by Thomas Enger
He waves at her. Anette spots him immediately and smiles as she walks toward him. He gets up. She hugs him.
It has been a long time since anyone hugged him.
They sit down. The waiter, a tall dark guy with the whitest teeth Henning has ever seen, is quick off the mark and takes their order.
“A Fontés burger with bacon. And the biggest beer you’ve got,” Anette says and smiles. Someone is breathing a sigh of relief, Henning thinks.
“And one for me, too,” he says. “Both, I mean.”
The waiter nods and leaves. Clumsy, Henning groans inwardly, expressing myself like that. He feels awkward. Even though his intentions are strictly honorable, it’s like they are on a date. And that’s an uncomfortable scenario.
“So,” she says, looking at him. “Did it make a good story?”
“It’ll do,” he says. “At least I think so. I didn’t write it myself. Didn’t have the energy.”
“So you got some poor sod to do it for you?”
“Something like that.”
“It’s much more fun to write yourself.”
“I thought you wanted to be a director?”
“Yes, but the best directors are often the best writers. Quentin Tarantino, for example. Oliver Stone. I was about to mention Clint Eastwood, but I don’t believe he writes very much himself, now that I think about it. Did you know that Clint Eastwood composes practically all his own film scores?”
“No.”
“Now you do. And very good scores they are, too. Very jazzy, a lot of piano.”
Henning likes jazzy. And a lot of piano. They look at each other, without saying anything.
“What will happen to the film now?” he asks, and immediately kicks himself for bringing up the subject so soon.
“Which one of them?”
“Well, both.”
“Please can we not talk about that? My best friend is dead, she was killed by a lunatic I wish I had never met, and the last thing I want to think about is what happens to the film. Or films. Right now, all I want to do is eat my burger. I don’t care about anything else.”
He nods. Anette looks for the waiter. There. Eye contact. The waiter nods and makes an apologetic movement with his hands.
“Has Bjarne been grilling you?” Henning asks.
“I’m well done on both sides.”
“Was he okay? Did he treat you all right?”
“Oh, yes. Nice and easy. I should expect to be interviewed again, but that’s fine. I understand.”
The waiter brings their much-needed drinks. Anette thanks him, swallows a large mouthful, and licks off the foam which has settled on her upper lip.
“Ah, a lifesaver.”
Henning takes his own glass and twirls it around. He sits like this for a while.
“It was me who found him,” he suddenly says. He doesn’t know where that sentence came from. He just blurted it out.
“Stefan?”
“Mm. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I had some questions for Yngve. The Foldviks weren’t at home, but the front door was open, and I—”
He looks down.
“Did you go inside?”
He looks up again and nods.
“Have you ever visited them?”
Anette takes another sip.
“I had a meeting with Stefan there once—now when was it? Six months ago or something like that. We chatted about his script.”
“Which you were turning into a film?”
“Precisely.”
“And that was the only time?”
She takes another sip and nods.
“We emailed and chatted occasionally after that, stuff to do with the film. Which was some way into the future. Everything in the film industry is. To begin with, you meet to agree to have a meeting, and when that meeting comes, you agree to meet another time to have another meeting about meeting up.”
She rolls her eyes. He smiles.
“Why do you ask about that?”
“Oh, I was just curious.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Go on.”
“What happened to you?”
She points to his face, to his scars.
“Oh, that.”
He stares down at the table.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Anette says, tenderly.
“No, it’s just that—”
He twirls his glass again.
“Several people have asked me that recently. I don’t really know what to say without—”
He stops and visualizes the balcony once more, Jonas’s eyes, feels his hands which suddenly aren’t there. It’s as if he is in a soundproof room with no light. He looks up at her.
“Another time, perhaps.”
Anette holds up her hands.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no. It’s fine.”
Anette looks at him for a long time, before she takes another sip of her beer. They drink in silence, watch the diners, watch the door whenever it opens, gaze at the flames.
A question, which has been troubling him, resurfaces.
“Why did you come back?” he says. “Why did you go to the tent?”
Anette swallows and suppresses a burp.
“Like I said to you: I was curious. You were obviously up to something. Your face gave it all away. You should have seen yourself. I’m used to thinking in stories and I realized that a very good one was happening right under my nose. It was too tempting not to go back.”
He nods slowly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to spy on you.”
“How long were you outside, before you came in?”
“Not very long. But listen, I’ve already been through this with that policeman, Brunlanes, or whatever his name is.”
“Brogeland,” Henning corrects her. “Sorry, I’m just a bit—”
It’s his turn to hold up his hands.
“I’m a bit all over the place after a day like today.”
He makes a circular gesture with his finger next to his temple.
“No worries,” she says, mimicking an Australian accent. “Cheers!”
She raises her glass. They drink.
“What are we drinking to?” he asks.
“That no more lives were lost,” she says and swallows.
“Cheers.”
