Scarred: A Novel Read online

  Fresh editions with new front pages went to press; a few newspapers also increased the number of pages to give both the press release and various follow-up articles sufficient space, as it had now become obvious that it was going to be the story of the week. In the press release the unnamed young man announced that it would be his final word on the matter. He doesn’t want a sexual assault by one of the country’s best-known politicians to be brought up every time he himself features in the media, as he has major political ambitions of his own. Nevertheless, in his statement he challenges the secretary of state for justice and he also gives a brief summary of the incident.

  It started with a glance. At first, the man felt honored that a minister—and a woman he has always liked—and yes, in that way, too—would be interested in him. During that evening one glance turned into many. And when he spilled a little red wine on his white shirt and went up to his hotel room to change, he suddenly found Trine standing right behind him. She asked if he wouldn’t rather change in her room instead, and the rest, he wrote, people could work out for themselves.

  Afterward, when she had practically shoved him out the door, he had felt used. And when he contacted the minister a couple of weeks later to get her to admit that she had crossed a line, he was coldly dismissed with “Plenty of men would count themselves lucky to have been in your shoes.”

  VG has twelve pages about Trine, Dagbladet has nine. Aftenposten devotes practically its entire front page and four pages inside the newspaper to the alleged assault and there are reactions and commentaries about them in addition to a series of pictures of Trine. The sexiest and most seductive photographs have been dug out and reproduced. Newspapers carry editorials that demand that Juul-Osmundsen either resign as soon as possible or come up with an explanation, “and a good one at that.” No one can understand why she hasn’t yet resigned and they mock her for apparently running away from the Ministry of Justice yesterday to escape the media.

  Several newspapers have visited Hotel Caledonien, they have discovered which room was registered in Trine’s name on the night in question, and they have—as usual—photographed the door. It happened behind this door, reads the caption. The media have contacted every single member of the Labor Party’s youth branch who was present that night to ask if they know the identity of the victim. No one does. But the media keep speculating. They have also spoken to other party members who were there, but no one remembers seeing Trine during the dinner. A revelation that causes several media commentators to conclude that “she probably had other things on her mind.”

  When Henning gets to the offices of 123news, he realizes that Trine won’t be able to ride out this storm. Too much negative publicity about her has appeared in the wake of the initial story. She is accused of having doctored a working environment survey in the Justice Department because it made her look bad. Sacked a member of staff, apparently for no reason. Failed to produce receipts for her traveling expenses. Accepted gifts without declaring them or paying tax on them. During an official trip to India, her Indian counterpart presented her with a rug, which she brought back and put in one of the guest bedrooms in her house in Ullern. Last Christmas she was given a 3.5-liter bottle of whisky by the Parliament’s Press Association, which she failed to declare.

  The press has also resurrected a story from two years ago when she traveled to the United States and flew business class, even though economy-class tickets were available on the same flight. Traveling too often and too expensively never enhances a politician’s popularity. And what about that cookery course she was given by the famous Norwegian chef and food writer Arne Brimi?

  The house, which Trine and her husband bought for 17.8 million kroner last year, becomes a story in itself. Several papers have included photo montages and added catty captions to the effect that Labor politicians don’t usually live in mansions. A quote from an unnamed Labor Party politician helps to pour petrol on the flames: “How many of us can afford to live like this? And I’ve heard she has a cleaner as well.” And a chalet in the Hafjell ski resort with four, possibly even five bedrooms? Shame on you. Nor does it help Trine’s case that her husband drives a Porsche Cayenne, a hugely polluting car. And since when is it appropriate for a minister to wear such short skirts or be allowed to borrow jewelry for free for three months at a time from one of Oslo’s most prestigious jewelers?

  Opposition politicians also make sure to stick the knife in with a “what she promised but failed to deliver” list. Anything she has done in the last three years that can be interpreted even remotely as a failure is dumped in a box labeled “character assassination.” And more is to come. The fact that she doesn’t get on very well with the head of Norway’s police force gives especially the Conservative section of the opposition yet another reason to demand that the minister be replaced at the earliest opportunity. If the opposition hadn’t already lost confidence in her over the Hotel Caledonien scandal, then they certainly will now. In an opinion poll on the front page of 123news, 97 percent of readers demand that Trine resign immediately, 2 percent disagree, while 1 percent “don’t know.” These figures are practically identical in every other publication that Henning checked before he went to work.

  Instead of sitting down at his computer, he walks over to the national news desk, where he finds the fax that was sent to them along with every other newspaper late last night and locates Kåre Hjeltland. The news editor’s gaze is focused on a PC screen a few workstations away. His hair stands straight up as usual and he looks as if he slept at the office and hasn’t had time to shower before new stories appeared and demanded his undivided attention.

  “Do you have two minutes, Kåre?” Henning says and stops in front of him. Hjeltland registers Henning’s arrival, nods, bashes the keyboard hard for thirty seconds before he gets up so abruptly that his chair rolls several meters backward.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  Henning waits until Hjeltland’s eyes stop flitting.

