by Thomas Enger
Pia Nøkleby got out her own phone and punched the number into a search engine. The answer made her wrinkle her nose, but at the same time wonder if she’d discovered something crucial.
She turned to Nordbø and Linnerud and said, ‘Thank you, boys. You really were a huge help.’
William Hellberg led the way, with Henning just a few steps behind. And Anne Cecilie Hellberg was just behind Henning. The sound of her high heels on the pavement was sharp and hard, and uneven. As though she was on her way home from a long night on the town.
Henning turned briefly towards her. But even now she wouldn’t meet his eyes and he had a fairly good idea of what was going on in her head.
He reckoned that deep down, she may well have suspected what her husband had done, but had repressed it, perhaps because she didn’t want to face reality. Or didn’t dare. Perhaps she was simply trying to protect herself, or her family. They had a son together. How to carry on living with a man she knew had killed other people was perhaps not something she could contemplate right now. Right now, it was simply a matter of dealing with the most immediate problem. In other words, Henning.
Soon they were in the car park by William Hellberg’s SUV, which looked like it had come straight from the car wash.
‘You’re driving, Henning,’ Hellberg said.
‘Me?’
‘Yes. It would be too hard to keep an eye on you if I was driving. I don’t think you’re stupid enough to try anything, but … you never know.’
Henning saw a bump in his inside pocket. A gun, no doubt. Maybe the one he’d used to kill Preben Mørck.
Henning took the car keys.
‘Wh-where are you going?’ Anne Cecilie Hellberg asked.
William turned to look at her.
‘It’s best you don’t know,’ he said.
She started to cry again.
‘Are you…?’
She looked over at Henning.
‘Are you…?’
William Hellberg embraced her. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Make a nice meal for Oscar, and we’ll speak later this evening.’
Then he pushed her away. Smiled tamely and kissed her on the forehead. Before she turned and walked back, she glanced briefly at Henning.
He saw what was in her eyes.
She was asking for forgiveness.
Henning looked up at the sky and filled his lungs, thought he caught a whiff from the canal down by the quay, as though something was rotting. He was absolutely certain that this would be his last day alive.
54
Henning drove as slowly as he could, and registered everything they passed. Dogs on leads on the pavement, children on bikes on their way home from school. A tractor in a field. A cat, back arched, as it snuck up on its prey. An old man who took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. A young woman out for a walk on her own, who looked like she was singing.
He saw a flock of birds swoop and chase each other to their next meal. There were thin dark streaks across the grey sky, as though someone had painted over it with a coarse brush.
All his senses were sharpened.
He noticed the slightest variation in the car’s air conditioning. The smell from an old packet of lozenges. A trace of cigarette smoke. Aftershave. The smell of the fabric of Hellberg’s expensive suit.
‘Where are we going?’ Henning asked, as they drove out of Tønsberg.
‘Stick to the main road. I’ll tell you when to turn off,’ Hellberg said. ‘But it’s some way yet.’
They drove in silence for a while. The buildings gave way to open fields, empty and sad after the harvest. A Norwegian flag was billowing in the wind outside a farm set back from the road. It made him long to be here. To be allowed to stay here. The feeling took him by surprise.
Hellberg got out his mobile phone and checked for any missed calls and messages. He slipped it back into his pocket and pointed towards the road sign for Oslo. Henning indicated to the right and turned onto the E18 in the direction of the capital.
As he drove, he thought about the man sitting beside him, who for years had helped Tore and Charlie whenever they ran into problems. And who no doubt had been richly rewarded for his advice and services, money he had invested in boats and foundations around the world. Who preferred to stay out of the limelight, safe behind his family facade.
No doubt it spiced up his life a little, Henning thought, to know that his mind was well-suited to criminal activities, but equally confident that he would never be caught.
‘Why did you meet Tore that day?’ Henning asked.
Hellberg looked over at him.
‘Which day?’
‘The day my son died.’
Hellberg turned in his seat, so he was half facing Henning.
‘It was you sitting in his car, wasn’t it?’ Henning continued. ‘It was your name in the Indicia report?’
Hellberg didn’t respond.
‘Come on,’ Henning said. ‘What does it matter now? I won’t be able to tell anyone.’
Hellberg brushed off some dust that had caught on his trouser leg.
‘At first I thought it was Preben Mørck who met Tore,’ Henning said, when Hellberg remained silent. ‘That he was the one who was keen to have his name removed from the report, especially as it was Mørck who hired Ørjan Mjønes to get rid of Tore.’
Henning looked over Hellberg, who was now staring out of the passenger window.
‘But Mørck was never anything other than a middleman. Someone who acted on behalf of others.’
Hellberg removed something that had got stuck between his lips.
‘Please, Hellberg,’ Henning asked. ‘You said yourself, we’ve got a way to drive. It wouldn’t hurt to talk a little in the meantime.’
Hellberg looked over at him again. Henning could tell that he was on the right track. Hellberg took a packet of cigarettes out from the inner pocket of his jacket and lit up. Henning tried not to cough.
