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  Uncovering class divisions, racial conflicts, and tangled emotions, this gritty, shocking novel of suspense heralds the arrival of a major new talent.

  Henning Juul is a veteran investigative crime reporter in Oslo, Norway. A horrific fire killed his six-year-old son, cut scars across his face, and ended his marriage, and on his first day back at the job after the terrible tragedy a body is discovered in one of the city’s public parks. A beautiful female college student has been stoned to death and buried up to her neck, her body left bloody and exposed. The brutality of the crime shakes the whole country, but despite his own recent trauma—and the fact that his ex-wife’s new boyfriend is also on the case—Henning is given the assignment. When the victim’s boyfriend, a Pakistani native, is arrested, Henning feels certain the man is innocent. This was not simply a Middle Eastern–style honor killing in the face of adultery—it was a far more complicated gesture, and one that will drag Henning into a darkness he’s never dreamed of.

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are

  products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag.

  English translation copyright © 2011 by Charlotte Barslund.

  First published in Norwegian as Skinndød in Oslo, Norway,

  by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof

  in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Atria Paperback edition October 2011

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  Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Enger, Thomas, date.

  [Skinndød. English]

  Burned : a novel / Thomas Enger ; translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.

  —1st Atria Books trade pbk. ed.

  p. cm.

  First published in Norwegian as Skinndød.

  1. Journalists—Norway—Oslo—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.

  3. Inner cities—Norway—Oslo—Fiction. 4. Oslo (Norway)—Fiction. I. Barslund, Charlotte. II. Title.

  PT8952.15.N44S5513 2011

  839.82’38—dc22 2010047582

  ISBN 978-1-4516-1645-3

  ISBN 978-1-4516-1646-0 (ebook)

  To my other hearts—

  Benedicte, Theodor & Henny

  My life, I promise you with all my heart

  to belong to you

  until death extinguishes my burning passion

  for you and for joy.

  —HALLDIS MOREN VESAAS, TO LIFE, 1930

  BURNED

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  September 2007

  He thinks it’s dark all around him, but he can’t be sure. He can’t seem to open his eyes. Is the ground cold? Or wet?

  He thinks it might be raining. Something touches his face. Early snow? The first snow?

  Jonas loves the snow.

  Jonas.

  Shriveled carrots in snowmen’s faces, clumps of grass and earth. No, not now. Frosty the Snowman, it can’t be you. Can it?

  He tries to lift his right arm, but it won’t move. Hands. Does he still have them? His thumb twitches.

  Or, at least, he thinks it does.

  His skin is crisp and delicate like snowflakes. Flames everywhere. So hot. His face slides down like batter on a sizzling frying pan.

  Jonas loves pancakes.

  Jonas.

  The ground is shaking. Voices. Silence. Wonderful silence. Protect me, please. You, who are watching me.

  It’ll be all right. Don’t be scared. I’ll take care of you.

  The laughter fades. He is out of breath. Hold my hand, hold it tight.

  But where are you?

  There. There you are. We were here. You and I.

  Jonas loves that there is a “you and I.”

  Jonas.

  Horizons. Blizzard rain on an infinite blue surface. A plop breaks the surface, line and bait sink.

  Cold wood beneath his feet. His eyes are still stuck together.

  It’ll be all right. Don’t be scared. I’ll take care of you.

  He feels the balcony under his feet. He has a firm foothold.

  Or so he thinks.

  Empty hands. Where are you!? Rewind, please—please rewind!

  A wall of darkness. Everything is reduced to darkness. Siren sounds approach.

  He manages to open one eye. It’s not snow. It’s not rain. There is only darkness.

  He has never seen darkness before. Never really seen it, never seen what the darkness can conceal.

  But he sees it now.

  Jonas was scared of the dark.

  He loves Jonas.

  Jonas.

  1

  June 2009

  Her blond curls are soaked in blood.

  The ground has opened up and tried to swallow her. Only her head and torso are visible. Her rigid body is propped up by the damp earth; she looks like a single long-stemmed red rose. Blood has tr
ickled down her back in thin, elongated lines, like tears on a melancholic cheek. Her naked back resembles an abstract painting.

  He takes hesitant steps inside the tent, glancing from side to side. Turn around, he tells himself. This has nothing to do with you. Just turn around, go back outside, go home, and forget what you’ve seen. But he can’t. How can he?

  “H-hallo?”

