Pierced

Chapter 46

The fan on the windowsill whooshes noisily but still loses its battle with the quivering heat. The heat moistens Henning’s face as he leans over the kitchen table and scrolls through a Google search. Hundreds of articles about Rasmus Bjelland. More irrelevant hits than useful ones.

The vibrating of his mobile makes him turn his head. It’s Iver. Henning decides to ignore the call, but the mobile keeps twitching and buzzing. Finally, Henning hits the green answer button with irritation. A couple of seconds pass.

‘Hello?’

‘Mm.’

‘Is that you, Henning?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really…? It doesn’t sound like you. Never mind… listen, have you heard the news?’

‘No?’

‘You won’t believe it. You know Tore Pulli? The ex-enforcer?’

Henning sits up in his seat. ‘Yes, what about him?’

‘He’s dead.’

The noise from the street disappears. The heat gives way to an icy blast. The space Henning is staring at narrows and contracts. His heart beats faster and faster until he swallows and inhales sharply. ‘W-what did you say?’

‘Tore Pulli is dead.’

Henning puts his elbow on the table and runs his hand across his face, letting it come to a rest on his forehead. His eyelids slide shut. He hears Iver say something, but the words refuse to sink in. All he can think about is Jonas. And his faint hope. That, too, has been extinguished.

‘Dead how?’

‘Jesus Christ, what kind of question is that?’

‘How did he die?’

‘I don’t have all the details yet. He appears to have just dropped dead, I believe, completely out of the blue. But you haven’t heard the worst. Or best, depending how you look at it. He died while he was being interviewed by TV2.’ The table moves in on him. ‘Unfortunately it wasn’t a live broadcast, otherwise we could have had a ball with it.’

Henning stares at the dents and scratches in the table top. The grain in the wood expands, it grows darker and deeper.

Who on earth will help him now?

‘When did it happen?’

‘About an hour ago. It’s completely-’

Henning plugs in the mobile’s headset and puts it down. He holds up his hands in front of his mouth and nose so they form a closed triangle.

‘Are you still there?’ Iver asks.

‘I’m here,’ Henning mumbles into his hands.

‘Are you coming in or what? I could do with some help here.’

‘No.’

‘But you’re supposed to be working today and-’

‘I’m taking a day’s leave.’

‘But I-’

Henning presses the red off button and buries his face in his hands.

Chapter 47

Thorleif Brenden is shaking all over as the TV2 car drives slowly down the cobbled avenue leading away from Oslo Prison. Everything is out of focus.

Guri Palme in the front seat turns around to check on him.

‘How are you doing, Toffe?’

Her voice makes him jump.

‘F-fine,’ he replies.

‘Are you sure? You don’t look it.’

Thorleif doesn’t respond. He is trying to forget Tore Pulli’s eyes, but it’s impossible. They turned cold and still as if someone had covered them with a moist membrane. Saliva and mucus dribbled from his mouth and mixed with something white and foaming. His hands started to quiver, and the twitching spread to each body part like an infection. Then Pulli slumped on his side where he lay shaking for a few seconds before silence descended on him like a blanket.

‘We should expect to be called in to make a statement later today,’ Palme continues.

A statement, Thorleif thinks, alarmed, and feels his face become burning hot. He knows that he will never be able to give a false account of what happened. His voice will falter and his eyes become evasive. He is sure the police will grow suspicious and wonder why he is so nervous. They will want to question him further. In the end he will crack. And he knows what the consequences will be.

The man in the black leather jacket told him he could go home after killing Pulli and everything would carry on as normal. But how can it? He has taken the life of another human being. And what guarantee does he have that they really will leave him alone now that the job is done? Thorleif saw the man’s face, he knows that the man had accomplices to bring about Pulli’s death. Do they think that threatening Thorleif’s family is enough to make him keep his mouth shut for ever? What if the police see through him and the choice is taken away from him?

In the park below the police station Thorleif sees an Asian man wearing light summer clothes. The man is walking his dog. He reminds Thorleif of a guide he and a friend had when they were hiking in the Caucasus Mountains trying to find their way from Laza to Xinaliq in Azerbaijan. Thorleif closes his eyes and recalls how they hiked through a deep gorge between grassy mountains, waded in water up to their knees through fast-flowing rivers and were met by sheepdogs foaming at the mouths when they finally arrived early one afternoon. The shepherd who ran out from under a tarpaulin didn’t mind that they threw stones at his dogs to keep them at bay. The toothless man even invited them inside his shelter for a cup of tea before he started banging on a bucket and singing shepherd songs in Ketsh.

The village had only one telephone, Thorleif remembers. All the men came out of their huts to watch them communicate with the outside world. The village children followed them too, all eager to show them the brick house where they would be sleeping that night. The father of the house appeared with his oldest son, welcomed them warmly in Arabic and took them straight down to a pen where Thorleif picked out a lamb that was slaughtered a few seconds later.

Afterwards, they had a warm foot bath and a meal of sharp sheep’s cheese which they washed down with tea. Behind a curtain little girls sneaked a peek at the men’s world. At night the couple’s bed was made ready for them. Thorleif will never forget feeling like a royal traveller in the Middle Ages.

He opens his eyes again. There is so much he hasn’t done, so much he hasn’t seen. So many things he has yet to show his children.

Ole Reinertsen drives into TV2’s underground car park and parks the car. Thorleif is the last to get out.

‘You go on without me,’ he says as he slams the door shut. Palme turns to him.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I… I just need to get something from my car.’

She looks at him for a moment before she nods. Thorleif goes out the same way the car drove in, out into the daylight where the building across the road offers him a little shade. He thinks about Elisabeth and the children and of what he is about to do. And he has an epiphany. Sometimes it’s infinitely harder to live than to die.

Chapter 48

Henning glares scornfully at the computer screen where the story about Pulli’s sudden death is making headlines. Fat white font against a black background. No photos. There are never any photos in the breaking-news section, only a small square in the top left-hand corner that says ‘breaking news’ in tiny red letters.

It feels as if the walls are trying to crush him into tiny pieces so he gets up and leaves the flat, moving quickly down the stairs once he has locked the door behind him.

The heat hits him as he steps outside. Three teenagers are sitting on a bench beneath a window in the courtyard, smoking. They look up at him as if he is insane, but Henning ignores them. He hurries past them out into the street and the dry summer dust. He walks past the old sail loft that gives the street its name and turns into Fosseveien. Cars drive by slowly. A grown man on a skateboard grins broadly as Henning moves out of his way.

He finds an empty spot on the grassy slope opposite Kuba Bru and watches the river Aker flow by lazily. Around him people are laughing, drinking beer, barbecuing or soaking up the sun.

They’re alive.

While the wrong people die.

Henning lies down and stares up at the sky. Tore Pulli is dead. He is gone. It’s weird, but it feels as if he has lost a friend. And when he thinks about it, perhaps he has.

Thorleif is reminded of Will Smith and the film Enemy of the State as he walks out into Karl Johansgate. Smith played a lawyer who was unaware that he had microphones and transmitters all over his body. Even his watch and shoes had been fitted with high-tech equipment which meant that Jon Voight’s team of rogue NSA agents knew absolutely everything that Smith did. The film’s tagline was ‘In God we trust. The rest we monitor.’

Thorleif doesn’t know how sophisticated the technology the man with the ponytail and his fellow thugs are using is, but they seem to know a great deal about him, and Thorleif can’t afford to take any chances. He glances over his shoulder before walking into the nearest budget clothes shop where he buys five pairs of socks, four pairs of underpants, a pair of long dark trousers, a pair of shorts, three white T-shirts, a thin cotton jumper and a denim jacket. Then he finds a shoe shop and buys a pair of trainers. He uses the lavatory at a Burger King restaurant to change and leaves all his old clothes behind.

Before going outside again, he waits in the restaurant for a few minutes and watches everyone around him, including the people in the street, until he feels confident that no one is waiting for him or keeping him under surveillance.

It takes him only seconds to cross the street and enter Arkaden Mall where he buys a black baseball cap. Afterwards he finds the nearest ATM and withdraws as much cash as he can first using his Visa card, then maxing out his previously untouched MasterCard.

Thorleif tries to suppress the urge to run when he exits on the other side of Arkaden. He walks briskly in the direction of Byporten Shopping Centre, enters through a revolving door and continues up two escalators while people rush around him. He passes a cafe, several clothes shops and makes eye contact with a pretty shop assistant at Handy Size before passing a supermarket, a bookshop and a kiosk. He has arrived at the forecourt of Oslo Central Station.

Leaving everything and everyone behind like this is pure madness, he thinks. But what choice does he have? If he stays, he will very likely be killed, probably today. If he is interviewed by the police, they will surely break him in the end and then his options are confessing to the murder and claiming responsibility for it or telling them everything. If he chooses to talk or if the police make him, the man with the ponytail will hurt Elisabeth and the children. In ways he can’t bear to think about.

The only sensible solution, Thorleif concludes, is to do what he is doing now. Get the hell out of Oslo. He wonders how long it will be before he is reported missing. Guri and Ole will wonder why he never returned to the office. They will try to call him on his mobile but will get no reply. They might ring Elisabeth to ask if he has come home though they will probably put that off for as long as they can. But it will be sometime tonight, Thorleif thinks. Before that, he needs to have found himself a place to hide. Until then his job is to make himself as invisible as possible.

Thorleif has reached the large departure boards at the station. An anthill of people is milling around. It is impossible to determine if any of them are watching him. He just has to hope that his diversion tactics have been successful.

Buses are out of the question. Too claustrophobic and too slow. So he checks the list of InterCity trains. Skien, Lillehammer, Bergen, Halden, Trondheim. The train to Bergen departs in nine minutes, he sees. The one to Gothenburg in eight. With his pulse throbbing in his neck, Thorleif rushes over to one of the numerous red ticket machines. He types in the letters and feeds money into the slot.

‘The train to Eidsvoll is ready to depart from platform number 10.’

Thorleif snatches the ticket and sets off. The train leaves in four minutes. And he still has one more thing to do.

Chapter 49

When Orjan Mjones catches sight of his own reflection in the shop window, he has to make an effort not to grin. Everything went according to plan. His plan. And no screw-ups this time.

It was bloody brilliant.

But it’s not over yet. The home leg remains. Getting rid of Brenden and picking up the rest of the money. After that he will leave Oslo for good. He can’t risk staying here or returning later if Brenden’s absence proves problematic.

Mjones laughs to himself. Problematic?

He has yet to decide on a destination, but it will be far away. He feels a strong urge to go to the woods and sleep under the trees for weeks. He could do that, of course, but not in Norway. And he certainly isn’t going to a place where cheap cocktails and scantily clad women are as easily accessible as the beach. That kind of life has never appealed to him.

Once he has collected the cash, he won’t need to work. Not for a long time. The question is how long he can manage without it. Idleness gives him cabin fever. His brain needs stimulating, and work makes him feel alive.

Around him people are rushing with briefcases in their hands or dragging suitcases behind them as they throw swift, panicky glances at their watches or mobiles. Mjones has nothing but contempt for those who subject themselves to this every day for a whole lifetime. It is so humdrum.

Mjones has never been attracted to a life of respectability. As a teenager, he carried out ram-raids most weeks. It was easy to do, and the cops were always completely baffled. Why should he be stuck in some dead-end job earning 180 kroner per hour when he could easily make a quarter of a million in a weekend?

He had a girlfriend once who tried to turn him into a law-abiding citizen, but he only lasted a couple of months. Every day he would sit in an office trying to sell some rubbish while his body ached to be elsewhere, casing a joint, on a job, mapping and planning. His mother had asked him several times why he couldn’t respect the law like everyone else, but that wasn’t who he was. He enjoyed destruction, he got a thrill from stirring things up, he sought out excitement and action precisely so that life wouldn’t be so bloody boring. It wasn’t society that turned him into a criminal. It was a life he had chosen for himself. And if he had the chance to live his life all over again, the result would have been exactly the same.

His inside pocket vibrates. Mjones takes out his mobile and answers it.

‘We’ve a problem,’ Jeton Pocoli says.

‘Go on.’

‘Number One. I don’t know where he is.’

Mjones’s smile freezes. He transfers the mobile from one hand to the other, pulls a face and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.

‘Where did you lose him?’

‘He went into Burger King. I walked up and down outside for five to ten minutes, but I started to worry when he never reappeared. I went inside to look for him. I found his clothes in the gents.’

Mjones says nothing.

‘Which Burger King was it?’

‘The one at the bottom of Karl Johansgate.’

‘Close to Oslo Central Station?’

‘Yes. That’s where I am now, but I can’t see him.’

Mjones considers this as he looks at his own reflection in the window of GlasMagasinet.

‘Okay,’ he says, eventually.

‘What do we do?’ Pocoli asks.

‘I’ll ring you back. Stay where you are.’

Mjones ends the call before Pocoli has time to reply and rings Flurim Ahmetaj straight away.

‘Speak,’ says the Swedish Albanian.

‘Has he called Number Two yet?’

‘No.’

‘Has he called anyone at all?’

‘No.’

‘Can you see where his mobile is now?’

‘No, but I can find out.’

‘Do that. And check his bank accounts. Number One has done a runner.’

‘Right.’

Mjones looks at himself while he processes the news. Gradually, a fresh smile emerges on his face. ‘It’s no big deal.’

‘Eh?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Number One is about to make the biggest mistake of his life.’

Chapter 50

There is a strange noise inside his head.

Is it the sound of the sea? He can definitely hear waves crashing.

Henning swallows, but the sound refuses to go away. It’s as if he has been to a concert where the noise level was too loud. He blinks as well, but the people around him still look weird. They blur and dissolve. Their voices mingle. The grass under him seems to come closer. An ant climbs up on his hand. It looks as if it is about to crawl inside his skin when Henning flicks it away and gets up. He stands there, swaying. The first steps hurt, the next ones are even worse. He turns away from the sun and lets it burn his neck instead. He carries on walking. The fence, where’s the fence? Tarmac under his feet again. The whoosh from a bicycle racing past grabs hold of him just as a fresh, sharp pain begins under the soles of his feet. When he puts pressure on them, they feel wet.

Nearby something bounces.

‘Oi!’

Henning is startled and looks up.

‘Stop the ball!’

He sticks out his more painful foot, feels something hit it and come to a halt. Someone runs towards him. Henning keeps the ball in place under his foot. He sees a boy with long blond hair. Ice-blue eyes. There is something familiar about them.

‘Thanks,’ the boy says. He is eight, maybe nine years old. ‘Can I have it back, please?’ he asks. Henning looks at him.

‘What’s your name?’ he hears himself say.

‘Fredrik.’

Henning takes a step to the side for support, tries to make eye contact with the boy, but can’t manage it. Instead he rolls the ball towards the boy, who kicks it up and catches it with his hands, but drops it instantly.

‘Yuk, it’s covered in blood!’

The ball rolls away. Henning tries to work out where it has gone, but he can’t. He only registers that the boy is leaving. The stinging pain under his feet grows more intense. He looks down. It’s not until then he realises that he is wearing slippers.

*

Thorleif has always experienced a sense of calm when travelling by train. There is something infinitely serene about gazing idly through a window. If his eyes follow the tracks, the world rushes past. If he looks out at the landscape, everything seems almost stagnant. It’s something which has always fascinated him. But not now.

Today he can’t be bothered to look for deer or admire the fields or the passing mountains. Instead he closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind. It proves to be impossible; he can’t stop reliving what he has done. On his fingertips Thorleif can still feel the tiny hairs on Tore Pulli’s body as he attached the microphone to the tight T-shirt. The needle in the palm of his hand, clammy and smooth. The startled look in Pulli’s eyes as he Thorleif can’t bear to complete the thought. He wonders what everyone will think in the next few days. Especially the children. Elisabeth will probably tell them that Daddy had to go abroad for work and that she doesn’t know how long he will be away. But how long will she be able to keep that up? Pal is eight years old and he is a bright boy. He will soon guess that something is wrong. I need to let them know that I’m in one piece, Thorleif thinks, tell Elisabeth not to worry. But how will he manage that if their flat is being monitored? What if they have bugged Elisabeth’s mobile? I can’t risk it, Thorleif concludes. I can’t risk them suspecting that she knows where I am.

So what the hell can he do?

She might still be at work. Perhaps he can call the school office and Damn, he doesn’t have a mobile. He looks around, sees several of his fellow passengers fiddle with their mobiles. Perhaps he could borrow one of theirs? He dismisses the thought instantly. A conversation of that sort must be had in private, and no sane person would hand over their mobile to a man who says he needs to go away to make a personal call. The best he can hope for is to wait until he leaves the train and look for a public telephone.

If he is to get hold of Elisabeth before she finishes work today, he needs to take action soon. Should he stay on the train until its final destination? Or is it better to get off along the way, at a smaller station? It will be easier to keep track of what is going on in a small town, fewer people around. However, if he is discovered and someone comes after him, he will be making their job easier.

An ad above the luggage shelves further along the carriage attracts Thorleif’s attention. He looks at the pictures and reads the caption. Get your dream cabin now. Under the caption there is a scenic photo of mountains and open spaces, white, beautiful and dramatic with small dark cabins dotted around the landscape. It says Ustaoset at the bottom as if the ad promotes a film starring the Norwegian winter.

Thorleif straightens up in his seat. The ad reminds him of Einar Flotaker, a childhood friend with whom he lost contact after they both had children. But Thorleif will never forget the trip they made as teenagers many, many years ago to Einar’s family’s cabin in Ustaoset. It was the height of winter, Thorleif recalls, and it was down to minus thirty degrees Celsius when they arrived. Once they got off the train they had to walk quite a distance from the station lugging their supplies and skis before they reached it. Inside the cabin it was minus twelve degrees before they got the fire going, and it wasn’t until the next day that they could take off their coats and walk around in normal indoor clothes.

The cabin is probably still there, Thorleif thinks. And I can’t imagine that anyone is using it at the moment.

Chapter 51

The footsteps stop right in front of him. Henning blinks and looks up, sees red shorts and a naked torso. Gunnar Goma is smiling down at him.

‘What are you sitting here for?’ his neighbour asks him, cheerfully but surprised. Henning looks around. He is slumped on the stairwell.

‘I–I don’t know,’ he replies.

It’s like waking up in the middle of a dream. Or perhaps he is dreaming? No. If he had been, his feet wouldn’t have been hurting.

‘How long have you been sitting here?’

‘I’m… I’m not really sure.’

Their voices echo between the walls.

‘I was just going out for a run, and then I find you here. I thought you were a ghost.’

Henning tries to get up. The pain shoots through his feet again.

‘It looks as if you’ve stepped on some glass.’

‘What time is it?’ Henning stammers.

‘Time? I don’t know, I never look at the clock these days. I look outside to see if it’s light or dark, hot or cold. That’s all a man of my age needs to know.’

‘Mm.’

Henning wants to pull himself to standing, but the banister is on the opposite side to him.

‘Do you have some disinfectant upstairs?’ Goma asks him.

‘I think so.’

‘Okay, you can’t stay here. Take my hand.’

Henning looks up at him.

‘Take my hand,’ Goma repeats.

Henning finds Goma’s face and eyes, discovers a determination and a gravity he hasn’t seen there before. He never would have thought that he would need helping up the stairs by a seventy-six-year-old bypass patient naked from the waist up. Nevertheless, he holds out his hand and staggers to his feet. He moves like a drunk. They take the stairs one step at a time. Goma wheezes. His old hand feels rough and full of cartilage. Working hands, Henning thinks. All the time he can hear someone sawing, hammering or hitting something in the courtyard.

They reach his flat. Henning fishes out his keys and opens the door, allows himself be led into the hallway. He stops, looks at the folding steps and the smoke detector, then he looks at Goma.

No, Henning tells himself. This is a job you need to do on your own.

He thanks his neighbour for his help.

‘Don’t mention it,’ Goma says.

Henning looks down. ‘Sorry, I don’t really know what… what happened-’

Goma holds up his hands. ‘Don’t worry about it. We all have our senior moments. I once came round just as I was about to go into Kondomeriet. I don’t know how I ended up in front of a sex shop.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes. But once I was there, I obviously had to go in and-’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Henning interrupts him and holds up his hand. A long moment passes in silence. They look at each other.

‘Can I offer you a cup of coffee or something?’ Henning asks.

‘No, thank you, I’m off to Sultan’s to buy tomatoes.’

‘Some other time perhaps?’

‘Yes, I would like that.’ Goma looks at him for a long time. ‘Right. Got to go. You take it easy now.’

‘You too.’

Chapter 52

It has just gone five o’clock when Thorleif gets off at Ustaoset Station on wobbly legs. He stops and surveys the area, looks at what must be Hallingskarvet mountain range up to his right. The peaks are covered by velvety circles of mist. Dotted randomly around the landscape below are cabins, big and small, in a range of colours. In front of him the mountain hotel, with its brown and red cladding, takes up a fair amount of space. There are several apartment blocks close to the hotel. Route 7 winds its way towards Haugastol and Bergen in parallel with the railway tracks. Across the tracks there is a little lake that sparkles in the late afternoon sunshine.

