Pierced (38 page)

‘That was Robert,’ she replies. ‘Robert van Derksen.’

The Doctor’s efforts helped Ørjan Mjønes get a good night’s sleep, but he still woke up early and feeling restless the next morning. The body of Thorleif Brenden had been found far too quickly. Nosy little Mia Sikveland, the receptionist at Ustaoset Mountain Hotel, will probably raise her eyebrows when she reads about Brenden in the newspaper even though his death is likely to be recorded as an accident. She will wonder why Brenden used an assumed name, and she certainly won’t understand why a police officer failed to correct her when she referred to Brenden as Einar. That had been a mistake. A big one. And if he had had a little more cash on him, he would have dispatched Durim to Sikveland’s small flat in Geilo and made sure she was silenced too.

Fortunately, they had had a stroke of luck with Brenden. The email he had sent from Mia Sikveland’s laptop had – according to Flurim Ahmetaj – been addressed to a journalist who was now in a coma. And as far as Mjønes is aware, he has yet to regain consciousness. As long as I move quickly, he thinks, there shouldn’t be any problems. He even has the money now. Two point five million kroner have been transferred to his account, adding nicely to the substantial sum he already had there. It will last him a long time. And as his money arrived without delay – despite his misgivings – neither does he need to worry about Langbein. His suspicions were unfounded.

So far, so good.

After lunch, Mjønes books a one-way ticket to Marrakech using one of his false identities, for no other reason than he has always wanted to go there. He takes the number 13 tram to Sandaker Shopping Centre, gets off and walks down to Thorshov Sports. He checks the cars parked on both sides of the road, but there is no sign of a driver surreptitiously waiting for anyone. Nor can he see anyone behind the windows or on the rooftops. He walks down Sandakerveien, past the recycling plant on Bentsehjørnet where the buses going to Sagene rattle past, before turning 180 degrees and repeating exactly the same exercise. With exactly the same outcome.

Even so, he feels increasingly uneasy the closer he gets to the flat where he has lived for the past six months. If this had been a hit or a burglary, he would have called it off by now. He always used to back down at the first sign of bad vibes. It’s one of the reasons he has stayed out of prison for the past seven or eight years.

Mjønes glances around again.
You have to go to the flat today
, he tells himself.
You have to get rid of the evidence. It will only take you a few minutes.

He looks around one last time before he lets himself in.

Inside the flat, a wall of heat hits him, but he refrains from opening the windows in case the place is under surveillance. Instead, he makes a mental list of everything he needs to take with him. All the research he did for the Pulli hit might be retrieved by IT experts even though he did his best to erase every trace from his laptop. Even if he doesn’t take the whole machine, he should at least take the hard disk.

Mjønes enters the bedroom where the roof slopes towards the floor. The fetid and stale air sticks to him. The smell reminds him of Durim and the pigsty of a flat he lives in. Mjønes puts these thoughts out of his mind, goes over to the large white wardrobe and opens the door. He kneels down, enters the four-digit code that unlocks the grey safe inside and starts stuffing bundles of euros into his backpack. Then he takes out the box where he put the ampoule for safekeeping. He opens it and looks at the transparent liquid inside it.

It had required considerable ingenuity and a touch of creativity to work out how to kill Tore Pulli in a quick, discreet and effective way. The fact that Mjønes had to travel all the way to Colombia to pick up the murder weapon only added to the fun. He likes the exotic, the primitive and yet simultaneously sophisticated.

He is about to close the box and the safe when he senses movement on the floor behind him.

‘Ørjan Mjønes?’ he hears an unknown voice say.

What the hell?

The sound of footsteps. Several pairs of shoes. Cops, he thinks. Damn. He considers his options. He should have brought a weapon. As it is, he has no way of defending himself. Yes, he is holding one in his hands, but he is lacking the most important thing. A needle or something with which to penetrate the skin. The box with the piercing needles is still in the safe, but he knows he doesn’t have time to remove the wrapping from the needle, open the ampoule and dip the needle in the poison. Besides, he would need to do it twice. And he is aware that he will never be able to take on two cops with only one working arm.

Mjønes swears again.

‘Get up, slowly.’

Mjønes does as he is told, turns his head and sees a police officer he thinks he recognises from somewhere. Big. Tall. Muscular. And, behind him, a man with a similar physique.

‘Who are you?’ he says, his mind racing.

‘You’re under arrest,’ the blond police officer says.

‘Why?’

‘You’re suspected of conspiracy to murder.’

Mjønes doesn’t reply‚ but looks at them in turn and sees them take up positions. Mjønes thinks about his shoulder, his money, the box with the ampoule.
Think quickly
, he says to himself.
That’s what you’re good at. Thinking on your feet.

Discreetly he takes out the ampoule and slips it into his trouser pocket. Then he turns to the police officers.

‘What is that?’ one of the police officers asks, pointing to Mjønes’s hand.

‘It’s just a box,’ he says.

‘Put it down on the table.’

Mjønes obeys him. ‘Take it easy,’ he says, holding up his hands to indicate his co-operation. ‘I’m coming of my own free will.’

