by Thomas Enger
They sat down on either side of the coffee table.
‘Have you noticed the officers that are watching you?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Good,’ he said and smiled. ‘That means they’re doing their job.’
He pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket.
‘I have to ask you some questions about Iver. I hope that’s alright.’
Bjarne’s voice was so soft and warm that it had her on the verge of tears.
She nodded.
‘Yesterday,’ Bjarne said. ‘Iver was here with you in the morning, wasn’t he? But he went back to his flat pretty early, is that right?’
She nodded.
‘Did he say what he was going to do?’
She shook her head.
‘Only that he had to work.’
‘Do you know what he was working on?’
She shook her head.
‘And you didn’t ask?’
‘Yes, I did, but he didn’t tell me.’
Nora heard how hard her voice was when she said that.
‘He didn’t mention it the evening before, or anything else in the past few days?’
She shook her head again.
‘But he was very distracted, so I realised he was busy with something. Something big enough for him to want to work on a Sunday morning.’
Bjarne scribbled a few words down in his notebook.
‘But otherwise, there was nothing about his behaviour that might indicate he was in trouble or having problems?’
Nora shook her head.
‘He didn’t seem to be frightened or anxious?’
‘No.’
Just thinking about a normal day, an evening like any other together with Iver, made Nora’s stomach start to knot. She straightened up and tried not to think about the fact that she’d gone to bed only half an hour after he’d arrived, partly because she was nauseous and tired, but mainly because he was so much later than he’d said he would be.
‘It’s possible…’
The reservation in Bjarne’s voice made her look up.
‘…that Iver was working with Henning on something,’ Bjarne said. ‘In connection with the fire in his flat.’
The thought had been lurking just below the surface since she found Iver, but she hadn’t allowed herself to think about it, not until now. She felt a surge of anger through her body, so powerful that she couldn’t say anything.
‘He didn’t mention anything to you?’
She immediately shook her head.
‘Did he talk about Henning at all?’
She knew what she wanted to say, but it was none of Bjarne’s business that Iver seemed to be more concerned about Henning than her.
‘Have you spoken to Henning since…?’
Nora shook her head again, then a long silence ensued.
Bjarne leaned in towards the table.
‘What about Rasmus Bjelland … Did Iver ever mention that name?’
She looked up at him again.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked.
‘A joiner,’ Bjarne replied. ‘That’s to say, he certainly used to be one.’
‘What about him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bjarne said, and tried to smile. He looked at his notebook and the few words he’d written down.
Did this Bjelland man have anything to do with Iver’s murder, Nora wondered. Or the fire at Henning’s flat?
‘It’s just a name that’s cropped up,’ Bjarne said. ‘Needn’t mean anything at all. But you’ve never heard of him?’
‘No.’
A heavy silence filled the flat for the next thirty seconds.
Until Bjarne’s telephone started to ring.
27
Henning was glad to find a free parking space on the street below police headquarters. The stop-start drive into the centre had worn him out, so he was grateful that he didn’t have far to walk.
He looked at his watch. Five minutes to four. He locked Iver’s car and was hurrying towards the zebra crossing when he noticed a car crawling next to the pavement. The sun was reflecting on the windscreen, but Henning could see that there were two men inside. The window on the passenger side was open. When Henning saw an arm reach out, he at first assumed that the man in the passenger seat wanted to ask him for directions or something. Then he saw the gun, and it was pointing straight at him, and he understood what was about to happen.
The man holding the weapon was called Durim Redzepi, and he was an experienced killer – perhaps the one who killed Iver – and now he’d found Henning too. Henning quickly looked around for somewhere to hide, something to grab and use as a weapon or protection, but no, it was at least five metres to the nearest car or barrier; there was nowhere to hide, no one nearby to help him.
A moment later he felt a sharp stab in his chest, a force strong enough to spin him halfway round, before a second projectile grazed his ear.
But Henning didn’t register anything more, as he was already falling backwards.
Downwards.
Towards the ground.
The sudden acceleration pressed Durim Redzepi back against the seat, but he managed to poke his head out of the window and look back. He caught a glimpse of Henning Juul lying on the pavement.
He wasn’t moving.
He hadn’t fired the best shots and the distance was greater than it should have been. But there wasn’t time; there were cars behind them and Juul would have suspected something if the car had been just waiting by the pavement. The question was how good his aim had been.
He had definitely hit him though. He was sure of that.
Jeton Pocoli pressed the pedal to the floor and it wasn’t long before the police station disappeared behind them. They jumped the lights at Schweigaards gate and tore on towards Tøyen, past the prison, then up to Carl Berners plass.
‘Is there anyone behind us?’ Pocoli shouted.
‘Don’t think so,’ Redzepi said. ‘Stop driving so fast.’
Pocoli slowed down, they merged with the traffic, and then had to stop at a red light by the Munch Museum. They both kept a vigilant eye on the side mirrors. Soon they heard the sirens.
‘Drive up towards Økern,’ Redzepi said, clutching his gun.