70
They agree to forget about the Foldviks, while they eat their Creole-inspired hamburgers with potato boats or potato slices or whatever they are called. He eats far too much and wolfs his food down. The beer settles like a fermenting layer on the top of his stomach. When they eventually leave, after Henning has paid the bill, he knows he is in troubled waters.
But then again, he likes the sea.
“Thanks for dinner,” Anette says, as they go outside into the June evening. It has started to rain again, tiny, spitting drops.
“My pleasure.”
“Fancy a couple of these?” she says. He lets go of the door which slams shut behind him. Anette is holding out a bag of Knott sweets.
“These are great after a few beers.”
She pours some of the white, brown, and gray pearls into her hand and tips them into her mouth. He smiles and says:
“Yes, please.”
He holds out his hand and gets his own stash. Knott. Oh, great sweet of my childhood! He has consumed his fair share of them over the years, but he dreads to think how long ago it is since he last tasted the tiny flavor explosions. He takes a brown one, smacks his lips, and nods to her with approval.
“You need to eat them all at once. That’s what makes them so great!”
He looks at the seven or eight pastilles, if he can call them that, and raises his hand to his mouth. He grins as he does it. One pastille escapes and rolls back into his palm. He looks at the tiny, white, round sweet while he chews and crunches and munches. It looks like a small, white pill.
A small pill, a small, round, white pill.
Small, white—<
br />
Oh, hell.
He chews and swallows, never taking his eyes off Anette. She shakes the bag, pours more sweets into her palm, and shoves them in her mouth. He looks at the sweets and remembers what Jarle Høgseth always used to say, that the devil is in the details. It’s a huge cliché, but now as he stands there, looking at the white sweet, it’s as if the sneaking feeling that has nagged him ever since he stared into Stefan’s expressionless eyes, the hook that stirred in his stomach, suddenly takes hold and rips him open.
“What is it?” Anette says. Henning is incapable of speech. He just stares at her, remembering the white powder under his shoe; the small, round, white pill on the floor in Stefan’s bedroom; how the shape and the smell of the pill reminded him of something. He remembers the curtains were closed, the door wasn’t shut properly.
“Don’t you like them?” she asks, still smiling. He is aware that he is nodding. He tries to see if her eyes reveal anything. The mirror of the soul, where the truth can be found. But she merely looks back at him. He looks alternately at the sweets and at her.
“Halloooo?”
Anette waves her hand in front of his face. He holds the sweet between his thumb and index finger and smells it.
“What are you doing?” Anette giggles, munching on.
“No, I—”
His voice is feeble, lacking in air. The number 11 tram pulls into Olaf Ryes Square. Its wheels screech. It sounds like a cross between a pig squealing and a sawmill.
“That’s my tram,” Anette says and makes to leave. She scrutinizes his face. “Thanks for dinner. Got to run. See you soon.”
She smiles and she is gone. He stands there looking after her. Her backpack bounces up and down as she jogs. He is still staring at her when she boards the blue and white tram. When the doors close and the tram glides down toward the city center, she takes a window seat and looks back at him.
Her eyes bore into him like sharp teeth.
It takes him forever to walk home. He can barely lift his legs and has to force them to move. All he can think about is Anette’s smile as she left, the backpack which she didn’t put on properly, which bounced up and down as she started to run and caused the stickers with the names of exotic, faraway places to perform a peculiar dance before his eyes.
He relives it, over and over, while his shoes make dragging noises against the tarmac, crashing like cymbals. The sound rises, gets wings and mixes with the rain, which has increased in intensity, as he passes the queue outside Villa Paradiso. People inside are eating pizza, drinking, smiling, laughing. He tries to concentrate, he recalls Anette’s eyes, the relief in them, the degree of satisfaction, only a few hours after she was knocked out by a stun gun. And he hears Tore Benjaminsen mimicking her voice:
What’s the point of being a genius if nobody knows?
Anette, he thinks. You might very well be the smartest woman I’ve ever met. With the taste of Knott still in his mouth, he turns into Seilduksgate with the feeling that he and everybody else has been conned.
71
The pleasant feeling he enjoyed only a few hours ago has been sucked out of him. Back then he was elated, pleased with himself, delighted to have got himself a new source and thrown a bone to Iver Gundersen.
Now his steps are heavy like lead.
He reaches his block and wonders if Anette tricked Stefan into believing that she would also kill herself. Was that why he lay huddled up against the wall? Because she was lying next to him in the narrow bed?
But why?
Again, he is reminded of Tore Benjaminsen, who thought that Anette was ultimately a lesbian, even though she had had several flings with men. Perhaps it’s that simple, Henning speculates. Henriette flirted with Anette, who mistakenly believed that Henriette was genuinely interested in her, only to be rejected. Anette had probably been dumped before, like most people, but not rejected. Not by someone she loved. And so she experienced, for the very first time, how much it hurt. The thin, dangerous line between love and hate.
