Pierced, p.29
Pierced, page 29
‘We’re not going to do that,’ Mjønes says. ‘I’ll contact you the way you contact me. The advert will appear sometime tomorrow morning, and the numbers you’ll need will be in it. If the money hasn’t reached my bank account by Tuesday, I’ll charge interest.’
‘Are you in a hurry?’
‘Yes . . . or . . . no.’
‘You’re not thinking of disappearing, are you?’
Mjønes hesitates.
‘Oh, no,’ he lies.
Chapter 95
Henning can’t sleep that night. In addition to Pulli’s nineteen minutes, another question is vexing him, so he sends a text message to Frode Olsvik early the next morning asking for a few minutes of his time as soon as possible. The reply arrives immediately: I have five minutes in Stockfleths by the Courthouse at 8.30 a.m.
Henning agrees with Heidi Kjus that he will come into the office a little later and squashes himself in with all the other morning-rush-hour commuters on the number 11 tram to the Courthouse. In Stockfleths he orders a double espresso and takes a seat by a window while he waits for the lawyer. A few minutes past 8.30 a.m. Olsvik appears, but rather than go up to the till to order, he nods to the waiter behind the counter who returns his greeting with a smile.
Olsvik manoeuvres his large body into a chair by the table and holds out his hand to Henning.
‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with me at such short notice.’
‘Not at all.’
In the course of the next minute, Henning learns that Olsvik has been informed about what has happened both to Pulli and to Brenden and that police are looking for the hit man who was probably paid generously for arranging Pulli’s death.
‘How can I help you, Juul?’ Olsvik says and straightens one of his braces. Henning takes a breath‚ but decides to hold off sharing his suspicions about the clock on Pulli’s mobile. He needs to test his hypothesis first.
‘In the past couple of years, no one had more to do with Pulli than you. I would bet that you knew him better than most.’
‘I suppose you could say that.’
‘Did he make any enemies during the time he spent in prison?’
A patronising expression spreads across Olsvik’s face. Henning braces himself for a lecture.
‘My relationship with my client is purely professional, Juul. Our conversations mainly revolved around his case. And my client is still entitled to a duty of confidentiality even though he is dead.’
‘Even though he was killed?’
‘Even though he was killed. Especially if the person asking the question is a reporter.’
‘Even though it was you who tipped off Tore Pulli that I was back at work?’
Olsvik looks at Henning as a cup of steaming hot coffee is placed in front of him.
‘Thank you,’ he says, looking up at the waiter. ‘Put it on the company account, would you?’
‘Sure.’
Olsvik waits until the waiter is out of hearing range. Then he pins his eyes on Henning. ‘What are you talking about, Juul?’
‘The only people to visit Tore while he was inside were you, Geir Grønningen and Veronica Nansen. And I know that neither of them told Tore that I had returned to 123news.’
Olsvik smiles wearily. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Juul. There are many ways to get information in a prison even if you don’t have visitors every day or access to the Internet. The inmates speak to the prison guards and with other inmates, and they’re entitled to make twenty minutes’ worth of telephone calls every week.’
‘I thought all telephone conversations were monitored?’
‘In theory, yes. But no one listens in to every word that is said. They do spot checks, primarily to determine if any communication relating to drug smuggling or similar is taking place. And I regret to have to tell you, Juul, but no alarm bells would start ringing if someone, in an aside, happens to mention that you’re back at work. People have more important things to worry about.’
Feeling a tad humbled, Henning has to admit that the lawyer is probably right.
‘Do you know if the prison keeps a record of which numbers an inmate has called?’ he says, trying to shake off his embarrassment.
‘I imagine that they log outgoing calls. And Tore might have tried to get someone on the outside to help him by calling or writing a letter. He is not the first inmate to believe he was unfairly convicted. Some write to the press, others to private detectives.’
‘So you and Tore never discussed if a third party might be able to help him?’
‘I really can’t tell you what I did or did not discuss with my client—’
‘Please, Olsvik,’ Henning interrupts him. ‘I know you have attorney–client privileges and rules to observe, but we’re not talking about information that is sensitive to your client’s case. And I’m asking you because I’m still trying to help him – even though he is dead.’
‘And you can do that by finding out how Tore knew that you were working again?’
Henning hesitates for a second. ‘Among other things.’
‘You have to explain the logic in this to me.’
Henning takes a deep breath. ‘In parallel with working on Tore’s case, I’m also trying to find out what happened on the day my son died. Tore claimed that he . . .’
