Pierced (33 page)

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.

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.

Ørjan Mjønes 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?

Mjønes 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. Mjønes 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
, he thinks. The last train back to Oslo left long ago.

He enters the lobby and smiles to a friendly girl behind the counter. He takes out the folded photo of Brenden and introduces himself as Detective Inspector Stian Henriksen. ‘I’m looking for this man,’ he says. ‘Have you seen him?’

Thorleif stands rooted to the spot. His breath has stopped somewhere at the back of his throat. He can’t move. Mustn’t move.

How the hell did the man with the ponytail get here?

Thorleif looks around, panicking. He can’t risk running into the restaurant from where soft music and muffled conversation drift out towards the lobby. It’s too near the reception. Nor can he go back inside the lavatory because there is no way out from there. He turns around and sees a door right behind him. And above the door there is a green exit sign.

His only chance.

He backs towards the door as calmly and quietly as he can. He sees the man lean across the counter, but it is impossible to hear what he is saying to Mia. Thorleif holds his breath as he takes tiny steps backwards. When he can no longer see the man, he turns around and narrows his eyes as if that will prevent the door from making a sound. As noiselessly as he can, he pulls the door open and enters a bright room with art on the walls. He closes the door carefully behind him. Without looking back he starts to walk, softly to begin with, then faster, until he finally starts to run.

He passes a grey staircase which splits into a right and left branch and continues towards the Plenary Hall but decides to follow the green exit sign past a bench, two chairs and a table in pale pine that have been placed in front of a window. He reaches a corridor with no windows, but there is a door at the end of it. He tears it open and steps out into the evening as he gasps for air.

To his right is a covered wooden walkway with red doorframes and green doors leading to the new holiday apartments. It gets darker and darker further down the corridor.
Don’t go that way
, Thorleif tells himself,
you don’t know if there is a door at the other end
. Instead, he steps out on to the gravel, sees hundreds of cabins up to his left and a mountain that has shed its misty veil. He runs past first one cabin, then another before he reaches the road which leads either to the petrol station or further up the hillside, past Presttun.
I can’t go back to the village
, he thinks.
The man could come out of the hotel at any moment, and he would have no trouble spotting me out here in the open. But does he know that I’m here? Or is he just trying his luck?

Then he remembers it. The denim jacket. The laptop.
And Mia would have recognised me
, Thorleif thinks,
if the man gave her a description or showed her a picture
. But perhaps she has guessed the man is a villain – after all, she is obsessed with studying faces. What are the chances that the man would then give up, try the next village and never come back?

Thorleif swears to himself. It’s Saturday night. The last train is bound to have left long ago. He looks up towards Einar’s cabin.

Then he starts to run.

Ørjan Mjønes stares at the girl behind the counter.

‘I’m not sure,’ she says, nervously, and glances furtively over his shoulder. Mjønes turns around; on a low table he sees a solitary laptop whose screen is facing them. There is a black denim jacket on the sofa. He gives her a look before he walks over to the laptop, bends down and reads the newspaper article displayed on the screen.

The story is about Thorleif Brenden.

He is here
, Mjønes thinks, and glances at the jacket. The stupid prat is in Ustaoset, and he was here a minute ago. Mjønes walks back towards the girl.

‘Y-yes, I have seen him,’ she stutters as she points to the lobby area. ‘His name is Einar and he has just gone to the lavatory.’

Einar
, Mjønes thinks, and glances around. The corridor is empty. He turns to her again and looks briefly at her anxious eyes before he thanks her and marches briskly past the dark brown
piano
. Inside the lavatory all he finds are two urinals, two sinks and a cubicle. The door is closed, but Mjønes pushes it open.

No one there.

He goes back out into the lobby, checks the restaurant and sees a solitary couple engrossed in conversation at a table. But no Brenden.
He must have seen me
, Mjønes thinks.
Otherwise why wouldn’t he be in the lavatory? And he left his jacket behind
. Mjønes returns to the corridor where he discovers the gallery.
Brenden must have gone that way
, he thinks. It is the only way out from there.

Mjønes opens the door and enters. It’s as if he can see Brenden’s footprints on the dark-grey slate floor. He continues across the bright room, looks around, stops and listens. No footsteps anywhere. Mjønes follows the exit sign through the gallery. Soon he is outside. He scans the landscape. No Brenden in sight, only more buildings and cabins that block his view. At that moment his mobile rings.

