Chapter 47
It is almost four o’clock, but Henning decides to stop by the office anyway. He has no articles to file, because he hasn’t found out anything he feels he can write about yet, but he is working. And he hasn’t shown his face since this morning. I ought to report to Heidi or Tourette Kare, he thinks. Have a chat with Gundersen, perhaps, if he is around.
He takes a risk and crosses the street at Vaterlands Park. He is dragging his legs across the road, some distance away from the pedestrian crossing, dodging the worst of the rush-hour traffic, when he becomes aware of a car on the far side of the lights. It’s not a silver Mercedes, it’s a Volvo too far away for him to make out the model, but it accelerates as the lights change from green to amber. It is forced to brake when the car in front blocks it. Tyres screech. Horns beep. Horns beep all over Oslo. All day long.
The Volvo gets a response from the car in front. Henning is half expecting a confrontation, that the Volvo driver will get out and have a go at the driver of the car in front, but it doesn’t happen. Instead the man in the passenger seat rolls down his window and sticks his head out. Henning can’t make out his face properly, all he can see is a pair of gleaming, gold-framed sunglasses, even though there isn’t a single ray of sunshine for miles around.
He registers this because he instantly gets the feeling that the man is looking for him. If they are all like Ray-Ban Man, Henning thinks, perhaps he doesn’t have much to fear. But some idiots carry guns and if you give a moron a gun, you can get him to do almost anything.
The thought makes him speed up and he decides to make a detour on his way to the office. The area between Gronlandsleiret and Urtegata can seem a little inhospitable, regardless of the time of day, so he walks up Brugata, mingles with people at the bus station and jumps on the number 17 tram when it arrives a few minutes later. He rides it up Trondheimsvei and gets off at the Rimi supermarket, follows Herslebsgate until the large yellow building at the top of Urtegata is once more in sight. Cars zoom past him in both directions; it is the height of the rush-hour, and if anyone wants to kill him or kidnap him, it would be impossible to do it here. With one million witnesses and no clear escape routes, Henning can feel safe. Or relatively safe.
Perhaps I’m just paranoid, he thinks, perhaps I’ve been out of the game too long to know that this is completely normal, that nothing is going to happen? But there was something about the way Brogeland spoke which got his attention. Brogeland was worried. He knows about this gang. And as Nora said: they’re not nice people.
He catches himself wondering how this is all going to end. If they are trying to kill him — as Brogeland hinted — because he can place Yasser Shah in Tariq Marhoni’s flat, they won’t stop until they have succeeded.
Chapter 48
Henning needs to check a couple of things. When he arrives at the office, he is thinking about them and practically collides with Kare Hjeltland at the coffee machine. Kare is about to step aside, when he sees who it is.
‘Henning.’
‘Hi, Kare,’ Henning replies. Kare gazes at him as if he were Elvis.
‘How are you? Bloody hell. Bloody hell, you must have been scared shitless?’
Henning reluctantly agrees that he was a little scared, yes, he probably was.
‘What the hell happened?’
Henning takes a step back and hopes that Kare won’t notice. While he gives him the abbreviated version, he checks the room. Gundersen isn’t there. But he spots Heidi. And he can see that Heidi has spotted him.
‘Listen, I didn’t manage to get back to the staff meeting,’ he says. ‘I heard Sture was going to say a few words?’
‘Yes, a lot of fun that was, he-he. Same old story. You were lucky, you had a good reason for getting away, away, AWAY!’
Kare grins from ear to ear, once his tic has died down.
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing we haven’t heard before. Bad times, you lot need to generate more pages and do it faster, if we’re to avoid cuts and boo fucking hoo.’
Kare laughs and smiles — for a long time. Heidi would probably enjoy cutting me right now, Henning thinks. But he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.
He excuses himself by saying he needs a word with Heidi before he goes home for the day. Kare understands and slaps him hard on the shoulder, three times. Then he is off again. Henning decides to strike first.
‘Hello, Heidi,’ he says. She turns her head.
‘Why the hell — ’
‘Bad times, slowdown in the advertising market, we need to deliver more pages, cuts.’
He sits down without looking at her. He feels her eyes on him and is reminded of the North Pole.
‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
He turns on his computer. Heidi clears her throat.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Working. Is Iver around?’
Heidi doesn’t reply immediately.
‘Er, no. He has gone home.’
He is still not making eye contact with her and tries to remain unaffected by the unpleasant silence which envelops them. Heidi doesn’t move. When Henning finally looks up, he is surprised by the expression in her eyes. She looks like she has had a puncture and there is no sight of a bus stop for miles.
‘I’m close to breaking a really good story,’ he says in a milder voice and tells her about his meetings with Yngve Foldvik and Tore Benjaminsen, tells her that the police will soon eliminate Mahmoud Marhoni as a suspect, and that from now on, the focus of the investigation will be on Henriette Hagerup’s closest circle of friends. He doesn’t mention his sources, but Heidi nods all the same and doesn’t pressure him.
‘Sounds very good,’ she says. ‘Will it be an exclusive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great.’
The sting in her voice has gone. Perhaps I’ve finally broken her, Henning thinks. Perhaps I have won The Battle. Or perhaps she is like Anette Skoppum. Perhaps she is one of those people who keep trying, only to get deeply upset when they fail.
Ten minutes later, Heidi goes home. She even calls out ‘take care!’ He says ‘you too’. Then his thoughts return to the three things he has come to check. He starts with Spot the Difference Productions.
Neat name. He guesses that whoever set up the company was fed up with continuity errors in films and their manifesto is never to make such howlers themselves. He looks forward to the newspaper headlines the day Spot the Difference Productions actually make some. They must be tempting fate.
He reads everything he can find about the company on the Internet. They have produced a couple of films, which he hasn’t seen yet and has no intention of ever seeing. They have a website, whose homepage is a collage of continuity errors from different Hollywood productions. He recognises photos from Gladiator, Ocean’s 11, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Titanic, Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park. There are more, but he can’t place them off the top of his head. It says ‘Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen ’ in a small font at the bottom of the page, and the quote is attributed to Robert Bresson.
He clicks away and finds the page with contact details. Spot the Difference Productions have two producers and a director on their staff. He decides to call the first person on the list, for no reason other than he has such a fine first name. He rings Henning Enoksen’s mobile. The call is answered after several long rings.
