Burned Page 7

  She looks around the team. Most people nod, but not very convincingly. Emil Hagen shifts in his chair.

  “Extreme rules telling you how to live or something?”

  Sandland smiles briefly.

  “That’s one way of putting it. Most people, who’ve heard about sharia, immediately think ‘mad mullahs and fundamentalists.’ But sharia is a complex concept. Those who call themselves learned, as far as sharia is concerned, have studied the legal principles of sharia for years. They study the Koran, the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim history, how different legal schools have interpreted the law, and so on. In Muslim countries today, sharia primarily applies to aspects of family law such as divorce and inheritance.”

  “But what has this got to do with the murder of Henriette Hagerup?” Gjerstad asks impatiently.

  “I’m getting to that. There’s no such thing as one Islamic law, and only a few countries enforce a penal code based on Islamic law. The countries that do have something they call hudud punishments.”

  “Hu-what?” Hagen asks.

  “Hudud punishments. It’s a penal code in the Koran. It prescribes specific punishments for certain crimes. Flogging, for example. Or chopping off someone’s hand.”

  Brogeland nods quietly to himself. He has instantly grasped the implications of Sandland’s information.

  “So what crimes warrant these punishments?” Nøkleby asks, folding her hands in front of her. Sandland looks at her while she explains.

  “Adultery, for example. You can get one hundred lashes for that. If you’re caught stealing, you might lose your hand. But the degree of enforcement of hudud punishments varies from country to country and, in some cases, people take the law into their own hands and justify their sick acts by referring to the law of Allah. The symbolic value of having such punishments is probably more important, because it proves that you respect the edicts of the Koran and Islamic law.”

  “Even if it’s only in theory?” Nøkleby continues.

  “Even if it’s only in theory,” Sandland says and nods. “However, some countries do actually enforce the laws. In November 2008, a thirteen-year-old Somali girl was stoned to death for trying to report a rape. She was taken to a soccer stadium, buried in a hole that was filled with earth up to her neck. Then fifty people started stoning her. A thousand people watched.”

  “Bloody hell,” Hagen gasps. Brogeland gazes dreamily at Sandland. You can lecture to me anytime, he thinks. With a cane and handcuffs within easy reach, for when I get the questions wrong.

  Stang shakes his head.

  “How come you know all this?”

  “I did Religious Studies for A-level.”

  “This is all very well,” Gjerstad interjects, “but we’re still no closer to knowing why this happened.”

  “No, or who did it.”

  “You don’t think Marhoni did?” Nøkleby asks.

  “I don’t know what I think yet. But Marhoni didn’t strike me as a hardcore Muslim, to be flippant, or as someone who is up-to-date on hudud punishments. And I think it’s important to bear in mind that this isn’t normal Muslim behavior. Someone with extreme views—and I’m mean really extreme views—and a twisted mind probably did this. And I don’t think that description fits Marhoni.”

  “Don’t you have to be a Muslim to warrant the punishment?” Brogeland asks.

  “Yes, that’s correct, you do.”

  “But Hagerup is white, like us?”

  “Precisely. So lots of things don’t add up.”

  “She could have converted?” Hagen suggests.

  Sandland pulls a face.

  “But as she was white and Norwegian, this might not have anything to do with sharia or hudud,” Gjerstad objects.

  “No, it’s . . .”

  “Perhaps someone just felt like stoning her to death. Hell of a way to kill someone. It takes forever, I imagine, especially if the stones are small.”

  “Yes, but we should be looking for someone who knows about hudud punishments.”

  “That could be anyone, surely?”

  “Anyone can read up on it, that’s true, whether you’re Norwegian or Muslim. However, this killing is highly ritualistic. Flogging her, stoning her, and chopping off one of her hands—it all means something.”

  “So it would appear,” Nøkleby remarks.

  “Was Hagerup unfaithful?” Hagen asks. “Or did she steal something?”

  Sandland shrugs.

  “No idea. Could be both. Or neither. We don’t know yet.”

