Scarred

Chapter 1

Ole Christian Sund puts down the glass on the bedside table with a soft thud.

‘There,’ he says, smiling to the resident whose moist, stiff eyes stare out into the room. Sund wipes away a trickle of water from the corner of the man’s mouth, meeting resistance only from the stubble on his chin. The skin is so pale it’s practically transparent.

‘Do you need anything else?’ Sund says in a loud voice.

The lines in the man’s face remain unchanged. Sund looks tenderly at the resident, a man who has been with them for eighteen months, but who keeps death waiting. There’s not much left of him, only lifeless skin and bones, hair detaching itself from his scalp, a glassy stare that rarely changes focus. Not even the eyelids seem to be working any more.

Sund thinks, he looks like my dad. He spent the last years of his life like this; barely aware of his surroundings. Most of the time his eyes would seek out the ceiling or some object in the room, lost in a world of their own. It’s six years since he died, but it still feels like yesterday.

Sund leaves quietly. In the corridor he meets a resident with a relative, a grandchild possibly, out for some gentle exercise. He smiles to them and takes out his mobile: it’s just after five in the afternoon. A sinking feeling starts in the pit of his stomach.

Soon she’ll be here to pick Ulrik up and yet another week will come and go without him being a part of his son’s life. At most he’ll get to hear about it – if Martine can be bothered to reply to his text messages.

He knows he’s pestering her, but as he can’t be there every day and hear the news from Ulrik’s own mouth, at least he can hear it from hers. How the boy is, what he learned in school that day. Friends he played with at home or visited. All the things he misses out on because Martine and he stopped loving each other. Or rather – because she stopped loving him.

And though he thinks he has found a new love, he hates the thought that another man might have taken his place not just in Martine’s bed, but also in Ulrik’s life. That Ulrik might start to love his new dad while his real dad is just someone who makes him come to work with him when they were supposed to be having fun together.

If he could afford to turn down the extra shift, he would have. Fortunately he managed to find a fully charged electric wheelchair in Ward 4 for Ulrik to play with as long as he promised to look out for the residents. And he did, of course he did, he’s such a good boy. He loves zooming around the care home. The last time Sund saw him he was doing precisely that.

But where has the little tyke got to now?

Sund’s shoes make a steady sound against the floor as he starts checking passages and common rooms. In the television lounge he finds only Guttorm and a couple of the other residents embroiled in a heated argument over which channel to watch. Sund carries on looking, but can’t see a happy, whooping nine-year-old in a wheelchair anywhere. He searches the corridors on both sides of the building’s long H-shape. And finally, outside one of the resident’s rooms, he spots his little boy who no longer seems quite so small in a place where death waits around every corner.

Sund smiles to himself as he always does when he watches his son without his being aware of it. But something is wrong with the boy in the wheelchair. His hands are wedged between his thighs. His feet are crossed. And he’s rocking back and forth while his eyes seek out something on the floor, but there’s nothing there except the cold light from the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling.

‘Hi, Ulrik,’ Sund says and stops. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

Ulrik makes no reply; he just carries on rocking. Sund bends down and strokes his hair. For a brief moment he wonders if one of the residents might have hurt him, but dismisses the thought instantly. At times they act up and lose their temper, but they would never take it out on a young boy. They all adore him.

‘Hello, son,’ Sund continues. ‘What is it?’

No response.

Sund looks up and reads the name plate outside the room. Sees that the door is ajar.

‘Have you been visiting Erna again?’ he asks.

The boy just carries on rocking.

He has seen something, Sund thinks. Or heard something.

His knees are shaking as he gets up. He walks past the wheelchair and pushes open the door to the resident’s room. Erna Pedersen is sitting in her chair, straight up and down as she always does. But that’s not why Sund pulls up short and takes a long step backwards. It’s her face, usually white and cold. Now it’s discoloured. Dark, rust-coloured trails run from her eyes down her wrinkled face like a river delta. He just has time to realise what her smeared glasses are hiding before the stench of death comes rolling towards him.

Chapter 2

Henning Juul leans forwards on the cold, rough seating planks below Dælenenga Club House. Above him the clouds have dressed the sky in layers of grey that move across the city as if they have somewhere special to go. The wind, which earlier that day whipped up dust and rubbish in the streets of Oslo, has started to settle, but still contains a hint of anger.

