Henning to clear his head, but it’s not Brogeland or Gjerstad or his recent uninvited guests.
It’s Gunnar Goma.
‘The door was open,’ Goma says in a loud voice. Henning tries to breathe normally, but his chest tightens and he can feel a warm tingling sensation in his hands. Goma enters, without waiting to be asked. He is wearing the red shorts, but he has a white vest on his upper body this time.
‘If this is about your Nancy boys, then it’s the last time I’m doing you a favour,’ Goma snorts.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nancy boys. The people who came to your flat today. They look like Nancy boys, both of them. If that’s what you’re into, you’re on your own.’
Henning takes a step forward, feeling an urgent need to account for his sexual orientation, but his curiosity gets the better of him.
‘You saw them?’
Goma nods.
‘How many were there?’
‘Two.’
‘Can you describe them?’
‘Do I have to?’
‘No, you don’t have to, but it would be really helpful.’
Goma sighs.
‘They were dark, both of them. Dark-skinned, I mean. Muslims, I reckon. Their beards were too well groomed and fancy. One of them — it didn’t look like he had proper hair. More like it was painted. Or drawn. Very complicated pattern. The other was as thin as a rake, but he walked like a Nancy boy.’
‘Anything else?’
‘The first guy walked in exactly the same way. Wriggling his bum, like, and swinging one arm slightly.’
Goma grimaces.
‘Did you get a look at his face?’
‘Same kind of beard. Sparse, but even, and shaved in straight lines. He was a little chubbier than the other immigrant poof. And he had a bandage on one finger. On his left hand, I think it was.’
‘When was this?’
‘An hour ago. It was a stroke of luck really, because I had just decided to have a nap, when I heard footsteps.’
‘How long were they here?’
‘At first, I thought you had come home, because it was quiet in the stairwell, but then I heard some more noise, now, when was it, ten minutes later, maybe? And so I had another look at them through the spyhole. But if they’re your Nancy boys — ’
‘They’re not.’
He doesn’t elaborate. Goma appears to accept his brief denial.
‘Thank you so much,’ Henning says. ‘You’ve been a great help.’
Goma grunts, turns around and makes to leave.
‘By the way,’ he says, grabbing the door handle. ‘One of them was wearing a black leather jacket. With flames on the back.’
BBB. Bad Boys Burning. It has to be, Henning thinks. He nods and thanks Goma again. He looks at the clock. It is almost 1.15 a.m. He is wide awake. Too much has happened and his mind is buzzing.
Goma closes the door with a bang. The noise makes the flat feel frighteningly empty, as if Henning is in a vacuum. He fetches a mop and places it under the door handle. If anyone tries to come in, he will hear them. The mop will slow them down and give him time to escape.
He finds the escape rope coiled up under the bed and ties it around the TV stand. The television alone weighs 40 kg, and with various DVDs plus the stand itself, it should be enough to take his weight, he estimates. The last time he checked, he weighed 71 kg. He probably weighs even less now.
He sits down on the sofa and stares at the ceiling. He still hasn’t switched on the light. If anyone is watching him from the street, he doesn’t want to reveal that he is back.
Stefan’s pale face pops into his head. Please don’t let him haunt me as well, he prays. What on earth causes a seventeen-year-old boy to take his own life? If that is what he did?
The thought makes him sit up. What if he didn’t? What if someone killed him and made it look like suicide?
No. So what about the script? It looked staged, somehow. As if someone wanted it to be noticed, to add the interpretation of the scene? It must have been a suicide, Henning tries to convince himself. Stefan must have got hold of the script and read it. Leaving the script in plain view was a message to his parents or, more likely, his father. Look what you made me do. I hope you can live with yourself.
Yes. That must have been what happened. But all the same. Henning has done this before, reasoned his way to a logical conclusion and yet been unable to shake off a feeling that a vague but ominous hook has anchored itself in his stomach. It yanks him, not constantly, but every now and then it wriggles, making him unpick the jigsaw puzzle and put the pieces back together again differently.
He doesn’t know why. There is nothing to suggest that he is wrong, but his feeling of unease tells him that some of the pieces in Stefan’s puzzle don’t fit. Stefan’s puzzle might not be complete yet.
Chapter 57
He nods off in the early morning hours and is woken up by a car beeping its horn. He is lying on the sofa, adjusting his eyes to the light. It is 5.30 a.m. He shuffles into the kitchen, gets a glass of water, fetches the medicine jars from his bedside table and swallows two tablets. The matchbox is where it always is, but he hasn’t got the energy to challenge the soldiers from hell today.
He feels like he has been on a week-long bender. He knows he ought to eat something, but the thought of stale bread with dried-out ham is about as attractive as eating sawdust.
He thinks about the men who came to his flat. What would they have done if he had been there? Were they armed? Would they have tried to kill him?
He pushes the thought away. The point is that he wasn’t there, that there was no confrontation. He decides to forget about breakfast and go straight to work, even though the day is just beginning.
An hour later, he rings Brogeland. A detective never sleeps more than a couple of hours when an investigation intensifies and Henning has questions he is dying to ask. Brogeland’s voice sounds groggy when he finally picks up.
‘Hi, Bjarne, it’s me,’ Henning says, suitably jovial and matey.
‘Hi.’
‘Are you awake?’
‘No.’
‘Well, are you up?’
‘Define up.’
‘How did it go yesterday?’
‘That’s also up for discussion.’
‘What do you mean?’
Brogeland doesn’t reply.
‘Are you saying he didn’t kill himself?’
Henning is on the edge of his seat.
‘No. No, I didn’t say that. It went well, in the sense that we did what we had to do at the crime scene. What do you want to talk about? Why are you calling me this early?’
Henning is wrong-footed by Brogeland’s brusque tone.
‘Well, I — ’
