Closed for Winter (8 page)

When Wisting returned to his office, he regretted not stopping at a pharmacy to buy a new pack of
Paracet
. The single tablet he had found in his desk had eased the pain, but not eliminated it entirely. He rubbed at his tender chin as he logged into the electronic project room where an endless stream of information poured in from all the caseworkers. Sometimes the sheer amount was so overwhelming that it blinded him to the intended focus of his attention, but there was no method of sifting the facts. He was forced to absorb it all and attempt to sort out the most pressing elements, knowing well that the answers often lay in the details.

Before beginning to read, he phoned Suzanne.

‘How are you getting on?’ she asked.

‘It’s sore, but I’m okay.’

‘You should have let a doctor look at it.’

He navigated around the computer screen while talking. ‘If it gets worse, I will,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken a
Paracet
.’

‘Are you coming home tonight?’

‘Yes, but I’ll be late.’ He cleared his throat before continuing. ‘Line phoned. She’ll be popping in.’ The silence at the other end told him Suzanne was waiting for an explanation. ‘She’s finished with Tommy. She’s coming down to take things easy for a while.’

‘Oh, that’s a shame. Is she upset?’

‘More relieved. She’s the one who ended it. She’s given him a few days to pack and find somewhere else. In the meantime, she’ll stay at the cottage.’

‘At the cottage? But it’s not been fixed up.’

‘This is what she wants to do. She’ll pop in to pick up the key.’

‘Okay. Do you think I should go with her to give her a hand?’

‘I think she wants to be on her own.’

‘Then I’ll stay here and prepare something for us to eat, in the hope that you can find the time.’

Wisting promised to come home if he could and replaced the phone on his desk. His landline and his mobile were constant sources of interruption, and the conversations were too often unnecessarily prolonged. He keyed in his out-of-office message on the office phone’s voicemail, and pushed his mobile aside, not risking a complete disconnect from the outside world.

Over an hour passed before the decisive call came in.

Unable to catch the name of the man who phoned, Wisting understood he worked at the central HQ of Oslo police district. ‘The good news first,’ the voice said. ‘I think we’ve found the hearse you’re looking for.’

Wisting leaned his head back, fixing his eye on a spot on the ceiling. ‘And the bad news?’

‘It’s on fire.’

Wisting closed his eyes; the thought had occurred to him. ‘What else can you tell me?’

‘We received a report from some hikers at two minutes past twelve about a vehicle on fire on the eastern side of Vettakollen.’

Frowning, Wisting glanced at the clock. Forty-eight minutes earlier. Vettakollen was only a few kilometres from the National Hospital, at most a drive of ten minutes. Nevertheless, several hours had elapsed from the time the vehicle had vanished until it had been set alight.

The man at the other end continued. ‘Police and fire service are on the scene, and it’s swarming with press.’

Wisting clicked onto the Internet to check whether the news had reached the online outlets. Fires were sources of excellent photographs, even when they were extinguished. ‘Are you sure it is our vehicle?’ he asked.

‘Yes. The folk who phoned in the report read out the registration number.’

Verdens Gang
newspaper had written about the case under the caption
HEARSE SET ABLAZE
. A reader’s mobile phone photograph accompanied the report. Wisting squinted at the screen. The firefighters had completed their work, and the police had cordoned off the area surrounding the burnt out vehicle.

Wisting clicked further into the story to a series of photographs. Steam was rising from the mangled wreckage of blackened metal, but the damage did not appear to be as comprehensive as he had feared. ‘Are there any witnesses?’ he enquired.

‘Nobody who’s seen anything other than the actual fire.’

‘How does the car interior look?’

‘The compartment is empty, but your body seems to be still lying in the rear. If he’d been conveyed in a coffin, perhaps more would have been saved. The plastic of the body bag melted and fed the flames.’

Wisting closed his eyes once more. He had seen enough charred bodies to fear fire more than anything else. If he had to choose between a body from the sea and a fire victim, he would prefer the drowned body’s swollen, formless mass to the fire victim’s carbonised, flaking remains.

