Cursed

by Thomas Enger

  ‘Is that why you called?’ he asked, as he went back to his chair. ‘To tell me about coalfish and coconut?’

  ‘You know why I’m calling.’

  ‘And we shouldn’t discuss it on the phone.’ He sat down.

  The crackling disappeared, and for a moment he wondered if the line had been cut off.

  But then the voice came back: ‘Hit and run, Daddy Longlegs? We’re back there again, eh?’

  He took a drink.

  ‘Damage control, you said. So far, I’ve seen plenty of the former and not much of the latter.’

  ‘We really shouldn’t be talking about this on the phone.’

  ‘You’ve opened up a wasps’ nest, Daddy Longlegs.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, you better clear up the mess. Solve our problems, once and for all.’

  On the TV, Jason Dufner putted a ball into the hole from seven metres without so much as a smile. He made it look so simple.

  ‘I know,’ he said, in the end.

  After they’d both hung up, he sat there clutching the phone.

  Once and for all.

  Stronger medicine, in other words. Not that it mattered to him.

  He knew exactly what they could do.

  44

  Henning rang Iver and asked if he could spend another night on his sofa.

  ‘Of course,’ Iver replied.

  Before Henning parked the car in Fredenborgsveien, where Iver lived, he drove round the block a couple of times, keeping an eye on the rear-view mirror to see if anyone else was doing the same, but there was no one. When he got out onto the pavement, he couldn’t see anyone sitting in a car nearby, leaning up against a wall, or sitting on a bench, waiting.

  It was ten o’clock when Henning kicked off his shoes and went into Iver’s flat. Iver turned down the volume on the TV.

  ‘Fancy a beer?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Henning said.

  There were two cans on the table by his colleague. The flat reeked of cigarettes, and Henning felt an acute need to open a window.

  ‘How’d it go today?’ Iver asked.

  Henning sat down on the other end of the sofa, and Iver turned off the TV. Henning crossed his legs, took a deep breath and told him where he’d been.

  ‘So William Hellberg knew who you were?’

  Henning nodded. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ he said. ‘As he said himself, I’ve got a face that people remember.’

  Iver finished off his can of beer. Henning said that he’d met Nora, at which point, Iver lowered his eyes. There was silence. They could hear footsteps in the flat above, something hard falling on the floor.

  ‘How was she?’ Iver asked.

  Henning shrugged. ‘She seemed alright to me,’ he said, and decided not to tell Iver about the shooting.

  Iver shook the can to check that there was nothing left.

  ‘What have you done today?’ Henning asked.

  Iver looked up. ‘I’ve argued with the boss about various non-stories, and, otherwise, I talked to some of my sources about Charlie Høisæther.’

  Henning sat up.

  ‘Høisæther Property was a property-development company,’ Iver said, and put the can down. ‘Charlie bought up old, dilapidated blocks of flats, did them up and sold them on. That kind of thing.’ Iver gesticulated with his hands as he spoke. ‘And Rasmus Bjelland was one of the joiners he used.’

  Henning frowned hard. ‘Charlie? Not Tore Pulli?’

  ‘Rasmus didn’t work for Tore, no. But he hammered and nailed for Charlie up until winter 1996, then stopped. And eventually he went bankrupt.’

  Henning got out his lighter, clicked it on and off a few times, and thought about what Bjelland had said – that Tore Pulli had no problems stepping over corpses to get what he wanted. How could Bjelland know that if he worked for Charlie and not Tore?

  You have to go back to the nineties, Bjelland had said.

  Perhaps 1996 was the year.

  ‘That Charlie guy is quite something,’ Iver said, and shook his head. ‘According to one of my sources, Charlie got into trouble one time when he was using some Poles to do up flats. Charlie owed them a lot of money, and in the end settled up by giving them a flat.’

  Henning listened with interest.

  ‘But what the Poles didn’t know,’ Iver went on, ‘and obviously Charlie never told them, was that the flat was in a joint-ownership building that had a substantial shared debt. And what most people don’t know is that, in a situation like that, when a flat gets a new owner, the bank pays back the developer for their share of the debt.’

