by Thomas Enger
“Yes, a lot of fun that was, he-he. Same old story. You were lucky, you had a good reason for getting away, away, AWAY!”
Kåre grins from ear to ear, once his tic has died down.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing we haven’t heard before. Bad times, you lot need to generate more pages and do it faster if we’re to avoid cuts and boo fucking hoo.”
Kåre laughs and smiles—for a long time. Heidi would probably enjoy cutting me right now, Henning thinks. But he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.
He excuses himself by saying he needs a word with Heidi before he goes home for the day. Kåre understands and slaps him hard on the shoulder, three times. Then he is off again. Henning decides to strike first.
“Hello, Heidi,” he says. She turns her head.
“Why the hell—”
“Bad times, slowdown in the advertising market, we need to deliver more pages, cuts.”
He sits down without looking at her. He feels her eyes on him and is reminded of the North Pole.
“That’s right, isn’t it?”
He turns on his computer. Heidi clears her throat.
“Where have you been?”
“Working. Is Iver around?”
Heidi doesn’t reply immediately.
“Er, no. He’s gone home.”
He is still not making eye contact with her and tries to remain unaffected by the unpleasant silence which envelops them. Heidi doesn’t move. When Henning finally looks up, he is surprised by the expression in her eyes. She looks like she has had a flat tire and there is no bus stop for miles.
“I’m close to breaking a really good story,” he says in a milder voice and tells her about his meetings with Yngve Foldvik and Tore Benjaminsen, tells her that the police will soon eliminate Mahmoud Marhoni as a suspect, and that from now on, the focus of the investigation will be on Henriette Hagerup’s closest circle of friends. He doesn’t mention his sources, but Heidi nods all the same and doesn’t pressure him.
“Sounds very good,” she says. “Will it be an exclusive?”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
The sting in her voice has gone. Perhaps I’ve finally broken her, Henning thinks. Perhaps I have won The Battle. Or perhaps she is like Anette Skoppum. Perhaps she is one of those people who keep trying, only to get deeply upset when they fail.
Ten minutes later, Heidi goes home. She even calls out “take care!” He says “you too.” Then his thoughts return to the three things he has come to check. He starts with Spot the Difference Productions.
Neat name. He guesses that whoever set up the company was fed up with continuity errors in films and their manifesto is never to make such howlers themselves. He looks forward to the newspaper headlines the day Spot the Difference Productions actually makes some. They must be tempting fate.
He reads everything he can find about the company on the Internet. They have produced a couple of films, which he hasn’t seen yet and has no intention of ever seeing. They have a website, whose home page is a collage of continuity errors from different Hollywood productions. He recognizes photos from Gladiator, Ocean’s Eleven, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, and Jurassic Park. There are more, but he can’t place them off the top of his head. It says “Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen” in a small font at the bottom of the page, and the quote is attributed to Robert Bresson.
He clicks away and finds the page with contact details. Spot the Difference Productions has two producers and a director on its staff. He decides to call the first person on the list, for no reason other than he has such a fine first name. He rings Henning Enoksen’s mobile. The call is answered after several long rings.
“Hello, Enok here.”
The voice is dark and deep, but welcoming.
“Hi, my name is Henning Juul.”
“Hello, Henning,” Enoksen says, greeting Henning like an old friend.
“I work for the online newspaper 123news. I’m working on a story about Henriette Hagerup.”
A moment of silence follows.
“I see? How can I help you?”
Henning quickly explains that he is curious about the screenplay, written by Henriette Hagerup, which Spot the Difference Productions had taken an option on.
“Hagerup, yes,” Enoksen sighs. “A tragedy.”
“Yes, it is,” Henning says and waits for Enoksen to add something. He doesn’t. Henning clears his throat.
“Can you tell me anything about the script?”
“Will you be writing about this?”
“No, I doubt it.”
“Then why do you want to know? Didn’t you just say you were a reporter?”
Enoksen’s powers of deduction are impressive.
“I’ve a hunch that the script might be important.”
“Why?”
Something tells him that Enoksen was a right pain at school.
“To find out what happened, to find out who killed her.”
“Right.”
“So, please, would you tell me about the script, which you must have liked, since you took an option on it?”
He hears mouse clicking in the background, fingers skating across a keyboard.
“Well, to be honest, it was mostly my coproducer, Truls, who was in touch with her.”
“So You’ve never read the script?”
“Ah, well, obviously—”
“What’s it about?”
More clicking.
“It’s about—”
He pauses to cough.
“It’s about, eh, I don’t actually know what it’s about. Like I said, it was Truls who dealt with Henriette and Yngve, and—”
“Yngve?”
“Yes?”
“Yngve Foldvik?”
“Correct. Do you know him?”
“Was Yngve Foldvik involved with the script?”
“He was her supervisor, I think.”
“Yes, but I thought she’d written the script in her own time? Not as part of her coursework?”
Enoksen hesitates.
“I don’t really know anything about that.”
Henning decides he needs another chat with Yngve Foldvik.
“Do you and Truls normally take options on scripts you haven’t discussed?”