Henning comes here as often as he can whatever the weather. He finds the place conducive to thinking, though it hurts him to see children, young and old, do the things Jonas would have been doing if he’d still been alive.

A football bounces towards a boy of eight or nine years. It rolls right past his football boots. Another boy with hair so blond it’s practically white takes possession of the ball, runs towards the goal and scores.

‘For Christ’s sake, Adil. What do you think you’re doing?’

The coach, dressed in a black tracksuit, screams till he is red in the face.

‘You were supposed to stop the ball!’

The boy who has scored the goal runs past Adil and sends him a look of triumph.

‘Good work, Jostein. Well spotted.’

The coach blows his whistle. The game resumes. Henning follows Adil’s movements. There is something resigned about them, a sense of hopelessness. As though he’d really rather not be there.

Henning has seen Adil before. Usually he is alone. No one ever picks him up after football practice. Sometimes he is with one of the other boys from the team, but his friend isn’t there now. Henning imagines he probably has better things to do on a Sunday evening.

And, strictly speaking, so do you, Henning says to himself, only he had been desperate for a change of scenery, something to distract him. But no matter how hard he tries to clear his head, the questions keep returning. What did former enforcer Tore Pulli know about the fire that killed Jonas? And was that the reason why Pulli himself had to die?

Henning’s mobile goes off in his inside pocket. He takes it out and groans. The name on the display tells him something has happened and that the rest of his evening is most probably ruined.

Even so he answers it.

‘Hi, Henning, it’s me. Have you heard the news?’

Henning holds the mobile away from his ear. Kåre Hjeltland’s voice is so loud he doesn’t need a telephone. He is the most fanatical news editor Henning has ever met, he operates exclusively at a super-octane level and it doesn’t help his somewhat comical appearance that he has been saddled with an aggressive form of Tourette’s. Tonight his random swearing has temporarily eased off, but Henning knows that his boss’s head makes sudden jerks while he talks. Hjeltland continues before Henning has time to say anything.

‘An old woman has been killed in a care home right around the corner from where you live. Do you think you could go over there? I’m a bit short of people tonight.’

You’re always short of people, Henning thinks, but doesn’t say it and checks his watch at the same time. He had planned to go home and try to sleep for more than two hours in a row for once. But he also knows that Hjeltland doesn’t have many journalists who can cover a murder right now. Iver Gundersen is still on sick leave after being beaten up in Josefinesgate a couple of weeks ago, and the Sunday evening shift at the offices of 123news.no comprises just two staff: a duty editor who has to keep on top of everything happening in the whole world with just a keyboard and only ten fingers, and a sports journalist reporting the latest football results.

Henning takes a deep breath and looks up at the gathering clouds. Another killing, he thinks, with everything that that entails: more time at work and less time to look for whoever torched his flat.

And yet he sighs and says: ‘All right, then.’

Chapter 3

Inspector Bjarne Brogeland parks near the entrance to the care home and steps out into the autumn evening. He slams the car door shut and takes a look around.

A narrow one-way street winds its way through towering buildings with dark windows that reach for the sky above Grünerløkka. The streetlights reflect on the wet tarmac. The road has been closed off to traffic, but curious onlookers walk slowly past on the pavement.

It’s the same everywhere. People like to rubberneck, catch a glimpse of death, a hint of tomorrow’s headlines so they can boast that they were there, that they saw it. Death in a body bag. Death in the eyes of a crime scene investigator dressed in white coveralls.

Bjarne has never understood the fascination with gore and wrecked cars, the desire to deliberately inflict trauma on yourself. People don’t know that the image of a broken body or the smell of a crushed skull doesn’t just disappear while you get on with your life, go to the cinema, to the café or drink yourself senseless. Such memories can return without warning. And once they’re in your head, they’ll stay there for a long time.

Bjarne’s father, who was an engineer, once told him that his team killed a female polar bear when he was working on a research project near ESRO, the European Space Research Organisation, in Ny-Ålesund in the sixties. They enticed the polar bear with food and as she stuck her head inside the wooden box where the bait was lying, she triggered a mechanism that fired the fatal shot from a sawn-off 12 bore shotgun. The polar bear had two small cubs, which were running helplessly around their mother when the team came to pick her up, Bjarne’s father said. He never forgot their screams. ‘They sounded just like human children, Bjarne. It might as well have been you screaming.’