‘We’re sending technicians to the scene,’ the man from headquarters continued. ‘As soon as is practical though, we’ll tow the vehicle here and examine it. The Forensics team might get the body early tomorrow.’

Wisting thanked him and asked to be kept informed.

The online report had been updated with the newspaper’s own photographs. The photographer had used a wide-angle lens. In addition to the wrecked car covered in foam, he had captured the firefighting crew packing away their equipment, spectators covering their mouths and noses from the stinking smoke, and the surrounding area. The discovery site was a clearing beside a gravel track. In the background, the yellow foliage of autumnal trees stretched up to a leaden sky.

He skimmed the text, establishing that this was indeed the missing hearse. The newspaper reporter had spoken to a hiker who had passed through the site half an hour before the fire was discovered, when the area had been deserted. The big question was: where had the car been during the hours between disappearance and being set on fire?

The newspaper neglected to pose the other unanswered question. Where was the driver?

The rain had begun after Line collected the cottage key. Now, as she drove towards the coast, fog swirled in from sea and she activated the wipers. Overhanging clouds reduced visibility, obscuring the roadsides so much that she took a wrong turning three times before finding the right gravel track, full of bumps and murky puddles. Another vehicle had left behind deep, muddy tyre tracks which made it difficult to manoeuvre.

The track twisted and turned for three quarters of a kilometre through dense woodland before climbing to an elevation which gave her a view of rocky slopes as they rolled down to sea. Fog erased the silvery contours of the landscape.

The track terminated at an open area about thirty metres from the cottage and a footpath continued from there, the final stretch covered in crushed seashells. A large silver van, its sides splattered with mud, was parked in the middle of the clearing. Stopping in front of a thick dog rose bush on the opposite side, Line stepped from her car and took deep appreciative gulps of the salt sea air.

The location of the cottage was exactly as she remembered, slightly secluded, the building painted red with a tiled roof and green window shutters. At the bathing jetty down by the sea, a seagull stood on a mooring post, its beak jutting towards the horizon. Several rungs on the ladder leading to the diving platform had by now rotted away, but the sight nevertheless evoked happy childhood memories of summer visits here at Uncle Georg’s cottage.

A man wearing a black, ankle-length raincoat was standing on Steinholmen a few hundred metres off, holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes and looking in a northeasterly direction. Obviously he had not seen Line approach. She looked in the same direction, but could see nothing beyond the monotonous grey mist. The seagull on the jetty took flight, rising in a circling, gliding motion, hovering on the air. She carried the bags of cleaning materials and food to the wide wooden staircase which led to the timber verandah on the cottage’s south face.

A dead bird lay on the top step. She prodded it warily with her foot, causing its wings to spread out. Slime oozed from the yellow, sharp beak, forming a small stain on the timber. She unbolted the door, inserting the key in the lock with some difficulty. It had been so long since anyone had been here that it had become somewhat recalcitrant. Inside she found herself in semi-darkness. The cold and stuffy air had a nauseating smell of mould.

Leaving the door open she located the light switch. The shade was full of dead flies and moths, subduing the light. She would need to remove the window shutters before she could fully inspect the place and to do that she would have to go outside.

The furniture in the living room was covered in white sheets. An ancient, sun-bleached maritime map of the Oslo fjord hung on one wall beside three framed black and white photographs. On the opposite side of the room, an overfull bookcase covered the entire wall from floor to ceiling with books stacked untidily and with no discernible system. Hand-woven rugs were thrown across the wooden floor. A large open fireplace divided the living room from the adjacent kitchen. Apart from cold, grey ashes and the remains of a few burnt logs, everything was spick and span.

The cottage contained four other rooms: a bathroom, storeroom and two bedrooms, one almost as large as the living room. As well as a wide bed, it was furnished with a writing desk and high-backed winged armchair. Two large windows overlooked the sea. She noticed that the fog was now even more impenetrable; rendering the man on Steinholmen invisible.

