Burned Read online

  He stops when he sees the yellow brick colossus at the top of Urtegata. People think the huge Securitas logo on the wall means the security firm occupies the entire office block, but several private businesses and public bodies are located here. As is www.123nyheter.no, where Henning works, an Internet-only newspaper which advertises itself with the slogan “1–2–3 News—as easy as 1–2–3!”

  He doesn’t think it’s a particularly good slogan—not that he cares. They have been good to him, given him time to recover, time to get his head straight.

  A three-meter-tall fence with black metal spears surrounds the building. The gate is an integral part of the fence and slowly slides open to let out a Loomis security van. He passes a small, deserted guard booth and tries to open the entrance door. It refuses. He peers through the glass door. No one around. He presses a brushed steel button with a plate saying RECEPTION above it. A brusque female voice calls out “yes.”

  “Hello,” he says, clearing his throat. “Would you let me in, please?”

  “Who are you meeting?”

  “I work here.”

  A period of silence follows.

  “Did you forget your swipecard?”

  He frowns. What swipecard?

  “No, I haven’t got one.”

  “Everyone has a swipecard.”

  “Not me.”

  Another silence. He waits for a continuation which never comes.

  “Would you let me in, please?”

  A shrill buzzing sound makes him jump. The door whirrs. Clumsily, he pulls it open, enters, and checks the ceiling. His eyes quickly identify a smoke alarm. He waits until it flashes green.

  The gray slate floor is new. Looking around, he realizes that many things have changed. There are big plants in even bigger pots on the floor, the walls have been painted white and decorated with artwork he doesn’t understand. They have a canteen now, he sees, to the left behind a glass door. The reception is opposite it, also behind a glass door. He opens it and enters. There is a smoke alarm in the ceiling. Good!

  Behind the counter, the woman with red hair in a ponytail looks fraught. She is frantically hammering away at the keyboard. The light from the monitor reflects in her grumpy face. Behind her are pigeonholes overflowing with papers, leaflets, parcels, and packages. A TV screen, hooked up to a PC, is mounted on the wall. The newspaper’s front page clamors for his attention and he reads the headline:

  WOMAN FOUND DEAD

  Then he reads the strap line:

  Woman found dead in tent on Ekeberg Common. Police suspect murder.

  He knows the news desk has yet to cover the story, because the title and the strap line contain the same information. No reporters have been at the scene, either. The story is accompanied by an archive photo of police tape cordoning off a totally different location.

  Neat.

  Henning waits for the receptionist to notice him. She doesn’t. He moves closer and says hello. At last, she looks up. First, she stares at him as if he had struck her. Then the inevitable reaction. Her jaw drops, her eyes takes it in—his face, the burns, the scars. They aren’t large, not embarrassingly large, but large enough for people to stare just that little bit too long.

  “It looks like I need a swipecard,” he says with as much politeness as he can muster. She is still staring at him, but forces herself to snap out of the bubble she has sought refuge inside. She starts rummaging through some papers.

  “Eh, yes. Eh, What’s your name?”

  “Henning Juul.”

  She freezes and then she looks up again, slowly this time. An eternity passes before she says:

  “Oh, that’s you.”

  He nods, embarrassed. She opens a drawer, riffles though more papers until she finds a plastic cover and a swipecard.

  “You’ll have to have a temporary pass. It takes time to make a new one and it needs to be registered with the booth outside before you can open the gate yourself, and, well, you know. The code is 1221. Should be easy to remember.”

  She hands him the swipecard.

  “And I’ll need to take your picture.”

  He looks at her.

  “My picture?”

  “Yes. For the swipecard. And for your byline in the paper. Let’s kill two birds with one stone, right? Ha-ha.”

  She attempts a smile, but her lips tremble slightly.

  “I’ve done a photography course,” she says as if to preempt any protest. “You just stand there and I’ll do the rest.”

  A camera appears from behind the counter. It is mounted on a tripod. She cranks it up. Henning doesn’t know where to look, so he gazes into the distance.

