He inhales and realises at that moment how exhausted he is. He goes to one of the bedrooms and lies down, covering himself with the pale-blue duvet without putting on bed linen, and closes his eyes. Minutes later he is asleep.
Chapter 55
Iver Gundersen lets himself into his flat and heaves a sigh as he dumps his shoulder-bag on the floor up against the wall. He kicks off his shoes, goes over to the fridge to get a beer, flops into an armchair in the living room and turns on the television. He downs most of the beer in four gulps, then drinks a few more mouthfuls. He realises that one beer won’t be enough tonight.
He should really be with Nora, but he hasn’t got the energy to play the lover after working twelve or possibly thirteen hours. All he can manage is to let the evening come. He wouldn’t be able to lie next to Nora, sensing her expectation of intimacy, their arms wrapped around each other, her breathing wafting across his face as they sleep. She can’t sleep, she says, unless she is burrowing into his naked arm or shoulder. Preferably while snuggled up to his throat.
Nora also happens to be a particularly restless sleeper, her arms and legs sprawled all over the place or violently flung aside — often without warning. And when he wakes up — early, as he always does when he sleeps at her place — she will cling to him until he spoons with her, holding her, gently caressing her back and side. It’s never enough. No, Iver thinks. He definitely hasn’t got the energy for that performance tonight.
She was annoyed, of course; Iver could hear it in her voice. Or not annoyed as such, more disappointed. But at least Nora knows what it’s like to be with someone who doesn’t care what day of the week or what time it is when a story breaks. Not that there is much left of that particular side to Henning Juul.
They never discuss her, but even so Iver knows that Henning finds it hard to have to work alongside the man who replaced him. Iver has never asked Nora if she still has feelings for Henning because he can tell from looking at her. Anything else would be strange given how their marriage ended. Never stir up a hornet’s nest, Iver reminds himself. Not if you don’t want to get stung.
He sits up when TV2’s nine o’clock news begins. He saw how the channel hinted at footage of Tore Pulli’s death during the early evening news, very clever of them. He always enjoys seeing pictures of a subject he is covering himself. Live images of a person only seconds before their life ends adds an extra dimension to a story. He turns up the volume and hears Guri Palme’s dramatic voice over the broadcast.
TV2 has nothing new or spectacular to report about the death itself, Iver soon ascertains, but then again they don’t have to. They already have the cream. He sees Guri’s panicky, clumsy reaction, how she disappears off screen and calls for help. There is nothing fake about her behaviour. This is reality TV at its best.
It is some years since Iver and Guri were at Oslo College of Journalism together. Guri was the kind of girl who would have her hair styled for the school photo, who asked the stills photographer to include her cleavage in head shots and who would spend a week on a tanning bed before a recording, whether it was college work or private. She went to the gym four times a week, at least, concentrating on her stomach, bottom and legs.
But she was also bright — Iver had spotted that immediately — and ambitious. Two very helpful attributes if you want to get ahead in their profession. And it didn’t take many bonding beers with lecturers or media personalities before Iver understood that Guri had an appetite for men that could only further her career.
Consequently, he was rather mystified when he started noticing Guri’s probing eyes on him, her penetrating gaze, her too-quick and false giggling whenever he made a remark that could generously be interpreted as amusing. There were brief, furtive glances over piles of books in the reading room. And the inevitable happened. After a drunken night on the town they collapsed into bed together — without any clothes on.
They were never an item, far from it, but while they were at college they hooked up every now and then to take full advantage of each other. It was good and uncomplicated. It’s like that with some people: there is an indefinable attraction, a spark whenever you look at each other, and you can’t help but give in to it.
After graduation they started job hunting. Guri had had a student placement at TV2, and to begin with she took all the shifts she could get there. But she was looking for her break, the scoop that would make her name. One night, after they had expended some excess energy and were lying in bed pillow-talking, she shared her concerns with him. ‘I need a scoop,’ she had sighed, blowing smoke up towards the ceiling. Her forehead was glistening in the glow from the street light that seeped in through the curtains. He was momentarily lost contemplating her smooth skin.
‘Perhaps I can help you,’ he heard himself say and regretted it immediately. But there was no way back. At the time Iver was brimming with confidence having already broken several stories that had made the headlines. And, as is often the case when a reporter has written several high-profile stories, the reporter becomes noticed and people bring him tip-offs that lead to more scoops.
One tip-off he hadn’t yet managed to investigate — and neither did he know when he would find the time to — concerned an employee in a construction company in Sorlandet who had — allegedly — received a number of private gifts from a subcontractor as a kickback for securing the subcontractor in question work on a road-building project worth billions. Guri found out that the employee, a forty-seven-year-old man from Vennesla, was one of the construction managers on the project and the ‘thank yous’ he had been given included a private garage at his home address in addition to several deposits paid into his bank account at various intervals. In total, the gifts were worth just over 300,000 kroner. The man had tried to cover up the bribes with fictitious invoices.
Guri created a stir, wrote several excellent follow-up articles about corruption in Norway and interviewed the world’s leading non-governmental anti-corruption organisation, Transparency International, who announced later that year that Norway was the most corrupt country in Scandinavia. Guri also secured an interview with the Norwegian-born French magistrate and politician Eva Joly, a famous anti-corruption scourge and the topic was hotly debated both on Tabloid on TV2 and on other news channels. It might not have been a major scoop, but it helped Guri get noticed. Shortly afterwards, TV2 offered her a permanent contract.
She had arrived.
Guri started dating a senior TV2 executive, Iver met Nora, and since then they have stayed out of each other’s beds. But Iver knows that the spark is still there, a delicious tension that simmers between them. And Guri is well aware that she owes him a favour.
The picture of Tore Pulli freezes on the screen as Prison Governor Borre Kolberg tells viewers that he can’t discuss Tore Pulli’s medical history before the journalist announces that an autopsy will be carried out on Pulli’s body as is standard procedure when a death is unexplained. Iver turns off the television, lights a cigarette and mulls it all over before he picks his mobile up from the coffee table and searches for Guri Palme’s number amongst his contacts. He stares at her name for a while before he presses call. And he thinks it’s definitely just as well that he isn’t with Nora tonight.
Chapter 56
After hours of mindless TV-watching, Henning’s brain starts to work again. At eleven o’clock that evening he opens FireCracker 2.0, the program Henning’s source within the police wrote a couple of years ago for their confidential two-way communication, and checks to see if 6tiermes7 is logged on. The minutes pass. Then there is a ding-dong sound as if someone had rung the doorbell.