Scarred (7 page)

The words in the email hit Trine so hard she starts to hyperventilate. It is as if the room begins spinning and she has to sit down in order not to fall. At her desk she rests her head in her hands and leans forwards on her elbows. Her hair falls over her eyes and forms a shield around her face, but one that offers no protection.

She raises her head and notices that the email was sent by [email protected]. She splutters at the sender’s name and guesses that whoever is threatening her isn’t using an IP address that will prove easy to trace. Nor will she tell the Security Service about it either; she doesn’t want to involve anyone else.

Then she remembers that her secretary automatically receives copies of all emails that go to the Justice Secretary’s email address. Trine gets up, a little too quickly and instantly feels dizzy again. She clutches her head and regains her balance. Then she goes to the door and opens it. Sees that her secretary isn’t at her desk right now.

A stroke of luck.

Trine rushes outside, glancing quickly up and down the corridor; she can hear voices and noises from every direction, but even so she races around to the back of the reception counter, wakes up the computer mouse and finds the email program and the email from biglie0910. She deletes it, both from the inbox and from the deleted items folder. She hurries back to her office before anyone sees her.

When she has shut the door, she leans against it, closes her eyes and hyperventilates. Again she has to concentrate hard not to cry. But how can anyone know what she did? Who is trying to set her up?

There is no shortage of enemies, neither in the Ministry of Justice itself, the police force or the Labour Party. Several people felt overlooked when she was appointed Justice Secretary three years ago. Words such as quotas for women were mentioned, there were hints that Trine would never have got the job if the Prime Minister hadn’t had to appoint a woman.
I bet my enemies are gloating now
, she thinks. But who could have found out what she did? She didn’t tell anyone, did she?

Trine shakes her head, goes back to her chair and sits down. She checks her mobile. Sixteen missed calls in only the last twenty minutes.

How quickly things can change. When she first appeared on TV or in the newspapers, she would get heaps of supportive text messages from people she knew and quite a few she didn’t. It hardly ever happens now. That’s why she makes a point of sending sympathetic messages to Ministers or other politicians, especially women, when they have been involved in a controversy. Quite simply because nobody else will. Not a single one of her government colleagues has texted her their support. Nor have any of her friends.

Maybe she doesn’t have any. Not any real friends.

Her thoughts are interrupted by a knock on the door. Trine sniffs, straightens up and blinks hard a couple of times. The door opens and Harald Ullevik pops his head around.

‘Hi,’ he says softly. ‘Can I come in?’

Trine feels incapable of saying anything yet, so she simply nods. Ullevik opens the door fully, enters and quickly closes it behind him. Takes a slow step forwards, presses his palms together and looks at her.

‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘No pity. I don’t think I can handle that right now.’

Ullevik says nothing, but nods gently.

‘I just wanted to ask if there’s anything I can do for you.’

‘You can sue
VG
,’ she says half in earnest, half in jest. ‘No,’ she sighs. ‘I don’t know.’

Ullevik doesn’t move. The walls radiate silence.

‘Trine, I—’

Ullevik lowers his gaze and digs the toe of his shoe into the floor.

‘What is it, Harald?’

It takes a few moments before he looks up at her.

‘I just wanted you to know that I … that you have my full support. No matter what. You’ve done a brilliant job as Justice Secretary. You’re the best one we’ve had for years.’

Don’t cry
, Trine tells herself.
Don’t you dare start crying now
.

‘If there’s anything you need, then . . . Don’t hesitate to ask. Okay?’

Stupid eyes.

‘I will,’ she stutters while the corners of her mouth start to tremble. ‘Thank you, Harald. It means a lot to me to hear you say that.’

Ullevik smiles warmly. Eyes meet eyes and she could have hugged him if there hadn’t been a desk between them, as well as her knowledge that she would most certainly burst into tears.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’

She watches him go and soon she is alone in the silence once more – normally a welcome friend on a noisy day. But not today.

Eventually Trine gets up and rings an internal number. Katarina Hatlem shows up in her office less than one minute later.

‘What is it?’ she asks and closes the door behind her. And before Trine has time to respond, she says: ‘How are you?’

