Burned

Chapter 56

The moment he walks through his front door, he knows someone has been there. He can smell it. Something sharp mixed with a faint trace of sweat. He moves quietly into the kitchen, then into the living room, without turning on the light. He stops, he listens. The tap in the bathroom is dripping. A car hits a puddle outside. Far away, someone shouts something he can’t make out.

No, he thinks. There is no one here now. If there is, they are able to stand completely still and not make a sound. His belief that someone was there is confirmed when he returns to his living room. He looks at the coffee table where his laptop normally sits.

It’s not there now.

He walks over to the coffee table, as if that would make it reappear. He swiftly reviews whether he had something valuable on his hard disk. No. Nothing but FireCracker 2.0. All essential research and documents have been printed out and filed. He doesn’t have a spreadsheet with a list of his sources.

So why steal his computer? He stands in the middle of the room, shaking his head. A long and eventful day, culminating in a break-in in his own flat. ‘Okay, boys,’ he says out loud, ‘you’re clever. You got into my flat, you got out again and you’ve sent me a message: we can get to you any time and we can take anything you care about.’

They are only trying to scare him. But it’s working. When there is a hard knock on his door, his knees buckle. He is half expecting it to be the police, that Brogeland has been unable to keep Gjerstad at bay long enough for Henning to clear his head, but it’s not Brogeland or Gjerstad or his recent uninvited guests.

It’s Gunnar Goma.

‘The door was open,’ Goma says in a loud voice. Henning tries to breathe normally, but his chest tightens and he can feel a warm tingling sensation in his hands. Goma enters, without waiting to be asked. He is wearing the red shorts, but he has a white vest on his upper body this time.

‘If this is about your Nancy boys, then it’s the last time I’m doing you a favour,’ Goma snorts.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nancy boys. The people who came to your flat today. They look like Nancy boys, both of them. If that’s what you’re into, you’re on your own.’

Henning takes a step forward, feeling an urgent need to account for his sexual orientation, but his curiosity gets the better of him.

‘You saw them?’

Goma nods.

‘How many were there?’

‘Two.’

‘Can you describe them?’

‘Do I have to?’

‘No, you don’t have to, but it would be really helpful.’

Goma sighs.

‘They were dark, both of them. Dark-skinned, I mean. Muslims, I reckon. Their beards were too well groomed and fancy. One of them — it didn’t look like he had proper hair. More like it was painted. Or drawn. Very complicated pattern. The other was as thin as a rake, but he walked like a Nancy boy.’

‘Anything else?’

‘The first guy walked in exactly the same way. Wriggling his bum, like, and swinging one arm slightly.’

Goma grimaces.

‘Did you get a look at his face?’

‘Same kind of beard. Sparse, but even, and shaved in straight lines. He was a little chubbier than the other immigrant poof. And he had a bandage on one finger. On his left hand, I think it was.’

‘When was this?’

‘An hour ago. It was a stroke of luck really, because I had just decided to have a nap, when I heard footsteps.’

‘How long were they here?’

‘At first, I thought you had come home, because it was quiet in the stairwell, but then I heard some more noise, now, when was it, ten minutes later, maybe? And so I had another look at them through the spyhole. But if they’re your Nancy boys — ’

‘They’re not.’

He doesn’t elaborate. Goma appears to accept his brief denial.

‘Thank you so much,’ Henning says. ‘You’ve been a great help.’

Goma grunts, turns around and makes to leave.

‘By the way,’ he says, grabbing the door handle. ‘One of them was wearing a black leather jacket. With flames on the back.’

BBB. Bad Boys Burning. It has to be, Henning thinks. He nods and thanks Goma again. He looks at the clock. It is almost 1.15 a.m. He is wide awake. Too much has happened and his mind is buzzing.

Goma closes the door with a bang. The noise makes the flat feel frighteningly empty, as if Henning is in a vacuum. He fetches a mop and places it under the door handle. If anyone tries to come in, he will hear them. The mop will slow them down and give him time to escape.

He finds the escape rope coiled up under the bed and ties it around the TV stand. The television alone weighs 40 kg, and with various DVDs plus the stand itself, it should be enough to take his weight, he estimates. The last time he checked, he weighed 71 kg. He probably weighs even less now.

He sits down on the sofa and stares at the ceiling. He still hasn’t switched on the light. If anyone is watching him from the street, he doesn’t want to reveal that he is back.

Stefan’s pale face pops into his head. Please don’t let him haunt me as well, he prays. What on earth causes a seventeen-year-old boy to take his own life? If that is what he did?

The thought makes him sit up. What if he didn’t? What if someone killed him and made it look like suicide?

No. So what about the script? It looked staged, somehow. As if someone wanted it to be noticed, to add the interpretation of the scene? It must have been a suicide, Henning tries to convince himself. Stefan must have got hold of the script and read it. Leaving the script in plain view was a message to his parents or, more likely, his father. Look what you made me do. I hope you can live with yourself.

Yes. That must have been what happened. But all the same. Henning has done this before, reasoned his way to a logical conclusion and yet been unable to shake off a feeling that a vague but ominous hook has anchored itself in his stomach. It yanks him, not constantly, but every now and then it wriggles, making him unpick the jigsaw puzzle and put the pieces back together again differently.

He doesn’t know why. There is nothing to suggest that he is wrong, but his feeling of unease tells him that some of the pieces in Stefan’s puzzle don’t fit. Stefan’s puzzle might not be complete yet.