A smart woman, he thinks, as he remembers what she said in the tent: based on her script, it should be obvious who he slept with. This makes him wonder if the script might have been Anette’s idea. Perhaps it was she who insisted on the Gaarder story line, so everyone would think that Yngve Foldvik had had an affair with Henriette? Foldvik told Henning that the script was written by Henriette, but that Anette was very likely to have had a say in it.
But when did it start, he wonders? When did her plan take shape?
He remembers what she said about her first meeting with Stefan, after he won the script competition. Perhaps the wheels were set in motion that evening? Perhaps she decided to direct his script, to get close to him, so she could manipulate him? She would be the woman who realized his dream. And everything in the film industry takes time. There are meetings about meetings about meetings. It would be relatively easy to pull the wool over Stefan’s eyes and, anyway, he would be dead by the time the film was completed.
What did she say to him? What words did she use to trigger his rage? Did she say that women like Henriette turn men into rapists who destroy families? It wouldn’t be difficult to inflame Stefan with this kind of logic, given what his mother had been subjected to. The more Henning thinks about it, the more he becomes convinced that Anette guided Stefan the whole way. Like a true director.
He is also convinced that they, or perhaps it was only Anette, tried to implicate Mahmoud Marhoni by texting him from Henriette’s mobile, just like in the script. The references to infidelity and the photograph on Henriette’s email would be hard to explain away. It would be Marhoni’s word against a dead woman’s text messages. And no one would have a problem believing that Henriette had two-timed him. After all, she was a great flirt. The one everyone wanted. Including Anette.
He sees Stefan’s dead face before him, lying in his bed, pressed up against the wall. Did Anette promise to follow him? Did they make a suicide pact? How did she manage to trick him? Didn’t he notice that her pills were different? Why—
Hang on! Henning has an idea. And once the thought is in his head, he unlocks his entrance door fast. He takes no notice of his post, he strides up the stairs, ignoring the pain which screams in his hips and his legs. He opens his front door and sets down his laptop on the kitchen table. He climbs up the stepladder as quickly as he can and replaces all the batteries before he takes off his jacket and opens a drawer in a driftwood cupboard. He sifts through receipts, takeaway menus, candles, matchboxes, hellish matchboxes, business cards, but they are not what he is looking for. He comes across a bottle of rum, Bacardi, yuk, more takeaway menus, and there, under an old ice hockey scorecard he has kept for some reason, he finds the business card—he knew he hadn’t thrown it away. He stares at it, sees Dr. Helge Bruunsgaard’s name offset printed into the white, textured cardboard.
He takes out his mobile, notices that the battery is low, but thinks it should last for the call he is about to make.
The telephone rings for a long time, before Dr. Helge replies. Henning’s breathing quickens when the familiar voice exuding enthusiasm and optimism says: “Is that you, Henning.”
“Hi, Helge,” he says.
“How are you? What’s it like to be back at work?”
“Er, good. Listen, I’m not calling this late on a Friday evening to talk about myself. I need your help. Your professional help with a story I’m working on. Can I trouble you for a few minutes? I imagine you’re on your way home?”
“Yes, I am, but that’s all right, Henning. I’m stuck in heavy traffic, there has been an accident, so tell me, what do you want to know?”
Henning tries to organize his thoughts.
“What I’m about to ask you will sound a bit strange. But I promise you, it’s not about me, so don’t get worried.”
“What is it, Henning? What is it?”
The sudden concern in Dr. Helge’s voice is lost on Henning. He takes a deep breath.
And asks his question.
The computer boots up, although somewhat reluctantly, and, as usual, takes a minute or thirty to load. Henning paces up and down while he waits for all the pre-installed programs to get ready, though he won’t be using them. The clock in the top right-hand corner of the screen shows 21:01 by the time he sits down and double clicks on the FireCracker 2.0 icon. Again, it takes ages before the program is up and running. Fortunately 6tiermes7 is logged on, and he double clicks the name. A window pops up.
MakkaPakka:
Hugger?
He waits patiently until the response arrives. Not even 6tiermes7 can be in front of a keyboard all the time.
6tiermes7:
Mugger.
Shouldn’t you be out celebrating now?
MakkaPakka:
Done that. It was no fun.
6tiermes7:
You would rather be chatting with me. I completely understand.
MakkaPakka:
I’m wondering about something.
6tiermes7:
You’re joking. Now?
MakkaPakka:
Now more than ever, possibly.
6tiermes7:
That sounds serious. What is it?
MakkaPakka:
One of the text messages sent to Henriette Hagerup on the day she died came from Mozambique. You know from where in Mozambique?
6tiermes7:
Hold on a moment, let me check.
His fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to type. A few minutes pass. Then 6tiermes7 is back.
6tiermes7:
A place called Inhambane.
Another large puzzle piece falls into place. It’s as if the gaping hole he has been staring at all day closes and clangs shut!
MakkaPakka:
This case isn’t over.
6tiermes7:
What!?
MakkaPakka:
Stefan Foldvik didn’t kill himself. Anette Skoppum murdered him.