by Thomas Enger
‘No one says so. I know. But what I don’t know, is how much contact you had with Tore more recently, before he died – other than that you were perhaps going to be neighbours in Brazil.’
William stopped about a metre from Henning, his mouth half open.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,’ he said.
‘No, because I’ve never been here before. But the name’s Henning. And these,’ he said, pointing to the scars on his face, ‘I got these on 11 September 2007, trying to save my son from our burning flat.’
‘I’m sorry to…’
‘At the time, I was working on a story that would expose Tore and his modus operandi – about how he’d worked his way up in the property business by illegal means. Obviously, I’d managed to upset him and others sufficiently for them to try to silence me. And they succeeded, for two years. But now I’m back. And I’m going to turn over every stone I can find, to look for clues that will lead me to whoever set fire to my flat.’
William stared at Henning. ‘And you think I had something to do with it?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Henning said, with a shrug. ‘But you were a friend of Tore’s; you bought a flat in Natal from Charlie Høisæther, or, rather, it’s in your wife’s name, but I’m supposing it was you who paid for it. And it’s not entirely unthinkable that you might know several of the dodgy characters who live down there. People from the Swedish League and the like.’
Henning paused to see if William would react.
‘I think someone in your network has ruined my life,’ Henning continued. ‘The same person, or people, who had Tore murdered when he was in Oslo Prison. I’m trying to find out who they are.’
William put his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘So that’s why you’re here? To find out if I had some reason to kill Tore while he was in prison? And to set fire to your flat?’
Henning shrugged.
William snorted. ‘Let me save you the trouble,’ he said. ‘I had nothing to do with it. Tore was, as you said, a good friend of mine when we were growing up. That’s all. And now I have to go home. My son’s ill.’
He was about to turn away when Henning said: ‘Do you know Daddy Longlegs?’
William took a few seconds to reply: ‘Daddy Longlegs?’
Henning nodded.
‘Is this a joke?’
‘No. I don’t hear anyone laughing.’
Henning waited, watched William’s reaction.
‘Yesterday evening, someone tried to kill me by running me over in Grünerløkka. I suspect that whoever got Ørjan Mjønes to kill Tore in Oslo Prison has more than one person on his payroll. And I wonder if that doesn’t take us back to warmer climes again, Hellberg – to your neighbours in Natal.’
William shook his head. ‘I … we … lead a very quiet life when we’re down there. I don’t know anything about the other people who live there, or about what they’ve done, it’s none of my business.’
‘Mm,’ Henning hummed.
‘And I can honestly say I know nothing about what happened to you or Tore, Juul.’
Henning tilted his head to one side. ‘So you know who I am?’
William stalled a moment.
‘You just told me who you were.’
‘I said that I was called Henning. I didn’t tell you my surname.’
William held Henning’s gaze for a few seconds before lowering his eyes. He looked at his shoe, which was stirring the grit covering the asphalt. His hand rose to his face, scratched his cheek.
‘How do you know who I am?’ Henning asked, and took a step closer. ‘I saw you looking at me outside your office back there.’
William still didn’t answer.
‘Come on, Hellberg, you—’
‘I do actually read the papers,’ William said, and looked up. ‘That’s how I know who you are; and what’s more, you’ve got a face that’s easy to remember.’
Henning stood there looking at him.
‘And I had nothing to do with the fire in your flat. So,’ he waved his hand, ‘I hope that you will now leave me in peace.’
William turned and walked to his car. Henning let him go. But he kept his eyes on him, on the car, as it drove off towards the ostentatious houses of Kalvetangen.
41
After Henning had left, Nora stayed in the restaurant.
As she was finishing her soup her phone rang. It was Merete Stephans, her colleague from Aftenposten.
‘Hi,’ Nora said.
‘They’ve found a suitcase in the water just out from the Hellbergs’ summer house,’ Merete said, without even saying hello.
‘Is it black?’ Nora asked.
‘Yes, it’s black. Like practically every other suitcase.’
‘Does it have a small Norwegian flag on the side?’
There was no response for a few seconds.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Hedda’s suitcase,’ Nora said.
Merete didn’t answer straightaway.
‘But Hedda hasn’t been found yet,’ she said, eventually. ‘They’re still looking.’
Nora frowned.
Merete Stephans told her that she had written a headline story for the following day’s paper, which was primarily about the discovery of Ellen’s body and the ongoing investigation.
‘But they’re not willing to say much yet,’ she concluded.
‘She was strangled,’ Nora said.
Another silence.
‘What did you say?’
‘Ellen. She was strangled. Might be good to include that,’ Nora said, and smiled to herself.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Merete replied.
‘We’ll be sharing the byline on our stories anyway, won’t we?’
Merete didn’t answer; she just hung up.
