Scarred: A Novel Read online

  However, we still have lots of people to interview, Bjarne thinks. Her primary care worker, for example. Daniel Nielsen. The man who looked after her most of the time. The people from the volunteer service. And not least—the little boy playing on the wheelchair who discovered the body. He might have bumped into the killer. Someone must have seen something. People in the street. Residents in neighboring buildings.

  We’ve only just scratched the surface, Bjarne predicts, as Oslo Police Station appears to his left with its dirt-gray walls and shiny clean windows. And he feels genuinely excited at the prospect; he is looking forward to getting stuck into a new case.

  Oh yes, he thinks with a smile as he drives into the underground car park. You still love this job.

  Chapter 9

  Trine Juul-Osmundsen runs to her study, flips open the screen of her laptop, and keeps hitting the Internet icon until the computer finally finds the network and downloads the front page of VG Nett. What she sees makes her gasp.

  There is a huge close-up of her face under the caption Accused of Sexual Assault. “Justice Secretary Trine Juul-Osmundsen Accused of Sexually Molesting a Young Male Politician.”

  What the hell?

  Trine clicks on the article while her heart starts to pound. The opening sentence merely repeats the lead-in. What the hell is going on? Trine thinks again as she reads on.

  The incident is alleged to have taken place at the Labor Party conference in Kristiansand last autumn where earlier that day Juul-Osmundsen had given a firebrand speech. Several commentators later said that the justice secretary was starting to look like prime ministerial material, but the question is now if that is still a realistic prospect. VG has spoken to sources who claim that on the night in question, Juul-Osmundsen assaulted a young politician, who later is said to have tried to resolve the incident with her—without success.

  “What’s going on?”

  Trine jumps and spins around, slamming shut the laptop a little harder than she intended. She positions herself in front of the desk and looks at her husband, who has come into her study dressed in only blue- and black-striped pajama bottoms. His short gray hair stands up and he still has sleep in his eyes. A fine layer of stubble covers his cheeks with a mask of something gray and dark, while the skin on his face reveals many active hours spent in the open air. The muscles in his throat and neck are taut like steel wire.

  Even after four years of marriage, Trine still feels warm all over whenever she sees him like this, rough, unshaven, and shirtless. But his inquisitive eyes, still sleepy, bore into her and leave an open, stinging wound.

  “I thought I heard the doorbell?” he says.

  Trine looks at him, but her gaze soon slips away and fails to find anything to settle on. Now she knows why there is a pack of journalists outside. And why more are bound to turn up.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “This early?”

  “Mm-hm,” she replies, absentmindedly, but she still can’t bear to look at him; she has no idea what to say. How can she explain to him what has happened and what they are about to be subjected to?

  Trine starts to walk past him when he puts out his arm to stop her.

  “Hey,” he says. “Good morning.”

  He smiles and tries to hug her, but Trine can’t cope with it. Not now. So she frees herself from his strong arms and says she is running late. Fortunately he buys her story.

  Trine goes into the kitchen, where she stops and rests her palms heavily on the worktop while she mutters curses under her breath. She continues swearing until she hears her husband’s voice again.

  “I’m just taking a shower.”

  He is on his way to the bathroom when Trine says his name and straightens up. Pål Fredrik stops. She takes a step toward him and sees the look in his eyes, which she knows will change as soon as she starts talking. The doorbell rings again, but Trine doesn’t take her eyes off him.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” he asks her, sounding baffled.

  “No,” she says quietly.

  He glances at the front door.

  “Do you want me to get it?”

  Trine shakes her head. She can feel her throat tighten.

  “I need to ask you a favor,” she whispers and faces him.

  “Okay?” he replies slowly. “What is it?”

  Words, sentences—even the air—stop their journey across Trine’s lips.

  “What is it?” he repeats.

  She clears her throat: “Don’t read anything they write about me in the papers today.”

  * * *

  Trine waits until she can hear the sound of running water before she goes back to her study, closes the door behind her, and hits a key on her mobile.

  “Pick up, Harald,” she says as she paces up and down the floor.

  Harald Ullevik has been Trine’s closest and most important sparring partner for the almost three years she has been secretary of state for justice. Always wise and knowledgeable. Always warm and friendly. Some of the speeches he has written for her have been brilliantly insightful and rich in persuasive arguments that she was proud to take the credit for. Several times his elephantine memory has rescued her from embarrassing situations. In fact he has been as much of an adviser to her as a junior minister. At times he has practically been acting secretary, willing to stand in for her whenever she needed it. If anyone can help her out of this mess, it’s him.

  “Hi, Trine.”

  As always, Ullevik’s voice sounds bright.

  “Have you seen today’s VG?” Trine says immediately.

  “No,” he says after a brief hesitation. “But they’ve just called me with a summary. I told them to get lost, obviously. We have to draw the line somewhere.”

  Trine flings out her other hand.

  “Half of Norway’s media is at my doorstep, Harald. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Trine,” Ullevik says. “Calm down, it’ll be all right.”

