Burned

Chapter 64

Henning struggles to control his breathing. He holds out his hands. Raindrops trickle down his head. He wipes his face with one hand and steps inside the tent. The air is stuffy. The merciless rain bangs against the roof, which can’t keep out all the water, so some seeps through and drips on to the grass. He looks into Ingvild Foldvik’s eyes. They are wide open and fixed. There is a shiny, faraway expression in them he has only ever seen in people who are insane.

‘Take it easy,’ he says and realises immediately how stupid that sounds. She is holding a spade, there is a pile of rocks by her feet and it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to work out what she intends to do with them.

She is much thinner than when he last saw her. She was slim when she gave evidence in court, but now she is practically a skeleton. Her clothes hang on her like rags. She has aged ten years, at least. Her skin sags. She is a zombie, he thinks. Her teeth are stained yellow from years of smoking and her hair has started to go grey. It is tied back into a hasty ponytail; strands of damp hair fall over her face, a pale, gaunt face with large bags under her eyes.

‘W-who are you?’ she stutters.

He looks at Yngve in the ground. His head has flopped. But he is breathing.

‘My name’s Henning Juul,’ he says with as much control in his voice as he can muster. He can see that the name means nothing to her.

‘I reported on your court case. Before this happened,’ he says, pointing to his face, thinking that the scarring might earn him some sympathy points.

‘What are you doing? Why are you here?’

Her voice is sharper now. He looks at Yngve.

‘Don’t do it, Ingvild,’ he says. ‘Deep down, you don’t really want to do it.’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ she snarls. ‘What have I got to live for? He has taken everything from me. EVERYTHING. My whole life. It’s — it’s — ’

Her eyes narrow. She starts to cry without making a sound. The tears just fall from her eyes. Then they start to glow again and she looks at her husband with contempt. She turns to Henning. It is as if a veil has been placed over her face.

‘Do you know what he made my son do? Do you know who my son is?’

Henning takes another step into the tent.

‘Stefan,’ he says, gently. ‘And it was Stefan who killed Henriette Hagerup.’

She lets out a pitiful howl.

‘H-how do you know that?’ she sobs. He takes a deep breath and prepares himself.

‘I read Henriette Hagerup’s script.’

She sniffs, brushes away the hair from her face. He thinks about what to say, how to find an inroad to the sentient part of her brain. Brute force is no good. Throwing himself at her and dragging her outside is hopeless. Ingvild Foldvik may be reduced to skeleton, but she is a skeleton with a purpose. And, if you have enough of that, you can achieve most things. Besides, she has a stun gun.

‘If you’ll let me, Ingvild,’ he says, as softly as he can, ‘then I want to talk to you about the script.’

‘Ingvild,’ she says, mimicking his voice. ‘So now you think you know all about me, eh? Stupid journalist.’

‘Stefan killed Henriette because your husband slept with her. He might even have been in love with her. He destroyed your family. She destroyed your family and wrote a script which — in parts — dealt with what happened. But Stefan read something more into the script.’

‘What do you mean?’

He glances at Yngve, who is still unconscious.

‘Stefan was into symbolism. The Da Vinci Code Lite, that’s what the newspaper called his script, wasn’t it? Henriette’s hand was chopped off. There was nothing about that in her script. Hudud punishments in sharia law prescribe that thieves are punished by having their hand chopped off. Henriette stole your husband.’

Ingvild digs the spade into the ground. But she stops shovelling more sand and grass around her husband. She clasps her mouth with her other hand.

‘And the flogging. There was nothing about flogging in the script, either. But the film would have ridiculed you and your family. And a woman isn’t allowed to mock, either. The punishment for that is flogging — ’

‘Stop,’ she shouts. It is deadly silent inside the tent. ‘Please stop. I can’t take any more. Please stop.’

The spade keels over and falls to the ground. Ingvild buries her face in her hands. Henning moves further inside the tent, without her noticing. Yngve’s green shirt is soaked with sweat. Ingvild collapses. Henning does nothing, he just watches her cry into her hands. She sits like this for a while, then she dries her tears and looks up at him.

‘You said you reported on my court case,’ she starts in a rusty voice. She clears her throat, she sees him nod.

‘So you know that the bastard raped me and cut me afterwards. I took a course in self-defence, learned all sorts of things, but I never felt safe. Wherever I went, I saw his shadow, felt the knife against my throat, the tip of the knife touching my stomach, touching my — ’

She heaves a sigh.

‘Yngve was understanding. Gave me time, never pressured me. But he got tired of waiting. Waiting for — ’

She closes her eyes and starts to cry again. Henning steps further into the tent. The roof is a couple of metres above his head. It is a large tent, probably big enough for twenty people.

She opens her eyes again. They watch each other for a while, but Henning has an inkling that he is the only one actually seeing. Ingvild’s eyes change from being remote to flashing when she registers colour or movement. Then she disappears into a world of her own again, or some other place where she has no contact with anybody.

‘I got myself one of these,’ she says and takes a mobile out of her pocket. It looks like an ordinary Nokia phone.

‘You can’t get these in Norway.’

She waves the mobile in the air.

‘It’s a combined mobile telephone and stun gun. Yes, such things are actually made. I got this in the US for less than $200. And everyone has a mobile these days, don’t they? People are always fiddling with them. Ringing, texting, talking rubbish. This never leaves my hand, but no one ever asks why. And if anyone tries to attack me again, I’m ready. 800,000 volts, straight into the body, Zzzzzt. It’ll knock you out, I promise.’

He looks at Yngve, though he needs no convincing.

