Thomas Enger: Scarred

But what piques her curiosity, what makes her particularly anxious, is the sight of many cars arriving outside the house she and Pål Fredrik bought in Ullern in west Oslo for almost eighteen million kroner last year. She sees that several of the cars bear the logos of NRK and TV2. A slightly bigger car with a satellite dish on its roof pulls up and parks outside her front door.

Not only has something major happened, Trine realises. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Late to bed, early to rise.

That’s how it has turned out, Bjarne Brogeland concludes, as he sits in his car on his way to work – again. And sometimes that is just the way it has to be. He resigned himself to it long ago and usually he loves giving his all to his work as an investigator. Use his body and his brain to solve a case and then move on to the next one. Do his bit to help make Oslo a city that’s safe to grow up and live in.

But even Bjarne, who has been fit and healthy all his life, who has always watched his diet and rarely poisons his body with alcohol, has started noticing how life as a police officer in the capital takes its toll on him. More importantly it takes its toll on those about him, his family, because he is seldom with them when they get up or go to bed. And when he finally gets home, he is usually so tired and worn out that he can’t be bothered or doesn’t feel like doing anything. He just wants to relax. Enjoy some peace and quiet.

He hasn’t told anyone, not even Anita, that he has written but not yet sent off an application to Vestfold Police. They have a six-month vacancy for a Head of Investigation starting in just four weeks. The current post holder is taking leave to write a book; a crime novel, Bjarne believes. Bjarne thinks this job could give him an opportunity to gain valuable management experience. Everything is about experience.

And that’s the rub. He hasn’t been a detective for very long, but he has been with the police force all his life and is regarded as a safe pair of hands. He has studied management and he has recently made a name for himself with his analytical skills. Previously he always felt he had something to prove whenever he spoke up in a meeting, especially to his boss Arild Gjerstad, Head of Investigation, but he has got over that, thank God.

He has no idea how Anita would react if he were to get the job. It would mean him being away from home, from her and Alisha even more; it would take him further away from the ideal of family life that is so important to his wife. Isn’t he making enough sacrifices as it is?

He can see it in his daughter’s eyes and hear it in the conversation around the kitchen table on the rare occasions they are all there at the same time. He has absolutely no idea how she is getting on. What she learns at nursery, who her friends are. Who is mean to her and who is nice. It’s not easy being a kid, he remembers that from his own childhood. But it’s not easy being a dad, either. Or a dad and a policeman at the same time.

Alisha deigned to let him put her to bed last night as long as he played with her first. Playing covers everything that makes her laugh out loud. He read to her from a Karsten and Petra book, scratched her on the back with sharp nails, something she loves. But he wasn’t allowed to lie next to her when she finally settled down. Only Anita gets to do that.

And maybe it makes no difference how much he plays and reads and scratches. He will always come second. And, yes, that’s still a spot on the podium, but Bjarne has never enjoyed not being first. He has always loathed the thought that someone might be better at something than he is.

I need more hours in the day , he thinks, and turns off towards Grønland. If you could buy time, he would have ordered it by the shed load. Then there would be time for trips to Legoland, a seaside holiday to Sørlandet, he could have gone camping in the mountains, caught those fish. He could have given Anita the children she always said she wanted.

But if he’s going to do his job properly, if he’s going to be as good a policeman as he wants to be, then he has to live the job. He has to be the job. And the job has to be him. All of him.

And soon they will turn forty, both him and Anita. And even if time isn’t running out for him, then it is definitely running out for her. Exactly what that means they haven’t yet sat down to discuss. They haven’t had the time.

Bjarne met Anita at Idretthøgskolen, the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, in the mid-nineties. She was in the year below him and not really his type; she was into Aerosmith and TV soaps such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place , she was twenty-two centimetres shorter than him and played football from time to time. But with her shoulder-length blonde hair, a slightly crooked front tooth and her echoing, infectious laughter, she grew increasingly irresistible to him. He was happy to ignore the fact that she had grown up in Hamar and kept declaring her intention to move back east, to the home of the Hamar Olympic Hall even though she was born in the beautiful scenic fishing village of Henningsvær in the Lofoten Archipelago. She had charm. The raw charm of Arctic Norway. He simply had to have her.

At first she resisted him, primarily because she already had a boyfriend, but she surprised him by going for what she could get, rather than holding on to what she had. Six years later they got married, and because of Bjarne’s job they now live in a semi-detached house on Tennisveien in Slemdal. Their car is a Volvo estate with a fan belt that never stops complaining. They don’t have a holiday cabin and they don’t have a dog, either, but they have a daughter whom he would happily throw himself under a bus to protect. Even if he is only second-best.

You’ve been lucky , he tells himself, and watches the grey band of tarmac that stretches out in front of him. He sees people going to work, cyclists jumping a red light and grim-faced pedestrians. The wind urges them on. Bjarne can feel the gusts against the car. A new spell of bad weather sails towards the city over the pointed roof of Oslo Plaza Hotel.

It’s going to be a cold day, Bjarne forecasts, but hopefully a productive one, even though they didn’t learn much about the eighty-three-year-old victim last night. A widow, retired teacher, born and raised in Jessheim, moved to Oslo in the early nineties. She has a son who doesn’t visit her very often, but it was him in the photograph, Tom Sverre Pedersen, and his family. He is a doctor and lives in Vindern. And the photograph of him and his family had indeed been torn down and smashed.

I’m sure it’s important , Bjarne thinks, but for reasons he has yet to find out. What he finds most peculiar about the case so far is that no one seems to have seen or heard anything. Neither the care workers nor any other staff had noticed if anyone entered or left Erna Pedersen’s room that afternoon. And no one Bjarne spoke to had had a bad word to say about the victim. She never made a fuss, barely communicated with anyone and spent most of her time knitting. An old lady who kept herself to herself and did what little she was capable of.

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 neighbouring buildings.

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