It’s a little over half an hour since Bjarne got the call. He had just put his five-year-old daughter Alisha to bed and sat down on the sofa with his wife. The message made him shudder and the feeling returns as he approaches the care home. There’s something about the murder of old women.

Bjarne glances at the clouds and pulls his collar up tighter around his neck. Darker and colder times are coming.

A sign to the left of the main entrance warns potential intruders that the area has CCTV. Good, Bjarne thinks. Perhaps the killer was caught on camera. He turns around and looks up at the buildings opposite. Closed curtains in the flats. Closed shops and a hairdresser at street level. A café called Sound of Mu also appears to be empty though a dim light seeps out from inside. Sunday is the big day for café visits and walks in Grünerløkka so several people might have seen the killer as he left – if he left through the main entrance.

Bjarne goes inside and doesn’t meet anyone until he gets out of the lift on the third floor. He stops at the red and white police tape outside Erna Pedersen’s room and hears the crackling and beeping of a police radio nearby while he slips bright blue plastic covers over his shoes.

He pauses before he enters. As always he hopes the walls will talk to him, that the chaotic landscape that awaits him will show him which path to follow. And he knows that he mustn’t look at the victim immediately, but concentrate on the other information in the room. He also tries as far as that’s possible to ignore smells, but it’s hard to block out the scent of death. He often wakes up in the middle of the night with a sense of being surrounded by this very smell.

Bjarne nods to Ann-Mari Sara, the crime scene technician, as he comes in. She is squatting on her haunches at the feet of the dead woman, her face hidden behind a camera. She lowers it and nods in return.

It took a while before Bjarne learned to appreciate Ann-Mari Sara. She is petite, barely more than 1.58 metres tall. Short, messy hair. Never wears make-up. He doesn’t recall ever seeing her smile and he has noticed that she doesn’t seem particularly bothered about personal hygiene. She is also immune to any attempt at charm or small talk. She rarely replies to questions that aren’t work-related.

But she is undoubtedly one of the best crime scene technicians Bjarne knows. Always thorough, always alert. Always respectful. He has never seen her chew gum or try to lighten up the tense atmosphere at a crime scene with a snide remark about the victim’s appearance or lifestyle. She is the most dedicated colleague Bjarne has ever come across and she is especially good at putting herself in the mind of a criminal and imagining what might have happened. If she hadn’t been so brilliant at analysing a crime scene, he would have liked to recruit her as part of his own investigation team.

Now she gets up, raises the camera to her face again and presses the shutter release. Then she points to a Bible on the floor.

‘I think he started with this one,’ she says. ‘Used it to bang… ’

Bjarne raises his hand to stop her.

‘I haven’t examined it fully yet,’ Sara continues. ‘But it would appear to have thirteen dents on it.’

Thirteen dents, Bjarne mutters to himself. The killer must have been very angry. And he thinks that this particular book is responsible for many deaths, but never quite like this.

The room is exactly as he had imagined. Small, oppressive and cold. A bed neatly made-up, anonymous yellow curtains, speckled lino on the floor and soulless furniture. Withered flowers on the table. A TV magazine with a programme circled in red, others crossed out. Red wool. Knitting needles, some big, some small. A shot glass, unused. A glass of water on the bedside table.

The place reminds Bjarne of a prison cell. And he realises how much he dreads old age. Squashing his whole life into a room measuring three metres by three metres.

There is something oddly pleasant about the victim in the chair. She is sitting on a cushion; Bjarne can just make out a pattern of yellow and green flowers. In her lap lies the start of a sock. A small, red sock.

Bjarne leans towards her. Although he has prepared himself for the sight, he still feels a prickling sensation behind his forehead. From behind the smeared glasses, trails of congealed blood have spread across the wrinkled, eighty-three-year-old face like the branches of a tree. And where her pupils should have been, he can see something shiny; something that just about sticks out.

Two of Erna Pedersen’s own knitting needles.

‘Did you see the marks on her throat?’

Bjarne leans closer, moves some hair out of the way with a pen he takes from his jacket pocket.

‘You’re joking,’ he says.

Sara raises one offended eyebrow.

‘As there’s not much blood at the scene, her heart must have stopped beating before the killer forced the knitting needles into her eyes.’

‘So he strangled her first,’ Bjarne concludes.

Sara nods.

‘But there are another couple of interesting things.’

