Chapter 21
Henning’s flat reminds him of a garage sale. He doesn’t like garages. He doesn’t know why, but they make him think of cars, idle engines, closed doors and screaming families.
Back in Klofta, the Juuls’ garage contained tyres that should have been thrown out long ago, ancient and unusable bicycles, rusty gardening tools, leaking hoses, bags of shingle, skis no one ever used, tins of paint, paintbrushes, logs stacked against the wall. Even though Henning’s father never tinkered with any of the cars he owned, the place always smelled like a garage. It smelled of oil.
The smell of oil will always remind him of his father. He doesn’t remember all that much about him, but he remembers his smell. Henning was fifteen years old when his father died suddenly. One morning, he simply failed to wake up. Henning had got up early; he had an English test later that day. His plan was to do some last-minute revision before the rest of his family stirred, but Trine was already awake. She was sitting on the bathroom floor, her legs pulled up to her chest. She said:
He’s dead.
She pointed to the wall, the wall to their parents’ bedroom. She wasn’t crying, she merely kept saying:
He’s dead.
He remembers knocking on the door, even though it was ajar. The door to his parents’ bedroom was always closed. Now it swung open. His father lay there with his hands on the duvet. His eyes were shut. He looked at peace. His mother was still asleep. Henning went over to his father’s side of the bed and looked at him. He looked like he was sleeping. When Henning shook him, he didn’t move. Henning shook him again, harder this time.
His mother woke up. At first, she was startled, wondering what on earth Henning was up to. Then she looked at her husband — and screamed.
Henning doesn’t remember much of what happened next. He only recalls the smell of oil. Even in death, Jakob Juul smelled of oil.
*
After a breakfast consisting of two cups of coffee with three sugars, Henning decides to go to work. It is only 5.30 a.m., but he thinks there is no point in hanging around the flat.
He visualises the sea as he turns into Urtegata. He should be feeling tired, but the coffee has woken him up. Solvi isn’t there yet, but he visualises her, too, as he swipes his card.
There is only one other person in the office when he arrives. The night duty editor is hunched over his keyboard, sipping a cup of coffee. Henning nods briefly to him as they make eye contact, but the duty editor soon returns to his screen.
Henning lets himself sink into his squeaking chair. He catches himself wondering when Iver Gundersen gets to work, if he is post-coital and glowing, if it’s plain for all to see that Nora gave him a good start to the day.
By the time Henning snaps out of his self-flagellating fantasy, he could have sworn he could detect Nora’s scent. A hint of coconut against warm skin. He doesn’t recall the name of the lotion, the one she loved and which he loved that she wore. But he can smell coconut all around him. He turns, gets halfway up from his chair and looks around. The duty editor and he are the only two people there. And yet he can smell coconut. Sniff, sniff. Why can’t he recall the name of that lotion?
The scent disappears as quickly as it came. He falls back into his chair.
The sea, Henning, he tells himself. Focus on the sea.
Chapter 22
Research is a fine word. It’s even a profession. A researcher. Every TV series has one. Every TV news desk has one, sometimes many.
Henning spends his time doing a little research while the rest of the newspaper wakes up. Research matters, it is possibly a journalist’s most important task when there isn’t much else to do. Dig, dig dig. The oddest but ultimately crucial snippets of information can be found in the strangest texts or public records.
He remembers a story he worked on years ago. He was relatively inexperienced at the time, probably hadn’t covered more than ten murders when a vicar, Olav Jorstad disappeared in the sea, off the coast of Sorland. Everyone knew how much Jorstad liked fishing, but he was familiar with the sea and would never have gone out if bad weather had been forecast.
Eventually, his boat was found, bottom up. Jorstad himself was never found and everything pointed to a tragic accident. The current had very likely carried his body out into the wide, blue sea.
Henning covered the story for Aftenposten, and put together a standard package, which meant interviewing family, neighbours, friends, Jorstad’s congregation, the whole Norwegian Bible belt, practically. After discussing the story with his editor, Henning decided to stay on because he had a hunch that something was missing from the picture of Jorstad that everyone was painting. In the eyes of his parishioners, Jorstad was an outstanding vicar, a brilliant spiritual leader, who had the gift of the gab; some even claimed that he had healed them, but Henning never reported such claims in his articles. He suspected some of them of actively courting publicity.
However, Jorstad’s role as a choir master and conductor received very little attention. Every church has a choir. Vicars are trained in choral song. The Reverend Mr Jorstad was a man who liked discipline and consequently, it was a fine choir. Some days after Jorstad’s disappearance, after the media novelty had faded, Henning was chatting to Jorstad’s son, Lukas. They happened to talk about the choir and Henning asked if Lukas had been a member. Lukas replied no.
A few weeks later, Henning was trying to contact a member of the choir, a woman called Susanne Opseth, who was supposedly one of the last people to see Jorstad alive. Henning did his research and found several newspaper cuttings in which she was featured. And in one of them, from the early 1990s, before the Internet, he spotted her in a photo, singing in the choir with Mr Jorstad conducting. What Henning didn’t notice at first, but discovered when he examined the picture in detail, was that Lukas was lined up in the back row.
Lukas had lied when he told Henning he had never sung in the choir. Why he would lie about something so trivial? The answer was obvious. There was something about the choir that Lukas didn’t want Henning to know or find out about.
So Henning started digging, interviewing the rest of the choir and it didn’t take long before he discovered that Lukas had left the choir as an act of rebellion against his father, to humiliate him publicly. The choir wasn’t the only place where Mr Jorstad demanded discipline. It found expression in strict routines, the reciting of Bible verses, a stern upbringing devoid of affection. And it ruined Lukas’s budding relationship with a girl his own age, Agnes. Mr Jorstad didn’t approve of her and he didn’t want Lukas wasting his time with her.
Lukas released, as police interviews later revealed, years of frustration and oppression one night when his father took him fishing. Lukas hit his father over the head with an oar, sending him over the railing. Afterwards, Lukas overturned the boat and swam ashore.
Lukas was a strong swimmer and he was willing to face the consequences of his actions. Anything to rid himself of his father’s hold on him. But Lukas had an unexpected stroke of luck: his father’s body was never found.
Henning worked with the local police force and was able to break the story the day they arrested Lukas. He hasn’t checked, but as far as he knows, Lukas is still in jail. And all because of a single picture printed in a local paper many, many years ago.
Research. Even the slightest gust of wind can upset a house of cards.
Henning likes research, likes finding out information about people. Especially if those people interest him or have done something he finds fascinating. The Internet is brilliant for research. He didn’t like the Internet to begin with; in fact, he was opposed to it, but now he can’t imagine life without it. Once you have driven a Mercedes, you never go back to your pushbike.