Thorleif starts to walk. It is hot. He gets even hotter when he realises it’s too late to call Elisabeth. She is bound to be home by now, probably busy feeding their starving children and irritated that he isn’t back yet or answering his mobile.

Normally she would have gone to the gym on a Thursday night, but now she will have to stay at home. Otherwise he could have tried calling her there. But she won’t be going tonight even if she could find a babysitter at short notice. Isn’t there anyone else he can call? Someone he can get to visit Elisabeth or who could bring her to a neutral place?

Calling her sister, his in-laws or his parents would set any number of alarm bells ringing. And if he had been the one hunting someone, apparently with access to unlimited funds, the first thing he would have done would be to check with their next of kin or friends to see if there had been any sort of contact. One of the football mums, perhaps. But Thorleif barely knows who they are or what their names are. Nor does he have their numbers. Besides, it occurs to him, it would be stupid to get even more innocent people mixed up with this. You’ll just have to wait, Thorleif concludes, until Elisabeth is back at work. This means she faces an unbearable evening and night.

As the train continues on towards Bergen, Thorleif follows a man and a woman who also have business in Ustaoset on a Thursday afternoon. They walk separately. Thorleif takes care to lag behind them while simultaneously looking as if he knows his way around. As if it was quite natural for him to get off the train right there, right now.

He leaves the platform, crosses route 7 and walks down towards the petrol station. Ustaoset’s only supermarket greets him with the words lebensmittel and groceries displayed above one other on a white wall. Thorleif tries to visualise the road to Einar’s cabin, but all he can recall is that they passed the shop, the petrol station and the kiosk before taking a right. So that’s what he does now though he has yet to recognise anything. It doesn’t help that the darkness and the snow back then have been replaced by bright afternoon sunshine and dry late summer colours. He walks past a block of flats with five garages under a large brown building with a red roof. Otherwise it is all cabins. Everywhere. And an enormous car park with rows of blue posts lined up with space for one car between them.

Thorleif follows the gravel road until he reaches a crossroads. There is a sign saying Prestholt to the right, via a road called Nystolvegen. Next to it are more signs on top of each other, all signposting cross-country ski routes such as Embretstolen, Geilo via Prestholt or Prestholt via Eimeheii. No, Thorleif thinks. It doesn’t ring any bells.

So he decides to continue straight ahead as a car comes towards him on the gravel road. Thorleif pulls down the baseball cap and stares at the ground. He steps aside until the car has passed him and carries on until he reaches a grey building with a sign saying Presttun.

Presttun, Thorleif thinks. That sounds vaguely familiar.

Spurred on by this he walks on, following the red sticks along the roadside — put there in case the snowfall is so deep that the snowplough drivers can’t see the road. He remembers Einar and himself struggling up that same hill, expelling clouds of beery breath as they went. He hears rhythmic hammering coming from a building site, but he doesn’t see anyone.

One hundred metres later he stops and looks across the slope to the right. Cabin after cabin and occasional young birch trees rise from the ground. Does he recognise the black cabin halfway up the slope? Red roof and windowsills. A small outhouse nearby. Yes, that’s it, Thorleif says to himself and speeds up.

He soon reaches it. It’s not a big cabin, but now when Thorleif sees it again he remembers what it looked like on the inside. Pine walls and pine furniture everywhere. A small galley kitchen. A sofa with red cushions. Oilcloth on the table. Square windows with red and white curtains.

It probably hasn’t changed on the inside, either, he thinks and takes another look around. The cabin looks deserted. The surrounding cabins look empty too. He walks up to it, stops and peers inside through a gap in the kitchen curtains. Thorleif has never burgled anyone’s house, he has barely done anything illegal in his entire life, and he feels uneasy knowing he is about to do so now, especially to someone he knows. He tries to persuade himself that Einar and his family would understand.

Thorleif walks around to the back of the cabin, remembering how Einar told him they forgot their key one Easter. They had to call out a local locksmith, who, in return for a substantial fee, made sure their holiday wasn’t completely ruined. Einar’s father, who was tight-fisted, promised himself that this would never happen again so he devised an alternative way into the cabin to be used in an emergency. As a result, the door of the woodshed was always left unlocked. At the end of the woodshed a new door was fitted that led to the tool shed and larder from which you could enter the kitchen through a hatch with a padlock. And Thorleif remembers Einar telling him that the key to that padlock was hidden in a small rusty tin can.

Thorleif pushes down the handle of the door to the woodshed, but he has to lean heavily on it before it opens. He looks around one last time before he enters and walks to the next door. The shelves and benches in the tool shed are packed with old skis, ski poles with snow guards, snowshoes, spades, tins of paint and various tools. Then he sees the tin can. Rusty but intact. He picks it up and shakes it.

The key rattles inside.

And Thorleif realises that he is smiling for the first time in several days.

Chapter 53

Henning is sitting on his battered Stressless armchair, balancing his laptop on his thighs and resting his legs on a footstool in front of him. He has cleaned the cuts on the soles of his feet and applied a sterile bandage. He can feel that the healing process has already started.

The last few hours seem a blur to him. All he can remember clearly is his telephone conversation with Iver. Then nothing until he found himself coming to in the stairwell. And it’s not the first time that his body has short-circuited like this. What on earth is wrong with me? he wonders.

It’s almost 6.30 p.m., so he turns on the television. The commercial break is followed by the logo for TV2 News. He turns up the volume as he sees Tore Pulli’s tall figure in the same doorway where he himself met him only a few days ago. A breathless female voice announces that convicted killer Tore Pulli collapsed and died in Oslo Prison today. The picture disappears while the theme music is turned up a few notches before it fades away. The next headline story is introduced. Henning doesn’t listen to it but sees images of a concertinaed train with smoke rising from it. The final headline story is given five seconds to tantalise the viewer before the camera cuts to the studio where news anchor Mah-Rukh Ali welcomes the viewers to tonight’s programme. Henning turns the sound up even further.

Former enforcer Tore Pulli collapsed and died in Oslo Prison earlier today. Pulli was being interviewed by TV2 when he died.

Ali stares into the camera. The feature begins, but there are no pictures from inside the prison. Instead, they cut right to a green screen with a photograph of prison spokesman Knut Olav Nordbo next to a telephone. He makes a nervous attempt at telling the people of Norway what has happened, but for the time being he can’t release any information about the circumstances.

They cut to an outside broadcast from the entrance to the prison where a reporter is ready and waiting, clutching a microphone close to his face. He reiterates the facts of the case, before addressing Prison Governor Borre Kolberg. He can’t shed any light on what has happened either. Then back to Mah-Rukh Ali in the studio, who explains that viewers can see the final pictures of Tore Pulli on the nine o’clock news later that evening. In addition, on TV2’s website they can read an interview with TV2 journalist Guri Palme, who was about to interview Tore Pulli when he died.

Henning turns down the sound, flips open the laptop and connects to the Internet. The home page of 123news downloads itself. The breaking-news logo has gone and has been replaced with a standard headline accompanied by the media’s favourite photo of Pulli: the mug shot of him that cold October evening almost two years ago where his eyes are wide, his mouth open and his face displaying a gawping expression.

Henning experiences a sinking feeling, not just at Pulli’s death but also as he recalls the disappointment and incredulity in Iver Gundersen’s voice right before he hung up on him. Looking at all the stories Iver has written makes Henning feel even worse. Under the lead story there is a plethora of links, all with relevant and recent titles. Henning clicks on the lead story which still has no headline other than the obvious one that Pulli is dead.

The first thing that strikes him as he scrolls down the article is that Iver has done a great job. He has tried to dramatise today’s events, has written it in the present tense and has even produced a timeline. He concludes by reminding the readers what Pulli had been convicted of, complete with fact frames. The main text has been broken up with a large picture of Veronica Nansen, but she has yet to respond to 123news ’s requests for a reaction.

Henning sees that the news desk has pasted in TV2’s interview with Guri Palme. ‘The Shock of My Life’ is the headline. Neat, he thinks, producing an internet exclusive so promptly and then referring to the story during a live broadcast. ‘Synergies’ is the trendy word for it in TV circles. But he doesn’t click on it because he already knows what it’s going to say.

Iver has also spoken to Pulli’s solicitor, Frode Olsvik, who explained that he visited his client only a few hours before the interview and that there was nothing to suggest that he was unwell. Henning sighs, thinks about Pulli and hankers after a cigarette for the first time in ages. But he only needs to visualise his mother slumped over the kitchen table with the oxygen tank humming next to her and the urge goes away. What a life, he thinks. What a death.

At least Pulli’s was quick.

Chapter 54

It’s not until he is inside the cabin that it occurs to Thorleif that the property might be fitted with a burglar alarm. However, the power is switched off, and he can’t see any devices on the walls that indicate a connection to a security company.

It takes him a while to locate the circuit-breaker in a fuse box on an external wall. Fortunately, the water is already connected so he doesn’t need to search for a stopcock amongst the heather, bushes and stones that make up the rugged Ustaoset terrain.

On his way back inside he helps himself to a tin of lamb casserole which he heats up even though he isn’t hungry. The meat, potatoes and carrots turn out to be juicy and tasty, and gradually he feels his strength return, but his conscience continues to trouble him. He can’t bear the thought of what Elisabeth must be going through at home where she is probably pacing up and down the floor‚ absent-mindedly answering the children’s questions. That the man with the ponytail and his accomplices might be watching her at this very moment doesn’t improve Thorleif’s mood.

When he has finished eating, he notices that the light in the sky is starting to lose its intensity. The shop is probably shut now, but it doesn’t matter now that he has had a meal. He won’t need anything else until tomorrow so he spends some time making himself at home. The cabin is fitted with a composting toilet, and there are instructions on the bathroom wall which he reads before using it. Afterwards he showers in lukewarm water and dries himself with a towel he finds in one of the bathroom cupboards. Soon he starts to feel better.

There are plenty of books and other types of reading material in the cabin. He also finds a map of the area which might come in useful. In the tool shed he noticed both fishing equipment and several boxes of hooks. If I’m to stay here for a while, Thorleif thinks, perhaps I should try to catch a trout or two.

There is a television in the cabin, but he decides not to switch it on. The glare from a television screen could be easily seen from outside, even from afar. Initially he considers not switching on any lights at all in order not to alert the neighbours — should any have arrived during the evening — but it won’t be viable long term. I can’t just lock myself in, he thinks. I have to find out what is going on — if anything is, what the police are doing, what the media is saying. How will I be able to do that?

The hotel he passed on the main road will definitely have internet access, and, given the time of year, the guest computers are unlikely to be in great demand. But can he really run the risk of going there?

Thorleif thinks about the man who forced him to kill Pulli and asks himself if it’s true that he knows nothing about him. He must have said or done something which Thorleif can use to his advantage. They spent several hours together. There has to be something he can do without compromising his family or himself. Think, Thorleif, he says to himself. You have to think.

He inhales and realises at that moment how exhausted he is. He goes to one of the bedrooms and lies down, covering himself with the pale-blue duvet without putting on bed linen, and closes his eyes. Minutes later he is asleep.

Chapter 55

Iver Gundersen lets himself into his flat and heaves a sigh as he dumps his shoulder-bag on the floor up against the wall. He kicks off his shoes, goes over to the fridge to get a beer, flops into an armchair in the living room and turns on the television. He downs most of the beer in four gulps, then drinks a few more mouthfuls. He realises that one beer won’t be enough tonight.

He should really be with Nora, but he hasn’t got the energy to play the lover after working twelve or possibly thirteen hours. All he can manage is to let the evening come. He wouldn’t be able to lie next to Nora, sensing her expectation of intimacy, their arms wrapped around each other, her breathing wafting across his face as they sleep. She can’t sleep, she says, unless she is burrowing into his naked arm or shoulder. Preferably while snuggled up to his throat.

Nora also happens to be a particularly restless sleeper, her arms and legs sprawled all over the place or violently flung aside — often without warning. And when he wakes up — early, as he always does when he sleeps at her place — she will cling to him until he spoons with her, holding her, gently caressing her back and side. It’s never enough. No, Iver thinks. He definitely hasn’t got the energy for that performance tonight.

She was annoyed, of course; Iver could hear it in her voice. Or not annoyed as such, more disappointed. But at least Nora knows what it’s like to be with someone who doesn’t care what day of the week or what time it is when a story breaks. Not that there is much left of that particular side to Henning Juul.

They never discuss her, but even so Iver knows that Henning finds it hard to have to work alongside the man who replaced him. Iver has never asked Nora if she still has feelings for Henning because he can tell from looking at her. Anything else would be strange given how their marriage ended. Never stir up a hornet’s nest, Iver reminds himself. Not if you don’t want to get stung.

He sits up when TV2’s nine o’clock news begins. He saw how the channel hinted at footage of Tore Pulli’s death during the early evening news, very clever of them. He always enjoys seeing pictures of a subject he is covering himself. Live images of a person only seconds before their life ends adds an extra dimension to a story. He turns up the volume and hears Guri Palme’s dramatic voice over the broadcast.

TV2 has nothing new or spectacular to report about the death itself, Iver soon ascertains, but then again they don’t have to. They already have the cream. He sees Guri’s panicky, clumsy reaction, how she disappears off screen and calls for help. There is nothing fake about her behaviour. This is reality TV at its best.

It is some years since Iver and Guri were at Oslo College of Journalism together. Guri was the kind of girl who would have her hair styled for the school photo, who asked the stills photographer to include her cleavage in head shots and who would spend a week on a tanning bed before a recording, whether it was college work or private. She went to the gym four times a week, at least, concentrating on her stomach, bottom and legs.

But she was also bright — Iver had spotted that immediately — and ambitious. Two very helpful attributes if you want to get ahead in their profession. And it didn’t take many bonding beers with lecturers or media personalities before Iver understood that Guri had an appetite for men that could only further her career.

Consequently, he was rather mystified when he started noticing Guri’s probing eyes on him, her penetrating gaze, her too-quick and false giggling whenever he made a remark that could generously be interpreted as amusing. There were brief, furtive glances over piles of books in the reading room. And the inevitable happened. After a drunken night on the town they collapsed into bed together — without any clothes on.

They were never an item, far from it, but while they were at college they hooked up every now and then to take full advantage of each other. It was good and uncomplicated. It’s like that with some people: there is an indefinable attraction, a spark whenever you look at each other, and you can’t help but give in to it.

After graduation they started job hunting. Guri had had a student placement at TV2, and to begin with she took all the shifts she could get there. But she was looking for her break, the scoop that would make her name. One night, after they had expended some excess energy and were lying in bed pillow-talking, she shared her concerns with him. ‘I need a scoop,’ she had sighed, blowing smoke up towards the ceiling. Her forehead was glistening in the glow from the street light that seeped in through the curtains. He was momentarily lost contemplating her smooth skin.

‘Perhaps I can help you,’ he heard himself say and regretted it immediately. But there was no way back. At the time Iver was brimming with confidence having already broken several stories that had made the headlines. And, as is often the case when a reporter has written several high-profile stories, the reporter becomes noticed and people bring him tip-offs that lead to more scoops.

One tip-off he hadn’t yet managed to investigate — and neither did he know when he would find the time to — concerned an employee in a construction company in Sorlandet who had — allegedly — received a number of private gifts from a subcontractor as a kickback for securing the subcontractor in question work on a road-building project worth billions. Guri found out that the employee, a forty-seven-year-old man from Vennesla, was one of the construction managers on the project and the ‘thank yous’ he had been given included a private garage at his home address in addition to several deposits paid into his bank account at various intervals. In total, the gifts were worth just over 300,000 kroner. The man had tried to cover up the bribes with fictitious invoices.

Guri created a stir, wrote several excellent follow-up articles about corruption in Norway and interviewed the world’s leading non-governmental anti-corruption organisation, Transparency International, who announced later that year that Norway was the most corrupt country in Scandinavia. Guri also secured an interview with the Norwegian-born French magistrate and politician Eva Joly, a famous anti-corruption scourge and the topic was hotly debated both on Tabloid on TV2 and on other news channels. It might not have been a major scoop, but it helped Guri get noticed. Shortly afterwards, TV2 offered her a permanent contract.

She had arrived.

Guri started dating a senior TV2 executive, Iver met Nora, and since then they have stayed out of each other’s beds. But Iver knows that the spark is still there, a delicious tension that simmers between them. And Guri is well aware that she owes him a favour.

The picture of Tore Pulli freezes on the screen as Prison Governor Borre Kolberg tells viewers that he can’t discuss Tore Pulli’s medical history before the journalist announces that an autopsy will be carried out on Pulli’s body as is standard procedure when a death is unexplained. Iver turns off the television, lights a cigarette and mulls it all over before he picks his mobile up from the coffee table and searches for Guri Palme’s number amongst his contacts. He stares at her name for a while before he presses call. And he thinks it’s definitely just as well that he isn’t with Nora tonight.

Chapter 56

After hours of mindless TV-watching, Henning’s brain starts to work again. At eleven o’clock that evening he opens FireCracker 2.0, the program Henning’s source within the police wrote a couple of years ago for their confidential two-way communication, and checks to see if 6tiermes7 is logged on. The minutes pass. Then there is a ding-dong sound as if someone had rung the doorbell.

Henning’s fingers hit the keyboard.

MakkaPakka: Do you know what killed Pulli yet?

6tiermes7: Come on, what do you think?

MakkaPakka: That it’s way too early. Was there any blood at the crime scene?

6tiermes7: No.

MakkaPakka: Anything suspicious at all?

6tiermes7: Not that I know of.

MakkaPakka: Police interviews?

6tiermes7: They haven’t got that far yet.

MakkaPakka: Why not?

6tiermes7: TV2 refuses to release the tapes without a warrant. But here’s something interesting for you. A member of TV2’s staff has gone missing.

Henning sits up.

MakkaPakka: Someone who was there when Pulli died?

6tiermes7: Yes.

MakkaPakka: Who is he?

6tiermes7: His name is Thorleif Brenden. He’s a cameraman.

MakkaPakka: Any previous convictions?

6tiermes7: No, or he would never have got into the prison.

MakkaPakka: Okay, but do you know anything about him at all?

6tiermes7: No. He hasn’t put a foot wrong his whole life.

MakkaPakka: So what are you doing about it?

6tiermes7: Nothing at the moment. He hasn’t been missing for very long. But we’ll put out a missing-person bulletin, I imagine — if he doesn’t turn up over the weekend.

Interesting, Henning thinks. Very interesting indeed.

MakkaPakka: Now for something completely different: do you know where Rasmus Bjelland is these days?

6tiermes7: Didn’t he apply for witness protection?

MakkaPakka: Yes. That’s why I’m asking.

6tiermes7: No. Not a clue. Do you want to talk to him again?

MakkaPakka: Not really sure. But I wonder if the people looking for Bjelland might be behind the arson attack on my flat. Knowing if he is still alive would be a good start.

6tiermes7: It could take some time. I might not be able to come up with anything.

MakkaPakka: Okay. I’ll just have to be patient.

6tiermes7: Stay healthy.

MakkaPakka: You too.

Chapter 57

Though it is late in the evening, the weather is still warm. Orjan Mjones lights a cigarette, blows smoke out through his nose. He is just about to take a second drag when the public telephone on the street corner starts to ring. Mjones squashes the embers with the tips of his fingers and puts the cigarette back in the packet. He goes inside the telephone booth and lifts the handset.

‘Hello?’

‘Congratulations.’ Langbein’s voice is flat.

‘Thank you.’

‘Have you tied up all the loose ends?’

Mjones hesitates. ‘Not all of them, but-’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s not a problem. I’m in control, there’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I’m paid to worry.’

‘Yes, but you can trust me.’

‘I’ve made that mistake once before.’

‘Okay, I understand why you say that, but it’s never going to point back to you or the deal that we have.’

‘I don’t like loose ends.’

‘Neither do I. That’s why I’m going to fix it.’

‘I’ll call you in seventy-two hours. If your problem has gone away, you’ll get the rest of your money.’

‘But-’

‘Same number. Same time.’

Mjones doesn’t have time to protest before the line goes dead. He hangs up the handset hard, shakes his head and walks out into the night.

A big part of him is tempted to let Brenden run, let him play his own game, since he evidently doesn’t understand how this works. Brenden has ruined everything for himself. Brenden killed Tore Pulli. If the police should ever manage to discover how Pulli died, and if they suspect that he might have been murdered, they will be looking for Brenden precisely because he is missing. They will probably want to interview him anyway, for the same reason. It doesn’t look good to disappear on the day that you were in a room with a convicted killer who collapses and dies. And if the police find him, Brenden will be too scared to talk. He knows that his family will be harmed if he reveals anything about the duress he was under.

The best solution, Mjones thinks, would be to give Brenden enough time to start yearning for his family and his old life. He has no experience of lying low. Sooner or later he will have to come out or someone will find him. The cash Brenden withdrew won’t last for ever, regardless of how careful he is. And when the media starts running their missing-cameraman stories or the police decide to issue a warrant for him, the chances that someone will recognise him are high.

