Thomas Enger: Pierced

Behind a window without any curtains a woman is pacing up and down. She is talking on the telephone, gesturing angrily. Henning thinks about his conversation with Erling Ophus. Ophus is right, of course. Simply believing that the fire was arson is a sign of desperation. There has to be something he can investigate. But what?

Perhaps it’s true that he is only looking for another explanation so he doesn’t have to face the truth. And whether or not it was arson, nothing will change the fact that he could have saved Jonas if his eyes hadn’t been stuck together with melted skin. If he hadn’t slipped on that wet railing. If he hadn’t been so bloody A vibrating sound from the kitchen table makes him turn around. He doesn’t feel like talking to anyone right now, but the seven letters on the display arouse his curiosity. He presses the green answer button and puts the mobile to his ear.

‘Is this a better time?’

Tore Pulli’s voice is deeper than Henning managed to register in the noisy street in Gronland.

‘Eh, yes, I think so, but-’

‘11 September 2007.’

Henning stops.

‘What did you say?’

‘I know what happened that day.’

Henning feels a sudden rush of heat to his forehead. Something sharp stirs in his stomach. His throat tightens. He tries to swallow.

‘You lost your son,’ Pulli continues.

‘Y-yes,’ Henning replies in a weak and dry voice. ‘I did. What do you know about it?’

‘So now you’re prepared to listen to me? Now you’ve got time for me?’

‘Yes, I’ve got time to talk to you now,’ he says, rather more combatively this time. ‘What do you want? Why are you talking about my son?’

‘I’ve a story for you.’

‘Yes, so you said. What does that have to do with my son?’

Henning is unaware that he is standing on tiptoe.

‘Nothing. Not directly.’

‘What you mean? And cut the bullshit, Pulli, I’m starting to get annoyed-’

‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Yes, I told you when we spoke earlier today. What about it?’

‘Then perhaps you know why I’m calling.’

Henning racks his brains. He doesn’t remember reading anything about Tore Pulli since returning to work earlier in the summer. Before Jonas died, the former enforcer was forever in the newspapers, often depicted with a broad grin on his face and usually accompanied by his glamour-model wife.

‘No,’ Henning says.

Pulli starts to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Sorry, I just-’

He leaves the sentence hanging in the air.

‘You just what?’

‘So you don’t know that I’m inside?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, I guess you’ve had other things on your mind in the past two years. But I’m calling you because you’re a good reporter. You’re good at finding things out.’

‘Do you know anything about the fire in my flat?’

There is a long silence. Then Pulli replies ‘Yes.’

Henning stands as if rooted to the floor. Pulli’s deep voice drills into him. There is something about the depth of gravity in it. He is not joking.

‘Are you there, Juul?’

‘What do you know about the fire?’ Henning demands to know and fails to hide the aggression lying right under the surface. ‘Did you start it?’

‘No.’

‘So, who did?’

‘Before we talk about that, I want you to do something for me.’

‘What?’

‘You obviously don’t know why I’m in jail. When you’ve found that out we can talk again.’

Outraged, Henning starts to pace around the flat.

‘You can’t just expect me to-’

‘I’m only allowed twenty minutes of phone calls per week, Juul. I need a few minutes with Veronica as well.’

‘What do you know about the fire?’ Henning shouts and stops right in front of the piano. ‘What do you want from me? Why are you calling?’

There is a short silence while Henning holds his breath.

‘Because I want you to find out who set me up,’ Tore Pulli says, slowly. ‘I want you to find out who should be sitting in here instead of me. If you can do that then I’ll tell you everything I know about the fire in your flat.’

Henning puts down the mobile, runs his sweaty hands through his hair and resumes pacing up and down the living-room floor. How the hell could a man like Tore Pulli know anything about the fire? What exactly does he know, and why hasn’t he said anything before?

If it hadn’t been for the fact that Pulli was in prison, Henning would have called back immediately, grilled him and refused to let go until all his questions had been answered. But he can’t simply march down to Oslo Prison, knock on the door and demand to be let in. First, Pulli must add him to a visitors’ list, then Henning has to apply for permission to visit, and then the prison authorities will check his criminal record. And even though he is a journalist, it can take days, weeks even, for permission to be granted.

But then it strikes him that one important question has just been answered, perhaps the most important of all. Somebody knows something. Perhaps the fire in his flat was started deliberately after all.

Rattled, Henning sits down in front of his computer and googles Pulli’s name. He can’t remember the last time his heart beat so fast. A second later, the search engine brings up a list of thousands of hits. Henning sees Pulli’s mug shot, sombre photos of him outside Oslo Court and inside the courtroom in conversation with people Henning can only see the back of.

Pulli cuts a towering figure. Thick ox neck, broad shoulders, a huge chest and biceps the size of Henning’s thighs. His body matches his voice. Dark, big, terrifying. In some of the earlier photos he has pierced eyebrows. Together with the rings in his ears they reinforce his thuggish appearance, a look he clearly abandoned when he announced his new career as a property developer.

Henning clicks on an article from dagbladet. no. PULLI GETS 14 YEARS AND LAUGHS

Friday last, Tore Pulli was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for the murder of Joachim ‘Jocke’ Brolenius.

Joachim Brolenius, Henning mutters to himself and tastes the name. Never heard of him. He reads on:

The high-profile property speculator Tore Pulli smiled and shook his head in disbelief when he was sent to prison for fourteen years in Oslo Court Friday morning for the murder of Jocke Brolenius. His lawyer, Frode Olsvik, told dagbladet. no that his client received the verdict with composure but that he continues to maintain his innocence.

‘My client has already decided to appeal,’ Olsvik says. This means a whole new hearing in the appeal court. No date has yet been set for Pulli’s appeal.

Jocke Brolenius was found murdered in a closed-down factory building at the top of Sandakerveien on 26 October 2007. The Swedish enforcer is believed to have been beaten up with a knuckle-duster before being killed with an axe. Pulli’s fingerprints were found on the knuckle-duster, and the victim’s blood was found on Pulli when he was arrested.

The court chose to ignore the fact that the murder weapon has never been found as well as Pulli’s claim that Brolenius’s blood was on him because he was trying to help him. Pulli has always strongly denied any involvement with the killing though he admits arranging to meet with Brolenius.

When summing up, the judge took into account Pulli’s past as an enforcer, especially since Brolenius’s jaw had been broken, a type of injury Pulli was known to inflict on his victims when he worked as a debt collector. At Ulleval Hospital this particular kind of injury had become known as a ‘Pulli punch’, and the Institute of Forensic Medicine found that Brolenius’s jaw had sustained this type of fracture.