Thomas Enger - Pierced

‘Yesss!’

Elisabeth smiles and looks at him tenderly. ‘Hi,’ she says in a soft and affectionate voice. ‘Did you have a good sleep?’

Thorleif shakes his head and refills his glass.

‘You certainly look as if you have.’

‘How can you tell?’ he asks her.

‘Your eyes are swollen. As if they’ve relaxed properly for once.’

‘It’s probably just an allergic reaction.’

‘Oh, you poor thing. You shouldn’t have joined us on that horse-and-cart ride. Have you taken your medication? Do you feel better for it?’

‘A bit, perhaps.’

Elisabeth strokes his cheeks and gazes at him as if he were a baby. Then she kicks off her shoes. He can hear Julie singing happily through the open bathroom door.

‘Are you going to fix the alarm today?’

‘What?’

‘The burglar alarm. We must get someone in to take a look at it.’

‘Oh, right.’

Thorleif had already forgotten that the alarm had, unexpectedly, not been working when they came back from Bogstad Farm.

‘Daddy,’ Julie shouts as she comes storming out of the bathroom. ‘Do you know what?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve learned to ride my bicycle!’

Her sense of triumph is written large across her face.

‘Really?’

Julie nods, bursting with pride.

‘Do you want to see, Daddy? Do you want me to show you?’

Thorleif looks at Elisabeth. Julie’s parents are bursting with pride, too.

‘Of course I want you to show me, sweetheart. Hang on, let me just put my shoes on.’

Henning walks across the golden brown floor of Jarlen. A wall painted red at the top and white at the bottom welcomes him to the restaurant. The wall sconces look like hats someone thought it would be amusing to turn upside down. There are white tablecloths and napkins on the tables but hardly any customers eating at them.

Henning picks a table in the middle of the room, orders Danish-style beefburger with potatoes, vegetables and pickled beetroot for no other reason than he likes Denmark and the Danes. While he waits for his food, he looks out of the window at the five-metre-high wall across the road.

Oslo Prison.

He is somewhere inside it, Henning thinks, the man with information about the fire. The time when he meets Tore Pulli face to face can’t come soon enough.

Henning is still feeling uncomfortably full after his meal when Geir Gronningen shows up, two hours and fifteen minutes after their brief chat at Fighting Fit. He has showered and is wearing tight leather trousers and a white T-shirt which strains over his belly. His steps are measured and decisive, and his arms hang well away from his upper body as if something has been stuffed under his armpits. His long hair falls loosely over his shoulders, but his hairline has retreated high up his forehead and has made room for deep frown lines.

Henning gets up when Gronningen appears. ‘I don’t think we managed to introduce ourselves properly earlier,’ he says and holds out his hand. ‘Henning Juul.’

Gronningen shakes his hand reluctantly. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ he says as he sits down.

‘Why is that?’

‘Walking straight into the gym and talking to me about what I-’

Gronningen breaks off, looks around, but all he sees is a noisy family with children at a table further away.

‘You’re lucky no one saw you,’ he continues.

‘I am or you are?’

Gronningen doesn’t reply.

‘So no one knows that you’re trying to find out who set Tore up?’

Gronningen looks at Henning. His lips form the beginning of an answer, but Henning sees that he opts for an alternative reply. ‘Turning up at the gym and asking questions about people isn’t very smart,’ he says archly. ‘People might think you’re trying to fit them up.’

‘And they’ve developed this paranoia because they’ve been law-abiding citizens all their lives?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I think so. But I wanted to talk to you because Veronica said that you’ve tried to help Tore while he has been inside.’

‘I’ve tried and tried, Mrs Blom,’ he says and looks down.

‘So you haven’t found anything out?’

Gronningen studies his napkin in detail. ‘Not much, no.’

‘That probably explains why Tore rang me yesterday,’ Henning says and waits for Gronningen to look up. Which he does half a second later.

‘Did he?’

‘Yes. He asked for my help. Since you’re clearly trying to help him too, I thought we might be useful to each other.’

Gronningen snorts with ill-concealed contempt.

‘I get it,’ Henning continues. ‘You don’t know if you can trust me. And no one has claimed the one-million-krone reward yet. But you can relax, Geir. I don’t give a toss about the money. I have my own reason for doing this.’

‘What reason would that be?’

‘This is how we do it,’ Henning says and waits until he has Gronningen’s undivided attention. ‘I tell you everything you want to know about me and why I’m here, and then you tell me what you know about your friend’s case. I’m interested in anyone who knew Tore. Who they were and what they stood for.’

Gronningen directs his dark-brown eyes at a floral arrangement on one of the console tables.

‘I don’t snitch on my mates,’ he says in a mournful voice that suggests that he has just betrayed a lifelong principle.

‘I’m not asking you to. All you have to do is tell me a bit about Tore and how he got on with his friends, how they treated each other. You don’t have to talk about what they got up to if you don’t want to. And just to make it clear: I’m only interested in this story. If I should stumble across anything else while I’m sniffing around I’ll leave it alone.’

Henning is surprised when he realises that he actually means what he says.

Many seconds pass without Gronningen saying anything. At regular intervals he looks at Henning before his gaze breaks away. The waiter comes over to their table. Gronningen orders a Wiener schnitzel with extra potatoes and vegetables. When the waiter has gone, Henning leans across the table.

‘My son died,’ he says, and a lump forms instantly in his throat. ‘I tried to rescue him from my flat. Somebody set fire to it.’ Henning tries to swallow. ‘Tore says that he knows something about what happened that day. He has promised to tell me what it is — if I help him. That’s the only reward I’m looking for. I’ll do anything to make Tore tell me what he knows. No matter what that is or where it takes me.’ He pauses for effect. Gronningen stares pensively at the table. ‘And it’s fine if you don’t want to help me help your friend. But I promise you, Geir, I’m not going to go away. Not now, not ever.’

Henning notices that his voice is trembling. Even so Gronningen remains silent.

‘You don’t happen to know something, do you?’ Henning continues after a pause.

‘Eh?’

‘About the fire in my flat?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you — given that you and Tore are such close friends. If Tore knows something then it’s not inconceivable that he might have told you.’

‘He didn’t.’

Henning concentrates on Gronningen’s eyes. At the other table a family erupts in a collective giggling fit. Gronningen quickly turns in their direction before resuming his study of the napkin in front of him. He picks it up and spreads it out.

‘How was he?’ he asks.

‘Tore? I don’t know. I’ve never met him so I don’t know what he was like before. And I didn’t speak to him for very long.’

‘I haven’t spoken to him for a long time.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s only allowed one visit a week and Veronica gets first pick. That’s all they’ve got, the two of them, so the rest of us tend to leave them alone.’