  “That’s good. Try to smile!”

  Smile. He can’t remember the last time he did that. She clicks three times in quick succession.

  “Great! I’m Sølvi,” she says and offers him her hand over the counter. He takes it. Soft, lovely skin. He can’t remember the last time he felt soft, lovely skin against his. She squeezes his hand, exerting just the right amount of pressure. He looks at her and lets go.

  As he turns to leave, he wonders if she noticed the smile which almost formed on his lips.

  3

  Henning has to swipe his shiny new card no less than three times, going from the reception area to the second floor. Though the office is where it always was, there is nothing to remind him of the place he had almost settled into, nearly two years ago. Everything is new, even the carpet. There are gray and white surfaces, a kitchenette, and he would bet good money that there are clean glasses and mugs in the cupboards. There are flat screens everywhere, on the desks and on the walls.

  He checks out the room. Four smoke alarms. Two foam extinguishers, possibly more. Good! Or good enough.

  It is a large, L-shaped room. Workstations by the windows, tables and chairs behind colored glass partitions. There are tiny individual cubicles for when you want to conduct an interview without an audience or any background noise. There are lavatories, for the disabled as well, even though he can’t actually see anyone even mildly infirm. He imagines there are rules about such things. They have always had a coffeemaker, but now they have the state-of-the-art version, which takes twenty-nine seconds to make a fancy cup of black coffee. Not four, like the old one.

  Henning loves coffee. You’re not a proper reporter unless you love coffee.

  He recognizes the buzz immediately. Foreign TV stations, all reporting the same news over and over. Everything is breaking news. Stock exchange figures scroll along the bottom of the screen. A collage of TV screens show what NRK and TV2 are reporting on their strangely antiquated but still viable text TV pages. The news channel runs its features on a loop. It, too, has a ticker which condenses a story into one sentence. He hears the familiar crackle of a police radio, as if R2D2 from the Star Wars movies intermittently makes contact from a galaxy far, far away. NRK News 24 can just about be heard from a radio somewhere.

  Bleary-eyed reporters tap on keyboards, telephones ring, stories are debated, angles suggested. In a corner by the news desk, where every story is weighed, measured, rejected, applauded, polished, or heavily edited, lies a mountain of newspapers—new and old—which the newly arrived reporters seize upon while they sip their first coffee of the day.

  It is the usual controlled chaos. And yet everything seems alien. The ease he felt after years of working in the streets, of being in the field, of showing up at a crime scene, knowing he was in his element, has completely disappeared. It all belongs to another lifetime, another era.

  He feels like a cub reporter again. Or as if he is taking part in a play where he has been cast as The Victim, the poor soul everyone has to take care of, help back on his feet. And even though he hasn’t spoken a single word to anyone, except Sølvi, his intuition tells him no one thinks it’s going to work. Henning Juul will never be the same again.

  He takes a few, hesitant steps and looks around to see if he recognizes anyone. It’s all faces and fragments from a distant past, like an
episode of This Is Your Life. Then he spots Kåre.

  Kåre Hjeltland is looking over the shoulder of a reporter at the news desk. Kåre is the news editor at 123news. He is a short, skinny man with messy hair and a passion which exceeds anything Henning has ever known. Kåre is the Energizer bunny on speed with a hundred stories in his head at any given time and an arsenal of possible angles for practically anything.

  That’s why he is the news editor. If it had been up to Kåre, he would have been in charge of every department and worked as the night duty editor as well. He has Tourette’s syndrome, not the easiest condition to manage when you’re trying to run a news desk and have a social life.

  However, despite his tics and various other symptoms, Kåre pulls it off. Henning doesn’t know how, but Kåre pulls it off.

  Kåre has noticed him, too. He waves and holds up one finger. Henning nods and waits patiently, while Kåre issues instructions to the reporter.

