed by one thing only—the bottom line.

“Look . . . we’ll discuss this later.”

“No. Now. Let’s talk now. I don’t want your people ripping up my land when they dig up the stiffs. I swear I’ll sue the police if you don’t put everything back to the way it used to be. This might just ruin my fishing operations if you keep blocking me from access to
my
land and
my
fish shack and
my
dock.

“Rasch . . . don’t you understand?

“I need this shack to keep my fish cold in the permafrost below . . . I can’t afford refrigeration. My great-grandfather found this spot . . . and now you’re going to ruin me! . . . I swear I’ll sue for millions and get you fired if I’m not allowed back in tomorrow.”

“Do whatever you need to do. But right now you need to leave this crime scene.”

“Hey Rasch you little jerk . . . ever since you joined the police you’ve been acting like you’re a real big man in town. I remember when you went to school with my little brother and he used to beat the daylights out of you.”

“Are you leaving or not?”

“Alright . . . alright. Save the tough guy looks for someone else.”

Rasch sighed as soon as he was alone. He knew that he too would soon have to leave the area that he had cordoned off with police tape. Forensics promised him they’d be over to start processing the shack within the hour. He wondered if he had compromised the crime scene by ripping up so many of the wood floor planks with Moen.

One of the corpses caught Rasch’s attention. A large white towel covered a barefoot man. The blood-soaked and frozen-stiff towel read:

WELCOME TO TROMSØ!

Constable Rasch could not help thinking that Tromsø had turned out not to have been all that hospitable or welcoming to the nine bodies which had been buried face down or sideways. He had a hard time imagining why all but one of the victims appeared to have been riddled with bullets. Two had been shot point-blank in the back of the head. He wondered who had buried the dead so unceremoniously under Moen’s fish shack in a remote location on the island of Reinøya. Even worse: someone had cut off the hands from each of the bodies.

Rasch surveyed the macabre scene. He closed his eyes but he knew that he would never get the gruesome images out of his mind.

“Let’s see,” said Rasch to himself, “if I can get the old city slicker out here.”

The constable took out his cell phone and dialed his boss who was at headquarters just 30 miles south of him. While Rasch dialed he noticed what appeared to be a square booklet next to one of the bodies.

~ ~ ~

“What . . . nine bodies?” said Chief Inspector Fredrik Waldemar Hvoslef of the Troms politidistrikt. “Shot? . . . Hands cut off? . . . Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Constable Rasch while he stared at the nine corpses. “All but one of the bodies have lots of bullet holes . . . two bodies have them point-blank in the head . . . I’m seeing big exit wounds in the front or the top of their heads.”

“Arrange for the autopsies . . . call in forensic services to help you.”

“I already did. Aren’t you coming?”

“I . . . I can’t,” said Chief Inspector Hvoslef. He did not like leaving his comfortable and warm offices at 122 Grønnegata in downtown Tromsø. Nor did he want to travel on a small boat to the crime scene because he easily got seasick. He could also drive his car to the crime scene but the transplant from Oslo rarely left the small island of Tromsøya where most of the city was located.

“You can’t?”

Hvoslef felt the contempt in Rasch’s voice. The constable seemed to ignore the fact that Tromsø sits 186 miles
north
of the Arctic Circle. In Hvoslef’s mind this cruel geographical fact meant that he faced imminent death year-round if he left the city limits to venture into the Arctic wastelands. Even during the summer months Chief Inspector Hvoslef felt threatened by the vast empty wilderness that surrounded him.

“Sir . . . I think you need to come out here. I found a passport and an Interpol badge next to one of the bodies.”

“What?”

“Yes . . . the pictures on the badge and passport match the dead man’s face perfectly.”

“Where’s the passport from?”

“Russia. According to the badge and passport the man’s name is Nicolai Dvorkovich.”

Chief Inspector Hvoslef realized that he’d have to venture out of his warm safety zone. He absolutely hated the outdoors with a passion. He also detested the Arctic police district that he had been assigned to three years ago. He was obsessed with the idea of freezing to death in the
Land of White Death
. He perfectly understood why the Russian explorer Valerian Albanov had consigned that name to the dangerous regions north of Norway. And yet Hvoslef knew that he had no choice but to venture out to the crime scene.

“Sir? . . . Can you hear me?”

“Yes! . . . I’ll be over there.”

~ ~ ~

“I told you not to get involved.”

“It’s done. Besides . . . I had to. What do you think? . . . That I could just walk away?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not me.”

“Since when are you . . . a poaching thief . . . such a moral and upstanding citizen?”

“Enough.”

“You steal cod and halibut and salmon . . . other men’s catch. I told you to stay away from Moen’s place. Sooner or later he’s going to think that you put the bodies in his fish shack.”

“Stop.”

“This will bring us trouble. Big trouble.”

“Enough.”

“They will find out it was you.”

Ervin Vikøren looked out to the sea and scanned the horizon. His blue eyes burned with Viking vigor. “No one will find us.”

“They will find us.”

“Enough.”

“You’ll see . . . you can’t stop this. I can’t believe you got us into such a mess. This is not good. We’re in big big trouble.”

He shook his head and started planning how to ambush and kill anyone who landed on his island.

~ ~ ~

Seasickness tormented Chief Inspector Hvoslef. Nausea continued to plague him even two hours after he had landed on the northwest shores of the island of Reinøya.

Constable Rasch leaned over and said, “Are you okay?”

Without any conviction Hvoslef nodded and weakly said, “Yes.”

