“Chief Inspector. . we checked and her doctors confirm that only Sweden offered her an innovative drug treatment that attacked the virus.”
“I don’t see why she couldn’t have gotten just as good care in Norway.”
“Maybe it’s because Norway sometimes doesn’t have everything we need.”
“Norway has everything Norwegians need.”
From her pitying looks Sohlberg could tell that Wanglein found his patriotism touching if not quaint and old-fashioned.
In high school Sohlberg had joined Ny Norge. The nationalist group advocated eliminating Norway’s monarchy because the king came from a line of Danish royalty that had served as puppets for Denmark. Sohlberg like most other Norwegians felt that Denmark had ruthlessly ruled Norway as a colony to be exploited. Ny Norge also advocated moving the capital out of Oslo and back north to Trondheim the old Viking capital. And Sohlberg like most other Norwegians was perfectly aware of the fact that Denmark and then Sweden had kept Oslo as the capital in southern Norway in order to control and keep tabs on Norwegians. The Ny Norge group also pushed hard for nynorsk or “New Norwegian” to be the only official Norwegian language to the exclusion of bokmal or "book language" which is a Danish bastardization of the Norwegian language.
“Chief Inspector. . regardless of how you feel about Sweden. . the fact remains that Karl’s mother went to Sweden. . where she got the medical treatment that successfully controlled her hepatitis. She was forced to let Karl live with his father and Agnes the stepmother when her Swedish doctors informed her that she would not be able to care for the child while she got the debilitating treatments.”
“So just like that she left Karl with the father and stepmother?”
“Ja. . Maya Engen came back a year later and she was still too weak to care for Karl. The father made it clear that Maya should spend her time and energies on recovering and not on Karl since he and Agnes were already raising him. Because of her illness Maya reluctantly agreed.”
“I can see why Maya Engen has a guilty conscience. First she brings her son into a broken marriage. Then she dropped the boy off with those two odd ducks because she was sick. . and then she was maybe too lazy to care for the boy during her recovery.”
“Could be. . but who knows what she was really going through during her recovery period. Regardless. . time passes and the father and stepmother kept finding excuses to keep Karl away from Maya. Three years later they flat out refused to return Karl to her because. . according to them. . Karl had already bonded with Agnes the stepmother. . apparently Karl was already calling her ‘Mommy’ or ‘Mama’.
“The father and stepmother insisted that the proposed change in living arrangements would be too disruptive for little Karl and that any judge or social worker or psychologist would see it their way.”
“Did they actually state that or is the birth mother making that up?”
“I’ve look at e-mails and they actually did say that.”
“How convenient for the father. He has no more child support to pay now that the boy lives with him. . and his live-in sex partner serves as a free nanny for the boy. How very convenient eh?”
“Ja.”
“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.”