Bjarne watches as Nøkleby struggles to phrase her suggestion.
‘Massage his ego,’ she says. ‘Include him a little in what we’re doing – off the record, of course – and make it clear that you’re doing him a favour, not the other way round. Make him feel that we’re on the same team. Though the breach is regrettable, I don’t think Henning is interested in damaging the police in any way. That has certainly never been his agenda before.’
‘He’s going to see through me,’ Bjarne objects.
‘Perhaps. But I think it might be worth a try. We’re fire fighting here, but I don’t want to call the fire brigade. It would only aggravate the situation.’
Bjarne’s shoulders tense up. A vein throbs in his temple.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he says, attempting to sound confident though he isn’t sure Nøkleby buys it. Nevertheless she gets up, smooths her skirt and smiles. Bjarne gets up too; Nøkleby puts her hand on his shoulder and sends him a gaze laden with expectation.
‘But I can’t promise you anything,’ he says. ‘I can’t just ask Henning a question about Indicia out of the blue. I need time.’
‘Of course, I understand. Use your analytical skills. I know how good you are at extracting information from people.’
Bjarne beams; he feels effervescent. Pia Nøkleby hardly ever praises anyone. And though she probably only said it to flatter him, it still worked.
She smiles once more before she leaves the room. Bjarne sits down again and exhales noisily. As if he didn’t have enough on his mind already.
Chapter 66
Henning doesn’t feel the soft, rocking movements of the bus as it makes its way back to the centre of Oslo. Nor is he aware of the darkness that is descending on the city. Stripes of dark blue change into purple before finally mutating into grey and black.
Did the Kjær family’s dog have an accident? Or did someone kill it?
You have to be one unlucky dog to die from such a relatively minor injury. And why wasn’t the rest of its body damaged?
The dog was killed, Henning concludes, and it was left on the veranda steps in the Kjærs’ garden so that everyone – especially the children – would see it. And that, Henning thinks, is brutal. It’s twisted. And it’s impossible not to interpret it as a direct threat to the family. Kjær must be in some kind of trouble. A policeman can have many enemies.
Henning forgot to ask the children when their dog died, but he will have to do that later. He gets off the bus at Alexander Kiellands Plass, but rather than go home, he goes to Dælenenga Sports Park and gazes at the football pitch. He sits there until it’s completely dark in the west. And though he can’t see any clouds, it feels as if the air is pregnant with raindrops only waiting to be released.
Once he gets home, he sits down with his laptop and tries to contact 6tiermes7, but again he is unsuccessful. He heats a ready-meal in the microwave and eats it in silence. Sated, he paces up and down the living-room floor while he thinks. As always when he passes the piano, he thinks he ought to try playing a little, but he doesn’t know how to make himself do it.
He stops in front of the IKEA bookcase, which is packed with CDs. Bands and artists lined up and organised alphabetically. Henning can remember the tunes, of course, but not how they sound here, in his new flat. He can’t remember playing a single CD since he moved in just over six months ago when a flat with a balcony facing his old flat became available to rent.
He selects the soundtrack to The Thin Red Line and feeds the disc into a dusty CD player. He presses ‘play’ and sets the volume to 3; he doesn’t want it to start too violently. The soundtrack begins as low, soft vibrations in the floor; the sound rises out into the room and soon a repetitive keyboard chord is keeping him company. Slowly Hans Zimmer’s violins take over.
It feels so strange to stand there, in his new flat, listening to music again. It’s as if the room changes and becomes alive. And he can’t understand why he hasn’t listened to music until now.
He sits down on the sofa, quietly taking in the first track. Then he lies down and closes his eyes, but not to sleep. Track two begins, a lovely, unhurried and lyrical piece of music. And as he hears the score again, he is convinced that The Thin Red Line is the best war movie he has ever seen.
Track three is his favourite. In the movie US forces race to the top of the ridge on the small Japanese island they are trying to take control of. The scene starts low-key, almost subdued, then the soundtrack grows louder. At the end – when the soldiers are shooting and killing and running around in a kind of blood lust – only the music remains. Not a gunshot, a death cry or the sound of a single explosion is heard. Only the music.
Only the magic.
The moment is ruined when the doorbell rings. Henning turns down the volume, plods over to the intercom by the front door and asks who it is. A familiar voice answers from the pavement: ‘Hi, it’s Nora.’
Henning doesn’t reply immediately, but his breathing becomes more laboured.
‘Can I come up?’
Henning hesitates before he says yes, of course she can. He can hear her footsteps against the tarmac in the archway. The sound gives him butterflies in his stomach.
Nora rings the bell at the bottom of the stairs to his flat. Henning lets her in. Half a minute later she reaches the second floor. Henning waits for her in the doorway. Nora is out of breath after the stairs and stops right in front of him.
‘Hi,’ she says again.
They stand there looking at each other for a few seconds until Henning opens the door fully and invites her in. At that very moment he is struck by the urge to tidy up until he realises that the place is actually quite neat already. His shoes are lined up against the wall. His jackets are on pegs. He has also cleared away his plate and glass, and washed up everything he used for dinner.
Nora enters.
From the living room Zimmer’s bewitching notes float towards them. It feels like he is visiting someone else and yet at the same time it doesn’t. It feels strange. It feels very strange indeed to have Nora back in his flat again.
She kicks off her shoes and hangs up her jacket, then she follows him into the kitchen. Henning doesn’t sit down; he just stands there looking at her. Clammy and tense. Warm and disturbing. There is something in Nora’s eyes that Henning doesn’t like. At the same time he likes it all too much.
‘How are you?’ he asks.
‘Well,’ she says, still breathless. ‘All right. I think.’
The pitch of her voice rises as she speaks.
‘Lots to do,’ she adds. ‘Especially now.’
‘There’s always lots to do,’ Henning says.
‘Yes,’ she laughs.
Silence. Oppressive and awkward.
‘Can I offer you something to drink?’ Henning asks.
Nora’s face looks pensive.
‘Yes, why not?’
‘What do you fancy?’
Henning goes over to the fridge, opens it and looks inside. Cans of Coke. A carton of milk that is definitely well past its sell-by date. Three bottles of Tuborg. A bottle of white wine he won in a Friday lottery he didn’t even know he was taking part in.
‘I’ll have a glass of white wine, please, if you’re having one,’ she says.
Henning can’t remember the last time he drank wine. But he takes out the bottle, finds a corkscrew and removes the cork, not without some difficulty.
‘Is not exactly Chablis, but—’
Henning smiles apologetically, remembering Nora’s favourite wine, which they would often share a bottle or two of on Friday evenings when they had eaten their tacos and Jonas was asleep.