Pierced by Thomas Enger Read Free Book Online

smoking cigarettes, moved on to cannabis, and was quick to start fights. He drove a moped long before he was legally allowed to. His path to the biker gang was a short one. And it was at that point that he took up bodybuilding in earnest.
    One evening when Pulli and his biker friends had been drinking heavily, Fred Are Melby, a notorious enforcer, came over to Pulli and started talking to him. Pulli, who was eighteen or nineteen years old at the time, thought this was cool until Melby’s fist connected with his temple and floored him. Pulli quickly got back on his feet and proceeded to beat Melby to a pulp, including breaking his jaw with a lightning-fast jab with his elbow.
    In the days that followed Melby’s discharge from the hospital, Pulli was expecting some form of retaliation, but it never came. Instead, Melby offered him a job and promised to teach him everything he knew about the business. Pulli had gotten his foot in the door. Melby encouraged him to perfect his fast-elbow move, thus establishing Pulli’s signature trademark. Later Pullidiscovered that the initial provocation had simply been a kind of initiation test.
    For six years he worked as a debt collector. Loan sharks and dodgy builders knew they could trust him, and as his reputation started to precede him, he no longer had to resort to violence to collect on his clients’ behalf. As soon as people heard Pulli had been hired, they paid up. However, brute force alone wasn’t enough even though Pulli regarded his body as a temple and never touched a drop of alcohol. He soon learned the importance of charisma, and the combination of strength and knowledge was—in his eyes—unbeatable. For that reason he read not only all the literature about weapons and combat techniques he could get his hands on, but also biographies of famous war heroes and personalities. Pulli enjoyed huge respect within his circle and in the course of time he came to be a wealthy man.
    His grandfather, Sverre Lorents, who had worked as a carpenter all his life, advised Pulli to invest in property and he entered the market at a favorable time. He reinvested the money he made in larger ventures, which provided him with even greater profits and enabled him to continue down the same road. Soon he no longer needed to rely on his enforcer activity to make a living. Nor was it beneficial to his legitimate business interests to have at least one foot firmly anchored in the criminal underworld. In 2004 he shelved his knuckle-duster, or more precisely, he hung it up on the wall in his study. And then he met Veronica Nansen. They married two years later and the tabloid press regarded their wedding as the highlight of the year.
    Today Nansen owns Nansen Models AS—a company that soon became a popular supplier of girls and models for a variety of glamorous assignments. Before that she had earned her living as a high-profile model and hosted a reality TV show that promised to give young, skinny, and very ordinary girls the chance to make a living from their looks.
    Henning would not normally call anyone on a Sunday, but given that the matter affected both him and Tore Pulli, he has no scruples disturbing Veronica Nansen slightly later that morning. After many long rings the telephone is answered by a woman whose voice is rusty with sleep.
    “Hi, sorry for disturbing you. My name is Henning Juul.”
    Henning’s other hand drums the table impatiently while he waits for her to reply.
    “I don’t know if Tore has—”
    “I spoke to Tore yesterday,” Nansen says sharply. “I know who you are.”
    Her words sow a seed of guilt without him quite knowing why, but he shakes it off.
    “So you know that I’m also—”
    “I know that you’re giving Tore false hope. It’s the last thing he needs right now.”
    “False—”
    “As far as I’m concerned he’s free to seek comfort in a pipe dream that someone outside the prison walls will ride to his rescue, but I’ve no time for people like