A thought occurs to Henning that almost takes his breath away. Pulli contacted him in the hope that Henning could help exonerate him. The bait was the truth of what happened the day that Jonas died.
What if that was the reason Pulli had to die?
‘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 Ørjan Mjønes.
Brogeland remembers Mjønes from his plain-clothes days. His name also appeared on the long list Nøkleby 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 Mjønes which Nøkleby 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, Mjønes 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, Njål Vidar Hammerstad, to ask if they had come across Mjønes 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 Mjønes had befriended several people in the criminal Albanian community. But Hammerstad didn’t know if there was a link between Mjønes and Tore Pulli.
In an ideal world, Brogeland thinks, plain-clothes officers would have followed Mjønes 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 Mjønes. 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
Ørjan Mjønes 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.
Mjønes 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 Mjønes 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. Mjønes 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 Mjønes, puts down the suitcase on the floor and inspects the bandage on Mjønes’s shoulder. The Doctor starts to ease off the makeshift dressing, slowly persuading the fabric fibres to release their hold on the scab. Mjønes 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. Mjønes 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.’
‘Just do the best you can, would you? And spare me the melodrama.’
‘There isn’t very much I can do. I presume the cut is more than eight hours old?’
Mjønes nods reluctantly.
‘Then I can’t stitch it. All I can do is clean the wound and keep it open so the pus can drain out. And I’ll give you a course of antibiotics.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
The Doctor puts his suitcase flat on the floor and opens it. Mjønes sways.
‘What about travelling with this thing?’ he says, pointing to his shoulder.
‘I wouldn’t recommend it for a couple of days, at least not until you have the infection under control.’
The thought of running away, of leaving Norway behind, makes him remember the safe in his flat where the ampoule is stored. You have to collect it first, he tells himself. Get rid of it and anything else that links you to the murder of Tore Pulli.
But first you have to get better.
Chapter 98
Henning sits down at his workstation and rubs his face with his hands. The chair opposite him is empty. Thank God Iver is going to be okay, he thinks, relieved. Even though he knows that Iver is entirely responsible for his own actions, he wouldn’t have been in hospital if it hadn’t been for Henning.
He stares into the air. Given the police now believe that Tore Pulli was murdered, they may already have requested the call logs from Oslo Prison to find out what kind of contact he had with the outside world. Or perhaps they haven’t. They think that Ørjan Mjønes is behind Pulli’s death. So why bother with the logs? They are going to be more interested in who Mjønes was talking to.
On his way back to the office, Henning calls Knut Olav Nordbø at Oslo Prison and learns that an inmate’s telephone records are deleted if they die or when they are released and that this happens in a matter of days. In other words, it may already be too late. He will never be able to access the logs himself, but the police could if they obtained a court order.
So Henning rings Nøkleby. From her tired, fed-up voice he realises that skipping the social niceties is a wise move. He also resists the temptation to ask if she still believes that Tore Pulli was guilty of the murder of Jocke Brolenius.
‘I’ll be quick,’ he begins. ‘As far as Tore Pulli is concerned, have you allocated all your resources to Ørjan Mjønes now or are you still pursuing other leads?’
‘Still pursuing other leads.’
Henning waits for more, but nothing comes. ‘Can you tell me anything about the leads you’re following up?’
‘Not at this moment in time, no,’ she says in a guarded tone.
‘Do you have any theory as to why Tore Pulli had to die?’
‘No comment.’
Henning hesitates. ‘What about Tore Pulli’s telephone records from prison, have you asked to see them?’
Nøkleby doesn’t reply immediately. Then she says, ‘I can’t discuss specific details of the investigation with you, Henning.’
He sighs. ‘I think it might be a good idea if you were to look at those logs.’
‘Yes, I imagine you do.’
Henning lets the slightly ironic remark pass unchallenged. ‘I have nothing else. Oh, yes, are you going to the funeral tomorrow?’
‘We haven’t decided yet.’
‘I see. Well, I’m going.’
‘Okay. Do let us know if you see anything which you think might be a good idea for us to follow up.’
‘I’ll . . . ’ Henning breaks off and smiles wryly. And when Nøkleby ends the call shortly afterwards without saying goodbye, his smile is even broader.
Chapter 99
The light that seeps through the windows of Solvang Church casts a cold, blue sheen across the floor. It matches the covers on the chairs, Henning thinks, as he stands at the entrance looking down the rectangular room. In the middle of the floor, in front of the pulpit, Tore Pulli’s coffin sits, white and beautifully decorated with flowers. Long white ribbons with golden letters express grief and final messages.