‘And Stefan knew that you had one? It was your stun gun he used, wasn’t it?’

She nods reluctantly.

‘Did he ask if he could borrow it?’

‘No. He took it one evening — I mean — that night. I had already gone to bed. I realised that he had used it the following day, because the mobile wasn’t where I had left it. I’m always meticulous about such things. I notice everything.’

‘Did you confront him about it?’

‘Not there and then. I woke up late and he had already left for college. But it came up yesterday afternoon, and — and — ’

She starts to cry again, but she carries on talking.

‘I asked him what he had done with my mobile, why he had borrowed it, but he wouldn’t say. Then Yngve took over and it got — ’

She shakes her head.

‘Everything Stefan had been keeping back came out. He wanted Yngve to own up to what he had done, be honest with himself and us. Stefan almost went berserk, he wanted to fight Yngve and, in the heat of the moment, Stefan told us what he had done, why he had taken my mobile and it became — ’

More shaking of the head.

‘It was so ugly. So — ’

She looks at her husband, whose head is still flopped to one side.

‘It was bad. So very bad — ’

She closes her eyes.

‘What happened after Stefan confessed to the murder? Because he was alone when he died.’

Ingvild sighs deeply.

‘I don’t really remember. I think I ran out of the flat. I’ve a vague memory of Yngve shaking me, at the top of St Hanshaugen. He said he had been looking for me for hours. I think I must have walked up there. Or run, I don’t know. I don’t remember. And when we came back, then — ’

She starts to cry again, silently. He sees her tremble, holding one hand over her mouth. Then her eyes cloud over. She looks straight ahead, into the wall of the tent. Then, abruptly, she regains lucidity.

‘How did you know that we were here?’

‘I spoke to someone at the college reception this morning.’

‘Gorm?’

‘Might have been.’

‘How did —?’

He holds up his hands.

‘He said that Yngve had rung to let the Principal know that you were going camping. The Principal wasn’t there, so he took a message. I added two and two together and got 400. It was a fluke that I found you. I had a feeling that everything had something to do with this tent, this hole,’ he says, pointing to the ground. ‘And if everyone was looking for you, but hadn’t been able to find you, I guessed that you might be here. Since you were going “camping”, like Yngve had said.’

Ingvild looks at him for a long time, before she nods.

‘I barely remember what happened yesterday. I had run out of pills, too, I guess they were the ones Stefan took, so I couldn’t get to sleep, either. I doubt I would have slept anyway.’

Her eyes are red.

‘Why did you come here?’

‘So I could get my revenge. In my own way.’

‘How did you persuade Yngve to come with you?’

‘I told him I needed to be here, in the tent, to see if I could even begin to understand what my son had done. It wasn’t just an excuse. I really needed to. Does that sound strange to you?’

He shakes his head.

‘Now that I’m here, it feels a little weird. But I know how Stefan felt. I recognise the hatred. And, as his mother, that’s a relationship that I’m grateful for.’

He is about to say something, but her face fills with contempt and anger. Before he has time to react, before he has time to grab her, she has picked up one of the rocks and thrown it at Yngve. She hits his shoulder, he jerks and wakes up; slowly his eyes open, he lifts his head slightly, but he is too deep in the hole to be able to move much. Finally, he sees Ingvild, then Henning, and understands what is about to happen. He tries to raise his arms in self-defence, but they are trapped in the ground. Ingvild picks up another rock.

‘Wait. Ingvild, don’t — ’

Yngve screams, Henning takes a long step towards Ingvild to stop her, but she sees him, her eyes widen and she holds the mobile in front of her, waving it at him, pressing it; sparks fly, and he stops and retreats.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Yngve howls.

‘You killed that whore,’ Ingvild hisses. ‘Yes, you, Yngve. If only you had stayed away from her, none of this would have happened. You killed Stefan too, you drove him to take his own life — ’

‘Ingvild, it — ’

‘Oh, stop whining. It’s only fair that you get a taste of your own medicine, the same rocks, and that it happens here, in the same place, so you can die in the same way as your mistress, that whore — ’

‘It wasn’t — ’

‘Oh, shut up.’

Ingvild has picked up another rock, she is foaming at the mouth and her eyes shine with hatred. Henning doesn’t know how to stop her; she waves her mobile maniacally, pointing it at him. Should I call for help, he thinks? No use, they won’t get here in time. The rocks are so heavy that a single, well-aimed throw could be the end of Yngve. Henning tries to think of something clever to say, but he can’t find the words, he finds nothing, so he shuffles his feet on the damp grass. Then he sees Ingvild raise the rock above her head and aim.

‘It’s because you fucked her, you bastard. I know I haven’t been a wife to you for a long time, I have been a zombie ever since I was raped, but you should have helped me, you should have helped me, you shit, you shouldn’t have raped my soul, and worst of all, worst of all, you shouldn’t have driven our son insane. I know, I know how he felt when he stood here, like me, holding the stone over his head, when he aimed it at that whore who ruined everything.’

‘But I never slept with Henriette.’ Yngve yelps and squeezes his eyes shut. Henning raises his arms in an impotent effort to defend himself against her, even though she is standing several metres away from him and he, too, shuts his eyes, and waits for the thud and the scream.

It never comes.

He opens his eyes again. Ingvild is still holding the stone above her head. She is gasping for air.

‘I swear I never slept with Henriette.’

Yngve’s voice is pitiful, on the brink of tears. Then Henning hears movement behind him.

‘No. But you did sleep with me.’

Henning spins around. And, for the second time in less than an hour, he is looking straight into the eyes of Anette Skoppum.