Burned Page 3

  Kåre plows on.

  “Rikke, what have you got for us today?”

  “We’ll be talking to Carrie Olson.”

  Rikke beams with pride and glee. Henning looks at her and wonders if she is aware his face is one big question mark.

  “Who the hell is Carrie Olson?” Kåre demands to know.

  “The author of How to Get 10 Orgasms a Day. A bestseller in the U.S., tops sales charts in Germany and France. She’s in Norway right now.”

  Kåre claps his hands. The room reverberates.

  “Bloody brilliant!”

  Rikke smiles smugly.

  “And she has Norwegian ancestors.”

  “Can it get much better?! Anything else?”

  “We’ve started a survey. ‘How often do you have sex?’ It’s already attracting plenty of hits.”

  “Another magnet. Sucks in the reader. He-he. Sucks, get it?”

  “And we have another Web hit: a sexologist says we need to prioritize sex in relationships. Might run it a little later today.”

  Kåre nods.

  “Well done, Rikke.”

  He carries on, full steam ahead.

  “Heidi?”

  Henning hadn’t noticed Heidi Kjus until then, but he does now. She is still skinny, her cheekbones are gaunt, the makeup around her hollow eyes is far too gaudy, and she wears a lip gloss whose color reminds him of fireworks and cheap champagne on New Year’s Eve. She leans forward and coughs.

  “Not much doubt about our big story today: the murder at Ekeberg Common. I’ve been informed that it is murder. Quite a brutal one. Police are holding a press conference later. Iver is going straight there and will be working on the story for the rest of the day. I’ve already spoken to him.”

  “Great! Henning should probably join him at the press conference. Right, Henning?”

  Henning jumps at the sound of his name and says “Hm?” The pitch of his voice rises. He sounds like a ninety-year-old in need of a hearing aid.

  “The murder at Ekeberg Common. Press conference later today. Would be a good start for you, wouldn’t it?”

  From ninety to newbie in four seconds. He clears his throat.

  “Yes, sure.”

  He hears a voice, but fails to recognize it as his own.

  “Super! You all know Henning Juul, I presume. He needs no further introduction. You know what he’s been through, so please give him a warm welcome. No one deserves it more than him.”

  Silence. The inside of his face is burning. The number of people in the room seems to have doubled in the last ten seconds and they are all staring at him. He wants to run. But he can’t. So he looks up and concentrates on a point on the wall, above all of them, in the hope they might think he is looking at someone else.

  “Time’s flying! I’ve another meeting. Anything else you need to know before you go off chasing clicks?”

  Kåre is addressing the duty editor, a man with black glasses, whom Henning has never seen before. The duty editor is about to say something, but Kåre has already leapt from his chair.

  “That’s it, then.”

  He leaves.

  “Ole and Anders, would you send me your lists, please?” The duty editor’s voice is meek. There is no reply. Henning is thrilled that the meeting is over, until the chairs are pushed back and a bottleneck is created at the door. People breathe down his neck, they bump into him accidentally, his breathing becomes constricted and claustrophobic, but he holds it together, he doesn’t push anyone out of the way, he doesn’t panic.

  He exhales with relief when he gets outside. His forehead feels hot.

  A murder so soon. Henning had hoped for a gentler return, time to find his feet, read up on stories, check out what has been happening, get in touch with old sources, relearn publishing tools, office routines, discover where everything is kept, chat to his new colleagues, acclimate gradually, get used to thinking about a story. No time for any of that now.

  5

  Heading back to his desk, Henning expects the worst. Heidi Kjus appears not to have noticed him, and yet she twirls around on her chair to face him the instant he gets there. She stands up, smiles her brightest Colgate smile, and holds out her hand.

  “Hi, Henning.”

  Business. Courtesy. False smiles. He decides to play along. He shakes her hand.

  “Hi, Heidi.”

  “Good to have you back.”

  “It’s good to be back.”

