Thomas Enger: Scarred

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 neighbour’s, son. You’re the building’s caretaker, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Great. I’ve a massive favour 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 neighbour’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 rear-view 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 realises that her tights 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 tights 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-cancelling headphones. Suddenly she can hear her own hectic breathing.

Trine closes her eyes as the lift sweeps her upwards. 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. She 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 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, greying 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 Under Secretaries 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 heel. They nod to Trine and mutter an almost synchronised ‘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 got on with Hilde Bye, but has never quite understood why. Perhaps it’s just a difference in age. Trine has always detected a hint of scepticism in Bye’s eyes and it hasn’t faded now.