Death on Pilot Hill

“Ja,” said Sohlberg. “But why. . why do this?”

“The third oldest motive in the world after lust and greed. . Revenge.”

“Revenge.”

“Ja,” said Anton Ronning while another chocolate bar disappeared into his mouth like so many of the hapless victims who fell into his voracious pit of depravity. “Sohlberg. . these chocolates remind me of my sweet grandmother. . when she wasn’t beating the life out of me she always quoted me an old saying. . Revenge converts a little right into a great wrong.”

PART THREE: DOORS OF PERCEPTION

To get a confession the police detective must offer the suspect a series of doors that must be attractive enough for the suspect to open and step through. Each door should open the path to a damaging admission or a provable lie.

— Lars Eliassen, Police Inspector

Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no fibs.

— Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774)

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Chapter 10

MORNING OF 1 YEAR AND 25 DAYS

AFTER THE DAY, FRIDAY, JUNE 4

The evidence room in the basement smelled as all evidence rooms smell: moldy. The clerk handed Sohlberg a numbered box with Karl Haugen’s backpack which the police had picked up at the school at 11:02 PM on the Friday that he disappeared. The red backpack held the usual collection of a child’s school supplies and life: pens and pencils and notebooks and books and rocks and Pokemon trading cards and chewing gum and a dead grasshopper.

Sohlberg looked around the bag and noted that Karl Haugen’s lunch box or pail was not in the backpack. He checked the list of evidence and it did not mention any school lunch.

In the elevator that took him back up to his office Sohlberg wondered why Karl Haugen did not have his lunch with him that day if the parents were correct in telling the investigators that Karl was supposed to be at the school all day long and that they always prepared a lunch for Karl to eat at school.

Why send a boy off all day to school without his lunch?

Was it because one parent or both parents never expected Karl to eat his lunch or come back home?

The question had intensely bothered Sohlberg ever since he had formed a mental outline of other troubling questions that he needed to ask the parents.

“Hei,” said Constable Wangelin cheerfully as she walked into Sohlberg’s cubicle at 9 AM. He had given her permission to come in one hour late because they had returned exhausted to Oslo after midnight from their excursion to Halden Prison. “Chief Inspector. . I just got a return call from one of the constables who worked on the early stages of the investigation. He says that we must talk to Karl Haugen’s teacher. . Lisbeth Boe.”

“Why?”

“According to him she’s always been very angry about being made a scapegoat and blamed by everyone for not alerting the school administrators early enough about Karl Haugen’s disappearance.”

“Why was she blamed?”

“Because she saw Karl Haugen early that day at the science fair. . and yet she did not raise the alarm when Karl was absent at her class at nine o’clock when she took roll.”

“But you previously told me that she marked him absent. Obviously she did not find his absence that strange.”

“Ja Chief Inspector. . that’s the key. . why didn’t she find it unusual that Karl Haugen was there earlier for the science fair and then gone from the class?”

Sohlberg rubbed his eyes. “My suspicions are coming true. . we are dealing with a brilliant devious mind. . Do you now see Constable what I meant when I said that this case is intricate. . brilliantly designed with a purpose that we still cannot even come close to understanding?”

“True. . but we have an inkling do we not. . that the taking of Karl Haugen was probably for purposes of revenge?”

“Ja. But by who. . why. . over what minor slight or great injury or wrong?”

“Chief Inspector. . you agreed with Anton Ronning that it was most likely one of the parents.”

“Ja. . but in this family just who is the parent?. . We have the birth mother and all of these messy entangled relationships. . such as the ex-husbands of Agnes Haugen who’d love to get even with her from what you’ve told me. The stepmother has left behind a small army of angry ex-husbands.”

“That’s true. . shall we leave now and go interview this school teacher who’s being blamed for Karl’s disappearance?”

“By all means. I’ve always found that scapegoats offer unique truths from their down-and-out point of view.”

“I want to see my Dad and Mom. Please. . I have to see them.”

The man said and did nothing but the woman smiled.

“I wanna go back home!”

The woman shook her head.

Karl refused to believe that he could not go back home to his father or mother. He no longer got angry about not seeing his father or mother. But he got ever so sad whenever the woman hugged him and told him:

“It’s going to be alright.”

By the time they drove into Holmenkollen the entire Oslofjord had clouded up. A cold front moved in from the North Sea and furiously dropped an inch of chilled rain.

“This almost feels like autumn,” said Sohlberg. “I wish I’d brought my parka.”

“We’ll have more sunny warm days.”

Sohlberg nodded but he wondered if his fellow countrymen felt as surprised as he was at how quickly the promise of summer had disappeared. Nature seemed intent on reminding him that the long grim dark days of winter would be back soon.

Hairpin switchbacks led all the way to the top of Pilot Hill. The school’s one-floor red building seemed cheerful enough as did the surrounding playground ringed by grass and then forest.

“Very nice school up here,” commented Sohlberg. “But I expected more rural surroundings. I remember this was all farms and ski slopes back when I was a kid.”

“You had no idea the area was so built up?”