The Caveman (27 page)

Wisting parked behind the vehicle used by his undercover colleagues, his stomach knotted with anxiety about Line, his mouth dry and his hands sticky with sweat.

Donald Baker leaned forward in the passenger seat, staring at the house at the end of the street. The Emergency Squad officers had observation posts on all sides.

‘Where did he keep them?’ Wisting asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘In some of the reports, it says that the first women were kept alive for up to seventy-two hours before they were killed. Where did he hold them?’

‘He may have used a workman’s hut on the outer edge of his uncle’s apple farm. It was searched several years afterwards. No technical evidence was found, but it was conspicuously well cleaned.’

‘3-0 Alpha in position,’
came across on the police radio
. ‘All the curtains are drawn.’

‘Received,’
the officer in charge answered.
‘Wait.’

The passenger door of the car in front opened and the officer in charge emerged, skirted round them and sat behind Wisting. ‘What’s our plan?’ he asked.

‘I’ll go and ring the doorbell,’ Wisting said.

‘I expect that could be called a plan, of sorts. Listen, I have ten armed men here.’

‘We don’t have legal grounds for an arrest,’ Wisting said. ‘We don’t even know if he’s the man we’re after. If we’re going to check him out, the simplest way is to make the least possible fuss.’

The officer leaned back. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’s your show, but you can’t go in alone.’

‘I’ll take Hammer with me.’

‘Then I’ll inform the crew.’

Five minutes later, Wisting stood on the doorstep with Nils Hammer, rapping his knuckles on the rickety window on the front door. A shadow appeared behind the glass and a sallow-complexioned man opened.

‘Mr. Godwin?’ Wisting asked.

The man looked bewildered. His beard obscured most of his face, but Wisting saw no similarity with the more than twenty-year-old wanted poster of Robert Godwin. His hair looked real, bushy and uneven, as if he cut it himself.

‘Mr. Robert Godwin?’ Wisting made another attempt.

‘Ellefsen,’ said the man in the doorway. ‘You’ve made a mistake. My name is Ellefsen. Odd Werner Ellefsen.’

He tried to shut the door, but Wisting held it open. ‘I’m from the police,’ he said, giving his name. ‘Where’s your car?’

‘My car?’

‘Where is it?’

‘At the
Viking
garage. I drove off the road. They towed it in.’

‘Listen,’ Hammer said. ‘We’re working on a case and need your fingerprints to exclude you from the enquiry.’

‘Okay then.’

Odd Werner Ellefsen looked like a man who was not used to expressing his opinions, who preferred to defer to others. If a serial killer was hiding here, there were two possible reactions to be anticipated: attack or flight. He must have anticipated this day, and passivity was hardly likely. However, if his past was going to catch up with him, he would not have reckoned it would arrive in the form of a middle-aged, plain-clothes policeman.

‘We’d like you to come with us to the station,’ Wisting said, implying no choice.

‘Now?’

‘It won’t take long.’

Odd Werner Ellefsen took an outdoor jacket from a peg. He was brimming with questions, but unused to asking them.

‘A journalist visited you,’ Wisting said in the car. ‘What did she want?’

‘To talk about the old days.’

‘Such as what?’

‘People I don’t know any longer.’

‘Who would that be?’

‘Viggo Hansen. And Cato Tangen. They’re both dead. Nothing to talk about. Nothing to write about.’

‘She visited you more than once?’

‘Came back yesterday.’

‘Why was that?’

‘The same stuff.’

The car stopped for children carrying their sledges across the street.

‘Bob Crabb?’ Wisting asked when they were moving again. ‘Is that a name you know?’

‘There was something about him in the paper.’

They drove the rest of the distance to the police station in silence and handed Odd Werner Ellefsen to Espen Mortensen who was ready with the fingerprint reader. Returning to his office, Wisting passed Torunn Borg’s door. She put down the phone and glanced up at him.

‘They don’t use chloroform at the
Jotun
factory,’ she said.

‘I think we have the wrong man anyway.’ Wisting leaned on the door frame. ‘We’ve brought him in but the man with Mortensen just now has probably never been violent.’

‘The business of the chloroform doesn’t necessarily tell us much; it’s really only a movie cliché. There are other anaesthetising chemicals he could have used, almost any kind of solvent. If you breathe in the gases from thinners or turpentine, for example, you risk knocking yourself out. Teenagers sniff glue and lighter gas just for fun.’

