The Caveman (19 page)

Line took the local paper from the mailbox before letting herself into the house. The phone rang as she removed her boots in the hallway. She dashed into the kitchen, throwing the newspaper on the table, to take the call.

‘Is that William Wisting’s house?’

‘Who’s calling?’ she asked, wriggling out of her jacket.

‘Henning Juul, journalist with 123 News. Sorry if I’m disturbing you, but I’ve tried to reach him at his office and on his mobile, and he isn’t answering.’

Line knew who the man was. They had covered some of the same stories, and she knew he was competent. ‘He’s not at home.’

He apologised for disturbing her and hung up.

Line put down the receiver, but continued to gaze at the phone. Henning Juul was so desperate to speak to her father that he had tried his private number. It could only relate to one case, the dead man from the felling area out at Halle.

The headlines in the paper related to the cold front and the big freeze. Line riffled through the pages, in two minds about whether to phone Sandersen in the news section. If something was brewing, her newspaper was in danger of being beaten to it by 123 News.

Change in weather at end of week
, she read, leafing past the readers’ letters about school buildings, reports of a Christmas market and property adverts, all the way to the TV listings at the back. There was no follow-up story about the mysterious death among the Christmas trees.

She found Sandersen’s number on her mobile, but had nothing to give him apart from confirming that they probably had a story. He was already aware of that and, if she called, he might assign her away from her own story to the Halle case. As things stood, she had no desire either to give up on Viggo Hansen or get involved in her father’s work.

Her phone vibrated in her hand. The number on the display was not stored in her contacts list. ‘Hi, this is Line,’ she answered.

‘Hi,’ said a young man at the other end. ‘Roger Nicolaysen. I’m responding to an unanswered call.’

Line struggled to place the name until it dawned on her that this was the locksmith who had been at Viggo Hansen’s house. ‘Thanks for calling back,’ she said, explaining that she worked at
VG
and had some questions about a job Nicolaysen had done in August.

The man whistled, as if to give notice that August was a long time ago.

‘You fitted two new locks at a house in Herman Wildenveys gate.’

‘Oh yes,’ he replied, surprisingly fast. ‘I remember that well. He’s the guy who died. I was there for the police last week too, after they found him. Had to drill through the same locks.’

‘Why did he want to replace the lock?’

‘The one he had was too old, he said.’

‘But you fitted two locks?’

‘That’s right. He was a fairly nervous type.’

‘How do you mean, nervous?’

‘Well . . . he just seemed nervous, as if he was scared of something. He was very cautious when he opened the door.’

‘What was he scared of?’ Line asked.

‘I don’t know, but we’re always reading in the newspapers about foreigners breaking into people’s houses, aren’t we? Even when people are at home.’

‘Can you recollect anything else?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘He mumbled when he spoke. Said yes and thank you, and that was that. Why are you asking?’

‘You were probably the last person he spoke to,’ she said, and went on to tell him she was writing an article about loneliness. ‘I might be able to use a photograph of you in your work clothes and maybe with your van in the background.’

That would enhance the selection of photographs, she thought. Among the pictures of old classmates and everything belonging to the past, it would be a good idea to have a picture of the last person to talk to Viggo Hansen. It being a random tradesman would suit the narrative. They arranged for Line to phone next day so that they could meet.

Frank Iversen was the next bullet point on her list. She ate a slice of bread as she re-read the email from the researchers in the fact-checking department. They had tracked down a Frank Iversen, one year older than Viggo Hansen, who had lived in Stavern but later moved to Langesund. He was now listed as living in Denmark, with an address in Hirsthals.

She keyed in the number supplied in the email. It rang for some time before a man answered in Danish. ‘Hello, this is Frank, Aqua Consulting.’

‘Frank Iversen?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘Hi, my name is Line Wisting and I’m calling from Stavern in Norway. Is it true you once lived here?’

He did not answer immediately. ‘Yes,’ he finally said, ‘but that was years ago.’

‘I’m calling about Viggo Hansen,’ she continued. ‘Do you remember him? You worked together at the prawn factory at one time.’

Again he hesitated. ‘That was years ago.’

Line sat at the kitchen table. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Viggo Hansen is dead.’

‘No, that’s a shame. When did it happen?’

‘He died last summer.’

‘Who is this I’m speaking to?’

Line explained the circumstances of the death and that she was a former neighbour, now intending to write about Viggo Hansen in the newspaper she worked for. ‘I’m talking to the people who used to know him,’ she said. ‘Trying to find out what he was like as a person.’

