Death on Pilot Hill

“Constable Wangelin. . we need to look more closely at the father. . he’s a piece of work. Interesting how he arranges people like pieces on a chessboard. . to be moved around for his pleasure and convenience.”

“He’s big into ‘people management’ as he calls it. . he gave me a long boring lecture on that topic when I asked him what he does at work. Nokia is apparently thinking of sending him to finish his business school education at Harvard or Yale in America. His library is filled with tons of books on that topic.”

“How can Gunnar Haugen work as a people manager at a big corporation when he can’t even manage the location or safety of his own son?”

“I guess. . Chief Inspector. . that big corporations have their own version of reality that is the opposite of reality.”

“Ja! That’s why absolute idiots thrive in big corporations. Anything else on the biological mother?”

“She eventually gave up on getting custody of Karl. She worked for a time as a secretary here in Oslo. . then two years after she returned from Sweden she went to Trondheim to visit relatives. That’s where she met Police Inspector Arvid Engen of the Sor-Trondelag district. They married and live in Namsos. Karl visited them every two weeks for the weekend during the school year. . and he spent most of his summer vacations with them.”

“Do the birth mother and her husband Arvid Engen have alibis for June fourth?”

“Airtight. She was at work at the courthouse in Trondheim. Arvid was also at work. . chasing down and arresting a gang of burglars all during that Friday with four other officers.”

“Has the Engen house been checked and searched in Namsos?”

“Ja. Nothing.”

“Could Karl have been taken by a friend or relative of Maya or Arvid?”

“I doubt it. . not after the commotion in the media over the boy. Anyone would have to be pretty stupid to keep little Karl Haugen after all that publicity. . and the massive five-hundred-thousand kroner reward that Karl’s father posted for Karl’s return or clues leading to his whereabouts.”

“Constable Wangelin. . another thing I’ve been thinking about. . was Karl supposed to be seeing his mother Maya Engen on the weekend after the Friday when he disappeared?”

“No. . the next weekend. . Now that I think of it. . the Engens and Haugens had some rather strange arrangements for those weekend visits.”

“Strange how?”

“Every other weekend Inspector Arvid Engen or Maya Engen drove down from Trondheim on the E-Six and they picked Karl up at a gas station in the small town of Otta. . which is about the halfway point between Oslo and Trondheim and Volda.”

“Why Volda?. . Isn’t Volda a little town on the coast. . about two hundred miles south of Trondheim?”

“Ja. Volda is where Maya Engen’s first husband lives with her first son. The man owns a goat farm that sells goat milk for a cheese factory. So. . every two weeks. . on the same day that Maya and Inspector Arvid Engen drove south to Otta. . the goat farmer drove east from Volda with his son on Highway Fifteen to Otta. . They all met at the same gas station. . at the same time. . with Karl and his father Gunnar Haugen and his stepmother Agnes.”

“So every two weeks this woman. . Maya Engen. . reunites for the weekend with the two sons that she abandoned to their fathers? How cozy.”

“It gets better. Karl doesn’t come alone on the hand-off trips with his father and stepmother Agnes. Oh no. He comes along with Thor Jenssen. . who is the first son of Agnes from her third marriage. . actually her second marriage. . but she got the dumb and wealthier third husband to adopt Thor as his own child.”

“Agnes Haugen. . has been married four times before she’s forty?. .”

“Ja. We found out quite a lot about her from her ex-husbands. Her first husband she married right after graduating from high school. . she married him so she could get out of her parents’ house and away from their control. Her own friends and family agree that she pursued him hard in high school and did her best to bed him down.”

“I know the type,” said Sohlberg as he thought of Margerete Frederisksen his old high school vixen on Ulvoya Island.

“You do?”

“Ja. . Constable Wangelin. . believe it or not I was young once upon a time.”

“Well. . anyway. . Agnes Haugen’s friends and family all agree that the young man wouldn’t spend much time with her because his parents were wealthy real estate developers who were adamant about Agnes not hanging around their son or their house. They hated her. . still do with a passion.”

“So how did she get around the young man’s parents?”

“Agnes’s own friends told us that she lied to him about being pregnant. . and how she might even press rape charges against him. So he was forced to marry her. Then. . when no baby bump showed up on her belly she claimed that she had a miscarriage. That’s when his parents swooped in and paid her off handsomely to get a divorce.”

“This belongs in some Hollywood tabloid.”

“Happens all the time Chief Inspector.”

“Not when I was growing up. That would’ve been extremely unusual. A young woman sleeping around like that to get a monied husband. Huh!” Sohlberg immediately noticed that Wangelin gave him a pity look as if saying, “Boy did you lead a sheltered life. You need to get on with modern times and not be an old-fashioned prude.”

“Now Chief we have Agnes’s husband Number Two. . a good-looking hunk but not too smart. She used the divorce pay-off and her parents’ money to try to get him set up in several businesses. . but they all failed. He’s broke. . a ne’er-do-well who’s failed in too many business ventures. . but he does succeed in impregnating her.”

“Don’t they always.”

“They have a son Thor. . but by then the marriage is an unhappy disaster. . each spouse accusing the other of infidelity. . seems they each had lots of casual sexual liaisons. Then she marries husband Number Three. He seems to know the most about her. . he has quite a lot of dirt on her. . on account of him being in contact with all of the husbands. . including the current Number Four. . who is of course. . Karl’s father.”

Sohlberg nodded in glum silence as Constable Wangelin proceeded to tell him about the many lies that Agnes had used to ensnare Gunnar Haugen into an unhappy marriage. Sohlberg wondered if someone — an ex-husband or her current husband — was trying to frame Agnes Haugen the stepmother with a salacious if not controversial past. Solhlberg sighed and said:

“I’m not surprised about her lies to get this man Gunnar Haugen since. . as you can imagine. . I’ve come across far worse marriages in my more than twenty years of investigations. . but my head is still spinning from all these crazy family relationships.”

“They are complicated.”

“What bothers me the most Constable Wangelin. . is that these adults meet twice a month to trade kids as if they were collectors who meet to trade Pokemon or baseball cards or some other collectible. So. . who picks up Agnes Haugen’s son Thor?”

“Her third husband’s parents. . the paternal grandfather is retired Navy. . they live near Trondheim.”

“Alright. Do this today. . since I doubt Nilsen ordered this. I want to find out what happened at the gas station where the parents met to trade the children. Call whoever’s in charge of policing Otta. . get whatever constables are necessary out there today or tomorrow at the latest. . have them find any witness who may’ve come into contact with this sad bunch of parents. Also. . have them check out all of the closed circuit cameras at or near the gasoline station. . maybe a camera filmed something interesting on the Friday of Karl Haugen’s disappearance. . or the Saturday after.”

“But it’s more than a year later.”

“I know. . I doubt if they’ll find anything. . but it’s worth the long shot that someone saw something suspicious. . or that some camera captured a picture of someone else with Karl Haugen. At least see if they can get any video. Look for bank ATMs nearby. They usually keep their video much longer. We need to focus on the parents before we look at anyone else.”

“Ja Chief Inspector. . it’s not good that we turned a blind eye on these parents. . and grandparents. You