  “That’s, eh, that’s good.”

  Henning studies her. As always, her eyes radiate earnestness. She is ambitious for herself and for others. He prepares for the speech she has undoubtedly rehearsed:

  Henning, you were my boss once. Times have changed. I’m your boss now. And I expect that you blah-blah-blah.

  He is taken aback when it fails to materialize. Instead she surprises him for the second time.

  “I was sorry to hear about . . . to hear about what happened. I just want to say that if there’s anything you need, if you need more time off, just let me know. Okay?”

  Her voice is warm like a rock face on a sunny afternoon. He thanks her for her concern, but for the first time in a long time he feels an urge to get busy.

  “So Iver is going to the press conference?” he says.

  “Yes, he worked late last night, so he’ll be going straight there.”

  “Who’s Iver?”

  Heidi looks at him as if he has just suggested that the earth really is flat.

  “Is this a joke?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Iver Gundersen? You don’t know who Iver Gundersen is?”

  “No.”

  Heidi suppresses the urge to laugh out loud. She controls herself as if she has just realized that she is talking to a child.

  “We hired Iver from VG Nett last summer.”

  “Aha?”

  “He delivered big stories for them and he has continued to do that here. I know that TV2 is desperate to get him, but so far Iver has been loyal to us.”

  “I see. So you pay him well.”

  Heidi looks at him as if he has sworn in church.

  “Eh, that’s not my area, but—”

  Henning nods and pretends to listen to the arguments which follow. He has heard them before. Loyalty. A concept that has worn thin in journalism. If he were being charitable, he might be able to name two reporters he would describe as loyal. The rest are careerists, ready to jump ship every time a fatter pay package is offered, or they are so useless that they couldn’t get a job anywhere else. When a relatively undistinguished VG Nett reporter is poached by a rival online publication, and later declines an offer from TV2, it’s bound to be about the money. It’s always about the money.

  He registers Heidi expressing the hope that he and Iver will get along. Henning nods and says “Mm.” He is good at saying “Mm.”

  “You’ll get to meet each other at the press conference and then you can decide who will be doing what on this story. It’s a frenzied murder.”

  “What happened?”

  “My source tells me the victim was found inside a tent, half-buried and stoned to death. I imagine the police have all sorts of theories. It’s obvious to consider foreign cultures.”

  Henning nods, but he doesn’t like obvious thoughts.

  “Keep me informed about what you do, please?” she says. He nods again and looks at the notebook on his desk, still in its wrapper. Brusquely, he rips off the wrapper and tries one of the four pens lying next to it. It doesn’t work. He tries the other three.

  Damn.

  6

  It’s not far from Urtegata to Grønland police station, where the press conference is being held. Henning takes his time and strolls through an area which Sture Skipsrud, his editor in chief, described as “a press Mecca” when 123news relocated here. Henning thought it was very apt. Nettavisen is there, Dagens Næringsliv has an ultramodern office block close by, and Mecca features in most flats in the neighborhood. If you ignore the tarmac
and the temperature, you might just as well be in Mogadishu. The aroma of different spices greets him at every corner.

  Henning is reminded of the last time he was heading this way. A man he had interviewed decided to kill himself a few hours later, and both the police and the man’s relatives wanted to know if Henning had said something or had opened old wounds which might have pushed the man over the edge.

  Henning remembers him well. Paul Erik Holmen, forty-something. Two million kroner mysteriously went missing from a company Holmen was working for, and Henning had more than suggested that the extravagant vacation Holmen had just taken, combined with the renovation of the family’s holiday cabin in Eggedal, might explain the whereabouts of the missing money. His sources were reliable, obviously. Holmen’s guilty conscience and the fear of being locked up was too much for him, and consequently Henning found himself in one of the many interview rooms at the police station.

  They soon released him, but a couple of jealous reporters thought it was worth a paragraph or two. Fair enough, Henning could appreciate that it was newsworthy to some extent even though Holmen would probably have topped himself anyway, but stories like that can be hard to shake off.