Bjarne turns to her.

‘We haven’t got a murder weapon,’ Sara says.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You can’t force knitting needles through someone’s eyes just by hitting them with a book. The nasal bone gets in the way, as does the forehead. He must have used something else. Something heavier. Take a look at this.’

Bjarne follows Sara’s index finger, which stops at the victim’s brown, knitted cardigan. A fine layer of white powder has settled on her shoulders.

‘I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m sure that the knitting needles dented whatever it was the killer used to bash them into her head.’

‘Did they go right through her skull?’

‘No, that requires more force,’ she says, tapping her own head with her knuckles. ‘The skull is thick. And it gets thicker with age, especially in women. But it looks as if he tried.’

Bjarne pulls a face.

‘Is there anything else I need to know?’

‘Yes.’

She steps past him and goes over to the wall behind the chest of drawers. Points to a picture frame lying on the floor. The glass is smashed and the picture is unclear, but Bjarne can still make out a seemingly happy and contented family of four.

He asks who they are.

‘Don’t know,’ Sara replies. ‘But the odds are they’re the victim’s son or daughter and his or her family. I’m more interested in why the picture is on the floor and why the picture hook on the wall is bent.’

Bjarne looks up.

‘If you take a look at the floor, you’ll see that it’s clean. You can almost see your own reflection in it.’

‘So the picture was torn off the wall,’ Bjarne concludes. ‘Possibly today.’

Sara nods.

‘If I were you, I’d ask myself why.’

Chapter 4

It takes him only ten minutes to walk from Dælenenga Sports Park to Grünerhjemmet, the care home at the bottom of Markveien. It’s a redbrick building that blends in effortlessly with the rest of the architecture in Grünerløkka. Few people walking past it would know that many of the neighbourhood’s most vulnerable residents live here. The exceptions are on 17 May, Norway’s Constitution Day, when schoolchildren stand outside to sing the national anthem, Ja, vi elsker dette landet, or otherwise when an ambulance or hearse is called.

A small crowd has gathered outside the main entrance, a subspecies of Homo sapiens that Henning would recognise anywhere, any time. And it takes him only a moment before he spots her among the other journalists.

Nora.

The woman he once loved with every fibre of his being. The woman he failed to love like she should have been loved. The woman who was ill on the day his flat burned down and who will never forgive herself for asking Henning to look after Jonas that very night, even though it wasn’t his turn. The woman who finalised their divorce shortly after that fatal night when he needed her most.

To say that being around Nora since he returned to work has been awkward would be an understatement. Their shared past as parents and the fact that they work for rival newspapers is just for starters. Another complication is that she is now dating Iver Gundersen, Henning’s closest colleague at 123news.

Nora waves and slowly makes her way towards him; she stops a metre in front of him and says ‘hi’. Henning nods and smiles, sensing immediately how a protective bubble forms around them where the wind, the air, the care home – the whole world – cease to exist.

‘How are you?’ she asks.

Henning tilts his head towards his shoulder, first to one side, then the other.

‘Not too bad,’ he says.

Henning hasn’t seen Nora since the end of the Tore Pulli case, but she sent him an email a couple of days ago after reading an article he had written about how and why Pulli was killed. It wasn’t a long email, just two sentences, but it has been on his mind ever since.

Bloody good article, Henning. You’re still the best.

Hugs

Nora

He should have replied and thanked her for her kind words, of course he should, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. What he definitely ought to have done was to thank her for saving his life as he lay unconscious in that grave, hovering between life and death just over one week ago. Nora had realised that something was wrong when she called at his flat and got no reply. She contacted Bjarne Brogeland who took action so that Henning was eventually found and saved.

He hasn’t managed to thank her for that, either.

It doesn’t make things any less awkward that her voice is gentler than it used to be and that he can detect genuine concern.

‘My head still hurts a bit, but I’m all right,’ he adds. ‘How is Iver?’

Nora imitates Henning’s shrug.

‘He says hi,’ is all she says.

‘Is he out of hospital yet?’

‘Mm,’ she says and nods. ‘Bored rigid on the sofa.’

Nora’s skin is still smooth. Her dark, shoulder-length hair falls in waves down her blue anorak, an anorak Henning has seen her wear before. He can even remember when. Between Gjendesheim and Memurubu when they hiked Besseggen Ridge on a day that started as summer, but ended in full-blown winter. The wind gusting towards them now holds some of the same promise.

