Killed Read online

  She nodded to Mjønes and to his lawyer. Lars Indrehaug gave a theatrical sigh.

  ‘So you managed to find us,’ he said.

  Indrehaug had long, thin, greasy hair. The skin hung loose around his chin and he had obvious warts on both his cheeks. Bjarne had never got on particularly well with Indrehaug, but nor did he aspire to.

  ‘My apologies,’ Sandland said. ‘I got a phone call.’

  ‘On a Sunday?’ Indrehaug queried.

  Sandland raised an eyebrow, wasn’t at all perturbed by the lawyer’s attempt to rattle her.

  ‘Doesn’t your phone ever ring on a Sunday?’ she parried.

  Bjarne smiled.

  Sandland ignored him, sat down on a chair in the small grey interview room, her papers resting on her lap. They sat in a triangle. Mjønes was still looking at his arms, as though nothing in the world could interest him more. Bjarne could see that Mjønes would have a certain appeal to the opposite sex. He was just shy of two metres tall, with caramel-coloured skin and fair hair pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that was so white that it looked like it had come straight from the shop.

  ‘What are we going to talk about today?’ Indrehaug asked. ‘Whether my client likes green or black bananas?’

  ‘We’re going to talk about Daddy Longlegs,’ Sandland said, crossing her legs, keeping a hand on her papers. Bjarne kept his eyes fixed on Mjønes as the name was mentioned, and even though Mjønes pretended it meant nothing to him, there was a faint twitch in his face. Bjarne saw it, even on the monitor.

  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest,’ Indrehaug said.

  ‘Do you know who Daddy Longlegs is?’

  Sandland addressed this to the lawyer as well as Mjønes.

  Indrehaug laughed.

  ‘I think most people know what a daddy longlegs is. Honestly, Ms Sandland, you can’t seriously mean that…’

  ‘Daddy Longlegs gives work to people like your client – contract killers and enforcers. Daddy Longlegs is his nickname, and not many know his real identity. But your client does.’

  There was silence. Bjarne kept his eyes on the screen, waiting.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ the lawyer asked eventually.

  Sandland didn’t answer straightaway.

  Bjarne studied Mjønes, waiting for him to look up. When he finally did, it was with an obstinate ‘I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about’ face.

  Mjønes had lost weight, Bjarne noted. But then he’d been in custody for a while now, and it was never easy to get used to the walls, routines, the absence of everything familiar. Even the hardest nuts broke at some point, it was simply a question of how long it would take. They had more than enough circumstantial evidence against Mjønes. He would be sentenced to fourteen or fifteen years, at least. He would probably serve eight to ten years, which was a decent amount, but still a bloody long time.

  ‘Does the name Preben Mørck,’ Sandland said slowly, keeping an eye on the other two, ‘mean anything to you?’

  Mjønes stopped squeezing his muscles. Then, seconds later, started again. Bjarne moved closer to the monitor. Saw Sandland hold up the photograph that lay on top of the papers she had with her.

  ‘He looks like this,’ she said, showing it to them.

  It took some time before Mjønes even raised his eyes to look at it.

  ‘He’s been the Hellberg family’s lawyer for many years, even though they are in Tønsberg and he’s based in Oslo.’

  ‘Never seen him before,’ Mjønes said, and lowered his head.

  Bjarne watched him carefully.

  ‘If we get evidence against him, Ørjan, we’ll bring him in. And then we’ll question him about you and Tore Pulli. Do you think he’ll be equally unwilling to say anything?’

  Mjønes didn’t answer.

  ‘Lawyers love to talk,’ Sandland said, and glanced over at Indrehaug – the lawyer scowled at her. ‘He’ll talk, Ørjan. And I happen to know that you two already know each other.’

  Mjønes lifted his head again. It looked like he was about to give a sarcastic ‘yeah, right’, but the words never passed his lips.

  ‘Killing someone as infamous as Tore Pulli in Oslo Prison is not the kind of job you’d give to someone you’ve never worked with before.’

  Bjarne studied his face for the slightest reaction.

  ‘You’ve done jobs for him previously, haven’t you?’

  Mjønes didn’t answer.

  ‘If Daddy Longlegs is smart,’ Sandland continued, ‘he’ll cooperate with us and tell us what he knows – about what he’s done himself and what those around him have done. And then we’re back to square one, Ørjan. In this room. You, me and your lawyer.’

  Sandland paused a while before carrying on.

  ‘You’d make it easier for yourself if you started to cooperate.’

  Mjønes gave a quiet snort.

  ‘Tell us who Daddy Longlegs works for,’ Sandland persisted. ‘Tell us who else was involved in the Tore Pulli murder.’

  Sandland had put her fingers together in a triangle. Indrehaug looked over at his client, who refused to look back.

  ‘You’ve previously had a good deal of contact with the Kosovo-Albanians here in town,’ she continued. ‘Were they involved in this as well?’

  Mjønes moved his hands from his lower arms to his biceps. Bjarne was sitting tight, waiting for the response when the door behind him opened. He turned and saw Martin Furuseth, the police laywer on duty, come in. And there was something about the plump man’s serious, heavy face – his eyebrows seemed to be even more knitted than usual – that made Bjarne stand up.

