Cursed

by Thomas Enger

  He sat down at the kitchen table and opened his laptop. He could clearly see the note about Ørjan Mjønes in his mind’s eye. Mjønes was given the Pulli job by Daddy Longlegs, whoever that was. But could Daddy Longlegs also be the man who had given Jocke enforcer jobs?

  Henning knew that there was no point in simply searching for Daddy Longlegs on the internet; he would get millions of hits about big, leggy spiders. Smart, Henning mused, to use such a household name as an alias. Not exactly something you could check up online.

  He sent an email to two of his regular helpers – Bjarne Brogeland at Oslo Police and Atle Abelsen, an old school friend who was an expert at digging things up on the internet – to see if they could help him find out who Daddy Longlegs was. Then he dialled Geir Grønningen’s number.

  ‘Hey,’ Grønningen shouted, before Henning had a chance to say anything. ‘Good you called. I was going to ring and ask how you were. You didn’t look too hot last night.’

  ‘I didn’t feel too hot either,’ Henning admitted. ‘But I’m not too bad now. You busy?’

  ‘No more than usual. What’s up?’

  ‘Do you know who Daddy Longlegs is?’ Henning asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Grønningen guffawed. ‘But don’t you mean what rather than who.’

  ‘I don’t mean the spider. I mean the Daddy Longlegs who gives out jobs like the ones you sometimes take on.’

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Then: ‘Nope, don’t think I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘It’s possible he’s a lawyer,’ Henning added.

  ‘Called Daddy Longlegs?’

  ‘No, that’s his nickname.’ Henning shook his head, and immediately regretted it. His brain protested.

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ Grønningen said. ‘See what I can find out.’

  Henning thanked him for his help and hung up.

  Feeling dizzy, he checked the time. He wouldn’t hear from his sources for a while, so he decided to lie down in the meantime, sleep for an hour or so. He’d heard somewhere that the body mended itself while you slept.

  And right now that would be a very good thing.

  17

  Pieces of a life, packed away in boxes.

  It didn’t seem like a lot, Veronica Nansen thought, and yet there was so much.

  She was standing by the door of her storage space in the basement of the building in Ullevål Hageby, where she lived, looking at what other people kept in their cupboards: sacks of wood, bikes, skis; there was even an outboard motor leaning against one of the walls. Stacks of paint tins, brushes, suitcases, clothes, a freezer, shoes gathering so much dust they would be unwearable. Ice skates, flower pots, bags of earth, plastic spades and deck chairs.

  Was this all our lives came to – an assortment of everyday objects, worn-out and forgotten in a dim cellar?

  Tore had always been a materialist. Loved to adorn himself with expensive, fine things. And he was forever buying her gifts: necklaces, dresses, jackets and suits. He even came home with a car for her once. One of those tiny Fiats. Most probably because he thought it would be easier for her to park in small spaces without denting it. Veronica would smile and thank him for all these presents, throw her arms around his neck and kiss him on the mouth. Sometimes she’d go further, because she knew that was how he wanted her to react. Tore had never understood that what she actually wanted most from him was time.

  Tore’s life was split between his work and his gym mates; he had her to snuggle up to in the evening when he went to bed. For him, that was perfect. So that was how it had to be. Tore was a my way or the highway kind of guy. Take it or leave it, baby. She had loved him, it was true. But she’d wanted their life together to be about more than just him.

  More often than not there was an apartment showing or a party that he had to go to at the weekend. Sometimes she wasn’t even invited. Occasionally, he’d have to rush off to meet a client – no matter whether it was early in the morning or late at night – and, of course, he had a week with the boys every summer when they roared off through Europe on their motorbikes. And then there was the gym. Always the gym. The only day off from working out was Saturday.

  Tore’s body was his temple, and even though she actually liked that side of him – the fact that he looked after himself – it was always at her expense, at the cost of their time together, just the two of them. But now that he was gone, was not just locked away in a cell, she would have let him travel as much as he liked and train as often as he wanted, as long as he would snuggle up behind her when he came to bed in the evenings.

  The people who had broken into her flat a week ago had clearly not been down here in the basement. They’d gone through everything she had upstairs, though. Everything Tore had had upstairs. That was why she was down here. She thought that maybe Henning was right, that they were looking for something particular, seeing as they’d only taken the computer and the cameras.

  Henning’s theory was that Tore had taken photographs of someone or something that had happened outside the building where he lived, on the night that his son died, and that Tore had then tried to use the photographs to get people to help him when he was inside. This meant the pictures might damage them in some way. And that was why he’d been killed. If she could only find the photographs, she might also find out who was actually behind Tore’s murder. And perhaps also who was responsible for the fire in Henning Juul’s flat. It was worth a try; she owed Henning that much – he had helped exonerate Tore, after all.

  Veronica took a deep breath, got out the key to the storage space, unlocked the door and pushed it open. She had put this off for as long as she could, but she knew that she had to clear Tore out of her life. Finally get him out of her system. She took a step inside. The floor was cold.

  So, she was looking for photographs.

  Photographs of what?

