by Thomas Enger
‘Where’s Henning?’ the policeman shouted again, looking at Redzepi, then Hellberg.
Neither of them answered.
A film seemed to fall over Hellberg’s face, like a mask. The policeman bent down over Redzepi and shook him.
‘Where is he? Where is Henning Juul?’
Redzepi took a deep breath.
Then he turned his head towards the lake.
‘He’s out there,’ he said. ‘He died about ten minutes ago.’
Epilogue
Eight days later
Ullensaker Church was a little over half full.
Trine had perhaps expected there to be a bit more fuss, maybe some media, but it suited her fine; she couldn’t face any more than was necessary. She didn’t know how long she would need to come to terms with everything that had happened. Perhaps she never would.
Pål Fredrik took her arm and tucked it in his, pulled her closer. They were sitting at the front on the left bank of pews. The coffin was in front of them, up by the altar, covered in beautiful flowers. Every now and then she turned to see who had come in. Recognised some faces she’d known when she was a girl. Some were crying. Others talking quietly, as the organist played a slow tune.
Henning would have liked that tune, Trine thought, and a memory from their childhood popped up: the funeral of Leonid Brezhnev, president of the USSR, which was shown on Norwegian television in the eighties. Henning was lying on his stomach under the coffee table listening to the music, and afterwards he said that the intense, sad melodies had filled his body with stillness, in a good way.
Trine saw Katarina Hatlem come up the aisle. She pushed back her long, curly red locks and looked at Trine with a small sympathetic smile. Trine stood up, waved to her former communications director to come to the front. Hatlem hesitated before saying something quickly to the man she’d come with, and then came forward. Trine stepped into the aisle with open arms.
‘My condolences,’ Katarina whispered.
‘Thank you,’ Trine said, and smiled. ‘And thank you for coming. Let’s talk again afterwards?’
Katarina smiled.
Then she turned and went back.
Trine spotted Nora Klemetsen, who had come alone. Trine wanted to go over and hug her as well, but had to make do with a nod as the organ stopped playing. She caught a glimpse of Bjarne Brogeland too, who had been so in love with her when they were younger. She’d spoken to him a lot over the last few days.
The church bells rang. Trine sat down again and folded her hands, something she never usually did. The bells clanged in her head and then a compact silence sank over the congregation.
The priest came in, and walked straight to her and Pål Fredrik. Shook her hand first. He said nothing, but his hands and his eyes expressed his sympathy.
He was a good man, a fine priest. He had talked with such warmth when he came to see them, all the way out to Ullern, even though it was well outside his parish. He drank his coffee and listened with interested eyes. Hadn’t asked any sensitive questions. And he’d quietly taken notes.
The priest stood in the pulpit and looked out at the congregation. Trine knew she would block out everything he said. She would sing the songs, as best she could, she would listen to the man playing ‘Clair de Lune’ on the piano, and would nod and say thank you, and accept the hugs and words of comfort offered outside the church afterwards.
The funeral service lasted for forty-five minutes, but it felt like hours. On the way out, she walked behind Pål Fredrik and the other coffin bearers. Fortunately, it was a beautiful autumn day. On the horizon, a plane was coming in to land on the runway at Gardermoen. The hills were full of colour and blazed in a way they only did in autumn. Red and green and yellow, all mixed together.
Trine put on her sunglasses, grateful to be able to hide her eyes. But still she kept them on the ground and concentrated on not stepping on heels in front of her.
Soon they stopped. People gathered around the grave. The white coffin was lowered onto a platform that would then be lowered further into the ground. The priest stood beside it and finished the service with a final hymn, then threw on the earth. Some people went forward and laid red roses on the coffin. Then it was lowered into the ground, after which people started to murmur and crowd around Trine and Pål Fredrik.
It was while she was embracing someone she’d never met before that she saw him up on the path between the gravestones. He was standing with his hands in his pockets beside Bjarne Brogeland, looking down at them. It felt as though he was looking straight at her, and maybe he was.
Trine let go of the woman, who was replaced by a man with a scratchy beard, but she didn’t hear what he said, just said thank you and kind of you to come.
Henning stood on the path, in a dark suit and sunglasses, and then he started to walk towards them, slowly, as though with dread, his arm in a sling. Some people made their way to him and shook his hand. He nodded, and she heard him say thank you.
It took another fifteen minutes, perhaps, until people started to drift way, relieved to be able to return to their lives. Trine stood by the grave, which would be covered in earth by the end of the day. She turned towards Henning, who was standing a few metres away, beside Nora Klemetsen.
There was no trace of grief in his eyes; they were just dull, as if he had no energy left. She felt sad, not because both their parents were now dead, but because neither of them had a family of their own. Not a whole one. She had denied Pål Henrik a family, and was in part responsible for Henning losing his.
She went over to him.
‘Hello Henning,’ she said.
‘Hi Trine,’ he replied.
‘How…’
She couldn’t say the rest.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
Trine opened her hands in a kind of shrug and tried to smile.
‘I don’t quite know what to say.’
She turned towards the grave.
‘I didn’t see you in the church,’ Trine said, turning back to him.