  ‘So the Poles were left with the debt, and Charlie earned good money?’

  Iver nodded.

  ‘What happened to the Poles then?’

  Iver showed his palms and shrugged. ‘They owned nothing, not even the nails in the wall, so they had to flee the country.’

  ‘Hm,’ Henning grunted. ‘Was there anything about it in the papers?’

  Iver shook his head and coaxed a cigarette out of the packet that was lying on the table.

  ‘That could be a great story, Iver,’ he continued.

  ‘It certainly could,’ Iver agreed, put the cigarette in his mouth, lit it and exhaled. ‘But I’m going to let it lie for the moment.’ He leaned back on the sofa.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Norway doesn’t have an extradition agreement with Brazil. And because I don’t want Charlie to go into hiding. Not now, when you’re…’ Iver looked away for a moment.

  Henning stared at him. ‘Sounds like your source is from the fraud squad,’ he said, eventually.

  Iver turned towards him, took another drag on his cigarette.

  ‘The person who told you this,’ Henning added.

  ‘Oh right, yeah. No … it…’ Iver smiled. ‘He’s called Milo Cavalli.’

  ‘Right, so now we share sources as well.’

  ‘Yeah, for Christ’s sake – and you’ve eaten all my baked beans.’ He took another drag.

  Henning grinned.

  ‘He’s a good guy,’ Iver said. ‘Catholic. Gets things done then goes to confession.’

  ‘Could perhaps do with some of that ourselves,’ Henning said.

  ‘Not me,’ Iver retorted, and winked at him. ‘I never do anything that bad.’

  He got up from the chair, pointed to the beer can. ‘You sure you don’t want one?’

  45

  Nora woke up with a thumping headache. She sat up slowly in bed. She had lain awake half the night. The last thing she could remember was the clock showing a quarter past three.

  She got up, and took two paracetamol from her bag, washing them down with what was left of the Coke she had opened the evening before. She stumbled over to the computer, turned it on and looked through the stories the internet editors had posted from the paper edition. ‘Ellen Was Strangled’ was the main story. Byline: Merete Stephans.

  Nora shook her head, feeling the urge to ring the internet desk straightaway to get them to add her byline as well. But she couldn’t face it, and instead took out her mobile phone and sent a text message to Fritz Hellberg III.

  Good morning. You don’t happen to know where and how I could get hold of Ellen’s mother? Nora Klemetsen, Aftenposten.

  It might not be easy to talk to the old lady so soon after the body had been found, she thought, but she had to give it a try.

  Nora didn’t feel like the big breakfast she’d had the day before, so she ordered an omelette and drank two glasses of orange juice while she waited for an answer from Ellen’s husband. It came when she was drinking her coffee.

  Why do you want to talk to the old bag?

  Nora wrinkled her nose, but answered: Just want some background information. Who Ellen was, what she was like. You know us journalists, we like to tell stories.

  She added a smiley, even though it made her feel like a teenager.

  He replied: She lives in a nursing home in Skien. Think it’s got Gj
erpen in the name. But she’s very muddled, so I would take what she says with a pinch of salt.

  Nora thanked him for his help, drank up her coffee, ran up to her room and quickly established that there was a nursing home called Gjerpen in Skien.

  Six minutes later she was in the car, on her way there.

  The E18 must be the world’s most boring road, Nora thought as the car rolled on. Too much traffic, nothing to see by the side of the road and a speed limit that was ridiculous. But it gave her time to think – about the road and life; the choices she had made and would have to make in the days and months ahead.

  Sometimes it wasn’t even a choice. It was just the way things had turned out. God knows, she hadn’t planned on getting pregnant, couldn’t really understand how it happened – she’d always made sure to take the pill; hadn’t missed a day. But then, all of a sudden, there was another life growing inside her. Which was guaranteed to change her life, just as Jonas had done.

  What she was most afraid of was that the new baby would replace Jonas – not just in her own life, but in other people’s as well. People would go around saying, ‘It’s so good that Nora had another baby, it’ll make it easier to forget what happened to Jonas.’

