Burned (37 page)

Jonas was three years old when the photograph was taken. Henning doesn’t remember the occasion, but Jonas’s smile is filled with pre-Christmas anticipation. He looks at the picture for a long time while the Hoover hums next to him. He is unable to put it down.

He doesn’t know how long he has been standing there, but it’s a long time. He snaps out of his trance when his mother demonstratively turns up the volume on the radio to drown out the Hoover. That’s enough, he thinks, and puts the picture back.

But not face down.

Chapter 69

After his one-hour visit to his mother, he buys an economy-sized box of batteries. As he leaves the shop, he sees how Sofienberg Park is filling up with happy people enjoying their Friday. His mobile beeps. He opens the message while he walks and sees, to his great surprise, that it is from Anette.

You still alive?

He smiles to himself and types a reply.

Just about. Am tempted to ask you the same question. How are you?

He strolls on, still holding his mobile, while he watches people spread picnic rugs, unpack barbecue trays and unfold deckchairs. Anette replies swiftly. His mobile simultaneously vibrates and beeps in the palm of his hand. Four short beeps.

A bit groggy, but all right.

He has never been zapped with a stun gun. He hopes he never will, either. And he is convinced that Anette will never forget it.

He sends another text:

I’m hungry. Do you fancy a bite to eat somewhere?

He presses ‘
send
’, and hopes that Anette won’t misinterpret his message. He just feels the need to talk about what has happened. And he is genuinely hungry, he has barely eaten these last few days.

His mobile beeps again.

Yes, please. Am starving. Fontés in Løkka? They do good food.

He texts her straight away.

Great. See you there.

He snaps the mobile shut and speeds up. She’s right, he says to himself. Their food is good. And decides he has also earned himself a beer.

After all, it is Friday.

He has managed to down his first beer before Anette arrives. He is sitting near the fireplace, where a log fire is blazing like a small furnace, despite the June evening, and where people walk up and down the stairs to get to the toilets. He has doubts about the fire, but it was the only vacant table.

He waves at her. Anette spots him immediately and smiles as she walks towards him. He gets up. She hugs him.

It has been a long time since anyone hugged him.

They sit down. The waiter, a tall dark guy with the whitest teeth Henning has ever seen, is quick off the mark and takes their order.

‘A Fontés burger with bacon. And the biggest beer you’ve got,’ Anette says and smiles. Someone is breathing a sigh of relief, Henning thinks.

‘And one for me, too,’ he says. ‘Both, I mean.’

The waiter nods and leaves. Clumsy, Henning groans inwardly, expressing myself like that. He feels awkward. Even though his intentions are strictly honourable, it’s like they are on a date. And that’s an uncomfortable scenario.

‘So,’ she says, looking at him. ‘Did it make a good story?’

‘It’ll do,’ he says. ‘At least, I think so. I didn’t write it myself. Didn’t have the energy.’

‘So you got some poor sod to do it for you?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s much more fun to write yourself.’

‘I thought you wanted to be a director?’

‘Yes, but the best directors are often the best writers. Quentin Tarantino, for example. Oliver Stone. I was about to mention Clint Eastwood, but I don’t believe he writes very much himself, now that I think about it. Did you know that Clint Eastwood composes practically all his own film scores?’

‘No.’

‘Now you do. And very good scores they are too. Very jazzy, a lot of piano.’

Henning likes jazzy. And a lot of piano. They look at each other without saying anything.

‘What will happen to the film now?’ he asks, and immediately kicks himself for bringing up the subject so soon.

‘Which one of them?’

‘Well, both.’

‘Please can we not talk about that? My best friend is dead, she was killed by a lunatic I wish I had never met, and the last thing I want to think about is what happens to the film. Or films. Right now, all I want to do is eat my burger. I don’t give a toss about anything else.’

He nods. Anette looks for the waiter. There. Eye contact. The waiter nods and makes an apologetic movement with his hands.

‘Has Bjarne been grilling you?’ Henning asks.

‘I’m well done on both sides.’

