Thomas Enger: Pierced

attention to a word she says. He finds the article he is looking for. His eyes race across the lines as he reads: MURDER VICTIM’S GRAVE DESECRATED

‘It’s a complete nightmare,’ Irene Otnes says.

Only a few weeks ago she buried her boyfriend, Vidar Fjell. Tuesday morning she woke up to the news that someone had overturned his gravestone and vandalised the plot. She is in no doubt as to who the perpetrator is. Last Friday night the man who is believed to have killed her boyfriend was himself found murdered in an old factory in Storo.

‘It’s an act of revenge carried out by his friends,’ Otnes says to Aftenposten. She is being comforted by Gunhild Dokken who discovered the desecration early Saturday morning when she went to put flowers on Fjell’s grave. It was she who alerted the police.

‘It’s despicable,’ she says.

Henning looks up before he examines the photograph of Irene Otnes and Gunhild Dokken by Fjell’s overturned gravestone.

It’s despicable.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ Nora says.

Henning doesn’t reply‚ but continues to stare at the photograph that accompanies the article. He concentrates on Gunhild Dokken’s eyes.

And then he runs out of the flat.

Henning races down the stairs and out into the late afternoon where the rain spatters the tiles in the courtyard. In a flowerbed he finds a small spade which he bends down to pick up and put in his green shoulder-bag, but as he stands up his mobile slips out of his breast pocket and lands in a puddle, face down. Henning swears, quickly retrieves it and wipes it down. He presses a random key. It’s still working, he sees, relieved. Then he straightens up, finds his Vespa and sets off. He doesn’t mind the weather. On the contrary, he thinks it might even be to his advantage.

The early evening traffic is light and easy to navigate, and it takes him only ten minutes to reach Gamlebyen Cemetery where Vidar Fjell lies buried, along with 7,000 other souls. Henning drives on to the pavement and parks up against the fence by Dyvekes Bru. The tall spruce trees growing along the length of the fence make it almost impossible to see into the cemetery from the road. Cars driving past spray water from the puddles, but Henning marches resolutely towards the nearest entrance while he takes out his mobile from his inside pocket to call Brogeland one more time.

But this time the mobile is dead.

Incredulously, he stops and stares at the grey, damp display before he tries to turn it on again. Nothing happens.

‘Damn,’ he swears out loud and returns the mobile to his pocket as he enters the cemetery. A fine layer of mist creeps towards him and envelops the trees and the bushes. From his recollection of the photograph in the newspaper, Fjell is buried near a rectangular fountain. Henning follows the grey flagstones where grass grows in the cracks. The smell of wet autumn and fresh flowers follows him as he walks. Around him the gravestones rise like tall dark teeth, surrounded by flowers that have started to succumb to the beating of the rain. He reaches two medium-sized trees, sees tall bushes lined up at intervals to form an avenue leading to a fountain. That must be it, Henning thinks as the mist comes ever nearer.

Once Henning reaches the fountain he stops and looks around. The flagstones spread out into several paths. He tries unsuccessfully to conjure up the details in the photograph so instead he begins walking around the fountain and reading the gravestones. Name after name after name. Further away, tarpaulin covers what must be an open grave. A pile of earth nearby has also been covered. When Henning has walked all the way around the fountain, he stops. Under a tree, well hidden by bushes, he sees the name Vidar Fjell on a grey stone. Henning goes over to it and spends a moment contemplating the letters and the numbers that make up the life that has ended. Above him the rain increases in volume.

A desecrated grave always attracts attention, Henning thinks. Everyone thought the vandalism was an act of revenge from someone close to Jocke Brolenius. There was no reason to ask questions. No one thought twice about the overturned soil, what else could it conceal but a coffin? No one would ever believe that a girl Vidar Fjell had brought back to life would dream of doing this to her benefactor’s grave.

It’s the perfect hiding place for a murder weapon.

Henning puts down his shoulder-bag next to Fjell’s grave and looks around again. There is no one nearby, no one mad enough to venture out in this dreadful weather. He kneels down and examines the ground in front of the grave, he touches the grass. It is moist and firm. And so it should be since the vandalism occurred nearly two years ago. He gets up and looks down the avenue. All he hears are car tyres against the wet tarmac outside the cemetery mixed with the splashing of raindrops drumming against the flagstones and the water in the fountain.

Are you really going to do this? he asks himself. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you have convinced someone that it’s absolutely essential? He takes out his mobile and tries to wake it up, but it is still dead.

Henning glances around one last time before he grabs his shoulder-bag and takes out the small spade. For a few seconds he squats down with the spade in his hand. It not only feels like a violation. That’s exactly what it is. But he has to find out if he is right.

Do it, he tells himself. Do it with respect.

He presses the spade into the soft grass. It goes in easily. He repeats the movement and marks out an area roughly half a metre square in front of the gravestone and starts removing the turf carefully. He places it neatly to one side. Then he starts to dig deeper. A feeling of revulsion surges in his stomach the further down he gets. He has never believed in any kind of god, never understood how people can anchor their life in faith, but there is something about disturbing a person’s last place of rest. Despite his honourable intentions, nothing can change the fact that he is violating both a life and a creed. Henning tries hard to convince himself that the end justifies the means.

At regular intervals he stops and looks around, but visibility has deteriorated even further in the past few minutes. He tries to wipe away some of the water from his face with one hand, but it makes no difference. He carries on digging, plunging in the spade as deeply as he can, checking to see if he hits anything other than pebbles and earth, but he doesn’t find anything.

He has been digging for fifteen minutes when he stands up and peers into the square hole he has made in front of Vidar Fjell’s gravestone. The coffin itself must be another metre and a half further below, he thinks. He got soaked through long ago, but when he kneels down again it’s as if both the mud and the wetness penetrate his skin. He is out of breath now. Could I have been wrong? he wonders as he resumes digging more furiously than before.

Then the spade hits something other than earth.

Henning inserts it into the ground again, right next to the place where he has just been, making small, cautious movements just a few centimetres apart. He can feel that he has found something; it could be a large stone or an object of some sort. He starts to remove the soil.

Then he sees it.

The handle of an axe.

Feeling reenergised now he clears away more soil. Part of the blade comes into view. Henning digs faster and faster while reminding himself not to do anything to damage his discovery. With a little bit of luck the police now have the evidence they need.

Henning is about to stand up when he senses movement right behind him. He spins around. But all he has time to see is something black hurtling towards him. And he barely hears the blow.