Returning to the kitchen, she turned on the tap, sending cold water into the sink. She located the hot water tank underneath the worktop and switched it on, but it would take several hours before she had hot water for washing, unless she boiled some in the kettle.

The refrigerator had been pulled back from the wall and its door left ajar. She plugged it in before pushing it back into place and filling it with her purchases. In the living room she removed the dust sheets from the furniture and somehow sparked some life into an old portable radio.

Standing at the windows staring into the fog, she thought about Tommy, his dark, warm eyes, sinewy forearms, and the intensity of his embrace.

She had never felt so close to anyone before, and had become dependent on this closeness. Possibly she had become more dependent on their physical intimacy as the mental distance between them increased. The impossibility of remaining in the relationship had struck her with full force only a few weeks earlier, and although it had been painful she had also felt a sense of relief. She needed to reclaim her life; she needed to stand on her own two feet. Deep inside, she had known for some time that life with Tommy would end in sadness, possibly worse; it had been clear for all to see. His dark sides, so attractive initially, were now the very aspects that drove her away.

She shivered as though freezing, and it struck her that this was how it often went. The qualities that the first intensity of passion masked with an indulgent veil became impossible when that initial intensity subsided. Tommy’s hidden life, his nightly jaunts and whispered telephone conversations in the bathroom simply created mounting unease and frustration.

Outside, the mist began to clear. The trees were being buffeted by the wind, which also blew away the fog.

Sitting down, she reached for a book that was sticking out from a bookshelf, one of Agatha Christie’s crime novels. A chocolate wrapper near the back had been used as a bookmark. She read a few lines before closing it again.

Her head was filled with chaotic thoughts: doubt, amazement, and a mixture of memories good and bad. To spend a few days at the cottage was at least to try to escape these thoughts, but she would need more than an old crime novel to help her. The silent solitary feeling now enveloping her did not exactly help, but perhaps this was something she could not escape. Perhaps it was something she had to face. She fetched her laptop, intent on expressing these disconnected thoughts and feelings in words.

She liked herself better now than she had before she met Tommy. Previously, she had been immature and uncertain. Now she was still uncertain, but in a different way. She knew more about what she wanted and who she was, and had more awareness of what life could offer. She had learned what passion could do to people; how invigorating and destructive it could be at one and the same time. She was more mature, and knew it was time for her to move on.

She was twenty-seven years of age. Once she had believed a person of twenty-seven must be an adult and ready to settle down. How wrong could one be? It was time to grab life by the throat, time to live. Not inside her head, in the past or the future, but in the here and now.

Therefore she could not look back, but had to turn to a new chapter. Glancing again at the Agatha Christie novel, she picked it up and flicked through its pages. Everything was so elementary, so easily understood. A community or family is shaken to its foundations by a murder. Miss Marple enters the picture, gathers information, analyses the situation, exposes the murderer, and harmony is restored in a carefully controlled universe that is unambiguous and transparent. She might wish for someone to take control of her life in the same way, arranging it so that everything could be brought to a simple, logical and happy resolution.

She lifted her eyes to the window again. The sea was about to vanish into the blue-grey twilight. Remaining seated, she let her thoughts drift before deleting everything she had written about herself and beginning again with a fresh sentence:

They retrieved the body on the eighth of July, just after three o
’clock in the afternoon.

Satisfactory; an excellent opening for a crime novel.

Benjamin Fjeld’s photographs of the burnt out hearse, with an overview of its stowage space, filled Wisting’s computer screen. They gave no grounds for optimism. Nothing remained of the dead man’s clothing, and the blackened skin was covered in enormous, burst blisters. Wisting opened an attachment and homed in on a close-up of the head: a few tufts of hair still clung to the cracked skull but the nose and lips had been burned away and the eye sockets had become gaping holes.

Forensics could ascertain little from the charred corpse. Dental records might assist in establishing identity, but very few other clues would be available. He now regretted their reluctance to remove the balaclava at the crime scene to allow photographs.