‘Was he okay? Did he treat you all right?’

‘Oh, yes. Nice and easy. I should expect to be interviewed again, but that’s fine. I understand.’

The waiter brings their much-needed drinks. Anette thanks him, swallows a large mouthful and licks off the foam which has settled on her upper lip.

‘Ah, a life saver.’

Henning takes his own glass and twirls it around. He sits like this for a while.

‘It was me who found him,’ he suddenly says. He doesn’t know where that sentence came from. He just blurted it out.

‘Stefan?’

‘Mm. I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I had some questions for Yngve. The Foldviks weren’t at home, but the front door was open, and I –’

He looks down.

‘Did you go inside?’

He looks up again and nods. ‘Have you ever visited them?’

Anette takes another sip.

‘I had a meeting with Stefan there once – now when was it? Six months ago or something like that. We chatted about his script.’

‘Which you were turning into a film?’

‘Precisely.’

‘And that was the only time?’

She takes another sip and nods.

‘We e-mailed and chatted occasionally after that, stuff to do with the film. Which was some way into the future. Everything in the film industry is. To begin with, you meet to agree to have a meeting, and when that meeting comes, you agree to meet another time to have another meeting about meeting up.’

She rolls her eyes. He smiles.

‘Why do you ask about that?’

‘Oh, I was just curious.’

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Go on.’

‘What happened to you?’

She points to his face, to his scars.

‘Oh, that.’

He stares down at the table.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Anette says, tenderly.

‘No, it’s just that –’

He twirls his glass again.

‘Several people have asked me that recently. I don’t really know what to say without –’

He stops and visualises the balcony once more, Jonas’s eyes, feels his hands which suddenly aren’t there. It’s as if he is in a soundproof room with no light. He looks up at her.

‘Another time, perhaps.’

Anette holds up her hands.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to –’

‘No, no. It’s fine.’

Anette looks at him for a long time before she takes another sip of her beer. They drink in silence, watch the diners, watch the door whenever it opens, gaze at the flames.

A question, which has been troubling him, resurfaces.

‘Why did you come back?’ he says. ‘Why did you go to the tent?’

Anette swallows and suppresses a burp.

‘Like I said to you: I was curious. You were obviously up to something. Your face gave it all away. You should have seen yourself. I’m used to thinking in stories and I realised that a very good one was happening right under my nose. It was too tempting not to go back.’

He nods slowly.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to spy on you.’

‘How long were you outside before you came in?’

‘Not very long. But listen, I’ve already been through this with that policeman, Brunlanes, or whatever his name is.’

‘Brogeland,’ Henning corrects her. ‘Sorry, I’m just a bit –’

It’s his turn to hold up his hands.

‘I’m a bit all over the place after a day like today.’

He makes a circular gesture with his finger next to his temple.

‘No worries,’ she says, mimicking an Australian accent. ‘Cheers.’

She raises her glass. They drink.

‘What are we drinking to?’ he asks.

‘That no more lives were lost,’ she says and swallows.

‘Cheers.’

Chapter 70

They agree to forget about the Foldviks while they eat their Creole-inspired hamburgers with potato boats or potato wedges or whatever they are called. He eats far too much and wolfs his food down. The beer settles like a fermenting layer on the top of his stomach. When they eventually leave, after Henning has paid the bill, he knows he is in troubled waters.

But then again, he likes the sea.

‘Thanks for dinner,’ Anette says, as they go outside into the June evening. It has started to rain again, tiny, spitting drops.

‘My pleasure.’

‘Fancy a couple of these?’ she says. He lets go of the door, which slams shut behind him. Anette is holding out a bag of Knott sweets.

‘These are great after a few beers.’

She pours some of the white, brown and grey pearls into her hand and tips them into her mouth. He smiles and says:

‘Yes, please.’

He holds out his hand and gets his own stash. Knott. Oh, great sweet of my childhood! He has consumed his fair share of them over the years, but he dreads to think how long ago it is since he last tasted the tiny flavour explosions. He takes a brown one, smacks his lips and nods at her with approval.

