by Thomas Enger
‘A Swedish man called Daniel Schyman,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘Do you know who that is?’
The name sounded familiar, but Nora couldn’t place him.
Refsdal continued: ‘He was shot and killed in his own forest about four or five weeks ago. About the same time that Hedda disappeared.’
Nora nodded, recalling that for quite some time the Swedish online newspapers had been full of articles about Daniel Schyman. It was a while since she had seen any updates on the investigation, but she knew that he had been killed when he was out hunting early one morning. As far as she could remember, the police had not arrested anyone.
‘Maybe she was interested in the case,’ Nora suggested.
Refsdal shook his head. ‘Hedda was doing searches before he was killed.’
Nora wrinkled her nose. ‘What did she look up?’
‘She had gathered various bits of information about him: where he lived, what he did. But he was nearly seventy, so I can’t for the life of me understand why she was interested in him.’
Nora didn’t know what to say. This put things in a whole new light, and she almost couldn’t wait to get back to a computer, so she could find out more about the Schyman case.
She took another mouthful of pizza.
‘There was something else as well,’ he continued. ‘Hedda had looked up information about an address in Tønsberg.’
Nora chewed quickly and swallowed too fast – it hurt her throat.
‘Which address?’ she asked, as she pulled a face.
‘Brages vei 18. I have no idea why; I certainly don’t know the people who live there, and can’t remember that we’ve ever had anything to do with them.’
Nora drank some Farris. ‘What are they called?’ she asked.
‘Torill and Jens Holmboe.’
She wiped her mouth as discreetly as possible. ‘Have you spoken to them?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s only a few hours since I discovered all this. I wanted to talk to you about it first.’
‘Hmm,’ said Nora.
She sat staring at the view as though hypnotised, then she said: ‘We’ll have to tell the police about this.’
Refsdal didn’t react. Instead, he went over to the kitchen worktop, folded up a newspaper and put it on a pile by a bowl containing almost black bananas. He put a dirty milk glass in the dishwasher and threw a half-eaten pizza slice into a green bag in the cupboard under the sink.
‘Has Cato Løken, the police inspector, phoned you?’ Nora asked.
Refsdal turned towards her. ‘No.’
She told him about the article she was planning for the paper for the next day, without going into too much detail, and didn’t mention her own suspicions or Georg’s two-hour visit to the summer house.
Refsdal’s reaction was exactly what Nora had expected it would be; first silence, then anger, then a barrage of questions that all amounted to the same thing: why had Hedda gone back? Who had collected her at the station? He asked Nora whether she knew anything about the car, what the person looked like, where the car went. Nora kept her answers as vague as possible.
Refsdal’s interrogation was interrupted by the sound of footsteps running downstairs. Seconds later, a little boy came sliding into the kitchen on his stocking soles and asked, before he noticed that his father had a guest, if he and Mikkel could watch Harry Potter three.
Refsdal gave a lame smile and looked at the clock.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘But you can’t watch the whole thing – that would take too long. Mikkel’s mum will be here to collect him soon.’
‘Yeeess,’ the boy said, punching the air, then immediately disappeared, his feet pounding on the stairs. Refsdal stood in silence. Then he turned around and grabbed a cloth that was lying beside the sink; he held it under the tap and then wrung it out.
‘What a lovely boy you’ve got,’ Nora said.
Refsdal nodded, without turning around.
Then he stood and rubbed and rubbed the same spot on the work surface.
21
Henning said goodbye to Veronica outside the Underwater Pub, and looked around as he tried to decide whether to walk straight home – which would take him about twelve or thirteen minutes, if he went by Telthusbakken – or if he should go the long way round through the centre of town. He plumped for the latter, as he needed to clear his head. He always thought best when he was doing something other than thinking about what he needed to think about.
The pavements were full of people on their way to or from St Hanshaugen; it was a nice evening, though there was still a slight chill in the air, and the clouds had cleared to reveal a pale-blue sky. There was something refreshing about seeing dry streets again.
Henning noticed that he was starting to feel better. His head and hip didn’t hurt as much, but every time he took a deep breath, he felt it in his ribs. Walking on asphalt was perhaps not the best medicine, though, and by the time he got to Stortorget, he was getting tired. The idea of walking all the way home was no longer tempting, so he got on a number 11 tram, sat down and leaned his head against the window as he watched the evening traffic in slow motion.
He thought about Nora, and about Iver. At some point he would have to talk to them both, but not this evening. Or tomorrow. He didn’t know what to say to either of them. He hadn’t spoken to Iver at all since he’d gone on leave.
A man who was sitting further back in the tram, and on the opposite side from Henning, quickly looked away when Henning caught his eye. There was something familiar about him. Hadn’t he been standing on the other side of the road when Henning said goodbye to Veronica? It looked like the same person. He’d stood there, staring in their direction, smoking furiously.
A few seconds later, he met Henning’s eyes again. But again, he pretended that he wasn’t looking at Henning, and turned his gaze to the window, looking at the evening outside.
