Thomas Enger - Burned

Mohammed shrinks.

‘I don’t care how you do it, but I want you to find him.’

Hassan looked at them, one by one.

‘Find out everything you can from the papers, speak to people you know, in case one of them can name the witness. Yasser said the man’s face was scarred. Burn scars. That should make your job easier. If the police don’t find any evidence that Yasser was in the flat, that witness is the only person who can ruin it for him and for us. When you find the guy, then you let me know.’

‘Why, what are you going to do?’ one of the men asks. Hassan breathes deeply.

‘What am I going to do? What the hell do you think?’

*

Henning finishes typing out the interview with Tariq and emails it to the news desk. He writes — in capital letters — that his name and photo must under no circumstances be displayed when the article is published. He has no intention of going underground, but nor does he want to advertise his whereabouts.

He looks at the clock. Damn. The off-licence is closed. And he isn’t going to his mother’s without St Hallvard. He decides to go for a walk instead. There might be a match practice that I can watch, he thinks, and unwind a little.

The sun over the Old Sail Loft hits his back as he gets outside. A table and two chairs have been put outside Mr Tang’s Restaurant. A dog under the table closes its eyes. He thinks it is an Irish setter.

He loved dogs when he was little. And dogs loved him. His grandparents had a dog called Bianca. Bianca worshipped him. Even more so after he became allergic to her.

A yellow Opel Corsa zooms down Markvei, just as Henning is about to cross. Yellow cars always remind him of Jonas. Once, when he picked up his son from nursery, Jonas pointed out every single yellow car he saw on his way home. The game was to be the first person to spot them. They played it again the next day. And the day after. The whole summer, in fact. Not a day goes by without Henning looking for yellow cars. And every time, he hears his own voice cry out: Yellow car! And Jonas protests: I saw it first. It wasn’t proper yellow. Anyway, it doesn’t count, we hadn’t started yet.

Kids. They can turn anything into a game.

There is hardly an empty spot in the stand. Football players, parents, balls, buggies. He sits in his usual place, among the bitter nightshade. He watches them practise and he watches them play; he recognises most of the children on the pitch. Boys huddle together. One of them holds a bag of crisps in his hands. A blond boy wearing goalkeeper gloves tries to do a headstand. The coach’s voice sounds stern, he tells the boys to get ready, the game is about to begin.

The boys are wearing purple oversized Gruner football shirts. Jonas always looked good in those big shirts. White shorts and white socks. Henning closes his eyes and tries to imagine Jonas, two years older. Perhaps his hair would have been longer. He used to like it long. It might be possible to make out the features of an older boy, the beginnings of a young man. Perhaps he would have started looking at girls, but denied it vehemently.

Perhaps.

What if.

He opens his eyes. The crisps have all been eaten. Sated, the boy tosses aside the packet and gulps down a mouthful of Coke.

That night he dreams about pistols. Huge pistols spewing bullets. The bullets are coming his way, but he wakes up every time, right before they hit him.

How he hates sleeping.

He can’t bear to be inside the flat, so at dawn the next morning, he goes up to Ekeberg Common. He rides on his Vespa, his rusty, pale blue Vespa, zooming through a city which has yet to wake up.

It was something he often used to do, return to the scenes of the murders he covered. It was his old mentor, Jarle Hogseth, who told him to do it. Get a feel for the surroundings, ideally at the time when the murder was committed. There might be information which hasn’t emerged from interviews, police reports and witness statements. Jarle Hogseth was a smart man. Except when it came to smoking.

Henning parks next to the tarmac path that runs across the Common, right by Ekeberg School. The tent is still there, surrounded by police tape. It is just past 6 a.m.

He looks around. A solitary horse is grazing near Ekeberg Farm. A woman, with blonde hair in a ponytail, is out jogging. He sees a dog running around on the grass where the huge birches appear to have grown into one tree. The dog has a stick in its mouth.

He heads for the tent and tries to visualise what happened. Henriette Hagerup in the hole in the ground, knocked out by a stun gun. A man throwing heavy rocks at her, flogging her, chopping off her hand. Perhaps she didn’t start screaming until it was too late. No one saw or heard her.

She must have been killed in the middle of the night or very early in the morning. And she must have come here of her free will. No one could have carried an unconscious person across Ekeberg Common without being seen. Not even at night. There would still be traffic around. This makes him think she must have been meeting someone she knew. Could the filming have something to do with it?

His thoughts are interrupted by the dog jumping up at him. He just manages to raise his hands in defence as the dog tries to take a chunk out of his arm. He shakes and pushes the dog away. It doesn’t hurt him, but it growls. Its owner comes over.

‘Sit.’

The man’s voice is firm. The dog scampers around Henning’s feet before it returns to its master, reluctantly.

‘I’m sorry,’ the older man says. ‘He just wants to play. He’s very frisky, you see. Are you all right? He didn’t bite you?’

Henning doesn’t mind frisky, but he draws the line at attempted murder. He wants to shout at this bloody idiot of a dog owner who lets a lethal weapon run free in a public space. But he doesn’t. Because he remembers Assistant Commissioner Nokleby saying at the press conference that:

The body was discovered by an older man out walking his dog. He called the police at 06.09.

He checks his watch. It is almost ten past. He inhales deeply and looks at the dog owner.

‘I’m fine,’ he says, brushing off invisible dog hairs. With Henning’s usual luck, some of them will have got stuck in his nostrils and he will have a fun couple of days of sneezing and wheezing to look forward to.

‘Lively animal,’ he says, forcing a smile.

‘Yes, he’s a bundle of energy. His name is Kama Sutra.’

Henning stares at the man.

‘Kama Sutra?’

The man nods proudly. Henning decides not to ask the obvious question.

‘You’re out early?’

‘We’re out early every day. I’m an early bird, always have been. Kama Sutra loves to start his day up here. And so do I. When it’s all quiet and the air is fresh.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ Henning says, and looks around again.

‘Thorbjorn Skagestad,’ the man introduces himself before Henning has time to ask. He holds out his hand. Henning shakes it.

‘Henning Juul.’

Skagestad wears a Norwegian army cap, though it is summer. The cap sits loosely on his head. His wellies are army green, too. His combat trousers have pockets on the front, on the back and on the legs, and are reinforced with leather patches on the knees. His jacket matches the trousers, both in colour and in style. Skagestad would look at home on the cover of Hunting and Fishing. His skin is lined and his teeth show his love of coffee and tobacco. Yet, he has an amiable face. It looks like it could break into a smile at any time.

‘Are you a police officer?’ he asks and throws the stick as far as he can. Kama Sutra shoots off. Henning sees its small paws dart across the soft grass.

‘I’m a reporter. I work for the on-line newspaper, 123news.’