  ‘I need you to go to Fagerborg,’ Furuseth said. ‘Immediately.’

  9

  Trine dried more tears and blew her nose, crumpled up the tissue and looked around for a bin. She spotted one by a pillar and went over to throw it away. Her legs would scarcely carry her and she still felt dizzy.

  On the way back, she looked at her brother.

  He must have gone through hell, she thought. Being unable to save your only child, and then to have to live with it afterwards. And even though she’d known he was searching for answers, she’d never even contemplated that he might discover her role in it all, let alone get hold of photographs that proved it.

  Trine sat down an arm’s length from him. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t decide how to say it. It was best not to look at him, she decided, better just to tell her story and pretend he wasn’t there.

  ‘You may already know this,’ she started, and cleared her throat, ‘but in the nineties I was working for Oslo Council. As a legal adviser in local administration.’

  She could hardly hear her own voice. She tried to put into words the memories she’d fought to suppress.

  ‘I was young and inexperienced at the time,’ she continued, ‘and I took the job because I thought that…’

  ‘Get to the point.’

  The edge in his voice made her jump.

  ‘I’m trying,’ Trine said, squaring her shoulders and exhaling slowly.

  Then she carried on: ‘One winter afternoon, I think it was 1996, an old woman came to my office. Bodil Svenkerud.’ Trine said her name slowly, and shook her head. ‘She wanted to hand in a written complaint. She’d lived in the same council flat in Oslo for most of her life, and it said in her contract that she would have a fixed rent until 2020 or thereabouts, I can’t remember exactly.’

  Trine put her hands together.

  ‘But then, in the nineties, the council sold some of its properties, including the building where Bodil Svenkerud lived, to private investors. The new owner took over responsibility for the tenants and even though Mrs Svenkerud had an old contract she could put on the table, it didn’t help much – the new owner tried to squeeze her out by putting up the rent by several hundred per cent.’

  Trine took another deep breath.

  ‘They wanted her to move so they could do up the flats and resell
them, but Mrs Svenkerud was having none of it. So she came to me, and said that if I couldn’t help her, she’d go to the papers.’

  Trine’s mouth was dry. She asked for the cup of water that Henning held in his hand. He passed it to her reluctantly.

  She took a few sips before she continued.

  ‘But because she’d come to me so late in the day,’ she said, and dried her upper lip, ‘I told her that I would look at her case first thing in the morning. Which I intended to do, but…’

  Trine looked around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them.

  ‘Early the next morning,’ she continued, in an even quieter voice, ‘the phone rang in my office.’

  She looked around again.

  ‘It was a man who wanted to know if an old lady had been to see me the day before.’

  Trine looked straight at Henning as she spoke. ‘I hesitated, but eventually said yes. The man then asked me to look at page four of Aftenposten.’ She shook her head again. ‘God, I even remember which page it was.’

  Trine lowered her eyes and put the plastic cup down on the bench. She needed a few moments to pull herself together.

  ‘It said that an old woman had been run over the evening before and had died as a result of her injuries.’

  Trine met Henning’s eyes, which were increasingly intense. She took another Kleenex from the packet and wiped her nose, then balled the tissue in her hand.

  ‘The man asked if I’d received anything from Bodil Svenkerud the day before. He even called me by my name, and seemed to know all sorts of things about me, where I lived, which floor, what my boyfriend at the time was called.’

  Trine let her eyes wander again, before continuing.

  ‘I was terrified. Sat there shaking, with the receiver in my hand. The man asked if anyone else had seen the complaint, but only I had. So he told me to shred it and not give it another thought.’

  Trine crushed the paper tissue.

  ‘I wish I’d been stronger,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t think what else to do, I just stammered yes. So…’

  Trine looked up at her brother.

  ‘When the man had hung up, I did what he’d told me to do – I shredded the complaint and tried not to think about it anymore.’ It took a few moments before she carried on. ‘The police took the case seriously, naturally enough; a hit-and-run in poshest Frogner was not exactly an everyday occurrence, and when they’d pieced together her final movements, they of course turned up at the office.’

  She lowered her eyes again.

  ‘I was convinced they would see that I was lying, but I told them that Svenkerud had wanted to complain about council services in her part of town, and that she was probably just an old lady who needed someone to talk to after her husband had died.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know I had it in me, to lie like that, but I managed and the police bought my explanation, and that was that.’

  She wiped her nose again.

  ‘I stopped working for the council not long after. And the years passed. I tried not to think about what had happened.’ She gave a heavy sigh. ‘Then I was appointed as Minister of Justice. I was always afraid that the past would catch up with me, and sure enough – after I’d joined the cabinet at the start of September, I was reminded of what had happened to Bodil Svenkerud.’

  ‘In what way?’ Henning asked.

  Trine took a deep breath. Waited a moment, before saying, ‘I got another phone call, this time from a man who wondered if I remembered what had happened to the old lady who’d come to see me one winter’s day when I was working for the council.’

  Trine fought hard to hold back the tears.

  ‘I asked who was calling, but the man wouldn’t answer.’ She looked directly at Henning. ‘Instead he told me that I had a bothersome brother.’