“No, this was a special case.”
“How?”
“Truls and Yngve used to work together, Yngve tipped us off about Hagerup’s script.”
“I see.”
“But remember, it was only an option.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we think the script has potential and we want to develop the idea, see if we can turn it into a decent film.”
“You’re not obliged to do anything more?”
“That’s right.”
That question came automatically while Henning’s brain was busy absorbing the information he had just been given. Yngve Foldvik was actively involved in a project which Henriette Hagerup hoped would launch her career. Henning wonders if Foldvik’s interest extends to all his students, or if his enthusiasm is reserved for pretty young women with an outgoing personality and a flirtatious streak.
“Do you think I could have a quick word with Truls?” Henning asks, while he checks the company’s contact details and reads that Truls’s surname is Leirvåg.
“Er, he’s a bit busy right now,” Enoksen says, quickly.
“Okay.”
He deliberately waits a few seconds. But Enoksen doesn’t elaborate.
“I’ll try him on his mobile later. If you could tell him that I would like a word, that would be great.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Thank you.”
Henning hangs up, wondering what was on the tip of Enoksen’s tongue.
49
A couple of quick Internet searches inform him that Henriette’s parents are called Vebjørn and Linda, and that she has an olde
r brother, Ole Petter. He looks up Anette Skoppum. Her parents, Ulf Vidar and Frøydis, are both over seventy, so Anette is most definitely an afterthought. She has three older sisters, Kirsten (thirty-eight), Silje (forty-one), and Torill (forty-four). In a matter of minutes, Henning has established that neither the Hagerups nor the Skoppums are a good match for the Gaarder family in the script.
He drops the idea and visits a public register of licenses. Here, you can search for information from three different categories: (1) Business Type and Named License Holder; (2) Licenses; and (3) Applications for Cross-county Routes. The page is produced by the Department of Transport in collaboration with Hordeland County Council, which might explain the convoluted language.
Henning moves the cursor to box 2, selects “Oslo” and “Taxi Licenses” and types in the serial number “A2052.” Then he hits “Enter.” The answer pops up instantly. And his heart skips a beat.
Omar Rabia Rashid.
He knows where he has heard that name before. Omar Rabia Rashid is the man for whom Mahmoud Marhoni was driving a minicab. It wasn’t a coincidence! Why else would Omar’s taxi be there, in that very place? Why else would those two men be staring at him?
Omar is registered as having three minicabs in Oslo. The number three is blue, and when he clicks on it a page entitled “Information about the License Holder” appears. It sounds like a dead end, he thinks, but is pleasantly surprised at the text that fills the screen a few seconds later. He skims through it and smiles. Omar, he thinks.
I know where you live.
He decides to go home. The urge to sit down, have a think, and work out what to do next is impossible to ignore. He waits until some of his colleagues, two women, get up, and he follows them. They exit the office building. The black gate is open. He leaves some space between him and the women, walks down the pavement, and checks the street. Two large stones divide Urtegata in half, making it impossible to drive in the direction of Grønland.
A Honda and a Ford are parked behind the stones. Both are empty. There is a man with a mangy-looking dog lying at his feet outside the Salvation Army building. If he were to suddenly jump up and pull out a Kalashnikov, Henning is prepared for that. He is surrounded by open spaces, the River Aker flows quickly down the hill, and it would be easy to point the mouth of a gun out of a car window and start firing.
No. That’s enough! He has to stop looking for assassins! He has only been back at work for two days and already he has managed to convince himself that hardened criminals are trying to kill him. Enough! I don’t want to live like this, he tells himself.
He decides to stroll along, take his time and enjoy the afternoon sun, which has broken through the dense layer of clouds over Oslo Plaza. He approaches Grünerløkka with a growing sense of composure. And when he lets himself into his flat, he decides to take no notice of the smoke alarms. He is about to go into the kitchen, when he stops in his tracks.
Damn, he thinks. There is no way I can ignore them.
50
I’m so looking forward to this, Brogeland tells himself, when he knocks on Gjerstad’s door. Gjerstad’s deep voice shouts out “Come in!” Brogeland enters. Gjerstad has his telephone pressed against his ear, but he gestures toward the chair in front of his desk. Brogeland sits down. If only Sandland could be here now, he thinks, then maybe—
Gjerstad is listening and making “hm” noises. He listens for a long time, before he finally nods and says:
“Okay. Then that’s how we’ll do it. Keep me posted.”
He hangs up and looks at Brogeland.
“Yes,” he says with a sigh. There is a hint of weariness in his voice, but Brogeland pays no attention to it. This is his moment. He places Hagerup’s script on the desk and looks expectantly at Gjerstad, who picks it up and starts flicking through it.
Brogeland spends the next few minutes summarizing. When he has finished, Gjerstad isn’t looking at him with satisfaction. Quite the opposite.
“And you got this from Henning Juul?”
“Yes. Juul is—”
“Let me tell you something about Henning Juul,” Gjerstad snarls and stands up. He starts pacing up and down.
