Pierced (26 page)

‘Okay,’ Mjønes says. ‘From his bank statement we know that he went into JeanTV in Arkaden Mall and bought something that cost 399 kroner.’

‘A hat, maybe.’

‘Yes, that was my first thought. Or a baseball cap. And since he ditched his mobile on a train leaving Oslo Central Station, it’s highly probable that he himself travelled in another direction around the same time. Can you find out which other trains left then?’

‘Okay.’ Ahmetaj’s fingers fly across the keyboard.

‘Wait a moment. I’ve got a better idea. Can you give me a printout of the best picture you have of Brenden?’

Ahmetaj clicks again and replays the video. He waits for Brenden to turn his head. His face appears in profile. Ahmetaj freezes the picture, takes a screen dump and opens the file in Photoshop where he adjusts the colours and the contrasts. Then he hits
Crtl
+
P.
The sound of a printer warming up comes from somewhere under the desk. Mjønes bends down and kicks away an empty Coke bottle, which in turn knocks over several other empty bottles. He pulls a face as the dust rises.

‘What are you going to do?’ Ahmetaj asks when Mjønes reappears with a sheet of paper in his hand.

‘I’m going to play cops and robbers,’ Mjønes replies and grins.

In US TV crime dramas, male pathologists are short and fat while female ones have long legs and are as immaculately groomed as only newly divorced women can be. Both sexes have complicated private lives, but as far as Henning knows Dr Karoline Omdahl fits none of the above categories. When he wrote a story about a day in the life of a forensic pathologist some years ago and used Dr Omdahl as his subject, he learned that she is married with three grown-up children and has a passion for golden retrievers. The numerous photos of dogs, children and grandchildren Dr Omdahl displayed in her office made it easy for Henning to bust every myth and cliché about the profession of forensic medicine. Even so, he couldn’t stop himself from spicing up his feature with references to smelly corpses, stomach contents and open chest cavities.

Dr Omdahl replies after several long rings. Henning introduces himself and asks if she remembers him.

‘Oh, hi,’ she says, surprised. ‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘Good to talk to you again.’

‘Likewise.’

‘How are the dogs?’

Henning hears her drink from a cup and swallow. ‘Why, thank you, they’re fine. Yash had an infected paw last week, but it seems to have cleared up now, fortunately.’

‘Glad to hear it. Do you have a couple of minutes?’

A few seconds of silence follow. ‘That depends on what it’s about.’

‘It’s about Tore Pulli.’

She falls silent again. ‘I can’t discuss him with you, Juul.’

‘No, I know. But have you finished his autopsy?’

‘The police have requested a forensic autopsy, yes, and we’ve made it our top priority. That’s all I can say.’

Henning nods. ‘How long will it be, do you think, before the preliminary autopsy report will be available?’

‘It’ll be ready later today.’

‘Can I ask . . . What exactly goes into a preliminary report? What do you look for?’

‘We open up the body and carry out a macroscopic assessment of the organs. We check for internal damage, possible stab injuries, gunshot wounds and so on.’

‘And what about the final report?’

‘That contains toxicology information and analyses of blood and other fluids, possibly a DNA analysis. In addition, we always take tissue samples from various organs. These samples are collected as a matter of routine, but we will also take samples of any discoveries we make during the autopsy. All of this goes into the final report.’

‘I understand. How long will it be before the final report is ready?’

‘It can take up to a couple of months.’

Months, Henning thinks. He can’t wait that long.

‘Speaking generally, what would cause an otherwise healthy forty-two-year-old man to suddenly drop dead?’

‘It depends on what you mean by “otherwise healthy”. You can carry many potentially fatal conditions without being aware of it. An electrical defect in your heart, for example. If that happens, you’ll need highly sophisticated medical intervention within minutes or you’ll die. These conditions can strike without warning.’

‘Sounds sinister.’

‘An artery in your brain might burst, or an artery in your chest or abdomen might rupture. This can sometimes be caused by a vessel degenerating through disease while in other cases the blood vessel may look healthy and still burst. Or you could suffer a blood clot in a central artery in your brain or your heart or a sudden bleed in your brain tissue.’

