Pierced (21 page)

Thorleif doesn’t know how sophisticated the technology the man with the ponytail and his fellow thugs are using is, but they seem to know a great deal about him, and Thorleif can’t afford to take any chances. He glances over his shoulder before walking into the nearest budget clothes shop where he buys five pairs of socks, four pairs of underpants, a pair of long dark trousers, a pair of shorts, three white T-shirts, a thin cotton jumper and a denim jacket. Then he finds a shoe shop and buys a pair of trainers. He uses the lavatory at a Burger King restaurant to change and leaves all his old clothes behind.

Before going outside again, he waits in the restaurant for a few minutes and watches everyone around him, including the people in the street, until he feels confident that no one is waiting for him or keeping him under surveillance.

It takes him only seconds to cross the street and enter Arkaden Mall where he buys a black baseball cap. Afterwards he finds the nearest ATM and withdraws as much cash as he can first using his Visa card, then maxing out his previously untouched MasterCard.

Thorleif tries to suppress the urge to run when he exits on the other side of Arkaden. He walks briskly in the direction of Byporten Shopping Centre, enters through a revolving door and continues up two escalators while people rush around him. He passes a café, several clothes shops and makes eye contact with a pretty shop assistant at Handy Size before passing a supermarket, a bookshop and a kiosk. He has arrived at the forecourt of Oslo Central Station.

Leaving everything and everyone behind like this is pure madness, he thinks. But what choice does he have? If he stays, he will very likely be killed, probably today. If he is interviewed by the police, they will surely break him in the end and then his options are confessing to the murder and claiming responsibility for it or telling them everything. If he chooses to talk or if the police make him, the man with the ponytail will hurt Elisabeth and the children. In ways he can’t bear to think about.

The only sensible solution, Thorleif concludes, is to do what he is doing now. Get the hell out of Oslo. He wonders how long it will be before he is reported missing. Guri and Ole will wonder why he never returned to the office. They will try to call him on his mobile but will get no reply. They might ring Elisabeth to ask if he has come home though they will probably put that off for as long as they can. But it will be sometime tonight, Thorleif thinks. Before that, he needs to have found himself a place to hide. Until then his job is to make himself as invisible as possible.

Thorleif has reached the large departure boards at the station. An anthill of people is milling around. It is impossible to determine if any of them are watching him. He just has to hope that his diversion tactics have been successful.

Buses are out of the question. Too claustrophobic and too slow. So he checks the list of InterCity trains. Skien, Lillehammer, Bergen, Halden, Trondheim. The train to Bergen departs in nine minutes, he sees. The one to Gothenburg in eight. With his pulse throbbing in his neck, Thorleif rushes over to one of the numerous red ticket machines. He types in the letters and feeds money into the slot.

‘The train to Eidsvoll is ready to depart from platform number 10.’

Thorleif snatches the ticket and sets off. The train leaves in four minutes. And he still has one more thing to do.

When Ørjan Mjønes catches sight of his own reflection in the shop window, he has to make an effort not to grin. Everything went according to plan. His plan. And no screw-ups this time.

It was bloody brilliant.

But it’s not over yet. The home leg remains. Getting rid of Brenden and picking up the rest of the money. After that he will leave Oslo for good. He can’t risk staying here or returning later if Brenden’s absence proves problematic.

Mjønes laughs to himself. Problematic?

He has yet to decide on a destination, but it will be far away. He feels a strong urge to go to the woods and sleep under the trees for weeks. He could do that, of course, but not in Norway. And he certainly isn’t going to a place where cheap cocktails and scantily clad women are as easily accessible as the beach. That kind of life has never appealed to him.

Once he has collected the cash, he won’t need to work. Not for a long time. The question is how long he can manage without it. Idleness gives him cabin fever. His brain needs stimulating, and work makes him feel alive.

Around him people are rushing with briefcases in their hands or dragging suitcases behind them as they throw swift, panicky glances at their watches or mobiles. Mjønes has nothing but contempt for those who subject themselves to this every day for a whole lifetime. It is so humdrum.

