‘I spoke to Geir Gronningen earlier today. He seemed to think that you might be stopping by. I was sorry to hear about your colleague,’ Nylund says and shakes his head. Henning studies him, not sure what to make of Nylund’s apparently genuine expression of sympathy.
‘Your colleague said you have a theory that Tore Pulli was innocent.’
Henning holds up his hand in front of his mouth and coughs briefly. ‘So he told you? Yes, I suppose we have. I wonder if that’s why he was beaten up.’
‘Who by?’
‘Well, that’s the problem. You, possibly.’
Nylund smiles. ‘Look at me,’ he says. ‘I weigh sixty-eight kilos. Some of my girls can beat me at arm wrestling.’
‘Yes, maybe they can. But those who work for you have been known to beat people up.’
Henning points to the screen where Petter Holte is holding up an authoritarian hand to a middle-aged man on unsteady legs who is trying to enter the club.
‘I can assure you, Juul, that no one here is involved in the attack on your colleague.’
‘And you’re sure that you know what your staff get up to at any given time?’
‘When they’re at work, then yes.’
‘And you keep an eye on them from here?’
Henning points to the monitors.
‘And in person — when I’m downstairs.’
‘Right. Do these monitors record?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you can find out who left the club after my colleague did.’
‘I can.’
‘Would you do it?’
Nylund smiles. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to your colleague, Juul, but my customers are entitled to a certain amount of privacy. I can’t show you recordings of what happens in here just because you want me to.’
‘I could get the police to do it.’
‘Be my guest — the police can see the footage as long as they produce the right paperwork. And just to be clear, it’s nothing personal.’
‘Mm.’
Henning looks around again. One of the video cameras is pointing at a door with a sign saying Glitnir.
‘Why the Norse theme?’ Henning asks and turns to Nylund again.
‘It was Vidar’s idea.’
‘Vidar Fjell?’
‘Yes. Some years ago, when I talked about opening this place, we spent an evening discussing how we could make the club stand out. Vidar talked about Freya and the Vikings and all that, and I was fascinated by the Norse concept of sex. I think we all were. We decided it would be a good look for us, and that’s how Asgard was born.’
‘So Vidar was into Norse mythology?’
‘Yes. In a big way.’
Interesting, Henning thinks, as he remembers that Fjell’s father is a professor of Nordic Studies. This must be where his interest sprang from. Henning realises he is excited by this discovery though he doesn’t quite know why.
He sits for a while looking at the real-time clock at the bottom of the right-hand corner of one of the monitors. It makes him think about the nineteen minutes that left Tore Pulli shaking his head. If he really was innocent and he continued to insist that he had arrived on time, how could time pass so quickly?
The answer is obvious, Henning thinks, and it irritates him that the thought hasn’t occurred to him earlier: time doesn’t run fast unless someone makes sure that it does.
Someone must have tampered with the clock on Pulli’s mobile. Someone with easy access to it.
Chapter 85
Mia is working today as well. Thorleif smiles to her as he enters the hotel lobby.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hello, you.’
‘I was wondering if I could borrow your laptop for a little while. Just for a couple of minutes,’ he says, apologetically.
‘Of course you can.’
‘Thank you so much. There was just something I wanted to check.’
‘Take as long as you like. It’s fine.’
Mia smiles and lifts the bag with the laptop over the counter. He takes it.
‘Thank you. How is the book coming along?’
‘Not too bad. I’m working on an escape scene at the moment. It takes place in a hotel,’ she says with her most conspiratorial smile.
‘Oh, good,’ Thorleif says. He realises he would genuinely like to hear more about Mia’s other experiences as a budding writer but suppresses the urge. He can’t allow himself to get to know her or anyone else here. Instead, he sits down in the same seat as yesterday and throws his denim jacket on the adjacent chair. The hotel’s home page glows at him as he opens the screen. Thorleif straightens his cap, opens his newly created email account and waits with bated breath as it downloads. There is no reply from Iver Gundersen.
Thorleif slumps a little in the chair but decides he might as well check the newspapers as he is already online. He finds an article that informs him that the preliminary autopsy report on Tore Pulli provided no answers as to his cause of death. Apart from that, there are no interesting stories about Pulli.
Most newspapers have produced their own, near identical stories about Thorleif’s disappearance, but none of them is accompanied by a picture. This is one of the advantages of being behind the camera, he thinks. You’re practically invisible to the public.
‘Mia?’ he calls out.
‘Yes.’
‘Where is the gents, please?’
She leans over the counter and points to the right. ‘Go past the piano and you’ll find the lavatories on the other side.’
‘Okay. Thank you. Is it all right if I leave your laptop here while I’m gone?’
‘Yes, as there is no one else around-’
Mia smiles again. Thorleif gets up and walks past the fireplace. He passes a lobster tank by the entrance to the restaurant and turns the corner by the dark brown piano. After the smell of the old earth closet in Einar’s cabin, it is a treat to enter a fragrant room. There are grey tiles on the floor. The walls are white.
Thorleif relieves himself and spends a long time washing his hands in one of the two square sinks in front of the mirror before he dries them with a paper towel which instantly disintegrates and sticks to his fingers. He is about to return to the lobby‚ but stops at the sight of a man at the reception with his back to him. The man is wearing a black leather jacket. And he has a ponytail.
Orjan Mjones looks around as he gets off the train. A petrol station, a hotel, a shop and a kiosk. Is that all this place has to offer? he wonders. In that case it will be a brief visit. If I was Thorleif, he thinks, and I had got off the train here, where would I have gone? What would I have needed?
Mjones tries the shop by the petrol station first, but finds it closed. The kiosk, however, is open, but the woman behind the counter has never heard of Brenden. Mjones walks down the steps and out into the evening heat. The sky above him is turning as dark and gloomy as he feels.
The hotel, red and built in the eighties, looms large in the landscape. I might as well stay here for the night,