But seventy-two hours, Mjones thinks, that’s not a lot. And Brenden showed initiative when he got rid of his clothes and left his mobile on a train to Eidsvoll without getting on himself. Brenden is keeping his cool. And that’s why he has to die. Preferably within the next seventy-two hours.

Mjones takes another drag and stubs out the cigarette on a nearby bin before he turns his attention to the cab rank and gets into a white Toyota Prius. It’s time to stir things up.

Chapter 58

The cuts to his feet throb all the way from Grunerlokka to Gronland, but Henning alternates between putting his weight on the heel and the ball of his feet so as not to aggravate the injuries more than necessary. It works to some extent.

At the office he hangs up his jacket on a coat hook by the grid of desks and chairs that is the national news desk. A quick glance across the room tells him that neither Heidi Kjus nor Kare Hjeltland have arrived yet. Iver Gundersen, however, is already behind his desk. Henning nods to him, sees that his eyes look bright and contented. He probably got laid last night, Henning thinks. Or this morning.

‘I thought you were taking today off as well?’ Iver snipes.

‘Yes, but I… I wanted to join in.’

Iver looks at Henning for a few seconds before he replies, ‘How nice of you.’

Henning sits down. The room starts to fill with voices from a television screen and the sound of stiff fingers across reluctant keyboards. He switches on his computer and leans back. He watches as Iver puts down his mug so quickly that the coffee splashes.

‘Listen, I’ve got something to show you,’ Iver says.

‘Eh?’

Iver looks around to check that no one is close enough to overhear. ‘We need to discuss it in private. Is now a good time?’

‘Time?’

‘I know the morning meeting is about to start, but we need a quick review. In my opinion.’

Henning shrugs his shoulders. He feels more like ringing Brogeland to check if Thorleif Brenden turned up during the night, but he decides that it can wait.

‘Why not,’ he says.

‘Great. Come on.’

Iver takes a CD, gets up and walks briskly past the coffee machine, where a small queue of bleary-eyed journalists has formed. Henning tries to walk as naturally as he can to avoid awkward questions he doesn’t feel like answering.

They go to a meeting room where four chairs are arranged around a table. A computer is pushed up against the wall. Iver closes the door, walks over to the computer and moves the mouse to wake up the screen. He types in his username and password and hits the enter key.

‘Sit down, would you?’ Iver says. ‘Please? People standing make me nervous.’

Henning does as he is told. ‘What is it you want to show me?’ he says.

‘Just wait.’

Iver inserts the CD into the computer and double-clicks on the icon that appears on the right-hand side of the screen. He drums his fingers on the table while he waits for the file to open. Soon the screen is filled with light coming from a doorway. Henning sees a familiar woman’s face on the other side of the door. And then he realises what they are looking at.

‘How the hell did you get hold of this?’

‘That specific piece of information is something I need to keep to myself,’ Iver smiles without taking his eyes off Guri Palme. Henning is forced to admit that he is impressed.

‘Which version is this?’ he asks. Iver’s smug world-champion smile appears to be glued to his face.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have TV2 edited it?’

‘No, this is raw footage. Or at least I think it is. This is the footage from one camera. Something went wrong with the other recording I think.’

Tore Pulli’s massive body comes into focus. He is wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt. Pulli shakes hands with Guri Palme, who can just about be seen. She is wearing dark-blue jeans, a white top and a short suede jacket. Her cleavage is clearly visible in the slanted camera angle. Pulli doesn’t smile, he merely looks her in the eye but can’t resist the temptation to look further down.

Palme ushers him into the room, and Pulli follows her. He stops and greets the other man from the TV2 crew. Could it be Thorleif Brenden? Henning wonders, and sees how the man helps to seat Pulli, attaches a microphone to his T-shirt and connects a cable from the microphone to the camera opposite. After that he adjusts Pulli’s sitting position slightly. From then on the camera focuses exclusively on Pulli.

‘Are you ready to start?’ Palme asks. ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

Pulli doesn’t respond. He looks nervous, Henning thinks and stares at Pulli’s restless eyes.

‘Tore Pulli, thank you for talking to us.’

Pulli’s head lolls forwards, but he tries to lift it up.

‘You’ve been convicted of murder, but you maintain your innocence and claim that someone set you up. Who set you up?’

Pulli still doesn’t reply. Henning leans forwards. Gravity seems to be forcing Pulli’s head down to his chest, and he starts to sway. Henning sees something that looks like fear in Pulli’s eyes before the spark in them fades away. Iver turns up the sound a bit more.

‘Pulli, are you feeling all right?’

Pulli alternates between swaying from side to side and rocking back and forth. He starts to shake all over, his eyes roll into the back of his head and his face turns blue. The cameraman captures it: he zooms in on Pulli’s face, then he zooms out again. Pulli’s convulsions increase before he keels over on his side and lies on the sofa in spasms. Then he stops moving. His eyes take on a glassy stillness.

‘Toffe, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Just carry on filming, will you?’

Iver starts to laugh.

‘What is it?’

‘They’ll want to cut that bit.’

‘Which bit?’

‘The bit where she tells Toffe or whatever his name is to carry on filming.’

Henning watches the chaos that ensues. He hears Guri Palme shout, ‘ He collapsed! He just collapsed! ’ as she bangs on what Henning assumes to be a door with her bare fists. Shortly afterwards a prison officer enters the room. She orders everyone to leave. Palme starts arguing with Knut Olav Nordbo who has entered with the prison officer.

‘We need to get out of here!’

‘I have to call an ambulance… the police… they… I-’

‘Yes, but we want to get out!’

The camera wobbles before the screen goes blue. Iver lets the CD play for a few seconds before he stops it.

‘Well, that didn’t take long,’ he says and exhales hard. An acrid smell of stale coffee and Pall Mall cigarettes reaches Henning’s nostrils.

‘What are you thinking?’ Iver asks.

Henning looks at him. It feels weird to sit in a small room with Iver, just the two of them, discussing a story. Henning leans forwards and rests his elbows on the table.

‘I don’t really know,’ he says and thinks about Thorleif Brenden. ‘There is not much we can do about the death itself except wait for the result of the preliminary autopsy report. And you dealt with everything else yesterday.’

‘So you did read it,’ Iver smiles happily.

Henning doesn’t reply.

‘But his case,’ Henning begins, and realises instantly that he has gone too far to turn back. The knowledge of what it involves makes his heart beat faster and harder.

‘You’re referring to his appeal?’

‘Yes, or the reason there was an appeal to be heard in the first place. I’ve a good mind to review the whole case,’ Henning says, surprised at the determination in his own voice.

‘What do you mean?’

Since the moment Henning heard that Pulli had died, he has gone over what Pulli said to him when they met in prison. ‘ I guarantee that you’ll be interested in what I know. ’ And the more he thinks about it, the more convinced he is that Pulli wasn’t lying or trying to scam him. It’s only human to want to think well of the dead, but he feels sure that Pulli had something on someone. And bearing in mind how many people he knew, it’s likely that others knew it too. If I’m to find out what it is, Henning thinks, I have to get to know Pulli better.

‘Pulli always maintained his innocence,’ Henning continues.

Iver scoffs and smiles. ‘Pull the other one‚ Henning,’ he says, sounding jaded.

‘What if he was telling the truth?’

‘A guy like Pulli? I refuse to believe that. He has nineteen minutes he can’t account for.’

‘Yes, I’m aware of that, but there are other aspects of his case which are highly suspect.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as why a former enforcer who didn’t even use his knuckle-duster when he went debt-collecting would take his old museum piece with him to what was supposedly a peaceful meeting.’

‘He was losing his touch.’

‘Seriously, Iver.’

‘Yes, but why not?’

Henning is about to say something but stops himself. ‘I’m not saying that he didn’t do it, but that it wouldn’t hurt to take a look. Something about this case isn’t right.’

Iver scratches his sparse beard. ‘It’s going to take for ever, Henning. And‚ besides, we don’t know if it’ll get us anywhere. Plus, we’re going to upset a lot of people.’

‘I know, but it’s worth doing some work on the story for that reason alone. On the side.’

Iver looks at Henning with an expression of scepticism in his eyes.

‘Why is this suddenly so important to you?’ he says.

Henning doesn’t reply straight away. ‘I just think there is a good story here,’ he says at last. ‘And I… I don’t think I can crack it on my own.’

Iver stares at Henning, who looks steadily back at him. Neither of them speaks for a while.

‘Besides, you owe me,’ Henning declares.

‘What did you say?’ Iver gasps.

‘The Henriette Hagerup story,’ Henning reminds him. ‘I handed it to you on a plate, and I know it opened doors for you. Is it just the two job offers you have received since then? Or did more come in during the summer?’

Iver stares at Henning with incredulity.

‘But that’s all right,’ Henning tells him. ‘I’m going to work on this story with or without your help.’

Iver looks down. A long, awkward silence ensues.

Finally, he nods.

Chapter 59

Thorleif wakes up with a start. He looks around, but doesn’t recognise his surroundings.

Then he remembers where he is.

He quickly flips back the duvet and sits up, heaving his legs over the edge of the bed so his feet touch the dark-brown wooden floor. There is a yellow bedside table next to the bed underneath a small window where white curtains make an unsuccessful attempt at keeping out the light. Thorleif runs his hands up and down his face, looks around for his mobile and sighs when he remembers that he put it on the Eidsvoll train. He has no idea what time it is except that it must be morning. At home he would have shuffled to the bathroom and woken himself up under the shower.

Home.

He wonders what Elisabeth and the children are doing. Perhaps Julie is playing and having fun at nursery. Perhaps Pal is tumbling about in PE as he always does on Friday mornings. Elisabeth is unlikely to have gone to work. If he knows her well, she will be too upset. But if that’s the case then he can’t contact her, and he is afraid to call her at home.

Thorleif goes to the living room where he carefully opens one of the curtains and looks out of the window. The cabin lies halfway up the slope, with breathtaking views across Ustaoset and Ustetind at the end of the lake and over the open terrain. It feels good to rest his eyes on the horizon. He sees a tiny aeroplane. Flocks of birds. A car drives down the grey snake of tarmac. Someone is walking from the petrol station to the hotel.

Even though Thorleif isn’t hungry he knows that he has to eat something. He won’t be very much use to himself if his head and body aren’t working. He potters sleepily to the larder and checks his supplies. Nothing very appetising. A few tins of lamb casserole. Peas and ham. Tinned pineapple. He can see he has food for a couple of days, but there are no dried foods, cold meats or beverages. He will have to go shopping.

It occurs to him that the weekend is about to start. People who have finished their summer holidays might already be contemplating getting their cabins ready for the winter season. Many love the vivid autumn colours that have started to emerge. There is bound to be considerably more traffic over the weekend, Thorleif thinks. Consequently, he should buy enough food to last him at least two days. If not longer.

Soon he is leaving the cabin the same way he came in, through the kitchen, the larder and the woodshed. The fresh mountain air feels good on his face. He walks at a steady pace down to the main road and into what he, with a little generosity, can call the centre of Ustaoset. He climbs the grey concrete steps and enters the shop, which he quickly sees is a cross between a Clas Ohlson home store and an Ica supermarket. On entry he is met by a display of all sorts of handy tools. Spades, mops, boiler suits, wellies, snowshoes — even though the snow is a couple of months away.

The first thing Thorleif does is check the newspapers. Tore Pulli’s death is on the front page of both VG and Dagbladet. Aftenposten, too, features Pulli’s death. As does Bergens Tidende. The local newspaper, Hallingdolen, leads with the unusual rise in break-ins in cabins in Ustaoset recently and how the Ustaoset-Haugastol area has been particularly badly affected. Thorleif’s stomach lurches, but he tries to shake it off by wandering around the aisles with the shopping basket. He fills it with a loaf of sliced bread, a tub of cream cheese, two cartons of juice and a large block of milk chocolate. He also picks up both tabloid newspapers on his way out and says a quick thank you to the man behind the till when he gets his receipt.

Thorleif is about to leave, but turns around. ‘Excuse me, do you happen to know if there is a public telephone nearby?’

The man laughs. ‘No, we don’t have those in Ustaoset.’

‘I thought they were everywhere.’

‘Not any more.’

‘Oh, right, no, I don’t suppose they are. I forgot my mobile, you see. Is there anywhere around here you can make calls if you need to.. if you haven’t got one?’

‘You could try the hotel and see if they can help you,’ the man says without the smile leaving his lips.

‘Thank you.’

Thorleif leaves the shop and makes his way to the main entrance of the hotel, but when he gets there the door is locked. He tries it again without success. He presses his face against the glass in the door but sees no movement inside.

‘Damn,’ he says and looks around while he decides what to do next. How on earth can a hotel be shut in the middle of the day? Feeling despondent and even guiltier towards Elisabeth he wanders back to the cabin. There he spreads a few slices of bread with cream cheese and reads the papers without finding anything to suggest that Tore Pulli’s death is being treated as suspicious. But much could have happened since the tabloids went to print. If I’m to know what is going on, Thorleif thinks, I’m going to have to try something else.

Chapter 60

Heidi Kjus gets up as Iver and Henning appear from around the corner looking as if they are about to join the queue of coffee-deprived early birds. Henning can see what she wants to say long before she says it and yet he still lets her make her first management mistake of the day.

‘Where have you been?’

‘We went out for a cigarette,’ Henning mutters.

‘What did you say?’

‘Sorry,’ Iver says and holds up his hands. ‘It’s my fault. Henning and I have just had a meeting to prepare for the morning meeting with you.’

‘That meeting was supposed to start ten minutes ago! And not just because of me, but because of everyone else in the department. Wasting other people’s time shows a lack of respect.’

‘Yes, we know. Sorry. It won’t happen again.’

Heidi turns her attention to Henning. ‘What are you doing here today? I thought you were taking today off as well?’

‘Yes, but I decided I would much rather be here,’ he replies, making no attempt to cover up his irony. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Iver smile.

‘Okay, fine. But are you ready now? Have you finished your little chat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Henning, will you be joining us?’

‘Obviously. It’s the highlight of my day. Do I have time to make a quick phone call first?’

‘To whom?’

‘It’ll only take a minute.’

She checks her watch and sighs. ‘All right then. But be quick.’

Heidi and Iver are sitting alone in the meeting room when Henning enters.

‘So, tell me,’ Heidi says. ‘What are you doing about Tore Pulli?’

Henning and Iver look at each other.

‘The preliminary autopsy report will probably be ready sometime today,’ Iver says.

‘Okay. Anything else?’

Iver and Henning exchange glances, but neither of them says anything.

‘Is that it?’ she asks, suspiciously.

Henning clears his throat. ‘One of the people present when Pulli died has gone missing.’

Iver and Heidi both look at Henning.

‘Missing how? Has he done a runner?’ she asks.

‘Nobody knows yet. I’ve just been speaking to the police. He was supposed to turn up at the station to make a statement last night, but no one has seen him since yesterday, since Pulli died.’

‘Do the police suspect him of anything?’

‘Not at the moment. But they would very much like to know what he has been up to.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Thorleif Brenden. He’s a cameraman.’

‘Perhaps the shutter went down for him,’ Iver jokes.

‘An experienced cameraman who has covered wars and atrocities all over the world? He goes AWOL just because he sees a man collapse and die in prison?’

Iver says nothing.

‘Besides, he lives with his girlfriend and their two children,’ Henning adds.

‘There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he is missing,’ Heidi suggests.

‘Sure, but it’s still a remarkable coincidence.’

Heidi makes a quick note on the pad in front of her. ‘Okay,’ she says, in her summing-up voice. ‘We need some scoops‚ boys. Real news. It’s been a long time.’

Chapter 61

Iver Gundersen places another steaming cup of coffee on his desk and sits down. An avalanche of emails has arrived since he last checked, but not one of them is from Nora. They always say hi to each other in the morning, especially if they haven’t spent the night together. He sent her a few lines just before Henning turned up, but she has yet to respond. He guesses she is still sulking and checks his mobile. No messages there either.

He finds her number and lets it ring for a long time, but there is no reply. With a dawning realisation that she may be not only sulking but also mad at him, he decides to leave a message. Before he starts to talk, he glances around, quickly checking that there is no one in the immediate vicinity. He hears the beep at the other end.

‘Hi, it’s me. I wanted to ask you about tonight. If you haven’t got plans I was wondering if you would like to go to the cinema? Or out for a meal somewhere nice? That would be… nice. As I didn’t make it last night and… eh-’

Iver looks up and sees Henning limp out from the lavatories.

‘Eh, okay, call me. Or send me an email. Okay. Take care.’

Iver hangs up just as Henning sits down. Iver looks at him. ‘How did you know Brenden was missing?’ he says.

Henning looks up.

‘You didn’t come to work yesterday,’ Iver continues.

Henning still makes no reply.

‘You also knew that he has a girlfriend and two children, that he is an experienced cameraman, etc. How did you manage to find all that out?’

Henning looks at Iver for a few moments before he says, ‘None of your business.’

‘None of my business?’

‘Do I ever ask you where you get your information from?’

‘No, but-’

‘No, precisely. Why don’t we agree how best to develop this story?’

Iver hesitates before he nods.

‘As far as Tore Pulli is concerned,’ Henning says, ‘the police are awaiting the preliminary autopsy report before they do anything. It’s also too soon for them to take action in respect of Brenden. But we ought to have a chat to TV2.’

‘I know Guri Palme a bit,’ Iver says. ‘I could try to speak to her.’

Henning looks at him for a couple of long seconds. ‘Okay. I’ll see if I can get hold of Brenden’s family. Unless they’ve already appointed a spokesperson. Everybody does, these days. Do you still have the CD?’

Iver looks around his desk. ‘What about it?’

‘I want to have another look at it.’

‘Okay. But be discreet. I don’t want anyone else seeing it.’

‘Fine. Do we have something we can feed to the monster?’

‘Pulli’s funeral, probably. It’ll be a glorious mix of celebrities and villains.’

‘Yes, but we can’t know in advance who’ll show and we need something now. Plus it would take up a lot of time.’

‘Yes. Stupid idea.’

‘No, we should still go. And if we’re to get to the bottom of this story, there are a couple of people we need to talk to. Kent Harry Hansen is one of them. He is the manager of the gym where Tore Pulli used to go and it’s where most of Pulli’s friends hang out.’

‘Okay. I’ll see if I can get hold of him.’

‘Fine. If you want to talk to him face to face it might be wise to do it away from the gym. They’re not very fond of visits from the press. In fact, it might be a good idea to tread carefully among those guys.’

‘I’ve taken a walk on the wild side before.’

‘Yes, I know. You have that I’m-invincible-because-I’m-a-journalist look. It will vanish once you’ve had your head kicked in.’

Iver scrutinises Henning. ‘I know you’ve just told me it’s none of my business, but how the hell do you know all this? Where Pulli worked out, the kind of people who go there, their names, etc.?’

Henning hesitates. ‘I did a bit of research last night,’ is all he says.

‘Yes, you could say that again.’

Henning shows no sign of wanting to elaborate. Instead he says, ‘If you get hold of Hansen, I’ve got some suggestions as to what you should ask him.’

Chapter 62

Henning finds the meeting room as empty as it was earlier that morning, closes the door behind him and inserts the CD. He puts on headphones and concentrates on Pulli’s face while observing everything that happens in the room, the movements of the cameraman, the cables, the gobos. Henning didn’t find any photos of Brenden on the Internet, but he thinks he must be the man with practically no hair and a goatee. Underneath his khaki photographer’s waistcoat he wears a red T-shirt with a logo Henning can’t make out.

He is reminded of a question his mentor Jarle Hogseth used to ask, especially when Henning muttered phrases such as ‘I don’t understand’ or ‘I’m stuck; this isn’t going anywhere.’ Hogseth always made him look at the problem again from different angles.

‘What does it mean to understand?’ he would sometimes ask him.

‘To know something, perhaps, to appreciate its implications.’

‘There are two ways of looking, Henning. If you don’t look properly, you’ll never see anything. But if you look a little less, you can also see much more.’

Hogseth went on to explain his philosophy, which Henning has applied to every aspect of journalism ever since. ‘All journalists focus on the speaker because that’s the reason they are there. But it’s often much more rewarding to study the person next to the speaker or their spouse for that matter, to see how they react. It’s about spotting something no one else is paying attention to.’

Henning watches Brenden as Pulli enters. They nod and shake hands before Pulli sits down. The camera follows Pulli’s movements. Brenden comes into view again. He attaches a microphone to Pulli’s T-shirt, runs a cable from his body in the direction of the camera before he puts his hand on Pulli’s back and pushes him a little closer to the table. Brenden’s physical contact with Pulli lasts ten or perhaps fifteen seconds. Then only Pulli can be seen on the screen.

Henning rewinds the recording and replays the scene. He plays it a third time before he hits the stop button and zooms in on Brenden’s left hand. It is clenched even while he clips on the microphone. Henning studies the hand more closely in slow motion. It remains clenched. When Brenden leans towards Pulli to make him straighten up, both his hands are behind Pulli’s neck. Suddenly Pulli glances sideways, towards Brenden, but Brenden merely steps away from him, still with his fist closed.

