Burned (16 page)

6tiermes7
was right. It won’t be easy to lie low. Too many questions are buzzing around his head and the more he thinks about it, the more convinced he is that Henriette Hagerup’s college and its students hold many of the answers.

He visits Westerdal’s homepage and switches on his mobile again. Just like the last time, the messages pile up. And just like the last time, he deletes them without checking them first. He clicks on the college’s film section, finds a staff list and localises Yngve Foldvik after some quick scrolling and clicking. A photograph with a CV and contact details pop up. Henning studies him.

Where does he know him from? Dark hair, side parting to the left. Narrow nose. Sallow skin, not brown, the kind which tans easily. Light stubble with streaks of grey. He looks to be in his late forties, but he is still a handsome man. Henning suspects some of the students have secret crushes on him.

He checks the time. 5.30 p.m. Tariq’s last words will have to wait. He rings Foldvik’s mobile instead. Three rings later, he strikes lucky. Henning introduces himself. Foldvik says ‘hi’ in a voice that Henning instantly recognises as the ‘oh shit’ tone.

‘I don’t have much to say to you,’ he begins. His voice is high.

‘I don’t want you to, either,’ Henning counters. Silence follows. He knows that Foldvik hasn’t quite understood what he meant. And that’s the idea. He lets Foldvik wait until he grows sufficiently curious and simply has to ask:

‘What do you mean?’

‘If I could meet you tomorrow morning, at a time convenient to you, then I can explain what I want to talk to you about. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t have anything to do with your late student.’

‘I don’t know if I have –’

‘It’ll only take a few minutes.’

‘Like I said, then –’

‘I want people who read about Henriette to get as accurate a picture of her as possible. I think you might be the most suitable person to paint that. You knew her in a different way to her fellow students, and – to be honest – they have a tendency to say some strange stuff.’

Another silence. He can hear Foldvik mull it over. And that’s part of the technique. Massage the ego of those you want to interview to such an extent that it becomes harder and harder for them to say no.

‘Okay, two minutes. Ten o’clock tomorrow?’

A broad smile forms around his lips.

‘Ten o’clock would be fine.’

*

It is a straightforward matter to write out an interview when he has everything on tape. To begin with, he decides to use everything Tariq said, word for word, since they were the man’s last, but he abandons that idea as soon as the interview takes shape on his computer. Too much irrelevant information. And he doesn’t want people to know everything Tariq said about his brother. After all, Mahmoud is still in custody and it very much remains an open investigation.

It takes him half an hour to type up everything Tariq Marhoni said. He starts to edit and decides to focus on the fine description Tariq gave of his brother.

My brother is a good man.

It borders on the dull, but it’s a start. He types on:

Tariq Marhoni spent his last moments praising his brother, who is suspected of murder. Read the exclusive interview here.

He knows that people will read this story, even though it is not very exciting. There is something about a man’s last words. They appeal, no matter what he said. And when it is as exclusive as this, everyone with even a vague interest in the story will click on it. Other media will trawl the story for quotes they can use. This means ‘…,
said Tariq Marhoni to 123news, only minutes before he died.’

Quotes. Apart from advertising revenue and profit, being quoted in rival media is what matters to many newspapers. At the same time, it is possibly also the greatest source of irritation, especially among smaller publications, when the big fish use a quote from someone else’s story and fail to credit them.

This happens every day. The big fish are so afraid of the little fish growing bigger that they sacrifice both good manners and press ethics in the process. If it isn’t a case of downright theft, they will often contact the source to obtain the same quotes which enables them to insist – often with a large portion of indignation – that ‘we just happened to have the same idea’. NRK, for example, has a standard policy that if a story appears in two media, at least, there is no reason to credit either of them.

He doesn’t know if this policy has changed during the two years he has been out of the game, but it’s impossible not to quote the Tariq story. He guesses that Heidi Kjus will be particularly pleased about it. Possibly Iver Gundersen, too.

No, on second thoughts, no. Not Gundersen.