‘I can’t handle this on my own,’ Trine says. ‘You have to help me.’

Emilie Blomvik can’t sit still for one minute. It’s almost like being back at school and waiting to get the results of a test you know you have done well in. She is quivering with anticipation, but it’s still a welcome sensation. She can only imagine how Mattis must be feeling right now.

Before he left work last Friday, the partners told him they would like to meet with him Monday morning. You’ve been doing very well recently, they said, but that was all they told him. Emilie has asked him several times during the weekend why he thought they wanted to meet with him. And even though he only shrugged and replied ‘I don’t know’, she could tell from looking at him what he was thinking. The way a small smile would curl up at the corners of his mouth though he tried very hard to suppress it.

Is it finally his turn to be made a partner?

Emilie isn’t quite sure what being made a partner entails, but she is absolutely sure that it’s a good thing. It holds out a promise of better times to come. Nicer holidays. More of everything. Before Mattis went to work today, he promised to ring her as soon as the meeting with his bosses was over. She doesn’t know what a Monday morning means for a lawyer, but surely it can’t be that long before he calls?

Emilie smiles to herself when she remembers how she met Mattis, or rather how he met her. He came up to the check-in counter at Gardermoen Airport where she worked and asked if she had ever been reindeer hunting. Emilie was lost for words after this unexpected question and when she didn’t reply immediately, he said: ‘Would you like to try?’

She didn’t know what to say; she is quite sure that she blushed as she sat there behind the counter. She had had her fair share of chat-up lines over the years, but the word ‘reindeer’ had never featured in any of them. And she was instantly attracted to the idea of leaving everything behind, eloping with a total stranger to a foreign place. He looked almost ruggedly handsome as he stood there, even though he is really quite skinny and not particularly attractive or brave, but Emilie had never been drawn to men with film star looks. And she had no trouble imagining how much tougher he would look with a hunting rifle in his hand. Had she been ten years younger, she might have thrown caution to the wind and gone off with him.

But she remembered him the next time he came to check in. She spotted him in the crowd, saw him wait until her counter was free. She got butterflies in her stomach and felt hot all over. She is quite sure that he noticed the warmth in the smile she flashed him. And there was something appealing about his confidence when he asked her if he could buy her a cup of coffee when he came back. Or a beer. Or a Strawberry Daiquiri.

Now the latter might have been a fluke, but at the time she loved Strawberry Daiquiris. And one Strawberry Daiquiri turned into two and three when he called her one month later. Now they have been living together for three years and been parents for two and a half. And she would have to agree that they’re happy.

But she is not sure that he is Mr Right.

Mattis is kind, funny and sociable. He is a great father to Sebastian – when he is at home, that is. He gets on very well with Emilie’s mother, with her friends, he even says that he likes or indeed ‘absolutely loves’ Jessheim, where they live. But sometimes it’s as if they are on different planets. One fortnight every year he goes hunting up in Finnmarksvidda in northern Norway. In the summer he prefers to go to rock festivals with his friends, while she prefers sun loungers and all-inclusive holidays. They don’t spend very much time together these days. He is busy with his work in Oslo; she with hers at the airport. Emilie had thought that living together, being a family, would be about more than just simple logistics, the organisation of everyday life. And the question she has been asking herself more and more often recently is: does she really love him?

Fortunately deciding where they were going to live required little discussion. Mattis wasn’t particularly bothered. Nor was he worried about how the house should look. Interiors, choice of sofa, the colour on the walls, the dinner service, none of that mattered to him and he was happy to leave all the decisions to her. So they bought a house that Emilie plans to redecorate over time, once she gets a clearer idea of what she wants.

Her only regret is that Johanne didn’t move back home to Jessheim once she had finished her studies. It would have made it so much easier for them to meet, or at least they would be seeing each other more than they do now. A whole summer has come and gone since the last time. And that is why Emilie is particularly excited about having lunch with her friend tomorrow.

But tomorrow is twenty-four hours away. Right now it is about the usual morning routine. Give Sebastian his breakfast, clean his teeth, brush his hair, make his packed lunch, help him into his coat and wellies, pack a spare set of clothing in case – no, not in case – because he inevitably gets dirty or wets himself.