‘I think I get the picture,’ Henning says. ‘In this case, it looks as if Tore Pulli suddenly begins to experience breathing difficulties. Does that fit in with any of the causes you’ve just mentioned?’

‘It might.’

‘If I were to tell you that he didn’t appear to be in control of himself or his muscles, either, what would you say?’

‘That his death could still be attributed to any number of reasons. It’s possible that he was poisoned though in this case it would be highly unlikely.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he died in a prison.’

‘Yes,’ Henning hears himself say. ‘But if it turns out that he was poisoned, how will you know?’

‘I’m not sure that we would.’

‘But if you suspected it?’

‘Then we would ask the Institute of Forensic Toxicology to carry out further investigations. They never attend the actual autopsy, they just get the samples. But if this turns out to be a case of poisoning, and I want to emphasise that I’m merely speculating here, then I would assume that we’re talking about some sort of nerve toxin.’

‘He couldn’t breathe or move just before he died.’

‘Quite so,’ Dr Omdahl replies, slowly.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘No, it’s just that
if
– and I want to stress again that
if
– it were a case of poisoning, then we might be talking about a combined neuro- and cardiotoxic substance, but speculating is a waste of time. We need to examine him first.’

‘I appreciate that, and I have no intention of speculating in my newspaper either. But how many types of such poison exist?’

‘Oh, several. Dozens. Hundreds. The Institute of Forensic Toxicology is much better placed to answer that question. They report to the Institute of Public Health now. Their full name is the Department for Forensic Toxicology and Intoxicating Substances Research.’

‘Okay, I think I might give them a call.’

‘You do that.’

‘How will the body look if it was poisoned?’

‘A pure nerve toxin that paralyses the respiratory system will cause you to suffocate while your heart is still beating. Your skin and mucous membranes will probably turn slightly blue. If we are talking about a combined neuro- and cardiotoxin, it’s likely to cause heart
and
respiratory failure, and then there will be no external signs whatsoever. All you’re likely to see are possible signs of suffocation if the respiratory system is affected before the heart stops.’

‘Okay,’ Henning says. ‘It sounds as if we’ll just have to wait and see.’

‘Yes, you’ve got it.’

‘Thank you so much for your help.’

‘You’re very welcome.’

Henning ends the call and looks up. At the monitor in front of him Pulli is staring at Brenden. There is something wounded in his eyes.

Henning starts rubbing his arms. He doesn’t know why, but the image makes him shudder.

Iver Gundersen looks at his watch. Kent Harry Hansen was meant to have turned up twenty-five minutes ago. Iver has investigated plenty of stories where the source gets cold feet and decides that they don’t want to talk after all. Words in print can be mighty, especially when you are the one who will be held accountable for them later regardless of whether you wrote or spoke them.

Iver would not have thought that of Hansen, who had said on the phone that he would be happy to talk about Tore as long as they could meet in Sagene, close to Hansen’s flat. This is why Iver is waiting at La Casa Spiseri, a restaurant that tempts him with the smell of food.

He can’t be bothered to do the return journey straight away so he orders a club sandwich and a beer from the waitress, who is only too happy to respond to his warm gaze with a smile.
I ought to bring Nora here
, he thinks. The whitewashed plastered walls, large red floor tiles and tables in matching colours lend the place a rustic charm.

She finally answered his calls, thank God, and said that dinner and a movie ‘sounded cute’. Cute, Iver snorts. Who the hell says cute to their boyfriend? He wonders if she ever said it to Henning.

A glass with condensation on the outside and an amber liquid on the inside arrives at the same time as a compact man with a tanned face and very short white hair. His T-shirt, which has the Fighting Fit logo printed on the black material in white and red, fits tightly across his paunch. His bellybutton can be seen in the upper circle of the second g. On his forearms Hansen has black tattoos that draw the eye up to his biceps, which bulge so much that the sleeves of his T-shirt look as if they are in danger of cutting off the blood supply. His biceps remind Iver of muscular thighs. His left ear lobe has studs which look like diamonds, but which Iver refuses to believe would have cost more than a hundred kroner.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Hansen says as he approaches Iver with swaggering, vigorous steps. Iver gets up and sticks out his hand.

