Cursed

by Thomas Enger

  That was why he had settled back down on the sofa after Jonas had gone to bed, pulled a blanket around him and had one, two, three glasses of cognac, then waited to feel the heat spreading through his body to his cheeks. He’d read a little. The heavy-water operation had always fascinated him, but a deepening sense of warmth and wellbeing meant that his eyelids had slowly dropped. It was practically impossible to resist the sleep that was stealing over him, and so he didn’t hear a thing when someone came into the flat and set it alight around half past eight.

  Henning had had two years to think about what might have happened if he had only had two glasses cognac instead of three; or if he had had none at all – after all, it had been a normal Tuesday; whether the outcome might have been different if he had been able to find another way to escape rather than taking Jonas with him out onto the balcony as the heat and his melting skin had glued his eyelids together. If he might have managed to hold onto his son’s arms a little tighter when he jumped from the slippery wet railing, just after he’d told him that everything would be fine, there’s nothing to be scared of, Daddy will take care of you.

  Henning opened the car door and stepped out onto Kjølberggaten, where the cherry trees hung their bare crowns between the two lanes. When they were in full bloom in spring, the street was a jewel in the city, and it was impossible to walk or drive down the avenue without being moved in some way.

  There weren’t many people around, the odd taxi hissed aggressively over the speed bumps and a cyclist spun by, spraying water in an arc from the back wheel. A man was out jogging in only a T-shirt and shorts. You could see his breath. Three Pakistani women, each from a different generation, stood at the bus stop, waiting for either the 67 or the 20. An elderly man was pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair; their progress was slow. Then behind them, he saw Geir Grønningen, all two metres of him, coming towards him, with a full gym bag over his shoulder.

  His black leather trousers sat tight around his thighs, and his white vest was equally tight under the open, black leather jacket. Grønningen liked riding motorbikes, liked to show that he rode a motorbike, and it was no skin off his nose if people thought they would rather not meet him after dark.

  Grønningen worked as a bouncer at a club full of scantily clad women, and when he wasn’t chucking randy, grabbing men out onto the street, he took occasional work as an enforcer. Beating up people who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, cough up.

  The first time Henning met Grønningen, he found himself studying the man’s physique – his upper arms, neck, muscles, the bulge of his belly. There were veins on his neck that were as thick as straws. And even though there was something kind and soft in his eyes, Henning quickly realised that Grønningen would never show this in what he said or did. He was too tough for that, too hard.

  He was smiling now, behind the beard he had let grow around his mouth, and greeted Henning from a few metres away: ‘Blimey, look who it isn’t!’

  Henning held out his hand, but immediately regretted it when Grønningen’s massive paw squeezed his own thin piano-player’s fingers.

  ‘You alright?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Henning said. ‘Not bad. And yourself? On your way to the gym, as usual?’

  ‘Have to, don’t I?’ Grønningen quipped.

  ‘Still only free on Saturdays?’

  ‘Yep,’ Grønningen confirmed, lifting the bag higher on his shoulder.

  ‘Have you got time for a coffee?’ Henning asked.

  Grønningen shook his wrist and a watch slipped out from under the arm of his jacket.

  ‘Yep, should be fine,’ he said. ‘Even though it gives me a fucking acid stomach.’

  His laughter was deep and rolling. Henning laughed with him and pointed to a door close by that led into an establishment that almost certainly served coffee, as well as local produce from farms with romantic names. Everything about the café said organic, even the table at which they sat down.

  Henning ordered two cups of black coffee.

  The only other people, apart from Henning and the big man, were two friends over by the window that looked out onto the street; they were deep in conversation, dissecting what had happened at the weekend, no doubt. A radio was playing softly, and outside the buses and taxis whooshed by in a regular rhythm. It was safe to talk. Safe enough, at least.

  ‘So,’ Grønningen said, once they’d got their coffee. ‘What’s up?’

  Henning put his hands round the cup, unsure where to start. How much did Grønningen know about his dead best friend’s business?

  In the days leading up to the arson attack on his flat, Henning had been working on a tip-off about Tore Pulli – he’d been told that he had made his fortune in real estate by illegal means. Henning didn’t doubt for a second that there was a link between this story and the fire at his flat. The question was, what role had Pulli played in it all?

  Tore Pulli had grown up more or less without parents. They both died in a car accident when he was eleven, and he got involved with the petty crime scene pretty early in life. Soon, he was lured in by the Hell’s Angels, so it was inevitable that he ended up with some dodgy friends. When Tore started bodybuilding, he discovered that he had a talent for beating people up, and that he could make a living from it. In the nineties, he built up a reputation as one of Norway’s meanest, and possibly most infamous, enforcers – the staff at Ullevål Hospital had even named a certain type of jaw break after him.

  When he reached his thirties, however, he quite literally hung up his knuckle-dusters, and started to buy and sell property instead. Lots of people were curious about how he would manage to make the switch. But Pulli put all the non-believers to shame; his company was very successful and he became a rich man – though not without a few raised eyebrows and questions as to whether he’d allied himself with some of his former clients, people in the real estate business who knew all the tricks; how to con people out of large sums of money without getting caught. But, try as they might, the Norwegian fraud squad, Økokrim, had never managed to catch him.

