his head, his eyes seeking out Henning’s, all the time. And he saw Jonas climb to the highest point of the climbing frame. All his concentration went into looking at his dad so he didn’t look where he was going, he stepped between the ropes, lost his grip, fell forwards and sideways and smashed his face and mouth into a post. Henning leapt up, ran over to him, turned the boy’s head to examine the extent of the damage, but all he could see was a black, sooty face. Jonas’s mouth was gone. No teeth.
The only things that weren’t black were his burning eyes.
He wakes up and finds himself blowing, blowing desperately on Jonas’s burning eyes to put out the flames. But they never go out. Jonas’s eyes are like those birthday candles which re-ignite themselves; you can try, but you’ll never succeed in blowing them out.
The dream knocks him for six, every time. When he wakes up, his pulse is racing and he closes his eyes to block out the image which makes him nauseous. He visualises the ocean. Dr Helge has taught him to do that, concentrate on a favourite place or activity, whenever he gets flashbacks.
Henning likes the sea. He has happy memories of saltwater. And the sea helps him open his eyes again. He rolls on to his side, sees, from the clock on his mobile, that he has slept for nearly three hours. Not bad, for him. And he decides that will have to do.
At least for today.
*
There isn’t much he can do in the middle of the night. He ignores the matches and gets up. He goes into the living room, glances at his piano, but keeps on walking. His hip aches, but it is a little early for pills.
He sits down in the kitchen. He listens to the fridge. It hums and whirrs noisily. He thinks it is on its last legs. Just like him.
He hasn’t been there for many, many years, but the groaning from the fridge reminds him of the family’s summer cabin. It is just outside Stavern, by Anvikstranda Camping. It is plain, simple and small, probably no more 30 square metres. Fantastic view of the sea. Loads of adders.
His grandfather built the cabin as cheaply as he could, just after the war, and to Henning’s knowledge, the fridge is still the original one. It moans and carries on almost like the fridge in Henning’s flat.
He hasn’t been to the cabin since he was a child. He thinks Trine goes there sometimes, but he doesn’t know for sure. Perhaps the fridge is still there. It was only a half-size and they always had to kick the bottom of the door after closing it. If they didn’t, the door would swing open again. The flap to the freezer compartment was missing. The shelves in the door were loose and cracked, which meant heavy items such as milk and bottles had to lie inside the main body of the fridge.
But the fridge worked. He can still recall how cold the milk would be. And he decides it’s all right to grow old and still be in working order. He has never tasted milk so cold, never experienced brain freezes like the ones he used to get on summer holidays in their tiny cabin. But it was fun. It was cosy. They went crabbing, played football on the large plain at the camping site, climbed rock faces, learned to swim in the sea, barbecued sausages on the beach in the evenings.
The age of innocence. Why couldn’t it have stayed that way?
He wonders if Trine remembers those summers.
*
He thinks about sharia again. Allah-u-akbar. And he recalls what Zahid Mukhtar, the head of the Islamic Council in Oslo, said in 2004:
As a Muslim, you’re subject to Islamic law and, to Muslims, sharia takes precedent over all other laws. No other interpretation of Islam is possible.
Henning interviewed a social anthropologist at the Christian Michaelsen Institute shortly afterwards, and she explained that most people in the West have a distorted image of sharia. Though there are traditions going back a thousand years and a certain consensus exists on how to interpret the laws of Allah, sharia isn’t a single unambiguous set of written laws. Religious scholars, who interpret the Koran and Hadith texts, decide what is right and wrong, and their reading is influenced by whatever culture affects them. In Norway, most people associate sharia with the death penalty in Muslim countries. And this ignorance is deliberately exploited.
The social anthropologist, whose name he can’t remember, showed him a website in Norwegian that listed sharia law in bullet points and the punishments for breaking them. ‘This is very simplistic,’ she said, pointing to the screen. ‘Few people will understand what sharia is really about from this. It’s people who aren’t scholars who might post a page like this. They use a fluid concept to gain power and influence. Most people don’t realise that hudud punishments are quite low key in the Koran. A few scholars even think they should be ignored completely.’
The interview made an impression on Henning because it challenged his own prejudices against Muslims in general and sharia in particular. And now, when he thinks about hudud punishments and links them to the murder of Henriette Hagerup, a number of things fail to add up. She wasn’t a Muslim. Nor was she married to one and, as far as he knows, she hadn’t stolen anything, either, and yet her hand had been chopped off.
He shakes his head. A few years ago, he might have been able to come up with a credible explanation, but now he is increasingly convinced that it makes no sense. And that’s the problem. It always makes sense. It has to. He just needs to find the common denominator.
Chapter 21
Henning’s flat reminds him of a garage sale. He doesn’t like garages. He doesn’t know why, but they make him think of cars, idle engines, closed doors and screaming families.
Back in Klofta, the Juuls’ garage contained tyres that should have been thrown out long ago, ancient and unusable bicycles, rusty gardening tools, leaking hoses, bags of shingle, skis no one ever used, tins of paint, paintbrushes, logs stacked against the wall. Even though Henning’s father never tinkered with any of the cars he owned, the place always smelled like a garage. It smelled of oil.
The smell of oil will always remind him of his father. He doesn’t remember all that much about him, but he remembers his smell. Henning was fifteen years old when his father died suddenly. One morning, he simply failed to wake up. Henning had got up early; he had an English test later that day. His plan was to do some last-minute revision before the rest of his family stirred, but Trine was already awake. She was sitting on the bathroom floor, her legs pulled up to her chest. She said:
He’s dead.
She pointed to the wall, the wall to their parents’ bedroom. She wasn’t crying, she merely kept saying:
He’s dead.
He remembers knocking on the door, even though it was ajar. The door to his parents’ bedroom was always closed. Now it swung open. His father lay there with his hands on the duvet. His eyes were shut. He looked at peace. His mother was still asleep. Henning went over to his father’s side of the bed and looked at him. He looked like he was sleeping. When Henning shook him, he didn’t move. Henning shook him again, harder this time.
His mother woke up. At first, she was startled, wondering what on earth Henning was up to. Then she looked at her husband — and screamed.
Henning doesn’t remember much of what happened next. He only recalls the smell of oil. Even in death, Jakob Juul smelled of oil.
*
After a breakfast consisting of two cups of coffee with three sugars, Henning decides to go to work. It is only 5.30 a.m., but he thinks there is no point in hanging around the flat.
He visualises the sea as he turns into Urtegata. He should be feeling tired, but the coffee has woken him up. Solvi isn’t there yet, but he visualises her, too, as he swipes his card.
There is only one other person in the office when he arrives. The night duty editor is hunched over his keyboard, sipping a cup of coffee. Henning nods briefly to him as they make eye contact, but the duty editor soon returns to his screen.
Henning lets himself sink into his squeaking chair. He catches himself wondering when Iver Gundersen gets to work, if he is post-coital and glowing, if it’s plain for all to see that Nora gave him a good start to the day.
By the time Henning snaps out of his self-flagellating fantasy, he could have sworn he could detect Nora’s