Nils Hammer appeared at the door, rubbing his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. ‘That’s what our job has become,’ he said. ‘Sitting staring at a computer.’

Wisting laid aside his glasses and rubbed his painful jaw. ‘What progress have we made with the toll stations?’ he asked. ‘Have you received the data files?’

‘Yes indeed, and I’m beginning to form an overview, but it’s a slow task sorting the information.’ Hammer sat down. ‘There’s more traffic than I anticipated. If we keep within a twenty-minute time window, there are 378 cars passing both tolls on the way south. Of those there are actually as many as 216 that return the same night. The problem is that the data we receive from the toll company only includes the registration numbers. I have to look up every number manually in the vehicle registers to identify the car model and owner; that done, it starts to get interesting. I just need a break at the moment. Far too many letters and numbers at one time, my head’s spinning.’

Christine Thiis entered the room. ‘It’s out now,’ she said. ‘The media have discovered that the cottage where the crime took place belongs to Thomas Rønningen. They can’t get hold of him either.’

‘Perhaps we should try to make contact with his dentist?’ Hammer suggested, pointing to the screen in front of Wisting.

Christine Thiis grimaced as she crossed to the window. ‘What should I say when they phone?’

Wisting opened the desk drawer to see if there might possibly be any loose
Paracet
tablets lying around. ‘We can confirm it’s his cottage,’ he said. ‘And that we have not succeeded in contacting him.’

His mobile phone rang. He closed the drawer without finding any more painkillers. Checking the display, he restrained a satisfied smile and held up the phone for the others to read:
Thomas Rønningen
. He answered concisely, nodding in confirmation to the others when the man at the other end introduced himself.

‘I understand you’ve been trying to get hold of me,’ the television presenter said. Wisting confirmed that point. ‘I don’t know how much you’ve found out about what has happened, but we need to talk to you.’

‘I’ve heard the news. Is it my cottage? Is that why you phoned?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was afraid of that. I’m on my way over.’

‘When can you be here?’

‘In an hour, but I had hoped we could meet somewhere other than the police station. I expect there are a lot of press people there?’

‘Where did you have in mind?’

‘Could we make it as discreet as possible?’

‘We can find a solution, I’m sure.’ Wisting said. ‘We could meet at my house.’

‘At your house?’

‘I need to go home anyway.’

‘If we can do things that way I’d appreciate it very much.’

Wisting had never taken such a course of action before, but had no objection to it. The most critical aspect was to create an atmosphere in which the witness felt relaxed. He gave Thomas Røningen his address in Herman Wildenveysgate, and an hour later was parking in the driveway.

Suzanne was working beneath the giant birch tree in the garden, raking wet leaves. She wore his black Wellington boots and a pair of gardening gloves from the shed. Straightening her back, she smiled when she caught sight of him. Resting the rake against the tree trunk, she removed her gloves as she approached.

‘Great that you could manage,’ she said, giving him a kiss.

‘You’re so clever,’ he smiled, glancing over her shoulder.

‘I like working in the garden. It lets your thoughts run free.’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘I can tell you another time.’ She laughed as she kissed him again, and then drew back to scrutinise his features. ‘How are you?’

‘It’s throbbing,’ he replied, walking to the front door. ‘I need to find some painkillers.’

‘Was that why you came home?’

‘One of the reasons,’ he smiled. ‘We’re going to have a visitor.’

‘Who would that be?’

‘Thomas Rønningen.’ Suzanne repeated the name, without seeming to understand who he meant. ‘He’s a witness in the case,’ Wisting explained. ‘The body was found in his cottage.’

‘Does he have anything to do with it?’

‘That’s what I’ll be trying to find out.’

‘And you’re going to talk to him here?’

‘It was a practical solution.’

Suzanne pulled off the overlarge boots. ‘It’s a bit strange,’ she said.

‘In what way?’

‘We were sitting watching him on TV yesterday, and now he’s actually coming here.’