  But she didn’t want to forget.

  Didn’t want to. Refused to.

  Couldn’t.

  Nora turned off at Junction 48 and continued over a series of roundabouts, to the left, to the right and straight over. One hour and eight minutes after she left Tønsberg, she arrived at Håvundvegen 17, an ugly, red-brick building that looked every bit as much like the nursing home that Nora had imagined. The windows facing the car park had lace curtains and some also had green blinds, which were no doubt pulled down to keep out the light, but it seemed unnecessary now that the sky on the horizon had turned a mucky grey.

  Nora found a parking space and realised how tense she was as she walked towards the three-storey building.

  Once inside, she grabbed the first nurse she could find, and asked for Mrs Nygaard Næss. She was told to go to the first floor, where she had to ask again. A man with a turban smiled and pointed to a woman sitting alone by a table, staring out of the window.

  ‘How … is she?’ Nora asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ the nurse replied.

  ‘Is she … is it possible to speak … normally with her?’

  ‘Depends,’ the nurse said. ‘She has good and bad days, like most of the old people here, but I couldn’t say how she is today.’

  Nora was tempted to ask if anyone from the police had been there the day before, but took it as a given. She found it more worrying that no one had asked who she was, nor why she wanted to talk to Mrs Nygaard Næss at a time like this.

  Nora thanked the nurse for his help and went over to the old woman. She sat down quietly on the opposite side of the table and looked around. The chairs were empty. All the inhabitants had wheelchairs. One man had a visitor who looked about a generation younger, but shared the same facial features.

  The different stages of life, Nora thought, and swallowed hard. She was worried about a life that was about to begin. In this place, everyone was concerned with the opposite end of the journey, when every day, every hour might be the last.

  Nora realised she had to get her act together. It helped to look at the television on the wall, and at the watering, staring eyes that followed the pictures of a large passenger ship cutting through still water somewhere in the beautiful, far north. The room smelt of food – fish of some kind – and Nora felt a pang of hunger. Again.

  She turned back towards Ellen’s mother, who couldn’t weigh more than forty kilos. Her skin hung loose, with deep wrinkles and furrows. Her jaw was slack, as though her mouth was used to being open. And even though she closed it every now and then, it soon fell open again.

  She reminded Nora of a thin, old dog.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, and moved closer to the table, resting her hands in front of her. She watched the old woman for any reaction, but saw none. Mrs Næss continued to stare at whatever it was out of the window. Nora glanced out and could see nothing other than the sky, in various shades of grey.

  ‘My name is Nora.’

  Ellen’s mother closed her mouth and smacked her lips a little, before her jaw dropped again.

  ‘I work for a newspaper. And I want to write about your daughter. Ellen.’

  When her daughter’s name was mentioned, the old lady turned her head and looked straight at Nora. Her eyes were glassy, like tiny jellyfish.

  ‘Could I ask you some questions about her? About Ellen?’

  Mrs Næss’s eyes focused, sharpened. ‘They killed her.’

  Her voice was frail. Nora had to concentrate to hear what she said.

  ‘I knew she hadn’t just disappeared. My Ellen didn’t just disappear.’ Her voice grew stronger, had more life in it. ‘They said she’d gone out into the forest or drowned herself in the sea. But they killed her,’ the old lady said again. ‘They did!’

  Mrs Næss lifted a shaking finger and pointed out of the window, as though the people she was talking about were just outside.

  ‘She wasn’t like that. My Ellen. She wasn’t like that.’

  Nora straightened up, unsure how to continue the conversation. Then suddenly it was as if Mrs Næss disappeared again. Her eyes faded, the muscles in her face lost their grip, and her jaw dropped open.

  Nora waited a little before continuing. ‘Are you thinking of anyone in particular in the Hellberg family?’

  Mrs Næss turned her head again. ‘Parasites, all of them,’ she said.

  ‘In what way?’ Nora pressed her, gently.