Henning said, ‘No, I don’t cope very well with that kind of thing after…’
He glanced over at Nora, before lowering his eyes.
Trine hadn’t gone to Iver Gundersen’s funeral, which she knew had been held a few days earlier. She presumed that Henning had been there, but possibly in much the same way as today; that he’d stayed in the background.
The policeman who found Christine Juul said that she was lying on the floor beside the oxygen therapy stand, with the mask in her hands. It seemed likely that she hadn’t been able to turn it on. She was drunk. She had died the same day that Trine had been there, and so she felt she was to blame, given what they’d discussed.
‘Henning, I have to talk to you,’ she said.
‘It was you,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Who paid the people to follow me,’ he continued. ‘To protect me. The ones in the Lexus.’
Trine lowered her head and found a patch of ground to focus on.
‘Bjarne told me,’ he said. ‘That you both agreed on it. Before he helped me leave the hospital the evening after I’d been shot.’
Trine could feel his eyes; it was as though they were boring straight into her head.
‘They were following me when I passed out outside Ann-Mari Sara’s house that evening. It was them who drove me to hospital.’
Trine felt a tear falling.
‘So Bjarne told you everything then?’ she asked.
He nodded.
They had kept an eye on him since he discharged himself from hospital. They’d followed him to Huk, where he met Rasmus Bjelland. Followed him to Tønsberg, where they saw Henning getting into a black SUV, which they followed to the holiday cabin not far from Ytre Enebakk. And they’d let Bjarne know en route.
Trine had read the interviews with Henning afterwards, knew that he had at first accepted his fate, that he had sunk deeper and deeper into the dark water, waiting to die. But even
people who have decided to commit suicide often end up fighting with the rope they’ve tied round their neck, and something similar had happened to Henning, far under the water.
As his oxygen ran out, his survival instinct kicked in, and he’d tried to push himself up towards the surface.
He wasn’t able to, so instead he thought about getting to the shore. It was some way off, thirty metres or so, but it would be easier to pull the weight along behind him than up. He’d kicked and struggled, even though he knew that Durim Redzepi would probably kill him if he managed to get there. But then, at least, it would be a different death.
Then suddenly there was light all around him, beams moving across the murky water, and he had seen shapes, waving arms, and he hadn’t understood until some strong hands grabbed hold of him and pulled him up. Towards the surface.
Trine’s former bodyguards did not have guns, but they had kept themselves out of sight, and on a couple of occasions had been certain that Durim Redzepi had either seen or heard them. They had moved stealthily through the woods and had seen what was about to happen, so they’d entered the water as quietly as they could. Under the cover of the thickening mist, they swam towards the boat, slowly and largely underwater, and then, when Durim Redzepi was on his way back towards the shore, they dove under and found Henning.
One of the bodyguards who was interviewed later said that it wasn’t a particularly deep lake and Henning had been underwater for less than a minute and half before they managed to get him to the surface.
They were frightened of making too much noise, but Redzepi hadn’t been able to see them through the mist. He’d heard something, he said, when he was being questioned by Bjarne later, but hadn’t turned to check; his main concern was to get away.
Henning took a step closer to Trine.
‘You saved my life,’ he said.
Trine stood silently, just looking at him.
Then she sobbed.
‘It wasn’t m…’
‘Yes, it was,’ he said. ‘It was you who saved me. Thank you.’
Trine’s eyes filled up, and she struggled to regain her composure.
‘But that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you,’ she said with a sniff.
Henning looked at her, puzzled.
‘And I could probably have found a better time to tell you,’ she said, ‘but in many ways, it seems right to do it here. In front of them.’
She pointed to the open grave and the gravestone alongside it, then gave a sign to Pål Fredrik, who immediately suggested to Nora that they should leave and let brother and sister speak in private.
‘Will you wait for me up there?’ Henning asked, and looked at Nora.
She nodded.
And then there was only Henning and Trine. She took a few steps towards the grave. Stopped in front of the hole where her mother’s coffin lay, beside their father.
Jakob.
Died at the age of 44, eternally loved and worshipped by his wife, who, after his death, never stopped hating the realities of life, the fact that she was a widow and that, in her eyes, it was Henning’s fault.
Trine hadn’t managed to talk or think the morning after their father had committed suicide. It didn’t help that their mother just screamed and screamed and screamed, and in the days and weeks that followed, seemed to take up all the space.
But even she, deep down, must have known what her husband had done with Henning. Fortunately not to Henning, which explained why Henning himself didn’t seem to know anything. His father had just sat there in Henning’s room, looking at him, when he thought that everyone else in the house was asleep. Sometimes with the duvet on, sometimes with it off.
Trine had been woken up one night by the sounds coming from Henning’s room. She’d tiptoed out into the hall, towards the light and sounds. She’d peeked round the door and seen her father sitting there, eyes closed, with his trousers off.
Trine had stood there, transfixed by the fast hand movements, the half-open mouth, the closed eyes.
But then the floor creaked underneath her.
She hadn’t been able to stand still, hadn’t been about to tiptoe back either, and when her father snapped out of his trance, he’d pulled on his trousers and run after her. Trine had managed to get into her room and lock the door before he reached her.