  Only the swishing branches of the trees reply. He takes a few more steps. The air is suffocating and clammy. The smell reminds him of something. But what?

  The tent wasn’t there yesterday. To someone like him, who walks his dog every day on Ekeberg Common, the sight of the large white tent was irresistible. The strange location. He just had to look inside.

  If only he could have stopped himself.

  Her hand isn’t attached. It’s lying, severed, next to her arm as though it has come undone at her wrist. Her head slumps toward one shoulder. He looks at them again, the blond curls. Random patches of matted red hair make it look like a wig.

  He edges up to the young woman, but stops abruptly, hyperventilating to the point where his breathing stops. His stomach muscles knot and prepare to expel the coffee and banana he had for breakfast, but he suppresses the reflex. He backs away, carefully, blinking, before he takes another look at her.

  One eye is dangling from its socket. Her nose is squashed flat and seems to have disappeared into her skull. Her jaw is dented and covered with purple bruises and cuts. Thick black blood has gushed from a hole in her forehead, down into her eyes and across the bridge of what remains of her nose. One tooth hangs from a thread of coagulated blood inside her lower lip. Several teeth are scattered in the grass in front of the woman who once had a face.

  Not anymore.

  The last thing Thorbjørn Skagestad remembers, before staggering out of the tent, is the nail varnish on her fingers. Blood red.

  Just like the heavy stones lying around her.

  Henning Juul doesn’t know why he sits here. In this particular spot. The crude seating, let into the hillside, is hard. Rough and raw. Painful. And yet he always sits here. In the exact same spot. Deadly nightshade grows between the seating which slopes up toward Dælenenga Club House. Bumblebees buzz eagerly around the poisonous berries. The planks are damp. He can feel it in his backside. He should probably change his trousers when he gets home, but he knows he won’t bother.

  Henning used to come here to smoke. He no longer smokes. Nothing to do with good health or common sense. His mother has smoker’s lungs, but that’s not what stops him. He wishes desperately he could smoke. Slim white friends, always happy to see you, though they never stay for long, sadly. But he can’t, he just can’t.

  There are people around, but nobody sits next to him. A soccer mum down by the artificial turf looks up at him. She quickly averts her eyes. He is used to people looking at him while pretending they aren’t. He knows they wonder who he is, what has happened to him, and why he sits there. But no one ever asks. No one dares.

  He doesn’t blame them.

  He gets up to leave when the sun starts to go down. He is dragging one leg. The doctors have told him he should try to walk as naturally as possible, but he can’t manage it. It hurts too much. Or perhaps it doesn’t hurt enough.

  He knows what pain is.

  He shuffles to Birkelunden Park, past the recently restored pavilion with its new roof. A gull cries out. There are plenty of gulls in Birkelunden Park. He hates gulls. But he likes the park.

  Still limping, he passes horizontal lovers, naked midriffs, foaming cans of beer, and wafts of smoke from barbecues burning themselves out. An old man frowns in concentration before throwing a metal ball toward a cluster of other metal balls on the gravel where, for once, children have left the bronze statue of a horse alone. The man misses. He only ever misses.

  You and I, Henning thinks, we’ve a lot in common.

  The first drop of rain falls as he turns into Seilduksgate. A few steps later, he leaves behind the bustle of Grünerløkka. He doesn’t like noise. He doesn’t like Chelsea Football Club or traffic wardens, either, but there is not a lot he can do about it. There are plenty of traffic wardens in Seilduksgate. He doesn’t know if any of them support Chelsea. But Seilduksgate is his street.

  He likes Seilduksgate.

  With the rain spitting on his head, he walks west toward the setting sun above the Old Sail Loft, from which the street takes its name. He lets the drops fall on him and squints to make out the contours of an object in front. A gigantic yellow crane soars toward the sky. It has been there for ever. The clouds behind him are still gray.

  Henning approaches the junction where Markvei has priority from the right, and he thinks that everything might be different tomorrow. He doesn’t know if it’s an original thought or whether someone has planted it inside his head. Possibly nothing will change. Perhaps only voices and sounds will be different. Someone might shout. Someone might whisper.

  Perhaps everything will be different. Or nothing. And within that tension is a world turned upside down. Do I still belong in it, he wonders? Is there room for me? Am I strong enough to unlock the words, the memories, and the thoughts which I know are buried deep inside me?

  He doesn’t know.

  There is a lot he doesn’t know.

