Pierced (2 page)

‘One more,’ he says. ‘You can do one more.’

Grønningen takes a deep breath, lowers the bar until it touches his chest and pushes as hard as he can. His muscles quiver while Holte lets him earn every single millimetre, right until the kilos have been raised and a roaring Grønningen can return the bar to the forked holders. He pulls a face and flexes his pecs, scratches his straggly beard and shakes his long thin hair away from his face.

‘Good job,’ Heggelund says and nods with approval. Grønningen scowls at him.

‘Good? It was crap. I can usually do much better than that.’

Heggelund glances nervously at Holte, but all he gets is a sour look in return. Holte loosens his gym belt while he studies himself in the mirror. His shaven head – like the rest of him – has the deep tan of a sunbed. He adjusts his black gloves slightly and observes the muscles under the tight-fitting white vest, nods with satisfaction as he tenses them and watches the contours in his biceps stand out. He hoists up his Better Bodies sweatpants before he marches over to the reception counter behind which a bored-looking Gunhild Dokken is flicking through a magazine, her fringe covering her eyes.

‘Are you doing anything tonight?’ Holte asks and stops in front of her. His voice is soft and hopeful.

‘I’m going home,’ she replies without looking up.

Holte nods slowly while he gazes at her.

‘Do you want company?’

‘No,’ she replies, unequivocally.

Holte’s nostrils flare.

‘Are you meeting anyone?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ Dokken huffs.

After a brief pause, Holte turns to Grønningen, who gives him an encouraging nod.

‘It’s just us here,’ Holte says. ‘I can lock up for you, if you like.’

Dokken slams the magazine shut.

‘Couldn’t you have told me that earlier? While there was still some of the evening left?’

‘Yes, but I—’

A shadow falls across Holte’s face as he stares at the floor.

‘Okay,’ she sighs, sullenly. ‘You know where the keys are.’

Dokken goes over to a coat stand and puts on a thin black jacket. She drops her mobile into her handbag, which she slips over her shoulder.

‘Don’t work too hard.’

‘We’re not training again until Sunday.’

‘Wow,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘A day off.’

Holte smiles and follows her with his eyes as she marches towards the door. A bell above her head chimes before the door shuts firmly behind her. Then she is gone in the night. Holte shakes his head almost imperceptibly before he goes behind the counter, stops the music and takes a Metallica CD,
And Justice for All
, from the stand. He finds track number eight, ‘To Live Is to Die’, turns up the volume and fast-forwards to the middle of the song.

‘Still no luck?’ Heggelund smiles when Holte comes back. Holte glares at him, but makes no reply. Instead he asks who is next.

‘Heggis,’ Grønningen replies and looks at Heggelund.

‘Yep, me it is,’ Heggelund replies, cheerfully. He goes over to the bar and removes 15 kilos from each side. Then he sits on the bench and breathes in deeply a couple of times before he lies down and finds the points on the bar where he always places the up-yours finger. He fills his lungs with air again. Holte is back in position behind him while James Hetfield proclaims, ‘When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.’

Heggelund lifts the bar from the stand. The weights clang against each other before he lowers the bar and raises it again. His first lift goes without a hitch. He tries to establish a steady rhythm, and his next repetition is smooth, too. Two lifts later his grunting has become more aggressive. Holte straightens his back and ensures his legs are evenly balanced before he puts his hands under the bar, ready to assist. He looks at Grønningen, who nods as he moves a little closer. From the sound system, Metallica launches into the thumping riff that is the opening of ‘Dyers Eve.’

Heggelund closes his eyes and summons up all his strength for the next repetition, but the bar refuses to move. He opens his eyes. Holte’s hands have moved from the underside to the top of the bar. Grønningen is standing by the side of the bench. He sits down astride Heggelund’s stomach. Heggelund groans loudly. Holte pushes the bar down and lets it hover a few centimetres above Heggelund’s Adam’s apple. His eyes fill with panic.

‘What . . . what—’

‘How long have you been coming here?’ Grønningen asks him. ‘Two months? Two and a half, perhaps?’

Heggelund tries to say something, but all his strength goes into keeping the bar off his throat.