‘Hm,’ Henning mutters to himself and rewinds the recording again and stops it just as Pulli looks at Brenden. Henning stares into Pulli’s eyes. Then he calls Brogeland to ask if the police have seen the footage.

‘No, we haven’t got the recording from TV2 yet. I think it’s coming later today.’

‘Okay. Call me when you’ve seen it. There are a couple of things I need to talk to you about.’

‘What things? Can’t you just tell me now?’

‘I need to check something first. Have you spoken to Thorleif Brenden’s family yet?’

‘Ella Sandland spoke to his girlfriend late last night.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘The usual, that they hadn’t argued, that he would never just stay away like this.’

‘So he hadn’t been behaving strangely up until he went to film Pulli in prison?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Okay. Call me later today, would you?’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Chapter 63

‘It’s beyond me how you can live like this.’

Orjan Mjones marches into the inner sanctum of Flurim Ahmetaj, a room that serves as his centre of operations, living room and also bedroom — or so it would appear. A duvet is scrunched up on a mattress under the window, which is covered with a black blind. The only source of light in the room is coming from three computer monitors lined up next to each other.

‘That’s how I like it,’ Ahmetaj says in Swedish.

Plates with crumbs and cold pizza crusts are piled high on his desk. The floor space by the computer tower is covered with Coke bottles, empty as well as half-full ones.

Mjones finds an office chair and rolls over to the desk. He looks for somewhere to put down his mobile but gives up.

‘You wanted to show me something?’

Ahmetaj slurps from a 1.5-litre Coke bottle and lets out an unashamed burp.

‘Check this out,’ he says and plays a video on the screen. From a bird’s-eye perspective they see people walk quickly in and out of a Burger King restaurant. Mjones looks at Ahmetaj.

‘I know a guy who knows a guy who does security for Burger King,’ Ahmetaj says in broken Swedish. ‘You wouldn’t believe what people will do in exchange for a couple of grand — which you now owe me, by the way.’

‘I’m sure we can sort that out,’ Mjones smiles.

The camera is mounted under the ceiling with the lens overlooking the tills and the entrance. At the bottom-right corner a counter shows the time as being 12:38:04.

‘Look at him,’ Ahmetaj says, pointing to a man who walks quickly into the restaurant. In his hand he holds a bulging white plastic bag.

‘That’s Brenden,’ Mjones says.

‘Okay. And now look, a few minutes later.’

Ahmetaj fast-forwards the recording until the counter shows 12:43:26. A man in a white T-shirt is standing with his back to the camera, glancing nervously around and carrying an identical but slightly less bulging plastic bag.

‘Brenden again,’ Mjones says, getting excited now.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It’s the same hairstyle and posture.’

Brenden leaves Burger King, making sure he is looking at the ground and shielding his face with his hand as he does so.

‘Okay,’ Mjones says. ‘From his bank statement we know that he went into JeanTV in Arkaden Mall and bought something that cost 399 kroner.’

‘A hat, maybe.’

‘Yes, that was my first thought. Or a baseball cap. And since he ditched his mobile on a train leaving Oslo Central Station, it’s highly probable that he himself travelled in another direction around the same time. Can you find out which other trains left then?’

‘Okay.’ Ahmetaj’s fingers fly across the keyboard.

‘Wait a moment. I’ve got a better idea. Can you give me a printout of the best picture you have of Brenden?’

Ahmetaj clicks again and replays the video. He waits for Brenden to turn his head. His face appears in profile. Ahmetaj freezes the picture, takes a screen dump and opens the file in Photoshop where he adjusts the colours and the contrasts. Then he hits Crtl + P. The sound of a printer warming up comes from somewhere under the desk. Mjones bends down and kicks away an empty Coke bottle, which in turn knocks over several other empty bottles. He pulls a face as the dust rises.

‘What are you going to do?’ Ahmetaj asks when Mjones reappears with a sheet of paper in his hand.

‘I’m going to play cops and robbers,’ Mjones replies and grins.

Chapter 64

In US TV crime dramas, male pathologists are short and fat while female ones have long legs and are as immaculately groomed as only newly divorced women can be. Both sexes have complicated private lives, but as far as Henning knows Dr Karoline Omdahl fits none of the above categories. When he wrote a story about a day in the life of a forensic pathologist some years ago and used Dr Omdahl as his subject, he learned that she is married with three grown-up children and has a passion for golden retrievers. The numerous photos of dogs, children and grandchildren Dr Omdahl displayed in her office made it easy for Henning to bust every myth and cliche about the profession of forensic medicine. Even so, he couldn’t stop himself from spicing up his feature with references to smelly corpses, stomach contents and open chest cavities.

Dr Omdahl replies after several long rings. Henning introduces himself and asks if she remembers him.

‘Oh, hi,’ she says, surprised. ‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘Good to talk to you again.’

‘Likewise.’

‘How are the dogs?’

Henning hears her drink from a cup and swallow. ‘Why, thank you, they’re fine. Yash had an infected paw last week, but it seems to have cleared up now, fortunately.’

‘Glad to hear it. Do you have a couple of minutes?’

A few seconds of silence follow. ‘That depends on what it’s about.’

‘It’s about Tore Pulli.’

She falls silent again. ‘I can’t discuss him with you, Juul.’

‘No, I know. But have you finished his autopsy?’

‘The police have requested a forensic autopsy, yes, and we’ve made it our top priority. That’s all I can say.’

Henning nods. ‘How long will it be, do you think, before the preliminary autopsy report will be available?’

‘It’ll be ready later today.’

‘Can I ask… What exactly goes into a preliminary report? What do you look for?’

‘We open up the body and carry out a macroscopic assessment of the organs. We check for internal damage, possible stab injuries, gunshot wounds and so on.’

‘And what about the final report?’

‘That contains toxicology information and analyses of blood and other fluids, possibly a DNA analysis. In addition, we always take tissue samples from various organs. These samples are collected as a matter of routine, but we will also take samples of any discoveries we make during the autopsy. All of this goes into the final report.’

‘I understand. How long will it be before the final report is ready?’

‘It can take up to a couple of months.’

Months, Henning thinks. He can’t wait that long.

‘Speaking generally, what would cause an otherwise healthy forty-two-year-old man to suddenly drop dead?’

‘It depends on what you mean by “otherwise healthy”. You can carry many potentially fatal conditions without being aware of it. An electrical defect in your heart, for example. If that happens, you’ll need highly sophisticated medical intervention within minutes or you’ll die. These conditions can strike without warning.’

‘Sounds sinister.’

‘An artery in your brain might burst, or an artery in your chest or abdomen might rupture. This can sometimes be caused by a vessel degenerating through disease while in other cases the blood vessel may look healthy and still burst. Or you could suffer a blood clot in a central artery in your brain or your heart or a sudden bleed in your brain tissue.’

‘I think I get the picture,’ Henning says. ‘In this case, it looks as if Tore Pulli suddenly begins to experience breathing difficulties. Does that fit in with any of the causes you’ve just mentioned?’

‘It might.’

‘If I were to tell you that he didn’t appear to be in control of himself or his muscles, either, what would you say?’

‘That his death could still be attributed to any number of reasons. It’s possible that he was poisoned though in this case it would be highly unlikely.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he died in a prison.’

‘Yes,’ Henning hears himself say. ‘But if it turns out that he was poisoned, how will you know?’

‘I’m not sure that we would.’

‘But if you suspected it?’

‘Then we would ask the Institute of Forensic Toxicology to carry out further investigations. They never attend the actual autopsy, they just get the samples. But if this turns out to be a case of poisoning, and I want to emphasise that I’m merely speculating here, then I would assume that we’re talking about some sort of nerve toxin.’

‘He couldn’t breathe or move just before he died.’

‘Quite so,’ Dr Omdahl replies, slowly.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘No, it’s just that if — and I want to stress again that if — it were a case of poisoning, then we might be talking about a combined neuro- and cardiotoxic substance, but speculating is a waste of time. We need to examine him first.’

‘I appreciate that, and I have no intention of speculating in my newspaper either. But how many types of such poison exist?’

‘Oh, several. Dozens. Hundreds. The Institute of Forensic Toxicology is much better placed to answer that question. They report to the Institute of Public Health now. Their full name is the Department for Forensic Toxicology and Intoxicating Substances Research.’

‘Okay, I think I might give them a call.’

‘You do that.’

‘How will the body look if it was poisoned?’

‘A pure nerve toxin that paralyses the respiratory system will cause you to suffocate while your heart is still beating. Your skin and mucous membranes will probably turn slightly blue. If we are talking about a combined neuro- and cardiotoxin, it’s likely to cause heart and respiratory failure, and then there will be no external signs whatsoever. All you’re likely to see are possible signs of suffocation if the respiratory system is affected before the heart stops.’

‘Okay,’ Henning says. ‘It sounds as if we’ll just have to wait and see.’

‘Yes, you’ve got it.’

‘Thank you so much for your help.’

‘You’re very welcome.’

Henning ends the call and looks up. At the monitor in front of him Pulli is staring at Brenden. There is something wounded in his eyes.

Henning starts rubbing his arms. He doesn’t know why, but the image makes him shudder.

Chapter 65

Iver Gundersen looks at his watch. Kent Harry Hansen was meant to have turned up twenty-five minutes ago. Iver has investigated plenty of stories where the source gets cold feet and decides that they don’t want to talk after all. Words in print can be mighty, especially when you are the one who will be held accountable for them later regardless of whether you wrote or spoke them.

Iver would not have thought that of Hansen, who had said on the phone that he would be happy to talk about Tore as long as they could meet in Sagene, close to Hansen’s flat. This is why Iver is waiting at La Casa Spiseri, a restaurant that tempts him with the smell of food.

He can’t be bothered to do the return journey straight away so he orders a club sandwich and a beer from the waitress, who is only too happy to respond to his warm gaze with a smile. I ought to bring Nora here, he thinks. The whitewashed plastered walls, large red floor tiles and tables in matching colours lend the place a rustic charm.

She finally answered his calls, thank God, and said that dinner and a movie ‘sounded cute’. Cute, Iver snorts. Who the hell says cute to their boyfriend? He wonders if she ever said it to Henning.

A glass with condensation on the outside and an amber liquid on the inside arrives at the same time as a compact man with a tanned face and very short white hair. His T-shirt, which has the Fighting Fit logo printed on the black material in white and red, fits tightly across his paunch. His bellybutton can be seen in the upper circle of the second g. On his forearms Hansen has black tattoos that draw the eye up to his biceps, which bulge so much that the sleeves of his T-shirt look as if they are in danger of cutting off the blood supply. His biceps remind Iver of muscular thighs. His left ear lobe has studs which look like diamonds, but which Iver refuses to believe would have cost more than a hundred kroner.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Hansen says as he approaches Iver with swaggering, vigorous steps. Iver gets up and sticks out his hand.

‘I got your text, but a guy wanted to buy our entire stock of Gainomax Recovery and I had to order some more before I left. And then loads of people turned up for their workouts. Plus Gunhild was late coming back from her lunch break as usual. Have you been waiting a long time?’

‘I decided to stick around.’

Hansen takes Iver’s hand and squeezes it hard. He sits down, knocking into the table so the beer in Iver’s glass jolts.

‘Do you want something to eat or drink?’ Iver sits down again, moving his mobile away from his glass as he does so.

‘What you’ve ordered looks good, but I think I’ll pass. I’m meeting a customer later today. A cup of coffee would be welcome though.’

Iver holds up his hand and makes eye contact with the waitress. ‘Would you get us a cup of coffee, please?’ he says softly, followed by a smile. She smiles back at him as she leaves. Hansen moves closer and plants his elbows on the table. Iver does the same in an attempt to balance out the table’s weight distribution, but is nowhere near successful.

‘I should offer you my condolences first,’ Iver says.

‘Thank you.’

‘You knew each other well, I gather?’

‘Yes,’ Hansen sighs mournfully and looks down. ‘Rotten business.’

Iver nods, uncertain how to phrase the questions he has prepared in advance. It occurs to him that it might be a good idea to warm Hansen up with questions he already knows the answers to before revealing the real reason he is here. It takes some minutes; he learns that Tore was a great guy, the undisputed leader, and that ‘ no one would dare to mess with Tore.’ Iver can’t quite make up his mind whether Hansen really believes his own bluster or whether he only says it because Pulli is dead.

Once the coffee arrives and the waitress has left with a flirtatious smile, Iver leans back. He remembers Henning’s warning that it might prove difficult to crack open this story. For that reason, Iver thinks, resorting to more drastic measures could be necessary. ‘How’s business?’ he asks.

‘Not too bad.’

‘Do you still work with recovering addicts and the homeless?’

‘Not as many as we used to.’

‘Why not?’

‘Things changed after Vidar’s death.’

‘But you still get financial support from the Inner City Project?’

‘Yes, we do. And I still employ staff who are a part of that.’

Iver stops the rhythm of his questioning. ‘And how is your other business?’

Hansen looks at Iver. ‘What other business?’

‘The one with no paper trail?’ Iver clenches his right fist and punches it into his left palm. Hansen stares at Iver for a few seconds before he starts to laugh. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve heard that you run some of the enforcer business in Oslo from Vidar Fjell’s old office. Is that right?’

Hansen continues to smile. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’re one of those.’

Iver doesn’t reply, he merely waits for an answer.

‘If you had done your homework before coming here then you would know that Fighting Fit isn’t mixed up in that. We never were. And we never will be.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’

‘Then you’ve heard wrong.’ The smile on Hansen’s face is gone.

‘So you deny that you run an enforcer business? That you use Fighting Fit as a front for-’

‘What the hell is this?’ Hansen interrupts him. ‘Why are you really here? I thought we were going to talk about Tore?’

‘We are. That’s what we’re doing.’

‘It seems more like harassment if you ask me, and you can forget about writing something that repeats what you just said in your paper or… ’ Hansen points his index finger at Iver.

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Iver replies. ‘But if you agree to help me, I might decide to forget about it. I’m trying to find out who actually killed Jocke Brolenius.’

Hansen stares at Iver for a long time.

‘Tore Pulli claimed that he arrived on time for his meeting with Brolenius, but he didn’t call the police until nineteen minutes past eleven o’clock. Could he have been delayed by something that happened at your gym that night?’

Hansen shakes his head. ‘Consider this a piece of friendly advice, Gundersen. Don’t go around making allegations you can’t prove. It’s not a very clever thing to do.’

Iver looks at the grave eyes in front of him and feels a shot of adrenalin spread through his body. ‘Are you saying you know who really killed Jocke Brolenius?’

Hansen pushes back his chair, gets up and glares at Iver before putting his hands on the table and leaning forwards. Iver tries to stay where he is, but he can’t help moving his head back.

‘You’re playing with fire,’ Hansen says quietly‚ and jabs his finger at Iver’s face. Iver tries hard to pretend that he isn’t scared. Then Hansen straightens up, heads for the door and slams it hard on his way out.

Chapter 66

Elisabeth Haaland stares at the ceiling but sees nothing, only a pale grey fog. She doesn’t know if she can cry any more, but every time she imagines Thorleif or thinks about him, what he is doing, where he is, the knot in her stomach tightens and she bursts into tears. Her thoughts repeat in a never-ending spiral without producing a single answer.

What will she tell the children?

The police aren’t much help yet because not enough time has passed since Thorleif went missing. But she could hear it in the voice of the female police officer who called half an hour ago, the one who rang yesterday, that they no longer regarded it as a straightforward missing-person case. Why else would she ask if Thorleif had had anything to do with Tore Pulli, including before the interview? What was she insinuating?

Elisabeth stretches out her arms behind her and buries them under the pillow. Her fingers stop when they touch a sheet of paper. She pulls it out.

‘Julie’s heart,’ she whispers to herself, holds up the drawing and looks at the fat red lines Julie drew at nursery. Her daughter has decorated every scrap of paper and every newspaper she has come across since with hearts. Elisabeth turns over the sheet and sees the car. And she sees that Thorleif drew it.

Why would he do that, she wonders and sits up. He never draws with Julie because, according to him, he is so bad at it. But now he appears to have drawn a picture of a car. And why did he leave the drawing under her pillow?

The car looks like a BMW. The registration plates are clear to see. Her gaze glides down towards the words written in Thorleif’s inimitable penmanship. Elisabeth raises her hand to her mouth. And she jumps the next moment when someone rings the doorbell.

*

The sun hits Henning’s face as he leaves 123news ’s offices in 9 Urtegata. He takes out his mobile and calls Iver, who gives him a quick summary of his conversation with Hansen.

‘So he didn’t punch you in the face?’

‘No, but he clearly wanted to.’

‘I told you to take it easy with those guys.’

‘I know.’

‘Have you spoken to any of the others?’

‘No, not yet. But I’m about to call TV2.’

Henning nods as he holds up his other hand. A cab across the street indicates and stops at the pavement. ‘Good. We need a few more angles.’

‘I found a picture of Tore Pulli and a guy named Even Nylund on the Internet earlier today. Nylund runs a strip club in Majorstua. Asgard it’s called or something like that.’

‘That’s where Geir Gronningen and Petter Holte work,’ Henning says and dashes across the street in between two cars.

‘I could try going over there tonight.’

‘Great idea.’

Henning gets into the cab.

‘What about you? Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to pay Thorleif Brenden’s girlfriend a visit.’

Chapter 67

The cab stops right outside the Italian School in Bygdoy Alle. Henning walks down a side street and searches for Brenden’s apartment block in Nobelsgate. He passes courtyard gardens with withered plants, finds the building marked B and presses the bell labelled ‘Brenden amp; Haaland’.

Henning looks around while he waits for an answer that doesn’t come. Perhaps she’s asleep, he thinks. Or trying to sleep. He called Elisabeth Haaland at the school where she works, but they told him that she was off sick today. He tried her mobile, which rang several times before switching to voicemail. Henning knows it is unlikely that she will open the door to him, but he thought it was worth a try and set out anyway. He rings the doorbell again. Another thirty seconds pass before a shattered female voice answers.

Henning introduces himself. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I would really like to talk to you about Thorleif. It will help you and your family if 123news can publish a detailed account of Thorleif’s last movements. It could prompt people to come forward which might lead to his being found.’

All Henning hears is a click at the other end. ‘Damn,’ he mutters to himself, and waits a few seconds before he presses the bell once more. There is only silence and the hum of city life behind the walls and the trees. Henning swears again even though he knows it is rare for relatives to want to talk to the press at this stage.

Henning refrains from pressing the bell a fourth time. Haaland has enough to worry about, he decides, when at that moment the door opens in front of him. An ashen-faced woman looks at him, her eyes and skin marked by tears and despair.

‘Elisabeth Haaland?’ he asks.

The bags under her eyes are enormous. Her hair has been gathered in a messy ponytail. No make-up. She pulls her jacket protectively around her and marches past him.

‘I know this is a bad time,’ Henning says. ‘But I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think it was important.’

Haaland ignores him. Henning hurries after her, gritting his teeth in response to the pain coming from his hip and feet as he struggles to keep up with her. ‘Please, just listen to what I have to say.’

Haaland stops and spins around. ‘They made him do it,’ she says and stares at him wild-eyed.

‘What?’

‘Thorleif didn’t do it.’

‘Didn’t do what?’

‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’

Henning makes no reply, but he looks perplexed. Haaland doesn’t elaborate, she just turns around and walks on.

‘How do you know?’ he says, rushing after her.

‘Because he told me,’ she says without turning around.

‘Have you spoken to him?’

She doesn’t reply, but continues marching down the street. Henning starts to run even though the soles of his feet are screaming.

‘What are you saying, Elisabeth?’

‘I’m going to the police.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Henning says, panting. ‘Perhaps we could talk while we walk? Or can I take you there in a cab?’

She glances at him over her shoulder; she doesn’t nod, but neither does she reject him. Henning tries to increase his speed as they reach Bygdoy Alle. Three cabs are waiting at the rank on the far side of the junction. Haaland gets into the first one. Henning stops outside and looks at her. She returns his gaze.

Then she nods.

Henning gets into the back. The cab pulls out before he has even had time to tell the driver that they are going to the police station. Henning hands over his credit card and leans back.

‘What’s going on, Elisabeth?’ he says, trying to catch his breath.

Haaland doesn’t reply. She looks at him with eyes that instantly well up. She strangles a sob and shakes her head, but can’t stop the tears that keep flowing.

‘What did you mean when you said that they made Thorleif do it? Are you referring to what happened in Oslo Prison yesterday?’

She gives him a quick look, but says nothing. She doesn’t have to.

‘Who made him?’

‘I–I don’t know who they are.’

‘Has anyone threatened him?’

Henning can’t decide if she is shaking her head because she doesn’t know or if fear has taken control of her body. ‘What’s happened?’ he says again, in an even softer voice.

Another shake of the head.

‘Has Thorleif been behaving strangely recently?’