  “Okay,” Gjerstad says in a voice designed to bring the meeting to a close. He gets up. “We need to carry out a more detailed background check on both Marhoni and Hagerup, find out who they were and what she did or didn’t do, what she knew, what she studied, people she knew, friends, family situation, and so on. Second, we need to talk to the Muslim communities, find out if anyone there approves of flogging and that kind of punishment, and see if there’s a link to Hagerup or Marhoni. Emil, you’re an IT whiz. Check the chat rooms, home pages, blogs, and more, look up everything you can on sharia and hudud and report back if you come across any names we should take a closer look at.”

  Emil nods.

  “And one more thing,” Gjerstad says and looks at Nøkleby before he continues. “It shouldn’t need saying, but NRK was remarkably well informed at today’s press conference. This investigation ticks so many boxes that we’ll only make it worse for ourselves if the press gets a hint of what we’re looking into. Anything said here stays within these four walls. Understood?”

  Nobody says anything. But everyone nods.

  16

  It doesn’t take him long to finish at Westerdals. He interviews some people, gets the information he knows the newspaper wants him to get, takes more pictures, and heads home. He is outside Jimmy’s Sushi Bar in Fredensborgvei when his mobile rings.

  “Henning,” he answers.

  “Hi, it’s Heidi.”

  He pulls a face and says “hi” back without a flicker of enthusiasm.

  “Where are you?”

  “On my way home to write up the story. I’ll email it to you tonight.”

  “Dagbladet already has a story about grieving students at the college. Why don’t we? Why is it taking so long?”

  “Long?”

  “Why didn’t you call in with what you had?”

  “Surely I have to write the story before I can call it in?”

  “Four lines about the mood, two quotes from a distraught bystander, and we could have put together a story and padded it out with photos and some more quotes later. Now we’re waaaaay late!”

  He is tempted to say that the expression isn’t “waaaaay late” but either “way behind” or “running late,” but he doesn’t. Heidi sighs heavily.

  “Why would anyone want to read our human interest story when they’ve already read it elsewhere?”

  “Because mine will be better.”

  “Hah! I hope so. And next time: call in your story.”

  He has no time to reply before Heidi hangs up. He grimaces at his mobile. And takes his time going home.

  He changes the batteries in the smoke alarms in his flat and settles down on the sofa with his laptop. On his way back, he thought about possible angles. It shouldn’t take him too long to write the story. He might even have time for a walk to Dælenenga and watch some training sessions before it gets dark.

  The most time-consuming task is uploading and editing the pictures, before he can send them to the news desk. He doesn’t want to risk the news desk ruining them.

  Six or seven years ago, he doesn’t remember precisely, a woman was brutally murdered in Grorud. Her body was found in a skip. He had taken dozens of photos and sent them all to the news desk at Aftenposten, just as they were, because The Old Lady goes to press early. He stated explicitly which photos could be used and which ones couldn’t, at least not before consent from her relatives had been obtained, as several of them had been present
behind the police tape. He also stressed to the news desk that they must check with him before going to print.

  He never heard anything back that evening and he never chased it. The following morning, the story was published with not only the wrong photos, but also the wrong captions. Humble pie time. He tried to apologize to the victim’s relatives, but they refused to talk to him. “Yeah right, blame the news desk,” they sneered.

  But journalism is like any other profession. You learn from your mistakes. One of the first things a friend of his was told, when he started his medical degree, was that you won’t become a good doctor until you have filled up a cemetery. You learn on the job, acquire knowledge, master new technology, adapt, get to know your colleagues and their skills, and learn to work with them. It is a continuous process.

  He opens Photoshop and uploads the pictures. Grief, fake grief, and more fake grief. And then, Anette. He double clicks on the photos he shot of her. Even on his 15.6-inch screen, every detail is visible. When he views the photos as a slide show, it becomes even more obvious. Anette looks around, as though she is being watched, but then she steals a moment with Henriette. It is over in seconds, but he caught it on camera.