Pocoli did as he was told; as soon as the lights changed to green, they roared up the hill, past the public baths on the left. And then very quickly they were surrounded by trees.
‘We have to dump the car,’ Pocoli said.
Redzepi nodded, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Juul had seen him. Just before he fired, their eyes had met. So it was more important than ever that they’d succeeded this time.
28
‘What d’you say, Mister High? Nice, eh? Good?’
Charlie Høisæther looked at himself in the mirror. The white suit fitted neatly around the shoulders, arms and legs – just as it should. The shirt underneath – also white – was stiff and smooth, elegant.
‘No, no, no,’ Mariana had said the last time he tried on a similar outfit. ‘You look like a snowman. OK, so you’re Norwegian – we can see that – but you need something that compliments your beautiful eyes. A blue shirt, for example, and a grey suit.’
Charlie was, of course, perfectly aware that his eyes were blue, but he hadn’t known that she’d noticed them, or liked them. And later, when he’d changed into something else, she’d come right up to him, pulled down the shirt sleeves so they peeped out from under the sleeves of his jacket, and her tiny fingers had stroked his skin – then she’d taken a step back and studied him.
‘Perfect.’
He hadn’t been sure if she was talking about the suit or him, but he’d thought a lot about it later. Whatever the case, he’d bought two suits and shirts in the colours that Mariana had chosen, and he had bought her a dress, too, as a kind of bonus.
But there was no Mariana to help him now, no assistant who knew what was needed before he knew it himself. And when he’d stood on the beach after her wedding to Bjella
nd some years later, he’d felt something he’d never felt before. Not for any woman.
The feeling that he’d done something wrong.
That he’d made a mistake.
That he’d not grabbed the opportunity before it was too late. The chance to have Mariana for himself. To make her his wife instead of Bjelland’s.
And when she’d come over to him and thanked him for the gift and his ‘blessing’ – that he was fine with the fact that they’d started up in the same business – she’d seen it in his eyes. She knew him so well after working with him for three years, she knew her and Bjelland being in the same business wasn’t the problem. Her now being Bjelland’s wife was. Deep down, she knew he loved her. And when, a few seconds later, she gave him a hug, her hair had brushed his neck, light as a feather, and her skin had smelled of lavender, of the sea, and a different future, without him. One that he now realised he yearned for.
The wedding party had carried on through the night and late into the morning. But Charlie had gone home early. He’d sat on another beach and gazed out over the ocean with the scent of lavender in his nose. And when he heard, several months later, that she was dead, he’d wept for the first time that he could remember. He’d been angry. He’d felt the need to take out his anger on someone. Which was why he’d taken a rare trip home to Norway, which was why he’d argued with Tore.
Again.
They had, for a while, disagreed about money, but when Tore had asked him again if there was anything that would make him change his mind about the damned flat, Charlie had replied, in an invincible rush of cocaine, that he might consider it, if Tore would give him a night with Veronica.
He hadn’t meant it, not really, and even though they’d shared women before, he should have known that those days were long gone, and that the rules were different when it came to Veronica. The next thing he remembered was waking up with a jaw that was broken in the same precise way that had become so famous when Tore worked as an enforcer that the staff at Ullevål Hospital had named it after him.
‘What d’you say, Mr High?’
The question jolted him out of his memories. He rubbed the scar on his chin and looked at himself in the mirror.
‘I need something darker,’ he said. ‘I look like a snowman in this shit.’
Mister High.
Charlie had liked the nickname to begin with. There was humour in it, as no one in Brazil managed to pronounce Høisæther, and it said something about who he was and how far he’d got in the years that he’d lived in Natal. But it had other connotations that he liked less and less, that he was high on drugs – as if he needed to do that anymore. Charlie had had his last line of coke at the Odeon the evening that Tore broke his jaw.
Freddy was sitting in the Mercedes, when Charlie was done with his shopping.
‘That went well then, boss?’ he asked. ‘Looks like you’ve got two, or even three, suits?’
‘Two,’ Charlie replied. ‘Only two this time.’
He got into the car and they drove off. The car’s suspension worked hard on the uneven, cobbled road, but soon enough they reached a smoother surface.
‘So, what’s happening tonight, boss? Senzuela?’
‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘Drive me home.’
Ten minutes later they were outside Sports Park, where Charlie had his penthouse. He looked over at the palm trees on the other side of the road, where the dark Audi had been parked in the past few days – the car that had sped off outside Senzuela the evening before. Charlie hadn’t seen it this morning. The car didn’t belong to any of his competitors in the area, but according to Freddy and the police it had been reported stolen a couple of weeks ago.
Charlie didn’t like it.
Something was brewing.
29
There was a wailing sound.
Something pressed, pushed. Him?
