Pierced (8 page)

As Thorleif gets out, the wheels of the BMW dig into the ground and tear it up. Thorleif follows the car with his eyes as it turns right at the end of the car park and accelerates towards the exit. He notices the driver’s fair skin and ponytail. The car indicates left and drives off at speed towards Oslo.

Human beings are creatures of habit. They have their fixed rituals which they repeat every day, every week, every year. Henning is one of those creatures. In the past, before Jonas, if he was at a café or bar, and if he used the toilet there more than once, he would inevitably find his way back to the same cubicle. He might even wait for it to be vacant if it wasn’t when he first arrived.

Veronica Nansen told him that Tore and his friends worked out every Sunday at one o’clock in the afternoon and that if one of them didn’t show up they needed a good reason. When Henning stops outside Fighting Fit in Kjølbergveien, the time is a little past 1.30. If I’m lucky, he thinks, that ritual is still being honoured.

The name of the gym is printed in red letters against a black background on a filthy glass door. The carpet inside is purple. Henning walks up to an imposing reception counter. Three tiny potted plants have been placed at random on the counter next to an index of workout cards and a till. A computer screen lights up the face of the short-haired woman who is staring at it. Two white cupboards in a corner behind her are stocked with protein drinks and dietary supplements.

Henning waits patiently for her attention. The receptionist he had initially classified as a woman isn’t particularly feminine. She has rings in both eyebrows, and she wears black make-up around her eyes and on her lips. The muscles in her biceps are defined in a masculine way. When she finally looks up at him she pushes her chest up and out. She is even wearing a T-shirt advertising a deodorant for men. He notices she has thin, encrusted scars running diagonally down her forearms. Whether they were made by an angry cat or something else Henning can’t determine without making it obvious that he is staring. The infected needle scars around the major veins in her elbow joint, however, are unmistakable.

Henning says hi and attempts a smile.

‘Hi,’ she replies.

‘My name is Henning Juul. I work for
123news
.’

No response, only a dull stare.

‘I’m working on a story about gyms, I don’t mean gyms that belong to the big chains, but the independent ones that survive despite the fierce competition. I thought it was about time that someone wrote about you too.’

He flashes a smile as false as the Rolex watches on Karl Johansgate, but it will have to do.

‘And that’s why you are here? On a Sunday?’

Her voice is hoarse as if something is stuck in her throat.

‘Eh, yes. I’m writing a lot of other stories this week, and, as I happened to be in the neighbourhood, I thought that—’

Henning realises he is struggling to convince even himself so he shuts up. The woman says nothing. She just stares at him.

‘Is Kent Harry Hansen here?’

‘No.’

‘Oh no!’ he says, excessively positive. ‘So where is he?’

‘Some people have better things to do on a Sunday than work.’

‘Fair point,’ Henning says and smiles again.

The girl’s fixed mask remains intact.

‘I was wondering, is there anyone from admin here today?’

‘I’m the only one.’

‘And you are—’

‘I’m just the receptionist.’

Henning looks around.

‘How about Geir Grønningen? Is he here today?’

‘He doesn’t work here.’

‘No, but I’ve heard that he uses this gym.’

‘So what?’

‘I need a quote or two. Why people work out here and blah blah blah. It makes the article sound better.’

The girl behind the counter looks at him before she nods in the direction of a row of exercise bikes by the windows. A man in a white vest is pedalling at a sedate pace whilst looking at a screen on the wall.

‘That’s him?’

The girl nods. Almost imperceptibly.

‘Okay, thanks for your help.’

Henning attempts an ironic smile, but her attention is already elsewhere. He crosses the large room where white and black equipment in all shapes and sizes competes for floor space. Music blasts from the loudspeakers. The weights ring out. Grunting and bellowing alternate. The sound of testosterone, Henning thinks. No one here looks as if it bothers them that brute strength on its own is pointless if you can’t run 150 metres without getting out of breath. Many of the stomachs on display are bulging, but not from muscle.

‘Geir Grønningen?’

Henning puts his hand on the bike’s handlebars. A tall man with long thin hair turns to face him. He has a wispy beard around his lips and chin. And here was Henning thinking the age of grunge was long gone.

‘Hi,’ Henning goes on.

