Thomas Enger: Burned

So, Nora, we meet again.

And, once again, we meet at a press conference.

Three uniformed officers enter, two men and a woman. Henning instantly recognises the two men: Chief Inspector Arild Gjerstad and Detective Inspector Bjarne Brogeland.

Bjarne and Henning went to school together in Klofta. They were never best friends, even though they were in the same year. That might have been enough to start a friendship back then. But it takes more. Chemistry and compatibility, for example.

Later, Henning also discovered that Bjarne was a Romeo whose ambition was to sleep with as many girls as possible, and when he started turning up at the Juuls’, it wasn’t hard to decipher Bjarne’s true intentions. Luckily, Henning’s sister, Trine, was on to him and Henning avoided having to play the part of Protective Older Brother, but his loathing of Bjarne stayed with him throughout their adolescence.

And now Bjarne is a policeman.

*

Not that this is news to Henning. Both of them applied to the police academy in the 1990s. Bjarne was accepted. Henning wasn’t. He was rejected long before the admission process even started, because he suffered from every allergy known to man, and had had asthma as a child. Bjarne, however, was the physically robust type. Twenty-twenty vision and great stamina. He had been an athlete when he was younger, and performed quite well in heptathlons. Henning seems to recall that Bjarne pole-vaulted over 4.50 metres.

What Henning didn’t know was that Bjarne had started working in the Violent and Sexual Crimes Unit. He thought Bjarne was a plain-clothes officer, but everyone needs a change now and again. Now he is up there on the platform, gazing across the assembly. His face is grave, professional, and he looks imposing in the tight-fitting uniform. Henning reckons he can still pull. Short, dark hair, hint of grey above the ears, cleft chin, white teeth. Tanned and clean-shaven.

Vain Bjarne, Henning thinks.

And a potential source.

The other man, Chief Inspector Gjerstad, is tall and slim. He has a neatly trimmed moustache which he strokes repeatedly. Gjerstad was with the murder squad when Henning started covering crime, and he seems to have stayed there. Gjerstad despises reporters who think they are smarter than the police and, to be fair, Henning thinks, I’m probably one of them.

The woman in the middle, Assistant Commissioner Pia Nokleby, checks if the microphone is working, then she clears her throat. The reporters raise their pens in expectation. Henning waits. He knows the first minutes will offer nothing but introductions and reiteration of information already available, but he intends to listen carefully all the same.

Then something takes him by surprise. He feels a tingle of anticipation. To him, who has felt only rage, self-loathing and self-pity in the last two years, this tingling, this excitement prompted by work is something Dr Helge would undoubtedly classify as a breakthrough.

He listens to the woman’s high voice:

‘Good morning and thank you for coming. Today’s press conference follows the discovery of a body at Ekeberg Common this morning. I’m Assistant Commissioner Pia Nokleby, and with me I have Chief Inspector Arild Gjerstad, who is heading the investigation, and Detective Inspector Bjarne Brogeland.’

Gjerstad and Brogeland nod briefly to the reporters. Nokleby covers her mouth and coughs, before she continues:

‘As you’re all aware, a woman was found dead in a tent on Ekeberg Common. We received a call at 6.09 a.m. The body was discovered by an elderly man out walking his dog. The victim is a 23-year-old woman from Slemdal and her name is Henriette Hagerup.’

Pens scratch against paper. Nokleby nods to Gjerstad who moves closer to the table and the microphone. He coughs.

‘We’re treating her death as murder. No arrests have been made yet. At this point in the investigation there’s very little we can tell you about what was found at the crime scene and any leads we may be following up, but we can say that this murder was particularly brutal.’

Henning notes down the word ‘brutal’. In media and police speak ‘brutal’ means there is information the press shouldn’t report. It’s to do with protecting the public against knowing what the crackpots out there are capable of. And fair enough: why should relatives have every detail of how their child, brother, sister or parents were killed splashed across the papers for all to see? But that doesn’t mean the press can’t be told.

Apart from that, the press conference has little to offer. Not that Henning had expected much. There can be no suspects while the motive for the killing is unknown, and the police are still securing evidence at the crime scene. It’s too early in the investigation to say if the evidence will give the police something to go on.

And blah-blah-blah.

Chief Inspector Gjerstad’s briefing, if you can call it that, is over in ten minutes. As usual, there is time allowed for questions afterwards and, as usual, reporters compete to get their question in first. Henning shakes his head at this every time. The First Question is a constant source of envious looks and congratulatory slaps on the back in editorial offices everywhere. A reporter is regarded as one hell of a guy, by himself and by others, if he can make his voice heard first.

Henning has never seen the point of this and assumes it’s about penis envy. TV2’s Guri Palme wins this time. She doesn’t have a penis, but she is a pretty blonde girl who has turned all the disadvantages that that entails to her benefit. She has surprised everyone by being ambitious and clever, and is successfully climbing the journalistic ladder.

‘What can you tell us of the circumstances surrounding the killing? In your introduction, Chief Inspector Gjerstad, you mentioned that the murder was unusually brutal. What do you mean?’

Take your places: ready, steady -

‘I can’t comment at this time, nor would I want to,’ Gjerstad says.

‘Can you tell us anything about the victim?’

‘We know that the victim was a student at Westerdal School of Communication. She had nearly completed her second year, and she was regarded as highly talented.’

‘What did she study?’

‘Film and television. She wanted to be a screenwriter.’

Three questions are all that Guri Palme gets and NRK takes over the baton. Henning detects disappointment in the journalist’s eye at coming second, though he can only see him from the back. But it is Jorn Bendiksen from NRK who takes them all by surprise.

‘It’s rumoured to be an honour killing?’

Journalists. Always ready with a statement that sounds like a question. Assistant Commissioner Nokleby shakes her head.

‘No comment.’

‘Can you confirm that the victim had been flogged?’

Nokleby looks at Bendiksen before glancing at Gjerstad. Henning smiles to himself. There’s a leak, he concludes. And the police know it. Still, Nokleby remains professional.

‘No comment.’

No comment.

You will hear that ten times, at least, during a police press conference, especially at the early stages of the investigation. It is known as ‘tactical considerations’. The strategy is to give everyone, the killer included, as little information as possible about any leads the police are pursuing or any evidence they may have found, so they have time to gather all the evidence needed to build a case.

Nokleby and Gjerstad know they are playing a game now. NRK has picked up two important pieces in The Great Jigsaw: honour killing and flogging. Bendiksen would never have made such allegations at the press conference without knowing that they are true, or pretty close. Nokleby straightens her glasses. Gjerstad looks more uncomfortable now. Brogeland, who so far hasn’t uttered a single word, shifts in his chair to find a more comfortable position.