‘Okay,’ Henning says. ‘It sounds as if we’ll just have to wait and see.’
‘Yes, you’ve got it.’
‘Thank you so much for your help.’
‘You’re very welcome.’
Henning ends the call and looks up. At the monitor in front of him Pulli is staring at Brenden. There is something wounded in his eyes.
Henning starts rubbing his arms. He doesn’t know why, but the image makes him shudder.
Chapter 65
Iver Gundersen looks at his watch. Kent Harry Hansen was meant to have turned up twenty-five minutes ago. Iver has investigated plenty of stories where the source gets cold feet and decides that they don’t want to talk after all. Words in print can be mighty, especially when you are the one who will be held accountable for them later regardless of whether you wrote or spoke them.
Iver would not have thought that of Hansen, who had said on the phone that he would be happy to talk about Tore as long as they could meet in Sagene, close to Hansen’s flat. This is why Iver is waiting at La Casa Spiseri, a restaurant that tempts him with the smell of food.
He can’t be bothered to do the return journey straight away so he orders a club sandwich and a beer from the waitress, who is only too happy to respond to his warm gaze with a smile. I ought to bring Nora here, he thinks. The whitewashed plastered walls, large red floor tiles and tables in matching colours lend the place a rustic charm.
She finally answered his calls, thank God, and said that dinner and a movie ‘sounded cute’. Cute, Iver snorts. Who the hell says cute to their boyfriend? He wonders if she ever said it to Henning.
A glass with condensation on the outside and an amber liquid on the inside arrives at the same time as a compact man with a tanned face and very short white hair. His T-shirt, which has the Fighting Fit logo printed on the black material in white and red, fits tightly across his paunch. His bellybutton can be seen in the upper circle of the second g. On his forearms Hansen has black tattoos that draw the eye up to his biceps, which bulge so much that the sleeves of his T-shirt look as if they are in danger of cutting off the blood supply. His biceps remind Iver of muscular thighs. His left ear lobe has studs which look like diamonds, but which Iver refuses to believe would have cost more than a hundred kroner.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Hansen says as he approaches Iver with swaggering, vigorous steps. Iver gets up and sticks out his hand.
‘I got your text, but a guy wanted to buy our entire stock of Gainomax Recovery and I had to order some more before I left. And then loads of people turned up for their workouts. Plus Gunhild was late coming back from her lunch break as usual. Have you been waiting a long time?’
‘I decided to stick around.’
Hansen takes Iver’s hand and squeezes it hard. He sits down, knocking into the table so the beer in Iver’s glass jolts.
‘Do you want something to eat or drink?’ Iver sits down again, moving his mobile away from his glass as he does so.
‘What you’ve ordered looks good, but I think I’ll pass. I’m meeting a customer later today. A cup of coffee would be welcome though.’
Iver holds up his hand and makes eye contact with the waitress. ‘Would you get us a cup of coffee, please?’ he says softly, followed by a smile. She smiles back at him as she leaves. Hansen moves closer and plants his elbows on the table. Iver does the same in an attempt to balance out the table’s weight distribution, but is nowhere near successful.
‘I should offer you my condolences first,’ Iver says.
‘Thank you.’
‘You knew each other well, I gather?’
‘Yes,’ Hansen sighs mournfully and looks down. ‘Rotten business.’
Iver nods, uncertain how to phrase the questions he has prepared in advance. It occurs to him that it might be a good idea to warm Hansen up with questions he already knows the answers to before revealing the real reason he is here. It takes some minutes; he learns that Tore was a great guy, the undisputed leader, and that ‘ no one would dare to mess with Tore.’ Iver can’t quite make up his mind whether Hansen really believes his own bluster or whether he only says it because Pulli is dead.
Once the coffee arrives and the waitress has left with a flirtatious smile, Iver leans back. He remembers Henning’s warning that it might prove difficult to crack open this story. For that reason, Iver thinks, resorting to more drastic measures could be necessary. ‘How’s business?’ he asks.
‘Not too bad.’
‘Do you still work with recovering addicts and the homeless?’
‘Not as many as we used to.’
‘Why not?’
‘Things changed after Vidar’s death.’
‘But you still get financial support from the Inner City Project?’
‘Yes, we do. And I still employ staff who are a part of that.’
Iver stops the rhythm of his questioning. ‘And how is your other business?’
Hansen looks at Iver. ‘What other business?’
‘The one with no paper trail?’ Iver clenches his right fist and punches it into his left palm. Hansen stares at Iver for a few seconds before he starts to laugh. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve heard that you run some of the enforcer business in Oslo from Vidar Fjell’s old office. Is that right?’
Hansen continues to smile. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’re one of those.’
Iver doesn’t reply, he merely waits for an answer.
‘If you had done your homework before coming here then you would know that Fighting Fit isn’t mixed up in that. We never were. And we never will be.’
‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’
‘Then you’ve heard wrong.’ The smile on Hansen’s face is gone.
‘So you deny that you run an enforcer business? That you use Fighting Fit as a front for-’
‘What the hell is this?’ Hansen interrupts him. ‘Why are you really here? I thought we were going to talk about Tore?’
‘We are. That’s what we’re doing.’
‘It seems more like harassment if you ask me, and you can forget about writing something that repeats what you just said in your paper or… ’ Hansen points his index finger at Iver.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ Iver replies. ‘But if you agree to help me, I might decide to forget about it. I’m trying to find out who actually killed Jocke Brolenius.’
Hansen stares at Iver for a long time.
‘Tore Pulli claimed that he arrived on time for his meeting with Brolenius, but he didn’t call the police until nineteen minutes past eleven o’clock. Could he have been delayed by something that happened at your gym that night?’
Hansen shakes his head. ‘Consider this a piece of friendly advice, Gundersen. Don’t go around making allegations you can’t prove. It’s not a very clever thing to do.’
Iver looks at the grave eyes in front of him and feels a shot of adrenalin spread through his body. ‘Are you saying you know who really killed Jocke Brolenius?’
Hansen pushes back his chair, gets up and glares at Iver before putting his hands on the table and leaning forwards. Iver tries to stay where he is, but he can’t help moving his head back.
‘You’re playing with fire,’ Hansen says quietly‚ and jabs his finger at Iver’s face. Iver tries hard to pretend that he isn’t scared. Then Hansen straightens up, heads for the door and slams it hard on his way out.
Chapter 66
Elisabeth Haaland stares at the ceiling but sees nothing, only a pale grey fog. She doesn’t know if she can cry any more, but every time she imagines Thorleif or thinks about him, what he is doing, where he is, the knot in her stomach tightens and she bursts into tears. Her thoughts repeat in a never-ending spiral without producing a single answer.