  “And stress that in the introduction. That’s the hook, no one cares that the tent was white or bought from Maxbo last March. Get it?”

  “Maxbo doesn’t sell tents.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean. And mention that she was found naked as soon as possible. It’s important. It plants a sexy image in people’s minds. Gives them something to get off on.”

  The reporter nods. Kåre slaps him on the shoulder and bounces toward Henning. He nearly trips over a cable running across the floor, but carries on regardless. Even though he is only a few meters away now, he shouts.

  “Henning! Good to see you again! Welcome back!”

  Kåre extends a hand, but doesn’t wait for Henning to offer him his. He simply grabs Henning’s hand and shakes it. Henning’s forehead feels hot.

  “So . . . how are things? You ready to chase Web hits again?”

  Henning thinks earmuffs might be a good investment.

  “Well, I’m here, that’s a start.”

  “Super! Fantastic! We need people like you, people who know how to give the public what they want. Great! Sex sells, coffers swell! Tits and ass bring in the cash!”

  Kåre laughs out loud. His face starts to twitch, but he carries on all the same. Kåre has coined a lot of rhyming slogans in his time. Kåre loves rhymes.

  “Ahem, I thought you could sit over there with the rest of the team.”

  Kåre takes Henning by the arm and leads him past a red-glass partition. Six computers, three on opposite sides of a square table, are backed up against each other. A mountain of newspapers lies on a round table behind it.

  “You may have noticed that things have changed, but I haven’t touched your workstation. It’s exactly the same. After what happened, I thought that you, eh, would want to decide for yourself if there was anything you wanted to throw out.”

  “Throw out?”

  “Yes. Or reorganize. Or . . . you know.”

  Henning looks around.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Who?”

  “The rest of the team?”

  “Buggered if I know, lazy sods. Oh yes, Heidi is here. Heidi Kjus. She’s around somewhere. In charge of national news now, she is.”

  Henning feels his chest tighten. Heidi Kjus.

  Heidi was one of the first temps from the Oslo School of Journalism he hired a million years ago. Newly qualified journalists are usually so bursting with theory that they have forgotten what really makes a good reporter: charming manners and common sense. If you’re curious by nature and don’t allow yourself to be fobbed off with the first thing people tell you, you’ll go far. But if you want to be a star reporter, you also need to be a bit of a bastard, throw caution to the wind and have enough fire in your belly to go the distance, accept adversity, and never give up if you smell a good story.

  Heidi Kjus had all of the above. From day one. On top of that, she had a hunger Henning had never seen before. Right from the start, no story was too small or too big, and it wasn’t long before she had acquired sources and contacts as well as experience. As she began to realize just how good she was, she added a generous helping of arrogance to the heavy makeup she plastered on every morning.

  Some reporters have an aura about them, an attitude which screams: “My job is the most important in the whole world and I’m better than the lot of you!” Heidi admired people with sharp elbows and soon developed her own. She took up space, even when she was working as a temp. She made demands.

  Henning was working for Nettavisen at the time Heidi graduated. He was their crime reporter, but it was also his job to train new reporters and temps, show them the ropes, put them straight and nudge them in the direction of the overall aim: turning them into workhorses who wouldn’t need micromanaging in order to deliver top stories that attract Web hits twenty-four/seven.

  He enjoyed this aspect of his job. And Nettavisen was a great first job for young journalists, even though most of them had no idea they were driving a Formula 1 car around increasingly congested streets in a media circus that grew bigger every day. Many were unsuited for this life, this way of thinking and working. And the problem was that as soon as he saw the beginnings of a good online reporter, they would leave. They would get offers of new jobs, better jobs, or full-time employment contracts elsewhere.

  Heidi left after only four months. She got an offer from Dagbladet she couldn’t refuse. He didn’t blame her. It was Dagbladet, after all. More status. More money. Heidi wanted it all and she wanted it now. And she got it.

  And she’s my new boss, he thinks. Bloody hell. This is bound to end in tears.