  “You know it’s a setup, don’t you?”

  Hjeltland folds his arms across his chest and looks at him for a few seconds.

  “The whole case against Trine bears all the hallmarks,” Henning continues. “Ever since yesterday morning, VG has been drip-feeding stories to its readers, stories it couldn’t possibly have written in just one day. It must have known about this for a while and planned it carefully.”

  Hjeltland gives Henning a baffled look.

  “Yes, and so what?”

  “So what? Don’t you think it’s just a little bit suspicious?”

  “No, not at all. We would have done exactly the same if a big story like this had landed in our lap.”

  “It doesn’t worry you that the story was deliberately leaked to Norway’s biggest newspaper, and that Trine wasn’t even offered the opportunity to respond to the allegations before the first articles went to print?”

  Hjeltland is about to say something, but Henning has no intention of letting him get a word in yet.

  “And don’t tell me that VG didn’t try, because that’s bullshit. It’s had every opportunity to confront Trine before it started this smear campaign against her, precisely because it’s known about it for a long time. It’s obvious what VG wants. And the rest of the media will blindly follow its lead while doing everything they can to come up with their own take on the story.”

  “But—”

  “I haven’t seen a single article that tries to defend Trine or examines the story from her point of view. No, that’s not true, I saw a two-liner saying one of her junior ministers is one hundred percent behind his boss. No one has yet managed to establish what exactly happened in that hotel room.”

  “But she’s refusing to say anything,” Hjeltland protests. “What do you want us to do, Henning? Not cover the story?”

  “No, but it has gotten completely out of hand. Trine might well be guilty of the things she’s accused of, but tha
t’s exactly why it would have been refreshing to see a newspaper or a TV channel take a step backward and assess the story from a balanced point of view. Or at least acknowledge that there could be more to it.”

  “Did you read the press release he issued last night?”

  Henning shows him the two fax sheets he is holding in his hands.

  “Your sister is a powerful woman, Henning. She exploited her position to pressure a young man into having sex with her.”

  “She might well have done, but all the media care about now is that Trine resign and that she apologize. It doesn’t matter what she says or what she did, because no one is going to believe her. Especially not now when the press has dug up all kinds of dirt on her.”

  Hjeltland scratches his head. Then he looks at Henning with editorial disapproval.

  “I understand how you must be feeling, Henning, since it’s your sister who’s being hounded, but—”

  “It’s got nothing to do with Trine being my sister,” Henning says with an unexpected touch of anger in his voice. “It’s about how history repeats itself whenever a public figure is alleged to have done something wrong. We go for the jugular right away, and I can see it in people’s faces—also here in our office—when yet another story is revealed that supports the impression that has already been created. It’s a mixture of indignation and glee, and it’s not just here, Kåre, I’ve seen it in every editorial office I’ve ever worked in. It makes me sick.”

  Henning is aware that the blood is rushing to his head. Around them other staff members have noticed his outburst, but they keep their distance. Henning doesn’t care about them; instead he makes a second attempt to get his point across and tries hard not to sound emotional or angry.

  “Besides, Trine has been on sick leave. Not all that long ago. Doesn’t anyone think that perhaps this is more than she can cope with?”

  Even though he keeps his voice low, his words are explosive and he can see the effect on Hjeltland’s face. The muscles tighten like wire.

  “So what do you think we ought to do, Henning?”

  “Investigate the allegations,” he says. “Rather than just repeat them.”

  Hjeltland emits a sigh from the depths of his chest.

  “You know very well we don’t have the resources, Henning. And our circulation figures, they’ve gone completely through—”

  “And you wouldn’t want to ruin that, would you? You’d rather bank on the story being true?”

  “No, but right now we have to produce a story based on the information currently available to us.”

  Henning can feel a fuse burning behind his eyes, but he knows continuing this discussion is pointless. So he shakes his head and says: “I’m going out. I can’t stand being here.”

  “Where are you going?” Hjeltland calls after him.

  “Jessheim.”

  Chapter 36

  The sound of footsteps wakes up Trine Juul-Osmundsen. At first she is startled and wonders where she is before she remembers it could be one of her bodyguards who might have gone outside for some fresh air. But she doesn’t recognize the noise. It’s a small, hard stomping not made by shoes.

  She sits up on the sofa bed in the living room and instantly feels the pounding in her head. Even getting to a sitting position is enough to make her nauseous. She groans and touches her temples. She screws up her eyes and sees the empty bottle of St. Hallvard in front of her. Her stomach churns at the sight. Nevertheless she gets up and opens the curtains. A gray hare hops away. It was sitting on the hilltop, Tissetoppen, as they used to call the little mound on the side of the cabin that overlooks the sea where Henning used to go for a pee in the evening before they climbed into the bunk beds in the narrow bedroom.