  Human memory is selective at best, and plain wrong at worst. When suspicions are raised or planted, it doesn’t take much for speculation to turn into fact and suspicion into a verdict. He has covered many murders where a suspect is brought in for questioning (i.e., arrested), usually from the victim’s close family (i.e., the husband), because all the evidence points to him. Later, the police find the real killer. In the meantime, the media circus has done its utmost to drag up anything in the husband’s past which might cast aspersions on his character. Trial by media.

  In the short term, truth is a good friend, but the doubt never goes away. Not among people you don’t know. People remember what they want to remember. Henning suspects someone out there hasn’t forgotten his role in Paul Erik Holmen’s last act, but it doesn’t bother him. He has no problem living with what he did, even though the police gave him a talking-to for trying to do their job.

  He is used to that.

  Or at least he was.

  7

  It feels odd to be back inside the gray building at number 44 Grønlandsleiret again. Once upon a time the police station was practically his second home; even the cleaners used to greet him. Now he tries to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, but he’s hampered by the burn scars on his face. He is aware that the other reporters are looking at him, but he ignores them. His plan is to just attend, listen to what the police have to say, and then go back to the office to write—if, indeed, there is anything to write about.

  He freezes the moment he enters the foyer. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of the woman leaning toward a man who shows every sign of being a reporter. Dark corduroy jacket, suitably arrogant presence, the “did everyone see the scoop I pulled off yesterday” expression. He sports designer stubble which makes his face look more sallow than it is. His thinning hair is gelled and swept back. But it’s the woman. Henning had never imagined he would see her, here, on his first day back.

  Nora Klemetsen. Henning’s ex-wife. Jonas’s mother.

  He hasn’t spoken to her since she visited him at Sunnaas Rehabilitation Center. He forgets when it was. Perhaps he has suppressed it. But he’ll never forget her face. She couldn’t bear to look at him. He didn’t blame her. She had every right. He had been looking after Jonas, and he had failed to save him.

  Their son.

  Their lovely, lovely son.

  They were already separated at that point. She only visited him at the hospital to finalize the divorce, to get his signature. She got it. No ulterior motives, no questions, no conditions. In a way, he was relieved. He couldn’t have coped with her in his life—a constant reminder of his own shortcomings. Every glance, every conversation would have been tarred with that brush.

  They hadn’t said much to each other. He was desperate to tell her everything, tell her what he had done or failed to do, what he remembered of that night, but every time he breathed in and got ready to speak, his mouth dried up and he couldn’t utter a single word. Later, when he closed his eyes and daydreamed, he talked like a machine gun; Nora nodded, she understood, and afterward, she came to him and let him cry himself out in her lap while she ran her fingers through his hair.

  He has been thinking he should try again, the next time he saw her, but now is clearly not the time. He is working. She is working. She is standing very close to some reporter—and she is laughing.

  Damn it.

  Henning met Nora Klemetsen while he worked for Kapital and she was a rookie business journalist on Aftenposten. They ran into each other at a press conference. It was a run-of-the-mill event, no drama, merely the announcement of some company’s annual results with so little headline-grabbing potential that they only warranted a paragraph in Dagens Næringsliv and a right-hand column on page 17 in Finansavisen the next day. He happened to sit down next to Nora. He was there to profile one of the senior executives who would be retiring shortly. They yawned their way through the presentation, started giggling at their respective and increasingly hopeless attempts at disguising their boredom, and decided to go for a drink afterward to recover.

  They were both in relationships; she was living—semi-seriously—with a stockbroker, while he had an on-off thing going with a stuck-up corporate lawyer. But that first evening was so enjoyable, so free from awkwardness that they went for another drink the next time they found themselves covering the same story. He had had many girlfriends, but he had never known someone who was so easy to be with. Their tastes were compatible in so many ways, it bordered on scary.

