The Hunting Dogs (16 page)

Finn Haber accompanied Wisting to his car. Though the weather had cleared, the temperature
had dropped.

Behind the wheel, Wisting’s thoughts turned to Suzanne. He felt he had unintentionally
embarrassed her, and that it was time to talk, to ask her frankly what she felt for
him. At the same time, however, he realised this was not the moment. Instead he drove
towards Brekke, turning off for Ruglandstrand and the Linde family’s summer house.
A gate closed off the last stretch leading to the property. Wisting parked and walked
the rest.

He had been here every day in the weeks following Cecilia’s disappearance, if only
to say there was no news. It seemed to have grown even quieter and more desolate,
rain-sodden and dull. The estate held several buildings. The main house was a white
two-storey sea captain’s house with green window shutters, a hipped roof, protruding
dormers, and faded red roof tiles. Roses and wild ivy climbed along the walls.

A flock of crows took flight from one of the nearby trees, cackling as they flew towards
him. The stone path was overgrown with weeds, and what had once been a well kept garden
was now autumnal brown grass. A circular patio table lay upside down, surrounded by
high stinging nettles. In the middle of the courtyard, a flagpole stood with the tattered
remains of a blue pennant flapping at the top, the cord whipping against the pole
in the wind. A faded letter
C
from the company name
Canes
was barely legible on the blue background.

The once magnificent summer estate was not only empty, but also completely abandoned.
The Linde family could not have been here since that summer seventeen years ago.

He placed his hands on the glass of a grubby window. The window ledge was covered
in cobwebs and dead flies lay spread-eagled, wings down and legs in the air. The faded
curtains were closed, but through a gap he saw the past: massive pine furniture with
close-weave covers in traditional colours and patterns, wainscoting and mahogany-coloured
walls.

Cecilia’s room was located on the east gable wall. He could see the traces left by
the burglary on her windowsill. How really strange that the place had been left untouched,
even by thieves.

Here, too, a chink in the curtains allowed him a glimpse inside: a wide bed with a
pink blanket at the footboard, a large cassette player on a chest of drawers, and
on the shelves above, her music cassettes arrayed with ornaments, little plush teddy
bears and other items.

Wisting advanced onto the south-facing terrace and stared out across the ocean, listening
to the pounding waves in the cove below.

On the beach a man was walking a black Labrador, the dog scampering freely at his
side. When he caught sight of Wisting he called the dog and attached its lead. Wisting
thought there was something familiar about him, but he had reached halfway before
he knew who it was. Danny Flom, the photographer who had been Cecilia Linde’s boyfriend.
Still retaining some of his bohemian style, he was dressed in jeans full of holes,
a black polo-neck sweater and a well-worn windproof jacket. His clear brown eyes were
overshadowed by the stiff brim of an old-fashioned cloth cap.

‘It’s been ages since I’ve seen anyone here,’ he said, holding out his hand to Wisting.

‘It’s ages since I’ve been here,’ Wisting replied. ‘Seventeen, to be exact.’

‘Do you recognise me? It was another detective I had most contact with. Hammer. Is
he with you these days?’

Wisting confirmed his recollection and that Nils Hammer still worked at the police
station. The black dog sniffed round his ankles. He crouched down to scratch behind
its ears.

‘I’m here a lot,’ Danny Flom said. ‘Not exactly here at the Linde place, but I have
a cottage on the other side of the headland.’ He pointed in the direction he had come.
‘We bought it four years ago. Despite everything that happened I always longed to
come back. My life took quite a different direction from what I had expected that
summer, of course, but I moved on. Onwards and upwards.’

‘
Flomlys
,’ Wisting said.

Danny Flom looked surprised.

‘I read about you in a newspaper a few years ago,’ Wisting said. ‘You’d won an award.’

‘
Flomlys
was an idea Cecilia and I had. She was brilliant in front of a camera, but even better
behind it. I managed to get it up and running all the same. It just took a bit longer,
and with another guy as my partner.’

He unclipped the dog’s lead and it shuffled off in the direction of the huge glass
doors of the main house. Virginia creeper had spread across the walls and its fronds
had spread over the cracked glass.

‘I read about you in the newspaper as well,’ Danny Flom said. Wisting did not reply.
He walked over to the railings, spattered with dried bird droppings. ‘I’m not bothered
how you managed to catch him. I’m just happy you did. I told Hammer that at the time.
Just get him caught. What pains me is that he’s out again. He took Cecilia from us
forever, but now he’s out and has the nerve to claim he’s innocent.’