‘I got your text, but a guy wanted to buy our entire stock of Gainomax Recovery and I had to order some more before I left. And then loads of people turned up for their workouts. Plus Gunhild was late coming back from her lunch break as usual. Have you been waiting a long time?’

‘I decided to stick around.’

Hansen takes Iver’s hand and squeezes it hard. He sits down, knocking into the table so the beer in Iver’s glass jolts.

‘Do you want something to eat or drink?’ Iver sits down again, moving his mobile away from his glass as he does so.

‘What you’ve ordered looks good, but I think I’ll pass. I’m meeting a customer later today. A cup of coffee would be welcome though.’

Iver holds up his hand and makes eye contact with the waitress. ‘Would you get us a cup of coffee, please?’ he says softly, followed by a smile. She smiles back at him as she leaves. Hansen moves closer and plants his elbows on the table. Iver does the same in an attempt to balance out the table’s weight distribution, but is nowhere near successful.

‘I should offer you my condolences first,’ Iver says.

‘Thank you.’

‘You knew each other well, I gather?’

‘Yes,’ Hansen sighs mournfully and looks down. ‘Rotten business.’

Iver nods, uncertain how to phrase the questions he has prepared in advance. It occurs to him that it might be a good idea to warm Hansen up with questions he already knows the answers to before revealing the real reason he is here. It takes some minutes; he learns that Tore was a great guy, the undisputed leader, and that ‘
no one would dare to mess with Tore
.’ Iver can’t quite make up his mind whether Hansen really believes his own bluster or whether he only says it because Pulli is dead.

Once the coffee arrives and the waitress has left with a flirtatious smile, Iver leans back. He remembers Henning’s warning that it might prove difficult to crack open this story. For that reason, Iver thinks, resorting to more drastic measures could be necessary. ‘How’s business?’ he asks.

‘Not too bad.’

‘Do you still work with recovering addicts and the homeless?’

‘Not as many as we used to.’

‘Why not?’

‘Things changed after Vidar’s death.’

‘But you still get financial support from the Inner City Project?’

‘Yes, we do. And I still employ staff who are a part of that.’

Iver stops the rhythm of his questioning. ‘And how is your other business?’

Hansen looks at Iver. ‘What other business?’

‘The one with no paper trail?’ Iver clenches his right fist and punches it into his left palm. Hansen stares at Iver for a few seconds before he starts to laugh. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve heard that you run some of the enforcer business in Oslo from Vidar Fjell’s old office. Is that right?’

Hansen continues to smile. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’re one of those.’

Iver doesn’t reply, he merely waits for an answer.

‘If you had done your homework before coming here then you would know that Fighting Fit isn’t mixed up in that. We never were. And we never will be.’

‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’

‘Then you’ve heard wrong.’ The smile on Hansen’s face is gone.

‘So you deny that you run an enforcer business? That you use Fighting Fit as a front for—’

‘What the hell is this?’ Hansen interrupts him. ‘Why are you really here? I thought we were going to talk about Tore?’

‘We are. That’s what we’re doing.’

‘It seems more like harassment if you ask me, and you can forget about writing something that repeats what you just said in your paper or . . . ’ Hansen points his index finger at Iver.

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Iver replies. ‘But if you agree to help me, I might decide to forget about it. I’m trying to find out who actually killed Jocke Brolenius.’

Hansen stares at Iver for a long time.

‘Tore Pulli claimed that he arrived on time for his meeting with Brolenius, but he didn’t call the police until nineteen minutes past eleven o’clock. Could he have been delayed by something that happened at your gym that night?’

Hansen shakes his head. ‘Consider this a piece of friendly advice, Gundersen. Don’t go around making allegations you can’t prove. It’s not a very clever thing to do.’

Iver looks at the grave eyes in front of him and feels a shot of adrenalin spread through his body. ‘Are you saying you know who really killed Jocke Brolenius?’

Hansen pushes back his chair, gets up and glares at Iver before putting his hands on the table and leaning forwards. Iver tries to stay where he is, but he can’t help moving his head back.