‘Do you think we’re idiots?’ Holte says, and eyeballs him. ‘Do you think we let just anybody work out with us without checking them out first?’

Heggelund can only manage some gurgling sounds.

‘You’ve been lying to us,’ Holte says through clenched teeth. ‘You’ve been having us on. Did you really think we wouldn’t find out that you’re starting at the Police College in the autumn?’

Heggelund’s eyes widen even further.

‘So what was your game?’ Grønningen continues. ‘Have you been watching too much television? Did you think you could get a head start? Go under cover, like?’

‘No chance,’ Holte takes over. ‘No one messes with us like that!’

‘Please,’ Heggelund begs as his arms tremble. Holte pushes the bar down until it makes contact with Heggelund’s skin. Sparks fly from his eyes.

‘So do you think you’ll be coming back here?’ Grønningen asks him. Heggelund squeezes his eyes shut and tries to shake his head. Tears mix with drops of sweat on his face.

‘Are you going to tell anyone about this?’ Holte hisses. Again, Heggelund attempts to shake his head. Grønningen looks at him for a few seconds before he gets off and nods to Holte. Heggelund can barely breathe, but Holte doesn’t remove the bar.

‘Petter!’

Reluctantly Holte lifts the bar aided by what little is left of Heggelund’s strength. He slams it back in the stand. Holte turns around and snatches a towel while he snorts with contempt. Grønningen pulls him to one side.

‘You could have killed him!’ he whispers. Holte doesn’t reply, he merely looks at Heggelund, who is gasping for air. His cheeks are stained with tears, his eyelids heavy.

‘Enough is enough,’ Grønningen says. ‘Have you forgotten everything Tore taught us?’

Holte makes no reply, he just walks off a few steps. Heggelund discreetly moves into a sitting position while James Hetfield’s voice roars from the sound system. Grønningen turns around and goes back to Heggelund, who is still clutching his throat. Grønningen waits until the two of them have eye contact before he nods his head in the direction of the door. Heggelund struggles to his feet and staggers towards the exit, where the name of the gym glows at him in letters the colour of blood: Fighting Fit.

A sharp light makes Henning blink. His eyes feel gritty. He rubs away the sleep and feels an ache across his lower back.

He sits up slowly. The Coke on the coffee table is no longer cold, but he takes a sip all the same, letting it fizz in his mouth. Outside, shades of blue sky merge into one another. He lets in the warm summer wind through a window in the living room. A swallow cries out, but there is no answer. Behind the block of flats opposite his a yellow construction crane skims the tops of the trees.

Henning goes to the bedroom, takes two tablets from the jar on his bedside table and swallows them dry before he continues to the kitchen where he glances at the chaotic pile of newspapers and printouts on the table. He sits down in front of his laptop, bumping into one of the table legs as he does so, and jolts the remains of a mug of cold coffee with dark brown rings on the inside. He opens up the screen and is greeted by an old version of the home page of 123news.no, before it automatically updates itself. Henning reads the main story, then he scrolls down and learns that nothing much has happened overnight. Heatwaves in Europe. Russia thinks Iran will soon have the ability to develop a nuclear bomb. Two people seriously injured following a traffic accident in Hedmark. Some girl he has seen before, but whose name he can’t remember, has had enough of her breast implants.

Henning checks the competition’s websites as well, even though he doesn’t know why he bothers, because it’s a waste of time. It’s the same news everywhere. But this is how he starts his day. And it’s what he used to do before Jonas died.

Soon it will be two years
, Henning thinks. For most people, two years is an eternity of moments and memories stacked on top of each other. For him it’s no time at all. He hasn’t managed to uncover a single clue. It would have been so much easier if only he could remember something, anything, from the days and weeks leading up to the fire.

