Thorleif tries to visualise the road to Einar’s cabin, but all he can recall is that they passed the shop, the petrol station and the kiosk before taking a right. So that’s what he does now though he has yet to recognise anything. It doesn’t help that the darkness and the snow back then have been replaced by bright afternoon sunshine and dry late summer colours. He walks past a block of flats with five garages under a large brown building with a red roof. Otherwise it is all cabins. Everywhere. And an enormous car park with rows of blue posts lined up with space for one car between them.
Thorleif follows the gravel road until he reaches a crossroads. There is a sign saying Prestholt to the right, via a road called Nystolvegen. Next to it are more signs on top of each other, all signposting cross-country ski routes such as Embretstolen, Geilo via Prestholt or Prestholt via Eimeheii. No, Thorleif thinks. It doesn’t ring any bells.
So he decides to continue straight ahead as a car comes towards him on the gravel road. Thorleif pulls down the baseball cap and stares at the ground. He steps aside until the car has passed him and carries on until he reaches a grey building with a sign saying Presttun.
Presttun, Thorleif thinks. That sounds vaguely familiar.
Spurred on by this he walks on, following the red sticks along the roadside — put there in case the snowfall is so deep that the snowplough drivers can’t see the road. He remembers Einar and himself struggling up that same hill, expelling clouds of beery breath as they went. He hears rhythmic hammering coming from a building site, but he doesn’t see anyone.
One hundred metres later he stops and looks across the slope to the right. Cabin after cabin and occasional young birch trees rise from the ground. Does he recognise the black cabin halfway up the slope? Red roof and windowsills. A small outhouse nearby. Yes, that’s it, Thorleif says to himself and speeds up.
He soon reaches it. It’s not a big cabin, but now when Thorleif sees it again he remembers what it looked like on the inside. Pine walls and pine furniture everywhere. A small galley kitchen. A sofa with red cushions. Oilcloth on the table. Square windows with red and white curtains.
It probably hasn’t changed on the inside, either, he thinks and takes another look around. The cabin looks deserted. The surrounding cabins look empty too. He walks up to it, stops and peers inside through a gap in the kitchen curtains. Thorleif has never burgled anyone’s house, he has barely done anything illegal in his entire life, and he feels uneasy knowing he is about to do so now, especially to someone he knows. He tries to persuade himself that Einar and his family would understand.
Thorleif walks around to the back of the cabin, remembering how Einar told him they forgot their key one Easter. They had to call out a local locksmith, who, in return for a substantial fee, made sure their holiday wasn’t completely ruined. Einar’s father, who was tight-fisted, promised himself that this would never happen again so he devised an alternative way into the cabin to be used in an emergency. As a result, the door of the woodshed was always left unlocked. At the end of the woodshed a new door was fitted that led to the tool shed and larder from which you could enter the kitchen through a hatch with a padlock. And Thorleif remembers Einar telling him that the key to that padlock was hidden in a small rusty tin can.
Thorleif pushes down the handle of the door to the woodshed, but he has to lean heavily on it before it opens. He looks around one last time before he enters and walks to the next door. The shelves and benches in the tool shed are packed with old skis, ski poles with snow guards, snowshoes, spades, tins of paint and various tools. Then he sees the tin can. Rusty but intact. He picks it up and shakes it.
The key rattles inside.
And Thorleif realises that he is smiling for the first time in several days.
Chapter 53
Henning is sitting on his battered Stressless armchair, balancing his laptop on his thighs and resting his legs on a footstool in front of him. He has cleaned the cuts on the soles of his feet and applied a sterile bandage. He can feel that the healing process has already started.
The last few hours seem a blur to him. All he can remember clearly is his telephone conversation with Iver. Then nothing until he found himself coming to in the stairwell. And it’s not the first time that his body has short- circuited like this. What on earth is wrong with me? he wonders.
It’s almost 6.30 p.m., so he turns on the television. The commercial break is followed by the logo for TV2 News. He turns up the volume as he sees Tore Pulli’s tall figure in the same doorway where he himself met him only a few days ago. A breathless female voice announces that convicted killer Tore Pulli collapsed and died in Oslo Prison today. The picture disappears while the theme music is turned up a few notches before it fades away. The next headline story is introduced. Henning doesn’t listen to it but sees images of a concertinaed train with smoke rising from it. The final headline story is given five seconds to tantalise the viewer before the camera cuts to the studio where news anchor Mah-Rukh Ali welcomes the viewers to tonight’s programme. Henning turns the sound up even further.
Former enforcer Tore Pulli collapsed and died in Oslo Prison earlier today. Pulli was being interviewed by TV2 when he died.
Ali stares into the camera. The feature begins, but there are no pictures from inside the prison. Instead, they cut right to a green screen with a photograph of prison spokesman Knut Olav Nordbo next to a telephone. He makes a nervous attempt at telling the people of Norway what has happened, but for the time being he can’t release any information about the circumstances.
They cut to an outside broadcast from the entrance to the prison where a reporter is ready and waiting, clutching a microphone close to his face. He reiterates the facts of the case, before addressing Prison Governor Borre Kolberg. He can’t shed any light on what has happened either. Then back to Mah-Rukh Ali in the studio, who explains that viewers can see the final pictures of Tore Pulli on the nine o’clock news later that evening. In addition, on TV2’s website they can read an interview with TV2 journalist Guri Palme, who was about to interview Tore Pulli when he died.
Henning turns down the sound, flips open the laptop and connects to the Internet. The home page of 123news downloads itself. The breaking-news logo has gone and has been replaced with a standard headline accompanied by the media’s favourite photo of Pulli: the mug shot of him that cold October evening almost two years ago where his eyes are wide, his mouth open and his face displaying a gawping expression.
Henning experiences a sinking feeling, not just at Pulli’s death but also as he recalls the disappointment and incredulity in Iver Gundersen’s voice right before he hung up on him. Looking at all the stories Iver has written makes Henning feel even worse. Under the lead story there is a plethora of links, all with relevant and recent titles. Henning clicks on the lead story which still has no headline other than the obvious one that Pulli is dead.
The first thing that strikes him as he scrolls down the article is that Iver has done a great job. He has tried to dramatise today’s events, has written it in the present tense and has even produced a timeline. He concludes by reminding the readers what Pulli had been convicted of, complete with fact frames. The main text has been broken up with a large picture of Veronica Nansen, but she has yet to respond to 123news ’s requests for a reaction.
Henning sees that the news desk has pasted in TV2’s interview with Guri Palme. ‘The Shock of My Life’ is the headline. Neat, he thinks, producing an internet exclusive so promptly and then referring to the story during a live broadcast. ‘Synergies’ is the trendy word for it in TV circles. But he doesn’t click on it because he already knows what it’s going to say.
Iver has also spoken to Pulli’s solicitor, Frode Olsvik, who explained that he visited his client only a few hours before the interview and that there was nothing to suggest that he was unwell. Henning sighs, thinks about Pulli and hankers after a cigarette for the first time in ages. But he only needs to visualise his mother slumped over the kitchen table with the oxygen tank humming next to her and the urge goes away. What a life, he thinks. What a death.
At least Pulli’s was quick.
Chapter 54