Inside, Wisting filled a glass with water from the tap and swallowed two
Paracet
tablets while Suzanne boiled the kettle for tea. ‘Line was here,’ she told him. ‘She took the key for the cottage.’

‘You didn’t manage to persuade her to stay here?’ Wisting asked, taking a seat at the window.

‘I asked her, but she said she wanted to have some time on her own.’

‘How did she seem?’

‘Fine, but I don’t like her being out there at Værvågen by herself. I wonder whether I should take a trip out there.’

Wisting drank the tea, appreciative of the concern she was displaying for Line. ‘That was what she wanted, of course,’ he said. ‘To be on her own for a while.’

‘All the same,’ Suzanne replied, nodding at the gloom outside. ‘The forecast is for the weather to worsen.’

The doorbell rang before they had finished their tea, and Wisting opened the door.

Thomas Rønningen, shorter than he had imagined, was dressed in jeans and a black turtle-necked sweater underneath his windcheater jacket. As he extended his hand with a jovial twinkle in his blue eyes, it struck Wisting that this felt like greeting an old friend. He led the way inside, where the famous television host hung his jacket in the hallway, removed his shoes and said hello to Suzanne. In the upstairs living room he stood by the window while Wisting found something to write on. Daylight was dwindling in the ashen sky outdoors.

‘Fantastic view here in good weather, I should think,’ Rønningen remarked.

‘Yes indeed,’ Wisting agreed. ‘Do sit down.’

‘We could probably have done this over the phone,’ Thomas Rønningen said, settling on the settee. ‘I don’t know anything about what has happened.’

Wisting sat directly opposite him and switched on the little tape recorder, prompting a more formal context. ‘All the same, it was good of you to take the time,’ he said.

The purpose of an interview was always the same: to obtain fresh information. Wisting often considered it a game played by two people who sat on opposite sides of a table, each with different information about a case. The police officer should take the lead to establish the terms of the interview but, occasionally, the interviewee was so proficient that he assumed control and the policeman ended up giving information instead of gathering it.

Thomas Rønningen was a professional adversary. In case he was more involved in this matter than he was admitting, Wisting decided to proceed with caution. He placed his notepad on his lap and leafed through to a blank page, mostly as a signal that a formal examination was in process.

‘When did you last visit your cottage?’

‘A fortnight ago. I was there from Friday to Monday.’

‘Were you alone?’

‘Yes.’

Wisting glanced at the tape recorder. He had learned from the celebrity press that Thomas Rønningen was divorced. They referred to him as an attractive young man who, in recent years, had been associated with a number of famous female actors and musicians. ‘No visitors?’ he asked.

Thomas Rønningen took a second or so to reflect. ‘No, actually not. I’m writing a book, and so I prefer to be on my own.’

‘A book?’

‘About what you don’t get to see onscreen,’ Rønningen said with a smile. ‘What happens behind the scenes and after the camera lights are switched off. I’ve hosted almost two hundred programmes with nearly one thousand guests. All the elite of Norwegian society have been there. Industry leaders and cultural icons. I’ve been visited by heads of state and members of royalty, porno stars and celebrated criminals. It’s obvious there has to be a book in it.’

Smiling back, Wisting continued. ‘Does anyone other than you make use of the cottage?’

Thomas Rønningen squirmed in his seat. A hint of tension at the corner of his eye suggested that he felt uncomfortable about this question. ‘I don’t quite understand where you’re going with all this. The point is surely that the people who were there yesterday weren’t there by invitation.’

‘Sorry.’ Wisting placed his pen on the open notepad. He should have explained the purpose of the interview more clearly; an uncertain witness was a poor witness. ‘This is about elimination,’ he explained. ‘The crime scene technicians have obtained fingerprints and DNA profiles, so we need to exclude people who have had authorised access to the cottage before we can be sure which traces have been left behind by the assailant. We will require fingerprints from you. If this becomes a lengthy investigation, it may also be necessary to take prints from your guests.’