‘I see.’

‘Can you spare a minute?’

He needed time to consider this: ‘Yes, okay.’

Line took out a notepad. ‘Is it a long time since you were in Stavern, or Norway?’

This time the response came more quickly. ‘I’m in Norway now,’ he said. ‘In Larvik.’

‘In Larvik? But you live in Denmark?’

‘I’m a consultant with a company that deals in fish farming and aquaculture. At the moment I’m checking a mussel farm outside Stavern.’

‘Can we meet?’

‘Well, I don’t know . . .’

‘Where are you staying?’

Frank Iversen hesitated again. ‘At the
Farris Bad
Hotel.’

‘Could I meet you there?’ she suggested, glancing at the clock. ‘At eight?’

‘I suppose that wouldn’t do any harm.’

20.00
, Line noted on the pad. ‘Brilliant, see you then,’ she wrapped up the conversation, ringed the time on her notepad when, as she did so, a thought struck her which she could not quite catch hold of. It had something to do with the television magazine on Viggo Hansen’s coffee table.

She took out her laptop and opened the folder of photographs, clicking through to the picture of the TV listings.

20.00 was the start time of
FBI’s Archives
on the Discovery Channel.
Follow the FBI’s investigators in their pursuit of criminals
, she read. Viggo Hansen had drawn an asterisk to show his intention of watching the programme. Later that evening, he had circled
22.50
, when a nature programme about elk in Alaska started on NRK2.

First an asterisk, then a circle. Two methods of marking the broadcasts. Why had he done that?

Nils Hammer unrolled a sizeable map across the office desk. Wisting did not take long to find his bearings and point out the two hills and the spot called Skaret. ‘There,’ he said, putting his finger on the map.

‘Not so good,’ Hammer said. ‘The tank is on open ground, with free access.’ Wisting walked to the window and stared into the evening darkness. Grey-white snow had been whipped into drifts at the street corners. ‘I’ll find a solution,’ Hammer promised, rolling up the map. ‘We’ll do it early tomorrow.’

Someone lit an Advent star in a window across the street.

‘I’m going home now,’ Hammer said. ‘See you in the morning.’

Wisting turned to face the room as his colleague disappeared through the door.

His mobile phone rang. The third time from the same number. Again he did not answer but, once it had rung out, he sat at his computer and tapped in the number.

123 News.

He had managed to keep the
VG
journalist at bay but he was not going to give up. The story would probably receive some coverage in tomorrow’s paper, but in the meantime the journalists did not have a clue what this was all about.

He reached across his desk for the case files for a total of twelve missing women. The names on the
main list
, as Leif Malm had described it.

Investigators in the various police districts had worked systematically to account for the women who had vanished without trace. Every conceivable fact had been brought to light. Personalities and life situations had been probed, electronic clues from mobile phones and bank cards had been checked, but the twelve cases remained unsolved.

What the investigators had failed to do was look at the cases in connection with each other. It was not to be expected that investigators in one part of the country would link their case to another in a different location and at another time. Some may have considered the idea, but probably it had been too much to manage.

The case at the top of the pile concerned Charlotte Pedersen, aged twenty-one, from Porsgrunn, last seen at a
Statoil
service station on route E18 at Eidanger, just outside the town. On 19th June 2009 at 16.23, she bought a packet of chewing gum and ten Prince Mild. Images from the CCTV camera inside the petrol station were included in the case notes. All traces ended there.

The next folder contained documents from a case in Drammen, in the autumn of 2007. Nineteen-year-old Diana Bender worked at a fast food kiosk in Tollbugata. The kiosk had closed at half past ten on the evening of Thursday 27th September. She had placed the day’s takings in the night safe at the bank in Strømsø and afterwards was seen in Konnerudgata, but she never got home to her parents in Tårnveien, no more than a kilometre from where she was employed.

Then there was twenty-year-old Hilde Jansen who had hitchhiked from Risør to Kristiansand in 2005 to attend the Quartfestivalen music festival. She had been given a lift by a lorry driver delivering to the Sørlandsenteret shopping centre. He dropped her off at the exit road for Kristiansand Zoo where several witnesses saw her at the verge trying to get a lift into town. No one saw her being picked up.

Wisting went to the photocopy room. On the top shelf of the bookcase, a stock of empty ring binders, notepads, ballpoint pens, paperclips and photocopy paper was kept, together with a rolled-up map of Southern Norway. He took the map back into his office with a box of paperclips and map pins with coloured heads. Pinning it to the wall of his office, he began to plot the missing women, according to where they had lived.