Danny Flom had been the special project assigned to Nils Hammer. His financial difficulties
and strained relationship with Cecilia’s father had meant that they had considered
the theory that the abduction had been arranged by the lovers.

‘Do you have any contact with her family?’ Wisting asked.

‘Not now. Her mother sent me Christmas cards for a few years, and I phoned her a couple
of times, but I had to move on with my life, you see. I got married four years later,
if you didn’t know. Then I got divorced and remarried. I put the Cecilia business
behind me.’ He called to the dog, though it did not respond. ‘Now it’s happened again.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The girl who’s missing. Linnea Kaupang. Haven’t you considered that someone may have
taken her?’

Wisting had indeed considered that. It overshadowed everything else.

On the way back to the cottage Wisting stopped at the
Meny
supermarket in Søndersrød, but didn’t get out of the car. Too many familiar faces,
and as he preferred to avoid the questions, comments and looks, he had driven on.

He put Haber’s box on the coffee table and picked up the newspaper still lying open
at the Cecilia story.

Haber was right. The amateur fisherman who gave a statement to
VG
was not an alibi witness. He might have seen Haglund at the lake, but Haglund could
have managed to fit in a fishing trip while Cecilia was in the cellar. He checked
himself. This was exactly the kind of thinking that led to Haglund’s prosecution when
they had found means of explaining away all objections.

He leafed through to the story Line was covering in Fredrikstad and a large picture
of Jonas Ravneberg’s house. His name had been released. A smaller photo showed the
crime scene with the contours of his body visible underneath a blanket. The most dramatic
aspect of the image was his dog sitting with big dark eyes at the foot of the stretcher.

The break-in at his home was described as ‘mysterious’. The break-in at the Linde
family’s country estate had been too. Mysterious. Again, nothing had been stolen.

He read the remainder of the story before folding away the newspaper. Line wrote well,
he thought, uncomfortable that she was close to something so dangerous.

From Haber’s box he took out the picture of Rudolf Haglund stripped to the waist at
the hospital.
Unsullied
was the first word that had come to him in Haber’s workroom. Again the word seemed
appropriate. He could not imagine how to interpret it but knew of psychological tests
with ink stains where patients were invited to say the first word that entered their
head.

On the wall at the other side of the room there was an old framed maritime map of
the Oslo fjord. He unhooked it and pushed Rudolf Haglund’s picture onto the nail,
piercing his taut ribcage, and taped Cecilia’s picture beside it.

Seductive
was the first word that came to mind. Several other pictures followed: alluring,
teasing, was probably the desired effect. Danny Flom had said she was brilliant in
front of the camera. This image had been used in an advertising campaign for that
sweater. Her breasts lifted the letters of the word,
Canes
.

Canes
was the fashion collection and each garment was given a supplementary name. The sweater
in the picture was called
Venatici. Canes Venatici.

Wisting said the words aloud,
Canes Venatici
the constellation known as the Hunting Dogs. Johannes Linde had pointed it out to
him one evening at his estate, an almost insignificant group of stars situated below
the Plough.

He turned his mind to Rudolf Haglund. ‘The Hunting Dogs,’ he said, into empty space.

That was what they had been, he and his colleagues. A pack of dogs pursuing a murderer.
Rudolf Haglund was the man they had caught but, like any other hunting dogs, they
had followed the warmest scent without further thought.

In Haber’s box, behind the divider marked
Reconstruction 20/7
, he found several photos of the Gumserød reconstruction, with the investigators gathered
out at the intersection, not in a huddle, as in the newspaper, but spread out. Frank
Robekk still stood alone with a cigarette in his mouth, peering over his glasses at
the others. Audun Vetti and Nils Hammer seemed to be discussing something. Wisting
selected one to hang on the wall.

He stared at the three photographs with the curious feeling that something he had
seen or read recently was significant, and struggled to reconstruct his actions of
that day in his mind. Footsteps on the verandah fronting the cottage brought him back.
Light steps, almost inaudible, stopping outside the door. Journalists, he thought,
his heart beating faster as the door creaked open. He grabbed a log of firewood to
use as a weapon.

‘Hello?’ It was Line, greeting him with a broad smile. ‘Lovely to see you.’

‘You too.’

‘It’s cold in here,’ she said.

‘I was just about to light the fire.’ He threw the log in the open hearth and stacked
kindling around it.

‘I’ve tried to phone you,’ Line said, examining the three photographs.

‘It’s on silent. I keep forgetting to check.’