She can’t wait until that stage is over. Sometimes she wishes it was possible to press the fast-forward button, as if life was a DVD series where you could skip all the boring episodes. But then Sebastian will smile or laugh or say something that gives her a warm glow all over, and she wishes she could change the pace of life to slow motion instead.

It is just past 8.30 in the morning when Emilie parks outside Nordby Nursery, a long flat building that has never been painted any colour other than red. She went there herself when she was little. She doesn’t remember very much about it except that they spent most of the day outdoors regardless of the weather – a tradition that seems to have endured. The nursery has a large outdoor space with plenty of playground equipment and a hill where the children can toboggan and roll down in winter.

Emilie gets out of the car, adjusts her clothing slightly, lifts Sebastian out of his car seat and puts him down carefully on the ground. Then she holds out her hand to him and he takes it. Slowly they start walking towards the entrance, a tarmac footpath where prams are lined up all the way to the wall. A father she meets practically every morning smiles to her. Emilie smiles back. It’s a fine morning and it’s important to enjoy it while it lasts. The sun breaks through the trees, which are craning their necks towards the sky. An autumnal morning mist has wrapped the branches and leaves in candy floss.

Her attention is drawn to a man standing close to the fence behind a fir tree. He is holding up a camera and isn’t moving. Emilie slows down and narrows her eyes to get a better look at him. She can’t see much in the drowsy morning light other than that he wears a khaki army jacket and that his face is obscured by the camera. When he lowers it, he seems to be staring right at her. At them.

‘Mummy,’ says a small, squeaky and impatient voice at her side. She looks down at Sebastian who is pulling at her.

‘I’m coming, darling, I was just—’

She turns again and looks towards the fir tree. The man is no longer there. She tries to work out where he could have gone, but all she can see are branches swaying in the wind and clouds of dust whirling up from the ground.

How strange
, she thinks.
Was he taking pictures of us?

She looks around. Right now they are the only people outside. And she thought there was something familiar about him.

She brushes the idea aside. He might just have been taking pictures of the beautiful light. Nothing to worry about.

Emilie carries on walking to the entrance while she glances at her watch. And it comes back, this twitchy, nagging feeling. Surely Mattis has to ring soon?

The reporters gathered around the big staircase at Oslo Police Station instantly fall silent when Pia Nøkleby arrives. She is usually accompanied by Chief Inspector Arild Gjerstad, but this time she is alone.

Henning has to be honest: he has grown to like Pia Nøkleby since he returned to work in the spring. He likes her dark hair, the fringe that she always brushes behind her right ear even though the hair instantly falls back over her eyes again. And her eyes – brown with a fleck of green, eyes that never look tired. The little beauty spot left of her nose, which gives him yet another reason to look at her heart-shaped face. Her lips always moist, not too red, as if she deliberately stops herself from being too beautiful. Her cheeks, soft and rosy with only a hint of pale, delicate hairs, are tempting to touch.

She is always very serious when the microphone is switched on, behaving like she thinks she should and ought. But as soon as the cameras are turned off, her personality changes and she will come out with quick and insightful comments. She has always had this professional acuity that rarely or never leads her astray in interviews.

Henning has seen something in her eyes, not often, but every now and then she drops her facade. True, it’s some time since he last felt a woman’s warmth, or even interest, but he hasn’t completely lost his touch. Pia’s voice tends to soften when she speaks to him, also when other journalists or police officers are present.

But Henning also remembers how Pia’s replies became more and more evasive when he started asking questions about the police investigation into a murder of which ex-torpedo and property magnate Tore Pulli was found guilty. At first he had put her behaviour down to work-related stress, concluding that she might not be inclined to answer questions from someone who was clearly critical of an investigation she had headed. But ever since Henning discovered that Pia had redacted a report in the police investigation program, Indicia, a report that stated that Tore Pulli was outside Henning’s flat on the night of the fire that killed his son, it’s tempting to think that her less than forthcoming answers were prompted by other motives.