‘Thinners and turpentine, who uses them?’

‘Painters, for instance. They use them to mix their paints and to clean their brushes and other tools.’

‘Anything else of interest?’

‘The family history trail doesn’t seem to have taken us anywhere.’

‘It must surely lead somewhere?’

‘The folk at the National Archives have managed to find a living third-cousin of Robert Godwin. He stays in Denmark. They have a common great-great-grandfather.’

Leif Malm appeared further down the corridor, tossing his head in the direction of the office door. Wisting held up a hand to Torunn Borg. He would hear the rest later. He followed Leif Malm into his own office and sat down.

‘The phone trace gave us nothing,’ Malm said. ‘The last activity was late last night. At that time, the mobile was located in the Farris Bad Hotel. Apparently it ran out of battery power overnight.’

‘So the last location was the hotel?’

‘We’ve watched the film from the CCTV cameras there. She left the hotel at 09.33 this morning.’

‘Is there anything more you can do?’ Wisting asked.

‘We have done more. Her computer has not been connected to the internet today. Neither has she checked her email, not from her computer, her mobile phone or any borrowed equipment. She normally checks frequently but the last time was last night at quarter past nine.’

Wisting raised his eyebrows. ‘Have you checked her email? Is it possible to do that?’

‘We can’t read the contents, but we can see when her address logs on and makes contact with the server.’

‘What about toll stations and speed cameras? Can you find anything there?’

‘We’ve set up a surveillance network,’ Malm said. ‘Five minutes ago, this cropped up.’

He handed across a printout, a report from the police operations log, in which all incidents were recorded. A car abandoned at a bus stop along the Stavern road had been towed in after a complaint from the bus company. The owner could have it returned after paying a fine. The registration number and name of the car owner were listed. Line’s car.

‘We’ve been in telephone contact with the vehicle recovery company,’ Malm said. ‘The car was unlocked with a handbag lying on the front passenger seat. Her phone was in it.’

He paused, holding back slightly, before continuing. ‘I’ve sent two of the crime scene investigators, presently tasked with sorting the skeletons in the basement, to the bus stop to see if they can find anything.’ He fell silent, before adding, ‘Viewed in connection with all the other information we have, I’m afraid this gives us real grounds for concern.’

Wisting blinked rapidly and repeatedly, struggling to find a logical explanation for what had occurred, something to rationalise events and render them innocuous. His thoughts all pointed the other way.

Line was freezing. Her damp breath crystallising in the air in front of her. The cold burned her thighs, but her fingers more. She pushed her hands into her jacket pockets, but it worked its way from her fingertips into her body all the same. Her feet were like blocks of ice.

The surrounding landscape was unfamiliar, with tall pine trees on both sides of the road. She had no idea where she was, but followed the cleared road. Fresh snow lay on the road surface with only one set of tracks visible; there must be very little traffic here. Looking back, her footprints left no doubt about which direction she had taken.

The narrow roadway twisted and turned through the forest landscape and she wondered whether she should have chosen the other road. In the end she decided she had made the right choice. This was the direction she had arrived from, and somewhere ahead must be an intersecting road with more traffic. However, she knew she could not risk continuing until she encountered a car. She must seek refuge from the cold, and from the man who would surely come after her.

Up ahead she spotted a lean-to shed beside the road with
Vremmen
painted on a sign, but that did not tell her much. An old milk shed; part of the roof had collapsed, and deciduous trees had grown between the grey timber planks. Beside it she found a narrow uncleared track and, in among the trees about fifty metres on, a few scattered buildings. A power line stretched between poles blown askew by the wind. The place was probably only used in summer but, if she was lucky, the power supply would still be connected. She came to a hurried decision.

Soon she would have no feeling left in her feet. She tottered onto the track, sinking to her thighs. After only the first few steps her boots filled with snow, but she battled forward dejected, knowing she could do nothing about her footprints. The farmhouse was burned down. Doors, windows and walls were missing. Only the brick gable-end with chimney and hearth remained, but the barn was intact.

Its timber walls were faded to pale grey by sun and wind and canted forward, the door closed and barred with a bolt. She unlocked it and pulled it against the snow, finally creating a gap she could squeeze through.