  When Henning found out that Pulli still had at least one foot in the criminal world, the hunting instinct in him was awakened. His question was, who was involved in the extortion, and how? Henning’s aim was to expose them all and show that Pulli was one of their main players. If Henning had managed to name names and document their methods, it would have sparked a wildfire. Heads would have rolled.

  But it was difficult to investigate that kind of thing without people getting wind of it. Henning soon became certain that Pulli had decided to resurrect his former skills and do a job on him. That was why he had had Henning followed in the days leading up to 11 September 2007. Pulli was well known for being thorough, and Henning believed he intended to find out when and where it would be easiest and best to attack.

  But Pulli was not the only one who faced prison and considerable financial losses if Henning’s snooping led to a published story; so naturally he wasn’t alone in wanting to prevent that from happening. And because Pulli had been watching Henning, he must also have seen who broke into his flat on the night that Jonas died. There was even a possibility that Pulli had photographs of whoever did it.

  The fire and Henning’s jump from the second-floor balcony had changed everything. It took him almost two years to get back on his feet, and he still had partial memory loss.

  Pulli, meanwhile, had run into problems himself. He had been sentenced to fourteen years behind bars for the murder of Jocke Brolenius, a well-known enforcer and member of the Swedish League in Oslo. The fact that Pulli was innocent didn’t make things any better; and that was why he had contacted Henning – a journalist who he knew was good at digging around. If Henning could clear his name, he promised to give him information about who had entered his building on 11 September 2007.

  Henning had succeeded in doing this, but to no avail. Pulli was killed in Oslo Prison before he managed to keep his part of the deal.

  Henning visited Tore a few days befo
re he died and saw the effect that prison life had had on the ex-enforcer. He was stooped, as though his fate was weighing on his shoulders. Even though he had lost a lot of weight, he was still a formidable and intimidating figure; his eyes glittered when Henning asked him something he didn’t like. Henning was still unable to decide whether he actually trusted Pulli or not.

  And now he was dead. Killed with a needle dipped in poison. And there was not much Henning could do except continue to dig. He was aware that Pulli knew the Swedes, and that there was a possibility that Jocke Brolenius had done work for people in the property business – people who Tore knew, who he may even have worked for previously. People experienced in paying their way out of problems, and who knew where to find someone who was willing to kill Tore for money.

  So Henning took a sip of his coffee and said: ‘I hear there’s not many of the Swedish League left in Norway now.’ He put down his cup. ‘Do you know if that’s true?’

  Grønningen tried to make himself more comfortable on the narrow chair, and bumped the table so that his coffee spilled out over the saucer and his hand.

  ‘Think a couple of them are still around,’ he said.

  ‘A couple of them?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe more; I don’t know.’

  Grønningen looked around for a napkin. Unable to find one, he shook his fingers, picked up the cup and took a sip.

  ‘…who are still working as enforcers?’ Henning asked.

  Grønningen nodded.

  ‘Do you know any of them?’

  Grønningen paused for a moment.

  ‘Why’re you asking?’ he said.

  ‘I need to speak to them,’ replied Henning, without offering any explanation.

  Grønningen put a hand inside his leather jacket and pressed on his left pectoral.

  ‘You can forget about that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because…’ Grønningen sent the women over by the window a long look. ‘…Because they don’t talk to people they don’t know,’ he said. ‘And if they find out you’re a journalist…’ Grønningen said the word as though it left a bad taste in his mouth.

  Henning had known it wouldn’t be easy.

  ‘But they talk to you,’ he persisted.

  Grønningen started to laugh. ‘None of them want to talk to me either. Not after what happened to Jocke.’

  ‘But they must have heard that Tore was innocent? That none of his crowd had anything to do with Jocke’s murder?’

  The door opened, and a clearly new mother pushed a pram into the café. The plastic cover on the pram was dripping. She sat down a few tables away. Grønningen followed her with his eyes, as he ran a hand through his thin hair.

  ‘Don’t think I can help you, either way,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘Not easy to get hold of the Swedes.’

  ‘But you could try?’

  The woman who had just come in lifted a tiny bundle up from the pram, held the baby in front of her and cooed.

  Henning pulled his chair in closer to the table.

  ‘When I proved that Tore was innocent, you said that I only had to ask if I needed any help. Well, now I’m asking. I need to get in touch with the Swedes, and I don’t know who to ask other than you.’

  Grønningen slowly let out a deep breath, then sat there playing with his cup. He looked around the café. The baby at the table nearby was gurgling happily.

  ‘OK, I’ll see if I can get hold of Nicklas,’ Grønningen said, eventually. ‘If he’s still part of it. He’s just had a baby boy. I’ll ask if he can get us a meeting with Pontus.’

  ‘Who’s Pontus?’

  Grønningen looked around again before answering, in an even quieter voice: ‘He’s the boss of what’s left of the League. If anyone knows anything, it’ll be him.’

  ‘OK,’ Henning said. ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘No,’ Grønningen protested. ‘Not good at all. You don’t fucking mess with a man like Pontus.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Grønningen leaned in towards Henning, as though he was going to whisper a secret.