Henning can see that she thinks about it before she nods.

‘In what way?’

She composes herself and dries her wet cheeks. ‘He has been very distant. He spent a couple of days in bed this week because of a stomach bug, and he kept calling to ask me to do the things I already do every day.’ Again she wipes the tears from her face.

‘Has he done anything else unusual?’

‘He drew a picture of a car.’

Henning lets her have all the time she needs.

‘And he put the picture under my pillow.’

‘Why do you think he did that?’

She shakes her head again while she opens her handbag and takes out the drawing. Henning’s eyes widen as he sees it. He reads the words Thorleif Brenden wrote at the bottom.

If anything should happen to me, go to the police and tell them to look for Furio. I don’t know what he will make me do or why, but I have to do what they want in order to protect you.

‘Who is Furio?’ Henning asks as he feels his heart beat faster. He used to live for moments like this.

‘I’m not sure,’ Haaland says. ‘But I’ve met him, I think. He interviewed me a couple of days ago.’

‘Is he a reporter?’

‘He said he was, but now I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the interview he did with me was never published.’

Henning studies her. ‘Which newspaper was it?’

‘ Aftenposten. ’

‘And this man was called Furio?’

‘No,’ she says, looking down. ‘But he looked like Furio, the character in The Sopranos, if you’ve seen that.’

Henning nods. ‘Do you mean the type, or did he specifically resemble Furio?’

‘Both.’

Henning ponders this. ‘Do you remember anything else about him?’

‘No.’

‘What kind of questions did he ask you?’

‘He wanted to know how far I would go to protect my family. It was supposed to be for a survey in the newspaper, but-’

Again she shakes her head.

‘And you told Thorleif about the interview?’

Haaland nods tearfully.

‘But this Furio guy appears to have been in contact with Thorleif after you were interviewed?’

‘Yes, wouldn’t you think so when you look at this?’

Henning examines the drawing. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Did he speak Norwegian?’

She looks up at him at once. ‘Why does everyone keep asking me that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Thorleif has asked me the same question several times in the past few days, if the people I had come into contact with spoke Norwegian. I thought he had gone mad. Why do you want to know?’

‘Because Tore Pulli was convicted of killing a Swedish enforcer,’ Henning says, gravely.

‘And you think his friends used Thorleif to take revenge on Pulli?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says.

There is no reason why they would want to do that. Pulli was already in jail, and, according to his lawyer, there was no new evidence in the appeal which might lead to him being acquitted. And even if there had been, all that would mean is that Jocke Brolenius’s real killer is still out there. So why kill Pulli? Pulli must have had other enemies, Henning thinks. ‘Has anyone else around you been acting strangely?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘And no other unusual events have occurred?’

‘No.’

Henning nods slowly to himself. There is silence for a few seconds. The cab slows down on Henrik Ibsensgate as they drive towards the National Theatre.

‘Our burglar alarm,’ Haaland exclaims and looks up.

‘Eh?’

‘A few days ago our burglar alarm stopped working.’

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t remember. Last Sunday, I think.’

‘What happened? How did you discover that it had stopped working?’

‘We had been out on a day trip — we tend to do this on Sundays — and we set the burglar alarm and locked the flat before we left. But when we came back, the alarm wasn’t working. Its power had been cut. Thorleif promised to fix it, but-’

She starts to cry again. Something occurs to Henning. The media has free access to prison inmates. The only item reporters are asked to hand over when they arrive is their mobile. No one is searched. Someone must have known about the interview, must have known which TV2 staff would be visiting the prison. It follows that the people who wanted Pulli dead must have identified and coerced whoever would be best placed to carry out the killing for them. The question is what they intend to do with Brenden afterwards, something which, now that he thinks about it, might explain why Brenden has gone missing.

It doesn’t bode well for Brenden; Henning shudders, and he looks at Haaland again. She dries her face. ‘Can you remember when Thorleif’s behaviour started to change?’

‘A couple of days later, I think. I’m not really sure.’

There is silence for a few more seconds as the cab approaches the police station.

‘This is a very important lead,’ Henning says, pointing at the drawing. ‘You need to tell the police everything you know, tell them about the burglar alarm, everything you remember about this Furio character. They will probably ask you to help them make an E-fit.’

‘I don’t know if I can,’ she says and starts to cry again.

‘They’ll help you,’ Henning assures her and puts his hand on her shoulder. ‘They’re very good at these things. Ask to speak to DI Brogeland.’

Haaland nods and tries to pull herself together as the cab stops outside the police station.

‘Will you be writing about this?’ she asks him.

‘It’s my job.’

‘No matter what you write then, please don’t say anything that makes Thorleif sound guilty. I know what people think when they read the papers. I don’t want my children to hear what their father might have done at their school or in nursery. Will you promise me that?’

‘If you like I can give you a call and read the article to you before it’s uploaded.’

‘I don’t know if I have the energy,’ she says, weakly. ‘Besides, you look — you look… decent.’

Henning grins. ‘Can I have that in writing, please?’

Her tearful smile fills him with compassion. ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘They’re waiting for me.’

‘Okay. Don’t give up, Elisabeth.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ she says and gets out of the cab.

Chapter 68

Orjan Mjones has to stop himself from laughing out loud. Everyone he meets on his way into Oslo Central Station quickly averts their eyes when he pretends to look them up and down. He can easily understand why someone would want to join the police. Having the power to make people shrink the moment they see a uniform even though they haven’t done anything wrong. When you think about it, it is ridiculous.

He goes over to the ticket office, nods to a woman behind the glass and asks to speak to ‘someone in charge’ — a safe bet since all offices have a manager. She gives him a name he doesn’t catch, but further into the office a corpulent man gets up from a chair. The man grabs hold of his belt and hoists up his trousers, peers out through the glass and walks reluctantly towards the door. Soon he joins Mjones outside.

‘Inspector Stian Henriksen, Oslo Police,’ Mjones says, holding out his hand.

‘Terje Eggen. How can I help you?’

‘We’re looking for this man,’ Mjones says, holding up the picture Flurim Ahmetaj printed out for him. ‘He is wanted in connection with a murder, and we have reason to believe that he was here at Oslo Central Station around one o’clock yesterday afternoon. We also believe that he left Oslo on a train that departed around that time. I need a list of all one o’clock departures.’

‘I’m sure that should be possible. Do you mean one o’clock precisely?’

‘A few minutes either side would be fine. Let’s say between 12.50 and 13.10, then we have a margin to work with.’

‘Okay.’

Eggen disappears back inside the glass office. Mjones waits outside until he returns a few minutes later with a printout. Mjones studies it and nods sternly.

‘I also need a list of ticket inspectors working on those trains. I want to start with the trains going furthest, and I’ll contact you again if I need the names of anybody else.’

‘I’ll have to ring around to get those for you. It could take some time.’

‘I can wait.’

Eggen is about to go back inside the glass office when he stops and turns around. ‘There are more than 500 cameras at the station,’ Eggen says, looking up. ‘There is bound to be a recording of him.’

Mjones improvises. ‘My officers are looking into that, obviously. However, it’s not enough to know which train he boarded. We also need to know where he got off. And I believe that the ticket inspectors are best placed to answer that question.’

Eggen nods. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-’

‘Not at all.’

Mjones smiles. Pretending to be a police officer is great fun.

Chapter 69

Even though the working day is far from over, Henning tells the cab driver to take him home to Grunerlokka. Perhaps he should have checked with Heidi Kjus first, but even she knows that he works just as effectively from home as at the office.

As the cab bumbles over the potholes at Schous Plass junction, Henning thinks about Jocke Brolenius. What if his murder is related to Tore Pulli’s death? Does anyone in Pulli’s circle have the means to hire a guy like Furio?

How about Veronica Nansen? Now that Pulli is dead she inherits a huge pile of money. But is she really that cold and calculating? She didn’t strike Henning as a psychopathic gold-digger. Nor can he see that she had any motive for killing Brolenius and framing her own husband unless there is more to her than meets the eye. So who else could it be?

None of the people he has met so far appears to have had the means or the motive. This leads him to believe they might be dealing with two unrelated cases. The murder of Jocke and the murder of Tore.

The cab turns into Seilduksgaten.

‘Just drop me off at the lights over there,’ Henning says, pointing across the passenger seat. The driver switches off the meter at the junction with Markveien. A receipt is printed out on which Henning scribbles his signature in handwriting even he can’t decipher.

Outside the tarmac is hot. Glumly, Henning kicks a pebble along the dusty pavement and hobbles to the door. What kind of story can he write about the things he has discovered today? Has he discovered anything at all?

He is about to unlock the door when his attention is drawn to a picture of a cat that has been stuck to the wall above the doorbells. ‘Have you seen Mans?’

No, I haven’t, Henning says to himself as he goes inside. But Mans has given him an idea.

*

Thorleif had forgotten how quiet the mountains can be. After they moved to Oslo, the ever-present traffic foisted itself on them like an invisible family member even though the street they chose — Nobelsgate — is relatively quiet. But the number 13 tram is always rumbling and squealing past, and then there are the sirens from emergency vehicles that frequently hare up and down Bygdoy Alle.

In the mountains, the silence is interrupted only by the wind and sporadic signs of people nearby. Under different circumstances Thorleif would have embraced the change, relished the opportunity to step away from the pressures of everyday life and simply immerse himself in the magnificent landscape that surrounds him. And even though it is difficult to think of anything other than the mess he has ended up in, he can feel with his whole body the value of having a place to go to, just the four of them, to fish, to ski, to feel their cheeks glow in front of an open fire after a long day outdoors.

Thorleif has tried to read The Mourning Cloak by Unni Lindell, but every time he reaches the bottom of the page, he can’t remember the words he has read or what happened. His thoughts keep straying, and he has considered every imaginable way he might contact Elisabeth without finding one that would be safe.

Thorleif closes his eyes and begins to relive the long car journey from Julie’s nursery to Larvik that day. Did the man with the ponytail give anything away? Thorleif shakes his head. Every time he asked him a question he would receive no reply or the man would simply change the subject. Nor can Thorleif remember if the man spoke on his mobile or if he Thorleif opens his eyes.

The mobile.

At one point the man received a text and had to remove his glove in order to press the keys. And Thorleif remembers that he didn’t put his glove back on straight away but texted a reply on his mobile and then put his arm on the armrest. He rested his hand in the same place, not for long, but possibly long enough for him to leave a fingerprint.

Agitated, Thorleif sits up. It’s not much, but it could be enough. It might be just what he needs to extricate himself from this nightmare.

Chapter 70

Iver Gundersen feels pressure at the back of his eyes as they leave the Colosseum Cinema. He should have checked with Nora in advance how long the film lasted. Over two and a half hours where he couldn’t move, and added to that wearing 3D glasses which involve a completely different strain than the muscles of his eyes are used to. They are worn out now. As is Iver. Nora, however, looks anything but.

‘What did you think?’ she says, beaming.

Iver hesitates. ‘It wasn’t bad.’

‘Not bad? It was absolutely-’

Nora lifts her head towards the dull evening sky while she searches for the right word.

‘Magical,’ she exclaims, enthralled, and looks expectantly at him. Iver doesn’t reply, he sees no need to ruin her experience. Then he takes her hand and says, ‘I’m glad that you liked it.’

Nora smiles and weaves her fingers into his.

‘Are you hungry?’ he continues.

‘More nauseous. I ate far too much popcorn.’

‘A proper meal will soon fix that-’

Iver is interrupted by his mobile ringing. He takes it out and looks at the display. He lets go of Nora’s hand. ‘It’s Henning,’ he says, and looks at her.

She takes one step away from him.

‘Hi, Henning,’ Iver says.

‘Did you enjoy the film?’

‘Eh?’

‘There aren’t many places where people turn off their mobiles these days so I assume that you’ve been to the cinema. Am I right?’

Iver is silent for a few seconds. Then he says, ‘It wasn’t too bad.’

Iver glances at Nora who doesn’t look back at him. Henning spends the next minutes telling him what he has found out about Thorleif Brenden, his behaviour at home, the drawing he left under Elisabeth Haaland’s pillow and the man Brenden referred to as Furio.

‘Wow,’ Iver says when Henning has finished. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘If you’re still planning to visit Asgard later, then ask if they know a hit man or enforcer who is tall as a tree and thin as beanpole and looks a little bit like Furio.’

‘Do you really think anyone will tell me that?’

‘No, but you can probably think of a slightly more elegant phrasing than I can.’

A short distance in front of him Nora is studying a shop window. ‘I spoke to TV2 earlier today,’ Iver says.

‘What did they say?’

‘That Brenden had been acting very strangely in the past couple of days. Guri Palme thought it was because he had been ill — he threw up outside the prison after Pulli’s death. And the footage he shot was completely out of focus as if he wasn’t paying attention at all while he was filming.’

‘That’s probably true if his mind was on other things.’

‘Brenden is one of their best cameramen, according to Guri. They’re very worried about him.’

‘I could include that quote in my story, and I’ll run it with a double by-line. Have fun at M.’

‘Eh?’

‘Cafe M. That’s where you’re going, isn’t it? You should try the halibut if they still serve it. It’s delicious. Grilled with some sort of apple.’

‘We’re not-’

‘Catch you later.’

Iver has no time to reply before Henning hangs up. He sighs and looks at his mobile as if it could explain to him how Henning knew where they were going.

No. Just no.

He takes hold of Nora, but this time he doesn’t seek out her fingers.

‘Listen,’ he says, while they wait for the lights at Majorstua junction to turn green. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere else for dinner?’

Chapter 71

A smiling green and red painted troll is holding up a sign outside the entrance to Ustaoset Mountain Hotel. This time, fortunately, the door is open.

Tentatively, Thorleif walks across the grey slate floor in the reception area where a white fireplace dominates the lobby. To his left, black leather chairs have been arranged around an oval coffee table. Further in, past a wall that sticks out into the long corridor, there is a sign for the Usta Restaurant.

The woman behind the reception counter is talking on the telephone. She looks up at him and smiles warmly. Her dark brown hair is tied back in a ponytail. Her lipstick is bright red and her skin lightly tanned. Around her neck, just above the white blouse, is a pendant with half a heart.

Thorleif takes a step forwards when she hangs up.

‘Hello,’ she smiles. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I was wondering if you have Internet access here?’

‘Indeed we do. We have wireless Internet in the whole lobby area. Guests or anyone else can connect. The network is free and you don’t need a password.’

‘Ah,’ Thorleif says, grateful for anything that will save him money. The woman serves up her best service smile. He looks around again. ‘Is there a computer I can borrow?’

‘No, unfortunately. We don’t offer that. But if you have WiFi on your mobile then you can use that.’

‘I don’t have a mobile, either,’ Thorleif says and shakes his head. ‘Is there a telephone here I could use? I’ll obviously pay the cost of the call and-’

‘I’m sorry, I — we — we don’t have that, either.’

Thorleif looks down. A torturous silence fills the room.

‘Are you a guest here?’ she asks.

Thorleif looks at the wall further away where notices and posters have been put up at random.

‘No. I live… in a cabin further up the mountains.’

‘And you didn’t bring your computer or your mobile?’

‘No.’

Another silence. What does he do now? Go to the nearest library?

‘You could borrow my laptop if you want.’

Thorleif looks back at her, sees that she is holding up a laptop bag and smiling at him again.

‘I always bring my laptop to work. At this time of the year there isn’t much to do in the evenings.’

‘Really? You would lend me your laptop?’

‘As long as you sit where I can see you, so that… ’ she smiles and points to the black leather chairs next to the fireplace.

‘You never can tell, isn’t that right?’

‘Absolutely,’ Thorleif says, drawn to her warm smile. ‘Thank you so much. You’ve no idea how grateful I am-’

He stops and looks at her.

‘I can see it in your face,’ she replies.

‘Can you?’

She nods eagerly. ‘I’m a writer, you see. Or… at least I’m trying to become a writer. That’s why I always bring my laptop to work in case I have some spare time, and then I can write. And I’m used to studying faces. But please don’t tell my boss. He’s in my book, you see.’

She giggles. Thorleif smiles but feels his smile freeze instantly. The thought that this helpful woman has memorised his face hits him like a punch to the stomach. He takes the bag as she lifts it over the counter and tries to look appreciative.

‘I’ve always wanted to write a book,’ he says, mostly to say something.

‘What a coincidence.’

Thorleif nods.

‘I’m Mia, by the way.’

‘Hi, Mia.’

She looks at him in anticipation.

‘My name is… Einar.’

‘Will you be staying here a long time, Einar?’

‘Well, I… I don’t really know.’

‘I work here every night, so just drop by. The restaurant is open at weekends.’

‘Okay,’ Thorleif says, unwillingly. ‘I’ll… I’ll remember that.’

He turns around and walks over to the leather chairs where he sits down facing Mia so she won’t be able to see what he is doing. The screen wakes up the moment he opens the computer.

‘My laptop remembers the network here, so surf away.’

Thorleif nods in response to her charming smile and thanks her with his eyes.

Ever since he remembered the potential fingerprint he has wondered who to contact and how to go about it. The police are out of the question since the man with the ponytail said that they had infiltrated them. Thorleif has considered contacting someone from work, but since the criminal gang knew that Thorleif was part of the team that was meeting Tore Pulli, he can’t trust anyone at work either. He has to find someone else.

Out of habit he visits TV2’s website first and sees an advert that frames the home page, but initially there is nothing about Pulli’s death. Nor can he find anything about himself. In the news section he finds an interview which the news editor did with Guri Palme. An edited video with the final images of Pulli has also been uploaded. That must be Reinertsen’s footage, Thorleif assumes, but he can’t bear to watch it. He checks the other newspapers and sees that VG, Dagbladet, Aftenposten and Nettavisen are all running stories on Tore Pulli, but they don’t mention

Thorleif’s disappearance either. He goes to 123news. When the ads at the top half of the page have downloaded themselves, his eyes widen. One of the top news stories reads: TV 2 CAMERAMAN MISSING

Eagerly he clicks on it and reads the introduction:

There has been no contact from TV2 cameraman Thorleif Brenden since Thursday morning. His family is worried.

Everything that has happened in the past few days becomes even more real as he reads about himself online. Fortunately, the story is not accompanied by his photo. Below the introduction he sees the names of the journalists who wrote the article.

Henning Juul and Iver Gundersen.

Strange, Thorleif thinks, that 123news is reporting his disappearance when nobody else is. Perhaps he isn’t officially missing yet? It might be too soon. So why and how did 123news know?

He rereads the final sentence and feels his stomach lurch when it dawns on him that the reporters have spoken to Elisabeth. Thorleif reads on:

Respected TV2 cameraman Thorleif Brenden has gone missing. On Thursday morning, Brenden was at work and, according to a colleague, went to fetch something from his car at the end of a recording. He never returned.

‘We dread to think what might have happened to him,’ says reporter Guri Palme to 123news. She was working with Brenden just before he disappeared.

Brenden’s girlfriend, Elisabeth Haaland, is also worried about him.

‘It’s not like Thorleif to behave like this,’ she said in tears to 123news.

His disappearance has been reported to the police who have initiated a search for him.

In tears, Thorleif thinks. Poor Elisabeth.

In a box to the right of the main text are links to various stories about the death of Tore Pulli. Thorleif clicks on them in turn and sees that Iver Gundersen wrote all of them. He is also the first to report that Thorleif is missing.

Thorleif opens another window and logs on to Hotmail.

Chapter 72

‘Okay, thanks for your help.’

Orjan Mjones hangs up and puts a despondent hard line through the name of Jan Ivar Fossbakk. Above him four other names have already been crossed out: Benjamin Rokke, Syver Odegard, Idun Skorpen-Wold and Sverre Magnus Vereide. Mjones leans back and stretches out his arms, turning his head from side to side so the bones creak.

He gets up, shuffles across the shiny floor and enters the kitchen. From the fridge he takes out a carton of milk, finds a clean glass in the top cupboard and fills it up. He downs the milk in a couple of big gulps. He has more ticket inspectors to call, a task he never would have started if he didn’t know that they are trained to recognise faces.

Mjones returns to the living room and sits down at the circular table where his laptop is open. Lying next to it is the list Terje Eggen was kind enough to provide him with which gives him the ticket inspectors’ names, their mobile numbers and the specific train line they were working on the day in question. Mjones picks up the sheet and finds the next name on the list. Nils Petter Kittelsen.

‘Hello, yes?’

‘Inspector Stian Henriksen, Oslo Police,’ Mjones says, in a commanding and grave voice.

‘P-police?’ Kittelsen stutters. ‘Has anything happened?’

‘I’m sorry for disturbing you on a Friday evening, but I’m investigating a murder which took place in Oslo yesterday.’

‘I–I see?’

‘We have reason to believe that the killer left Oslo on the train to Bergen, the train you are responsible for, around lunchtime yesterday. We’re trying to find out where the killer got off, and I hope that you can help.’

Mjones hears Kittelsen swallow. ‘I’ll do my best.’

Mjones looks down at the picture of Thorleif Brenden.