  Anette, he thinks again. What are you scared of?

  Writing the story and sending it to the news desk takes him longer than he had expected. The sentences don’t come to him as easily as he had hoped. But he decides that even an old dog can learn new tricks. And he hopes Heidi is at home, foaming at the mouth because he kept her waiting.

  He looks at the clock—8:30 PM. Too late to go to Dælenenga.

  He sighs and leans back in the sofa. He should have gone to see his mum, he thinks. It has been days now. She is probably hurt. On reflection, he can’t recall the last time she wasn’t feeling sorry for herself.

  Christine Juul lives in a simple two-bedroom flat in Helgesensgate. She has lived there for four years; it is one of those new developments, which cost a fortune to buy initially but lose value over time. There are some of them in Grünerløkka as well.

  Before Helgesensgate, she lived in Kløfta, where Henning grew up, but it proved to be too great a distance to him and Trine. She wanted to be closer to her children, purely so that they could take care of her. She spent nearly all her money on a flat devoid of character; she has nothing on her walls, only plain once-white surfaces, discolored from all the smoke she blows out into the room every day. But he doesn’t think that’s why she is hurt.

  Henning believes Christine Juul was quite content with her lot in life until her husband died. She had a good job as a care assistant, an apparently happy marriage, apparently happy and thriving children; she didn’t have many friends, but she valued the ones she had and was involved with the local choir and wine-tasting club, but when Jakob Juul died unexpectedly, she fell to pieces. Overnight.

  Even though Henning and Trine were only teenagers when it happened, they soon discovered they had to fend for themselves. They had to shop, cook, cut the grass, trim the hedge, wash the clothes, clean the house, take themselves to soccer training and matches, to school, and to their holiday cabin by the sea. If they had any questions about their education, they had to ask the neighbors. Or leave them unanswered.

  All because Christine Juul got herself a new best friend.

  St. Hallvard is a sweet herb liqueur made from potatoes, and it contains just enough alcohol to numb an anxious mind. Now, not a week goes by without Henning visiting to refill her drinks cabinet. Two bottles, at least. She sulks if she only gets one.

  He has given it plenty of thought and come to the conclusion that if she wants to drink herself to death, then far be it from him to stop her. She seemed only mildly interested when he got married, attended Jonas’s christening for less than an hour. She didn’t even cry when Jonas died, though she turned up for his funeral. She was one of the last mourners to arrive and she didn’t sit at the front with the rest of the family; she stood at the back and left the church as soon as the service had ended. Not even when he was a patient at Haukeland Hospital, in the Burns Unit, did she visit him or call to ask how he was. When he was transferred to the Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital, she visited only twice and never stayed for more than thirty minutes. She barely looked at him, hardly said a word.

  Liqueur, Marlboro Lights, and gossip magazines.

  He feels he can’t deny her these pleasures, the only three she has left, at the age of sixty-two. She barely eats, though he stocks up her fridge at regular intervals. He tries to vary her diet, get her to eat some protein, calcium, essential nutrients, but she has very little appetite.

  Every now and then he cooks for her and sits at the small kitchen table while they have dinner. They don’t speak. They just eat and listen to the radio. Henning likes listening to the radio. Especially when he is with his mother.

  He doesn’t know why she is so angry with him, but it’s probably because he hasn’t made something of himself, unlike his sister—Trine Juul-Osmundsen, Norway’s minister for justice. She seems to be making quite a name for herself. She is well-liked, even by the police. But he only knows that because his mother told him.

  He isn’t in touch with his sister. That’s how she wants it. He stopped trying long ago. He isn’t sure how they ended up like this, but at some point in their lives, Trine stopped talking to him. She left home when she turned eighteen and never came back, not even for Christmas. But she wrote—to her mother, never to him. He wasn’t even invited to her wedding.

  The Juul family. Not exactly a happy one. But it’s the only one he has.

