Cnut - They Tumble Headlong

By Stig Larssen

Follow the money.

Cnut, his own life in imminent danger, comes close to falling over the body of Eli Peterssen, strangled with a bicycle chain – a unique weapon, as far as he is concerned, and starts the investigation process into her murder. Motives, in her case, are not difficult to identify.

Eli, he finds, was something else: a seriously rich nymphomaniac, who filmed herself in intimate action with many men, possibly for blackmail purposes; a talented major financial crimes investigator, who has ruined a whole bunch of businessmen, and caused one to commit suicide; and the avowed target of more than a dozen threatening letter writers.

Suspects abound, the main one Max Aasgard – her most recent lover, and the latest businessman she intended to destroy, seeking evidence not only from him, but also from his senior employees, while bedding them too.

When Max's ex-chief accountant is killed in exactly the same way as Eli Peterssen, Cnut, Ilse, and the team, up to their elbows in evidence, realise that they are faced with a serial killer, and there is no clear motive.

As the bodies pile up, and the possible motives change yet again, Max is always there at the centre of things, though Cnut is sure that the entrepreneur is not the killer.

Things come to a climax when the detectives find themselves under fire, when going to arrest the likely murderer, and that arrest, to say the least, does not go according to plan.

The twist in the tail is ironic in the extreme.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TONY NASH
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393528500

Stig Larssen

Stig Larssen is the Norwegian pen name of Tony Nash – acclaimed author of over thirty detective, historical and war novels, who began his career as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, later re-training at Bletchley Park to become an electronic spy, intercepting Russian and East German agent transmissions, during which time he studied many languages and achieved a BA Honours Degree from London University. Diverse occupations followed: Head of Modern Languages in a large comprehensive school, ocean yacht skipper, deep sea fisher, fly tyer, antique dealer, bespoke furniture maker, restorer and French polisher, professional deer stalker and creative writer.

Book preview

Copyright © Tony Nash June 2018

Other works by this author:

The Tony Dyce thrillers:

Murder by Proxy

Murder on the Back Burner

Murder on the Chess Board

Murder on the High ‘C’

Murder on Tiptoes

Bled And Breakfast

The John Hunter thrillers:

Carve Up

Single to Infinity

The Most Unkindest Cut

The Iago Factor

Blockbuster

Bloodlines

Beyond Another Curtain

Historical sagas:

A Handful of Destiny

A Handful of Salt

A Handful of Courage

Other novels:

The Devil Deals Death  

The Makepeace Manifesto

Panic

The Last Laugh

The Sinister Side of the Moon

Hell and High Water

Hardrada’s Hoard

And The Harry Page Thrillers:

Tripled Exposure

Unseemly Exposure

So Dark, The Spiral

CNUT – The Isiaih Prophesies

CNUT – Paid in Spades

CNUT – The Sin Debt

CNUT – They Tumble Headlong

CNUT – Night Prowler

CNUT – Past Present

CNUT – Cry Wolf

CNUT -  Mind Games

CNUT -  When The Pie Was Opened

LOOT – (A Viking tale)

OTHER NOVELS:

The Last Laugh

The Sinister Side of the Moon

Hell and High Water

The Thursday Syndrome

ESPIONAGE:

‘Y’ OH ‘Y;

PROLOGUE

Eli Peterssen caressed herself once more before sighing contentedly as she turned off the shower.

Max was without doubt the best lover she’d ever known and had performed magnificently, as always, but the après-coitus pillow talk had her bothered. His initial reluctance to discuss his business affairs had been replaced by an openness that was difficult to accept. From everything she had learnt about him she knew that he shrewdly compartmentalised his life.

Had their intimacy relaxed his usual guard, or was he deliberately misleading her?

Her biggest problem was that she was beginning to have deeper feelings for him; feelings that she could not allow to develop. He was a strange man in many ways; outwardly unattractive, but the more she got to know him, the more she recognised his sincere inner goodness, almost to the point where she felt guilty about her investigations and intent to ruin him. Almost – but not quite. No one could have risen as fast or as far as Max without criminal activity being a part of it, and for that he had to be punished.

