Burned

Chapter 49

A couple of quick Internet searches inform him that Henriette’s parents are called Vebjorn and Linda, and that she has an older brother, Ole Petter. He looks up Anette Skoppum. Her parents, Ulf Vidar and Froydis, are both over seventy, so Anette is most definitely an afterthought. She has three older sisters, Kirsten (thirty-eight), Silje (forty-one) and Torill (forty-four). In a matter of minutes, Henning has established that neither the Hagerups nor the Skoppums are a good match for the Gaarder family in the script.

He drops the idea and visits a public register of licences. Here, you can search for information from three different categories: 1) Business Type and Named Licence Holder. 2) Licences. 3) Applications for Cross-county Routes. The page is produced by the Department of Transport in collaboration with Hordeland County Council, which might explain the convoluted language.

Henning moves the cursor to box 2, selects ‘Oslo’ and ‘Taxi Licences’ and types in the serial number ‘2052’. Then he hits ‘enter’. The answer pops up instantly. And his heart skips a beat.

Omar Rabia Rashid.

He knows where he has heard that name before. Omar Rabia Rashid is the man Mahmoud Marhoni was driving a minicab for. It wasn’t a coincidence. Why else would Omar’s taxi be there, in that very place? Why else would those two men be staring at him?

Omar is registered as having three minicabs in Oslo. The number three is blue and when he clicks on it, a page entitled ‘Information about the Licence Holder’ appears. It sounds a dead end, he thinks, but is pleasantly surprised at the text which fills the screen a few seconds later. He skims through it and smiles. Omar, he thinks.

I know where you live.

*

He decides to go home. The urge to sit down, have a think and work out what to do next is impossible to ignore. He waits until some of his colleagues, two women, get up and he follows them. They exit the office building. The black gate is open. He leaves some space between him and the women, walks down the pavement and checks the street. Two large stones divide Urtegata in half, making it impossible to drive in the direction of Gronland.

A Honda and a Ford are parked behind the stones. Both are empty. There is a man with a mangy-looking dog lying at his feet outside the Salvation Army building. If he were to suddenly jump up and pull out a Kalashnikov, Henning is prepared for that. He is surrounded by open spaces, the River Aker flows quickly down the hill, and it would be easy to point the mouth of a gun out of a car window and start firing.

No. That’s enough. He has to stop looking for assassins. He has only been back at work for a few days, and already he has managed to convince himself that hardened criminals are trying to kill him. Enough. I don’t want to live like this, he tells himself.

He decides to stroll along, take his time and enjoy the afternoon sun, which has broken through the dense layer of clouds over Oslo Plaza. He approaches Grunerlokka with a growing sense of composure. And when he lets himself into his flat, he decides to take no notice of the smoke alarms. He is about to go into the kitchen, when he stops in his tracks.

Damn, he thinks. There is no way I can ignore them.