  17

  He looks at the piano. It stands up against the wall. He used to love playing it, but he doesn’t know if he still can. It has nothing to do with his hands. His fingers work fine, despite the scars.

  He recalls the night Nora told him she was pregnant. It was shortly after their wedding and it was a planned pregnancy, but they had heard about couples who had tried for years without success. Henning and Nora, however, fell pregnant at their first attempt. Bull’s-eye!

  He was working on a story, when Nora came into his study. He could tell from her face that something had happened. She was nervous, but excited. Brimming with fear and awe of what they had started, the responsibility they were taking on.

  I’m pregnant, Henning.

  He recalls her voice. Cautious, trembling. The smile, which soon spread across her face before giving way to an uncertainty he couldn’t help but love. He got up, embraced her, kissed her.

  Christ, how he had kissed her!

  Nora was just over seven weeks pregnant that evening. He remembers her going to bed early because she felt nauseous. He sat alone for a long time, thinking, listening to the silence in the flat. Then he sat down at the piano. At the time, he was working very hard and he hadn’t played for ages. But it is always the same when he sits down at the keyboard after a long break. Everything he plays sounds fine.

  That evening, he composed possibly the finest song he had ever written. He woke Nora up and dragged her out of bed to play it to her. Nauseous and magnificent, she stood behind him as his fingers caressed the black and white keys. The tune was soft and melancholic.

  Nora rested her hands on his shoulders, bent down, and hugged him from behind. Henning called the song “Little Friend.” Once Jonas was born, he often played it to him. Jonas liked to hear it in the evening, before going to bed. Henning wrote the lyrics, too, but he is bad at writing lyrics, so he tended to hum along, mostly.

  He should have played “Little Friend” at the funeral, but he was in a wheelchair, encased in plaster and bandages. A friend could have played it, obviously, but it wouldn’t have been the same. It should have been him.

  Henning hummed while the vicar spoke. He hasn’t hummed since.

  Something has been bugging him all day. All good crime reporters have sources. Henning has a great one. Or he used to. This source came into Henning’s life when he was surfing for child porn for a story one evening. He wanted to disc
over how easy it was to find child porn on the Internet, how many clicks it would take, and he soon reached a flagged page. Fortunately, the police already knew about it. But because Henning had visited it, they knew about him, too. He had been aware that this might happen, but that was also a part of his story. Establish how well informed the police were, how far he could go before he was stopped. He couldn’t quite recall how he got the idea, but he thought it had come to him after learning he was going to be a dad. Perhaps it had been an attempt to meet trouble halfway?

  After visiting several different child porn sites, he was befriended online by a woman calling herself Chicketita. She promised to give him some child porn DVDs if he met her in Vaterland Park at eleven PM that night. He never went.

  The day after, he was brought in for questioning, his laptop was seized and sent to Forensics to check if he had surfed for child porn before. Which he obviously hadn’t. He was quickly released once he had explained his actions to officers from the Sexual Crimes Unit. Chicketita, who turned out to be a female police officer called Elisa, was sympathetic. He was given permission to carry on with his project. She was in favor of the press highlighting the issue.

  Some days later, he was contacted by 6tiermes7. At first he thought it was another police officer hunting pedophiles, but he eventually decided that it couldn’t be—6tiermes7 had a completely different agenda.

  He didn’t know if 6tiermes7 knew about his child porn story, but he suspected that he or she had followed his work for a while, or, at least, checked him out to know that he was sound. At that time, he often worked undercover; he had exposed several scandals, which lead to the police starting new investigations or solving cold cases. He got results, and 6tiermes7 was willing to help him on the nonnegotiable premise that he never revealed his source.

  Via an email account, which couldn’t be traced to 6tiermes7’s real name, Henning was sent a file containing a program called FireCracker 2.0, which he was told to install. Henning later searched the Internet for the program, but never found anything which suggested it might be for sale anywhere. He assumed that 6tiermes7 had written it, but he never asked. The program, once opened, connected to a server so they could chat safely. Or in relative safety.