  “It’ll be good to have you back in the saddle, Henning,” Kåre enthuses.

  Henning says “Mm.”

  “Morning meeting in ten minutes. You’ll be there, won’t you?”

  Henning says “Mm” again.

  “Lovely! Lovely! Got to dash. I’ve another meeting.”

  Kåre smiles, gives him a thumbs-up, and leaves. In passing, he slaps someone on the shoulder before disappearing around the corner. Henning shakes his head. Then he sits down on a chair that squeaks and rocks like a boat. A new red notebook, still in its wrapper, lies next to the keyboard. Four pens. He guesses that none of them works. A pile of old printouts. He recognizes them as research for stories he was working on. An ancient mobile telephone takes up an unnecessary amount of space and he notices a box of business cards. His business cards.

  His eyes stop at a framed photograph resting at an angle on the desk. There are two people in it, a woman and a boy.

  Nora and Jonas.

  He stares at them without seeing them clearly. Don’t smile. Please, don’t smile at me.

  It’ll be all right. Don’t be scared. I’ll take care of you.

  He reaches for the frame, picks it up and puts it down again.

  Upside down.

  4

  Morning meetings. The core of every newspaper, where the day’s production plans are defined, tasks distributed, stories up- or downgraded, based on criteria such as topicality, importance, and, in the case of 123news, potential readership.

  Each news desk starts by holding its own morning meeting. Sports, business, arts, and national and international news. Lists of potential stories are drawn up. At this stage, a morning meeting can be inspirational. A good story often matures through discussion, while others are discarded—by common consent—because they are bad or a rival newspaper ran something similar two weeks ago. Afterward, the editors meet to update each other and inform the duty editor of the kind of stories that will unfold throughout the day.

  The one thing Henning hasn’t missed is meetings. He knows before it has even begun that this meeting is a total waste of time. He is supposed to cover crime: murders, filth, evil. So why does he need to know that a sports personality is making another comeback? Or that Bruce Springsteen is getting divorced? He can read about it in the paper—later—if he cares, and if the reporter in question writes something worth reading. The finance editor or the sports editor is often clue
less about arts and vice versa, which ruins any chance of a productive meeting. And second, each editor is too preoccupied with his or her own area of interest to offer valuable ideas or suggestions. However, the paper’s management insists on such meetings, which is why Henning is now entering a meeting room with a table whose surface shines like a newly polished mirror. A stack of plastic cups and a jug of water are placed in the middle. He hazards a guess that the water is stale.

  He sits down on a chair that isn’t designed for lengthy discussions and avoids making eye contact with the others, who are taking their seats around the table. He doesn’t do small talk, especially when he believes everyone knows who he is anyway, and isn’t entirely comfortable with his presence.

  Why is he here?

  He’s not an editor?

  I heard he had a breakdown?

  Kåre Hjeltland is the last to arrive and he closes the door.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” he shouts and sits down at the end of the table. He looks around.

  “We’re not expecting anyone else?”

  No one replies.

  “Right, let’s kick off with foreign news. Knut. What have you got for us today?”

  Knut Hammerstad, the foreign news editor, coughs and puts down his coffee cup.

  “There’s an upcoming election in Sweden. We’re putting together profiles of their potential new prime ministers, who they are, what they stand for. A plane crash-landed in Indonesia. Suspected terrorist attack. Crash investigators are looking for the black box. Four terror suspects have been arrested in London. They were planning to blow Parliament sky high, I heard.”

  “Great headline!” Kåre roars. “Sod the Swedish election. Don’t waste too much time on the plane crash. No one cares about it, unless any Norwegians were killed.”

  “We’re checking that, obviously.”

  “Good. Push the terror story. Get the details, planning, execution, how many potential deaths, and so on and so forth.”

  “We’re on it.”

  “Great. What’s next?”

  Rikke Ringheim sits next to Knut Hammerstad. Rikke edits the sex and gossip columns. The paper’s most important news desk.