‘Like I said to you: I was curious. You were obviously up to something. Your face gave it all away. You should have seen yourself. I’m used to thinking in stories and I realised that a very good one was happening right under my nose. It was too tempting not to go back.’
He nods slowly.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to spy on you.’
‘How long were you outside before you came in?’
‘Not very long. But listen, I’ve already been through this with that policeman, Brunlanes, or whatever his name is.’
‘Brogeland,’ Henning corrects her. ‘Sorry, I’m just a bit — ’
It’s his turn to hold up his hands.
‘I’m a bit all over the place after a day like today.’
He makes a circular gesture with his finger next to his temple.
‘No worries,’ she says, mimicking an Australian accent. ‘Cheers.’
She raises her glass. They drink.
‘What are we drinking to?’ he asks.
‘That no more lives were lost,’ she says and swallows.
‘Cheers.’
Chapter 70
They agree to forget about the Foldviks while they eat their Creole-inspired hamburgers with potato boats or potato wedges or whatever they are called. He eats far too much and wolfs his food down. The beer settles like a fermenting layer on the top of his stomach. When they eventually leave, after Henning has paid the bill, he knows he is in troubled waters.
But then again, he likes the sea.
‘Thanks for dinner,’ Anette says, as they go outside into the June evening. It has started to rain again, tiny, spitting drops.
‘My pleasure.’
‘Fancy a couple of these?’ she says. He lets go of the door, which slams shut behind him. Anette is holding out a bag of Knott sweets.
‘These are great after a few beers.’
She pours some of the white, brown and grey pearls into her hand and tips them into her mouth. He smiles and says:
‘Yes, please.’
He holds out his hand and gets his own stash. Knott. Oh, great sweet of my childhood! He has consumed his fair share of them over the years, but he dreads to think how long ago it is since he last tasted the tiny flavour explosions. He takes a brown one, smacks his lips and nods at her with approval.
‘You need to eat them all at once. That’s what makes them so great.’
He looks at the seven or eight pastilles, if he can call them that, and raises his hand to his mouth. He grins as he does it. One pastille escapes and rolls back into his palm. He looks at the tiny, white, round sweet while he chews and crunches and munches. It looks like a small, white pill.
A small pill, a small, round, white pill.
Small, white -
Oh, hell.
He chews and swallows, never taking his eyes off Anette. She shakes the bag, pours more sweets into her palm and shoves them in her mouth. He looks at the sweets and remembers what Jarle Hogseth always used to say, that the devil is in the detail. It’s a huge cliche, but now as he stands there, looking at the white sweet, it’s as if the sneaking feeling that has nagged him ever since he stared into Stefan’s expressionless eyes, the hook that stirred in his stomach, suddenly takes hold and rips him open.
‘What is it?’ Anette says. Henning is incapable of speech. He just stares at her, remembering the white powder under his shoe, the small, round, white pill on the floor in Stefan’s bedroom, how the shape and the smell of the pill reminded him of something. He remembers the curtains that were closed, the door which wasn’t shut properly.
‘Don’t you like them?’ she asks, still smiling. He is aware that he is nodding. He tries to see if her eyes reveal anything. The mirror of the soul, where the truth can be found. But she merely looks back at him. He looks alternately at the sweets and at her.
‘Halloooo?’
Anette waves her hand in front of his face. He holds the sweet between his thumb and index finger and smells it.
‘What are you doing?’ Anette giggles, munching on.
‘No, I — ’
His voice is feeble, lacking in air. The number 11 tram pulls into Olaf Ryes Square. Its wheels screech. It sounds like a cross between a pig squealing and a sawmill.
‘That’s my tram,’ Anette says and makes to leave. She scrutinises his face. ‘Thanks for dinner. Got to run. See you soon.’
She smiles and she is gone. He stands there looking after her. Her backpack bounces up and down as she jogs. He is still staring at her when she boards the blue-and-white tram. When the doors close and the tram glides down towards the city centre, she takes a window seat and looks back at him.
Her eyes bore into him like sharp teeth.
*
It takes him forever to walk home. He can barely lift his legs and has to force them to move. All he can think about is Anette’s smile as she left, the backpack which she didn’t put on properly, which bounced up and down as she started to run and caused the stickers with the names of exotic, faraway places to perform a peculiar dance before his eyes.
He relives it, over and over, while his shoes make dragging noises against the tarmac, crashing like cymbals. The sound rises, gets wings and mixes with the rain, which has increased in intensity, as he passes the queue outside Villa Paradiso. People inside are eating pizza, drinking, smiling, laughing. He tries to concentrate, he recalls Anette’s eyes, the relief in them, the degree of satisfaction, only a few hours after she was knocked out by a stun gun. And he hears Tore Benjaminsen mimicking her voice:
What’s the point of being a genius if nobody knows?
Anette, he thinks. You might very well be the smartest woman I’ve ever met. With the taste of Knott still in his mouth, he turns into Seilduksgate with the feeling that he and everybody else have been conned.
Chapter 71
The pleasant feeling he enjoyed only a few hours ago has been sucked out of him. Back then he was elated, pleased with himself, delighted to have got himself a new source and thrown a bone to Iver Gundersen.
Now his steps are heavy like lead.
He reaches his block and wonders if Anette tricked Stefan into believing that she would also kill herself. Was that was why he lay huddled up against the wall? Because she was lying next to him in the narrow bed?
But why?
Again, he is reminded of Tore Benjaminsen, who thought that Anette was ultimately a lesbian, even though she had had several flings with men. Perhaps it’s that simple, Henning speculates. Henriette flirted with Anette, who mistakenly believed that Henriette was genuinely interested in her, only to be rejected. Anette had probably been dumped before, like most people, but not rejected. Not by someone she loved. And so she experienced, for the
