He thinks hard. ‘Juul or something like that.’
Another silence.
‘Henning Juul?’
‘Yes, it could be him. Do you know him?’
Long silence.
‘I know who he is.’
What if the reporter was right? Robert wonders. What if Tore really was innocent? In which case, the list of alternative suspects is very short indeed.
The next moment someone rings the doorbell. Van Derksen gets up, gives the punchbag suspended from the ceiling a Pulli elbow and goes over to the intercom on the wall. He asks who it is‚ but receives no reply. Through the handset he hears hard footsteps on the stairs.
‘Hello?’ he calls out. Downstairs, the front door slams shut. Probably a cold caller, he thinks, and goes back to the living room. He has barely sat down when there is a knock on his door. Wearily, he gets up again and goes out into the hallway. He opens the door and stares at a face that makes his blood run cold. He instinctively takes a step back. And at that moment he knows that he is going to die.
Chapter 103
Bjarne Brogeland is roused from a chaotic dream. He contracts his abdominal muscles and sits up, finds the luminous instrument of torture on his bedside table and answers the call before the ring tone wakes Anita. The duty officer in the control room briefs him while Brogeland registers Anita’s grunting and stirring.
‘Okay,’ he whispers. ‘I’m on my way.’
He tiptoes out of the bedroom as softly as he can and closes the door behind him. Yet another murder, he sighs and knows immediately what the next few days will look like. The initial phase is the most important. The first twenty-four to forty-eight hours are about building the best possible foundations for the investigation. In practice this means that huge resources are reassigned without delay, forensic technicians, investigators and as many officers deployed as possible — in consultation with the head of the Violent Crimes Unit. Everyone drops whatever they are doing and heads for the crime scene. Everybody knows their role and the job they have been trained to do. Fortunately, it is a well-oiled piece of machinery.
It takes him fifteen minutes to reach Vibesgate. Red-and-white police tape has been stretched around the whole block. Nosy onlookers have congregated as usual even though it is past midnight. Cars are parked along pavements, illegally, but no one cares about that now. Brogeland nods to a crime-scene technician before he bumps into Detective Constable Emil Hagen.
It doesn’t surprise Brogeland that Hagen is already there. There is competition to be the first at a crime scene, or at least there is between Hagen and Detective Constable Fredrik Stang. But Stang hasn’t arrived yet as far as Brogeland can see. And it irritates him that Hagen always looks so bloody bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. His footsteps are bouncing, his mouth half open. The gap between his front teeth makes him look so damn young.
‘What happened?’ Brogeland asks.
‘Man in his early thirties, shot five times.’
‘Five times?’
‘Yes. I’ve just spoken to one of the neighbours, but he heard nothing.’
‘He didn’t hear five shots?’ Brogeland says in disbelief.
Hagen shrugs. ‘Silencer, possibly.’
‘Hm. Calibre?’
‘Nine millimetre. The flat belongs to a Robert van Derksen, and it’s very likely that he’s the victim.’
Brogeland walks around in a small circle. The name sounds familiar, he thinks, as they enter the courtyard. Neighbours peer down from open windows. The flowerbed next to van Derksen’s stairwell appears to have been dug up by a dog. There is scattered soil in front of the entrance.
‘Have we found any evidence upstairs?’
‘We found a shoe print outside his front door.’
‘Which doesn’t belong to van Derksen?’
‘That remains to be seen,’ Hagen says, shaking his head. ‘But I don’t think so. It looks like a smaller shoe size.’
Henning gets the message from Heidi Kjus just as he is about to leave his flat. ‘ Murder in number 2 Vibesgate. Can you go straight there?’
Henning rings her immediately rather than reply to her text message. Neither of them bothers with small talk, and Kjus gives him a quick update.
‘So are you going over there?’ Heidi asks.
‘Okay,’ Henning sighs.
He had been chatting with 6tiermes7 the night before and had intended to start the day by breaking the news about Orjan Mjones, but that will have to wait now. He is confident that the news won’t reach anyone else until he has finished in Vibesgate.
Before he leaves, he visits the Yellow Pages website and types in 2 Vibesgate in the search field. It will be some time before the police confirm the victim’s identity, he assumes. He gets two pages of hits and prints them out. As he picks up the sheets, he quickly skims the names. And then he stops and looks up.
‘Oh, sod it,’ he says, softly.
Henning sees that several of his colleagues are already there, and he goes up to the police liaison officer, a tall man in uniform who looks stern-faced and grey as he answers the standard questions according to the book. Henning asks a few of them himself but gets no useful information. It’s too early to say. We’re working on securing evidence. The usual.
A little later, Brogeland emerges and marches resolutely down a side street. Henning makes sure that nobody follows him and catches up with him just as the inspector is about to get into a patrol car.
‘You’re kept busy these days,’ Henning begins. ‘First you arrest Orjan Mjones, the man who arranged the murder of Tore Pulli, and then one of Pulli’s friends is killed on the same day he has an argument with another of Pulli’s friends at Pulli’s funeral.’
Brogeland looks sharply at Henning. ‘What’s on your mind?’
Henning tells him about the altercation between Robert van Derksen and Petter Holte.
‘It’s the body of Robert van Derksen you’ve found, isn’t it?’
Brogeland sighs. ‘You can’t write that it’s him, Henning. Not yet.’
‘I know. So when can I?’
‘I don’t know. We haven’t even told his next of kin.’
‘Okay, I’ll hold fire until you give me the go-ahead, but I want to know before you issue a press release.’
Brogeland looks hard at Henning for a long time before he gets into the car. Before he turns the key in the ignition, he glances up at Henning and nods.
Chapter 104
The patrol car drives off without sirens, but at high speed. Henning watches it disappear around the corner before he takes out his mobile and calls Heidi Kjus. He knows that she hates to act as a switchboard for reporters in the field, but this time she accepts instructions from a field agent without asking questions. Nor does she express an opinion on the quotes from Robert van Derksen’s horrified neighbours. Instead she asks him when he is coming in.
‘I haven’t finished here,’ Henning lies.
There isn’t much more for him to do in Vibesgate, but he has other plans. Plans he doesn’t want to share with Heidi.
Henning flags down a cab and goes to Niels Henrik Abelsgate. It doesn’t take him long to establish that Veronica Nansen isn’t at home so he continues to Ulleval Stadium. There he locates the offices of Nansen Models AS on the second floor, next door to a clinic for allergy and respiratory diseases. Strange juxtaposition to a business that provides scantily clad entertainment, Henning thinks, but dismisses the thought as he enters a reception area and nods to the woman behind the shiny, boomerang-shaped glass counter.
‘Veronica Nansen?’ he says.
‘What’s it about?’
‘I need to speak to Veronica. She knows who I am.’
‘She is a bit busy right now.’
‘Just tell her Henning Juul needs to speak to her,’ he says. ‘And that it’s important.’