  The light outside is sharp and hurts her head. Her mouth is filled with dry cotton wool and the taste of cigarettes lingers on her tongue. Her laptop is open on the dining table. Last night, in between shots of liqueur, she tried to reconstruct her movements on October 9. She remembered how she sneaked out of Hotel Caledonien and got into a car that was waiting at the goods entrance, a car that took her straight to Kjevik Airport. How she arrived at a different hotel an hour and a half later. The run she went for that same evening to rid herself of some of the anxiety that was coursing around her body at the thought of what she was going to do the next day. Trine even looked up her running profile on a street map, just to assure herself that her memory was correct.

  She also tried to find a name and face among all her enemies, but she couldn’t think of a single one. Or, that is to say, the more she drank, the more potential candidates sprang to mind, but not one of them struck her as more plausible than the others. None of them is capable of gambling with such high stakes. It made her wonder if perhaps several colleagues have ganged up on her.

  Trine groans and opens the door to let in the sea air. She walks outside in the clothes she fell asleep in. She is tempted to stick two fingers down her throat, so she won’t have to spend the rest of the day recovering from her hangover. On Tissetoppen she has to take a step to the side when a gust of wind almost knocks her over while she looks for the hare. It would appear to be hiding.

  Sometimes, when they opened the cabin early in the spring, the hares would come unusually close to them. They hadn’t yet remembered to be wary of people after a long, lonely winter. Once she was sunbathing, wrapped up warm in a rug, when a hare hopped straight past her. It stopped only a few meters away. And it stood there, for a long time, just staring at her. While Trine stared back.

  Now all she can see is the sea. An endless horizon, heaven and water united far, far in the distance without a clear dividing line, where one merges into the other. The spray rises behind the rocks of Svartskjær and Måkeskjær. Eider ducks dive under the surface of the water.

  Trine goes back inside the cabin to get her mobile phone and brings it out with her to Tissetoppen where satellite coverage is usually better. There are no new text messages from Katarina Hatlem. Her core staff probably haven’t held their morning meeting yet, Trine thinks, while she wonders how long her friend with the curly red hair will manage to hold out. Trine is well aware that the press office is snapping at Katarina’s heels, even though Katarina wouldn’t admit to it when they spoke last night. And they are not the only ones. Trine dare not even think about what people must be saying about her in her department, across the whole Labor Party and in the prime minister’s office.

  A large ship appears behind the rocks and slides past Rakke toward the foamy crests that are waiting for it. Trine turns toward the wind. The fast, blue colossus slices neatly through the white horses without rocking while her own little boat is listing and taking in water.

  Farther down the uneven hillside the hare peeks out from behind a bush. It stands still for a few seconds and sniffs before it runs off to hide from its enemies. And she thinks how easy it would be just to disappear out here among the rocks, the crags, and the knolls, something she has been fantasizing about in the last twenty-four hours. She could go for a walk along the coastal path and then just . . .

  Trine closes her eyes and imagines it. And realizes that she isn’t scared of the pain or of the darkness. The door is open. All she has to do is go in.

  Chapter 37

  The investigation team return to their activities straight after the morning briefing. The information about the missing school photo is a welcome development in the case and much of their work now revolves around it. They contact the three schools where Erna Pedersen taught. Ultimately that could mean hundreds of photographs, thousands of pupils, but at least it’s a place to start. They have also requested pupil registers starting from 1972 and up to 1993 when she retired.

  Other officers are busy searching the care home for a stone troll with a dent. There is a remote possibility that the troll might still have fingerprints or contain other forensic evidence that justifies expending resourc
es on it. Meanwhile, they continue interviewing everyone who was at the care home at the time when Erna Pedersen was killed. Bjarne is responsible for interviewing the five people from the volunteer service.

  Bjarne can’t imagine that he could ever do what they do and visit people who are lonely but complete strangers. Accompany them to the doctor or the hairdresser. He wouldn’t know what to say to them. What little time he has outside work is spent on family and exercise. Quite simply, there isn’t room for anything else.

  He reads the first name on the list, Markus Gjerløw, and runs it through the criminal records register. No hits. So he rings Gjerløw’s number and waits for a reply. The ring tone is interrupted by a bright voice saying “Hello.”

  Bjarne introduces himself and explains the reason for his call.

  “Yes, I wondered when you would get to me,” Gjerløw responds with a voice laden with haughty contempt. Bjarne suppresses a sudden rage and coughs into the palm of his hand instead.

  “I’m trying to find out what happened at the care home on Sunday afternoon. Do you remember when the volunteers arrived and when they left?”

  “I don’t know when the others arrived, but I got there between three and three thirty, I think. And I guess I was there until around five o’clock. I didn’t check what time it was when we left.”

  Bjarne makes a note of the times.

  “You said when we left. Did you all leave the care home at the same time?”

  “Yes, I think so. I wouldn’t know if anyone stayed behind as we didn’t share the lift down. It isn’t big enough for all five of us.”

  Bjarne nods and gets a flashback to Sandland and him in the narrow space, a little too close for her comfort zone, too far apart for his. The silence that follows gives way to an impatience that prompts him to ask, “Have you been to these singalongs before?”