‘I tried to get them to make up again,’ Hellberg said.
‘Tore and Charlie?’
Hellberg took a drag and nodded.
‘The fact they weren’t talking wasn’t good for any of us. They knew too much about each other. And not least, they knew too much about Preben and myself.’
‘So … you took on a kind of mediator role?’
‘You could call it that. But they were both stubborn fools. Loose cannons. The number of ridiculous situations they got themselves into, you’ve no idea.’
He shook his head.
‘But then a patrol car was sent out to talk to you and Tore, so your name ended up in an Indicia report.
Henning saw out of the corner of his eye that he nodded.
‘And it couldn’t stay there. Not after you’d arranged for him to be killed.’
Hellberg suddenly turned and looked at Henning.
‘He threatened you, didn’t him? From prison?’ asked Henning.
Hellberg didn’t answer.
‘Tore became a desperate man after serving a year and a half for a murder he didn’t commit. And apart from Preben Mørck and Charlie Høisæther, there was only one man who knew about your role in what went on in Natal, and everything that happened here in the wake of Bodil Svenkerud’s death. And how you threatened my sister.’
Henning could see his conclusions were right.
‘Not only that, Tore also knew something crucial about your family. He had, after all, killed someone for your mother. And he knew why she wanted her sister-in-law out of the way.’
Henning thought about the envelope that Tore had kept in his safe, the letter that went a long way to prove that Hellberg Property – of which William was the director – was established with blood money. He might manage to wangle his way out of that, the sins of the father and all that, and maybe even pay a symbolic sum in order to morally redeem himself and the other living members of the Hellberg family. But it might also implicate his mother in an unsolved murder. And Tore knew about Preben’s role as middleman.
He knew too much.
So he had to die.
Hellberg took a long drag on his cigarette and then shook his head before blowing out the smoke.
‘Tore wanted me to pay for a private investigation into his case,’ he said. ‘But of course I couldn’t do that. It would only lead to a lot of questions.’
He snorted, then sighed, put the cigarette in his mouth while he got out his mobile phone again, checked the screen, then put it back.
‘And when Tore got in touch with you – you, who might get him to tell you everything, so you could write about it in your paper – well, there was no going back.’
He took another deep drag on the cigarette.
‘But most of all, I was frightened that he would say something about what happened in Natal,’ he said, and slowly exhaled. ‘That it was my idea to blame Bjelland when the police carried out the major operation against the property sector down there in 2007. Tore’s word was still worth a good deal in those circles and there was a risk that any revenge on their part might harm my family. And I couldn’t allow that to happen.’
Henning thought about Bjelland and the information he’d given Iver, which led to Iver’s murder. Bjelland was still a potential danger for Hellberg, which meant it would be wise not to mention that they’d been in touch.
Had it not been for the display on the dashboard, Henning wouldn’t have believed the engine was running, it was so quiet in the car. Like sitting in a machine that hovered over the ground.
Hellberg looked out of the window, cigarette between his fingers, leaning on his elbow against the door.
‘So now you’ve got rid of everyone who might cause you problems,’ Henning said. ‘Tore, Preben, Charlie. And by this evening, you’ll have killed me too. What then?’
Hellberg shrugged.
‘You thought you’d just go back to being the good citizen for the rest of your life?’
Hellberg shrugged again.
‘Who knows,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you can,’ Henning said. ‘It’s not in your blood. You’ll miss solving problems for people, proving to yourself that you’ve still got the brains. People like you don’t change.’
Hellberg laughed, but didn’t say anything.
They slipped into silence again. Henning would have preferred to take the back roads where time didn’t go so fast, where the lower speed limit would allow him to admire the trees and autumn, where the stones and rock faces would be close enough for him to see the cracks. Jonas always used to point at everything when they were driving and comment on the colours, the cars, the ones that looked like they could go fast.
The thought of Jonas brought him back down to earth.
‘Was it your idea to set fire to my flat, too?’
Hellberg turned towards him again, took a last drag on his cigarette, then stumped it out in the ashtray. He opened the window a little, so the sound of the wind filled the car. He closed it again, and immediately there was silence.
‘Charlie asked if I had any suggestions,’ Hellberg said, but didn’t explain. He didn’t need to either, Henning understood the rest: Hellberg had come up with a plan, Mørck had hired people who could do the job – as he always had done – while Hellberg himself kept a low profile. Which was why he didn’t know the details of what would happen on the street where Henning lived on 11 September 2007. The night Jonas died.
A car sped past to Henning’s left. The woman sitting in the passenger seat sent him a long look. She had the same short brown hair as Nora. Henning wondered where she might have gone. What would happen to her after all this?
‘There’s just one more thing I wonder about,’ Henning said.
Hellberg turned his head.
‘The day I was shot. It was you who told them, wasn’t it? That I was on my way back to Oslo?’
He didn’t answer straightaway.
‘I’d been to your house, after all,’ Henning said. ‘You could quite easily have noted what kind of car I was driving, the registration number.’
Hellberg gave a fleeting smile.