The man was small and slim, with dark clothes; he had on a black baseball cap, and a leather jacket with a grey hoodie underneath. He had his hands in the jacket pockets. The tram glided past Oslo Central Station, the shops in Storgata, on past Brugata, where people of all ages and colours stood side by side waiting for a bus or tram. Henning acted as though he was watching what was going on outside, whereas in fact he was watching the reflection of the man in the window. He stayed where he was all the way up to Grünerløkka, looking over at Henning every now and then.
The man was possibly in his late thirties, and looked like he might be Eastern European. Henning wondered if it was perhaps the scars on his face that had made the man curious. In which case, he wouldn’t be the first.
But wasn’t it a bit odd that he’d been up at St Hanshaugen, then apparently taken the same route as Henning down to the centre, and back up to Grünerløkka, again?
Henning got off at Olaf Ryes plass, which was buzzing with people. Some were still sitting outside under the awning at Kaffebrenneriet, illuminated by the light from the window of the bookshop next door. Henning kept his pace leisurely as he tried to find a window or surface that could act as a mirror. The sign outside Brocante proved perfect.
The man in the hoodie had also got off and was following Henning about fifteen or twenty metres behind.
Henning looked right, then left, before crossing the road. He glanced in the man’s direction, without looking directly at him, but could see that he, too, had moved out into the road, and was crossing to the other side. Henning got out his mobile phone and tapped the camera function, then turned the phone and held it by his side as he walked, pressing the screen and hoping that his finger was hitting the camera button and that the photographs would not be too grainy. He might not even get a picture of the man, but it was worth a try.
Henning popped into the supermarket and stood behind some shelves to see if the man would follow. He didn’t; not after one, then two minutes. Henning went back outside.
The man was nowhere to be seen.
Henning hurried home, and looked a
t the photographs he had taken. He’d actually done alright: it was possible to get a fair impression of the man’s face. He downloaded the pictures onto his computer and looked at them in more detail.
The man wasn’t particularly tall; he had a two-day growth of beard and deep bags under his eyes. Henning was quite certain that he had never seen him before.
He stood up, went over to the door and looked out through the peephole. There was no one there. But he still made sure that the door was locked before he sat back down to study the man on the screen.
Who are you? he wondered. And why are you following me?
Nora thought about Hedda and Daniel Schyman as she drove back to Oslo. Hugo Refsdal wasn’t a hundred percent sure that they hadn’t known each other. He had only been with Hedda for seven years, but she had certainly never mentioned his name in that time. Why would she suddenly look up all this information about him on the internet and then delete her searches?
When she got back to her flat, the first thing Nora did was to sit down with her computer and open the page for the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. She wrote Daniel Schyman in the search field; there were plenty of hits. It didn’t take long to establish that a full murder investigation was still going strong.
Schyman had been found on the morning of 13 August; he’d been shot with a high-calibre weapon, the sort used for hunting. The police didn’t think it was an accident. The shot was to the middle of his chest and it had not taken long for him to die.
Two of Schyman’s friends were quoted as saying that he was someone who enjoyed his own company; but he was as kind as they come, and they could not believe that anyone would want to kill him. His death remained a mystery.
Hugo Refsdal had taken a screenshot of the log files that Hedda had deleted and had sent them to Nora. She saw that Hedda had looked for information about the forest that Schyman owned, among other things, and had even found a detailed map of the area. She had also found his address.
But what about Brages vei 18 in Tønsberg?
Hedda had typed the address plus ‘property history’ into Google; but she’d also added her own surname and searched under ‘Brages vei 18 Tønsberg sold’, which led to a property database. Nora did the same and could see that Jens and Torill Holmboe had bought the property in 2001 for 1,325,000 kroner. There were several other transfers of ownership but the names were not listed. According to Hugo Refsdal, Hedda had never mentioned the Holmboes either, so it had to be the address itself that interested her.
Nora’s mobile phone beeped. She reached over for it. Iver had sent her a text message.
Nora took a deep breath before she opened it.
Have you told Henning about the baby?
Nora made an exasperated sound. Not a word about how she was. She just wrote back: Yes. A few seconds later, there was another beep.
How did he take it?
Why do you care about that, Nora wanted to ask, and not about me or us? But she didn’t, she just didn’t answer. If he really wanted to know, he could call either her or Henning. But he probably wouldn’t dare do either. Probably hadn’t got his head round it yet.
Nora stood up, went into the living room and lit the candle on the windowsill. She sat down heavily on the rocking chair, squeezing the ball in one hand and stroking her belly with the other. Her thoughts turned to Hedda again, and her behaviour in the period before she disappeared. Nora was overcome by a sense of unease. She didn’t like the way things were developing.
Not at all.
22
Henning couldn’t remember putting his head down on the kitchen table, but he must have done at some point during the night, as that was where he woke up. His cheek was pressed flat, and it felt like his jaw was dislocated – a sensation that made him think of Pontus’s punches. The memory was reinforced by the taste in his mouth: dust and metal.
Henning sat up slowly. His eyes were dry and out of focus and it took a few minutes for his head to clear. He stood up, turned on the kettle, went to the toilet, washed his hands and face – carefully – but he wasn’t able to think until he’d had some coffee. So he spooned out some instant, poured in some water, a drop of milk from the fridge and then sat down again at the kitchen table where he waited for the day to take hold.