‘So what’s happened here?’ he asks.

Nora turns to the redbrick building. Again she shrugs her shoulders.

‘We don’t know very much yet other than the victim is an old lady.’

Nearby a journalist bursts out laughing. Henning glares at him.

‘No statements yet?’

Nora shakes her head.

‘I imagine the police will hold a press conference tomorrow morning,’ she says with a sigh.

‘Yes, I suppose they will.’

Press conferences, however, are open to everyone and tomorrow is too far away. So Henning takes out his mobile and texts Bjarne Brogeland asking him for a quick chat about the case. The reply comes in a couple of minutes later:

Rushed off my feet. Will call when I have two minutes.

Just as I thought, Henning thinks. In other words: no reason to hang around.

He looks about him. It’s getting late. The deadline for printed newspapers is imminent, which means that duty editors everywhere are now screaming for copy. But there is a limit to what field reporters can write tonight. The investigation has only just begun and no one knows the name of the victim or how she died, so it’s still possible to be the first reporter to break the story tomorrow. All he needs is a detail or two that no one else knows yet.

Henning uses his mobile to check out the online competition and sees that none of them is reporting anything other than the obvious. Nor is anyone going to let him into the care home this late in the evening and possibly not tomorrow, either. The residents and the investigation take priority. Standing here watching police officers come and go is a waste of time.

And that gives him an idea. What about the staff? And the visitors? How will they get out of the building tonight?

Henning catches Nora’s eye and he signals that he’s off.

But going home is the last thing on his mind.

Chapter 5

A care worker in a white uniform sits on a chair outside the television lounge picking his nails. He flicks away a bit of skin that lands on the floor. Then he jumps up as though the seat has suddenly got hot.

Bjarne Brogeland is standing in front of him.

‘Ole Christian Sund?’

The man nods and rubs his neck with his right hand. Sund has a sparse, blond moustache on his acne-scarred face. His eyebrows meet in the middle. His thin arms stick out from the loose-fitting sleeves.

‘How is your son?’ Bjarne says, finding himself a chair and indicating to Sund to sit down again.

‘I don’t know,’ the care worker says, looking glum. ‘He’s with his mum now, but she’s not replying to my texts. But I’m sure he’s fine with her.’

‘Yes, mums are great at that sort of thing,’ Bjarne says, smiling sympathetically. ‘I presume you’ve been offered counselling?’

Bjarne takes out his notebook and pen.

‘We have. But Martine, Ulrik’s mum, is a psychologist and no one knows Ulrik better than her, so—’

‘I understand,’ Bjarne says. ‘But we’ll want to talk to him as soon as possible. He might have seen something important.’

Sund nods and rakes a hand through his long, blond fringe.

‘I’ve never seen him like that,’ he whispers. ‘He seemed almost in a trance.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He just sat there. Rocking back and forth. His eyes were all glazed and distant.’

Sund’s face takes on a sad, anxious expression.

‘Did he say anything to you?’

‘Not straightaway. But when I came back out from Erna Pedersen’s room, he muttered something about fractions.’

‘Fractions?’

‘Yes. He kept repeating it. Fractions, fractions, fractions.’

Bjarne notes down the word in capital letters.

‘Now he’s been very excited about his maths homework recently so it might have something to do with that. What do I know?’

‘How old is he?’

‘He’s nine.’

Bjarne nods.

‘I won’t keep you for very much longer,’ he says. ‘But do you have any idea who might have done this?’

Sund heaves a sigh.

‘No.’

‘Can you think of anyone who didn’t like her?’

Sund mulls it over.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Have there been any disagreements here recently? Did someone get angry or upset with her?’

Again Sund racks his brains.

‘Sometimes our residents get agitated and their discussions heated. But I really don’t think that anyone would hurt Erna Pedersen. She never made a fuss; she was quite frail and unwell. And if she hadn’t died like… like this, she would have died soon, anyway.’

Bjarne scratches his head with the pen. A female care worker walks past them. Sund takes out his mobile and checks for new messages. Then he turns it off and puts it away.

‘Did you notice if anyone went to her room today?’

Sund shifts slightly on the chair.

‘I was working mainly at the other end of the corridor. A lot of staff are off sick at the moment.’

Bjarne nods again.