  Behind her, someone knocked over and smashed a glass. Nora turned to watch the bustle of activity that followed. A nurse, who had been sitting folding towels nearby, got up and picked up the shards of glass, while one of the patients scolded a man who was sitting at the table, with a long thread of spittle hanging from his mouth.

  Mrs Næss appeared to have forgotten the question. Nora decided to wait a while before asking it again.

  ‘What was your daughter like? Tell me about Ellen.’

  Hearing her daughter’s name seemed to waken Mrs Næss again.

  ‘She was kind and good,’ she said. ‘Far too good for…’ She pursed her lips as though what she was about to say made her angry.

  ‘Too good for who, Mrs Næss?’

  ‘Too good for that drunken husband of hers.’

  The sentence was clear and precise. Nora didn’t have time to ask another question before she continued.

  ‘She was a nurse, my Ellen. Like an angel, they said. Looked after that old battle-axe until she died. But do you think anyone thanked her for it?’ Mrs Næss sent Nora a hard look, as though she was to blame. ‘They’re parasites. All of them.’

  Nora remembered what Fritz had told her about Ellen, how she had looked after his mother until she died. Mrs Næss must be talking about her. The woman with the archiving system.

  ‘You said “they killed her”. The Hellberg family. Do you mean that quite literally?’

  Mrs Næss expelled a fast, hard snort. Her eyes blazed with contempt, but she said nothing. Nora looked around, making sure that none of the nurses who came in and out of the TV lounge would hear her next question.

  ‘Who killed her, Mrs Næss?’

  A pain clouded the old woman’s eyes and she retreated into herself.

  ‘I’m trying to find out who was responsible for Ellen’s death,’ Nora carried on. ‘Please help me.’

  Nora was begging, she could hear it herself.

  ‘She found out.’

  Nora tried to hold her eyes, but Mrs Næss lost her focus.

  ‘What did Ellen find out, Mrs Næss?’ Nora leaned as far as she could over the table.

  ‘She found out what kind of people they were.’ Ellen’s mother’s fingers were constantly moving. Scratching, rubbing, picking at each other, at her nails. ‘She found out what kind of people they were,’ she rep
eated, more to herself than to Nora.

  ‘What kind of people were they, Mrs Næss?’

  She said nothing for a long time.

  Then she turned back towards Nora again. ‘Ask that drunken husband of Ellen’s,’ she said, through set teeth. ‘Ask him what kind of people they are. Ask him where their money comes from. Ask him about it.’

  She looked straight ahead again.

  ‘I’d rather ask you, Mrs Næss, if you know.’

  But Mrs Næss made no sign of wanting to say more. Her hands fell to rest. She just stared out into thin air, with an angry expression to begin with, but then this faded and her eyes became distant. She looked towards the horizon again, at the grey sky. She didn’t react when Nora reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulder.

  But her words pounded like a hammer in Nora’s head all the way back to Tønsberg. She drove much faster than she should, while the questions raced around in her mind.

  Ellen found out.

  Found what out?

  46

  Henning hadn’t changed his clothes for a few days, and borrowing clothes from Iver was out of the question – if nothing else, they wouldn’t fit. His colleague was at least fifteen centimetres taller and carried a good deal more weight on his body. Henning could, of course, buy some new things, but it wasn’t only his dirty clothes that made him think that he should pop by his flat. He needed his tablets; his laptop was there; there was probably a fair amount of post, and there was some food in his fridge that would be out of date by now.

  So he locked Iver’s door around midday and drove to his flat. He did the same thing that he’d done the night before: took a very odd route around Grünerløkka, making sure to drive on less trafficked roads, studying the faces he passed, looking in car windows, checking his rear-view mirror at regular intervals, but he saw nothing of the man who had been standing, waiting for him outside Sultan a few days ago – Durim Redzepi. Maybe I scared him off, Henning thought.

  As usual, it was impossible to park in Seilduksgaten, but that was perhaps for the best. A yellow car like his would draw attention, especially now. So Henning parked in Fossveien, which was no more than a stone’s throw from the flat; and he didn’t intend to stay long.