Henning has just switched on the kettle when his mobile beeps. He checks the message, sees that it is from the 123news breaking news service.
Truls Ove Henriksen has been appointed as the new Justice Secretary following the resignation of Trine Juul-Osmundsen. Henriksen, who comes from Tromsø, was previously a political adviser.
Henning has barely heard of Henriksen, but he still clicks on the link that follows the text message. The main text doesn’t add much more information about the appointment itself, but Henning notices that Harald Ullevik, considered by many to be Trine’s obvious successor, has resigned with immediate effect. No reasons given other than he ‘has decided to leave the government’.
Henning smiles; he would love to be a fly on the wall in the Justice Department right now, but he has more important things to do.
Bjarne Brogeland’s voice is sleepy when Henning finally gets hold of him. He, too, would appear to be taking it easy today.
‘Thanks for yesterday,’ Henning says.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘I’m glad it ended the way it did.’
‘Mm.’
‘I’ve just got one question for you. The Swedish Albanian criminals Ørjan Mjønes used to work with. Have you caught them yet?’
Brogeland doesn’t reply immediately.
‘You’re calling to ask me that now?’
‘Yes.’
Again it takes a while before Brogeland says anything. Henning hears him yawn.
‘Rough night?’
‘Are you sure that it’s morning?’
‘Quite.’
‘Right, the Swedish Albanians,’ Brogeland says. ‘I can double-check for you, but the last time we spoke about them, they were lying low. I guess most of them have left Norway.’
‘Scared that they would be banged up as well?’
‘Probably.’
‘So, in theory, they could be anywhere.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Okay,’ Henning sighs and they hang up.
But even if they have gone underground, Henning thinks, it must still be possible to find them. It’s just a matter of asking the right people.
Chapter 93
Bjarne lay in his bed all night, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. At one point he got up, went to his study and sat down with the application he had prepared for Vestfold Police. He reread his bombastic statements, ambitions and visions. Then he scrunched up the pages and threw them in the wastepaper basket.
Now he walks into the kitchen where Alisha sits on her Tripp Trapp chair doing everything but what she was supposed to do, which is to eat her breakfast. He stops and gazes at her tenderly.
So big and yet still so small.
And he doesn’t know if there is any point in him trying to explain to her why the evenings come and go without him being there for her bedtime. But he owes it to her to try, perhaps tonight, even though he isn’t sure he knows the answer himself. If what he does makes a difference, if he helps make Oslo safer.
‘Hi, girls,’ he says and walks across to the cupboard by the window and takes out a bottle. He removes a few more until he finds the one he is looking for. Unopened and dusty. With a well-aimed puff he blows away a layer of grey household dirt and looks at the brown contents of the bottle that bears the good old Norwegian name Braastad Cognac.
‘What are you doing with that?’ Anita asks, sounding alarmed. ‘Surely you’re not going to drink cognac at this hour?’
‘Of course not,’ Bjarne says and laughs, then he rubs his eyes and stretches his hands high above his head. He finds a bag for the bottle.
‘Where are you going?’
Bjarne gives her a kiss on the cheek and is still smiling when he says: ‘I’m off to see a friend.’
It is early evening when Henning makes another visit to the building where his mother lives, but this time he doesn’t let himself into her flat. Instead he knocks on her neighbour’s door. He hears footsteps and the door opens. The caretaker Karl Ove Marcussen, a man with a beer belly, thin longish hair and six-day-old stubble that gives his face scattered patches of colour, looks him up and down.
‘Hi,’ Henning says. ‘I’m Christine’s son.’
He jerks a thumb in the direction of his mother’s front door.
‘Ah,’ Marcussen says and nods. ‘You rang me the other day.’
‘That’s right.’
Marcussen nods again. His stomach wobbles.
‘What the hell happened to your face?’
‘Microlight flight accident,’ Henning replies. ‘Dangerous things.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Thanks for doing me that favour I asked you for. I don’t think my mother has been listening to the radio or watched TV in the last few days. But it’s safe again now.’
‘So you want me to reconnect—’
‘Yes, please. It would be great if you could, so she can carry on destroying her hearing. But here,’ Henning says as he hands him a bag from an unnamed shop with black windows he visited on his way here.
‘A contribution to your collection, in recognition of all your help.’
The caretaker hoicks up his trousers, takes the bag and looks inside it. He smiles when he sees what kind of movies they are. He is about to thank him, when Henning holds up his palms.
‘Don’t mention it.’
Henning makes a Scouts salute to Karl Ove Marcussen, thanks him again and starts making his way home. But as he realises it is coming up for 8.30 p.m., he is reminded of something his mentor Jarle Høgseth would often do when he was stuck on a story. He would return to the scene of the crime, usually at the same time as the crime had been committed, to take in the mood, see if a detail that wasn’t clear when there were police cordons everywhere might suddenly stand out. And the fire brigade’s report stated that the police had received a call about the fire in Henning’s flat at 20.35.
So he walks back to his old flat and stops outside the entrance he would so often go in and out of, usually accompanied by Jonas. He looks around and tries to work out where Tore Pulli must have parked in order to keep an eye on the building’s front door. There are several possibilities on both sides of the street. And Henning realises how suspicious Pulli’s presence must have seemed to the sharp-eyed traffic warden who saw him sitting in his car in roughly the same place several nights in a row and why the traffic warden alerted the police.
Henning walks up and down the street, meets some people in party clothes with bottles that clink in carrier bags, a woman pushing a pram, and sees cars whose suspensions groan as they go over the speed bumps. If I’d been Tore Pulli, Henning thinks, and I’d been sitting in my car, what would be my reason for being there? And why did Pulli get in touch with me while he was in prison? After all, we had never had anything to do with each other before the fire.
Once again he comes to the same conclusion: Pulli was watching him. And that’s when Henning gets a flash of inspiration. If he had been watching someone, how would he have gone about it?
He would have mapped that person’s movements. Made notes. Taken pictures.
What if Tore Pulli did the same?