‘The man we’re looking for is approximately thirty-five years old, he’s just under six foot tall, and he was wearing dark-blue shorts, a white T-shirt and probably a hat or a cap when he left Oslo Central Station yesterday. Do you recall seeing a man who fits that description?’

There is silence for a while.

‘I really couldn’t say.’

‘Think carefully. It’s very important.’

‘I’m thinking,’ Kittelsen says intently, as he breathes hard into the mobile. Then he sighs despondently. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I saw him.’

‘He may not have been on your train,’ Mjones says, trying to hide his disappointment. He takes the tip off the black felt-tip pen.

‘Was he wearing sunglasses?’ Kittelsen suddenly asks.

Mjones stops and looks at the picture of Brenden. ‘He was.’

‘And a black baseball cap?’

‘He might well have been. Did you see him?’

‘I think I might have,’ Kittelsen says, eager now. ‘Pale skin, a goatee?’

‘That’s him!’ Mjones exclaims, unable to suppress the elation in his voice. ‘Do you remember where he got off?’

Another silence.

‘There are so many passengers,’ Kittelsen says, defensively.

‘I know. But please try.’

‘I’m sorry, I-’

‘Do you remember if he was on the train for a short period or a long time?’

Another pause for thought.

‘He was there for some time, certainly.’

‘How long, do you think?’

‘A couple of hours, at least.’

‘Okay. More than three hours? Four hours?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kittelsen says, despairing at himself. ‘I’m quite sure that I saw him when we stopped at Fla, but I don’t think he was there when we got to Finse.’

‘How many stations are there between Fla and Finse?’

‘Six,’ Kittelsen replies immediately.

‘Okay. That gives us something to go on. Thank you so much, Mr Kittelsen. You’ve been a great help.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

Chapter 73

Iver Gundersen is strolling down the small steep hill where Bogstadveien meets Josefinesgate, when his eyes are drawn to a sign on the right. A castle with a heart that frames the name Asgard. Iver smiles to himself. Something of a trite fantasy to sell, he thinks.

It’s still early in the evening — it has only just gone ten o’clock — but it makes it less likely that the club will be busy.

Nora was unhappy that he had to work after their dinner, and she sulked even more when he refused to tell her why. They have had this conversation before. Iver doesn’t mind discussing stories they are both working on as they unfold, but it’s another matter when he is out chasing his own scoops. Then he never shares information with her. Nora has not quite accepted it. She thinks that he ought to trust her, says that she wouldn’t dream of stealing a story or an angle from him. But as far as Iver is concerned it’s a matter of principle. Besides, he doesn’t really believe that the scene of tonight’s assignment would have done much to lighten her mood.

Iver notices a red carpet that sticks out from the entrance to the strip club. He walks under a canopy and heads for the door. Two doormen in matching black suits and black T-shirts are standing outside. Bulging muscles. Earpieces in place.

Iver walks up some steps and into a room which opens diagonally to the left and offers booths where customers can seek refuge or simply sit and gawp without anyone seeing the beads of sweat on their forehead or their throbbing groins under the table. The bar stretches deep inside the room before breaking off to the left at an angle of ninety degrees. The stage is bathed in a pink and purple light, and it is small, no bigger than a kitchen floor. The traditional dance pole, longing to be caressed by sensual fingers, is mounted near the front. To the right there are more booths, some tables and chairs, and pictures of naked women on the walls. A spiral staircase leads up to the next floor where Iver imagines a similar layout, perhaps a private room — or twelve.

Iver nods to the bartender and introduces himself.

‘Even Nylund, is he here?’ Iver says and holds up his press card as if he worked for the FBI and the card automatically opened every door to him. The bartender, a man who proudly wears a white T-shirt with the Swedish flag emblazoned on his chest, says in Swedish, ‘I’ll check. Wait here.’

Iver makes himself comfortable on a bar stool, puts down his notepad and takes out his mobile, mainly to have something to do while he waits. He looks at two solitary men at separate tables some distance from the stage.

‘He’s just coming. What can I get you?’

‘A beer, please.’

The bartender turns around, takes a glass and starts filling it from a green spout. Iver notices the camera fixed to the ceiling above the bar and pointing at the booths. The lens stirs as if distracted by the rhythm pounding out into the room and suffusing the atmosphere with a sticky sensation of foreplay. A few minutes later a man sits down heavily on the bar stool next to him. Iver is caught off guard and spins to the left.

‘Oh, hi,’ he says. ‘Iver Gundersen, 123news. ’

‘Even Nylund.’

Right palm meets right palm, hard. Iver instantly regrets it, unsure as to where Nylund’s hands have been in the past few minutes.

‘Thanks for talking to me.’

‘Uffe, get me a Coke, will you?’

The bartender obeys without nodding.

‘So,’ Nylund says. ‘How can I help you?’

Iver studies Nylund and decides that the man conforms to the stereotype of shady club owners as he had expected. Nylund’s hair is greased back and sticks to his scalp in a failed attempt to disguise a bald patch; the hair at the back is gathered in a thin ponytail. He is skinny but has still chosen to wear an unbuttoned black linen shirt which reveals chest hair of the same colour and reminds Iver of pubic hair. Nylund’s stubble makes his ruddy face a shade darker.

‘Has there been any vandalism to the club recently?’

Nylund shakes his head sullenly. ‘Not that they’ve given up yet, those FASB bitches. If I had caught any of them red-handed, I would bloody well… ’ Nylund clenches his fist.

‘No, I don’t know what I would have done if someone had keyed my car, either,’ Iver says.

‘And they sprayed fire-extinguisher foam into my car.’

‘And you are sure that the FASB was behind it?’

‘On the fender someone had left a note saying Front Against the Sale of Bodies. What do you think?’

Iver smiles and nods.

‘What annoys me the most is that the politicians don’t distance themselves from that kind of behaviour.’

‘I heard that one of your doormen got into serious trouble?’

‘Yes,’ Nylund says, looking down. ‘He did.’

‘What happened?’

Nylund sighs. ‘It was the 8th of March, though you probably already know that since you ask. There was a mob outside the club. A bunch of feminists in need of a good lay who were going on and on about International Women’s Day and all that. The usual rubbish. Petter got angry, he tried to scare them off, but they wouldn’t budge. And then he lost it.’

‘He went to prison, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. He got a couple of months inside. There were a lot of witnesses, as you might expect.’

‘Where was he sent?’

‘Botsen Block, Oslo Prison. Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m just curious. I’m working on a story about Tore Pulli.’

‘Right. So that’s why you’re here, is it? Not to write about the vandalism and the attacks on my business?’

‘No. But I’m interested in that too,’ Iver lies. ‘I might do a story about it later. I agree with you. They shouldn’t be allowed to carry on like that.’

Uffe puts a glass filled with ice cubes and Coke in front of his boss. Nylund takes it and drinks in big gulps. ‘It’s a real shame about Tore,’ he says.

Iver nods and waits for Nylund to continue, but he doesn’t. Iver reflects on this for a while before he decides to cut straight to the chase.

‘We think he might not have killed Jocke Brolenius.’

Nylund bursts out laughing. ‘Oh, I get it,’ he says. ‘You’re one of those reporters who see conspiracies everywhere, aren’t you? Who can never take no for an answer but always takes no to mean I’m lying?’

‘Not at all,’ Iver smiles.

He loves reporters like that.

‘What makes you think Tore didn’t do it?’ Nylund asks.

‘There were several anomalies in his case that no one paid attention to. But there’s no point in dragging that up here. You followed the trial, I presume?’

‘On and off,’ Nylund says. He puts an ice cube in his mouth and sucks it. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ he continues and puts down the glass on the counter as he crunches the ice cube between his teeth. This was a bad idea, Iver thinks. And a bad strategy.

‘Did Tore have any enemies here?’

‘No.’

‘That no came very quickly.’

‘Here we go again,’ Nylund sighs.

‘What?’

‘The no that really means I’m lying. ’

‘Are you?’

‘No.’

‘Are you lying now?’ Iver holds up his hands and smiles apologetically. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist that.’

He tries to laugh it off, but Nylund isn’t amused. ‘It’s no secret, Nylund, that you employ people who have links to criminal gangs. You wouldn’t happen to know a man in that business who is slim, tall and always wears his hair in a ponytail?’

Nylund looks at him, smiles wryly. ‘Did you say your name was Gundersen?

‘Yes.’

‘You ask some strange questions, Gundersen.’

‘Someone has to.’

‘Are we done?’

‘So you don’t know anyone who fits that description?’

Nylund shoots him a condescending smile. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I can help you.’

‘Okay. Thanks for your time.’

Nylund abandons his still half-full glass and walks up the spiral staircase to the first floor. This is taking too long, Iver frets. How the hell does Henning get these people to talk? Just for once he would have loved to tell Henning something he didn’t already know.

Chapter 74

Henning is munching a slice of crispbread and rereading his own article about Thorleif Brenden when his mobile rings. It is Bjarne Brogeland. The inspector skilfully ignores pleasantries.

‘I’ve seen the video footage,’ he says. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

Henning swallows and tells Brogeland his suspicions about Brenden’s clenched fist and Pulli’s sudden, perturbed look.

‘It’s not a particularly good camera angle, but something happens while Brenden has his hands on Pulli’s back,’ Henning tells him.

Silence. He reaches towards the windowsill and turns off the fan. The hum in the kitchen stops and the heat immediately starts sticking to him.

‘Have you discovered the cause of Pulli’s death yet?’ he asks.

‘The preliminary autopsy report provided no answers except that.. ’

Brogeland stops.

‘Except what?’

‘I can’t tell you, Henning. Sorry, I-’

‘Come on, Bjarne, you know I won’t write anything that would harm your investigation.’

Brogeland exhales. ‘They found an abnormal lesion on his neck.’

‘From what?’ Henning asks eagerly.

‘They don’t know. But it could be a tiny prick. From a needle or something similar.’

‘A needle,’ Henning mutters, remembering what Dr Omdahl told him about nerve toxins. In which case it must have been a highly poisonous substance.

‘Clever,’ Henning says. ‘Tore Pulli was a diabetic. And he used to have loads of piercings.’

‘So what?’

‘When we met, I asked him if he had grown used to needles and injecting himself with insulin. He said that he hardly noticed it these days.’

Henning smiles to himself. It was a clever plan.

‘I spoke to his girlfriend earlier today. She showed me the drawing Brenden left under her pillow. Was she any help?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you produced an E-fit of this guy Brenden is talking about? Do you know who he is?’

‘Not yet,’ Brogeland replies. ‘But we’re working on it.’

Henning nods. ‘So when can I write that Tore Pulli was murdered?’

‘We’re not sure about the cause of his death yet, Henning. And you can’t start speculating either, or we run the risk that whoever could have been behind it will disappear.’

‘Okay,’ Henning sighs.

When they have ended the call, Henning listens to the silence in the flat. He has a bad feeling about this. Even though Brogeland refuses to be drawn, it looks very much as if Pulli was murdered, probably poisoned. But will they be able to detect which kind of poison was used? The final autopsy report won’t be ready for two months, at the earliest. And even if they do find evidence of poisoning, how will they trace it back to the people who made Brenden kill Pulli?

Henning logs on to FireCracker 2.0 again, but 6tiermes7 isn’t online. Then his mobile vibrates. A text message from Iver.

Sorry. Small catch from Asgard. Iver.

Henning rings Iver immediately. Two heads are better than one, he thinks, and presses the mobile to his ear while he waits. It takes only a few seconds before Iver’s recorded message can be heard. He must be on another call. Perhaps he is talking to Nora, arranging to go over to hers when he has finished work. Or perhaps he is asking if he can go over there straight away.

Thinking about Nora and Iver shouldn’t hurt so much. Not any more. But he can’t dodge the punch that hits his chest every time. He can’t just erase his ex-wife like a typo.

Henning waits a few minutes before he tries Iver again. Same result. He looks at his watch. A quarter to eleven. Glumly, he hobbles to the bathroom and cleans his teeth, changes the compresses under his feet and tries calling Iver a third time when he has finished. And yet again he gets Iver’s voicemail.

Never mind, Henning thinks, and decides to call it a night.

Chapter 75

Iver takes a deep breath as soon as he leaves Asgard and instantly feels better for it. Cleaner, too, now that he thinks about it, even though the summer night is still humid.

He tries to look inconspicuous, desperate to avoid meeting anyone he knows on his way out of a club no one can claim is selling anything other than fantasies and orgasms. He decides to head home. Right now the thought of crashing with a cold beer in front of the television is more tantalising than a night-time visit to Nora’s.

Iver crosses Bogstadveien and continues into the darkness down Josefinesgate where the tall buildings and sloping wilderness gardens with swings and sandpits are partly lit up by the full moon. He passes Josefine, where he has spent many a Tuesday night listening to live music on open-mike night when the management allows both the talented and the not-so-talented to have a go. A few hundred metres further ahead the left wall of Bislett Stadium curves towards the roundabout. Iver takes out his mobile and sends Henning a text about tonight’s small catch.

The footsteps appear out of nowhere. Heavy footsteps from boots with hard soles, but Iver doesn’t have time to turn around before he feels an iron grip on his neck. He can’t move his head as he is dragged into a yard and brutally thrown on the ground. He can feel shingle under his body, crunchy sharp pebbles, his legs dig into them as they kick out, but it doesn’t get him anywhere. He is flipped on to his back as if he weighs nothing at all. His eyes close instinctively when a fist comes hurtling towards his face. He hears it make contact, feels his jaw and cheek give and everything starts to throb. The blows rain down on him with a speed that takes his breath away. The back of his eyes begin to sting, a pricking light appears and he hears nothing, he feels only intense pain.

The blood is running from his mouth and mingles with saliva and tears. Iver tries to raise his arms to protect himself, but they refuse to obey and fail to ward off the blows landing on him. Soon he no longer feels the pounding, the punches simply make contact and fling his head from side to side. But he is able to think that if this assault doesn’t stop soon, the ending will be terribly, terribly bad.

Chapter 76

The smoke is different this time. The opening stretches further. Henning sees fumbling hands in front of him trying to wave away the smoke. Somehow they succeed. The contours of a CD rack appear as he coughs and splutters. He stops and turns to the left where the stripe of light continues. But then the smoke thickens again, the light disappears, and even though he swings his arms frantically, it makes no difference. Everything in front of him goes completely black.

Henning sits up with a start, quickly wipes his face and looks around for the flames. But he can’t hear the crackling of fire and the door is still intact.

Those infernal dreams again.

He lets himself sink back on to the pillow and waits for the smoke detector above him to flash. In the distance a siren wails. There is always a siren somewhere, he thinks, there is always someone whose life is about to be changed for ever by something happening at this very moment. There is no guarantee that promises us we can close our eyes, safe in the knowledge that we will open them again. Life, as we know it, can change in an instant.

Jonas once asked him a question, as he often did — especially at bedtime. It could be a simple one such as why the walls were white or a more complicated one such as what was wrong with the man they saw on their way home from nursery, the one who was sleeping on a bench in Birkelunden Park. But it might also be something more profound, thoughts Henning could easily see would baffle his son without Jonas finding the time to think them through or remember them long enough to articulate during the day. But the questions would come at night when everything calmed down.

‘Daddy, do you hate Mummy?’

There is nothing unique about what happened to Nora and Henning. It happens every day, all over the world. People meet, they fall in love, they fall out of love, fall in love with each other again. They do stupid things or experience something that makes it impossible for them to go on living together. So they part, often to start over with another person. Or not. It’s not unique. And yet, from time to time, the thought of why it had to happen to him absolutely chokes him. Why did it have to be them? Why did it have to be Jonas?

‘ Did Mummy say that? ’

‘ No, but — ’

Henning turned over, rested on his elbows and looked at Jonas. But the more he thought about it, the harder it became to come up with an answer. The moment stretched out, it became too long for him to contain it, and all he could finally say was, ‘ I don’t hate Mummy, Jonas.’

No explanation. Just a brief statement, like when a child says ‘because’ when you ask them to explain why they cut up the newspaper with a pair of scissors. And Henning doesn’t know how long he lay there, on his elbows, looking at Jonas’s searching eyes, but it felt like for ever.

A persistent buzzing sound and a sharp light bring him back to the present. His eyes dart to the bedside table where his mobile is vibrating. Henning leans across and picks it up. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, it’s… Nora.’

Henning can hear voices in the background. He sits up. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Iver.’ A note of panic has entered her voice. ‘He’s in hospital. He was attacked and beaten up.’

‘What?’

‘He’s in a coma.’

Henning’s jaw drops. His eyes flicker from side to side. ‘Where are you?’ he asks.

‘At Ulleval Hospital.’

‘Okay,’ he says, and stands up. ‘I’m on my way.’

Chapter 77

Iver, in a coma, beaten senseless. Given what he was investigating, it can be no coincidence, Henning thinks and throws 200 kroner on to the passenger seat for the cab driver. He rushes inside the hospital. Walking as fast as he can manage, he makes his way to Emergency Admissions. The highly polished floor swims in front of his eyes as he goes through two doors, passes waiting next of kin, sees white walls and randomly displayed pictures with equally random motifs and notices doctors and cleaners, but he doesn’t look anyone in the eye. Not until he sees Nora.

She gets up from a chair and comes to meet him. Even from a distance he can see that her eyes are red. She doesn’t stop walking until he embraces her, and then she clings to him.

Christ, how she clings to him.

He holds her for a long time and feels his body grow hot all over. Old memories are reawakened, images he doesn’t want to see and certainly doesn’t want to relive. But he is incapable of suppressing the memory of their time together, which is so far distant now that nothing can bridge the gap between them. And he hates himself because it hurts him so much that she is crying and even more that she is crying for somebody else.

‘What are the doctors saying?’ Henning asks and holds her out from him.

She sniffs and shakes her head at the same time. ‘They don’t know very much yet.’

‘He’s still in a coma?’

She nods and dries the tears from her eyes. They walk over to a seating area and sit down.

‘Who found him?’

‘An old lady who lives nearby. The noise woke her up so she decided to have a look outside.’

‘But she didn’t see who did it?’

Nora shakes her head again, lifts her hands to her mouth and squeezes her eyes tightly shut. Fresh tears roll down.

‘How did you find out?’

‘Iver briefly regained consciousness when he was brought in here.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Henning nods. A nurse marches past them.

‘Have the police been here?’

‘Yes, but they’ve gone again.’

Henning breathes in deeply, stays in his seat and looks around without taking anything in.

‘Have you been to see him?’

‘Only for a minute.’

‘What did he look like?’

Nora stares at him for a long time. Then she says in a voice that breaks, ‘Bloody awful.’

Henning returns her gaze, watches her tears. ‘Are you staying here until he wakes up?’ he asks her.

She nods.

‘It could be a long time — you know that, don’t you? The doctors never try to rush this. You must let nature take its course. Iver will wake up when he is ready.’

She looks at him with eyes that well up. ‘ If he wakes up.’

Henning doesn’t know how Nora reacted when she was told that Jonas was dead. Nor does he want to know. But he heard that she lost fourteen kilos in the four weeks that followed. Several of them are still missing, but she is slowly starting to recover. And if there is anything left of the Nora he knew, then she has been balancing on a knife’s edge every single day since.

Henning considers a sentence that is forming itself inside him. He never thought he would say it, let alone mean it. ‘Iver is a fighter, Nora. He’ll be all right.’

She looks at him. ‘I hope so.’

‘He will.’

‘I can’t bear to lose… ’

Henning is grateful that she doesn’t complete the sentence. He pulls his jacket more tightly.

‘Give him my best when he wakes up,’ he says and stands up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To work.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. I’ve a story to write.’

Chapter 78

The duty editor raises an eyebrow when Henning lets himself into the office and presses the button for black coffee. Henning gives him a quick update before he sits down at his desk.

On his way to the office he wondered how he should approach the story. The headline was obvious: Famous Journalist in Coma. He knows that anyone awake at this time of night will click on it. Given the headline it could be anyone in the media, an industry fond of turning its own into celebrities. And celebrities sell. That’s just the way it is. If the story is also placed on the front page, where the introduction can’t be seen so that the readers won’t automatically see which celebrity it concerns, the story will generate loads of hits.

It’s macabre, Henning thinks, to take such things into consideration at a time like this, but he is sure that Iver wouldn’t have minded. On the contrary: he would have insisted on it.

Henning starts to write. When he was at the hospital, he couldn’t take it in. Nor did it sink in when he was talking to the duty officer at the police station to get some quotes. But when he types the word ‘coma’ and writes that Iver Gundersen is hovering between life and death, the brutal truth that Iver might actually die finally dawns on him.

*

Orjan Mjones turns towards the morning sun, shielding his face with one hand as he peers towards the entrance door, which only stays closed for short periods. Passengers with bags and suitcases on wheels are walking in his direction. Mjones looks at his watch. The train leaves in five minutes.

He lights another cigarette and sucks it greedily. He is about to ring Jeton Pocoli when both Pocoli and Durim Redzepi come shuffling down the platform. Their tired faces grimace when the sun greets them.