All the others had been relatively easy, but the sheer difficulty of nailing Max Aasgard made the hunt so much more exciting.

She dried herself with care, lingering with her hand on her lower stomach as she considered pleasuring herself again while she played back in her mind Max’s ministrations, but the phone rang.

‘Faen!’ She swore and picked up the receiver.

A voice she didn’t recognise asked, ‘Was it good, Eli?’

The question made her gasp, ‘Who is this?’

‘Someone who wants to help you. You’re trying to ruin him, I know. I have information that will let you do that – devastating information. It’s up to you whether you want it or not.’

‘What kind of information?’

‘Proof of insider trading, intimidation, sexual misconduct.’

‘How much do you want?’

‘Not a single krone. We have a common aim. I have good reason to want him destroyed too.’

‘Can you tell me why?’

‘Maybe when I see you.’

Eli made an instant decision, ‘All right. Come to the house.’

‘No, not there. I’ll meet you near the river where we stopped for lunch two Sundays ago, at two o’clock today. Come on your bike, not in the car. I’ll bring the papers and give them to you there.’

‘Yes, but...’

The caller had hung up.

Eli considered – what did she have to lose? Often in the past she’d received information from third parties, and it had sometimes paid off. The caller, who must be a member of the club, didn’t want money, which made the proposition sound genuine. She decided to go to the location, which was close to a designated picnic spot, where the cycling club had spent an hour’s break on that particular Sunday.

She arrived five minutes early and saw first a cycle lying on the ground, and then, close by, her informant, whose identity surprised her and told her that the information she was about to receive would be genuine.

She felt a frisson of excitement as she braked to a halt, got off and laid her cycle down next to the other one, smiling.

‘I didn’t know it would be you. What has Max done to you that you would so much want to hurt him? Has he...?’

‘He’s done enough. I’ve got these for you. Do with them whatever you like.’

She was handed a large envelope, and shoved her hand inside it to take out the contents...

CHAPTER ONE

For once, Cnut was not humming a tune.

The veins on the back of his good hand stood out under the intense pressure of his death-like grip on the door handle, the pain in his groin ignored as a lesser evil for the first time in weeks.

Dag Tromsø’s clutch on the wheel was no less vice-like.

His fear was palpable.

The Passat was moving at less than twenty kph but skidded out of control round yet another corner on the treacherous new snow.

Cnut had to give credit where credit was due: when it came to IT, the young detective constable was the finest serinakaker in the biscuit barrel. Give him a computer and he’d have it standing on its head, its arse in the air, whistling the national anthem backwards through its high-tech fundamental orifice before you could say, ‘Switch it on’.

As a driver, he was something else, but Cnut had to take the entire blame for his present situation. He’d asked Dag to drive, knowing that the lad had only recently passed his test. Though it had been freezing hard for the last three days and nights, the roads had been treated and were clear of ice. What could possibly go wrong?

Every one of the officers he’d previously used as drivers were out of the office: Chief Inspector Ilse Karnweg, his live-in lover and second-in-command, was at the hospital for checks on her skin grafts; Sigurd Kvindstrom, newly promoted to Inspector and next in line, was on leave, and Sergeants Karla Ingversson and Anders Andersson were out for the day on the shooting range, doing their annual marksmanship tests. The only others present in the office at that moment were two young female officers, in their first year as detectives. Though they might have had driving licences, they were even younger than Dag, and Cnut was reluctant to use one of them.

The IT specialist was the only possible choice.

There had been nothing urgent on the white boards, and Cnut had been expecting what the members of the force liked to call a lost dog day, when they could metaphorically put their feet up for once, but the frantic phone call from a distraught mother had ended that expectation. The switchboard had patched it straight through to his office, with the terse comment, ‘Sounds kosher, sir.’

He took over, ‘Sheriff Cnut speaking. What’s the problem?’

‘My daughter has been abducted!’

‘You know that for certain - the abduction was witnessed by someone?’

‘Well, no, but...’