‘I can see from the visitors’ log that no one visited her today. Do you know what it was usually like? Did she have a lot of visitors?’

‘You’re better off asking Daniel, Daniel Nielsen. He was her primary care worker. But, no, I don’t think they were queuing round the block, to be honest.’

Bjarne writes down Nielsen’s name and circles it.

‘Are you aware of any relatives who might have visited her from time to time?’

‘If they did, it can’t have been very often. I barely know what her son looks like.’

‘So she has a son?’

Sund nods.

Bjarne writes ‘son’s family in broken photograph?’ on his notepad.

‘The camera outside the main entrance,’ he continues. ‘Do you happen to know if it records?’

Sund shakes his head.

‘It’s only there so we can see who rings the bell outside regular visiting hours.’

‘So people can come and go as they please?’

‘They can.’

Bjarne nods again.

‘Did something unusual happen here today? Anything out of the ordinary?’

Sund thinks about it.

‘The Volunteer Service people were here in the afternoon to play and sing for the residents.’

‘Go on?’

‘They come once a fortnight.’

‘I see. Are they popular?’

‘Yes, very.’

‘Did Erna Pedersen usually join in?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think I saw her there today.’

Bjarne makes another note.

‘How many people usually come from the Volunteer Service?’

‘Five or six, I think.’

Bjarne has met members of the Volunteer Service before, people of all ages who help others in return for no money at all. They’re unlikely to be the type to force knitting needles into the head of an old lady, Bjarne thinks, but he still makes a note of the name of the service in capital letters with an arrow pointing to it.

‘Okay,’ he says, getting up. ‘I can imagine that you want to get home and check on your son. But please think about what you saw here today, especially if something strikes you as a little odd or unusual. Anything that might be of interest.’

‘Will do,’ Sund says, taking the card Bjarne hands him. Then he hurries towards the lift while switching on his mobile to check for new messages. It doesn’t even have time to beep before he shakes his head in despair.

Chapter 6

In the old days Henning used to go running along the River Aker late at night, though he would sometimes come across people he would rather not meet after the hours of darkness. He would always jog straight past them and ignore their offers of all sorts of dubious merchandise. Even so, it was never a very pleasant experience.

A similar unease comes over him as he walks past Riverside, the café at the bottom of Markveien, to get round to the back of Grünerhjemmet. But there are no unsavoury characters around tonight, only the river, which winds its way down to Oslo Fjord under a bridge.

It could have been a picture postcard of the city. There are old ruins and tall trees on the far side of the river. On warm summer days people sit in Riverside or on the grassy bank leading down to the water and let life and the river flow past. But the area around the mouth of the Aker has become a haven for drug dealers and their customers. Once upon a time such people would have hidden in the shadows because it was shameful both to sell and to buy drugs, but now everything is out in the open and no one seems to care. The police know what goes on, but don’t have the resources to do anything about it. And if one dealer is arrested, another will take his place the next day.

Henning follows the road around the care home where bushes as lifeless as the residents inside have been planted along the walls. He knows how hard it is to get a place in a care home these days. You practically have to have one foot in the grave already. It means that many vulnerable people in Oslo and in the rest of Norway have to rely on self-sacrificing relatives or visits from care workers in their own homes.

Henning wanders around the car park while he waits for someone to emerge from the back entrance. For the first fifteen minutes nothing happens. He looks at his watch. Slowly 9 p.m. turns into 9.30. In his former life he might have lit a cigarette – or fourteen – while he waited, but he stopped smoking completely after the fire. There’s something about flames and embers. He can’t look at them without seeing his son’s eyes in all the red and orange.

The door opens and a woman comes out. She has brown hair and is wearing a beige coat.

‘Excuse me,’ Henning says, rushing towards her. She instinctively slows down.

‘Do you work here?’ he asks.

The woman’s expression immediately becomes guarded as she reluctantly replies ‘yes’. Henning knows that the burn scars on his face can make him look scary, especially in the dark, so he follows up his assertive opening with a smile that’s intended to be disarming. The woman walks off.

‘Sorry, but you’ll have to talk to someone else,’ she calls out.

‘I—’

‘I don’t talk to people like you.’

Henning is left standing with a reply that withers on the tip of his tongue.

Ten minutes later a man appears. He is happy to stop, but neither speaks nor understands Norwegian terribly well. It doesn’t, however, prevent him from chatting and smiling. Henning eventually works out that the man has washed the floors on the ground and first floors tonight, but he doesn’t know anything about what happened on the floors higher up.