  Henning had suggested that it might be people Tore knew – business partners; someone in property with whom he was no longer friends. But Tore wasn’t the type to tell her if he’d fallen out with someone. In fact, he wasn’t the type who said much at all, and Veronica never asked. The only thing she really knew about his job was that it was about buying and selling, and hopefully, making a few kroner at the end of the day.

  Veronica looked at all the stuff they had managed to accumulate, things that they would probably never use again. An old skull-and-crossbones motorbike helmet. Bin liners full of planks that they could burn in the fireplace. Ski wax, even though they never went skiing. An ancient computer.

  Veronica took another step forwards, ran her finger along the top of the gun cabinet, then rubbed her hands together. There was a time when she had offered to lend Henning a gun. She had seen things were getting to a point where he might need to protect himself. But he had swiftly declined.

  ‘You could maybe use it for more than just protection,’ she had said. ‘To get people to answer your questions, for example.’

  Veronica was quite tempted by the idea herself. Someone should pay for what they had done. She knew Henning was feeling the same, after what had happened to his son.

  Another step. There was a dusty, fusty smell in here. She pulled her running jacket tighter around herself and crossed her arms. Where should she begin, where might Tore have hidden something? The safe was the most obvious place to start.

  But how would she get it open?

  Tore had never given her the code, not even when he was inside. God knows what was so important that he had to keep it in a safe. Contracts maybe. Keys? Money, possibly. Cash for a rainy day.

  Photographs?

  She squatted down in front of the safe, wiped off the dust, then noticed a grey smear on her left ankle and wiped that off too. She studied the combination lock. Veronica had a similar one in the office with a six-digit code, 291173 – her sister’s date of birth – but she didn’t think that Tore would be as sentimental or obvious as that. She tried his date of birth all the same – 190667; the lock remained red. Her own da
te of birth, 131276, didn’t work either. She tried everyone she could think of: Tore’s parents and grandparents, his colleagues, his mates from the gym; Geir. She had to look some people up in the tax records to find out when they were born. All to no avail.

  Veronica gave up, for the time being at least, and concentrated on other things instead. She went through the bags, looked in boxes, moved everything that Tore had put on the shelves, which he had made himself. She turned and looked around again, and noticed a pile of folders on the floor that looked like it was about to topple over. Bending down she picked them up: contracts, schedules, advertisements – the usual estate-agent stuff.

  But one of them caught her attention. There was a photograph of a beach and a housing complex on the outside of the folder. It wasn’t hard to work out where the picture was taken, given the accompanying text.

  Natal in Brazil.

  Veronica remembered what Henning had said about Rasmus Bjelland – the source who had tipped him off about Tore’s particular way of doing business. Bjelland had been bankrupt several times and had tried to build up a business and a name for himself in Natal. And he had disappeared.

  She sat down on a sack of wood, not bothered by the edges and corners, and started to look through the brochure. She’d just noticed Tore’s writing in the margin, when her mobile phone rang.

  ‘Damn,’ she exclaimed, when she saw who was calling. She’d forgotten she was supposed to meet her lawyer today, to discuss the details of Tore’s will.

  18

  Nora rushed back to Spicy and sat down at the same place by the window.

  So Fritz Georg Hellberg owned a car not unlike the one that Hedda got into outside Skoppum Station. It needn’t mean anything, of course, but she was clutching at whatever straws she could find. She took out her laptop and read all the information she could find about Georg.

  He was the son of Fritz Hellberg III and Ellen; his father was still alive and lived in an old house in the highly desirable area of Solvang in the centre of Tønsberg. Ellen had disappeared in 1993, only a few weeks after Fritz had suffered a serious heart attack. After the heart attack, he let his nephew William take over as director of the family business. This was a good many years before Georg had even finished school, though he obviously started to work there, too, later on.

  Georg was single, as far as Nora could work out, and lived in a flat with a roof terrace in the centre of town. According to the tax records, his income the previous year was impressive – over a million kroner. Nora found him on Facebook as well, and saw that, while he had 1,134 friends, he was not an active user and only changed his status occasionally.

  The photos he had posted of himself were not recent, but he hadn’t changed much. And in most of the pictures, he was wearing a cravat.

  This gave Nora an idea. She called Camilla Wergeland for a third time and found out that she worked in a petrol station on the outskirts of town.

  Ten minutes later, Nora parked by the station and went into the shop.

  It was easy enough to find the woman who had seen Hedda the day she was supposed to have travelled to Italy, as she was standing behind the counter, serving customers. She was tall, with blonde hair, and looked open and friendly. Nora stood in the queue and waited patiently for the fat man in front of her to pay for his diesel, a newspaper, three different bars of chocolate and two hotdogs. When it was finally Nora’s turn, she smiled, held out her hand and introduced herself.

  Camilla Wergeland shook her hand and looked over Nora’s shoulder to see if it was possible to take a short break. She whispered something to a colleague who was standing beside her then came round to meet Nora by the coffee machine. Nora saw no reason for small talk, so she took out her mobile phone, scrolled to a photograph of Georg that he had posted on Facebook, and asked Camilla if it might have been him who picked Hedda up from Skoppum Station.