He thinks about BBB. Bad Boys Burning. What a name for a gang. Some gangs have a great need to send out warnings. Bandidos. Hell’s Angels. And yet, Henning can feel himself growing curious about BBB. He googles the full name and gets thousands of hits, many of which are irrelevant and inaccurate. Reviews of the film
Bad Boys
, articles about a Swedish crooner who had a hit with a song called ‘Burning’ a couple of years ago, people who are described as ‘bad boys’ and a gang from the Furuset area of Oslo, who also call themselves that. Little of relevance.

However, he finds an article from
Aftenposten
from six months ago about a gang confrontation in Furuset, coincidentally. The Google text doesn’t mention BBB in the link, but he clicks on it anyway.

He gasps for air. Nora wrote this story. She has ventured into dangerous territory. Gangs are usually associated with drugs and debt collecting. Its members are wannabe criminals, people searching for an identity, usually. That’s one of the reasons they become hooligans. To have a place to belong.

Nora’s headline is ‘
BRUTAL GANG CLASH IN FURUSET
’. He looks at the story. No photos from the crime scene. Only an archive photo of an axe against a baseball bat. He guesses that Nora worked the night shift and that
Aftenposten
wasn’t prepared to fork out on a new picture from Scanpix. Or that Scanpix has had to make cuts, too.

Nevertheless, he can see that Nora did a good job. She interviewed terviewed the officer in charge of the investigation, the head of Oslo’s Operation Gangbuster, got hold of two eyewitnesses, spoke to a high-profile ex-gang member who knows what this kind of confrontation is about and delivered fifty lines on a subject which normally gets only a mention in most newspapers.

People don’t usually care about gang fights. They think: ‘great, let them kill each other, get a few idiots off our streets’. He isn’t sure why he does it, but he decides to call her. It is possible she has fresh information about these morons, but he suspects he might have an ulterior motive.

He wants to know where she is.

He knows that it is stupid and beyond all reason, but he can’t help it. He wants to know if she is with Gundersen, if her voice is happy or sad, if there is a hint of longing when she hears him speak. They haven’t spoken on the telephone since the day Jonas died. She called to ask him if he could pick up Jonas from nursery and look after him until the following morning, even though it was actually her week to have him. She wasn’t feeling very well. He replied:
yes, of course, don’t worry about it.

And he knows it is not the fire itself, or that Jonas died, which is eating Nora. She will never forgive herself for falling ill that day and asking him to swap. If she hadn’t felt unwell, Jonas wouldn’t have been with Henning. And their son would still be alive.

He is convinced that whenever Nora feels a touch of ’flu or a twinge somewhere, she dismisses it as unimportant. She will be fine. I’m all right, I’m going to work. And every time, the same thought haunts her: why didn’t I just pull myself together and pick him up? How ill was I
really
?

Thoughts like that can drive you mad. As for him, he thinks about the three generous brandies he drank after Jonas had gone to sleep that night. Perhaps he would have been able to save him if he had only had two? Or how about one? What if he had gone to bed earlier the night before, then he wouldn’t have been overtired and nodded off in front of the television before the fire started?

What if
.

Chapter 30

He lets it ring a long time. Perhaps her display informs her that it is him? Or she might have got a new mobile and not transferred the numbers from the old one? Or maybe she has quite simply deleted him? Or she is busy doing something? Like having a life.

He is surprised when she finally picks up. He could and probably should have hung up after the tenth ring, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Her voice is awake when she says ‘hi, Henning’. He replies:

‘Hi, Nora.’

Christ, how it hurts to say her name out loud.

‘How are you?’ she says. ‘I heard what happened.’

‘I’m good.’

‘You must have been terrified?’

‘More angry, really.’

That’s actually true. He isn’t trying to come across as some macho action hero. He
did
get angry, mainly because he didn’t want his life to end like that, in a crescendo, in the middle of something unresolved.

They fall silent. They used to be very good at silence, both of them, but now it is merely uncomfortable. She asks no followup questions. He starts a conversation before it gets too awkward. He imagines that she doesn’t want to seem overly concerned about his welfare if Gundersen is in the room with her.