“Some years ago, a man was killing prostitutes in Oslo. He was no Jack the Ripper, far from it, but he murdered some girls from Nigeria and threatened to kill some more unless we took them off the streets. He contacted us directly to announce his intentions.”
“I remember the case. If—”
“There was obviously no way we could do that, even if we wanted to. First, we never give in to threats of that type, and second, the girls move around all the time and their pimps protect them.”
Gjerstad strokes his mustache and stops right in front of Brogeland.
“Henning Juul found out that the killer was talking to us and had warned of further attacks. When the next Nigerian girl turned up with forty-seven stab wounds to her back, stomach, chest, and face, Juul launched a major campaign. Hung us out to dry as the Big Bad Wolf because we hadn’t responded to the killer’s threats. To top it all, Juul tracked down the killer himself and interviewed him—without letting us know, so we could arrest him. Bottom line, Juul cared more about making us look like idiots than catching a killer. What does that tell you about Henning Juul?”
Brogeland stares at the floor, looking for an answer, but finding none.
“Why do you think he came to you with this?” Gjerstad says, pointing to the script. “Do you think he did it because he wanted to help the police or because he wanted to help himself?”
Brogeland remembers that Gjerstad is well known for his rhetorical powers. And he can think of nothing to say by way of reply.
“Juul may very well have stumbled across something important, but don’t think for a minute that he’s doing this to benefit society. He’s using you, Bjarne. I think that what happened to him, however tragic it was, it did something to him. Given what I know of Henning Juul, my guess is it has only served to make him more cynical and manipulative.”
Brogeland doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing.
“Have you done anything about it yet?” Gjerstad asks, referring to the script.
“I’ve tried to get hold of Anette Skoppum, but no luck so far. She doesn’t answer her mobile and she isn’t in her flat, either. I sent Emil to talk to her, but when she wasn’t there, I placed a unit outside.”
“Where does she live?”
“Bislett.”
“Okay.”
“She also withdrew five thousand kroner from a cashpoint in Akersgate, a couple of hours ago.”
“Five grand? That’s a lot. Well, at least, she’s still alive.”
“Most probably. But it also suggests she isn’t planning on withdrawing cash for a while. I’ve sent Emil to Westerdals to look for her and to talk to her friends, but I haven’t heard anything from him.”
Gjerstad nods and waits, but Brogeland has nothing more for him. He has a feeling of emptiness. Just as well that Sandland didn’t come with him, after all.
Could Henning Juul really have been that ruthless? Let a killer go free in return for a good story? Of course he could. And might Juul screw him, too, one day? But they know each other. A little.
Brogeland looks at Gjerstad, who has sat down behind his desk again and started to leaf through some documents. If Brogeland has learned anything during the seventeen months he has been working for Gjerstad, it is that once his boss has formed an opinion about someone, it takes a lot to change it. Perhaps that’s why he is such a good police officer, Brogeland thinks. Or perhaps that’s why he’ll never be a great one.
Brogeland gets up, he waits for Gjerstad to say something. But he doesn’t. Brogeland closes the door behind him on his way out.
51
Jonas’s burning eyes rip Henning out of his sleep. He curses, sits up, finds himself on the sofa in front of the television, and realizes he must have dozed off during an episode of That ’70s Show.
The television is s
till on. The screen is filled by a man with blond hair who is eating cheese while a multitude of women of different colors and shapes and one man swap seats. Henning leans back and imagines himself riding a wave. Keep breathing, he says to himself. Keep breathing.
He is reminded of Finding Nemo, the animated film, where Nemo’s father searches for his missing son and meets Dory, a fish who can barely remember her own name, but who loves to sing. Henning can hear her voice in his head: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.
They must have watched Finding Nemo at least thirty times, most of them the summer they visited an idyllic Danish island called Tunø. It rained the whole time. They hardly left the charming cottage they had rented on the car-free island. But Jonas loved Nemo. He wonders what that holiday would have been like without Nemo.
His mobile vibrates on the coffee table. The noise startles him. He looks at the display, caller unknown.
“Henning Juul,” he says and clears his voice of sleep.
“Hi, it’s Truls Leirvåg. I hear you’ve been trying to get hold of me?”
The voice is dark and coarse. As he gets up, Henning places Truls’s dialect somewhere near Bergen. Perhaps even in Bergen.
“Oh, hi. Yes. Great. Thanks for calling.”
No response.
“Er, yes. I wanted to ask you about this screenplay you’ve taken an option on. Henriette Hagerup’s script.”
More silence.
“Can you tell me a little about her script, please? Why did you decide to option it?”
“For the same reason we usually option scripts, I suppose. We liked it. We think we can turn it into a good film—eventually.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s called Control+Alt+Delete. It’s about a young woman who achieves fame and fortune, but dreams about pressing Control+Alt+Delete on her keyboard—and starting her life over. She doesn’t like the person she has become. And using a very special keyboard, she gets the chance to relive her life. Now the question is: Will she make the right choices this time or will she make the same mistakes again?”
“I see.”
“The script needs some work, if I can put it like that, but the story has great potential.”