A small pill, a small, round, white pill.
Small, white -
Oh, hell.
He chews and swallows, never taking his eyes off Anette. She shakes the bag, pours more sweets into her palm and shoves them in her mouth. He looks at the sweets and remembers what Jarle Hogseth always used to say, that the devil is in the detail. It’s a huge cliche, but now as he stands there, looking at the white sweet, it’s as if the sneaking feeling that has nagged him ever since he stared into Stefan’s expressionless eyes, the hook that stirred in his stomach, suddenly takes hold and rips him open.
‘What is it?’ Anette says. Henning is incapable of speech. He just stares at her, remembering the white powder under his shoe, the small, round, white pill on the floor in Stefan’s bedroom, how the shape and the smell of the pill reminded him of something. He remembers the curtains that were closed, the door which wasn’t shut properly.
‘Don’t you like them?’ she asks, still smiling. He is aware that he is nodding. He tries to see if her eyes reveal anything. The mirror of the soul, where the truth can be found. But she merely looks back at him. He looks alternately at the sweets and at her.
‘Halloooo?’
Anette waves her hand in front of his face. He holds the sweet between his thumb and index finger and smells it.
‘What are you doing?’ Anette giggles, munching on.
‘No, I — ’
His voice is feeble, lacking in air. The number 11 tram pulls into Olaf Ryes Square. Its wheels screech. It sounds like a cross between a pig squealing and a sawmill.
‘That’s my tram,’ Anette says and makes to leave. She scrutinises his face. ‘Thanks for dinner. Got to run. See you soon.’
She smiles and she is gone. He stands there looking after her. Her backpack bounces up and down as she jogs. He is still staring at her when she boards the blue-and-white tram. When the doors close and the tram glides down towards the city centre, she takes a window seat and looks back at him.
Her eyes bore into him like sharp teeth.
*
It takes him forever to walk home. He can barely lift his legs and has to force them to move. All he can think about is Anette’s smile as she left, the backpack which she didn’t put on properly, which bounced up and down as she started to run and caused the stickers with the names of exotic, faraway places to perform a peculiar dance before his eyes.
He relives it, over and over, while his shoes make dragging noises against the tarmac, crashing like cymbals. The sound rises, gets wings and mixes with the rain, which has increased in intensity, as he passes the queue outside Villa Paradiso. People inside are eating pizza, drinking, smiling, laughing. He tries to concentrate, he recalls Anette’s eyes, the relief in them, the degree of satisfaction, only a few hours after she was knocked out by a stun gun. And he hears Tore Benjaminsen mimicking her voice:
What’s the point of being a genius if nobody knows?
Anette, he thinks. You might very well be the smartest woman I’ve ever met. With the taste of Knott still in his mouth, he turns into Seilduksgate with the feeling that he and everybody else have been conned.
Chapter 71
The pleasant feeling he enjoyed only a few hours ago has been sucked out of him. Back then he was elated, pleased with himself, delighted to have got himself a new source and thrown a bone to Iver Gundersen.
Now his steps are heavy like lead.
He reaches his block and wonders if Anette tricked Stefan into believing that she would also kill herself. Was that was why he lay huddled up against the wall? Because she was lying next to him in the narrow bed?
But why?
Again, he is reminded of Tore Benjaminsen, who thought that Anette was ultimately a lesbian, even though she had had several flings with men. Perhaps it’s that simple, Henning speculates. Henriette flirted with Anette, who mistakenly believed that Henriette was genuinely interested in her, only to be rejected. Anette had probably been dumped before, like most people, but not rejected. Not by someone she loved. And so she experienced, for the very first time, how much it hurt. The thin, dangerous line between love and hate.
A smart woman, he thinks, as he remembers what she said in the tent: her script, too, made it obvious. This makes him wonder if the script might have been Anette’s idea. Perhaps it was she who insisted on the Gaarder storyline, so everyone would think that Yngve Foldvik had had an affair with Henriette? Foldvik told Henning that the script was written by Henriette, but that Anette was very likely to have had a say in it.
But when did it start, he wonders? When did her plan take shape?
He remembers what she said about her first meeting with Stefan, after he won the script competition. Perhaps the wheels were set in motion that evening? Perhaps she decided to direct his script to get close to him, so she could manipulate him? She would be the woman who realised his dream. And everything in the film industry takes time. There are meetings about meetings about meetings. It would be relatively easy to pull the wool over Stefan’s eyes and, anyway, he would be dead by the time the film was completed.
What had she said to him, what words did she use to trigger his rage? Did she say that women like Henriette turn men into rapists who destroy families? It wouldn’t be difficult to inflame Stefan with this kind of logic, given what his mother had been subjected to. The more Henning thinks about it, the more he becomes convinced that Anette guided Stefan the whole way. Like a true director.
He is also convinced that they, or perhaps it was only Anette, tried to implicate Mahmoud Marhoni by texting him from Henriette’s mobile, just like in the script. The references to infidelity and the photograph on Henriette’s e-mail would be hard to explain away. It would be Marhoni’s word against a dead woman’s text messages. And no one would have a problem believing that Henriette had two-timed him. After all, she was a great flirt. The one everyone wanted. Including Anette.
He sees Stefan’s dead face before him, lying in his bed, pressed up against the wall. Did Anette promise to follow him? Did they make a suicide pact? How did she manage to trick him? Didn’t he notice that her pills were different? Why -
Hang on. Henning has an idea. And once the thought is in his head, he unlocks his entrance door fast. He takes no notice of his post, he strides up the stairs, ignoring the pain which screams in his hips and his legs. He opens his front door and sets down his laptop on the kitchen table. He climbs up the stepladder, as quickly as he can, and replaces all the batteries, before he takes off his jacket and opens a drawer in a driftwood cupboard. He sifts through receipts, takeaway menus, candles, matchboxes, hellish matchboxes, business cards, but they are not what he is looking for. He comes across a bottle of rum, Bacardi, yuk, more takeaway menus, and there, under an old ice hockey scorecard he has kept for some reason, he finds the business card he knew he hadn’t thrown away. He stares at it, sees Dr Helge Bruunsgaard’s name printed into the white, textured cardboard.
He takes out his mobile, notices that the battery is low, but thinks it should last for the call he is about to make.
The telephone rings for a long time, before Dr Helge replies. Henning’s breathing quickens when the familiar voice exuding enthusiasm and optimism says: ‘Is that you, Henning?’
‘Hi, Helge,’ he says.
‘How are you? What’s it like to be back at work?’
‘Er, good. Listen, I’m not calling this late on a Friday evening to talk about myself. I need your help. Your professional help with a story I’m working on. Can I trouble you for a few minutes? I imagine you’re on your way home?’
‘Yes, I am, but that’s all right, Henning. I’m stuck in heavy traffic, there has been an accident, so tell me, what do you want to know?’