‘Listen, I’m working on a story and I came across an article you wrote about a gang, Bad Boys Burning, about six months ago. Do you remember?’

A few seconds of silence follow.

‘Yes. They had a bust-up with another gang, if I remember rightly. Hemo Raiders, or someone like that.’

They sound like a nice, friendly bunch, he thinks.

‘That’s right.’

‘Four or five of them ended up in hospital. Stab wounds and broken bones.’

‘Right again.’

‘Why are you writing about them?’

He debates whether to tell her, but remembers that they work for rival newspapers and that trust is a closed chapter in their joint book of memories. Or, partly closed, at any rate.

‘I’m not writing about them. Or, at least, I don’t think so.’

‘BBB is no joke, Henning.’

‘I never joke.’

‘No, I mean it. Some of those boys are psychopaths. They don’t give a toss about anyone. Do you think that they’re behind the murder of Tariq Marhoni?’

Oh, Nora. She knows him far too well.

‘I don’t know. It’s early days yet.’

‘If you decide to go after them, Henning, then be careful. Okay? They’re not nice people.’

‘It’ll probably be all right,’ he says, thinking how weird it is to discuss stories and sources with Nora again. Journalists inevitably end up talking shop. When you live together as well, it just becomes more shop. Until the whole thing topples.

He worked too much for a while. When he finally got home, Nora was so tired that she didn’t want to hear another word about newspapers. It all got too much. It was his fault, obviously. That, too. It is becoming the pattern of my life. I manage to destroy even the finest things, he thinks.

He thanks her for her help and hangs up. He stays on the sofa, staring at the telephone as though she is still down the other end. He presses the telephone against his ear again. Nothing but silence.

He is reminded of a double murder in Bodø he covered some years ago. Before Nora went to bed, one of the first nights they were apart, he called her. They spoke for half an hour, longer possibly. When he heard her yawn, he told her to put the handset on her pillow but not hang up. He wanted to hear her sleep. He sat in his hotel room, listening to her breathing which was rapid to begin with. Then deeper and deeper. Then he lay down, too. He doesn’t remember if he hung up. But he remembers how well he slept that night.

Chapter 31

Zaheerullah Hassan Mintroza leans forwards on the squeaky chair in his glass cage. He is counting money. Cash. It’s only ever cash in the car wash. He does have a till and it is plugged in, but he never uses it.

Nothing beats cash in hand.

He is very pleased with today’s takings so far. 12 passenger cars × 150 kroner each = 1,800 kroner. Plus 2 polishes @ 800 kroner. And 36 mini cabs × 100 kroner each. 7,000 in total. Not bad. And it’s two hours till closing time.

Offering cabbies a discount was a good move.

He is about to go and greet a new customer, when two other cars pull up behind the filthy Mercedes parked outside. Two police cars.

Damn, Hassan thinks. The officers, three in total, get out. Hassan goes to meet them. He has seen one of them before.

‘Are you the owner of this car wash?’ asks Detective Inspector Brogeland. He raises his voice to drown out the sound of the high pressure hosing-down in progress inside the car wash. Hassan nods.

‘Do you employ a man called Yasser Shah?’

Damn, Hassan thinks again.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he? We would like to talk to him.’

‘Why?’ Hassan asks.

‘Is he here?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

Hassan shakes his head.

‘Isn’t he supposed to be at work today?’

‘No.’

‘Do you mind if we take a look inside the car wash?’

Hassan shrugs and remains outside while the officers enter the car wash. The filthy Mercedes drives off.

Hassan thinks about Yasser. Bloody amateur. Didn’t he tell him ‘no mistakes’?

Work inside stops. An Avensis minicab is nearly ready. The officers talk to the men, but Hassan can’t hear what they are saying. He sees Mohammed shake his head. Omar too.

The officers search every room, look around the glass cage, check in front of and behind the car wash. Brogeland says something to the other officers, before he comes over to Hassan again.

‘We need to talk to Yasser Shah urgently. If you do see him, you must tell him to contact me or the police as soon as possible.’