‘Did you just tell them that I was going to police headquarters?’ Henning finished.
Hellberg said, ‘I wouldn’t have got this far if I didn’t have a degree of intuition. You told me that you hadn’t shared your theories about Preben with the police yet, so it was only a matter of time before you did.’
Henning nodded, reflected on what lay ahead. A thought struck him: he could drive off the road, into a rock face or an oncoming lorry, then it would be over and done with straightaway. And he’d kill Hellberg, in the bargain. He would get his revenge.
He’d thought about it so many times, about what he would do when confronted with the person responsible for Jonas’s death. But now that he was actually here, when he could actually do something to this person, he realised he didn’t have it in him. To kill someone. That he wanted to live for as long as possible. He hoped for a miracle.
But he also hoped that death, when it came, would be painless.
That it wouldn’t be drawn out.
He didn’t know exactly how long they’d been driving, but it had to be close to two hours. They’d driven straight through Oslo and on, east. Hellberg had dialled a number and said they were on their way. There was more and more forest, and fewer and fewer cars. Then Hellberg instructed him to turn onto a forest track.
Immediately, the tyres crunched and Henning drove slowly, as though to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. The sky above them was increasingly drab. It would soon be dark, and the evening would be chilly in the forest.
55
Bjarne was waiting for a phone call when Pia Nøkleby knocked on his office door and came straight in.
‘Have you got time for a quick meeting?’ she asked.
‘Eh … not really,’ Bjarne replied.
Nøkleby took another step into the room, and looked at him expectantly, thinking he would give an explanation. And when he didn’t, she said, ‘OK, I’ll tell you very quickly then, before I brief the others. Tore Pulli was in frequent contact with William Hellberg in the weeks before he was killed. You know who that is, don’t you?’
Bjarne nodded and straightened up, ever so slightly.
‘Of course, it doesn’t need to mean anything, but I think he’s someone we should look at more closely,’ Pia Nøkleby said. ‘Preben Mørck was his lawyer. There must be a connection somewhere.’
There had to be, Bjarne thought.
Nøkleby waited for him to say something, and when he didn’t, she added, ‘Well, OK, come as soon as you can then.’
Bjarne could see that she was agitated. She always got a flush on her throat when she was tense. She turned on her heel and closed the door behind her.
Bjarne sat there, looking at his phone.
Come on, he thought.
Ring!
The forest made Henning think about another murder case he’d worked on many years ago. A man had been found on a bonfire, killed by his brother-in-law. It was the result of a family feud about who owned what and where. The case had fascinated him, seeing just how little it took for so much to go wrong in a family. A boundary here, a limit there. The man, who eventually confessed to the murder, didn’t even like the forest.
Cases, Henning thought.
Crime cases had been his life for so long. He enjoyed meeting people, passing through their lives, winning their trust and their stories, then going back to the office, his fingertips itching with words and sentences. To see the result in the next day’s paper or the weekend supplement, spread over five, maybe even six columns, certain that he had touched someone’s life, changed something, put the focus on something.
It had been important.
It felt like an eternity since he’d been that person. And it had been a long and painful journey. He was exhausted. Damaged. Tired of the constant pain, tired of the hunt. But he finally found a peace, inside.
There was a time when he’d cultivated that sti
llness, he’d sought it out. And had only sporadically found it, on the terraces at the Dælenenga football ground or in his own flat. He’d wallowed in the melancholy, stared at the walls, had scarcely put a foot out the door. He hadn’t even listened to music.
But he would give anything to be able to do that one more time.
And to see the sea one more time as well. Experience the peace that always filled him when he saw its vast expanse. He would have loved to go out on the water, to fish, watch the sun go down over the horizon, to see the moon rise over the rocks and cast a greenishwhite shimmer on the black eternity. He would love to see the stars in the sky, never clearer than at the cottage in Stavern. He would have talked to people, try to get to know them. Would have looked for things that made him laugh. He would have read more books. Drunk ridiculously expensive wines. He would have smoked a cigar, moist and full of flavour. And he would have stared into the flames and seen his own son there, without crying.
‘Over there,’ Hellberg said, pointing to a red cabin.
Henning was roused from his thoughts. There was a silver-grey van outside.
He accelerated a little; the road was narrow and bumpy, but William Hellberg’s big car was easy to steer, even with only one arm. Soon they were in front of the cabin. Henning turned off the engine. Hellberg opened the door as soon as he stopped the engine, and got out. Slammed the door shut. The whole car shuddered.
Henning sat still in the silence for a few seconds.
He wondered if he would fight death when it approached, when the pain started and the seconds ticked by towards that one final destination.
He wondered if he’d be frightened.
If he would cry.
He got out, and breathed in the smell of the forest and the evening, raw and chill. The door to the cabin opened and Redzepi came out. He had a gun in his hand. Henning caught his eye for a moment, but then found his own eyes drawn to the red splashes on his t-shirt. They looked like blood. And his hand was also covered in small red dots – as though something had sprayed him at close quarters. But now he was heading straight for Henning with a determined step.