Grønningen’s only reply is to pedal more slowly. Henning gets on the vacant exercise bike next to him and discovers too late that his feet don’t reach the pedals, but he refrains from adjusting the seat. Instead he sits there, dangling his legs.

‘Do you mind if I have a chat with you while you warm up?’

Grønningen looks straight ahead. Henning fixes his eyes on him until he turns around. ‘My name is Henning Juul,’ he continues. ‘I’m a journalist with
123news
. I’ve just been talking to Veronica Nansen.’

Grønningen turns his head slightly.

‘She told me that you’ve been trying to find out who—’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Grønningen hisses and looks daggers at him before quickly glancing around. ‘You can’t just come in here and—’

‘Why not?’ Henning says as frown lines appear on his brow. ‘We’re just having a chat.’

‘You don’t understand,’ the big man says. ‘Get out before anyone sees you.’

‘You’re quite right,’ Henning says, feigning ignorance. ‘I don’t understand.’

Grønningen gives him a look of exasperation. Neither of them says anything for a while, but Henning refuses to release Grønningen’s eyes. Finally, Grønningen gives in. ‘Do you know where Jarlen, the restaurant, is?’

‘No, but I can find out.’

‘Wait there and I’ll have a chat with you later.’

‘Okay. When?’

Grønningen rolls his eyes before he faces Henning again. ‘When I’m done here. I can’t cut my workout short just because you turned up.’

‘So give me a time.’

Grønningen glances surreptitiously around again. Then, without looking at Henning, he says, ‘Give me a couple of hours.’

‘A couple of hours it is.’

Henning looks at the clock on the wall behind the reception counter, nods to Grønningen and climbs off the exercise bike. On his way to the exit he smiles at the girl behind the counter and gives her a thumbs-up before he walks outside and back into the heat.

Thorleif Brenden wakes up with a start and looks around. There is light all around him. From an open window that overlooks the courtyard the sound of children shouting enters and exacerbates his headache.

He gets up and goes to the kitchen. Then he fills a glass with cold water and swallows the contents with rapid gulps. He groans with satisfaction. The next moment the door is flung open as if Kramer from
Seinfeld
himself is about to make an entrance. But it is only Julie with Elisabeth at her heels.

‘Hi, Daddy! I need the loo.’

‘Okay, sweetheart,’ he smiles and looks at Elisabeth. ‘Remember to close the door behind you.’

‘Okay,’ Julie replies.

‘And afterwards you must tell Daddy what you’ve just learned, promise?’ Elisabeth calls out after her daughter.

‘Yesss!’

Elisabeth smiles and looks at him tenderly. ‘Hi,’ she says in a soft and affectionate voice. ‘Did you have a good sleep?’

Thorleif shakes his head and refills his glass.

‘You certainly look as if you have.’

‘How can you tell?’ he asks her.

‘Your eyes are swollen. As if they’ve relaxed properly for once.’

‘It’s probably just an allergic reaction.’

‘Oh, you poor thing. You shouldn’t have joined us on that horse-and-cart ride. Have you taken your medication? Do you feel better for it?’

‘A bit, perhaps.’

Elisabeth strokes his cheeks and gazes at him as if he were a baby. Then she kicks off her shoes. He can hear Julie singing happily through the open bathroom door.

‘Are you going to fix the alarm today?’

‘What?’

‘The burglar alarm. We must get someone in to take a look at it.’

‘Oh, right.’

Thorleif had already forgotten that the alarm had, unexpectedly, not been working when they came back from Bogstad Farm.

‘Daddy,’ Julie shouts as she comes storming out of the bathroom. ‘Do you know what?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve learned to ride my bicycle!’

Her sense of triumph is written large across her face.

‘Really?’

Julie nods, bursting with pride.

‘Do you want to see, Daddy? Do you want me to show you?’

Thorleif looks at Elisabeth. Julie’s parents are bursting with pride, too.

‘Of course I want you to show me, sweetheart. Hang on, let me just put my shoes on.’

Henning walks across the golden brown floor of Jarlen. A wall painted red at the top and white at the bottom welcomes him to the restaurant. The wall sconces look like hats someone thought it would be amusing to turn upside down. There are white tablecloths and napkins on the tables but hardly any customers eating at them.