‘Yes?’

‘Hi, it’s me again,’ Flurim Ahmetaj says. ‘Why are you whispering?’

‘Because I’m hot on his heels. Number One is in Ustaoset.’

‘That makes perfect sense. One of Number One’s Facebook friends is called Einar Fløtaker. His family owns a cabin in Ustaoset.

Einar
, Mjønes thinks, and at that moment he hears the sound of pieces falling into place.

‘Right,’ he whispers. ‘Email me everything you’ve got.’

‘Okay.’

Mjønes thinks about the girl behind the hotel reception. She has seen his face, and she knows who Brenden is. And if Brenden turns up dead in Ustaoset in the next few days she might put two and two together.

He turns to the door he has just come out of and looks through it. Then he shakes his head.
One thing at a time
, he says to himself.
First things first.

Once he is back inside the cabin, Thorleif realises that he hasn’t drawn breath for a long time. With a gasp he hunches his shoulders and inhales deeply, planting his hands on his thighs as he does so in order not to fall. He stands like for a few moments before he slumps down on the floor and leans against a kitchen cupboard. He looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes.

He sits there in deep despair, panting, before he stands up on wobbly legs and creeps over to the window. Carefully, he twitches the curtain and looks outside. The evening is matte and dark. There is not much left of the moon in the night sky, only a torn nail that offers little light. There is no one on the road below.

It was possibly a mistake to return to the cabin, Thorleif thinks, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to hide. As he surveys the landscape and can clearly see both the roads and the cabins, he concludes that it was actually quite a smart move. He can easily see anyone approaching. All he has to do is stay where he is and keep a lookout. Stay awake and wait. But what does he do if the man should turn up?

Thorleif looks around. He can’t remember if he saw any weapons in the tool shed. There must be an axe, he thinks. Next to the tap he sees a set of kitchen knives. He takes the biggest one, the one that looks the sharpest, and feels the edge. Yes, it’s nice and sharp, he decides. He knows that he must get the first strike right. No mistakes. He has covered several crime stories where the victim tried to use a knife against a burglar or boyfriend only to fall victim to their own weapon.

Thorleif puts down the knife on the table and looks outside again. In just a couple of minutes the sky has grown darker. But he sees no one. He hears no one. He blinks and runs a hand over his sweaty face. His T-shirt sticks to his body.
Take it easy now, Thorleif
, he says to himself.
Stay alert.

You have been in worse situations than this.

A dark Mercedes saloon stops in front of the red information board cut in the shape of a cabin, complete with ridged roof and windows. Ørjan Mjønes, who had been leaning against the left wall of the Mix kiosk while he listened out for the sound of the engine, steps forwards and goes over to Jeton Pocoli and Durim Redzepi as they emerge from the car.

‘What’s happening?’ Pocoli asks.

‘He’s up there,’ Mjønes says and nods in the direction of Hallingskarvet as he takes out his mobile and opens an email from Flurim Ahmetaj. The email contains a JPEG file with a map of all the cabins in Ustaoset. One of the numbered cabins has been circled in red.

Pocoli and Redzepi move closer.

‘Here is the road,’ Mjønes says, pointing. ‘It bends to the right a little further up.’ He turns towards the petrol station and gestures to the right, to the back of the brown building. ‘And you can see the cabin up there.’ He points towards the red cabin. ‘There are tons of cabins here, but I bet my life that’s where he is.’

‘But won’t he see us if we take the road?’ Pocoli asks.

‘Yes, and that’s precisely why we won’t do that. We’ll split up. Before the hill begins there is a road called Nystølvegen to the right. You’ll take that and follow it for a while.’

‘But won’t he still be able to see us from the cabin?’

‘Yes, possibly. But he doesn’t know who you are. He has only met me.’

Pocoli nods. ‘So we take the long way round and approach the cabin from the rear?’

‘Yes. Spread out so you cover as much of the back as possible. Don’t get closer to the cabin than fifty metres. And take as much time as you like. There is a greater chance that he will be less vigilant if you’re the only two people he sees on the road.

‘And what will you be doing?’

‘I’ll stay here until you’re in position. Once you are, I’ll start to walk up the hill. If he sees me, he might try to run away, away from me.’