The Caveman (9 page)

The suitcase lay in the middle of the metal worktop in the examination room used by the crime scene technicians.

Espen Mortensen took charge, noting all the objects as he removed them. Each item of clothing was placed in turn in a paper bag. At the bottom of the suitcase he found a pair of binoculars but, apart from those, there was nothing inside that Wisting had not already seen. The two most interesting objects were on the worktop. The camera and the envelope crammed with newspaper cuttings.

‘What are we missing?’ Wisting asked. ‘Apart from the laptop, the mobile phone and a larger camera?’

‘Travel documents,’ Hammer suggested. ‘Passport and tickets. Something with his name on.’

Mortensen poured the contents of the envelope onto the worktop, using his fingers to spread them out. Several of the newspaper cuttings had tiny perforations in the corners, as if they had been fastened to a wall with drawing pins.

One of the cuttings was dated 24th September 1989 and showed Robert Godwin’s face: a black and white photograph in which he had a broad moustache and was wearing a white shirt buttoned to his neck. Wisting leaned forward to look the mass murderer directly in the eye.

‘It’s more than twenty years since Robert Godwin was posted wanted in the USA,’ Hammer said. ‘Why on earth should he turn up here now?’

‘He might have been here the whole time,’ Wisting said. ‘These items are not his possessions, more likely someone tracking him down.’

Torunn Borg entered the room, carrying a sheaf of papers. ‘This man is reported missing,’ she said, holding out a printout with a photo of an older man with a beard and fine-rimmed glasses. His expression was genial, but there was a seriousness in the depths of his grey eyes. ‘Bob Crabb,’ she said. ‘A sixty-seven-year-old widower from Minneapolis.’

‘He’s not in our records,’ Wisting said, searching the folder of missing people.

‘Minneapolis Police Department sent a report to the Norwegian police via Interpol on 3rd September. A friend and neighbour of his had made contact with them when he did not return home from a trip to Norway. It was a standard application in which they sought information. In our records, it’s registered only as a cause for concern.’ She took out one of the other sheets. ‘He arrived in Norway at Gardermoen airport on flight FI318 via Reykjavík on 14th July. His return ticket was for 14th August, but it was cancelled that same day.’

‘Cancelled?’

‘The airline company don’t know how, but expect it was done on the internet or by phone.’

‘What was he doing in Norway?’

‘According to his neighbour he was trying to trace Norwegian relatives. He had no surviving family in the USA. His forefathers had emigrated from Toten at the end of the eighteen hundreds. The report was sent to the police at Gjøvik to follow up.’

‘Gjøvik? We know he made the arrangement to rent the flat in Stavern as early as May, don’t we?’

‘He was supposed to go to Toten,’ Torunn shrugged.

‘The police in Gjøvik found he had hired a car through Avis. That is to say, the information actually came from the American police, taken from a statement from his credit card company to the effect that he hired a car at Gardermoen on the day he arrived. One of the investigators at Gjøvik called them and confirmed the vehicle in question was a grey Audi A3. It was returned on the same day that the journey home was cancelled.’

Wisting was brimming with questions. ‘Could they tell you any more at the Avis office?’

Torunn Borg shook her head. ‘No more than what is on the computer screen.’

‘What about the credit card statement? Is there anything there?’

‘There’s a large withdrawal of money in Norwegian kroner from an ATM at the airport. Apart from that, no transactions.’

‘And that’s where the case has stalled?’

‘Yes. The US police have not made any further approaches. They’ve probably concluded that he extended his trip without telling his neighbours at home in Minneapolis.’

‘Maybe he met a cousin in Gjøvik?’ Hammer suggested.

Wisting was not in the mood for humour. ‘He hasn’t been to Gjøvik,’ he muttered. ‘He was here with us, until someone took his life and hid him under a fir tree.’

‘It must be the killer who cancelled the flight,’ Mortensen said. ‘All you need is the booking number and the surname. He could have found those in the papers that didn’t surface in the suitcase. As far as the keys to the hire car are concerned, it’s probably just a matter of dropping them into a postbox.’

‘Here is something very interesting,’ Torunn Borg said, producing a sheet of personal details. ‘Bob Crabb was previously a professor at the university in Minnesota. The same place where Robert Godwin worked.’

Wisting folded his arms and stared at the stack of newspaper cuttings. One of them reported a reward of up to one million dollars. ‘Bob Crabb was on his trail,’ he said. ‘But he became another victim.’

His next thought gave him a creeping, cold sensation. Somewhere out there, a serial killer was on the loose.