  Henning raised an eyebrow. Trine shook her head once more and dried a tear.

  ‘I tried to tell the man there wasn’t a lot I could do about that, but then he played a recording of me talking to the man who called the morning after Bodil Svenkerud died. And there it was, word for word, everything he’d said and everything I’d agreed to, I even confirmed that I was called Trine Juul.’

  She stopped and sighed, and then continued in almost a whisper. ‘This put me in a very difficult situation. The man said he was considering giving the recording to one of the newspapers. If he did, then I would be implicated in an unsolved murder. I’d given in to threats. My career, my life, would be ruined. I asked what he wanted,’ Trine said, shaking her head, ‘and that’s when he said, “We want you to do something for us.”’

  She paused before carrying on.

  ‘He said they needed to get into your flat.’

  Henning stared at her, wide-eyed.

  ‘And I knew that Mum had a key…’

  It was Henning’s turn to shake his head.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do, Henning,’ she added, swiftly, in a louder voice. ‘The man promised that nothing would happen to you. They just wanted to give you a scare, they said, to make you stop poking around in whatever it was you were doing.’

  Henning stood up.

  ‘And so I went up to Mum’s later on that day, got the key to your flat and gave it to the man in that photograph you showed me. That’s all, I promise.’

  Henning said nothing. Just carried on shaking his head.

  ‘If you look closely at the photograph, you’ll see I’m shouting something at him. I shouted that he had to promise that nothing would happen to you.’

  Henning started to pace up and down, rubbing his head with one hand.

  ‘I promise, Henning,’ Trine sobbed. ‘What happened to Jonas was never supposed to happen. I promise.’

  Henning’s hand moved from his head to his face, from his forehead, down over his nose, mouth, then up and down again, and when he started to come towards her, Trine was frightened for a moment that he was going to hit her, so she pulled even further back on the bench. But instead he stopped in front of her and said in a shaken voice: ‘The company that bought the building where Mrs Svenkerud lived, what company was it?’

  Trine looked down.

  ‘I…’ she whispered.

  ‘What company was it?’ he repeated, coming a step closer and grabbing her arms.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘What street was it, then?’

  Trine thought. For a long time. Then she looked up at him and said, ‘I can’t remember that either, I’m sorry, Henning.’

  Frustrated that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell him what he wanted to know, Henning let go of her.

  And walked away.

  10

  Henning half ran, half walked. There was a sharp pain in his hip where they’d put in several pins following his fall from the second-floor balcony a couple of years back, but he pushed himself on. He bought a ticket for the airport express and hurried down the escalators onto the platform. A train was there waiting, and a minute after he’d boarded, the silver serpent, with its carbon steel axles, snaked towards Oslo at a speed of nearly 160 kilometres an hour.

  As cars and fields and forests sped by, he thought about Trine and what she’d told him. Her explanation was plausible enough. She’d been a pawn in someone else’s game, and he had a feeling that Tore Pulli and Charlie Høisæther were involved in some way. He decided to get hold of everything he could find on the Svenkerud case as soon as he got home.

  But there was one thing he had to do first.

  Assistant Chief of Police Pia Nøkleby lived in a side street off Uelands gate. All the local drug addicts and alcoholics gathered on the corner outside the Tranen pub, by the traffic lights at Alexander Kiellands plass. Henning had never been to her flat before, he’d met her most recently in a café close to where she lived, after he’d discovered that a report in the police investigation system, Indicia, had been modified via her user profile.

  The report was about Tore Pulli’s movements in Markveien on
the evening that Jonas had died, but Henning didn’t think it was Nøkleby herself who had made the changes. The way she’d answered his questions gave him no reason to believe she was lying to him. She clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

  In other words, someone else had done it.

  Henning asked the taxi driver to drop him off in Elias Blix’ gate, a stone’s throw from the street where she lived. He didn’t know if Nøkleby would be at home – police folk often worked at the weekend as well – but if he didn’t catch her there, he’d go down to the police headquarters.

  Henning’s pulse was still racing when he rang the bell. On the other side of the street, an old woman was pushing her rollator in front of her. There were no cars here, but he could hear the traffic on Uelands gate. A helicopter that didn’t seem to be moving was making a racket above him. The wind whistled through the leaves on some branches nearby.

  It took about 30 seconds before he heard rustling on the intercom.

  ‘Hello?’

  Her voice was rusty, as though she’d just woken up from a deep sleep.

  ‘Hi, it’s Henning,’ he said. ‘Henning Juul. I need to talk to you.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Can I come up?’ he asked.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A long silence, then: ‘I’d rather come down. Be with you in two ticks.’

  It was already dark and the streets were wet. A taxi was approaching. Henning looked the other way, and heard it stop. The door opened and a woman got out. She said thank you and goodbye. The taxi reversed out of the street and disappeared.

  Henning heard footsteps on the stairs and peered through the window in the door. Pia Nøkleby was coming towards him, but he barely recognised her. Her hair was normally short and tidy, but now it was untidy and standing on end. Her face was bare of any make up, which was unusual, and when she came out onto the step, she wrapped her slightly oversized jacket around her.