Thomas Enger - Scarred

‘So am I right in thinking that you’re not able to move out today?’

He turns his gaze to the debt collector again.

‘No, I – I—’

‘Okay,’ the man says turning to the woman next to him. ‘You’re lucky; you’ve a very kind landlord. He has said he’s willing to give you another three days, but that’s the absolute final deadline. We’ll come back at ten o’clock on Thursday morning and change the locks. So you’ve got three days. That should be more than enough.’

The debt collector seems to be expecting some kind of response, but it is not appropriate to nod or to thank him. So instead the man nods by way of goodbye and they start walking back to the stairwell and the lift. He takes a step back inside and closes the door behind him.

Three days , he thinks when everything around him is quiet again. What the hell is he going to do? He certainly can’t ask his mother if he can move back home again for a while.

With heavy footsteps he plods back to his desk and the computer monitors. The back of the chair creaks as he sits down. It creaks in his brain as well as if the bones inside his head are stretching.

Again he stares at her Facebook profile and the status she posted just after eleven o’clock this morning. Now with forty-nine likes and thirteen comments. Another one is added while he watches.

And that’s when the rage overwhelms him.

Just as well you ended up with Mattis. It could have been much much worse ☺☺☺. Looking forward to hearing all about it tomorrow. Hugs and kisses. JK

He shakes his head, feels a lump in his stomach and clenches his fists. Something cold pricks him in the back of his neck and turns into a restless itch he has to scratch. A light he just has to extinguish.

To dread coming home is the worst thing.

Or rather, Johanne Klingenberg doesn’t dread it because Baltazar will be there waiting for her, always happy, always eager for her company, but she has been on edge since the break-in – how long has it been now – two weeks ago?

She returned home after a lecture and got a strange feeling that someone must have been in her flat because Baltazar acted so out of character when she went up to greet him. As if he wasn’t sure that she was someone he recognised or that she was a friend. It wasn’t until she poured him a little milk and gave him some treats that she was allowed to stroke his neck and back.

She didn’t get truly scared until she saw the damaged picture on the wall. And the red stain next to Baltazar’s basket. It looked as if someone had smeared blood across the floor. She immediately checked the cat and discovered that he hadn’t hurt himself.

Johanne proceeded to check out the rest of the flat, tiptoeing as quietly as she could from room to room and brandishing a kitchen knife. She wrenched open cupboards and doors in case someone was hiding behind them, but she found no one. Even so she called the police. She knew that these days they can identify a criminal from only a single hair or a trace of blood, but the officers who turned up told her she would just have to be patient. Such tests took forever to carry out. And when the sample finally got to the front of the DNA queue, it would only prove useful if they found a match – something for which there was absolutely no guarantee.

It might have been easier to forget the whole thing – after all nothing was taken. But there have been other incidents. On several occasions she has been absolutely sure that she was being followed, both when she has been for a night out or making her way home after a lecture. Once she saw a man in a khaki army jacket press himself against the wall one hundred metres away from her. He had been staring at her and he had had a camera. The strange thing was that she was sure she had seen him somewhere before, she just couldn’t remember where.

Fortunately she doesn’t believe anyone is following her today. Or yesterday, now that she thinks about it. Perhaps that is why the lecture is still buzzing around her head. Though to call that a lecture is insulting to lecturers. Reading out loud would be a more accurate description. Like sleeping tablets without the need for a prescription.

Johanne had hoped that she would start the new term invigorated after a long warm summer, but from day one she could feel it, the weight of something starting to oppress her. She didn’t want to be there. She was quite simply fed up, fed up with marketing and the crackle of stiff new books being opened for the very first time. But she made herself get out of bed the next day and the day after and decided to put it down to a post-holiday depression that would lift of its own accord once she got back into the routine. But it hasn’t passed. Everything just gets drearier and more exhausting.

It’s no help, either, that the dreaded thesis is lying in wait for her like a troll under a bridge. And her useless supervisor who is always busy and never interested in hearing what she thinks or believes. He is the expert, not her. She is just a student, one of many who have filed through his office over the years. Fresh perspectives, hah!

She has no idea how she will find the strength to get through the last few terms. She recognises the feeling from her time at sixth form when she came to hate everything to do with school. She just wanted to finish the course as quickly as possible. It showed in the grades she got, something that prompted her to try to improve her academic results when she reached her early thirties. And to begin with, going back to school was fine. The partying from her teenage years came back, with all that entailed. And perhaps that’s the only thing that has kept her going.

Her thumb glides up and down her mobile as she walks. She is on Facebook and she feels a warm glow when she reads Emilie’s last status update. Johanne presses ‘Like’ and writes a comment. Only occasionally does she look up to see where she is going.

Luckily the college she attends in Oslo is not far from her flat and it feels good to get home and see that everything is still the same, that Baltazar lies in his basket just as he did when she left him. Black, white and happy.

Johanne Klingenberg throws down her keys, takes out her mobile and goes back on Facebook to update her status.

Home.

Safe at last.

Henning looks at the clock. The working day has come and gone without Erna Pedersen’s son returning his call. Henning has sent him a text message as well, but has had no reply. Nor does Bjarne Brogeland appear to have had the time to return his calls. Things are moving slowly.

Henning files a story about how Erna Pedersen was strangled, a story he illustrates with a photograph of her that the police have issued to the media. The story reads well even though it is far less sensational than the stories being written about Trine.

The online version of VG , VG Nett , has managed to track down an old boyfriend of his sister’s when she was a law student who can tell the newspaper’s readers that ‘Trine Juul, as she then was, was known for her excessive partying. It certainly wouldn’t surprise him if she is guilty of the accusations being made against her.’ None of the newspapers has a single new picture to publish. The most recent ones they have are from this morning when she hurried inside the Ministry of Justice and didn’t make eye contact with any of the cameras. A headline repeated by several papers is TRINE HIDES.

Henning would have expected that the identity of the young Labour Party politician would have become known during the day, but even though online speculation is rife, no one has yet come forward, nor has any particular name taken more hold in the public imagination than others. As far as Henning can work out, most members of the Labour Party’s youth branch who took part in last year’s conference must have been interviewed by now. All of them are denying that they went to Trine’s hotel room.