Mjønes has never been attracted to a life of respectability. As a teenager, he carried out ram-raids most weeks. It was easy to do, and the cops were always completely baffled. Why should he be stuck in some dead-end job earning 180 kroner per hour when he could easily make a quarter of a million in a weekend?

He had a girlfriend once who tried to turn him into a law-abiding citizen, but he only lasted a couple of months. Every day he would sit in an office trying to sell some rubbish while his body ached to be elsewhere, casing a joint, on a job, mapping and planning. His mother had asked him several times why he couldn’t respect the law like everyone else, but that wasn’t who he was. He enjoyed destruction, he got a thrill from stirring things up, he sought out excitement and action precisely so that life wouldn’t be so bloody boring. It wasn’t society that turned him into a criminal. It was a life he had chosen for himself. And if he had the chance to live his life all over again, the result would have been exactly the same.

His inside pocket vibrates. Mjønes takes out his mobile and answers it.

‘We’ve a problem,’ Jeton Pocoli says.

‘Go on.’

‘Number One. I don’t know where he is.’

Mjønes’s smile freezes. He transfers the mobile from one hand to the other, pulls a face and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.

‘Where did you lose him?’

‘He went into Burger King. I walked up and down outside for five to ten minutes, but I started to worry when he never reappeared. I went inside to look for him. I found his clothes in the gents.’

Mjønes says nothing.

‘Which Burger King was it?’

‘The one at the bottom of Karl Johansgate.’

‘Close to Oslo Central Station?’

‘Yes. That’s where I am now, but I can’t see him.’

Mjønes considers this as he looks at his own reflection in the window of GlasMagasinet.

‘Okay,’ he says, eventually.

‘What do we do?’ Pocoli asks.

‘I’ll ring you back. Stay where you are.’

Mjønes ends the call before Pocoli has time to reply and rings Flurim Ahmetaj straight away.

‘Speak,’ says the Swedish Albanian.

‘Has he called Number Two yet?’

‘No.’

‘Has he called anyone at all?’

‘No.’

‘Can you see where his mobile is now?’

‘No, but I can find out.’

‘Do that. And check his bank accounts. Number One has done a runner.’

‘Right.’

Mjønes looks at himself while he processes the news. Gradually, a fresh smile emerges on his face. ‘It’s no big deal.’

‘Eh?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Number One is about to make the biggest mistake of his life.’

There is a strange noise inside his head.

Is it the sound of the sea? He can definitely hear waves crashing.

Henning swallows, but the sound refuses to go away. It’s as if he has been to a concert where the noise level was too loud. He blinks as well, but the people around him still look weird. They blur and dissolve. Their voices mingle. The grass under him seems to come closer. An ant climbs up on his hand. It looks as if it is about to crawl inside his skin when Henning flicks it away and gets up. He stands there, swaying. The first steps hurt, the next ones are even worse. He turns away from the sun and lets it burn his neck instead. He carries on walking. The fence, where’s the fence? Tarmac under his feet again. The whoosh from a bicycle racing past grabs hold of him just as a fresh, sharp pain begins under the soles of his feet. When he puts pressure on them, they feel wet.

Nearby something bounces.

‘Oi!’

Henning is startled and looks up.

‘Stop the ball!’

He sticks out his more painful foot, feels something hit it and come to a halt. Someone runs towards him. Henning keeps the ball in place under his foot. He sees a boy with long blond hair. Ice-blue eyes. There is something familiar about them.

‘Thanks,’ the boy says. He is eight, maybe nine years old. ‘Can I have it back, please?’ he asks. Henning looks at him.

‘What’s your name?’ he hears himself say.

‘Fredrik.’

Henning takes a step to the side for support, tries to make eye contact with the boy, but can’t manage it. Instead he rolls the ball towards the boy, who kicks it up and catches it with his hands, but drops it instantly.

‘Yuk, it’s covered in blood!’

The ball rolls away. Henning tries to work out where it has gone, but he can’t. He only registers that the boy is leaving. The stinging pain under his feet grows more intense. He looks down. It’s not until then he realises that he is wearing slippers.