Nora rubbed her face in the hope that it she could massage some more blood to her brain, then decided to go up to her room. She thought about Iver, and the fact that she hadn’t heard any more from him. About her plants at home, how dry they must be. About all the post that was no doubt bursting out of the mailbox by now. She realised that she missed being with someone – just being. Not working, not thinking. It was an age since she’d been to the cinema, gone for a run; an eternity since her head had not been full of things that got her down.
All the same, it helped to think about work.
She sat down and studied the Hellberg family tree that she’d drawn up. She stared at the name Ellen Hellberg, née Nygaard Næss.
Turning on her computer, she searched around on the internet and quickly found a Tanja Nygaard Næss who was born in 1928 and had paid tax to Skien Council and Telemark County, but there was nothing to say where she lived or even if she was still alive.
Nora rang Hugo Refsdal.
‘A quick question,’ she said, when he answered. ‘Ellen Hellberg, Hedda’s aunt – do you know if her mother’s name was Tanja?’
Refsdal didn’t answer immediately.
‘I actually don’t know what she’s called,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve never met her.’
Nora wrinkled her nose. ‘No?’
‘I’ve not been part of the family for that long.’
Nora thought hard.
‘Do you know if she has any contact with her grandson?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Refsdal said. ‘I don’t think so. But she’s still alive. Or she was, the last time I heard anything about her.’
Nora stared at herself in the mirror, noticed that her cheeks had got rounder.
‘What have you heard about her?’
Refsdal sighed. ‘That she went a bit mad after her daughter disappeared. Wouldn’t accept that Ellen was gone, I think. Evidently she didn’t throw away any of her clothes, and used to sniff them all the time.’
Nora thought about how she was herself with some of Jonas’s things. Like his ball. Some things you just can’t let go. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re mad. There had to be another reason why Ellen’s mother wasn’
t in close contact with the family any more.
‘Just one more thing, Hugo. Do you know if Hedda was interested in literature?’
‘In reading books, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
He started to laugh. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I guess it’s a strange question,’ she said. ‘But what’s even stranger is that I’m not sure what the significance is, whether you answer yes or no. So I thought I’d ask all the same.’
Refsdal exhaled loudly down the phone. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Hedda never read anything other than the paper.’
Nora thought to herself that Hedda’s behaviour in the period before she disappeared had been increasingly odd. Then she remembered what she’d seen through the window at the summer house. The books were all higgledy-piggledy in the shelves.
‘Was there anything else?’ Hugo Refsdal asked. ‘I have to put Henrik to bed.’
‘No, that was it. Thank you for your help.’
42
As Henning drove back to Oslo, he thought about what he was going to do. The people who had tried to mow him down the night before knew where he lived, and might try a more discreet method next time. This meant his flat was dangerous, and he’d never get any sleep there now. Should he book into a hotel? That could be dangerous as well.
His phone rang just as he passed Holmestrand. It was Nora.
‘Hi,’ she said, when Henning answered. ‘How did you get on with William?’
‘Alright,’ Henning said, and told her briefly how Hellberg had reacted. Henning wasn’t sure if Hedda’s brother was a good actor, or if, in fact, he really didn’t know about everything that had happened to Tore. How well had they actually known each other anyway? He wondered out loud.
‘Sounds like you’re in the car,’ Nora said.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I’m on my way … home. And you?’
‘I’m in my hotel room,’ she said. ‘Trying to work out what to do next.’
Henning closed his eyes for a brief second. He’d always liked hearing Nora’s voice on the phone. It calmed him down.
‘And are you getting anywhere?’ he asked, opening his eyes again; he turned the steering wheel slightly to keep a steady course.
‘I’m not sure yet,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I think I’m getting closer. We’ll see.’
Henning nodded.
A long silence filled the car.
‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘I better get myself home to bed. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
Nora ended the call, and scrolled to a text message she’d got from Iver, just before Henning had called earlier.
Just been to your flat, but you weren’t there. Are you working? Everything OK?
If you really wanted to know, you could have called, Nora thought. On the other hand, she didn’t like talking about important things on the phone. And it was good that he’d been to the flat. Then and there, she regretted slightly that she was where she was.
She sent a text to say that she was in Tønsberg, with work. There was no reply.
Her body was screaming for something sweet, so Nora raided the minibar for more chocolate, and then finished off the frenzy with some nuts. She felt like she was the perfect example of what a pregnant woman shouldn’t be. To top it all off, she opened a bottle of Coke and took three big gulps that frothed up in her mouth.
Nora walked back and forth across the room, then stopped by the full-length mirror. She lifted up her sweater and shirt, and looked at her belly from every angle. It was visible now, the little bump, low down.
She pulled her shirt and sweater back down, got the ball out of her bag, lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She thought about Ellen Hellberg, and what it must have been like to have to sneak out in order to meet Oscar for a few snatched moments of happiness.
It’s strange, Nora thought, how much sadness we put up with in daily life, just for those few opportunities. Like Olivia Svendsen, who lived for the summers, when she was out on the water all the time with Patrik. But was life necessarily about being happy all the time?
