Thomas Enger: Pierced

‘How are you?’ he asks as they glide away from each other.

Nansen shrugs her shoulders. ‘It’s strange,’ she sniffs. ‘It feels as if I’ve lost a huge piece of myself.’ She speaks slowly without looking at him. ‘A part of me has gone, and yet — somehow — that part still hurts. Do you know what I mean?’

Henning looks at her with eyes that are starting to well up too. He would never have thought that a woman like Veronica Nansen could articulate a feeling he has lived with for almost two years.

‘Phantom pains,’ he says quietly.

‘What?’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Yes, of course you do,’ she says and shakes her head. ‘Sorry.’

The man he presumes to be Nansen’s father comes over to them and nods to Henning.

‘There is a get-together afterwards for Tore’s friends,’ she says as they start to walk. ‘It would be nice if you could join us.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Veronica, but I don’t know if I can call myself a friend of Tore’s. Or if my presence there would be wildly popular. It didn’t look as if everybody was equally welcome.’

‘No,’ Nansen says, and looks down. ‘Petter, he is… ’ She shakes her head in resignation.

‘Who was the other man?’ Henning asks as they reach the car park.

‘That was Robert,’ she replies. ‘Robert van Derksen.’

The Doctor’s efforts helped Orjan Mjones get a good night’s sleep, but he still woke up early and feeling restless the next morning. The body of Thorleif Brenden had been found far too quickly. Nosy little Mia Sikveland, the receptionist at Ustaoset Mountain Hotel, will probably raise her eyebrows when she reads about Brenden in the newspaper even though his death is likely to be recorded as an accident. She will wonder why Brenden used an assumed name, and she certainly won’t understand why a police officer failed to correct her when she referred to Brenden as Einar. That had been a mistake. A big one. And if he had had a little more cash on him, he would have dispatched Durim to Sikveland’s small flat in Geilo and made sure she was silenced too.

Fortunately, they had had a stroke of luck with Brenden. The email he had sent from Mia Sikveland’s laptop had — according to Flurim Ahmetaj — been addressed to a journalist who was now in a coma. And as far as Mjones is aware, he has yet to regain consciousness. As long as I move quickly, he thinks, there shouldn’t be any problems. He even has the money now. Two point five million kroner have been transferred to his account, adding nicely to the substantial sum he already had there. It will last him a long time. And as his money arrived without delay — despite his misgivings — neither does he need to worry about Langbein. His suspicions were unfounded.

So far, so good.

After lunch, Mjones books a one-way ticket to Marrakech using one of his false identities, for no other reason than he has always wanted to go there. He takes the number 13 tram to Sandaker Shopping Centre, gets off and walks down to Thorshov Sports. He checks the cars parked on both sides of the road, but there is no sign of a driver surreptitiously waiting for anyone. Nor can he see anyone behind the windows or on the rooftops. He walks down Sandakerveien, past the recycling plant on Bentsehjornet where the buses going to Sagene rattle past, before turning 180 degrees and repeating exactly the same exercise. With exactly the same outcome.

Even so, he feels increasingly uneasy the closer he gets to the flat where he has lived for the past six months. If this had been a hit or a burglary, he would have called it off by now. He always used to back down at the first sign of bad vibes. It’s one of the reasons he has stayed out of prison for the past seven or eight years.

Mjones glances around again. You have to go to the flat today, he tells himself. You have to get rid of the evidence. It will only take you a few minutes.

He looks around one last time before he lets himself in.

Inside the flat, a wall of heat hits him, but he refrains from opening the windows in case the place is under surveillance. Instead, he makes a mental list of everything he needs to take with him. All the research he did for the Pulli hit might be retrieved by IT experts even though he did his best to erase every trace from his laptop. Even if he doesn’t take the whole machine, he should at least take the hard disk.

Mjones enters the bedroom where the roof slopes towards the floor. The fetid and stale air sticks to him. The smell reminds him of Durim and the pigsty of a flat he lives in. Mjones puts these thoughts out of his mind, goes over to the large white wardrobe and opens the door. He kneels down, enters the four-digit code that unlocks the grey safe inside and starts stuffing bundles of euros into his backpack. Then he takes out the box where he put the ampoule for safekeeping. He opens it and looks at the transparent liquid inside it.

It had required considerable ingenuity and a touch of creativity to work out how to kill Tore Pulli in a quick, discreet and effective way. The fact that Mjones had to travel all the way to Colombia to pick up the murder weapon only added to the fun. He likes the exotic, the primitive and yet simultaneously sophisticated.

He is about to close the box and the safe when he senses movement on the floor behind him.

‘Orjan Mjones?’ he hears an unknown voice say.

What the hell?

The sound of footsteps. Several pairs of shoes. Cops, he thinks. Damn. He considers his options. He should have brought a weapon. As it is, he has no way of defending himself. Yes, he is holding one in his hands, but he is lacking the most important thing. A needle or something with which to penetrate the skin. The box with the piercing needles is still in the safe, but he knows he doesn’t have time to remove the wrapping from the needle, open the ampoule and dip the needle in the poison. Besides, he would need to do it twice. And he is aware that he will never be able to take on two cops with only one working arm.

Mjones swears again.

‘Get up, slowly.’

Mjones does as he is told, turns his head and sees a police officer he thinks he recognises from somewhere. Big. Tall. Muscular. And, behind him, a man with a similar physique.

‘Who are you?’ he says, his mind racing.

‘You’re under arrest,’ the blond police officer says.

‘Why?’

‘You’re suspected of conspiracy to murder.’

Mjones doesn’t reply‚ but looks at them in turn and sees them take up positions. Mjones thinks about his shoulder, his money, the box with the ampoule. Think quickly, he says to himself. That’s what you’re good at. Thinking on your feet.

Discreetly he takes out the ampoule and slips it into his trouser pocket. Then he turns to the police officers.

‘What is that?’ one of the police officers asks, pointing to Mjones’s hand.

‘It’s just a box,’ he says.

‘Put it down on the table.’

Mjones obeys him. ‘Take it easy,’ he says, holding up his hands to indicate his co-operation. ‘I’m coming of my own free will.’

Mjones takes one step towards them and tries to make eye contact. Lose the ampoule before you reach the police station, he thinks. Drop it in the road, anywhere it will disappear by itself, under a car tyre, in between some bushes.

And without resisting he allows himself be led out of the flat while reminding himself of 2.5 million reasons not to say a single word for a very, very long time.

Henning can’t stop thinking about the incident in the churchyard. Why was Petter Holte so mad at Robert van Derksen? Had he done something to Pulli?

Henning considers the obvious explanation, namely that van Derksen was responsible for the murder of Jocke Brolenius, but it strikes him that Holte would hardly have reacted as he did if that was an acknowledged truth among Tore’s friends.