It feels as if the walls are trying to crush him into tiny pieces so he gets up and leaves the flat, moving quickly down the stairs once he has locked the door behind him.
The heat hits him as he steps outside. Three teenagers are sitting on a bench beneath a window in the courtyard, smoking. They look up at him as if he is insane, but Henning ignores them. He hurries past them out into the street and the dry summer dust. He walks past the old sail loft that gives the street its name and turns into Fosseveien. Cars drive by slowly. A grown man on a skateboard grins broadly as Henning moves out of his way.
He finds an empty spot on the grassy slope opposite Kuba Bru and watches the river Aker flow by lazily. Around him people are laughing, drinking beer, barbecuing or soaking up the sun.
They’re alive.
While the wrong people die.
Henning lies down and stares up at the sky. Tore Pulli is dead. He is gone. It’s weird, but it feels as if he has lost a friend. And when he thinks about it, perhaps he has.
Thorleif is reminded of Will Smith and the film Enemy of the State as he walks out into Karl Johansgate. Smith played a lawyer who was unaware that he had microphones and transmitters all over his body. Even his watch and shoes had been fitted with high-tech equipment which meant that Jon Voight’s team of rogue NSA agents knew absolutely everything that Smith did. The film’s tagline was ‘In God we trust. The rest we monitor.’
Thorleif doesn’t know how sophisticated the technology the man with the ponytail and his fellow thugs are using is, but they seem to know a great deal about him, and Thorleif can’t afford to take any chances. He glances over his shoulder before walking into the nearest budget clothes shop where he buys five pairs of socks, four pairs of underpants, a pair of long dark trousers, a pair of shorts, three white T-shirts, a thin cotton jumper and a denim jacket. Then he finds a shoe shop and buys a pair of trainers. He uses the lavatory at a Burger King restaurant to change and leaves all his old clothes behind.
Before going outside again, he waits in the restaurant for a few minutes and watches everyone around him, including the people in the street, until he feels confident that no one is waiting for him or keeping him under surveillance.
It takes him only seconds to cross the street and enter Arkaden Mall where he buys a black baseball cap. Afterwards he finds the nearest ATM and withdraws as much cash as he can first using his Visa card, then maxing out his previously untouched MasterCard.
Thorleif tries to suppress the urge to run when he exits on the other side of Arkaden. He walks briskly in the direction of Byporten Shopping Centre, enters through a revolving door and continues up two escalators while people rush around him. He passes a cafe, several clothes shops and makes eye contact with a pretty shop assistant at Handy Size before passing a supermarket, a bookshop and a kiosk. He has arrived at the forecourt of Oslo Central Station.
Leaving everything and everyone behind like this is pure madness, he thinks. But what choice does he have? If he stays, he will very likely be killed, probably today. If he is interviewed by the police, they will surely break him in the end and then his options are confessing to the murder and claiming responsibility for it or telling them everything. If he chooses to talk or if the police make him, the man with the ponytail will hurt Elisabeth and the children. In ways he can’t bear to think about.
The only sensible solution, Thorleif concludes, is to do what he is doing now. Get the hell out of Oslo. He wonders how long it will be before he is reported missing. Guri and Ole will wonder why he never returned to the office. They will try to call him on his mobile but will get no reply. They might ring Elisabeth to ask if he has come home though they will probably put that off for as long as they can. But it will be sometime tonight, Thorleif thinks. Before that, he needs to have found himself a place to hide. Until then his job is to make himself as invisible as possible.
Thorleif has reached the large departure boards at the station. An anthill of people is milling around. It is impossible to determine if any of them are watching him. He just has to hope that his diversion tactics have been successful.
Buses are out of the question. Too claustrophobic and too slow. So he checks the list of InterCity trains. Skien, Lillehammer, Bergen, Halden, Trondheim. The train to Bergen departs in nine minutes, he sees. The one to Gothenburg in eight. With his pulse throbbing in his neck, Thorleif rushes over to one of the numerous red ticket machines. He types in the letters and feeds money into the slot.
‘The train to Eidsvoll is ready to depart from platform number 10.’
Thorleif snatches the ticket and sets off. The train leaves in four minutes. And he still has one more thing to do.
Chapter 49
When Orjan Mjones catches sight of his own reflection in the shop window, he has to make an effort not to grin. Everything went according to plan. His plan. And no screw-ups this time.
It was bloody brilliant.
But it’s not over yet. The home leg remains. Getting rid of Brenden and picking up the rest of the money. After that he will leave Oslo for good. He can’t risk staying here or returning later if Brenden’s absence proves problematic.
Mjones laughs to himself. Problematic?
He has yet to decide on a destination, but it will be far away. He feels a strong urge to go to the woods and sleep under the trees for weeks. He could do that, of course, but not in Norway. And he certainly isn’t going to a place where cheap cocktails and scantily clad women are as easily accessible as the beach. That kind of life has never appealed to him.
Once he has collected the cash, he won’t need to work. Not for a long time. The question is how long he can manage without it. Idleness gives him cabin fever. His brain needs stimulating, and work makes him feel alive.
Around him people are rushing with briefcases in their hands or dragging suitcases behind them as they throw swift, panicky glances at their watches or mobiles. Mjones has nothing but contempt for those who subject themselves to this every day for a whole lifetime. It is so humdrum.
Mjones has never been attracted to a life of respectability. As a teenager, he carried out ram-raids most weeks. It was easy to do, and the cops were always completely baffled. Why should he be stuck in some dead-end job earning 180 kroner per hour when he could easily make a quarter of a million in a weekend?
He had a girlfriend once who tried to turn him into a law-abiding citizen, but he only lasted a couple of months. Every day he would sit in an office trying to sell some rubbish while his body ached to be elsewhere, casing a joint, on a job, mapping and planning. His mother had asked him several times why he couldn’t respect the law like everyone else, but that wasn’t who he was. He enjoyed destruction, he got a thrill from stirring things up, he sought out excitement and action precisely so that life wouldn’t be so bloody boring. It wasn’t society that turned him into a criminal. It was a life he had chosen for himself. And if he had the chance to live his life all over again, the result would have been exactly the same.
His inside pocket vibrates. Mjones takes out his mobile and answers it.
‘We’ve a problem,’ Jeton Pocoli says.
‘Go on.’
‘Number One. I don’t know where he is.’
Mjones’s smile freezes. He transfers the mobile from one hand to the other, pulls a face and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.
‘Where did you lose him?’
‘He went into Burger King. I walked up and down outside for five to ten minutes, but I started to worry when he never reappeared. I went inside to look for him. I found his clothes in the gents.’