  He lets himself into the flat after climbing three long flights of stairs where the dust floats above the ingrained dirt in the woodwork. An appropriate transition to his home. He lives in a dump. He prefers it that way. He doesn’t think he deserves a large hallway, closets the size of shopping centers, a kitchen whose cupboards and drawers look like a freshly watered ice rink, self-cleaning white goods, delicate floors inviting you to slow dance, walls covered with classics and reference books; nor does he deserve a designer clock, a Lilia block candleholder from Georg Jensen, or a bedspread made from the foreskins of hummingbirds. All he needs is a single mattress, a fridge, and somewhere to sit down when the darkness creeps in. Because inevitably it does.

  Every time he closes the front door behind him, he gets the feeling that something is amiss. His breathing quickens, he feels hot all over, his palms grow sweaty. There is a stepladder to the right, just inside the hall. He takes the stepladder, climbs it, and locates the Clas Ohlson bag on the old green hat rack. He takes out a box of batteries, reaches for the smoke alarm, eases out the battery, and replaces it with a fresh one.

  He tests it to make sure it works.

  When his breathing has returned to normal, he climbs down. He has learned to like smoke alarms. He likes them so much that he has eight.

  2

  He turns over with a disappointed grunt when his alarm clock goes off. He was halfway through a dream which evaporates as his eyes glide open and the dawn seeps in. There was a woman in the dream. He doesn’t remember what she looked like, but he knows she was the Woman of his Dreams.

  Henning swears, then he sits up and looks around. His eyes stop at the pill jars and the matchbox that greet him every morning. He sighs, swings his legs out of bed, and thinks that today, today is the day he’ll do it.

  He exhales, rubs his face, and starts with the simplest task. The pills are chalky and fiendish. As usual, he swallows them dry because it’s harder that way. He forces them down his throat, gulps, and waits for them to disappear down his digestive tract and do the job that Dr. Helge enthusiastically claims is for Henning’s own good.

  He slams the jar unnecessarily hard against the bedside table, as if to wake himself up. He snatches the matchbox. Slowly, he slides it open and looks at its contents. Twenty wooden soldiers from hell. He takes one out, studies the sulfur, a red cap of concentrated evil. Safety Matches it says on the front.

  A contradiction in terms.

  He presses the thin matchstick against the side of the box and is about to strike it when his hands seize up. He concentrates, mobilizing all his strength in his hands, in his fingers, but the aggravating splinter of wood simply refuses to shift, it fails to obey and remains uni
mpressed. He starts to sweat, his chest tightens, he tries to breathe, but it’s no good. He makes a second attempt, takes out another tiny sword of evil and attacks the matchbox with it, but soon realizes that he doesn’t have the same fighting spirit this time, nowhere near the same willpower now, and he gives up trying to turn thought into action. He remembers that he needs to breathe and suppresses the urge to scream.

  It’s very early in the morning. That explains it. Arne, who lives upstairs, might still be asleep despite his habit of reciting Halldis Moren Vesaas’s poetry day and night.

  Henning sighs and carefully returns the matchbox to the exact same spot on the bedside table. Gently, he runs his hands over his face. He touches the patches where the skin is different, softer, but not as smooth. The scars on the outside are nothing compared to the ones on the inside, he thinks, and then he gets up.

  The sleeping city. That’s where he wants to be. And he is here now. In the Grünerløkka district of Oslo, early in the morning, before the city explodes into action, before the pavement cafés fill up, before mum and dad have to go to work, the children are off to nursery, and cyclists run as many red lights as they can as they hurtle down Toftesgate. Only a few people are up and about, as are the ever-scavenging pigeons.

  He passes the fountain on Olaf Ryes Square and listens to the sound of the water. He is good at listening. And he is good at identifying sounds. He imagines there is no sound but the trickling water and pretends it’s the day the world ends. If he concentrates, he can hear cautious strings, then a dark cello slowly intermingling before fading away and gradually giving way to kettledrums warning of the misery that is to come.

  Today, however, he doesn’t have time to let the music of the morning overwhelm him. He is on his way to work. The very thought turns his legs to jelly. He doesn’t know if Henning Juul still exists, the Juul who used to get four job offers a year, who made the mute sing, who made the days start earlier—just for him—because he was stalking his prey and needed the light.

  He knows who he was.

  Does Halldis have a poem for someone like me, he wonders? Probably.

  Halldis has a poem for everyone.