  ‘He’s cagey as hell, and he’s a mean motherfucker. Likes to see people bleed. Likes to see that people are scared of him. Doubt he’ll be up for a chat with either of us,’ Grønningen explained, then leaned back. ‘But I’ll give it a try.’

  Henning smiled. ‘I appreciate it.’

  4

  Nora sat down at her desk and reached for the open packet of oat crispbread sitting beside her computer screen. There were only two pieces left.

  For the next couple of minutes she did nothing other than listen to the sound of her own munching. Only when she felt her blood-sugar levels were at an acceptable level did she open Outlook on her PC and check to see if she’d received any emails. She had, lots of them, most of which she deleted without reading. But one of the emails was from Iver.

  She took another bite of crispbread, and then clicked on it.

  From: iver.gundersen@123nyheter.no

  To: nora.klemetsen@aftenposten.no

  Subject: Yesterday

  Hi Nora

  Sorry to leave in the way I did last night. I didn’t know what to say. Still don’t know what to say, to be honest, or what to do, or what you expect me to do. Think I need a bit of time to sort everything out. Hope you understand that it’s not easy for me either.

  Kiss from

  Iver

  Yeah, yeah, Nora said to herself. I understand. But running away doesn’t help. Just as she couldn’t run away from Henning.

  Maybe it is as well to get it over and done with, she thought. She pulled her mobile phone out of her bag and typed in the four-digit password. Finding the most recent text message from Henning she wrote:

  Hi, can you meet me after work today? Got something I want to talk to you about. Hugs, Nora.

  She immediately regretted how she’d signed off. A hug might indicate that she wanted to talk about something nice.

  Henning answered straightaway.

  Give me a time and place and I’ll be there.

  Nora suggested that they meet on the corner of Christian Kroghs gate at four. She soon got an OK back.

  Nora put her phone to one side, leaned forwards on her elbows and sat with her hands in her hair, like two wide-fingered combs. She thought about the almost-kiss with Henning at his flat, not so long ago, how the walls had seemed to vibrate around them as they stood there, their noses almost touching, after a goodbye hug that had lasted a little too long. Things could have got really messy; all it would have taken was for one of them to make the first move, step a centimetre closer, and everything would have been different. It would have been even harder then to say what she had to tell him now, in a few hours’ time.

  ‘Everything alright?’

  Nora sat up and looked straight into the eyes of Merete Stephans, one of the other news journalists. Stephans was almost one metre eighty tall and liked to use her height and deep, masculine voice to intimidate other female journalists who worked in the same field. The fact that Nora worked on her section on the same paper, gave her no advantages. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  ‘Yes, why? Shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Stephans said with a smile. ‘It’s just you look a bit peaky.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Nora replied promptly. ‘Very well, in fact.’

  ‘Good.’

  Stephans still had a wry smile on her lips as she walked over to the nearest Nespresso machine. Nora hated lies, no matter how white they were; and, anyway, she’d never been particularly good at telling them. One look from Henning was all it took to undo her. Fortunately, Merete was not as observant, despite her grand illusions about her own journalistic superiority – or, as Nora would describe it, mediocrity.

  Nora finished the crispbread and looked down at the notepad in front of her. Hugo Refsdal had written down the names and telephone numbers of everyone in Hedda’s family, and the number of her best friend, Kristin Theodorsen. Nora picked up her pho
ne and dialled.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Kristin Theodorsen said when Nora introduced herself. Kristin’s voice was high, almost falsetto. Nora could hear rustling on the line, as though Theodorsen had the phone wedged between her cheek and shoulder while she was doing something else.

  ‘Is it a bad time to call?’ Nora asked.

  ‘No, not at all, I’m just putting on my jacket, to take the dog for a walk. He gets a little, well, excited when he knows we’re about to go out.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Down! Down!’

  Nora heard some eager barks and the scuffing of paws on the floor.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ Theodorsen said. ‘It’s…’

  Her voice disappeared again. There were some loud movements, and then calm.

  ‘There,’ Kristin Theodorsen said. ‘I’m all yours.’

  Nora laughed the little laugh she used, and hated, when she was cold-calling.

  ‘Well, I won’t keep you long,’ she started. ‘I understand that you are Hedda Hellberg’s best friend, is that right?’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘Yes, I … I guess I am.’ Theodorsen had lowered her voice.

  ‘I guess you know that she’s missing, then?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I’m going to write an article about her for tomorrow’s Aftenposten,’ Nora said. ‘And I hoped that you might be able to give me some background. You probably know Hedda in a very different way from her husband.’

  ‘Yes, I guess so,’ Theodorsen said, in a stronger voice. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘As much as possible,’ Nora said, and let out a deep breath. ‘I’m most curious to know whether Hedda had any problems you were aware of; I mean, other than her father’s illness and death, and the fact that she wasn’t managing to make ends meet as a wine importer.’

  Nora propped her left arm on the desk and leaned forwards with her pen at the ready.

  ‘No, not that I…’

  ‘She wasn’t ill, was she?’ Nora asked, to see if this would prompt Theodorsen.