She’d sunk to the floor with her back to the door and cried, while her father had begged her, as loudly as he dared, in order not to wake the rest of the house, to open up. But Trine hadn’t opened the door until late the next day, long after he’d gone to work.
In the afternoon, when she got home from school, she’d made sure she was never alone with him. And Jakob was silent; he hadn’t spoken to Henning, or to his wife. It was like being in a dead house.
Then one day, Jakob ambushed her. He hadn’t gone to work. Instead he was waiting for her in the garage where she kept her bike.
‘Trine,’ he said. ‘We have to talk.’
Trine didn’t answer.
‘I’ve never laid a hand on Henning. I’ve never done anything to him.’
Still she didn’t answer.
‘Please, Trine, you have to believe me.’
And then he had tried to make light of what he’d done. He knew that it was wrong, that he should never had done it, but in his eyes, it hadn’t hurt Henning in any way, because he didn’t know.
Jakob Juul had stood there with tears streaming down his cheeks; he’d shaken his head and mumbled that their mother didn’t understand, that she’d always been so jealous of Henning because Jakob loved him more than he loved her. She’d told him, many times, but she didn’t know the ways in which it had manifested itself. It would devastate her, he said, if she discovered what he’d done. And he would be a social pariah, everywhere, if the truth were to get out.
Trine had just stood there, looking at him. He’d realised that she would never let him get away with it, and that no doubt was why he’d taken an overdose of insulin one evening, after everyone else had gone to bed.
Trine believed that her mother knew, deep down. And that was what she had confronted her with on the last day she was alive.
Henning looked as his father’s gravestone as he tried to process what Trine had just told him. It should, perhaps, have hurt; he should, perhaps, have been disgusted, but he was neither.
He felt … nothing.
It was as though it was all part of someone else’s life, perhaps because it happened so long ago, and because he had so few memories of his father.
He looked at the open grave. The coffin, beautiful and white, was covered by a thin layer of earth. A few roses had fallen off the coffin and now lay on the ground by the grave. He wondered which way she was lying.
He thought about the way his mother had always looked at him, accusingly. Her breathing, always strained. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember what she looked like when she smiled. They should really raise a glass of St Hallvard liqueur, he thought, in honour of the poor soul who had been their mother, but it was hardly appropriate in a graveyard. Perhaps Trine had bought a few bottles for the reception.
He offered her his good arm, as they started to walk up towards the car park. She took it, and they walked in silence between the gravestones.
Nora and Pål Fredrik were waiting for them by the cars.
‘I won’t be coming to the reception,’ Henning said to Trine.
‘No, I guessed that you wouldn’t,’ she said, with a careful smile.
They stood there looking at each other. An airplane thundered overhead as it ascended into the sky. Trine took a step towards him and opened her arms. Henning let her in.
It felt so strange to hug his own sister again. It must have been at least twenty years since they last hugged. But she had protected him for so many years, held the truth inside. The fact that they hadn’t had much contact was perhaps Trine’s way of protecting herself as well, so she wouldn’t be reminded of what had happened.
Trine pulled away from him and
dried a tear. Took a step back, and then another. Then she lifted her hand in a brief wave.
‘Goodbye,’ she said.
He lifted his hand, too.
‘Bye.’
Henning and Nora stayed by the cars and watched Trine and Pål Fredrik drive off.
‘Was it OK?’ Nora asked.
Henning turned to her.
‘Hm?’
‘Your little chat?’
She nodded down to towards the grave.
‘Oh yes,’ Henning said. ‘Yes, that … fine. In a way.’
Nora pulled her dark-grey coat tighter around her. As always, her cheeks were rosy after being out in the autumn air. And her lips were dry.
They stood there and listened to the silence.
‘So, what happens now?’ she asked.
Henning took a deep breath.
‘Durim Redzepi’s behaviour during questioning has been exemplary,’ he said. ‘I think he’s doing everything he can to get a good deal. Which of course has made it harder for William Hellberg and Ørjan Mjønes. Redzepi’s got a lot of key information on them all.’
He shrugged, and winced at the pain in his shoulder.
‘I meant with you,’ Nora said. ‘What happens with you?’
Henning looked at her for a long time.
‘I don’t know, Nora.’
The sun went behind a cloud and it got colder straightaway. Nora put a hand on her stomach, and tried hard not to pull a face.
‘Is it…?’
Henning pointed to her stomach.
‘I just feel a bit sick,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘Would you like a lift home?’
She shook her head and pointed to a car that was parked a bit further along. They stood looking at each other for some time. Both thinking about that other grave, back in Oslo.
‘OK,’ he said, eventually. ‘Well, see you around then. And thank you for coming.’
Henning had spent the first few days after he’d been fished out of the water at home in his own bed. He’d slept. Eaten. Slept again. He’d had a cup of tea with his old neighbour, Gunnar Goma, who’d recently had a heart operation. And Gunnar had told him about the war, about all the ladies he’d known, about all the cafés he still frequented in Grünerløkka, always with nitroglycerin in one pocket and a tooth guard in the other – ready to defend a damsel in distress. Henning had smiled and wondered what he would be like when he was old.
