‘Listen, I didn’t manage to get back to the staff meeting,’ he says. ‘I heard Sture was going to say a few words?’
‘Yes, a lot of fun that was, he-he. Same old story. You were lucky, you had a good reason for getting away, away, AWAY!’
Kare grins from ear to ear, once his tic has died down.
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing we haven’t heard before. Bad times, you lot need to generate more pages and do it faster, if we’re to avoid cuts and boo fucking hoo.’
Kare laughs and smiles — for a long time. Heidi would probably enjoy cutting me right now, Henning thinks. But he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.
He excuses himself by saying he needs a word with Heidi before he goes home for the day. Kare understands and slaps him hard on the shoulder, three times. Then he is off again. Henning decides to strike first.
‘Hello, Heidi,’ he says. She turns her head.
‘Why the hell — ’
‘Bad times, slowdown in the advertising market, we need to deliver more pages, cuts.’
He sits down without looking at her. He feels her eyes on him and is reminded of the North Pole.
‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
He turns on his computer. Heidi clears her throat.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Working. Is Iver around?’
Heidi doesn’t reply immediately.
‘Er, no. He has gone home.’
He is still not making eye contact with her and tries to remain unaffected by the unpleasant silence which envelops them. Heidi doesn’t move. When Henning finally looks up, he is surprised by the expression in her eyes. She looks like she has had a puncture and there is no sight of a bus stop for miles.
‘I’m close to breaking a really good story,’ he says in a milder voice and tells her about his meetings with Yngve Foldvik and Tore Benjaminsen, tells her that the police will soon eliminate Mahmoud Marhoni as a suspect, and that from now on, the focus of the investigation will be on Henriette Hagerup’s closest circle of friends. He doesn’t mention his sources, but Heidi nods all the same and doesn’t pressure him.
‘Sounds very good,’ she says. ‘Will it be an exclusive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great.’
The sting in her voice has gone. Perhaps I’ve finally broken her, Henning thinks. Perhaps I have won The Battle. Or perhaps she is like Anette Skoppum. Perhaps she is one of those people who keep trying, only to get deeply upset when they fail.
Ten minutes later, Heidi goes home. She even calls out ‘take care!’ He says ‘you too’. Then his thoughts return to the three things he has come to check. He starts with Spot the Difference Productions.
Neat name. He guesses that whoever set up the company was fed up with continuity errors in films and their manifesto is never to make such howlers themselves. He looks forward to the newspaper headlines the day Spot the Difference Productions actually make some. They must be tempting fate.
He reads everything he can find about the company on the Internet. They have produced a couple of films, which he hasn’t seen yet and has no intention of ever seeing. They have a website, whose homepage is a collage of continuity errors from different Hollywood productions. He recognises photos from Gladiator, Ocean’s 11, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Titanic, Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park. There are more, but he can’t place them off the top of his head. It says ‘Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen ’ in a small font at the bottom of the page, and the quote is attributed to Robert Bresson.
He clicks away and finds the page with contact details. Spot the Difference Productions have two producers and a director on their staff. He decides to call the first person on the list, for no reason other than he has such a fine first name. He rings Henning Enoksen’s mobile. The call is answered after several long rings.
‘Hello, Enok here.’
The voice is dark and deep, but welcoming.
‘Hi, my name is Henning Juul.’
‘Hello, Henning,’ Enoksen says, greeting Henning like an old friend.
‘I work for the on-line newspaper, 123news. I’m working on a story about Henriette Hagerup.’
A moment of silence follows.
‘I see. How can I help you?’
Henning quickly explains that he is curious about the screenplay written by Henriette Hagerup, which Spot the Difference Productions had taken out an option on.
‘Hagerup, yes,’ Enoksen sighs. ‘A tragedy.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Henning says and waits for Enoksen to add something. He doesn’t. Henning clears his throat.
‘Can you tell me anything about the script?’
‘Will you be writing about this?’
‘No, I doubt it.’
‘Then why do you want to know? Didn’t you just say you were a reporter?’
Enoksen’s powers of deduction are impressive.
‘I’ve a hunch that the script might be important.’
‘Why?’
Something tells him that Enoksen was a right pain at school.
‘To find out what happened, to find out who killed her.’
‘Right.’
‘So, please, would you tell me about the script, which you must have liked, since you took out an option on it?’
He hears mouse clicking in the background, fingers skating across a keyboard.
‘Well, to be honest, it was mostly my co-producer, Truls, who was in touch with her.’
‘So you’ve never read the script?’
‘Ah, well, obviously — ’
‘What’s it about?’
More clicking.
‘It’s about — ’
He pauses to cough.
‘It’s about, eh, I don’t actually know what it’s about. Like I said, it was Truls who dealt with Henriette and Yngve, and — ’
‘Yngve?’
‘Yes?’
‘Yngve Foldvik?’
‘Correct. Do you know him?’
‘Was Yngve Foldvik involved with the script?’
‘He was her supervisor, I think.’
‘Yes, but I thought she’d written the script in her own time? Not as part of her coursework?’
Enoksen hesitates.
‘I don’t really know anything about that.’
Henning decides he needs another chat with Yngve Foldvik.
‘Do you and Truls normally buy options on scripts you haven’t discussed?’
‘No, this was a special case.’
‘How?’
‘Truls and Yngve used to work together, Yngve tipped us off about Hagerup’s script.’
‘I see.’
‘But remember, it was only an option.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means we think the script has potential and we want to develop the idea, see if we can turn it into a decent film.’
‘You’re not obliged to do anything more?’
‘That’s right.’
That question came automatically while Henning’s brain was busy absorbing the information he had just been given. Yngve Foldvik was actively involved in a project that Henriette Hagerup hoped would launch her career. Henning wonders if Foldvik’s interest extends to all his students, or if his enthusiasm is reserved for pretty young women with an outgoing personality and a flirtatious streak.
‘Do you think I could have a quick word with Truls?’ Henning asks, while he checks the company’s contact details and reads that Truls’s surname is Leirvag.
‘Er, he’s a bit busy right now,’ Enoksen says, quickly.
‘Okay.’
He deliberately waits a few seconds. But Enoksen doesn’t elaborate.
‘I’ll try him on his mobile later. If you could tell him that I would like a word, that would be great.’
‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘Thank you.’
Henning hangs up, wondering what was on the tip of Enoksen’s tongue.
Chapter 49
A couple of quick Internet searches inform him that Henriette’s parents are called Vebjorn and Linda, and that she has an older brother, Ole Petter. He looks up Anette Skoppum. Her parents, Ulf Vidar and Froydis, are both over seventy, so Anette is most definitely an afterthought. She has three older sisters, Kirsten (thirty-eight), Silje (forty-one) and Torill (forty-four). In a matter of minutes, Henning has established that neither the Hagerups nor the Skoppums are a good match for the Gaarder family in the script.