Free Pierced by Thomas Enger Page A

eating at them.
    Henning picks a table in the middle of the room, orders a Danish-style beef burger with potatoes, vegetables, and pickled beetroot for no other reason than he likes Denmark and the Danes. While he waits for his food, he looks out of the window at the five-meter-high wall across the road.
    Oslo Prison.
    He is somewhere inside it, Henning thinks, the man with information about the fire. The time until he meets Tore Pulli face-to-face can’t come soon enough.
    Henning is still feeling uncomfortably full after his meal when Geir Grønningen shows up two hours and fifteen minutes after their brief chat at Fighting Fit. He has showered and is wearing tight leather trousers and a white T-shirt that strains over his belly. His steps are measured and decisive and his arms hang well away from his upper body, as if something has been stuffed under his armpits. He has long hair that falls loosely over his shoulders, but his hairline has retreated high up his forehead and made room for deep frown lines.
    Henning gets up when Grønningen appears.
    “I don’t think we managed to introduce ourselves properly earlier,” he says and holds out his hand. “Henning Juul.”
    Grønningen shakes his hand reluctantly.
    “You’ve got a nerve,” he says as he sits down.
    “Why is that?”
    “Walking straight into the gym and talking to me about what I—”
    Grønningen breaks off, looks around, but all he sees is a noisy family with children at a table farther away.
    “You’re lucky no one saw you,” he continues.
    “I am or you are?”
    Grønningen doesn’t reply.
    “So no one knows that you’re trying to find out who set Tore up?”
    Grønningen looks at Henning. His lips form the beginning of an answer, but Henning sees that he opts for an alternative reply.
    “Turning up at the gym and asking questions about people isn’t very smart,” he says archly. “People might think you’re trying to set them up.”
    “And they’ve developed this paranoia because they’ve been law-abiding citizens all their lives?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “I think so. But I wanted to talk to you because Veronica said that you’ve tried to help Tore while he has been inside.”
    “I’ve tried and tried,” he says and looks down.
    “So you haven’t found anything out?”
    Grønningen studies his napkin in detail.
    “Not much, no.”
    “That probably explains why Tore rang me yesterday,” Henning says and waits for Grønningen to look up. Which he does half a second later.
    “Did he?”
    “Yes. He asked for my help. Since you’re clearly trying to help him, too, I thought we might be useful to each other.”
    Grønningen snorts with ill-concealed contempt, but it’s loud enough for Henning to hear it.
    “I get it,” he continues. “You don’t know if you can trustme. And no one has claimed the one million kroner reward yet. But you can relax, Geir. I don’t care about the money. I have my own reason for doing this.”
    “What reason would that be?”
    “This is how we do it,” Henning says and waits until he has Grønningen’s undivided attention. “I tell you everything you want to know about me and why I’m here, and then you tell me what you know about your friend’s case. I’m interested in anyone who knew Tore. Who they were and what they stood for.”
    Grønningen directs his dark brown eyes at a floral arrangement on one of the console tables.
    “I don’t snitch on my mates,” he says in a mournful voice that suggests he has just betrayed a lifelong principle.
    “I’m not asking you to. All you have to do is tell me a bit about Tore and how he got on with his friends, how they treated each other. You don’t have to talk about what they got up to if you don’t want to. And just to make it clear: I’m only interested in this story. If I should stumble across anything else while I’m sniffing around, I’ll leave it alone.”
    Henning is surprised when he realizes that he actually means