The face of Mikael Vollan stares out at him from the top of the pile. Mikael Vollan, the man who bombarded businesses and private individuals with 153 million fraudulent emails sent through accounts he created using false identities. Vollan advertised pyramid schemes and other scams to trick people into paying for something that didn’t exist. Henning got so fed up with receiving all that spam that he decided to find out who was behind it and what was in it for them. Together with
6tiermes7
(Henning’s anonymous police source) and his good friend and computer wiz Atle Abelsen, he eventually managed to unravel Vollan’s network. When the most important pieces were in place, Henning handed over his file to the Norwegian Gaming Authority, the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime and, eventually, Kripos, the Norwegian Serious Crime Unit, in return for a head start of a couple of hours before the long arm of the law went into action. Vollan was later sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, and he was ordered to pay compensation as well.

Henning studies the printouts once more before putting them away with a sigh. In court Vollan expressed both remorse and relief: he was glad that someone had finally put a stop to him. It had become an obsession was how he put it.

Vollan wouldn’t have had any money left to pay a hit man to eliminate Henning. Or Jonas.

Henning rubs his face wearily.
Something will turn up
, he tells himself.
It has to
.

Tore Pulli used to enjoy looking at himself in the mirror. The ultra-short hair. The bright blue eyes. The strong nose. The dense, neatly combed beard. His sharp chin that no one had ever managed to punch without having their own smashed soon afterwards. The gold chains around his neck. The tight-fitting clothes. He loved to see how his muscles bulged, how his veins swelled under the tanned, tattooed skin. No one was ever in any doubt that he, Tore Pulli, was a guy they really didn’t want to mess with.

But that’s not what he sees now. His clothes no longer fit his body as snugly as they once did. What was at one time a tightly packed explosion, feared and revered, is nothing but a distant memory.

Pulli turns on the tap and lets the water run until it gets cold before he bends down and immerses his face in his wet hands. He rubs his eyes, dragging his fingers across his cheeks, his forehead, the frown lines and the bald patch before he dries himself with a white towel.
Are you ready?
, he asks the face in the mirror.
Are you really going to go through with this?

Veronica looks back at him from the picture on the cork noticeboard. As always, she looks straight at him with her lovely youthful smile. And as always he wonders how she keeps going.

Pulli sits down on the narrow pine bed, rests his elbows on his knees and cups his hands under his chin. His eyes wander to the rubbish bin overflowing on the grey linoleum floor. An ashtray, a lighter and a remote control are lying on a stool in front of him. His best friends. Surrounding him, his four worst enemies.

Resolutely he gets up and walks out into a corridor almost as long as a handball pitch, only narrower and with tables and seating arrangements, benches and chairs, placed either side of thick yellow lines. He nods briefly to the guard in the armoured glass cage, points to a telephone and gets a nod in return before he walks, unwillingly, to a table on the opposite side of the room A grey telephone sits on top of a dark-red plastic cloth. Stacks of writing paper, envelopes and forms are lying next to it. Pulli looks at the wall clock. Twenty minutes max.

He lifts the receiver but puts it back immediately.
Have you done everything you can?
, he wonders.
Is there really no one else who can help you?

No. There are no other options left.

Henning’s back is damp with sweat as he stops at the corner outside Café Con Bar. Across the road, Vaterlands Park lies like a lung between Oslo Plaza Hotel and the aggressive main road to Grønland. Nearby, a steady stream of people hurry across the uneven cobblestones. The traffic roars angrily.

Henning takes off his rather scruffy jacket and finds a vacant table. If Erling Ophus hadn’t insisted on meeting in the city centre, and preferably near his old workplace, Henning would never have chosen to sit in a place where people rush by.

Henning has interviewed Ophus many times before, but he has never met him in person. By the time Ophus turned up at a crime scene, the flames had usually died down and the journalists had gone home to write up their stories. Henning was surprised that Ophus was prepared to meet with him on a Saturday rather than enjoy his leisurely retirement in Leirsund.

It doesn’t take long before Henning spots Ophus across the road. The retired fire investigator wisely waits for a green light before he crosses. Henning stands up, takes a few steps towards Ophus and holds out his hand. The tall, stately man in the short-sleeved white shirt and dark-blue trousers smiles and shakes Henning’s hand firmly.

‘Hi,’ Henning says. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘No, thank you. My wife had planned for me to spend the day on all fours in the flowerbed, and you’ve given me a good excuse to come into town and perhaps catch up with some old colleagues later. If they’re at work, that is.’