The austere cliff-scraped landscape. The odd-shaped mountains. The thin and sporadic green plants and brush. These all served as grim reminders to Chief Inspector Hvoslef that this was indeed the Land of White Death and that he must return to town as soon as possible. Anorexic clumps of Downy Birch seemed ominous if not cruel hoaxes in comparison to the lush Scandinavian forests that grew south of the Arctic Circle. Shrieking seagulls added a dirge that promised death or madness.

Hvoslef’s discomfort increased even more when he saw Leif Jørgensen the Third.

“Chief Inspector,” said the 68-year-old doctor, “what have we here?”

“Nine dead men. Two were shot execution-style in the back of the head.”

Hvoslef went on to give the doctor a brief summary of the investigation thus far. He intensely disliked the medical examiner who had an imperial air of intellectual superiority.

Except for Hvoslef everyone in Tromsø felt that Jørgensen’s arrogance was well-earned. The brilliant doctor was the third generation of Leif Jørgensens MDs who had served as highly-respected medical examiners of Troms County.

Hvoslef eyed the balding doctor and his angular bird-like features and loathed him even more. He disliked intelligent and accomplished professionals such as Version 3.0 of Leif Jørgensen. The good doctor had worked for decades as a professor of forensic pathology at the University of Tromsø’s School of Medicine
and
at the University Hospital of North Norway.

Suicide was the leading cause of death in Troms County. But Leif Jørgensen MD continued a family tradition that his father and grandfather had started. He always checked off the box marked ACCIDENT instead of the box marked SUICIDE for the sake of the surviving family members and the dead one’s memory. And that’s why the people of Troms County adored the Leif Jørgensens. The natives also appreciated the fact that the Jørgensens had never left Tromsø for Oslo. The educated and wealthy tended to immigrate in overwhelming numbers from the forlorn and melancholy land.

“Well now,” declared Jørgensen, “I guess it’s time to find out what really happened to these folks.”

Hvoslef’s face reddened at the slight implied in the comment. He hated the insinuation that Jørgensen the medical doctor—and not Hvoslef the police detective—would discover what had really transpired at the crime scene. Hvoslef decided it was time to cut the doctor down a little. “Jørgensen . . . it’s rather
obvious
that each of these nine men have been murdered with gunshots. Isn’t it now?”

“No. It’s not
obvious
. . . . I won’t know the cause of death until I fully examine the bodies. I already see other wounds on their bodies. . . . One of them may have been strangled . . . I don’t think he’s been shot. I can see a deep red line that goes all the way around his neck. Those wounds may or may not be fatal. . . . I won’t know
that
until all of the bodies have been removed and the autopsies completed. Then I will determine the exact cause of death. Also . . . all or some of these individuals might have head wounds that I can’t see under their hair. Or they may have drowned or been drugged or poisoned first.”

“Why would anyone shoot these nine men if they were already dead?”

“Nine men? . . . You’re wrong on that count. Chief Inspector . . . one of your nine men is a woman. The third from the right.”

Waves of anger and nausea rolled inside Hvoslef. He almost threw up and later wished that he had done so on the doctor’s expensive and elegant clothes. “I think . . . I’m going to. . . .”

“Yes. What? . . . What are you going to do?”

Hvoslef’s rage worsened with the sickening thought that he was forever stuck with the only expert in Tromsø and Troms County who was authorized to render forensic opinions on a person’s cause of death by the Norwegian Commission of Forensic Medicine.

Soon after arriving at Tromsø to assume his new position Hvoslef had tried to fire Jørgensen and replace him with a younger and more pliable and less experienced candidate. But under Norway’s Criminal Procedure Act only the Commission had the power to choose who could testify as a forensic expert in criminal proceedings and who could perform autopsies and write autopsy reports which had to be filed with the Commission.

“Hvoslef are you sick? . . . You’re absolutely green. Let me get my stethoscope and bag.”

~ ~ ~

Later that day Ervin Vikøren came back to his cabin. The rustic building was nestled in the upper portion of a sloping valley that overlooked the sea. He dropped his enormous frame into the squealing sofa.

“The cops are out there in force . . . dozens and dozens of them . . . plus a bunch of scientist types in white smocks. They’ve got five big boats . . . and two helicopters.”

“Did they see you?”

“Yes and no. I took the boat towards Ringvassøya . . . pretended I was fishing . . . I used the old binoculars.”

“I hope you didn’t go back into Hansnes.”

“No,” he lied.

“Someone in that stinking town is bound to put two and two together.”

“Bah. They’re idiots.”

“They have nothing else to do but gossip and spy on everyone.”

“They won’t.”

“Who are you kidding? . . . They knew we were a couple long before your wife knew and she used to keep very close tabs on you.”

He said nothing. No one ever won an argument with her. She was ten years older and acted too often like his boss. But she was smart and willing to live the hard life of the woman of a fisherman and a poacher and a thief and she ran his businesses well and exhausted him in the sack. He grunted and got up.

“Where are you going?”

He left the cabin and despite her harridan screams he felt very sure about himself and his decisions. He went into the brush to check the tripwires that surrounded their cabin and they were tight and ready to trigger the deadly and silent missiles that would shoot out of the handmade crossbows that he had built several years ago for such an eventuality.

“Come back here! . . . You need to clean the nets. I told you to clean them yesterday.”

He hid behind a clump of Downy Birch and gently picked up one of the crossbows which he aimed in her direction. She was standing by the front door. She was clueless as to his intentions or his aim. He wondered what she would do if the steel-tipped bolt thudded deep into the wall next to her.