Thomas Enger - Burned

Wanker. If only you knew who is washing your car.

Hassan lets the quartet finish, then he presses a button which opens the door. The owner isn’t sure if he is expected to go inside. Hassan gets up, comes outside and gestures to the four men to finish off the car in daylight. Yasser Shah gets in and starts the car, which roars aggressively in the acoustically perfect space, and backs out. The others follow with chamois leathers.

Hassan goes over to the owner and accepts the cash.

‘Looks very good,’ the owner remarks. Hassan nods, counts the eight 20-kroner notes and omits to mention there is 10 kroner too much. Quite right, he thinks, since he got the express-while-u-wait service.

Shah gets out of the car and hands the owner the keys. The other three wipe off the remaining moisture on the Audi’s roof, doors and rims.

‘Thank you so much,’ the owner says and gets in. He drives off at a leisurely pace. Hassan looks at the others and signals that they should go back inside. They obey his command and step inside Hassan’s glass cage office. It is the size of a bedroom. There are three chairs and a television in the corner, Al-Jazeera with the sound off. There is a mug of coffee, a computer and piles of documents and newspapers on Hassan’s desk. An old nude picture of Nereida Gallardo Alvarez decorates the wall behind Hassan’s squeaking chair.

‘Close the door,’ Hassan orders Yasser Shah. Hassan presses a button. A red light goes on outside the car wash.

The others wait. Hassan looks at them. His hair is longish, shining with Brylcreem and combed back. He doesn’t have a ponytail, though his hair is long enough for one. He has strips of beard, carefully combed, around his mouth and on his cheeks. He wears a thick gold chain around his neck and earrings that match. He is wearing worn, stonewashed jeans and a white vest which stretches tightly across his stomach and chest. Hassan is thin, but not gangly. The muscles in his arms are noticeable. He has a tattoo of a green frog on one arm and a black scorpion on the other.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ he says, looking gravely at them in turn. ‘We’ve talked about this before, what to do should such a situation arise, and especially if this particular situation should arise.’

The others nod silently. Yasser Shah opens his mouth slightly. Hassan registers it.

‘Yasser — over to you now,’ he says firmly. Yasser’s about to speak, but Hassan interrupts him.

‘We need to send him a message. This is your chance to prove that you’re one of us, that you’re serious about being here.’

Shah looks down. He is short and of heavy build. There is a square of dense beard around his mouth, his skin is smooth, and he has sideburns. His nose is crooked from a fist fight in Gujrat in 1994. His lip was split in the same fight, and he has a scar on his upper lip, to the left. The stud in his left ear looks like a diamond.

‘Do you want to go to jail?’

Shah looks up again.

‘No,’ he mutters.

‘Do you want the rest of us to end up in jail?’

‘No.’

His voice is firmer this time.

‘This way of life demands that we sacrifice ourselves for each other,’ Hassan continues. ‘We can’t take risks.’

The others look at Hassan and then at Shah. Hassan waits a long time before opening a drawer and taking out a black box. He opens it, takes out a pistol and a silencer and gives both to Shah.

‘Nice and easy. No mistakes.’

Shah nods reluctantly.

‘As for the rest of you. As soon as this hits the headlines — make sure you’re near a CCTV camera and have plenty of witnesses who can vouch for you. The cops mightn’t call, but if they do, it’ll be to find out where you were.’

Everyone, apart from Yasser Shah, nods. He stares at the floor.

Henning opens his laptop again and locates FireCracker 2.0 on the program menu. He hesitates for a few seconds before he double-clicks the icon of a miniature firecracker. Perhaps 6tiermes7 uses a different version now, a more recent one, new applications might have been added which require upgrades, but he clicks anyway. It’s worth a try.

The program takes forever to load. I must get a new computer, he thinks, as the fan starts to whirr. While the machine hums into action, he goes to the homepage of 123news to check if his story has been published.

It has. A quick glance tells him the news desk has made very few changes. It is their lead story. Iver Gundersen’s story about the arrest is accessible via a link in the introduction. Just looking at Gundersen’s words makes Henning feel sick.

So he concentrates on his own headline: ‘We’ll never forget you’. The accompanying photograph is of the shrine and the cards and messages for Henriette Hagerup. A standard package. But a good one, a good start. It’s not proper news as such, but it’s a good start.

Someone stomps up and down the communal stairs. Henning tries to ignore it and checks if FireCracker 2.0 is up and running. It is. But 6tiermes7 isn’t there. He leaves it for a few more minutes. In the meantime, he forces himself to read Iver Gundersen’s story, telling himself that it might contain useful information. He remembers that Nora’s new loverboy asked him to find out the name of Hagerup’s boyfriend, something which completely slipped his mind.

He curses his useless grey cells, before he clicks on the story and begins to read.

STONING: MAN ARRESTED

A man in his twenties has been arrested in connection with the brutal murder of Henriette Hagerup.

There is a photograph of the crime scene — the right one, this time — next to the introduction. He can see the large white tent in the background. Some onlookers are standing behind the police tape. He reads on. The man was arrested following a routine police visit to his flat. The man attempted to escape when officers knocked on his door, but he was quickly apprehended. 123news has learned that incriminating evidence was discovered in the suspect’s flat. He will be brought before a judge and remanded in custody later today. Lars Indrehaug, the suspect’s solicitor, denies that his client is guilty.

Gundersen then reviews the story, explains what has happened, when it happened and how the story has developed in the course of the day. He also includes a quote from Chief Inspector Gjerstad, a quote Henning recognises from the press conference.

Noise continues to come from the stairwell. He checks FireCracker 2.0 again. He is still the only user to be logged on. He decides not to log out in case 6tiermes7 logs on during the evening or overnight. But he has a sinking feeling that’s not going to happen.

He sighs and stares blankly at the wall. His first day back at work is over and done with. He thinks about the people he met: Kare, Heidi, Nora, Iver, Anette. After just one day at work, he has acquired knowledge and formed relationships he could, quite happily, have done without. Memories are returning, memories he had hoped would remain in the darkness.

He thinks about Nora, what she is doing now, if she is with Gundersen. Of course she is. Mister Super Fucking Corduroy. They are probably having dinner. In a restaurant. Swapping stories about their day, what they will do when they get home, under the duvet, or on top of it, possibly.

He decides not to think about it and hopes that the evening and the night will come quickly.

*

The stomping still hasn’t ended. Henning gets up to investigate. An elderly man is on his way up the stairs when Henning peers out. The man is wheezing. He is dressed in shorts only, nothing on his upper body. Despite his age — Henning reckons he is well in excess of seventy — he still has plenty of muscles. They look at each other. The man is about to carry on, but stops and takes another look at Henning.