Mjones nods when they reach him and pulls them aside.

‘Let’s go over this once more: Durim, you get off at Fla, you take a picture of Brenden with you and start looking around. Check out shops, petrol stations, hotels, post offices and restaurants.’

Redzepi grunts.

‘And you,’ Mjones says, looking at Pocoli. ‘You’ll do the same at the next station. Nesbyen. I’ll take Gol. And we’ll keep each other updated.’

More bleary-eyed looks.

‘What about Flurim? Isn’t he coming?’ Pocoli asks.

‘He’s monitoring data traffic, you know that. This wouldn’t have been necessary if you had done your job properly in the first place.’

Pocoli looks down and makes no reply.

‘If we don’t strike lucky at any of those stations we’ll carry on to Al, Geilo and so on.’

Mjones looks at them. Nobody nods. A ticket inspector with a backpack passes to one side of them. Mjones checks the clock on his mobile. Ten minutes past eight.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘We’ll travel in separate compartments. I don’t want anyone seeing us together.’

Chapter 79

It is just past nine o’clock in the morning when Henning rings Geir Gronningen’s doorbell at number 13 Toyengata. He presses the bell four times and keeps his finger on it extra long on the last ring. Soon afterwards he hears a hello in a voice still thick with sleep. Henning can’t be sure, but he thinks it’s Gronningen.

‘Henning Juul. May I come in, please?’

A few seconds of silence follow. ‘Now?’

‘Yes, now. I need to talk to you again.’

‘Are you kidding? At this time in the morning?’

‘I wouldn’t be here at this hour if it wasn’t urgent,’ Henning barks.

Again there is silence. A morose snort can be heard from the intercom. ‘Hang on a minute, I just need to put some clothes on.’

Henning looks around while he waits impatiently for the door to buzz. Soon he is let in, and he stomps up to the third floor. The smell of spices which hits him the moment he entered the stairwell grows less noticeable the higher he gets. Gronningen meets Henning in the doorway of his flat at the top of the stairs.

‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ he says.

Henning nods while he tries to get his breath back.

‘I was working until the early hours,’ Gronningen continues.

‘In which case you went to bed just as I started work,’ Henning replies, unperturbed. ‘A colleague of mine was beaten up last night. I think you might know who did it.’

‘Me?’

‘Did you see a man with long hair wearing a corduroy jacket talking to your boss yesterday?’

Gronningen scratches his head while he tries to remember. His eyes are still sleepy.

‘When was this?’

‘About 10.30. Shortly afterwards, on his way home, he was attacked.’

‘Dammit, Juul, I did tell you.’

‘Yes, and I warned him not to be as cocky as he usually is, but I don’t think he heard me. Are you going to let me in?’

Gronningen hesitates for a long time before he nods and pushes open the door. ‘It’s a bit of a mess.’

‘Do I look like a guy who cares?’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee if you could manage it.’

‘It’ll have to be instant.’

‘Instant is fine.’

Henning kicks off his shoes. In the hallway there is a mountain of shoes, socks and coats.

‘I don’t bother tidying up when I have things to do,’ Gronningen says as he fills up the kettle. Henning struggles to step over the mess.

‘So what are you doing, then?’ he asks.

‘Writing the eulogy. For the funeral.’

‘Yes, of course. When is it?’

‘Tuesday. In Tonsberg.’

‘That was quick.’

‘Yes, Veronica wanted it over and done with as soon as possible.’

Henning indicates with a nod of his head that he will wait in the living room. There he tries to find a vacant seat on the worn black leather sofa. He just about manages it. He sits down and takes a look around. There is carpet on the floor with bits of crisps embedded in the fibres, a bottle top, several empty bottles, bags of photocopies. A dumb-bell marked 17.5 kilograms has made a hollow in the carpet under the coffee table.

On the wall are pictures of bodybuilders in various glistening poses. A poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator appears to take pride of place.

Gronningen comes in soon afterwards and sits down in an armchair next to the sofa.

‘Thank you,’ Henning says and slurps the hot coffee.

‘So what happened?’ Gronningen asks him.

Henning spends thirty seconds telling him about Iver’s meeting with Kent Harry Hansen and the Asgard visit later that same evening.

‘According to Iver, Hansen was quite angry when he left.’

Gronningen looks as if he has suddenly put two and two together.

‘What?’ Henning says.

Gronningen glances down. ‘No, it’s just that I… ’

‘What?’ Henning says again after a fresh pause. Gronningen stares at Henning for a long time before he answers unwillingly: ‘When Kent Harry came to the gym yesterday, he was angry about something. None of us knew what it was.’

‘Did he say anything?’

Gronningen shakes his head. ‘He just stormed into the office and slammed the door behind him.’

‘And you never found out why he was in such a bad mood?’

‘No. I left soon afterwards.’

‘And no one has been boasting about beating up some scummy journalist either?’

‘No. But I wouldn’t tell you if they had.’

Henning nods slowly before he decides to change the subject to something he has been pondering since their previous meeting.

‘Do you know if Tore made any enemies while he was inside?’

Gronningen looks up at him. ‘Not that I know of,’ he replies. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because I can’t work out why Tore was so keen to talk to me. There aren’t that many journalists in Norway, certainly not crime reporters, so I can’t ignore the fact that Tore might have known who I was before he was locked up. But how did he know that I was back at work?’

Gronningen keeps his eyes fixed on Henning for a few seconds before they glide away.

‘Tore doesn’t have access to the Internet in prison. And the only person to visit Tore, apart from Veronica, was you.’

Gronningen briefly meets his eyes again before they disappear out into the room.

‘Did you tell him I was back at work?’

‘Me? No.’

Henning makes no reply, but looks directly at Gronningen. ‘Do you know if Tore knew who I was before he went to prison?’

‘No idea.’

Henning takes a deep breath. I’m getting nowhere, he thinks. Every door slams in my face. ‘Okay,’ he says and signals that he is about to leave. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’

Gronningen nods to indicate that Henning is welcome.

‘I’ll probably see you on Tuesday,’ Henning adds. ‘Good luck with the eulogy.’

‘Thanks.’

Chapter 80

The bell above the entrance to Fighting Fit chimes energetically as Henning arrives and steps on to the purple carpet. He walks up to the reception counter. The girl who was behind it before is there again today. Like the last time, she looks up and pushes her chest up and out as he comes over. Her T-shirt, which displays a Pondus cartoon he has seen before, briefly attracts his attention.

‘Kent Harry Hansen?’ he enquires and sees that the woman recognises him. She manages a bored nod towards the back room before her fringe falls over her eyes again. Henning thanks her, and, as he starts to walk, the popular Prima Vera song about the Swedes starts to play on the loudspeakers. Henning doesn’t bother knocking, he just walks straight into Hansen’s office.

‘I’ll call you back,’ Hansen says and puts down the handset. He gets up and looks at Henning. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes,’ Henning says, aggressively and without introducing himself. ‘The man who interviewed you yesterday is in hospital, beaten to a pulp.’

‘Is he?’

‘Yes, he is.’

Henning looks at Hansen’s unruffled face and shifts his gaze to Hansen’s hands. No evidence of recent fighting. ‘Would you know anything about that?’

‘Me? Why would I?’

Henning doesn’t reply. Instead, he studies Hansen’s eyes, but he can’t read anything in them.

‘Sometimes he upsets people. He told me he had got on the wrong side of you.’

‘Yes, but I don’t go round beating people up for that.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do. You have people who do it for you.’

Hansen scoffs. ‘As I said to that journalist, I don’t know what you think we’re doing in here. And I don’t know who the hell you think you are, coming here, hurling accusations about-’

‘My name is Henning Juul,’ Henning interrupts him. ‘I asked Iver to talk to you about Tore Pulli. I got him into this mess. I don’t know what questions he asked you, but I gave him the ammunition. If you have a problem with the press or your operation here can’t stand a little close scrutiny then take it up with me. Don’t beat people up in dark alleys.’

‘Listen, I don’t know what you think you’re-’

‘It’s either you or Even Nylund who sent some heavies to tell Iver to shut up and back off.’

‘I think you should leave now.’

‘Or you’ll beat me up, too?’

Hansen looks at Henning for a long second before he quickly moves past the desk, grabs hold of Henning’s upper arm and pushes him out of the office. Prima Vera is halfway through the chorus, Henning can hear, as Hansen shoves him in the back and Henning has to take a step to the side to avoid falling over.

‘Get out of here,’ Hansen thunders.

‘Thanks for talking to me,’ Henning says with sarcasm, but he does as he is told. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the for-now-gentle receptionist staring at him.

Chapter 81

The sound of a car approaching is unmistakable. Thorleif sits up, goes straight to the kitchen window and looks outside. Down the road an Audi comes to a halt before it turns left, towards the cabin. Thorleif’s heart skips a beat. Panicking, he considers rushing to the larder to hide when he notices an estate agent’s sign at the roadside by the crossroads. The sign wasn’t there yesterday.

There must be a viewing at one of the cabins this weekend, he concludes. It could attract many potential buyers. Thorleif swears softly. He hears the car spray gravel as it comes down the road. He steps back behind the curtain as it drives past. With a sigh he sits down at the dining table where a notepad and pen are waiting for him.

When he came home last night he began to write, inspired by Mia, the hotel receptionist. He did it in an attempt to keep himself busy since he couldn’t concentrate on reading, and he realised at once how good it felt to express himself in the old-fashioned way again. Writing on a computer is so quick by comparison.

He started with the man who forced him to kill Tore Pulli, tried to describe him in as much detail as possible in case he needed to remember it later. Then he tried to articulate what he had been through in the past week. At the end he realised that what he had written was a confession and an apology to Tore Pulli’s family and to his own. It was as if the words took on a will of their own.

It’s Saturday, Thorleif thinks. It’s almost twelve hours since he emailed Iver Gundersen. Perhaps Gundersen was working last night or he is at work today. Worst-case scenario is he won’t see Thorleif’s email until Monday. But he might get his emails forwarded to his mobile; he might be one of those people who can’t help checking their messages all the time. It could mean that Gundersen has already taken action and contacted someone he knows or trusts.

There is still hope, Thorleif says to himself.

Never give up hope.

Chapter 82

Henning finds Nora on a chair outside the intensive-care unit where Iver is being monitored. Her skin is pale. The circles under her eyes have grown more noticeable, but she is just as beautiful as she always was. She stands up when Henning approaches her.

‘How is he?’ he asks. ‘Any change?’

She shakes her head.

‘He hasn’t regained consciousness yet?’

‘No.’

‘So what are the doctors saying?’

‘Not much. They’re just waiting for him to wake up.’

Henning nods and concentrates on her. ‘And how are you?’

She looks up. Her eyes are swollen.

‘Forget it,’ he says. ‘Stupid question. Have you had something to eat?’

She stares at him as if the concept of food is alien to her.

‘You have to eat something, Nora.’

There is silence for a few seconds. Then she says ‘You too, Henning.’

They stand there looking at each other.

‘Then let’s do that,’ he says.

They sit in the hospital’s cafe clutching warm mugs. Henning has coffee, Nora drinks tea. As always, each has taken two sugars. He bought a ham and cheese baguette and had it heated up in the cafe’s microwave oven, but neither Henning nor Nora are in a rush to sink their teeth into the chewy bread.

He studies her in brief flashes. He has never noticed until now how small vertical lines appear to be carved into her lips with a careful scalpel. It feels weird to be with her again after everything that has happened. Nora stares vaguely at something with a glowing melancholy in her eyes.

‘The police haven’t found the person who did it,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Iver’s attacker. The police haven’t got much to go on at the moment.’

‘Right.’

Henning takes a sip of his coffee. He knows there are other people present, but the only face he sees is Nora’s. It is like being caught in a force field. Even if he could, he isn’t sure that he would want to escape. Sitting here, opposite her, with food and drink on the table between them, makes it difficult not to remember the golden hours before everything became so bloody complicated. Before Jonas. And he knows deep down, in his heart of hearts, that they loved each other once.

For a while they eat in silence, and though Henning knows that it belongs to their past life, he recognises the feeling of companionship, the idea of a joint project where pauses are permitted so that the silence which follows each sentence can embrace them. But then the silence becomes uncomfortable and he knows that the longer they sit there without saying anything, the harder talking will be.

‘There is something I need to tell you.’

Nora takes a bite of her baguette and chews it absent-mindedly. Henning takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve discovered a clue,’ he says, uncertain as to how to continue.

‘What do you mean? What kind of clue?’

‘A clue that relates to the fire.’

‘The fire? What do you… ’ Her mouth opens.

‘I know that somebody set fire to my flat… our old flat… my place, on the day that-’

For no reason he makes a fencing movement with one arm.

‘Henning, what are you-’

‘Just listen to me, Nora, please,’ he interrupts her. ‘I know I’m right. And now I’ve discovered a clue which I believe changes the case. The day of the fire… Tore Pulli was outside my flat that day, and-’

Nora’s mug hits the table with a bang. ‘Henning, what the hell are you talking about? What clue? What case? Tore Pulli? Are you sitting there telling me that someone caused Jonas’s death? Is that what you’re saying to me?’

‘I-’

‘What the hell does Tore Pulli have to do with anything?’

Henning searches for the start of a sentence that will extinguish the embers he sees in her eyes, but he finds nothing. Nora pushes the chair out behind her.

‘Christ, Henning, I knew that you were mad‚ but not that you had lost the plot completely.’

‘Nora, please-’

‘Forget it. Just forget it. I don’t want to hear another word about it, I can’t bear it. And don’t come here again. Please, don’t come here again.’

On her way out she bumps into her chair, which almost falls over. People stand back to make way for her. Henning sees that she is crying as she leaves the cafe.

He doesn’t move for several minutes. You idiot, he says to himself. It has taken you almost two years to be able to breathe normally when Nora is in the same room as you. And then you go and ruin everything. And, honestly, what did he think would happen? That she would jump for joy and say, ‘ Well done, Henning. I’m thrilled that you’ve found a clue. Come here, I always knew that one day you would discover who killed our son. My all-time hero! ’

He should have tested the waters first, found out what Nora thought about that day, if she shares his suspicions. When he thinks about it, he knows that she has crossed Jonas out. Not deep down, because she carries him in her heart, but she applies correction fluid every day.

He shakes his head at himself. Great, Henning. Well played.

Chapter 83

They ought to rename this dump Hole, Orjan Mjones thinks, as he gets back on the train after spending three hours wandering around the centre and vicinity of Gol. He is fed up with hotels and motels and bars and cafes, especially since none of the people inside them have seen anything of Thorleif Brenden. Durim might be right when he said it would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Nor have the other two got anywhere in Fla and Nesbyen. They are on their way to Al and Geilo now. Mjones remembers what Langbein said. The clock is ticking.

He finds an empty seat by the window and updates Durim and Jeton before he rests his head against the wall and weighs up the situation. Brenden might have sat in this very seat. What did he think? What plans did he make?

Mjones rings Flurim Ahmetaj, taking care to speak quietly into the mobile. ‘Have you found out if Number One has friends or relatives or any other links to the area between Fla and Finse?’

‘I haven’t discovered any.’

‘He wasn’t stationed here when he was in the army?’

‘No. He did his military service in Jorstadmoen.’

‘Do a wider search on the guy, check his Facebook profile, see if any of his friends live around here.’

Ahmetaj sighs. ‘We should have wrapped this up two days ago. I have other things to do. If you need my services after today you’ll have to stump up some more dosh.’

‘You’ll carry on working until the job is done. That was the deal.’

‘Yes, and the job you wanted done finished on Thursday. Today is Saturday. So how much extra are you going to pay me?’

Mjones sighs as he shakes his head. ‘Let’s discuss your fee when I’m back. In the meantime I want you to-’

‘No.’

‘What did you say?’

‘“Discuss your fee”? What the hell do you think this is?’

Mjones takes a deep breath. ‘What will it take for you or the three of you to stick with this job until it’s done?’

‘Twenty a day.’

Mjones shakes his head. ‘I’ll give you ten.’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Agreed. But then you had better come up with something useful.’

‘Now, now old man. I’ve got some news for you. I’ve lost the feed at Number Two’s flat. The cops turned up and searched the place. They found the cameras and took them away.’

Mjones ends the call and feels like hurling the mobile against the wall. Soon afterwards they pass Al.

Al. Gol. Where the hell do they get those names from?

Chapter 84

Henning walks under the ruby-red canopy and stops in front of the two doormen outside Asgard. He looks at them in turn.

‘Which one of you is Petter Holte?’ he asks.

The doormen exchange glances before the bigger one pushes his chest up and out.

‘You don’t seem to be answering your phone,’ Henning says.

Holte makes no reply, he merely stares at him blankly. The light above the entrance shines on the bald patch on Holte’s head. There is a dense crescent of stubble around his pate.

‘I’ve been trying to call you,’ Henning continues.

‘And you are?’

‘My name is Henning Juul.’

Holte looks at him, but shows no signs of recognition. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘No, but I know you. You’re Tore Pulli’s cousin.’

Holte doesn’t reply.

‘Are you going in or what?’ the other doorman says.

‘In a moment. I just need to have a quick word with Petter first. I’m a reporter.’

‘I don’t talk to reporters,’ Holte says, far from impressed.

‘Oh, you don’t? But perhaps you beat them up?’

Henning watches Holte closely as his muscles tense and his face darkens. Henning reacts by straightening up.

‘A colleague of mine was beaten up last night. Before that he had been here.’

Henning has to narrow his eyes in order to see Holte’s pupils in the dim light.

‘We don’t know anything about that,’ the other doorman says.

Henning focuses exclusively on Holte. ‘Why are you wearing gloves?’

Holte looks down at his hands before he steps forwards. His tanned face has taken on a flushed undertone. ‘What do you want?’

In the past, the heavies in front of Henning would have intimidated him. ‘I want to know if you beat up my colleague last night.’

Holte snorts. The light from the lamp above the entrance bounces off his right earring. The voice of the other doorman is softer.

‘Petter has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be interviewed. You need to respect that or we’ll have to ask you to leave.’

Henning looks at Holte for one more second before he holds up his hands and says, ‘Okay.’ Holte’s colleague steps aside and opens the door. It would have been fun, Henning thinks, to accidentally bump into Holte’s inflated shoulder, but it strikes him that he might have pushed his luck far enough as it is. In spite of everything, he would still like to leave in one piece.

Henning enters, and the Swedish bartender tells him to go upstairs to Even Nylund’s office. From the first floor Henning has a view of the small stage where a woman of East European appearance tries to tantalise the sparse audience with sensual movements.

It is like entering an attic. The corridor in front of him has an opening that reminds him of a vagina. The lighting is subdued. On the wall to the left he sees an illuminated picture of a woman having sex with a fallen warrior. It must be Freya, Henning thinks, and remembers from his schooldays how Vikings who died in battle would come to her. In Norse mythology this kind of death was depicted as an erotic encounter.

Henning walks down the corridor, stops in front of an open door and peers inside. A man sitting on a chair with his back to him turns around.

‘Ah, right. There you are.’

Four TV monitors are mounted on the wall above Even Nylund. Nylund gets up as Henning goes inside. They shake hands.

‘So you found me.’

Nylund gestures to a chair. Henning sits down.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’

Henning shakes his head even though his shirt sticks to his body and his throat is parched. He looks around. The walls are decorated with pictures of scantily clad women, advertising posters and press cuttings. The images on the TV screens are replaced every few seconds. They are live shots from the bar, the stage, the whole room seen from a bird’s-eye view plus pictures from outside. Petter Holte stands tall and tough with his thumbs hooked in his belt.

‘I know who you are,’ Nylund says.

‘Do you?’

‘I spoke to Geir Gronningen earlier today. He seemed to think that you might be stopping by. I was sorry to hear about your colleague,’ Nylund says and shakes his head. Henning studies him, not sure what to make of Nylund’s apparently genuine expression of sympathy.

‘Your colleague said you have a theory that Tore Pulli was innocent.’

Henning holds up his hand in front of his mouth and coughs briefly. ‘So he told you? Yes, I suppose we have. I wonder if that’s why he was beaten up.’

‘Who by?’

‘Well, that’s the problem. You, possibly.’

Nylund smiles. ‘Look at me,’ he says. ‘I weigh sixty-eight kilos. Some of my girls can beat me at arm wrestling.’

‘Yes, maybe they can. But those who work for you have been known to beat people up.’

Henning points to the screen where Petter Holte is holding up an authoritarian hand to a middle-aged man on unsteady legs who is trying to enter the club.

‘I can assure you, Juul, that no one here is involved in the attack on your colleague.’

‘And you’re sure that you know what your staff get up to at any given time?’

‘When they’re at work, then yes.’

‘And you keep an eye on them from here?’

Henning points to the monitors.

‘And in person — when I’m downstairs.’

‘Right. Do these monitors record?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you can find out who left the club after my colleague did.’

‘I can.’

‘Would you do it?’