Nora’s thoughts turned to Henning and the walk they’d taken, just the two of them, to Midtbønipa, one weekend when they’d gone to visit some friends who owned a house in a small place called Solheim – a beautiful, narrow strip of houses on the Norddal Fjord in Vestlandet. Henning had pointed at a cairn and said that it looked like something, but Nora didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Like what? Nora had said, and then taken a few steps closer to study the stones.
Nora had seen Henning draw a heart once, with Jonas. It had looked more like a plucked chicken without a head. The shape of the cairn had been much the same, and when she’d turned back towards him, saw his gentle smile, the tiny twitches in the corner of his mouth – moist with sweat and the fine, west-coast rain – she’d started to cry. When she moved the stones that made up the heart-shaped cairn, she found a small box that he’d put there the day before, when he’d done the same walk alone. A box with a ring in it.
She’d never been happier than at that moment. She wished she could have frozen it, framed it and managed to remind herself of that feeling later when the rain got harder and colder and the days darker.
It had been no more than a brief moment in time, which led to other moments that eventually papered over the idea of the two of them and the life they would live together. And the very knowledge of that made her sadder than she could remember having been for a long time.
43
They make it look so easy, he thought, the boys on the PGA tour. Just select the right club, twist your upper body a little and whack the ball, which then flies for a few hundred metres and lands straight on the green.
It never did that when he played golf. The times when he did hit a shot that would make even Tiger Woods proud, it was generally just luck – a fortunate bounce here or there that meant that the ball landed reasonably well for a birdie putt. Which he then, of course, missed.
He should really stop watching golf; it only depressed him. But he had to do something as the evenings drew in, when the public prosecution offices had closed for the day and only the night remained – his wife having gone to bed long ago.
He downed the rest of his whisky, sucked on one of the ice cubes for a moment then crushed it between his teeth. He put the glass down, lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and blew the smoke out through his nose. Jim Furyk’s rubbish, amateur swing made him snort. Furyk’s face was as though set in stone – never a smile, never an emotional reaction to what he’d done.
He was a bit like that himself, certainly from the outside. No one could read him. The woman behind the bedroom door thought perhaps she could, but she couldn’t, not really. He had a mask for every occasion. His early years in the theatre had taught him that. The ability to improvise. Put on a show.
Those were the days. His parents came dutifully to see every production – applauding with false smiles and stiff faces because the neighbours were there; they always had a look of expectation in their eyes, expectation of more, something else. And the only time he’d ever seen any kind of recognition in his father’s eyes was when he told him that he wanted to study law. The thought of having a lawyer in the family. That was a respectable job. Theatre, on the other hand? Culture?
Culture was for homosexuals. There was no money in it, either.
He was three years into his law degree when there was a knock on the door one afternoon. The two men standing outside wondered if he knew where his father was. From their clothes, he guessed they were detectives, but couldn’t bring himself to answer their question. Instead, he just shook his head and said that he hadn’t spoken to his father for months, which wasn’t that far from the truth.
Later that day, he heard on the news that his father had been arrested on suspicion of fraud; he’d siphoned off funds from a number of client accounts and then used the money to finance his expensive cars and other extravagant spending.
He could
still remember that first phone call from the prison, a voice that said ‘Your father is on the line’. He hadn’t heard a peep from him for seven months after the trial and sentencing, and all his father managed to say now, before the call was cut off, was: ‘Happy birthday, son.’
He’d never been angry with his father for being a criminal.
But he was angry with the old man for getting caught, for being stupid and careless and for tarring the family name. For being so bad at damage control.
He would never be like that. If it was him that found himself in trouble with the law – if he caught even the slightest whiff of anything that told him ‘it’s over’ – then he would put an end to it all. A bottle of pills, a gun to the head, whatever; as long as it did the job.
The question was, who had been with Henning Juul? Who had managed to push him out of the way before the bumper hit him? But perhaps the answer was simple, given who had shared a byline with Juul more than once – someone who Henning might meet for a beer or two at Stopp Pressen.
Iver Gundersen.
Had Juul said anything to him?
The mobile phone on the coffee table started to vibrate. He pulled himself up and reached over for it. He let out a deep sigh. This was all he needed: him calling now.
‘Good evening,’ he said.
The line crackled. ‘Hi Daddy Longlegs.’
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘You liked it before.’
‘No, I’ve never liked it.’
‘Oh, well. Do you know what I’ve never liked?’
He said nothing.
‘Piña coladas, Daddy Longlegs. Rum, pineapple juice and coconut. Coconut!’
He reached for his glass again, shook it a little, so the ice cubes clinked.
‘Coconut is nice with white fish, and a bit of chilli sauce. Coalfish, for example – a totally underrated fish, especially when baked in the oven with coconut. But coconut in a drink?’
He got up, went over to the drinks cupboard, took out the bottle of whisky. Poured himself another glass.