The wooden floor creaked under her feet and the place smelled of dry, old timber and thick dust. She had no plan other than to seek warmth, to rest here until darkness fell and it became safer to move outside.

Light filtered under the roof ridge and through cracks in the wall planks, but it took some time for her eyes to adjust. She could make out a cart and, behind that, dry hay hanging over the edge of the timber wall that divided the barn from the hay loft. Old crates and chests were stacked in the middle of the floor, grey with age. Abandoned tools were propped against the wall: a pitchfork, a crowbar and a couple of spades.

Farther forward was a wall with a door. She opened it and stepped through. The air in this room had a hint of mould and lacked ventilation; a high window provided light. The walls had once been whitewashed, but patches of black dampness had eaten their way up from the floor. A faded poster of a pin-up girl hung from a nail. There were two chairs and a table, and a work bench strewn with machine parts. Small boxes, plastic containers and jam jars containing nails and screws sat on a shelf. A pipe rested on the edge of an ashtray.

In the innermost corner lay a heap of canvas sacks. Line picked up a couple. Tiny balls of mouse droppings rolled off, and she could see they had been gnawed at, but they were thick and could be warm. She moved several aside before lying down and pulling five or six over herself. She could not stay long, but needed heat, and time to consider her course of action.

‘She fits his victim profile,’ Leif Malm said.

Wisting shook his head, though he knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. ‘Line’s too old,’ he said. ‘She’s twenty-eight.’

‘She has put herself in a high-risk situation,’ Malm said. ‘Somewhere in her investigation she must have crossed Robert Godwin’s tracks.’

There was a knock at the door. Wisting did not often keep it closed, and though he did not want to share this with the others, he would soon have to tell them that his daughter might have become part of their enquiry.

‘Come in!’ he shouted.

It was Mortensen. ‘He’s been checked and is nowhere near. Odd Werner Ellefsen has a whorl pattern, while Robert Godwin’s fingerprints have a loop formation.’ He sat in the vacant chair and looked at them, picking up the tense atmosphere. ‘Spit it out,’ he said.

Wisting gave him a condensed version and watched Mortensen draw conclusions. As investigators, they were used to assuming that the worst had happened.

‘She could have discovered something,’ Mortensen said, leaning back.

‘She may have found the Caveman,’ Wisting said.

‘Talking to people about Viggo Hansen, she may have come into contact with him. That also opens the possibility that Viggo Hansen’s death was not from natural causes.’

‘You examined the scene,’ Wisting reminded him.

‘The discovery site,’ Mortensen corrected. ‘There was nothing to suggest a crime, but perhaps we were prejudiced. Blinded by the idea that there was no motive or people around him who might do him harm. Now we know that Bob Crabb visited him last summer. He could have stirred up something.’ He placed his palms on his knees. ‘Where’s her computer?’ he asked.

‘At home,’ Wisting said. He assumed it would be password-protected, but regretted not bringing it with him. Staff here could circumvent such things. He had not gone thoroughly through her papers either. The relationship chart was all he had brought.

‘What is it we’re not seeing?’ Leif Malm wondered. ‘Bob Crabb found something that led him here. Now it seems that Line has come across something similar.’

‘Bob Crabb followed the family history,’ Wisting said. ‘We have a theory that Robert Godwin’s Norwegian origins made him choose Larvik when he fled here. His ancestors were from this area. Crabb simply followed his tracks.’

A thought struck Wisting as he spoke. He searched among the papers on his desk and found the list of tip-offs that had arrived in the wake of the newspaper article with Bob Crabb’s photograph. He keyed in Torunn Borg’s room number on the intercom. ‘Did you say that Robert Godwin had no surviving relatives in Norway?’ he asked.

‘Yes. The last one who lived here was called Iversen and moved first to Langesund in the sixties and later to Denmark.’

Wisting held up the report from the pensioners who thought they had seen Bob Crabb on board the Danish ferry. Aware that his pulse was racing, he pulled out Line’s relationship chart. ‘Is his name Frank Iversen?’ he asked, in an unsteady voice.

‘Yes, he lives in Hirsthals, moved there in 1990. He has no other family.’

Wisting turned to face Leif Malm. ‘We need everything you can find on him,’ he said. ‘And we need it as fast as possible.’