All Henning knows about the Pulli report is that Pulli was sitting in a car outside Henning’s flat in Markveien 32, on 11 September 2007, and that he had been there several nights in a row. But why was he there? Was he waiting for a meeting? Was he planning to beat someone up – after all, he had previously made his living as one of Oslo’s best-known enforcers? Or was he simply observing?

Henning has been asking himself those same questions in the last few weeks. Last month Pulli contacted Henning and told him he had information about what happened on the night that Jonas died. But before Pulli was able to tell him, he was murdered in Oslo Prison. Because of what he was about to tell Henning? And what did the original Indicia report say about Pulli’s movements on the night in question? Who might that information have incriminated – unless it was damaging to Pia Nøkleby herself?

Henning was tempted, of course he was, to confront Nøkleby when he discovered what she had done, but he has since had second thoughts. He decided to protect his source who had told him Nøkleby had edited the report and find another way to proceed. There must be others who know something.

He looks at Nøkleby as she stops on the fourth step from the bottom and surveys the crowd. TV camera lights are switched on. Microphones are stretched out. Mobile telephones switched to recording mode.

Henning knows the police are not about to disclose anything that he doesn’t already know. They might release a photograph of the victim, tell them a little about her background and confirm the information that Henning has already included in the article he filed earlier today. But Nøkleby won’t say anything about
how
the victim was maimed. Instead she will say that the investigation is looking at every aspect, technical as well as tactical, and that they have solid evidence that they are following up. But no one will be told what that solid evidence is, obviously.

Henning is there mainly to see how Nøkleby behaves, if her face gives anything away. He tries to catch her eye, but her gaze glides across the large room and the reporters assembled there.

When she has finished her statement and everyone has gone their separate ways, Henning sends her a text message asking politely for a private chat. He sits down on a bench outside the police station from where he has an uninterrupted view of Oslo Prison and waits for her to reply. This is the place they usually meet. Occasionally she invites him to her office, but only when she has information she officially wants the media to know about.

While he clutches his mobile waiting for her to get back to him, life in Oslo rushes by on the roads below. The sky is just as restless as satellite images played back at high speed. And he wonders how long it will be before another gigantic bucket of water will be tipped over the city.

He thinks about the murder of Erna Pedersen. Given the number of potential witnesses it’s odd that no one saw anything. On the other hand – all the patients on Ward 4 were suffering from some form of dementia, so even if they had seen something, there is no guarantee that they would have remembered it. It is even possible that one of them might have killed her and not even know it.

He tries to visualise Erna Pedersen, old and grey, in her wheelchair when she met her killer. He must have been known to her. No stranger would enter the room of an eighty-three-year-old woman, strangle her and then proceed to whack knitting needles into her eyes afterwards.

But why do it when the woman was already dead?

The killer must have suffered an enormous, pent-up rage. Killing her wasn’t enough. This gives Henning an idea. The murder is unlikely to have been planned in advance. Not in detail, at any rate. Then the killer would have used something other than the victim’s own knitting needles – unless he knew that she always had them by her side.

There can be no doubt that this was a crime of passion. And everyone who commits a crime of passion is affected by it one way or another. It takes time to recover from such raw emotions. How can the killer have found an outlet for such tremendous pressure without anyone noticing a change in him?

Since no one at the care home saw the killer, they must have been distracted. Or did the killer switch from being Mr Hyde one moment to Dr Jekyll the next? In which case they are looking for a killer who is extraordinarily callous.

Henning ponders the most important question in every murder investigation. Why? Several motives can be eliminated immediately. Jealousy. Desire. Some people kill for the thrill of it, but it’s rare. Neither is there anything to suggest that this murder was committed to cover up another crime. Nor is loss of honour a likely motive, since it mostly occurs between gang members or people with extreme religious convictions. Personal gain? It’s possible, of course, since no information has yet been published about the victim’s financial circumstances, be it anything she might have kept in her room or any money she might have had in her bank account. No more alternatives exist, except the usual one:

Revenge.