Thorleif has always experienced a sense of calm when travelling by train. There is something infinitely serene about gazing idly through a window. If his eyes follow the tracks, the world rushes past. If he looks out at the landscape, everything seems almost stagnant. It’s something which has always fascinated him. But not now.

Today he can’t be bothered to look for deer or admire the fields or the passing mountains. Instead he closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind. It proves to be impossible; he can’t stop reliving what he has done. On his fingertips Thorleif can still feel the tiny hairs on Tore Pulli’s body as he attached the microphone to the tight T-shirt. The needle in the palm of his hand, clammy and smooth. The startled look in Pulli’s eyes as he—

Thorleif can’t bear to complete the thought. He wonders what everyone will think in the next few days. Especially the children. Elisabeth will probably tell them that Daddy had to go abroad for work and that she doesn’t know how long he will be away. But how long will she be able to keep that up? Pål is eight years old and he is a bright boy. He will soon guess that something is wrong. I need to let them know that I’m in one piece, Thorleif thinks, tell Elisabeth not to worry. But how will he manage that if their flat is being monitored? What if they have bugged Elisabeth’s mobile?
I can’t risk it
, Thorleif concludes.
I can’t risk them suspecting that she knows where I am.

So what the hell can he do?

She might still be at work. Perhaps he can call the school office and—

Damn, he doesn’t have a mobile. He looks around, sees several of his fellow passengers fiddle with their mobiles. Perhaps he could borrow one of theirs? He dismisses the thought instantly. A conversation of that sort must be had in private, and no sane person would hand over their mobile to a man who says he needs to go away to make a personal call. The best he can hope for is to wait until he leaves the train and look for a public telephone.

If he is to get hold of Elisabeth before she finishes work today, he needs to take action soon. Should he stay on the train until its final destination? Or is it better to get off along the way, at a smaller station? It will be easier to keep track of what is going on in a small town, fewer people around. However, if he is discovered and someone comes after him, he will be making their job easier.

An ad above the luggage shelves further along the carriage attracts Thorleif’s attention. He looks at the pictures and reads the caption.
Get your dream cabin now.
Under the caption there is a scenic photo of mountains and open spaces, white, beautiful and dramatic with small dark cabins dotted around the landscape. It says Ustaoset at the bottom as if the ad promotes a film starring the Norwegian winter.

Thorleif straightens up in his seat. The ad reminds him of Einar Fløtaker, a childhood friend with whom he lost contact after they both had children. But Thorleif will never forget the trip they made as teenagers many, many years ago to Einar’s family’s cabin in Ustaoset. It was the height of winter, Thorleif recalls, and it was down to minus thirty degrees Celsius when they arrived. Once they got off the train they had to walk quite a distance from the station lugging their supplies and skis before they reached it. Inside the cabin it was minus twelve degrees before they got the fire going, and it wasn’t until the next day that they could take off their coats and walk around in normal indoor clothes.

The cabin is probably still there
, Thorleif thinks.
And I can’t imagine that anyone is using it at the moment
.

The footsteps stop right in front of him. Henning blinks and looks up, sees red shorts and a naked torso. Gunnar Goma is smiling down at him.

‘What are you sitting here for?’ his neighbour asks him, cheerfully but surprised. Henning looks around. He is slumped on the stairwell.

‘I-I don’t know,’ he replies.

It’s like waking up in the middle of a dream. Or perhaps he is dreaming? No. If he had been, his feet wouldn’t have been hurting.

‘How long have you been sitting here?’

‘I’m . . . I’m not really sure.’

Their voices echo between the walls.

‘I was just going out for a run, and then I find you here. I thought you were a ghost.’

Henning tries to get up. The pain shoots through his feet again.

‘It looks as if you’ve stepped on some glass.’

‘What time is it?’ Henning stammers.

‘Time? I don’t know, I never look at the clock these days. I look outside to see if it’s light or dark, hot or cold. That’s all a man of my age needs to know.’