He’d had similar conversations many times before, and in nine cases out of ten there was no abduction at all – merely a teenager who’d stayed out late, fallen out with a parent over something trivial, or gone off with a boyfriend.

He held back a sigh and suggested, ‘Tell me the details.’

‘We were going to have a party for our other daughter’s fifteenth birthday, and decided we needed more soft drinks. Just after ten o’clock this morning, Eva went on her bicycle to get some more from the shop less than half a kilometre away, but she didn’t come back. After about half an hour, my other daughter, Mia, went to look for her and found her cycle near the shop, but Eva was nowhere to be found, and the shopkeeper, Gustav Blint, swears she has not been in his shop today.’

‘How old is Eva?’

‘She’s just turned thirteen. Her birthday was three weeks ago.’

Cnut considered: thirteen was young to run away from home, but it did happen.

‘Your name?’

‘Elsa Hagersson.’

‘And your address?’

‘Alvinsgate number four, Tryvanshøgda.’

‘Is the shop on the same street?’

‘Yes, at the far end.’

Tryvanshøgda was a good hour’s drive from Oslo. After nearly coming to grief half a dozen times while foolishly driving the two kilometres from home to work that morning, with his badly sprained right wrist from a fall on the first ice of the winter giving him vicious surges of pain whenever he tried to use the hand, and slightly lesser, but nevertheless annoying, jolts of pain from his back, which he had wrenched in the same fall, he knew it would be impossible for him to drive that far. Someone else would have to.

‘Normally,’ he told the woman, ‘We would only begin a missing person inquiry after that person has been missing for forty-eight hours. However, since your daughter is only thirteen, we will come out today and begin the investigation.’ He looked up at the clock and added, ‘We’ll probably arrive shortly after one. Please have everyone who was going to be at the party available for us to talk to.’

To be on the safe side, he called Oslo-Blindern weather station for an up-to-date forecast.

The duty meteorologist told him, ‘Basically, a couple of degrees above freezing during daylight hours, but there is a small chance – perhaps fifteen per cent - of light snow flurries north of here later today.’

It sounded safe enough, and Dag had nothing urgent that he was working on.

He drove much slower than Cnut was used to, but seemed competent, and they reached Tryvanshøgda with no trouble.

The mother, Elsa Hagersson, looking tearful and white with worry, opened the front door as they got out of the car, and when they reached her, told them that it was she who had telephoned.

Cnut wanted background information from the woman, before interviewing any others who might be involved, and suggested, ‘Join me in the car, while my colleague goes into the house to take names and addresses.’

He had already given Dag instructions.

Cnut opened the front passenger door for Fru Hagersson and waited until she had settled herself on the seat before closing it again.

He climbed into the driver’s seat, easing himself down onto it to lessen the pain in his groin.

With a case like the present one, he knew from experience, someone close to the family was usually responsible.

He asked, ‘Have you or any of the family had a row with Eva recently?’

‘No. The girls have a slight spat now and again – the usual teenagers’ thing - but never over anything serious, and I can’t remember the last time – it was months ago.’

‘Which of the guests that are now here arrived after Eva left to go for the extra drinks?’

She looked shocked, ‘You can’t be thinking one of them could...oh, no! That’s not possible.’

‘I have to look at every possibility, no matter how far-fetched, Fru Hagersson. As you say, it is highly unlikely, but elimination of individuals is just as important at this stage as finding clues, so could you first of all answer my question?’

‘Most of the guests were here. Three arrived after she left – two of her uncles – Nils Eriksson and Bim Hagersson, and Bim’s son, Kjetil.

‘How long after she left did they arrive?’

‘Bim about a quarter of an hour later, then Nils, maybe ten minutes after that. Kjetil was close behind him – only a couple of minutes.’

‘Where do each of them live?’

‘Kjetil lives with his mother, two streets away from here. Nils lives in Oslo when he’s in Norway – he has several other residences abroad, and Bim has a flat in Nittedal.’

Too far away for either of them to have taken her home. She’d have to still be in the car, been picked up and dropped off somewhere, or been killed and dumped in a hurry, not too far away.

‘Would you write down their addresses for me?’