‘You need to eat them all at once. That’s what makes them so great.’

He looks at the seven or eight pastilles, if he can call them that, and raises his hand to his mouth. He grins as he does it. One pastille escapes and rolls back into his palm. He looks at the tiny, white, round sweet while he chews and crunches and munches. It looks like a small, white pill.

A small pill, a small, round, white pill.

Small, white –

Oh, hell.

He chews and swallows, never taking his eyes off Anette. She shakes the bag, pours more sweets into her palm and shoves them in her mouth. He looks at the sweets and remembers what Jarle Høgseth always used to say, that the devil is in the detail. It’s a huge cliché, but now as he stands there, looking at the white sweet, it’s as if the sneaking feeling that has nagged him ever since he stared into Stefan’s expressionless eyes, the hook that stirred in his stomach, suddenly takes hold and rips him open.

‘What is it?’ Anette says. Henning is incapable of speech. He just stares at her, remembering the white powder under his shoe, the small, round, white pill on the floor in Stefan’s bedroom, how the shape and the smell of the pill reminded him of something. He remembers the curtains that were closed, the door which wasn’t shut properly.

‘Don’t you like them?’ she asks, still smiling. He is aware that he is nodding. He tries to see if her eyes reveal anything. The mirror of the soul, where the truth can be found. But she merely looks back at him. He looks alternately at the sweets and at her.

‘Halloooo?’

Anette waves her hand in front of his face. He holds the sweet between his thumb and index finger and smells it.

‘What are you doing?’ Anette giggles, munching on.

‘No, I –’

His voice is feeble, lacking in air. The number 11 tram pulls into Olaf Ryes Square. Its wheels screech. It sounds like a cross between a pig squealing and a sawmill.

‘That’s my tram,’ Anette says and makes to leave. She scrutinises his face. ‘Thanks for dinner. Got to run. See you soon.’

She smiles and she is gone. He stands there looking after her. Her backpack bounces up and down as she jogs. He is still staring at her when she boards the blue-and-white tram. When the doors close and the tram glides down towards the city centre, she takes a window seat and looks back at him.

Her eyes bore into him like sharp teeth.

*

It takes him forever to walk home. He can barely lift his legs and has to force them to move. All he can think about is Anette’s smile as she left, the backpack which she didn’t put on properly, which bounced up and down as she started to run and caused the stickers with the names of exotic, faraway places to perform a peculiar dance before his eyes.

He relives it, over and over, while his shoes make dragging noises against the tarmac, crashing like cymbals. The sound rises, gets wings and mixes with the rain, which has increased in intensity, as he passes the queue outside Villa Paradiso. People inside are eating pizza, drinking, smiling, laughing. He tries to concentrate, he recalls Anette’s eyes, the relief in them, the degree of satisfaction, only a few hours after she was knocked out by a stun gun. And he hears Tore Benjaminsen mimicking her voice:

What’s the point of being a genius if nobody knows?

Anette, he thinks. You might very well be the smartest woman I’ve ever met. With the taste of Knott still in his mouth, he turns into Seilduksgate with the feeling that he and everybody else have been conned.

Chapter 71

The pleasant feeling he enjoyed only a few hours ago has been sucked out of him. Back then he was elated, pleased with himself, delighted to have got himself a new source and thrown a bone to Iver Gundersen.

Now his steps are heavy like lead.

He reaches his block and wonders if Anette tricked Stefan into believing that she would also kill herself. Was that was why he lay huddled up against the wall? Because she was lying next to him in the narrow bed?

But why?

Again, he is reminded of Tore Benjaminsen, who thought that Anette was ultimately a lesbian, even though she had had several flings with men. Perhaps it’s that simple, Henning speculates. Henriette flirted with Anette, who mistakenly believed that Henriette was genuinely interested in her, only to be rejected. Anette had probably been dumped before, like most people, but not
rejected
. Not by someone she loved. And so she experienced, for the very first time, how much it hurt. The thin, dangerous line between love and hate.