Thomas Rønningen leaned back in his seat ‘I don’t know …’ he began, but broke off just as he did on the TV screen. ‘Let me try to understand,’ he said instead. ‘My cottage is the scene of a murder.’ Wisting nodded. ‘I understood that the man who was murdered was found in the outer hallway. Was he killed there, or inside the actual cottage?’

‘He was killed in the hallway,’ Wisting clarified. ‘On the way in. The assailant was already inside the cottage.’

Wisting said no more, wondering whether he had given away too much. He had to assume that Rønningen would be interviewed by the press and make reference to what he had learned.

‘A burglar?’

‘That’s one theory.’

‘What did they steal?’

‘Several cottages were broken into. It appears that they were after easily marketable domestic electronics equipment. What did you have there?’

‘I certainly had that kind of thing, and a portable computer I worked on when I was there.’ Wisting saw the ransacked cottage in his mind’s eye. ‘It was on the coffee table,’ Rønningen added.

‘That’s probably gone,’ Wisting confirmed. ‘There were some pages of manuscript left behind.’

Thomas Rønningen grimaced. ‘It was an old computer, and I’ve backed up the files, of course, but I don’t like the thought of the manuscript going astray.’

Wisting picked up his pen once more. Rønningen’s focus had shifted and he had avoided the question of who used the cottage other than himself. Throughout the interview his hands had been fidgeting, which was unlike his demeanour on television. Restlessness suggested unease.

Wisting restated his question. ‘Who, other than yourself, has been to the cottage?’

‘I had a lot of visitors during the summer, including
Se og Hør
magazine. And I had visits from some colleagues at
NRK
.’

Thomas Rønningen rattled off a few names, and listed several summer guests, while Wisting took notes. Eventually the list contained an excess of blonde women considerably younger than the cottage owner. ‘And what’s more, I was visited by David Kinn and some of his friends.’

Wisting could not disguise how surprised he was. ‘The investor?’ he asked.

Thomas Rønningen nodded. David Kinn was described in the media as an acrobat of the financial world and a repeated bankrupt. He was involved in gambling and pyramid schemes, and several years earlier had been sentenced for receiving criminal proceeds after borrowing money that turned out to be stolen. The most recent headlines had him being pursued by thugs.

‘He was a guest on my programme around Easter. We had some business meetings during the summer, but they didn’t lead to any agreements.’

Wisting sat without uttering a word, hoping that the television presenter would find the silence uncomfortable and, from habit, take up the thread of the conversation.

‘He borrowed the cottage for a few weeks in late summer,’ the man finally said. ‘I don’t know if he had visitors or anyone else staying with him.’

‘A few weeks?’

‘Three. From the 4th to the 25th of August.’

Wisting noted the name
David Kinn
at the top of the sheet of paper. The list of visitors had become lengthy, and a furrow was digging into the TV personality’s brow. ‘Do you have any idea who the murdered man was?’ he asked.

Again the conversation was being diverted. ‘We don’t have a firm identity,’ Wisting said.

Thomas Rønningen indicated the notepad. ‘Do you think it might be one of them?’ he asked.

Wisting cast his eye over the list of names. ‘Do you?’ he threw the question back.

The television celebrity shook his head. ‘I think it was completely accidental that it happened in my cottage,’ he said, gesturing with his hand as Wisting had seen him do on TV when he wanted to introduce a new topic. ‘You must have a difficult job. Challenging, is it not?’

‘That’s what makes it so interesting.’

‘I’m fascinated by the way competent investigators like you manage to see connections that others are blind to.’

Wisting understood how television guests felt comfortable and opened up in Thomas Rønningen’s company. It was natural for him to be the central person and focus of attention, but at the same time he managed to direct the spotlight towards his conversational partner. His charm and gift for rhetoric created a congenial atmosphere, a type of charisma that could not be learned or practised. Nevertheless what he said seemed more like a diversionary tactic than a genuine opinion.