Thomas Enger - Scarred

Henning is there mainly to see how Nøkleby behaves, if her face gives anything away. He tries to catch her eye, but her gaze glides across the large room and the reporters assembled there.

When she has finished her statement and everyone has gone their separate ways, Henning sends her a text message asking politely for a private chat. He sits down on a bench outside the police station from where he has an uninterrupted view of Oslo Prison and waits for her to reply. This is the place they usually meet. Occasionally she invites him to her office, but only when she has information she officially wants the media to know about.

While he clutches his mobile waiting for her to get back to him, life in Oslo rushes by on the roads below. The sky is just as restless as satellite images played back at high speed. And he wonders how long it will be before another gigantic bucket of water will be tipped over the city.

He thinks about the murder of Erna Pedersen. Given the number of potential witnesses it’s odd that no one saw anything. On the other hand – all the patients on Ward 4 were suffering from some form of dementia, so even if they had seen something, there is no guarantee that they would have remembered it. It is even possible that one of them might have killed her and not even know it.

He tries to visualise Erna Pedersen, old and grey, in her wheelchair when she met her killer. He must have been known to her. No stranger would enter the room of an eighty-three-year-old woman, strangle her and then proceed to whack knitting needles into her eyes afterwards.

But why do it when the woman was already dead?

The killer must have suffered an enormous, pent-up rage. Killing her wasn’t enough. This gives Henning an idea. The murder is unlikely to have been planned in advance. Not in detail, at any rate. Then the killer would have used something other than the victim’s own knitting needles – unless he knew that she always had them by her side.

There can be no doubt that this was a crime of passion. And everyone who commits a crime of passion is affected by it one way or another. It takes time to recover from such raw emotions. How can the killer have found an outlet for such tremendous pressure without anyone noticing a change in him?

Since no one at the care home saw the killer, they must have been distracted. Or did the killer switch from being Mr Hyde one moment to Dr Jekyll the next? In which case they are looking for a killer who is extraordinarily callous.

Henning ponders the most important question in every murder investigation. Why? Several motives can be eliminated immediately. Jealousy. Desire. Some people kill for the thrill of it, but it’s rare. Neither is there anything to suggest that this murder was committed to cover up another crime. Nor is loss of honour a likely motive, since it mostly occurs between gang members or people with extreme religious convictions. Personal gain? It’s possible, of course, since no information has yet been published about the victim’s financial circumstances, be it anything she might have kept in her room or any money she might have had in her bank account. No more alternatives exist, except the usual one:

Revenge.

And in view of the killer’s unbridled rage, revenge is the most obvious motive. But what could an eighty-three-year-old woman ever have done to anyone? Nothing, probably, in the last few years. Not much happens at a care home. So we need to go further back in time, Henning reasons. But how far back? To the time before she was moved to a care home? Or even further back? Surely there is a limit to how much evil a woman can do after she turns seventy?

At the police press conference they learned that the victim was originally from Jessheim – where Henning also grew up, incidentally. Perhaps the answer lies there? In which case he knows exactly who to ask for help.

Henning is so completely lost in thought that he doesn’t hear the footsteps behind him, and when Pia Nøkleby sits down next to him, he spins around so fast that she starts to laugh.

‘I didn’t know you scared so easily.’

‘Oh,’ Henning says and blushes. ‘Occupational hazard.’

Nøkleby laughs again.

Henning likes laughter. He especially likes her laughter. And it’s hard to believe that Pia Nøkleby would have been able to sit here with him and act as if nothing had happened unless she had a clear conscience. She knows Henning’s story, knows what happened to Jonas. So could she really have tampered with the Tore Pulli report in Indicia and still sit here joking with him?

‘I should have brought you a strawberry ice cream,’ he says.

Nøkleby smiles and brushes some hair behind her ear.

‘I’m still feeling sick from the last one you gave me.’

Henning smiles and watches her lips stretch out, moist and perfect, as if she put on fresh lipstick just before she came down to see him.

‘Nice summary you just gave us,’ he continues. ‘Nice and professional, as usual.’

‘Hah,’ she snorts. ‘There wasn’t much for you lot to go on. Or, at least, not for you.’

He lowers his gaze.

‘Sometimes, Henning, your sources are a little too well informed.’

‘So you don’t fancy becoming one of them?’

This time they both smile.

‘I thought I was one of your sources?’

‘Yes, but on-the-record sources are boring, Pia. You know that.’

She laughs again.

‘But I won’t lie – you’re my dream source. No doubt about it.’

‘Oh?’

‘But more than anything, I wish I had a source who could grant me access to the information held in Indicia.’

Henning looks up at her.

‘Now that would be worth having,’ he continues.

Nøkleby doesn’t reply immediately.

‘Yes, I can imagine that’s every journalist’s wet dream,’ she then says.

‘Mm.’

Henning had expected that her eyes would start to flicker the moment he mentioned the word ‘Indicia’, especially if she understood why he was bringing it up. But there was no hint of a change. No quick, nervous glance. Not even a twitching in the corner of her mouth.

Perhaps it was too much to hope for. Pia has worked for the police for years; she is used to keeping secrets, to keeping a straight face in front of the media.

But would she be able to conceal something as big as that?

‘How easy is it for an outsider to gain access to Indicia?’

Nøkleby turns to him.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Could I, for example, log on to Indicia if I knew your username and password? From the outside?’

Nøkleby’s mouth starts to open, but she hesitates before she replies.

‘I hope you’re not about to make me an indecent proposal?’

‘You know me better than that, Pia.’

Her face darkens slightly. Her gaze sharpens.

‘But could I? I mean, purely hypothetically, of course, just to be clear.’

Nøkleby doesn’t reply. She simply stares at him with searching eyes.

‘I thought you wanted to talk to me about the murder of Erna Pedersen?’

‘That too.’

Her eyes probe him so hard that her gaze pricks him.

‘The functionality of a program such as Indicia isn’t something we share with the public, Henning. Not even with off-the-record news-hungry journalists.’

‘Sorry,’ he says and smiles.

‘Tell me, why do you want to know?’

He shrugs his shoulders.

‘I’m just curious.’

‘Yeah, right,’ she says, sarcastically. ‘You always have an agenda.’

True, Henning thinks and pauses before he replies. Then he holds up his hands in defence.

‘There’s an exception to every rule,’ he says and smiles again, hoping that will be enough to lift the veil of scepticism over her eyes.