First he placed the women in the three cases he had already familiarised himself with: Charlotte from Porsgrunn, Diana from Drammen and Hilde from Risør. He wrote their names on the map and noted the dates when they had gone missing on little post-it notes beside their home towns. He found pictures of them in their case files to cut out and fasten to the map.

He continued to do this with the remainder of the bundle: Anita from Stavanger, Karoline from Kristiansand, Silje from Vinstra, Malin from Halden, Thea and Nora from Oslo, Julie from Arendal, Maja from Hamar and Janne from Sarpsborg.

He read through accounts of interviews with witnesses: parents, siblings, teachers, work colleagues, neighbours and boyfriends; skimmed through reports of searches, including dog patrols, door-to-door enquiries and telephone tracking. All were equally lacking in results.

After three hours, the map was covered with twelve names. Twelve faces.

Ten of the young women were blond. Diana from Drammen was dark, both hair and skin colour. Nora from Oslo was also different. She was plump and, in the photograph, her hair was completely black with a few red streaks. Her eyebrow was pierced and she had a ring in her nose. Apart from them, the girls were all young and blond.

He took a closer look at Charlotte from Porsgrunn. Her picture was taken at the service station, where all trace of her had ended. Hers was the most recent name on the list and he recalled the case. The picture of her at the counter was the one that had been used in the newspapers when she was posted missing. She had an unruly fringe, just like Line, and inquisitive blue eyes.

Just as Donald Baker had explained about the Interstate Strangler, the pins on the map were placed along the motorway network. Route E18 ran like a dark orange line through the towns and cities from Stavanger to Oslo, while the E6 ran in a corresponding line northwards from the capital, through Hamar and up as far as Vinstra. In a southerly direction, it connected Janne from Sarpsborg with Malin down in Halden.

Larvik lay like an intersection in the centre of the map. From there it was approximately five hours’ drive to Stavanger and almost equally long to Vinstra, though somewhat shorter to Halden. Wisting took a step back, feeling his pulse race. The orange line continued across the broken line marking the border with Sweden. If you followed the E6 as far in a southerly direction as Vinstra lay to the north, you would end up in Gothenburg.

Names and images blurred on the map facing him, so much so that he had to use the desk for support. The case at once grew into something even more wide-ranging. There was no reason to believe that Robert Godwin had turned at Halden or stopped in Svinesund at the border. They would have to obtain a list of names from the police in Sweden as well.

The thought made him restless. He paced the room before coming to a halt at the window, where he leaned his forehead on the cold glass in an effort to gather his thoughts, his eyes drawn to the lights of the ferry as it glided across the dark fjord on its way to Denmark.

There was something terrifying about this case. Something he had never experienced before made him feel like a child afraid of the dark.

The hotel was located at the head of the Larvik fjord, partly on pillars above the beach and the sea. A colossal structure, it looked like a stranded cruise ship. Line had been inside only once before, and was again fascinated by its atmospheric calm, harmonious proportions, flooring, walls and interior furnishings in natural colours. She asked Reception to phone Frank Iversen’s room to let him know she had arrived.

‘He’ll be down shortly,’ the receptionist said.

She put her waiting to good use by looking at the pictures on the walls, imposing black and white photographs by Morten Krogvold and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Though Frank Iversen was silver-haired, his complexion was still smooth. He approached directly, without showing any of the hesitation apparent in their phone conversation. ‘Line Wisting?’ he asked.

‘That’s me,’ Line said. His handshake was exaggeratedly firm. ‘Shall we sit in the bar?’

They sat in the deep sofas on either side of a window table. Far out on the fjord, they could see the lights of the Danish ferry. Closer to shore, the sea had frozen solid. Waves broke over thin ice, driving the floes inland. A waiter approached to take their order. ‘A glass of apple juice,’ Line said, turning to Frank Iversen. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

‘I’ll have a beer.’

Nodding, the waiter made a note and took his leave.

‘Are you in Norway often?’ Line asked, taking out her notepad.

‘Maybe a few times a year.’

‘Do you still have family here?’

‘No. It’s only in connection with my job.’

The waiter returned with bottles and glasses and poured for them both. ‘How do you remember Viggo Hansen?’ Line asked when he had gone.

Frank Iversen shrugged. ‘I don’t actually remember him.’

‘You grew up just a couple of hundred metres from each other, and worked together at the prawn factory.’