The evening before, Henning had found out that Charles Høisæther was the sole trader in a company called Høisæther Property, which had not earned a single kroner since the end of the nineties. The cash flow had been pretty good up until then, so it was difficult to understand why it had dried up. Whatever the reason, Høisæther had kept a low profile in Norway. Henning had not managed to find even one newspaper article about him on the internet.
Henning tried to call the contact number that was on the brochure Veronica had given him, but was met with a recording telling him that the number was no longer in use. He had tried to send an email to the address provided, to ask if Charlie could spare him a few minutes, but hadn’t received a reply yet. He had also rung a number he found on the Heavenly Houses website, the company that managed the properties down there in Brazil. He hadn’t had much joy there either; there was only an answer machine.
Henning finished his coffee, and realised he was feeling hungry. There wasn’t much in the fridge, so he’d have to go out. He called Geir Grønningen as he walked down the stairs.
‘Talk about flies and shit,’ Grønningen said.
‘Have you ever been to Brazil?’ Henning asked him. The sharp light outside hurt his eyes.
‘Brazil?’ Grønningen repeated. ‘No. What makes you ask?’
‘Did Tore ever talk to you about it?’ Henning continued. ‘Or, more specifically, Natal?’
‘Um, no, don’t think so.’
Henning walked past a green rubbish bin. The rank smell of old prawns and cat piss filled his nose.
‘So you didn’t know that Tore was possibly thinking about buying a flat there?’
There was a short pause. Then: ‘In Brazil?’
Henning stepped out onto the street and looked both ways; no sign of the man who might or might not have been following him the evening before.
‘I thought maybe you’d want to join him there,’ he suggested, and started to cross the road.
‘Me? I don’t earn … Seriously, was Tore thinking about moving to Brazil?’
Henning jumped over a puddle and passed in front of Mr Tang’s restaurant.
‘There are things to indicate he was at least considering it,’ Henning said, and looked up Markveien.
Grønningen had nothing more to say on the matter.
‘What about Charlie Høisæther, do you know anything about the man?’
‘Charlie, yeah, I know him well. What about him?’
A car came racing towards Henning. He darted over to the other side of the road, where Bobby, as always, had his kiosk open.
‘How do you know him?’
‘Well, he was one of Tore’s mates. From way back. Met him here and there.’
Henning passed a car that was parked half on the pavement. There was a picture of a big pizza and a telephone number fixed to one of the side windows.
‘What was your impression of him?’
‘Of Charlie?’ Grønningen yawned. ‘Well, he was alright. A bit cocky, maybe. But I don’t think him and Tore got on so well at the end.’
Henning stopped abruptly, to avoid walking through some dog shit.
‘Why not?’ he asked, taking a step to one side.
‘Think they fell out about something.’
‘Do you know about what?’
‘Not a Scooby. Tore didn’t want to talk about it. But I kind of had an idea. There was talk about some poker game, so I asked if that meant that Charlie was home. He was, but he wasn’t coming to the game, Tore said. He sounded kind of angry, if you know what I mean. Like they’d had an argument.’
Interesting, Henning thought.
‘These poker games, did you go, too?’ he asked.
‘Me?’ Grønnin
gen exclaimed. ‘Haven’t got the nerves for it, me. Even the one-armed bandit on the Denmark ferry makes me anxious.’
A taxi with a series of small dents in the side was driving towards him; it didn’t slow down for the speed bumps and the suspension groaned as it hit them.
‘So you didn’t know that Tore had a problem with gambling?’
Grønningen was hesitant. ‘I know that he liked putting money on the horses and things like that, and that he won every now and then. But not much more than that, really.’
‘Right,’ Henning said, and jumped over another puddle. He was getting close to the tram lines on Thorvald Meyers gate, and the noise was increasing.
‘Cheers, Geir. That was all I wanted to know. Speak again.’
‘No doubt.’
Charlie Høisæther was becoming more and more interesting, Henning thought, as he finished the call. He wanted to talk to him, hear his voice – preferably meet him face to face.
Henning went into Sultan and bought some Turkish bread, cherry tomatoes, a bunch of bananas and carrots, as well as a small piece of Parmesan cheese. Back out on the street, he did the same as before: looked from side to side, scanning the crowds moving up and down the pavements.
He fixed on a man leaning up against the wall outside an optician’s on the other side of the street. To all intents and purposes, he was simply waiting for someone.
It was him.
The same man.
Henning had no doubt; he wore the same baseball cap, the same hoodie. Henning stood and stared at him. The man noticed Henning, but looked past him, down Thorvald Meyers gate and back again.
Henning mulled over the options. It didn’t take him long to make a decision.
He started to walk straight towards the man.
The man promptly pushed himself away from the wall, and just then a tram came clattering towards Henning and the driver sounded the horn. Henning jumped back and had to wait for the long, clumsy, blue-and-white beast to snake its way to Birkelund before he could attempt to cross the road. But the tram was followed by lots of cars, so when he eventually reached the other side, all he saw was the man disappearing round the corner onto Markveien. He was walking fast.