Henning wandered in and out of a fog that seemed to be alive. His chest was gurgling. His head ringing. It was night, no, day – or evening; every time he opened his eyes, the light changed. He felt nothing, realised that he was being lifted out of a flashing blue car, down onto the ground. The wheels rattled as someone pushed him into a building and along a corridor where long yellow and white arrows flashed above him. He tried to lift his hands. Couldn’t. Tried to swallow. But it only left a dry metallic taste in his mouth.
He was turned over – it felt like floating. He was cold, could hear voices around him, urgent voices that spoke in some sort of code that he couldn’t understand. They went down what must be another corridor, through a door, into a room where the light was even brighter.
Then he lost all consciousness.
Didn’t even notice that everything went dark.
When Henning came to, he realised where he was. He was in hospital. He couldn’t feel any pain, not in his arms or legs. For a moment he was scared that he’d been paralysed, but then he managed to move a finger, then an arm. Pulled it out from under the covers and lifted it ever so slightly.
So this was what it felt like to be shot.
A nurse opened the door and smiled; he wasn’t even sure it if was a man or a woman, he just saw a white figure moving. He or she said something that Henning didn’t catch. He heard a tap being turned on. The nurse’s smell reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what.
He closed his eyes.
Durim Redzepi had tried to kill him. Again.
Henning attempted to push himself up, but he had no strength in his right arm. He tried with the other, only just managing to lift his upper body, and ended up lying on his side.
‘No, no, no, you mustn’t do that,’ the nurse said. ‘Lie down again.’
Henning didn’t lie down. He focused on the nurse who came over to him. It was a woman. Long brown hair in a ponytail. About thirty. Kind eyes.
She helped him to settle back down.
‘You were incredibly lucky,’ she said. ‘The bullet went in here,’ she pointed to a spot just below her collarbone, ‘and out the other side.’
Lucky, Henning thought. Yes, perhaps.
‘There’s a major artery just below the collarbone, the subclavian artery. If you’d been hit there, well…’
Then it could well have been a fatal wound, Henning thought.
She gently moved his leg.
‘We opened the wound and cleaned it, gave you a tetanus injection, so you won’t be able to move your arm much for a while. It’ll be very stiff, because of the bleeding in your shoulder joint. You will gradually regain feeling, but we’ve put your arm in a sling in the meantime. And we’ve given you some morphine for the pain.’
That explains the drowsiness, Henning thought.
‘Where am I?’ he asked.
‘Ullevål Hospital,’ the nurse replied.
‘Is there anyone from the police here?’
‘There’s an officer just outside the door.’
The nurse then turned around and sailed out of the room. Henning felt dizzy again and let his head sink into the pillow. He closed his eyes and immediately went back to sleep.
30
Whenever he went to a hospital, Bjarne Brogeland thought of Alisha, his daughter, and the woman who had given birth to her. The labour had lasted for 42 hours, and the strain and blood loss had left Anita looking like a wan, worn-out heroin addict. It had taken her a long time to recover.
Henning’s room was at the end of the corridor on the third floor, and Bjarne showed his ID to the officer sitting outside, before rapping on the door three times and going in.
Henning barely opened his eyes when Bjarne sat down by the bed. Bjarne looked at him for a long time and then shook his head.
‘I’ve known a few people in my time who had guardian angels,’ he said. ‘But you really take the biscuit. Have you been speaking to someone up there?’
He pointed to the ceiling.
‘The next floor up?’ Henning asked, coughing. He blinked furiously. ‘No, I haven’t done much other than lie
here.’
Bjarne laughed.
Then was promptly serious again.
‘Have you spoken to anyone since you were admitted?’
‘Anyone in the same uniform as you, you mean?’
Bjarne confirmed this with a nod.
Henning gave a slight shake of the head.
‘It was Durim Redzepi who shot me,’ he said.
His voice drawled. He sounded drowsy.
‘Are you sure?’
Henning nodded slowly.
‘He’s not been caught then?’ he asked.
‘No one’s been arrested,’ Bjarne said, shaking his head. ‘We found the car in flames at Etterstad, not long after. But no Redzepi.’
‘There was someone else in the car too,’ Henning said. ‘A driver.’
‘Did you get a look at him?’
Henning shook his head.
‘Bet it’s buzzing on the fifth floor right now. First Iver, then me.’
Bjarne didn’t answer.
‘Has the media got wind of the fact it was me who was shot?’
‘Don’t think so. Not yet, anyway.’
Henning nodded slowly again.
They were both silent for a while.
‘I can’t stay here,’ Henning said.
Bjarne had guessed Henning might say this.
‘There are so many entrances to a hospital this size,’ Henning continued.
‘Yes, but we’re keeping a close eye on you, obviously.’
‘So, one officer out in the corridor – that’s your definition of keeping a close eye?’
Bjarne lowered his head.
‘I can’t stay here,’ Henning said again. ‘I’ve got too much to do.’
Bjarne gave him a stern look.
‘You are not going to do anything at all. Not now, and not when you’re better. You have to let us deal with this now. Someone is trying very hard to kill you, Henning. You need protection.’
‘You can start by getting me out of here.’
Henning’s speech was faster and more determined now.