Wisting reached for Torunn Borg’s papers on the missing man. ‘Professor Bob Crabb,’ he said to himself. Several pieces fell into place.

The brochure from the sailing church was one of the clues the dead man had collected in his pursuit of the mass murderer. Robert Godwin must have had a leaflet pressed into his hand when the
Elida
was lying in port. Indifferent to its contents, he would have thrown it away. Retrieving it, Bob Crabb slipped it inside a plastic wallet to preserve the fingerprints.

‘Follow this up,’ he said, returning to Torunn’s documents. ‘Forensics will need something to identify him beyond any doubt: a dental report, something of that nature. The Minneapolis police have to be told.’

Torunn Borg agreed. She had already made a start and was irked that Wisting felt the need to tell her.

‘Then we have to check out everything they have on his connection to Robert Godwin,’ Wisting said. ‘Were they close colleagues at the university? Did he know any of the victims? How on earth did he discover that Robert Godwin had fled to Norway, of all places in the world?’

He exhaled slowly. The pulse in his neck was racing, his temperature rising.

‘Robert Godwin has been on the run for more than twenty years,’ he said, looking them in the eye one by one. ‘The trail led Bob Crabb to search here for nearly four weeks, but Robert Godwin has maybe been living here for years without anyone knowing. For God’s sake, he may even have become one of us.’

‘You mean he settled here after escaping from the USA,’ Mortensen said, ‘that he’s adopted a new name and started a new life?’

‘What will we do?’ Hammer asked.

Wisting had no answer. He turned his attention to the newspaper clippings on the worktop. ‘Is there really not a single note in here?’ he asked. The faces of the girls who had disappeared sometime in the eighties shone up from the yellowing, faded newspaper pages. ‘Couldn’t he have written an address or something? Something to help us pick up the scent.’

‘The woman who let the apartment to him said he had a shoulder bag with a laptop,’ Hammer reminded them.

Wisting remained on his feet, reading a cutting that described twenty-two-year-old Marie Gesto, who disappeared while hitchhiking to Duluth in 1988. He put it down again and picked up a similar cutting with a picture of Isabelle Pierce from Milwaukee. None of the words in the text were underlined, and nothing jotted in the margins. Bob Crabb must have kept his working notes on his laptop, or in a notebook his murderer had most likely destroyed.

‘Let’s establish a direct link with the FBI,’ he said. ‘They have to search Bob Crabb’s house over there. He must have left something to say why he came to Norway. That story about relatives in Toten was just a cover for what he was actually up to.’

Standing by his side, Hammer picked up a clip with a photo of a young woman with long blond hair:
Police search for Angela Olsson. Last seen on Friday
.

‘Where’ll we start looking for him?’ he asked. ‘He may have changed his appearance, perhaps he’s married and has children. Even grandchildren, for that matter. There’s . . .’

‘When did it say Robert Godwin was born?’

‘In 1950 . . .’

Wisting began pacing the room. ‘I want lists,’ he said to Nils Hammer. ‘Lists of all the men born between 1947 and 1953, with their address history, so that we can separate out the ones who immigrated or moved into this area after 1989. That’s a start.’

‘We must be talking about several thousand.’

‘Any better ideas?’

They all fell silent until Espen Mortensen approached the examination bench and picked up the camera. ‘Let’s take a look at these photographs,’ he said.

They huddled behind Mortensen’s office chair. Flipping open a cover on the underside of the camera housing, he teased out the memory card, inserted it into a card reader, and uploaded the contents. Eight photographs appeared as tiny icons on the screen, taken during the summer in the middle of a forest. Ten or twelve slender birch trunks stretched into an azure sky.

‘What’s that?’ Torunn Borg asked, pointing to something between the trees. A brown building.

‘A summer cottage?’ Wisting suggested. ‘Look at the next picture.’

It had been taken in the same location, but from a slightly different angle. The foreground was an overgrown rocky slope. The tree trunks in the centre of the image were in focus, but it was difficult to make out what lay further back.

In the next photograph the subject was sharper, a farm with several buildings: a grey barn and a white farmhouse.

‘Where the hell is that?’ Hammer asked. ‘Somewhere near here, don’t you think?’

Mortensen shook his head. Not because he did not agree, but because he was not sure.

The fourth photo had been taken somewhere else entirely, a place that was totally uninhabitable. In the foreground was an old farmhouse with a sagging roof. Paintwork was peeling from the timber walls, the porch was askew and several of the windowpanes broken. A rusty plough was propped against a well in the centre of the farmyard. On one side of the house stood the remains of a barn destroyed by fire. Fragments of the rear wall were still standing, but only black, charred planks of wood. Beside the barn were a couple of collapsed and decayed outhouses.