Nylund smiles. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to your colleague, Juul, but my customers are entitled to a certain amount of privacy. I can’t show you recordings of what happens in here just because you want me to.’

‘I could get the police to do it.’

‘Be my guest — the police can see the footage as long as they produce the right paperwork. And just to be clear, it’s nothing personal.’

‘Mm.’

Henning looks around again. One of the video cameras is pointing at a door with a sign saying Glitnir.

‘Why the Norse theme?’ Henning asks and turns to Nylund again.

‘It was Vidar’s idea.’

‘Vidar Fjell?’

‘Yes. Some years ago, when I talked about opening this place, we spent an evening discussing how we could make the club stand out. Vidar talked about Freya and the Vikings and all that, and I was fascinated by the Norse concept of sex. I think we all were. We decided it would be a good look for us, and that’s how Asgard was born.’

‘So Vidar was into Norse mythology?’

‘Yes. In a big way.’

Interesting, Henning thinks, as he remembers that Fjell’s father is a professor of Nordic Studies. This must be where his interest sprang from. Henning realises he is excited by this discovery though he doesn’t quite know why.

He sits for a while looking at the real-time clock at the bottom of the right-hand corner of one of the monitors. It makes him think about the nineteen minutes that left Tore Pulli shaking his head. If he really was innocent and he continued to insist that he had arrived on time, how could time pass so quickly?

The answer is obvious, Henning thinks, and it irritates him that the thought hasn’t occurred to him earlier: time doesn’t run fast unless someone makes sure that it does.

Someone must have tampered with the clock on Pulli’s mobile. Someone with easy access to it.

Chapter 85

Mia is working today as well. Thorleif smiles to her as he enters the hotel lobby.

‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Hello, you.’

‘I was wondering if I could borrow your laptop for a little while. Just for a couple of minutes,’ he says, apologetically.

‘Of course you can.’

‘Thank you so much. There was just something I wanted to check.’

‘Take as long as you like. It’s fine.’

Mia smiles and lifts the bag with the laptop over the counter. He takes it.

‘Thank you. How is the book coming along?’

‘Not too bad. I’m working on an escape scene at the moment. It takes place in a hotel,’ she says with her most conspiratorial smile.

‘Oh, good,’ Thorleif says. He realises he would genuinely like to hear more about Mia’s other experiences as a budding writer but suppresses the urge. He can’t allow himself to get to know her or anyone else here. Instead, he sits down in the same seat as yesterday and throws his denim jacket on the adjacent chair. The hotel’s home page glows at him as he opens the screen. Thorleif straightens his cap, opens his newly created email account and waits with bated breath as it downloads. There is no reply from Iver Gundersen.

Thorleif slumps a little in the chair but decides he might as well check the newspapers as he is already online. He finds an article that informs him that the preliminary autopsy report on Tore Pulli provided no answers as to his cause of death. Apart from that, there are no interesting stories about Pulli.

Most newspapers have produced their own, near identical stories about Thorleif’s disappearance, but none of them is accompanied by a picture. This is one of the advantages of being behind the camera, he thinks. You’re practically invisible to the public.

‘Mia?’ he calls out.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is the gents, please?’

She leans over the counter and points to the right. ‘Go past the piano and you’ll find the lavatories on the other side.’

‘Okay. Thank you. Is it all right if I leave your laptop here while I’m gone?’

‘Yes, as there is no one else around-’

Mia smiles again. Thorleif gets up and walks past the fireplace. He passes a lobster tank by the entrance to the restaurant and turns the corner by the dark brown piano. After the smell of the old earth closet in Einar’s cabin, it is a treat to enter a fragrant room. There are grey tiles on the floor. The walls are white.

Thorleif relieves himself and spends a long time washing his hands in one of the two square sinks in front of the mirror before he dries them with a paper towel which instantly disintegrates and sticks to his fingers. He is about to return to the lobby‚ but stops at the sight of a man at the reception with his back to him. The man is wearing a black leather jacket. And he has a ponytail.

Orjan Mjones looks around as he gets off the train. A petrol station, a hotel, a shop and a kiosk. Is that all this place has to offer? he wonders. In that case it will be a brief visit. If I was Thorleif, he thinks, and I had got off the train here, where would I have gone? What would I have needed?

Mjones tries the shop by the petrol station first, but finds it closed. The kiosk, however, is open, but the woman behind the counter has never heard of Brenden. Mjones walks down the steps and out into the evening heat. The sky above him is turning as dark and gloomy as he feels.

The hotel, red and built in the eighties, looms large in the landscape. I might as well stay here for the night, he thinks. The last train back to Oslo left long ago.

He enters the lobby and smiles to a friendly girl behind the counter. He takes out the folded photo of Brenden and introduces himself as Detective Inspector Stian Henriksen. ‘I’m looking for this man,’ he says. ‘Have you seen him?’

Chapter 86

Thorleif stands rooted to the spot. His breath has stopped somewhere at the back of his throat. He can’t move. Mustn’t move.

How the hell did the man with the ponytail get here?

Thorleif looks around, panicking. He can’t risk running into the restaurant from where soft music and muffled conversation drift out towards the lobby. It’s too near the reception. Nor can he go back inside the lavatory because there is no way out from there. He turns around and sees a door right behind him. And above the door there is a green exit sign.

His only chance.

He backs towards the door as calmly and quietly as he can. He sees the man lean across the counter, but it is impossible to hear what he is saying to Mia. Thorleif holds his breath as he takes tiny steps backwards. When he can no longer see the man, he turns around and narrows his eyes as if that will prevent the door from making a sound. As noiselessly as he can, he pulls the door open and enters a bright room with art on the walls. He closes the door carefully behind him. Without looking back he starts to walk, softly to begin with, then faster, until he finally starts to run.

He passes a grey staircase which splits into a right and left branch and continues towards the Plenary Hall but decides to follow the green exit sign past a bench, two chairs and a table in pale pine that have been placed in front of a window. He reaches a corridor with no windows, but there is a door at the end of it. He tears it open and steps out into the evening as he gasps for air.

To his right is a covered wooden walkway with red doorframes and green doors leading to the new holiday apartments. It gets darker and darker further down the corridor. Don’t go that way, Thorleif tells himself, you don’t know if there is a door at the other end. Instead, he steps out on to the gravel, sees hundreds of cabins up to his left and a mountain that has shed its misty veil. He runs past first one cabin, then another before he reaches the road which leads either to the petrol station or further up the hillside, past Presttun. I can’t go back to the village, he thinks. The man could come out of the hotel at any moment, and he would have no trouble spotting me out here in the open. But does he know that I’m here? Or is he just trying his luck?

Then he remembers it. The denim jacket. The laptop. And Mia would have recognised me, Thorleif thinks, if the man gave her a description or showed her a picture. But perhaps she has guessed the man is a villain — after all, she is obsessed with studying faces. What are the chances that the man would then give up, try the next village and never come back?

Thorleif swears to himself. It’s Saturday night. The last train is bound to have left long ago. He looks up towards Einar’s cabin.

Then he starts to run.

Orjan Mjones stares at the girl behind the counter.

‘I’m not sure,’ she says, nervously, and glances furtively over his shoulder. Mjones turns around; on a low table he sees a solitary laptop whose screen is facing them. There is a black denim jacket on the sofa. He gives her a look before he walks over to the laptop, bends down and reads the newspaper article displayed on the screen.

The story is about Thorleif Brenden.

He is here, Mjones thinks, and glances at the jacket. The stupid prat is in Ustaoset, and he was here a minute ago. Mjones walks back towards the girl.

‘Y-yes, I have seen him,’ she stutters as she points to the lobby area. ‘His name is Einar and he has just gone to the lavatory.’

Einar, Mjones thinks, and glances around. The corridor is empty. He turns to her again and looks briefly at her anxious eyes before he thanks her and marches briskly past the dark brown piano. Inside the lavatory all he finds are two urinals, two sinks and a cubicle. The door is closed, but Mjones pushes it open.

No one there.

He goes back out into the lobby, checks the restaurant and sees a solitary couple engrossed in conversation at a table. But no Brenden. He must have seen me, Mjones thinks. Otherwise why wouldn’t he be in the lavatory? And he left his jacket behind. Mjones returns to the corridor where he discovers the gallery. Brenden must have gone that way, he thinks. It is the only way out from there.

Mjones opens the door and enters. It’s as if he can see Brenden’s footprints on the dark-grey slate floor. He continues across the bright room, looks around, stops and listens. No footsteps anywhere. Mjones follows the exit sign through the gallery. Soon he is outside. He scans the landscape. No Brenden in sight, only more buildings and cabins that block his view. At that moment his mobile rings.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, it’s me again,’ Flurim Ahmetaj says. ‘Why are you whispering?’

‘Because I’m hot on his heels. Number One is in Ustaoset.’

‘That makes perfect sense. One of Number One’s Facebook friends is called Einar Flotaker. His family owns a cabin in Ustaoset.

Einar, Mjones thinks, and at that moment he hears the sound of pieces falling into place.

‘Right,’ he whispers. ‘Email me everything you’ve got.’

‘Okay.’

Mjones thinks about the girl behind the hotel reception. She has seen his face, and she knows who Brenden is. And if Brenden turns up dead in Ustaoset in the next few days she might put two and two together.

He turns to the door he has just come out of and looks through it. Then he shakes his head. One thing at a time, he says to himself. First things first.

Chapter 87

Once he is back inside the cabin, Thorleif realises that he hasn’t drawn breath for a long time. With a gasp he hunches his shoulders and inhales deeply, planting his hands on his thighs as he does so in order not to fall. He stands like for a few moments before he slumps down on the floor and leans against a kitchen cupboard. He looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes.

He sits there in deep despair, panting, before he stands up on wobbly legs and creeps over to the window. Carefully, he twitches the curtain and looks outside. The evening is matte and dark. There is not much left of the moon in the night sky, only a torn nail that offers little light. There is no one on the road below.

It was possibly a mistake to return to the cabin, Thorleif thinks, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to hide. As he surveys the landscape and can clearly see both the roads and the cabins, he concludes that it was actually quite a smart move. He can easily see anyone approaching. All he has to do is stay where he is and keep a lookout. Stay awake and wait. But what does he do if the man should turn up?

Thorleif looks around. He can’t remember if he saw any weapons in the tool shed. There must be an axe, he thinks. Next to the tap he sees a set of kitchen knives. He takes the biggest one, the one that looks the sharpest, and feels the edge. Yes, it’s nice and sharp, he decides. He knows that he must get the first strike right. No mistakes. He has covered several crime stories where the victim tried to use a knife against a burglar or boyfriend only to fall victim to their own weapon.

Thorleif puts down the knife on the table and looks outside again. In just a couple of minutes the sky has grown darker. But he sees no one. He hears no one. He blinks and runs a hand over his sweaty face. His T-shirt sticks to his body. Take it easy now, Thorleif, he says to himself. Stay alert.

You have been in worse situations than this.

*

A dark Mercedes saloon stops in front of the red information board cut in the shape of a cabin, complete with ridged roof and windows. Orjan Mjones, who had been leaning against the left wall of the Mix kiosk while he listened out for the sound of the engine, steps forwards and goes over to Jeton Pocoli and Durim Redzepi as they emerge from the car.

‘What’s happening?’ Pocoli asks.

‘He’s up there,’ Mjones says and nods in the direction of Hallingskarvet as he takes out his mobile and opens an email from Flurim Ahmetaj. The email contains a JPEG file with a map of all the cabins in Ustaoset. One of the numbered cabins has been circled in red.

Pocoli and Redzepi move closer.

‘Here is the road,’ Mjones says, pointing. ‘It bends to the right a little further up.’ He turns towards the petrol station and gestures to the right, to the back of the brown building. ‘And you can see the cabin up there.’ He points towards the red cabin. ‘There are tons of cabins here, but I bet my life that’s where he is.’

‘But won’t he see us if we take the road?’ Pocoli asks.

‘Yes, and that’s precisely why we won’t do that. We’ll split up. Before the hill begins there is a road called Nystolvegen to the right. You’ll take that and follow it for a while.’

‘But won’t he still be able to see us from the cabin?’

‘Yes, possibly. But he doesn’t know who you are. He has only met me.’

Pocoli nods. ‘So we take the long way round and approach the cabin from the rear?’

‘Yes. Spread out so you cover as much of the back as possible. Don’t get closer to the cabin than fifty metres. And take as much time as you like. There is a greater chance that he will be less vigilant if you’re the only two people he sees on the road.

‘And what will you be doing?’

‘I’ll stay here until you’re in position. Once you are, I’ll start to walk up the hill. If he sees me, he might try to run away, away from me.’

‘And then he will run right into us.’

‘Exactly.’

Pocoli nods again. ‘It sounds like a good plan.’

Chapter 88

Orjan Mjones waits for fifteen minutes until Jeton and Durim have reached Nystolvegen before he walks back to the hotel. He enters the lobby and nods to the girl at reception.

‘Hi,’ he says and pretends to be out of breath. ‘I didn’t find him.’

‘Oh,’ she stutters, nervously. ‘What a… shame.’

‘You don’t happen to know where he lives, do you?’

‘No, it… I’ve no idea. He never mentioned it. He never really said very much about anything.’

Mjones nods, turns around, and sees that the laptop is no longer on the table.

‘It was my laptop,’ she says by way of explanation. ‘I let him borrow it. He didn’t have a mobile or a laptop with him.’

Mjones nods. ‘Did he say why he wanted to borrow it?’

‘No, all he said was that he… he had to check something.’

Another nod. He fixes his gaze on her. She is sweet. A sweet, innocent and naive young girl.

‘What’s your name?’ he asks.

‘Mia. Mia Sikveland.’

‘Okay, Mia, I need to have a look at your laptop.’

She hesitates.

‘I just need a quick look,’ he assures her.

She still appears reluctant.

‘Don’t you need a court order or something in order to do that? Or a green light from the public prosecutor?’

Mjones has to think quickly. Mia is clearly not as gullible as she looks. He closes his eyes in an overbearing manner as if he is explaining something very simple to a small child.

‘This is an active investigation,’ he lectures her. ‘In which case it’s my decision whether I need to obtain a warrant from the court before I carry out a search or confiscate potential evidence.’

She looks at him for a few seconds.

‘Besides, it’s late. I can’t call anyone in Oslo now.’

‘But, I… I thought you were from the local police?’

‘No, I’ve been following Br-… Einar all the way from Oslo.’

She nods slowly.

‘This isn’t unusual. And you could help me save time,’ he says with a hint of irritation in his voice. ‘Time could be of the essence here.’

‘Okay, it’s just that I… ’

He looks at her.

‘Nothing.’

She hands him her laptop bag over the counter.

‘Thank you. And I’ll need your telephone number and address in case I need to speak to you again.’

‘Okay,’ she says, unwillingly.

‘Thank you,’ Mjones says and smiles at her.

*

Thorleif blinks hard in an attempt to stay awake. His legs can barely manage to keep him upright. He has no idea what time it is except that it must be late. The sky is dark, but there are no clouds to cover the twinkling stars.

He drinks a mouthful of water from a glass he has filled up several times. He will have to go to the lavatory soon. Surely it would be safe to go now? He hasn’t seen a living soul since the two men he noticed further down the road for what must now be several hours ago. He runs to the lavatory, pees, but doesn’t wash his hands before resuming his position behind the window.

His eyes widen.

Only 100 metres away he sees a figure striding purposefully up the road. Thorleif snatches up a pair of binoculars he found in a drawer in the living room and puts them to his eyes. He gasps.

Frantically, Thorleif grabs the knife and raises it, ready to strike. The man with the ponytail is close now. What the hell am I going to do? Thorleif panics. He can’t possibly know which of these cabins I’m in, he says to himself in disbelief.

Or can he?

He takes a step back as he considers his options. What is better: making a run for it now in the middle of the night or hiding somewhere in the cabin and waiting for the right moment to attack? He mutters a string of expletives. He can’t stay behind the window in case he makes a movement that attracts the man’s attention. He looks around while his thoughts rage. Then he grips the knife harder and slips into the living room.

Chapter 89

It is quiet. Thorleif holds his breath, looks at the knife, feels the weight of it. He has never held a knife like this before nor thought what he is thinking now. Even the idea of stabbing another human being fills him with revulsion. But then he thinks, you have done it before. You’ve already killed another human being, and you did it to protect your family. Now you have to do it again, this time to protect yourself.

He tilts his head. The footsteps are right outside the cabin. Damn, he thinks. Somehow the man must have discovered that Thorleif has a friend who owns a cabin in the area. Thorleif exhales and waits. A drop of sweat runs from his forehead down to his temple. He lifts his T-shirt to his face, wipes it off, dries the handle of the knife as well and grips it once more.

Then he hears the sound of the door.

And the floor squeaks.

Even though he hasn’t been out in the hallway, he remembers the sound from when he was here with Einar. His heartbeats throb inside his head. Thorleif closes his eyes, he hears the rustling of clothes. Light footsteps. Controlled breathing. He tries to concentrate, telling himself he must be ready to strike at the right moment without fear or hesitation.

The footsteps stop right outside the door behind which he is hiding. Thorleif holds his breath again and stares at the door handle. Slowly it starts to move. The door is opened, calmly; it conceals Thorleif, who makes himself small. He sees an arm, an arm that isn’t holding a weapon, and at that moment Thorleif lashes out as hard as he can: he flings out his arm from behind the door, feels the knife take hold and sink in, a voice cries out, loud and shrill, and Thorleif is about to stab the intruder again when he feels a hand around his wrist. He is pulled out from his hiding place behind the door and stares right into the man’s angry eyes. He sees that the knife stabbed him in the shoulder and that blood is pouring from the black leather jacket. Summoning up all his strength, Thorleif grits his teeth and tries to force the knife towards him again, but he fails, the man is too strong. Next Thorleif kicks out and feels his foot hitting the man’s shin, but the man doesn’t even move, he merely roars in anger and pushes the knife out and away from himself. Thorleif tries desperately to find some extra strength, but he can feel that he is almost running on empty, that he is being forced back into the bedroom. He makes an effort to gain a foothold with his trainers, but the man overpowers him and pushes Thorleif backwards as he twists his wrist. The pain is intense. He tries to resist the man’s force and ignore his own agony, but it hurts so much, so much, it feels as if his arm is about to be snapped off. The knife slips out of his hand and falls to the floor.

Thorleif feels the man’s eyes on him. They shine, ice cold and hostile, and the next moment Thorleif receives a blow to his stomach that knocks the wind out of him. He buckles, clutching his stomach, and feels another blow, this time to his back, and his legs collapse under him. He hits the floor knees first. There he stays, struggling to get air into his lungs, and finally manages it with a gasp.

Drops of blood fall on to Thorleif’s neck and back. He hears more footsteps enter the cabin, but no voices. The bedroom becomes crowded and claustrophobic. Thorleif looks up at two men of East European appearance.

‘You’re bleeding,’ one of them says.

‘Of course I bloody am,’ the man with the ponytail snarls.

Thorleif is still on his knees, wheezing. His eyes look around for the knife, but it is beyond his reach.

It’s over, he thinks. This time it really is over.

‘Take him outside,’ the man says. ‘And clean up the blood. Damn!’

It grows dark in front of Thorleif. One of the men towers over him. He closes his eyes and waits for the sharp blow to his back or his neck or perhaps an arm tightening around his throat. But the man helps him to his feet. Thorleif opens his eyes again and looks straight at a man slightly shorter than himself.

‘Come with me,’ the man orders him.

Thorleif looks at him apathetically‚ but allows himself to be led outside.

‘W-where are we going?’ he stutters.

Neither of them replies. Soon Thorleif is outside in the night air. Above him the stars are twinkling.

‘What do you want us to do with him?’ one of the men asks.

Thorleif watches as the man with the ponytail glances around before looking up the mountain. He makes a nod with his head.

‘You’re joking?’

‘No,’ he says and pulls a face. He clutches his shoulder. Blood drips from his hands.

They stay where they are until the third man comes outside. Even in the faint light Thorleif can see the bloodstained paper towels in the plastic bag the man is carrying.

‘You’ll have to finish him off without me. I’ve got to get this seen to,’ the man with the ponytail says, pointing to his shoulder.

Thorleif looks up at the mountains with acceptance. If he concentrates, he is sure he can see Pal’s face up there. His son is smiling and laughing, with that special light that radiates from his eyes when he is happy. Julie is next to him with dimples in her cheeks, Thorleif sees her now, she is waving eagerly to him. Just like she does at nursery. Behind them, Elisabeth is happy, beautiful and gorgeous. She holds up the bookmark he gave her, the first token of his love after they started going out, a red heart-shaped bookmark with no wording. So you’ll always know where you are and where you have me, as he said to her. And there is the Ketsh shepherd with his blasted dogs. But Thorleif knows that throwing stones at them won’t help him now.

Slowly they fade away. Thorleif looks at the moon, or is it the sun? Or perhaps it’s Morocco.

Yes, it’s Morocco, he thinks.

And he knows with a conviction stronger than anything he has ever felt that it is possible to love someone as far as that.