  They both liked grainy mustard with their sausages, not the usual bottled Idun rubbish. Neither of them liked tomatoes all that much, but they both loved ketchup. They liked the same type of films, and never had protracted arguments in the video store or outside the cinema. Neither of them liked spending the summer in hot foreign places when Norway offered rock faces and fresh prawns. Friday was taco day. Eating anything else on a Friday was simply unthinkable.

  And, gradually, they both realized they couldn’t live without each other.

  Three and half years later they were married, exactly nine months later Jonas arrived, and they were as happy as two sleep-deprived career people in their late twenties could be when their life is a plank full of splinters. Not enough sleep, too few breaks, minimum understanding of each other’s needs—both at home and at work—more and more rows, less and less time and energy to be together. In the end, neither of them could take any more.

  Parents. The best and the worst human beings can become.

  And now her arm is entwined with another man’s. Unprofessional, he thinks, flirting at a press conference. And Nora spots him halfway through a fit of laughter. She stops immediately, as though something is stuck in her throat. They look at each other for what seems like forever.

  He blinks first. Vidar Larsen, who works for NTB, touches his shoulder and says “Hi, so you’re back, Henning?” He nods and decides to follow Vidar; he says nothing, but he makes sure he gets as far away from Nora as he can, looking no one in the eye, following feet and footsteps through doors he could find blindfolded. He takes a seat at the back of the press room where he can watch other people from behind rather than vice versa. The room fills up quickly. He sees Nora and Corduroy enter together. They sit next to each other, quite a long way forward.

  So, Nora, we meet again.

  And, once again, we meet at a press conference.

  8

  Three uniformed officers enter, two men and a woman. Henning instantly recognizes the two men: Chief Inspector Arild Gjerstad and Detective Inspector Bjarne Brogeland.

  Bjarne and Henning went to school together in Kløfta. They were never best friends, even though they were in the same year. That might have been enough to start a friendship back then. But it takes more. Chemistry and compatibilit
y, for example.

  Later, Henning also discovered that Bjarne was a Romeo whose ambition was to sleep with as many girls as possible, and when he started turning up at the Juuls’, it wasn’t hard to decipher Bjarne’s true intentions. Luckily, Henning’s sister, Trine, was on to him and Henning avoided having to play the part of Protective Older Brother, but his loathing of Bjarne stayed with him throughout their adolescence.

  And now Bjarne is a policeman.

  Not that this is news to Henning. Both of them applied to the police academy in the 1990s. Bjarne was accepted. Henning wasn’t. He was rejected long before the admission process even started, because he suffered from every allergy known to man, and had had asthma as a child. Bjarne, however, was the physically robust type. Twenty-twenty vision and great stamina. He had been an athlete when he was younger, and performed quite well in heptathlons. Henning seems to recall that Bjarne pole-vaulted over 4.50 meters.

  What Henning didn’t know was that Bjarne had started working in the Violent and Sexual Crimes Unit. He thought Bjarne was a plainclothes officer, but everyone needs a change now and again. Now he is up there on the platform, gazing across the assembly. His face is grave, professional, and he looks imposing in the tight-fitting uniform. Henning reckons he can still pull. Short dark hair, hint of gray above the ears, cleft chin, white teeth. Tanned and clean-shaven.

  Vain Bjarne, Henning thinks.

  And a potential source.

  The other man, Chief Inspector Gjerstad, is tall and slim. He has a neatly trimmed mustache that he strokes repeatedly. Gjerstad was with the murder squad when Henning started covering crime, and he seems to have stayed there. Gjerstad despises reporters who think they are smarter than the police and, to be fair, Henning thinks, I’m probably one of them.

  The woman in the middle, Assistant Commissioner Pia Nøkleby, checks if the microphone is working, then she clears her throat. The reporters raise their pens in expectation. Henning waits. He knows the first minutes will offer nothing but introductions and reiteration of information already available, but he intends to listen carefully all the same.