‘Is that him?’ she asked, pointing at Haglund’s photograph.

‘Yes.’

‘Why is his chest bare?’

The fire caught the dry firewood and the flames cast a reddish-gold glow across the
room. ‘It was taken at the hospital. He was being examined for wounds possibly inflicted
by Cecilia when he abducted her or smothered her.’

Line leaned closer to the picture. ‘Did you find any?’

‘No.’

‘Isn’t that rather odd? I’d have done all I could to get free. Kicked and scratched.’

‘We’re all different,’ Wisting said. ‘Many rapists don’t sustain any injuries.’

‘Was she raped?’

‘No.’

‘Isn’t that rather odd too? I mean, why else would he take her?’

It struck Wisting how acute Line was, but asking questions was her job.

She carried her shopping bags to the kitchen worktop. ‘I brought some food.’ Ten minutes
later, they were sitting on opposite sides of the coffee table, eating freshly buttered
bread rolls. ‘What are you looking for?’

Wisting hardly knew himself. ‘Inconsistencies,’ he said. ‘Insignificant snags or exceptions
that I didn’t notice seventeen years ago, or that I thought had nothing to do with
the case.’

Line picked up one of the police reports. ‘Can I help you? I’m good at that kind of
thing.’

Wisting by now understood the task was too extensive for one man. Line would be an
asset. As a journalist, she had an inbuilt mistrust of everything in public reports.
She was accustomed to attacking the establishment. ‘You can’t use any of it in the
newspaper,’ he said.

‘I’m not here as a journalist. I’m here because you’re my father.’

He cleared the dishes before explaining the case and how the documents were organised:
the lists, the projects and the fresh analysis, the break-in at the Linde estate,
the footprint, and Haber’s offer to take the blame, the encounter with Danny Flom,
and the appointment he had with Rudolf Haglund at the lawyer’s office the next day.
It had grown to quite a list.

‘What are you actually looking for?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Are you looking for the colleague who planted the DNA evidence, or something to support
your belief that you arrested the right man?’

‘Both,’ he said. ‘I think they’ll both be found here.’

Line got up and examined the three photographs, looking at them for some time. ‘So
you think a policeman planted the DNA evidence to make sure the murderer didn’t go
free?’

‘Yes.’

‘What if that wasn’t what happened at all?’ she asked.

‘What then?’

‘What if a policeman abducted her and planted evidence to give somebody else the blame?’

Wisting was minded to dismiss Line’s theory, but then he looked at the picture of
the investigators again. In all probability, one of them had falsified the evidence.
Possibly the same officer had committed other crimes. He had to admit that Line’s
suggestion was plausible. More than anything else, it reassured him that Line was
the right person to go through the case documents. If he had overlooked anything,
she would home in on it.

He added a couple more logs to the fire. ‘I need to do something,’ he said, lifting
his jacket.

Line was engrossed in the first ring binder. ‘What’s that?’

‘Pay Frank Robekk a visit. Frank fielded the tip-offs in the Cecilia case.’

‘The witness who was never heard! The phone call was probably transferred to him rather
than you.’

Wisting tucked the newspaper under his arm. ‘I didn’t have any direct contact with
callers of that kind. Will you lock the door behind me?’

‘Switch on your mobile, then,’ she said. ‘So I can get hold of you.’

She stood up and went out with him. The leaden sky was heavy with low, scudding rain
clouds, and a bitterly cold wind came sweeping in from the southwest.

His mobile rang before he sat in the car. An unknown number, it was not already listed
in unanswered calls. The voice sounded officious, introducing itself as Chief Inspector
Terje Nordbo of the Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs.

‘This concerns your handling of the Cecilia Linde murder,’ he said. ‘Acting Chief
Constable Audun Vetti has sent the documentation received from the defence lawyer,
Sigurd Henden, with regard to possible irregularities in the collection of evidence.
We have decided to initiate an investigation and would like to conduct a preliminary
interview with you.’

Wisting opened the car door. ‘Is this an investigation of me directly?’

‘Your status is that of a suspect. We are treating the case as gross negligence of
duty. That gives you the right to be accompanied by a defence lawyer.’

‘When were you thinking of?’ Wisting settled into the driving seat.

‘As soon as possible. Preferably as early as tomorrow.’

‘Where?’

‘We’re based in Hamar, but also have offices in Oslo.’

Wisting started the car. ‘What time tomorrow?’

‘Shall we say twelve o’clock?’

‘I’ve another appointment then. It’ll have to be two.’