‘He might have lived there,’ Wisting said. ‘We need to find out where that is and who owns it.’

‘Who could tell us that?’

‘There must be somebody in a local history association. Something along those lines? Some local historian? What’s the name of the guy who sometimes writes in the local newspaper? Thorvik? Bjørn Thorvik. We can speak to him.’

The next two photographs were taken at the same place, but nothing suggested where these dilapidated buildings were located.

Two final images had been taken in an open field. No buildings, only the edge of a forest and a tractor track emerging from the trees.

‘Was that all?’ Wisting asked.

‘That was all,’ Mortensen said. He clicked on one of the picture files to display the embedded information. ‘This one was taken on 7th August, but the time of day can’t be right. It says it was taken at 05.40, early morning. The clock on the camera must be set wrongly.’

‘American time,’ Hammer said. ‘He hasn’t changed the settings on the camera. We’re seven hours or so ahead.’

‘That would make it about midday,’ Mortensen said, examining the other picture files. All had been taken on the same day, over a period of just under two hours.

‘So, here you are.’ Benjamin Fjeld stood in the doorway. ‘I’m finished with Jonathan Wang,’ he said, waving a DVD.

‘Has he left?’ Wisting asked.

‘He’s at least on his way out.’

‘Ask him to hold on for a minute. There’s something I want him to look at.’

As Benjamin Fjeld left, Wisting asked Mortensen to print out a picture of the ramshackle farm. ‘He works as a temporary relief farmhand,’ Wisting explained. ‘Maybe he’ll know where the photo was taken.’

He took the printout to reception where Jonathan Wang was waiting. The farm worker was older than Wisting had envisaged, certainly over sixty, but nimble on his feet when he jumped up. He was wearing work clothes: a stained overall and red check shirt. The left side of his face was disfigured by deep scars.

‘Was there something else?’ he asked.

‘I’ve a photo here I’d like you to look at.’ Wisting held out the print, unable to take his eyes off the scarring.

Wang squinted as he studied it closely.

‘Do you know where this is?’

‘No,’ Wang said, biting his lower lip. ‘Can’t say that’s a place I’ve been. Dreadfully run down, anyway.’

Wang had a certain inflection in his speech, an almost imperceptible trace of an accent. Something made Wisting regret showing him the picture.

‘Why do you ask?’ Wang asked, returning the photograph.

Wisting shook his head. ‘Well, I just thought, since you work on a number of farms, that you might have an idea where it was.’

‘Sorry, but no. Can I go now?’

Wisting made his way back to the office, took out Robert Godwin’s photograph and noted that his appearance was extremely ordinary, with no special facial features. On a report form, Wisting would have crossed the box for normal with regard to a description of his chin, mouth, nose and ears. His forehead was rather high, but that was probably because of his receding hairline. In fact, he looked Nordic.

He keyed in Benjamin Fjeld’s number on the intercom and asked him to come through.

Godwin’s picture was more than twenty years old, but there was nothing Wisting recognised as similar to Jonathan Wang. However, neither was there anything to suggest that the temporary farmhand and the fugitive killer could not be the same person.

Benjamin Fjeld entered and took a seat.

‘What did Wang say?’ Wisting asked.

‘I was in the middle of writing the report,’ Fjeld replied. ‘He confirms Per and Supattra Halle’s statement that they were in Thailand, and that he didn’t see anything he thinks might be connected to the murder. At least nothing he can remember.’

‘Is he Norwegian?’

‘No, he’s originally from Austria and came here in 1994. Before that, he worked for a few years on a farm in Denmark. When he first arrived in Norway, he worked at one of those big farms at Nalum. Ten years ago, he bought himself a smallholding.’

‘Is he married?’

‘No.’

‘How did he get those scars on his face?’

‘I didn’t ask him that.’

Wisting pushed the photo of Robert Godwin across the desk, placing his hand on it so that half of his forehead and hair was hidden.

‘Imagine he’s wearing a wig,’ Wisting said. ‘Does it look like him?’

Benjamin Fjeld leaned forward to study the photograph before shaking his head. ‘Not really. Do you think so?’

‘I suppose not.’ Wisting drew the photo back again. ‘It was just the manner of his speech, and that he seemed to be from a different country.’

‘Do you want me to follow it up?’

Wisting considered for a few seconds before agreeing. ‘Find out why he left his homeland.’