‘Certainly. Have you a pad and pen?’

He pulled them from his pocket and passed them to her.

While she wrote, he asked, ‘Which cars belong to them?’

‘The red Porsche belongs to Nils, and that old Volvo is Bim’s.’

He opened his door, slid carefully onto the gravel, and strolled across to the cars. The large luggage space of the Volvo was not covered and was empty – the carpet spotlessly clean. The new looking Porsche’s boot spaces were closed, front and rear, and Cnut could imagine the difficulty someone would have trying to stuff a body, even that of a dead teenage girl, into one of the small spaces. It would be impossible.

He returned to his own car as Elsa Hagersson stepped out, ‘You’ve told me about their spats, but tell me now, how well do your two daughters get on together?’

She flared up, ‘You can’t imagine...’

Cnut interrupted, ‘At this point I don’t imagine anything, Fru Hagersson. There is a procedure to go through in cases such as this. I have to ask these questions.’

She relented and nodded her understanding, ‘They are as close as if they were twins.’

Good, then if Eva was in touch with someone by cell phone, or on Facebook or Twitter, Mia would probably know.

‘That must be pleasing for you. Now, how many of the other guests are not actual family?’

‘Mia’s friends - four girls of her own age, who are in the same class at school; Marie Sand, my next-door neighbour, who is helping with the catering and drinks; our local pastor – Sven Svensson, and a friend, Erik Jenson.’

Cnut picked up on the ‘friend’ and asked, ‘Is your husband present?’

And if he is, why was it you that telephoned?  

Fru Hagersson blushed, ‘We’re separated, Sheriff.’

‘For how long?’

‘Three years.’

‘Has there been any acrimony?’

‘You mean, has he tried to get Eva away from me? The answer to that is no. Our parting was reasonably amicable, and I’ve told Eva she could go to see him or stay with him whenever she wanted to.’

‘Has she done so?’

‘No. She can’t forgive him for leaving us, to go and live with what she calls his blond bimbo.’

‘That’s how Eva feels, but what about him? Does he want to see her?’

‘Not after the last time. He came one day about a year after we split up and asked to see her and Mia. Eva told him he was no longer her father and that she never wanted to see him again.’

That doesn’t mean that he feels the same way.

‘Does Mia speak to him?’

‘Yes, she does, and has spent some time with him and his girlfriend. Being older, she understands that these things can happen.’

‘Where does he live now?’

‘In Oslo – on Sørkedalsveien, near the Vestre Gravlund.’

‘Was he invited to the party?’

‘No. Though it was Mia’s birthday, and she would have liked him present, Eva didn’t want him here.’

‘I see. Before we go indoors, can you think of anyone who would want to harm Eva?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘All right, let’s go inside. Does Eva have a mobile phone or a computer?’

She nodded, ‘Both. I bought her a laptop for her twelfth birthday, and her uncle Nils bought her an iPhone for her thirteenth.’

‘And I guess she would have had the cell phone with her?’

‘Of course, but we’ve tried ringing the number dozens of times, before I rang you and since. The only answer we get is the message that tells you the phone is switched off.’

‘Did she have a mobile phone before her uncle bought her the new one?’

‘Yes, an ordinary straightforward model that she’d had for about three years.’

‘What did she do with that one?’

Fru Hagersson shrugged, ‘It’s probably in one of the drawers in her room. She would not have thrown it away.’

‘Could I have a look at her bedroom?’

‘Of course. Come this way.’

She led him up the stairs and to a room at the back of the house.

For a teenager’s room, it was neat and smart; the furniture from Ikea – functional rather than beautiful, and Cnut was surprised to see no soft toys and no clothing thrown haphazardly around. Eva was not a typical teenager.

There were no photographs of boys, and only one of her parents together, taken some years before, he estimated, from the age of the woman in the picture. He picked up one of Eva and then another of the two girls and asked, ‘When was this taken?’

‘During the August holidays this year.’

There was little difference between them except for their bust size. Mia’s breasts were larger.

The laptop and an iPhone lay on top of the dressing table. Cnut was impressed. The iPhone was the latest release, and one would get no change from seven thousand kroner when buying it.

