He blinks and carefully opens his eyes.
It is a new day. It means he only has two days left.
The realisation makes him feel dizzy. The pills he took last night always have that effect on him. They slow him down. But the thought of what he is going to do today makes him leap out of bed and go over to the computer. Has she told the whole world where she is? And what she is doing?
Of course she has.
He goes to the bathroom and washes his face. Puts on his clothes and gets ready. Takes some pills with him, different ones that make him stronger. Then he goes outside. Out into a day, the number of which is decreasing.
But it makes no difference. All he can think about is how it will feel. If he’ll be there this time, all of him. When the light goes out.
Chapter 39
Henning made a point of asking if the rental firm had a yellow car, but had to settle for a small white vehicle that hasn’t even clocked up 3,000 kilometres. Now it has clocked up another forty and his first stop is Jessheim School – one of Erna Pedersen’s former employers.
It’s more than sixteen years since she stopped working there and Henning realises there is a limit to what he can hope to achieve in just one morning. Even so he parks the car and enters the school’s playground, an area that has changed considerably since Henning was last in Jessheim. He played a football match here when he was in Year Five. It was a big deal at the time for a class from Kløfta to come all the way to Jessheim to play. It was rivalry at its best – and at its worst. On the lumpy pitch behind the school they played two halves of twenty minutes each and won 5–2. Henning scored three of the goals. He can still remember being lifted up on the teacher’s shoulders after the match.
If Tom Sverre Pedersen was right and the school walls used to be covered in graffiti about his mother, there is no trace of it now. The paint on the walls look fresh and the school has been extended since Henning took part in the legendary football match back in the eighties.
He walks around to the rear of the school. Everything looks much better than he remembers it. Back in his day the place was unloved and filthy. Today there are green areas. A new volleyball sand court. The football pitch that Henning used play on now looks like something a reasonably well-off football club would use for training purposes. It feels a little odd to be retracing his footsteps now that the past has been erased and replaced with something better. But he tries to visualise them, the pupils who detested Erna Pedersen, what they did, what they thought. The graffiti on the walls would probably have been removed as soon as it was discovered and the culprits probably wouldn’t have been hard to find. But would the kid who hated her most have done something quite so obvious?
Maybe. Maybe not. People differ. But if Henning had wanted to hate, he would have picked a spot where he could nurse his hatred. A specific place that no one could destroy, erase or restore.
Henning looks around. None of the pupils is outside. The sun shines on the school’s windows, but he can see activity behind them. There are some trees at the end of the playground close to the fence separating it from the grey high-rise buildings on the other side. Trees of various heights. Trees you can climb.
Henning studies them as he walks over to them. The branches stretch up high and spread to the sides, some of them have become tangled up in each other. He reckons there are ten or twelve trees clustered together.
He looks around for the thickest branch, tests it and starts to climb. He can find no carvings in the tree trunk after the first or the second metre, so he climbs back down again and tries the next tree. Same result. An elderly woman with a Zimmer frame walks past on the pavement outside the fence. Henning smiles to her before he scales yet another tree; he manages to climb quite high; he swings one leg over the biggest, fattest branch, leans into the tree trunk and looks around.
No.
Nothing.
And yet somehow he feels closer to the killer, or at least he can imagine having a place like this, a place where you can sit and think and feel and hate. The school photo that was removed from Erna Pedersen’s wall and the word ‘fractions’ that she uttered in horror the day before she was killed both suggest that someone truly loathed her. And that her death is linked to her job as a teacher.
Henning climbs back down again and goes inside the school just as the bell goes for break; a small boy helps him find the head teacher’s office. The head teacher isn’t there today, a helpful secretary tells Henning, but perhaps she can help?
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Henning says and smiles to the friendly woman with the long, black hair. ‘Tell me, how does it work – do you keep old yearbooks here?’
‘Yes, indeed we do,’ she smiles. ‘But we don’t have very many of them. We didn’t start producing yearbooks until the mid-noughties, I think.’
‘So if I were to ask you to find me a school photo that includes Erna Pedersen then you wouldn’t have it?’
The secretary’s smile freezes.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘So that’s why you’re asking.’
Henning realises that news of the murder of Erna Pedersen has obviously reached her former employer. He introduces himself and explains the reason for his visit.
‘I’m trying to find someone who knew her when she worked here. Do you have any teachers who were hired before Pedersen retired in 1993?’
The secretary thinks about it.
‘We have quite a young team here, so I don’t think so. But if you’re looking for a photo of her, you’re better off trying one of her former pupils. If you can find one, that is.’
Another smile.
‘Yes, that’s just it,’ Henning says. ‘Anyway, thanks for your help.’
Chapter 40
The uneven tarmac rumbles under the car. Bjarne looks across to the passenger seat where Ella Sandland is gazing out through the window.
‘I’ve been thinking about the care workers at Grünerhjemmet,’ he says. ‘Nielsen, Sund and Thorbjørnsen.’
‘What about them?’
Bjarne holds up one finger.
‘We know that Daniel Nielsen lied about what he had been doing when we visited him in his flat yesterday. He hadn’t been working out at Svein’s Gym as he claimed. We know that he stopped by the care home last Sunday to drop something off and that the time of his visit fits with the time of the killing. And none of the staff knew the victim better than him.’
Bjarne holds up a second finger.
‘We know that Ole Christian Sund was at work when Erna Pedersen was killed and that he was most likely the man who drove Daniel Nielsen up to Holmenkollen yesterday for reasons we’ve yet to establish. So they’re more than just colleagues. They could be protecting each other.’
‘Don’t forget that Sund’s son was present at the care home that evening,’ Sandland objects. ‘Surely you don’t think that Sund took part in a brutal murder while his son was just around the corner?’
‘Hush, I’m on a roll here. And then we have Pernille Thorbjørnsen,’ Bjarne says, holding up a third finger. But the train of thought that was so clear in his head has been derailed.
‘What about her?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bjarne says. ‘But it was her car they used to drive up to Holmenkollen yesterday. Sund and Nielsen, I mean.’
‘But that’s not exactly a crime.’
‘No, but I’ve had another thought. What kind of temptation might staff in a care home be exposed to?’