‘That’s more than forty years ago,’ Iversen said. ‘I can hardly recall working there myself.’

Frank Iversen spoke a mixture of Norwegian and Danish, almost certainly more Norwegian now that he was talking to her, but there was something dilatory about him, making his sentences seem very sluggish.

‘You sent him Christmas cards.’

‘That could well be, but not for the past twenty years.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s just how it went. He never sent me any.’

Line held her glass and reclined into the sofa. A man in a black suit at the bar looked at her. Their eyes met momentarily before she looked away. ‘I spoke to Annie Nyhus yesterday,’ she continued. ‘Do you remember her?’

‘There’s something familiar about the name.’

‘She lived diagonally opposite you when you were growing up. Next door to Dr. Welgaard.’

Frank Iversen smiled. ‘Old Annie, yes. What about her?’

‘She told me about you and Viggo, that you hung out together. I hoped you might remember more.’

‘Sorry, but that’s how it is. I remember how we moved from Stavern, but everything from the time before is pretty vague.’

‘When did you move to Denmark?’

‘In 1990. First of all I met a woman, and then I got a job there. Now there’s only the job.’

Line asked other questions, but none of the answers brought her any closer to Viggo Hansen. When Iversen finished his beer, she did not offer him another.

‘Well,’ he said, standing up. ‘It was nice talking to you. Apologies again that I couldn’t be of more help.’

Line thanked him for his time, before checking through her notes. She had tracked down many of the people who at some time or other had been part of Viggo Hansen’s life, but it seemed they had all drawn a veil of forgetfulness over him. Frank Iversen had not told her anything she had not previously known. On the contrary, really, since she was the one who had revealed what she knew.

The waiter appeared again to place a drink clinking with ice cubes, slices of lime and a straw, before her. ‘I haven’t ordered anything,’ she said.

‘From the man over there,’ the waiter nodded at the man in the dark suit.

He slid down from his bar stool. Around her own age, the beginnings of a beard gave his cheeks a fine dark veneer and the skin on the rest of his face bore witness to many hours spent in the fresh air. The muscles on his neck were taut and his brown eyes sparkled.

‘Do you mind?’ he asked in an American accent, gesturing to where Frank Iversen had been sitting.

Line was neither dressed nor groomed for an evening in a bar, but she smiled and nodded.

He extended his hand and introduced himself. ‘John Bantam.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said in English, glancing at his hand. No ring. ‘Line.’

‘Are you staying at the hotel?’

‘No, I live in Stavern,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been here for a meeting.’

His gaze was penetrating, in a very affable way. ‘This is a beautiful country you live in,’ he remarked.

‘Thanks. Where do you come from?’

‘Minneapolis.’

Line placed the American city on a mental map. Far north, near the large lakes on the Canadian border.

‘You would feel at home there,’ he continued. ‘Snow, wind, hats and gloves.’

‘So, what are you doing here?’

‘Work,’ he replied, as if his business was something very boring indeed. ‘I’m an analyst.’

She lifted the drink he had bought for her. Gin and tonic. Her car was outside, but she could have a couple of sips without any danger.

Raising his glass, he smiled and steered the conversation by asking questions about Norway, Norwegian authors, musicians, Thor Heyerdahl and the polar explorers.

‘My great-great-grandfather was one of the first men in the world to reach the South Pole,’ she told him.

John Bantam’s eyes opened wide. ‘Really?’

She told him about Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole in 1911, and how one of her ancestors had been a member of the group.

‘My great-great-great-grandfather came from Kristiansand,’ the American said. ‘His name was Daniel Larsen. Perhaps they knew each other?’

After half an hour’s conversation she had drunk slightly more gin and tonic than she had planned, and pushed the half-empty glass away. ‘I have to go,’ she said, but in fact she had nothing to go to, and this was something she had yearned for on her own at home in Oslo. Interesting conversation, no strings.

He took hold of his glass. ‘Already?’

‘I have an appointment,’ she lied, although the only plans she had were to sit at the computer and record the information she had gleaned that day. ‘How long are you staying?’

He stood up at the same moment she did. ‘Not too sure. It would be great if you could keep me company another evening. Would it be very forward of me to ask for your phone number?’

She produced one of her business cards from her bag. They had not spoken of her job, and she prepared herself to explain how she worked with
VG
.

‘Wisting,’ he said, tapping the card lightly on the palm of his hand. ‘Is that a common name in these parts?’

‘Not very.’

‘Well, Line,’ he said, slipping the card into his inside pocket. ‘It was very nice to meet you.’