  Usually his rock-solid voice can convince her that everything will indeed be all right. But right now she struggles to believe him.

  “They’re going to bombard you with questions once you leave your house, but for God’s sake don’t start arguing with them. Don’t say anything until we’ve looked at this together and agreed on a strategy.”

  Trine heaves a sigh and thinks about Pål Fredrik, wondering if the water can wash away some of the shock and the disbelief she saw in his eyes. When she took another step toward him to assure him that the accusations were not true, he simply turned away.

  “It’ll be all right,” Ullevik reassures her again. “You get yourself to work in one piece and we’ll deal with this together.”

  Trine continues to listen to the echo of his voice before she utters an “Okay” and hangs up. When the silence returns, she realizes that her knees are threatening to buckle under her. She orders them to lock. Then she swallows something viscous and thick that is stuck in her throat, disconnects the laptop, puts it in her bag, and hurries out into the hallway. She stops in front of the hall mirror, smooths a crease in her jacket, and studies her face, her hair, and her eyes. She decides she is wearing too much makeup and starts to wipe off the lipstick she applied earlier, but she is desperate to get out of the house, and she doesn’t want to wait for Pål Fredrik to come out of the shower so she can stare into the depths of his shocked and horrified eyes.

  She quickly checks her shoes to see if they are clean. Then she braces herself. Put on a brave face. And keep your mouth shut.

  Chapter 10

  The morning is still only a pale outline over the roofs when Henning wakes up from his usual spot on the sofa. His face is squashed into one of the cushions and he can almost feel the imprint on his cheek.

  He stayed up later than he had planned, but he didn’t need coffee to keep him awake. The story he had ready for public
ation at 8 a.m. practically wrote itself. He said only that the victim was killed and mutilated, a headline he knew would attract hits. He had agreed with Bjarne Brogeland to keep back the grotesque details and he isn’t sure that he will ever make them public. The readers don’t need to know what was done to Erna Pedersen’s eyes.

  Henning gets up to check that the story has been uploaded and taken its rightful place at the top of the front page.

  It’s not there.

  Instead he is shocked to read what his sister, Trine Juul-Osmundsen, has been accused of. He quickly gets dressed and finds the telephone number of Karl Ove Marcussen in Helgesensgate. It takes a few seconds before a man’s voice answers with a sleepy “Yes.”

  “Hi, my name is Henning Juul. I’m Christine’s, your neighbor’s, son. You’re the building’s caretaker, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. I’ve a massive favor to ask you.”

  * * *

  Trine steps out into a roar of voices that stops her in her tracks. A thousand words and sentences are hurled at her, but even if she tried, she wouldn’t be able to tell the questions apart.

  Her bodyguards manage to clear a narrow path for her and she keeps her eyes firmly on the ground. She is aware of the presence of a photographer who has climbed a tree in her neighbor’s garden. His camera is aimed at her. It feels as if he is about to shoot her.

  Trine would never have believed there was room for that many people outside her house. Her black government car appears in front of her. She aims for the open door on the right-hand side while her bodyguards try to keep the press at bay. They are fairly successful, she manages to get inside, but even though the window behind which she is hiding is tinted, the flashlights continue to go off.

  The car pulls away. Trine turns around to see if they are being followed.

  “Yep, they’re after us,” Trine’s driver says and looks for her eyes in the rearview mirror.

  Trine has always liked her driver, a middle-aged man who hasn’t had a single day off sick during the three years she has been justice secretary. No matter what has happened, he greets her with a calm and pleasant voice. The car is a safe haven where she can take some time out. She likes being in the car, talking to him, inhaling his warm smell, but she doesn’t know if he has seen today’s headlines yet and she doesn’t have the energy to discuss them with anyone before she has to.

  Trine clutches her mobile, which vibrates and beeps every two seconds. She feels like kicking a hole in the seat in front of her. Her mood worsens when she realizes that her panty hose have laddered below the knee. Trine in a hole will probably be the headline in some newspaper soon. And how they’ll laugh at the editorial offices. Fortunately she is not due in Parliament until later today and she knows they sell panty hose in the Parliament shop.

  Trine usually spends her time in the car catching up on the news, but not today. She dreads the moment when the car stops and she will have to get out and face the vultures. She spots the media the moment the car pulls up in front of H Block in the government district.

  Trine tries to focus on the sound of her own footsteps as she walks the short distance to the entrance. Click, click, quick and hard. Words and predictable questions rise and fall before rising again because she doesn’t answer. The sound waves follow her even after the security guard has admitted her. As she enters the lift and the doors close behind her, the noise instantly disappears. It is like wearing noise-canceling headphones. Suddenly she can hear her own hectic breathing.

  Trine closes her eyes as the lift sweeps her upward. She doesn’t open them again until it pings and the doors slide open.