Wisting thought about what he would say as he drove. A great deal would be dependent
on what Rudolf Haglund said in his lawyer’s office.

He would have preferred the meeting after he had made further inroads, but perhaps
it was just as well to endure it and get it done with.

When they had both embarked on a career in the police, Frank Robekk had lived on a
smallholding in Kleppaker with his parents. Now they were both dead, he lived there
on his own.

Wisting parked in the yard at the end of a long avenue of birch trees. Comprising
twelve acres of cultivated land and a similar area of grazing, the place provided
Frank with a good rental income in addition to his modest disability pension, as he
had once confided to Wisting.

His elder brother Alf lived on the other side of the fields, in a house built on a
separate, hived off plot where Ellen Robekk vanished the summer before Cecilia’s disappearance.

The breeze carried the scent of a bonfire, and a plume of smoke rose behind the old
barn. Taking the newspaper with him, Wisting found Frank Robekk leaning on a stick,
smoking and gazing into flames that leapt from a rusty oil drum. Tiny flecks of ash
hung in the air.

Wisting was beside Robekk before the man noticed him, startled, as if he had been
lost in his own thoughts.

‘On your own?’ Robekk poked the stick into the drum to revive the flames. Sparks shot
a metre into the air. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked, flicking his cigarette end
into the blaze.

‘I’m looking for answers.’

Robekk produced a paper bag from his jacket pocket and popped a couple of lozenges
into his mouth to cover the smell of cigarette smoke, as he had always done. ‘Who
isn’t?’

‘Have you read the newspapers?’ Wisting asked, holding up that day’s edition of
VG.

‘Not today, but I’ve caught what they’re saying about Rudolf Haglund’s DNA profile.’

‘Did you hear anything about it at the time?’ Did anyone mention doing something like
that?’

‘Never, and I don’t believe any of it. I don’t think any of the boys would have done
that.’

‘It had to be someone.’

‘Some other explanation? What if one of the cigarette butts out at Gumserød really
belonged to Haglund, and the other two had been dropped there earlier?’

‘Tiedemann’s Gold was the brand he used.’

‘I do too, but if they’re sold out I’ll take another.’

Everything could be explained and dismissed, Wisting thought, if you did not wish
to believe anyone on the force had tampered with the evidence.

‘It could have been done more convincingly, don’t you think?’ Robekk said. ‘To be
certain, you could have planted a more decisive piece of evidence, a strand of Cecilia’s
hair, for example, a more direct connection between victim and killer.’

The smoke gusted at them and they moved to the other side of the blaze. No matter
where they stood, the smoke found them. Robekk removed his thick glasses to rub his
eyes. He had worn the same frames for as long as Wisting could remember; without them
he became a stranger.

Wisting handed him the newspaper. ‘Pages eight and nine.’

Frank Robekk took the paper and put his glasses back on. ‘A witness says he phoned
in a tip-off that would have provided Rudolf Haglund with an alibi.’

‘That’s me,’ Frank said, pointing at the archive photo the newspaper had used.

‘Have you heard about this before?’ Wisting asked. ‘That somebody phoned and said
they had seen Haglund on a fishing trip?’

Frank read the whole article before shaking his head. ‘I would have remembered that.
Besides, all the tip-offs were recorded and allocated a number. They were passed on
to you.’ He handed the paper back. ‘Have you checked him out? To see if he’s some
guy Haglund met in jail that he’s persuaded to fool you?’

‘That’s up to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to discover,’ Wisting said. Silence
settled round them. The flames in the oil drum crackled. ‘I went to the Linde family’s
estate today. They haven’t been back there since. It looks completely abandoned.’

‘I know. I was out there this summer.’

‘Why did you go?’

‘Just a whim. I’ve been there a few times. Walked the paths Cecilia used when she
was out running.’

‘You were there before the kidnapping too,’ Wisting said. ‘Remember the burglary?’

Robekk pushed the stick into the drum again, rooting around in the embers. ‘Did you
ever see Cecilia alive?’ Wisting asked.

‘She was there.’

‘You spoke to her?’

Robekk shook his head. ‘No. She returned from a run just as I left. A fortnight after
that, she disappeared.’

Neither spoke for some time. The fire in the drum was dwindling, a cold wind sweeping
over the agricultural landscape. Wisting drew his jacket more tightly round his neck.

Robekk leaned the stick against the wall of the barn. ‘If you’ve come to talk about
the old days,’ he said, ‘we could just as well go inside and have a cup of coffee?’