Henning picks a table in the middle of the room, orders Danish-style beefburger with potatoes, vegetables and pickled beetroot for no other reason than he likes Denmark and the Danes. While he waits for his food, he looks out of the window at the five-metre-high wall across the road.

Oslo Prison.

He is somewhere inside it
, Henning thinks,
the man with information about the fire
. The time when he meets Tore Pulli face to face can’t come soon enough.

Henning is still feeling uncomfortably full after his meal when Geir Grønningen shows up, two hours and fifteen minutes after their brief chat at Fighting Fit. He has showered and is wearing tight leather trousers and a white T-shirt which strains over his belly. His steps are measured and decisive, and his arms hang well away from his upper body as if something has been stuffed under his armpits. His long hair falls loosely over his shoulders, but his hairline has retreated high up his forehead and has made room for deep frown lines.

Henning gets up when Grønningen appears. ‘I don’t think we managed to introduce ourselves properly earlier,’ he says and holds out his hand. ‘Henning Juul.’

Grønningen shakes his hand reluctantly. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ he says as he sits down.

‘Why is that?’

‘Walking straight into the gym and talking to me about what I—’

Grønningen breaks off, looks around, but all he sees is a noisy family with children at a table further away.

‘You’re lucky no one saw you,’ he continues.

‘I am or you are?’

Grønningen doesn’t reply.

‘So no one knows that you’re trying to find out who set Tore up?’

Grønningen looks at Henning. His lips form the beginning of an answer, but Henning sees that he opts for an alternative reply. ‘Turning up at the gym and asking questions about people isn’t very smart,’ he says archly. ‘People might think you’re trying to fit them up.’

‘And they’ve developed this paranoia because they’ve been law-abiding citizens all their lives?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I think so. But I wanted to talk to you because Veronica said that you’ve tried to help Tore while he has been inside.’

‘I’ve tried and tried, Mrs Blom,’ he says and looks down.

‘So you haven’t found anything out?’

Grønningen studies his napkin in detail. ‘Not much, no.’

‘That probably explains why Tore rang me yesterday,’ Henning says and waits for Grønningen to look up. Which he does half a second later.

‘Did he?’

‘Yes. He asked for my help. Since you’re clearly trying to help him too, I thought we might be useful to each other.’

Grønningen snorts with ill-concealed contempt.

‘I get it,’ Henning continues. ‘You don’t know if you can trust me. And no one has claimed the one-million-krone reward yet. But you can relax, Geir. I don’t give a toss about the money. I have my own reason for doing this.’

‘What reason would that be?’

‘This is how we do it,’ Henning says and waits until he has Grønningen’s undivided attention. ‘I tell you everything you want to know about me and why I’m here, and then you tell me what you know about your friend’s case. I’m interested in anyone who knew Tore. Who they were and what they stood for.’

Grønningen directs his dark-brown eyes at a floral arrangement on one of the console tables.

‘I don’t snitch on my mates,’ he says in a mournful voice that suggests that he has just betrayed a lifelong principle.

‘I’m not asking you to. All you have to do is tell me a bit about Tore and how he got on with his friends, how they treated each other. You don’t have to talk about what they got up to if you don’t want to. And just to make it clear: I’m only interested in this story. If I should stumble across anything else while I’m sniffing around I’ll leave it alone.’

Henning is surprised when he realises that he actually means what he says.

Many seconds pass without Grønningen saying anything. At regular intervals he looks at Henning before his gaze breaks away. The waiter comes over to their table. Grønningen orders a Wiener schnitzel with extra potatoes and vegetables. When the waiter has gone, Henning leans across the table.

‘My son died,’ he says, and a lump forms instantly in his throat. ‘I tried to rescue him from my flat. Somebody set fire to it.’ Henning tries to swallow. ‘Tore says that he knows something about what happened that day. He has promised to tell me what it is – if I help him. That’s the only reward I’m looking for. I’ll do anything to make Tore tell me what he knows. No matter what that is or where it takes me.’ He pauses for effect. Grønningen stares pensively at the table. ‘And it’s fine if you don’t want to help me help your friend. But I promise you, Geir, I’m not going to go away. Not now, not ever.’