  * * *

  As soon as she steps out into the corridor, she feels the probing looks of people coming in the opposite direction. Normally she would have met them with her head held high and a friendly nod. But not today. She is burning up inside and her rage expresses itself as angry lines around her eyes. Your feet, she thinks. Concentrate on your feet.

  At the door to the wing where Trine and the administration of the Justice Department have their offices, she is met by Katarina Hatlem, her Director of Communications, who ushers Trine in while she continues to talk on her phone.

  “I understand,” she says. “But Trine isn’t here yet. We’ll have to get back to you—”

  Hatlem rolls her eyes.

  “Fine,” she says eventually. “The people’s demand has been duly noted. I’m going into a meeting now. Goodbye.”

  Then she hangs up and shakes her head so her long red curls bounce from side to side.

  Over time Katarina Hatlem has become one of Trine’s closest friends. Trine can talk to her about anything, but the main reason she wanted Katarina as her director of communications was that she had worked for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK, for many years. She knows the media inside out.

  Trine rushes down the corridor leading to her office, but slows down when she reaches the portrait wall where former justice secretaries smile at her from gilded frames. It is a world dominated by men, but with a stronger female presence in the last two or three decades. The pictures act as a reminder of how quickly a life in politics can change. Many of the ministers resigned under a cloud, Trine remembers, and some of them fell hard. She knows that her department has already prepared a framed picture of her in case her departure turns out to be sudden. They have even bought her a leaving present. It is like working under the sword of Damocles.

  She speeds up, enters her office, and hangs her jacket on a coat stand behind her desk.

  “Is everyone in yet?” she says brusquely.

  “Everyone who needs to be here, yes,” Hatlem says.

  “Okay, let’s start the meeting.”

  Hatlem leaves the moment Harald Ullevik enters. He stops and says hi to Trine with a warm gaze that, like the sound of his voice earlier, makes her throat feel tight and raw. She forces herself to look at something other than the elegant man in front of her. With his short, graying hair and his perfect posture, Harald Ullevik could easily feature in a Dressmann ad. At a party once, Katarina Hatlem compared him to Harrison Ford, and the forty-six-year-old junior Minister is probably the man in this building who attracts the most attention—also from other men.

  “How was it?” he asks. “Was it as bad as you feared?”

  “Worse.” Trine snorts and turns away from him.

  “But it went okay? You didn’t say anything?”

  Trine shakes her head.

  “Good,” he says and steps closer to the large boardroom table. “The other undersecretaries are out of the office today, not that it makes much difference. And you won’t be needing these,” he says, picking up a pile of newspaper cuttings that the press office has left for her on the table. “The only thing the media are interested in right now is how you’re going to respond to the allegations. So we need to find out what you’re going to say—if, indeed, you’re going to say anything at all.”

  Ullevik tosses aside the pile, takes a seat at the table, and pours some water into a glass. Trine doesn’t feel like sitting down until everyone else has taken their places. It doesn’t take long before she hears more footsteps approaching.

  Permanent Secretary Hilde Bye enters with Trine’s political adviser, Truls Ove Henriksen, at her heels. They nod to Trine and mutter an almost synchronized “Good morning.” Then they take their usual seats around the table and have time to pour themselves coffee before Katarina Hatlem enters and closes the door behind her.

  Trine sits down and puts her hand on today’s diary printout. Everyone around the table looks as if they are waiting for Trine to say something, but she doesn’t know where to begin. She grabs hold of the press cuttings and stabs her finger so hard at the top sheet that it bends.

  “Is this really legal?” she says.

  “Is what legal?” asks the permanent secretary, a woman
who has been in charge of the Justice Department’s administration for many years, interrupted only by a three-year period when she was district governor on Svalbard. Trine has never gotten along with Hilde Bye, but has never quite understood why. Perhaps it’s just a difference in age. Trine has always detected a hint of skepticism in Bye’s eyes and it hasn’t faded now.

  “I haven’t read everything yet,” Trine says. “But in its lead story, VG refers to sources its reporter has spoken to. Can you really publish any allegation as long as two sources are prepared to back it up? No matter what the subject matter is?”

  Trine looks around the table for an answer.

  “Are you saying the story isn’t true?”

  Trine looks daggers at the permanent secretary’s raven black hair.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Trine had been asked to say a few words at Hilde Bye’s recent fiftieth-birthday party. She had sweated over her keyboard trying to think of something nice because it was so much easier to mention all the things Hilde Bye wasn’t. Not especially friendly, not especially talented—job-wise or with people. Too enamored of being in charge.

  “But if that’s the case,” says Truls Ove Henriksen, “then that’s what you say. That the allegations are false.”

  “If that’s the case,” Trine snarls to herself and glares at the bald man. She knows what he is really thinking, this wet rag of a political adviser who was foisted on her when she was made a minister three years ago. She had been so overcome by her unexpected appointment that she had agreed to everything her party wanted. Such as having a political adviser, a man she didn’t know very well, but who was part of the political horse trading after the election—because he had previously been the secretary of the Labor Party’s branch in Trom.