‘Do you think that’s why Tariq was killed?’
He asks on impulse. But now that the question has been aired, he decides it was actually a good one.
‘That’s hard to know. Might have been.’
He nods to himself. It might very well have been. In which case, someone doesn’t mind if Mahmoud Marhoni stays where he is. But why doesn’t Marhoni say something?
‘And you? Are you at work since you ask?’
Henning looks at Heidi.
‘Yes, I’m at the paper.’
‘I thought you were meant to take it easy for a couple of days?’
‘So did I.’
He is in no mood to discuss his mental health with Gundersen, so he carries on:
‘Did Emil Hagen say anything about the hunt for Yasser Shah?’
‘Yasser who?’
‘The man who shot at me yesterday. I picked him out on a police database.’
‘I asked how far they had got in the hunt for the killer, but Hagen didn’t know. Didn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer. Hagen, I mean.’
Henning nods to himself and wonders if the Operation Gangbuster team is now in charge of the hunt for Shah, seeing that he was a member of BBB.
‘I’ve an appointment with the first victim’s supervisor today. I don’t know if he has anything useful to tell us, and I’ll try to speak to more of her friends. There’s something wrong at that college.’
‘Sounds good. I might see you later,’ Gundersen says and inflects it as a question. Henning has no idea what will happen after his meeting with Foldvik, but he still says:
‘Yeah, you probably will.’
Then he hangs up. He is left with a strange feeling that this was possibly their first civilised conversation. Or it was their first conversation which lasted more than two sentences.
‘Don’t forget we have a staff meeting today at two o’clock.’
Heidi’s voice is frosty. She doesn’t look at him.
‘A staff meeting?’
‘Yes. Sture will be giving us a general update. Business is bad at the moment.’
Isn’t it always?
‘I only mention it because I overheard you saying you have an appointment later today. Attendance is compulsory.’
Henning thinks yes, I bet it is, but refrains from saying it out loud.
Sture Skipsrud. Founder and editor-in-chief of 123news. Sture and Henning worked together at Kapital for a couple of years. The advantage of working on a specialist journal, which isn’t published daily, is that you have time to investigate a story in depth. Interview several sources, form a proper and balanced impression of the issue. Good stories are born in that atmosphere. Stories that need a little more time.
Sture was a great investigative journalist. He received the profession’s self-congratulatory award, The SKUP, at the start of the nineties for an expose of the Trade Minister which led to the minister’s resignation. It made his career and Sture used his superstar status to negotiate better contracts; he worked for Dagens N?ringsliv for a while, wrote a couple of books about some finance wizards, joined TV2 before he left to start 123news in the late nineties. Many have wondered why a man who had made his name in investigative journalism would suddenly want to promote its absolute opposite.
But Henning has always believed in the simplest explanation, which was that Sture wanted a reaction. Things weren’t happening fast enough for him. He wanted results. And preferably 1–2 — 3.
‘I’m off now,’ Henning says. He needs some breakfast before he talks to Yngve Foldvik.
‘Aren’t you coming to the morning meeting?’
‘You already know what I’m doing today.’
‘Yes, but — ’
‘I’ll try to make the staff meeting.’
‘You must.’
‘I’ll remember that when I’ve a gun to my head.’
Okay, so that parting shot was a tad melodramatic, but it worked. Heidi says nothing and lets him go.
1 — 1, he thinks.
Chapter 35
He stops off at Deli de Luca in Thorvald Meyersgate and buys a pesto chicken calzone. He also gets a couple of tabloids and a cup of coffee and sits down on a bench opposite Deichmanske Public Library. The worst of the morning rush-hour is over, but there are still cars, trams and people late for work around. He takes careful sips of his coffee and starts reading VG. Their front-page story is a scaremongering tale about a new lethal bacteria terrifying Denmark, and which the Norwegian Institute of Public Health fears will reach the country by the autumn. There is a small photo of him in the top right-hand corner with the caption ‘Tried to kill journalist’ underneath it.
He swears under his breath, doubly annoyed because not only is there actually a photograph of him, but also because Heidi Kjus was right. He finds the story on page four. Petter Stanghelle gets the by-line. Henning skims through the text until he reaches a quote: ‘Juul was lucky to escape the killer. Besides the three shots which killed Tariq Marhoni, another four were fired. None of them hit the reporter,’ says Chief Inspector Arild Gjerstad, who is heading the investigation, to VG.
Four shots, Henning thinks. He doesn’t remember there being four. He reads on: VG has been unable to contact Henning Juul, but Juul’s editor, Heidi Kjus, made the following comment on the dramatic situation: ‘We’re obviously deeply grateful that Henning is all right. I dread to think what might have happened.’
Henning smiles to himself.
You can always rely on Heidi.
Stanghelle goes on to speculate whether there is a link between the murder of Marhoni and the murder of Henriette Hagerup, but no one from the police will comment on it.
No surprise there.
Dagbladet also leads with the murder of Tariq Marhoni, but doesn’t mention Henning. Their angle is that it was a straightforward execution, carried out by a professional, it would seem. Except that Henning escaped.
He is about to get up and leave, when a silver Mercedes minicab slows down as it drives past Deli de Luca. The car stops for a red light. There are two men inside, both in the front. Henning’s eyes are drawn to them, because they are looking at him. And they carry on looking at him, even though the lights have now changed to green.
The tram behind the minicab beeps its horn and the Mercedes slowly accelerates. Henning’s eyes follow the minicab as it turns right into Nordregate and disappears behind the library. Of course, it could be nothing, he thinks. But it could also be the exact opposite. He swallows the rest of his coffee, tosses the paper cup into an already overflowing bin and heads for the junction. He looks for the Mercedes, which has turned left into Toftesgate, but fails to get the car’s registration number or its licence number on the roof.
Henning tries to dismiss the incident, but it’s not easy. He only had time to see that the two men in the car looked similar. Both dark, with black hair, dark beards. Brothers possibly? And they were immigrants.
Coincidence?
Perhaps he should get a move on, before the silver Mercedes returns? He aims for the steep incline between Markvei and Fredensborgvei, where the sleepy current of the River Aker flows under the bridge, but decides on a whim to go to the off-licence. For once, it has nothing to do with his mother.
He stands at the window in the off-licence, hiding behind the customers and flicking through a leaflet while he checks the road. Many Mercedes, many of them silver, but none containing two dark men.
A good while later, he goes back outside, glances to the left and the right, before marching briskly in the direction of Westerdal School of Communication. His breathing is faster than normal. And he keeps looking over his shoulder.
When he finally puts the traffic behind him and is back on college premises, his breathing starts to relax. He decides that if the minicab duo was keeping him under surveillance, they were pretty useless at it, given that he managed to lose them so easily. Either that or they were doing a brilliant job, since he couldn’t see them any more. They might just have slowed down to stare at his face. He decides to forget all about it. It is nearly ten o’clock. Time for a chat with Henriette Hagerup’s supervisor.