‘Pulli claimed what?’ Olsvik asks him.
‘That he knew something about the fire in my flat,’ Henning says, distracted.
‘And you think that your son’s death relates to Pulli’s?’
‘Yes. Or… I… I don’t know,’ Henning admits without looking up.
He remembers what Elisabeth Haaland told him about their burglar alarm packing up on a Sunday. That must have been the day after Pulli called me, Henning concludes, since he met the fire investigator Erling Ophus on a Saturday. In which case, someone must have acted with extreme speed. First they would have to identify someone who could get close to Tore Pulli, a job that would surely require time and research, then they would need to get hold of the surveillance equipment for Brenden’s flat — on a Saturday — and install it when the Brenden family left the house the next day.
Henning shakes his head. There wouldn’t be enough time.
‘I know nothing about this,’ Olsvik says. ‘I haven’t heard anything.’
Henning nods slowly. But the thought refuses to go away. And there is another option, he thinks, which Olsvik also touched on. That Pulli had been in contact with someone else regarding the same subject before he called Henning.
I need to get hold of those call logs, Henning says to himself.
Chapter 96
Normally it takes the police five to six weeks to get an answer when they send off a fingerprint to Kripos. But after locating Thorleif Brenden’s car in Kirkegaten and successfully lifting a fingerprint from the armrest on the passenger side, Brogeland persuaded forensic scientist Ann-Mari Sara to convince her bosses to give the sample top priority and run it through AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It took only ten or twelve seconds before she got a hit. And after the result had been checked manually, there was no doubt that the fingerprint belonged to a man called Orjan Mjones.
Brogeland remembers Mjones from his plain-clothes days. His name also appeared on the long list Nokleby gave them after Elisabeth Haaland had described ‘Furio’ — the man who pretended to interview her.
It really is ridiculous, Brogeland thinks, that so few staff within the police force have access to the Indicia database where all information about everyone — obtained both officially and unofficially — is collected and stored. If you have a description of a person and if information about someone with similar features has previously been entered, everything relating to them — including any criminal record — appears in a matter of seconds. In some cases the level of information stored about the person includes the smallest details. All mapping of East Europeans, for example, in connection with Project Borderless is being entered into Indicia.
Brogeland studies the fact sheet on Mjones which Nokleby printed out and gave to them after Elisabeth Haaland had described ‘Furio’. His criminal career began in his teens, and he has two previous convictions. The first is for a robbery in the Majorstua area of Oslo where a car was used to ram-raid a jeweller’s, while the other conviction relates to possession of an illegal weapon in a bar in Oslo. When police searched his remarkably tidy home, they discovered several other weapons as well as explosives and burglary equipment. While he was suspected of being the brains behind a string of minor and major robberies in his early twenties, things quietened down around him at the end of the nineties and the start of the new millennium. For that reason, Mjones was suspected of having made the transition from petty to organised crime and of moving into an even more lucrative and discreet career as a fixer. This could mean anything from providing persuasive heavies to carrying out actual hits. But even though the rumours flourished, the police never found anything concrete they could arrest him for.
Yesterday, Brogeland had called one of his former colleagues at Organised Crime, Njal Vidar Hammerstad, to ask if they had come across Mjones in recent years. Hammerstad said that they didn’t have him under surveillance, but that his face popped up from time to time. They knew, for example, that Mjones had befriended several people in the criminal Albanian community. But Hammerstad didn’t know if there was a link between Mjones and Tore Pulli.
In an ideal world, Brogeland thinks, plain-clothes officers would have followed Mjones and his like every day all year round. But it’s too expensive. Every year Oslo Police spends billions of kroner fighting organised crime and yet it’s still not enough. It doesn’t even scratch the surface. Norway is an attractive country for criminal gangs because we’re an affluent nation, he thinks. With a chronically understaffed police force.
Sometimes his wife asks him if he misses his old life as a plain-clothes police officer. His reply is always no, but that’s a lie. Of course he does. He misses the buzz of the chase even though there might be long boring intervals in between. He remembers the endless hours sitting in cars or trying to blend in in the street. And then the high when everything kicked off at last, when he would explode into action, give his all without hesitating. Not for one second. But he couldn’t live that life once he had a family. The level of risk and the generally anti-social working hours were intolerable in the long run.
Brogeland heaves a sigh and looks at an old photograph of Mjones. A man who has stayed in the shadows in recent years but who has now emerged to carry out a hit. The chances that he has already left the country are considerable — unless something went wrong. But what would that be?
Chapter 97
Orjan Mjones feels cold even though he is sweating. He puts one hand on the tiled wall in Durim’s bathroom for support and stares at his face in the mirror. It’s white. His arm dangles limply by his side. It’s as if a heavy lump is trying to force its way out from the inside of his shoulder and paralyse him totally.
Mjones blinks hard and watches as the damp creases in his face fill with sweat trickling from his forehead and eyes. I’m burning up, he thinks, and splashes himself with cold water. It helps. For now.
The night on Durim’s sofa was one of the worst that he can recall. At one point the ceiling transformed into an ocean where a gigantic wave came crashing towards him. When he blinked, everything returned to normal. Then he started seeing colours, yellow and purple, pink and blue — all mixed up. In a lucid moment he realised that he must be hallucinating. Early the next morning he called the Doctor. A man whose name Mjones doesn’t know, a man who makes house calls at short notice to provide medical assistance to people who prefer to avoid hospitals. It’s an expensive service, but the combination of life-saving first aid and discretion is usually worth the money.
Durim opens the door when the bell rings. A few minutes later the Doctor enters. Mjones stands up on trembling legs. A chill washes over him. The Doctor comes towards him. Tall, well-groomed, newly shaven, hair neatly combed.
‘And here’s the patient,’ the Doctor says, and smiles.
He carries a small suitcase in his hand. He stops in front of Mjones, puts down the suitcase on the floor and inspects the bandage on Mjones’s shoulder. The Doctor starts to ease off the makeshift dressing, slowly persuading the fabric fibres to release their hold on the scab. Mjones cries out in pain when the sticky skin finally lets go. A crust has formed at the edge of the wound, but the cut itself is still open and weeping. Mjones estimates that the cut is between four and five centimetres deep and sees that the area around it has grown redder and even more swollen overnight. Judging from the colour of the bandage the wound has become infected. The skin around it is hot.
‘We need more sterile surroundings,’ the Doctor mutters. ‘We should really cut around the wound and then rinse it with a saline solution.’
‘Can’t you do that here?’
‘No. That would only make it worse. You need to go to an operating theatre.’
‘I don’t have time for that.’
‘You could become very ill, do you realise that? The infection you’ve acquired could spread to the bones in your shoulder, and your blood might become infected with bacteria. That could lead to septicaemia. Worst-case scenario you could die.’