And in view of the killer’s unbridled rage, revenge is the most obvious motive. But what could an eighty-three-year-old woman ever have done to anyone? Nothing, probably, in the last few years. Not much happens at a care home. So we need to go further back in time, Henning reasons. But how far back? To the time before she was moved to a care home? Or even further back? Surely there is a limit to how much evil a woman can do after she turns seventy?

At the police press conference they learned that the victim was originally from Jessheim – where Henning also grew up, incidentally. Perhaps the answer lies there? In which case he knows exactly who to ask for help.

Henning is so completely lost in thought that he doesn’t hear the footsteps behind him, and when Pia Nøkleby sits down next to him, he spins around so fast that she starts to laugh.

‘I didn’t know you scared so easily.’

‘Oh,’ Henning says and blushes. ‘Occupational hazard.’

Nøkleby laughs again.

Henning likes laughter. He especially likes
her
laughter. And it’s hard to believe that Pia Nøkleby would have been able to sit here with him and act as if nothing had happened unless she had a clear conscience. She knows Henning’s story, knows what happened to Jonas. So could she really have tampered with the Tore Pulli report in Indicia and still sit here joking with him?

‘I should have brought you a strawberry ice cream,’ he says.

Nøkleby smiles and brushes some hair behind her ear.

‘I’m still feeling sick from the last one you gave me.’

Henning smiles and watches her lips stretch out, moist and perfect, as if she put on fresh lipstick just before she came down to see him.

‘Nice summary you just gave us,’ he continues. ‘Nice and professional, as usual.’

‘Hah,’ she snorts. ‘There wasn’t much for you lot to go on. Or, at least, not for you.’

He lowers his gaze.

‘Sometimes, Henning, your sources are a little too well informed.’

‘So you don’t fancy becoming one of them?’

This time they both smile.

‘I thought I
was
one of your sources?’

‘Yes, but on-the-record sources are boring, Pia. You know that.’

She laughs again.

‘But I won’t lie – you’re my dream source. No doubt about it.’

‘Oh?’

‘But more than anything, I wish I had a source who could grant me access to the information held in Indicia.’

Henning looks up at her.

‘Now that would be worth having,’ he continues.

Nøkleby doesn’t reply immediately.

‘Yes, I can imagine that’s every journalist’s wet dream,’ she then says.

‘Mm.’

Henning had expected that her eyes would start to flicker the moment he mentioned the word ‘Indicia’, especially if she understood why he was bringing it up. But there was no hint of a change. No quick, nervous glance. Not even a twitching in the corner of her mouth.

Perhaps it was too much to hope for. Pia has worked for the police for years; she is used to keeping secrets, to keeping a straight face in front of the media.

But would she be able to conceal something as big as that?

‘How easy is it for an outsider to gain access to Indicia?’

Nøkleby turns to him.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Could I, for example, log on to Indicia if I knew your username and password? From the outside?’

Nøkleby’s mouth starts to open, but she hesitates before she replies.

‘I hope you’re not about to make me an indecent proposal?’

‘You know me better than that, Pia.’

Her face darkens slightly. Her gaze sharpens.

‘But could I? I mean, purely hypothetically, of course, just to be clear.’

Nøkleby doesn’t reply. She simply stares at him with searching eyes.

‘I thought you wanted to talk to me about the murder of Erna Pedersen?’

‘That too.’

Her eyes probe him so hard that her gaze pricks him.

‘The functionality of a program such as Indicia isn’t something we share with the public, Henning. Not even with off-the-record news-hungry journalists.’

‘Sorry,’ he says and smiles.

‘Tell me, why do you want to know?’

He shrugs his shoulders.

‘I’m just curious.’

‘Yeah, right,’ she says, sarcastically. ‘You always have an agenda.’

True, Henning thinks and pauses before he replies. Then he holds up his hands in defence.

‘There’s an exception to every rule,’ he says and smiles again, hoping that will be enough to lift the veil of scepticism over her eyes.

He isn’t that lucky.

‘Well, if there’s nothing else, then—’

Nøkleby stands up.

‘There is.’

She stops and looks down at him.

‘How far back in time are you going to have to go to find the reason for the revenge killing of Erna Pedersen?’

Nøkleby looks at him. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly.

Then she leaves.