Fru Hagersson showed her surprise when she exclaimed, ‘It’s no wonder she didn’t answer. She’s left her mobile phone here. I can’t understand that – she’s usually glued to it.’

Cnut swore under his breath.

Shit! She’s cut the legs out from under us. We could have traced her in minutes if she’d had it with her. Did she know that and leave it behind deliberately?

He began opening drawers and found the old Samsung phone in the third one down, along with its charger. He tried to switch it on, but the battery was dead. Another non-starter.

He asked, ‘Do you mind if I plug this in for a while?’

‘Not at all. Please do.’

‘And are you happy for me to take the laptop and these cell phones away with me? They will, of course, be returned.’

The woman nodded.

‘I haven’t found a passport. Does she have one?’

‘Yes. Her uncle took the two girls to Disneyland for a week last year, and we got her a passport for that trip.’

‘Which uncle?’

‘Nils. Bim couldn’t afford something like that, but it was nothing to Nils. He said all it cost was the airline fares, because he owns Disney shares.’

‘Did you go with them?’

‘No, but they had a chaperone – the lady Nils was dating.’

‘Can I see the passport?’

‘It should be on the top shelf of the wardrobe, in a box with other important papers – her birth certificate and school reports.’

Cnut crossed to the wardrobe, opened the door and lifted down the box, a decorative old one that had once held expensive Belgian chocolates.

He opened the lid and found the passport on top. Flicking through the pages he came to that which held Eva’s photo and details.

There was just one stamp – from Paris Orly.

Fuck! Another dead end.

He had a sudden thought and asked, ‘Whose idea was it to go and get more soft drinks?’

Fru Hagersson frowned, ‘The two girls were checking over the stuff for the party. I don’t know which one of them decided they needed more. We can ask Mia.’

‘Yes, we can.’

It was time to do the interviews, and Cnut asked, ‘Is there a room apart from this one where we could have some privacy?’   

She nodded, ‘It would have to be the kitchen.’

‘That’s fine. Could we have a word with Mia before we speak to the guests?’

‘Of course. I’ll send her to you.’

The honey-blond, blue-eyed fifteen-year-old came through the doorway only seconds later. She still had her puppy fat, but would be a beauty when she lost it, Cnut thought. Tall for her age, she had an air of self-confidence about her, despite the tears that were wetting her cheeks.

She flashed an interested look at Dag, as if sizing him up.

Cnut asked her to sit down and then began, ‘Which of you decided you needed more soft drinks before Eva went off to get them?’

‘Eva. I thought we had plenty, but she said we didn’t have enough Coke. She said we needed two more bottles to be sure.’

‘Did she say it casually or did she insist?’

‘She sort of insisted, I guess.’

Was that part of a plan? To disappear on her sister’s birthday and ruin it? A foolish little girl’s trick that went badly wrong? Or maybe...

‘How much did you have?’

‘Five litre-sized bottles, and it was only the girls that would have drunk it.’

Cnut had a sudden idea and asked, ‘Think carefully, Mia – can you remember if Eva looked at her watch before she talked about getting more?’

Mia frowned, concentrating, and then she nodded, ‘Yes, she did. I remember thinking that she must be wondering if she had time to go and fetch some before the last guests arrived.’

‘Do you know if Eva was in touch with any men or boys on the Internet, or using her phone?’

‘You mean grooming?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was in regular contact with two boys – Uri and Jan, who both said they were fourteen, but the messages she showed me made me wonder.’

‘Was any of it sexting?’

Mia didn’t blush, as Cnut expected her to, but moved her head, a slight smile forming, to look at Dag as she answered, ‘Uri sent her a picture of his...thing...you know, but she gave him a piece of her mind and said she didn’t want to see anything like that or correspond with him any more.’

‘Do you know if that’s what happened?’

‘I believe so. When I asked her about him later, she said he’d sent several more messages but she had not answered them.’

‘Was she telling the truth, do you think?’

She shrugged, ‘I’m not sure. She never used to lie to me, but several times lately I’ve known from