‘Who lives on the third floor?’ Henning asks him.

‘All the mad people,’ the man says.

Henning frowns.

‘The mad people?’

‘Yes, the ones who’ve gone gaga.’

The man smiles and reveals a row of bright white teeth.

‘Right,’ Henning says.

The man gives him a thumbs-up before he gets on his bicycle and rides off.

So the victim suffered from dementia, Henning concludes. It’s not a story in itself, but it’s a useful detail to include. He needs more.

Henning knows that care staff have a duty of confidentiality, but it’s not a rule that has bothered him before. In his experience some people simply enjoy chatting. It’s just a question of finding them. Working on them.

Not so easy on a Sunday night.

A woman in a hijab comes out. Again Henning smiles, but she ignores him. A little later he tries a man with dark stubble, but learns only that he has been to visit his mother and is annoyed that he missed the Brann versus Vålerenga match on TV.

Henning is about to call it a day and crosses his fingers that 6tiermes7 – his secret Internet source in the police – can give him some information when a man in a black leather jacket and trousers comes out. His hair, long and blond, swings rhythmically from side to side as he quickly crosses the car park. Henning thinks he recognises him from somewhere and goes up to him.

‘Hi, my name is Henning Juul. I work for 123news. Could I have a word with you?’

The man glances at Henning.

‘I’m busy,’ he says.

‘I can walk with you if that’s more convenient?’

The man still doesn’t say anything, but Henning can see there are signs of recognition in his face too.

‘What’s going on up there?’ Henning asks.

The man looks at him quickly.

‘I won’t quote you. I’m just trying to find out what happened. I hear someone killed a demented old lady?’

The man glances at him again.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘But I have to get home. My son—’

The man breaks off halfway through the sentence and his eyes flicker. Henning continues to follow him.

‘Okay, fine,’ Henning says. ‘But here’s… ’

He starts to jog as he produces a business card from his pocket. ‘If there’s anything you want to tell me, on or off the record, then just give me a call. Any time. Okay?’

Reluctantly the man takes the card Henning is holding out.

‘Thank you. Then I won’t keep you any longer. I hope your son isn’t asleep yet.’

He smiles after the man who looks over his shoulder several times before he disappears in the night. There, Henning thinks, was an interesting person, someone who stands out from the crowd. A staff member who didn’t look exhausted after working, but upset. Or possibly frightened.

For the next hour Henning tries to speak to more people, then he goes home. He sits down in front of his laptop hoping to chat to 6tiermes7, a hope that gradually diminishes as the clock approaches midnight. A little desperate now, Henning sends Bjarne Brogeland a few more text messages. He doesn’t give up before his police contact rings him back.

‘You’re a pest,’ Brogeland says.

‘You said you’d call when you had two minutes.’

The roar of traffic mingles with the sound of Brogeland’s exasperation.

‘Are you on your way home?’

‘Wow, you should’ve been a detective, Henning. It’s five to one in the morning.’

‘Then let’s make it quick. Demented old woman found killed. What happened?’

‘Your version is fine.’

‘Mm. But she wasn’t shot or someone would have heard it. And it would’ve been messy. So, for the same reason, I don’t think she was stabbed, either, because then you would already have arrested the killer.’

‘Who says we haven’t?’

‘You do. I can tell from your voice. You’re exhausted. You sound defeated. You wouldn’t if the case had been solved.’

Brogeland sighs.

‘I can’t give you much, Henning. Tactical considerations, you know.’

‘Mm. What if I were to tell you that I spoke to a staff member tonight, a man with long, blond hair who looked like he’d seen the grim reaper—’

‘Did he talk to you?’ Brogeland interrupts him.

Henning makes no reply.

‘I hope he didn’t say anything?’

Henning doesn’t reply immediately.

‘He said he had to hurry home to his son.’

‘Damn,’ Brogeland hisses softly down the phone. Seconds pass. Henning knows better than to ruin a moment like this with more questions.

Finally Brogeland heaves a sigh. And when he pulls over at a bus stop and starts talking, Henning fills a whole A4 sheet with a story that, back in the old days when he was a cynical and less sensitive reporter, he would have summarised in three words:

GRANNY BRUTALLY SLAIN.