Mjønes takes one step towards them and tries to make eye contact. Lose the ampoule before you reach the police station, he thinks. Drop it in the road, anywhere it will disappear by itself, under a car tyre, in between some bushes.

And without resisting he allows himself be led out of the flat while reminding himself of 2.5 million reasons not to say a single word for a very, very long time.

Henning can’t stop thinking about the incident in the churchyard. Why was Petter Holte so mad at Robert van Derksen? Had he done something to Pulli?

Henning considers the obvious explanation, namely that van Derksen was responsible for the murder of Jocke Brolenius, but it strikes him that Holte would hardly have reacted as he did if that was an acknowledged truth among Tore’s friends.

On his way back, Henning tries to call Geir Grønningen, but all he gets is his voicemail. He sends him a text message, but that doesn’t produce a response either. He realises why when he remembers that Grønningen is giving the eulogy at the get-together.

Henning winds his way through the rush-hour traffic in his rental car and decides to drive up to visit a source who so far has proved to be the most reliable in her insight into human nature. This time he catches up with Vidar Fjell’s old girlfriend as she is leaving her house.

‘Oh, hi,’ Irene Otnes says. ‘You again?’

Henning doesn’t have time to say anything before she tells him that she is on her way to the shops.

‘Perhaps I could ask you a couple of questions first?’

Otnes closes her front door and locks it. ‘If you don’t mind walking down to the car with me,’ she says in a cheerful tone.

They start to walk. Above them the clouds are moving swiftly.

‘I didn’t see you at the funeral today,’ he remarks.

‘Did you come here to ask me that?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘I hate funerals,’ she says, though she strolls along as if Pulli’s death hasn’t dampened her mood noticeably. ‘I find them upsetting. And I spoke to Veronica on the telephone yesterday, and she said it was okay that I didn’t go.’

Henning begins‚ ‘Would you know why Petter Holte has a problem with Robert van Derksen?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Otnes smiles. ‘I can tell you that. Robert stole Petter’s girlfriend while he was inside. Or rather she dumped him, I think, but she dumped him for Robert. You don’t do that to your friends, you know.’

Otnes starts walking down the steps. Henning follows her doggedly. The scabs under his feet protest, but he ignores the pain.

‘Poor Petter. He’s always being teased about his small feet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know – small shoes, small . . . ’ She points to her crotch.

‘I thought that was a myth?’ Henning says.

‘I wouldn’t know about that. Not that it made any difference to his friends. Petter has been made to suffer for years, believe you me.’

‘Was Tore Pulli one of his tormentors?’

‘No, not Tore. It was Tore who told Petter that his girlfriend had started seeing someone else.’

Henning thinks quickly. ‘While they both were in prison?’

‘Yes. I believe he felt that Petter had a right to know. That was one of the things I liked about Tore. He was decent to a certain extent. And he heard it from Veronica during one of her visits. Veronica and I – we tell each other everything,’ she says and laughs. ‘But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Petter. He has never had much success with women, he has always been a loser. Women never stay with him for very long, you see. We women like a challenge.’

Otnes smiles and turns around when she reaches the car. ‘Anyway, I’m off to the shops.’

‘Okay. Nice talking to you,’ he says.

‘Likewise.’

His image of Petter Holte is becoming increasingly complete, Henning thinks as he drives back towards the city centre. Short fuse. A failed enforcer. Never managed to step out of Tore’s shadow. Possibly envious of Geir Grønningen, who became Tore’s best friend instead of him. Even his girlfriend walked all over him.

The question is, how deep are those scars?

The evening wind wafts through the open window and brushes Robert van Derksen’s glistening face. He takes a deep breath, leans back in the sofa and stares at the ceiling. It has been a long day. Going straight from the funeral to teach a demanding Krav Maga class full of students who expect him to deliver is not to be recommended. It requires energy to perform, especially given how the funeral went.

Tore Pulli – dead as a dodo. Just thinking about it feels weird. In their eyes, Tore was immortal, the man who could do nothing wrong. And then his life fell apart. First he was sentenced and jailed, then dead long before his time.

Van Derksen thinks about what the reporter said to him that day that it made no sense that a man as clever as Tore would leave behind his calling card at the crime scene. It was a valid point, and van Derksen had himself pondered this anomaly shortly after Tore’s arrest – especially once Tore put a reward of one million kroner on the table for information that could help free him. But then Tore was convicted, and everybody stopped talking about it after a while. Nor had Robert given it much thought until the reporter called. And that in turn prompted him to make a call straight afterwards. Now when he re-runs the short conversation it strikes him as really quite odd.

‘I’ve been thinking about something: you didn’t teach anyone else the Pulli punch, did you?’

There was silence for a while.

‘Why do you ask about that?’

‘No, I was just wondering. A guy just called me suggesting someone other than Tore had killed Jocke and elbowed his jaw. To make it look as if Tore did it.’

Again there was silence.

‘What kind of guy?’

‘A journalist.’

‘Name?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘For God’s sake, Robert, of course you do.’

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.

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.