  Camilla studied the picture, tilting her head. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

  Georg was wearing a Burberry cravat in the photograph that Nora had chosen.

  ‘He was so far away,’ Camilla continued. ‘And everything happened so quickly – a second or two, and then they were gone. And I saw him from another angle.’

  She chewed at a nail. Nora looked at the floor.

  ‘But there is a resemblance,’ Camilla said.

  Nora looked up at her.

  ‘He’s about the same age. And his colouring is pretty much the same.’

  ‘Right,’ Nora said.

  ‘What’s he done?’

  Nora hesitated for a moment, then said ‘Nothing,’ and tried to smile disarmingly, but wasn’t sure that she managed it. Once again, she thanked Camilla Wergeland for her help, and then left.

  Not long after, Nora was back outside Hellberg Property. She parked her car a few spaces away from Georg’s, and then sat there and waited for him to finish for the day.

  When he finally came out, he ran his hand through his hair, looked from side to side and then crossed the road, used his remote key to open his car as he walked towards it and got inside. Nora slid down in her seat.

  The engine roared when Georg started his car, and black smoke burped out of the exhaust. Nora waited until he had pulled out of the car park, before starting her own car and accelerating in the same direction.

  It was easy to keep track of Georg’s car, and Nora made sure there were always at least three cars between them. She soon realised that he wasn’t going home, but was in fact on his way out of town. He was driving fast, following Nøtterøveien in the direction of Tjøme. Nora had an inkling of where he might be going, and let the distance between the cars grow. He turned off towards Hulebakk.

  She stopped by a bus stop and used her mobile to locate Oscar Hellberg’s summer house on Dalsveien. Then she typed the address into the rental car’s GPS and pulled away again.

  The Vestfold countryside was truly idyllic. The water lapped the shores of the narrow bays, and there were large white, wooden houses with apple trees dotted throughout the gardens. The landscape gradually became less verdant, with smooth rocks surrounded by bushes and low growth to protect the homes against the wind and salt. Some houses lay close to the road, which was asphalted with a broken white line along the edge. At times, she felt like she was passing through a garden, and she drove carefully in case there was anyone walking on the road or on a bike round the corner.

  Eventually the trees closed in on the right-hand side. There was a turning that went off into the woods, but it looked more like an unmade track, so she assumed that Georg hadn’t driven down there. However, she caught a glimpse of a fence at the end.

  Soon, she saw that the fence was high, and ran between the trees and the road, indicating the perimeter of a large property. Nora slowed down, unperturbed by the dark-green Audi on her tail. She wondered what Georg was doing out at his uncle’s summer house at this time of year, if that was where he had indeed gone. Summer was long since over.

  Nora replayed their short conversation in her head. She would normally have recorded the interview on her mobile phone, but everything had happened so fast, she didn’t have time to make any decisions before she was sitting in front of him and they were talking about his missing cousin and mother.

  Hadn’t there been something quite nervy about the man, though?

  You’re taking it a bit too far now, Nora said sternly to herself. But all the same, there couldn’t be that many people who drove cabriolets, even in a town like Tønsberg, and Hedda certainly wouldn’t have got into just anyone’s car of her own free will. Nora was tempted to ring Hugo Refsdal, to ask about Hedda’s relationship with Georg, but she didn’t want to fuel any suspicions or speculation. Not yet.

  When she arrived at the address, she saw a drive to the right that led to a high, wrought-iron gate. She turned off to the left and stopped in front of a dilapidated double garage with a corrugated-iron roof. The driveway up to the gate was flanked with dense woodland. It was impossible to see if Georg had actual
ly driven in there, but Nora decided to wait and see if he came back out.

  She turned off the engine and tried to think how she might find out whether this was a perfectly ordinary visit or something less usual.

  Then she had an idea. She decided to ring Hugo Refsdal after all. It took him a long time to answer.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ he asked.

  ‘Um, things are … fine. There was just something I wondered about. Hedda’s father’s summer house out at Hulebakk – do you know if they use it all the year round?’

  There was silence. Then: ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No particular reason. I was just curious.’

  Refsdal didn’t answer straightaway. Eventually, he said, ‘They usually close it up for winter after the big crab party they always have at the end of August or beginning of September. It gets too cold there once summer is over.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked again.

  Nora tried to think of a plausible answer but couldn’t come up with anything.

  ‘Who has keys to the summer house?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Unni.’

  Nora wrinkled her nose. ‘Only Unni?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know why, but it’s always been the case. That might perhaps be why we don’t go there very often any more. She wants to keep an eye on everything.’

  Nora thought about Georg, and the fact that he might be there now. Did Hedda’s mother know anything about it?

  ‘But I don’t understand why you’re asking me, Nora. Do you think that Hedda might be there? Because she isn’t, I went there to check myself.’

  Nora’s brain was racing. She still couldn’t think of a plausible answer.

  Luckily, Refsdal didn’t persist. Instead, he said: ‘But it’s a good thing that you called. I’ve … found something I have to show you. Would it be possible for you to come out here?’

  Nora looked at her watch.