The morning is still only a pale outline over the roofs when Henning wakes up from his usual spot on the sofa. His face is squashed into one of the cushions and he can almost feel the imprint on his cheek.
He stayed up later than he had planned, but he didn’t need coffee to keep him awake. The story he had ready for publication at 8 a.m. practically wrote itself. He said only that the victim was killed and mutilated, a headline he knew would attract hits. He had agreed with Bjarne Brogeland to keep back the grotesque details and he isn’t sure that he will ever make them public. The readers don’t need to know what was done to Erna Pedersen’s eyes.
Henning gets up to check that the story has been uploaded and taken its rightful place at the top of the front page.
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.
‘I haven’t read everything yet,’ Trine says. ‘But in its lead story,
VG
refers to sources its reporter has spoken to. Can you really publish any allegation as long as two sources are prepared to back it up? No matter what the subject matter is?’
Trine looks around the table for an answer.
‘Are you saying the story isn’t true?’
Trine looks daggers at the Permanent Secretary’s raven black hair.
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
Trine had been asked to say a few words at Hilde Bye’s recent fiftieth birthday party. She had sweated over her keyboard trying to think of something nice because it was so much easier to mention all the things Hilde Bye wasn’t. Not especially friendly, not especially talented – jobwise or with people. Too enamoured with being in charge.
‘But if that’s the case,’ says Truls Ove Henriksen, ‘then that’s what you say. That the allegations are false.’
‘If that’s the case’
, Trine snarls to herself and glares at the bald man. She knows what he is really thinking, this wet rag of a political adviser who was foisted on her when she was made a Minister three years ago. She had been so overcome by her unexpected appointment that she had agreed to everything her party wanted. Such as having a political adviser, a man she didn’t know very well, but who was part of the political horse-trading after the election – because he had previously been the secretary of the Labour Party’s branch in Trom.
‘I’m not going to dignify this tabloid tosh by commenting on it,’ she says, jabbing her finger on the file again.
‘But you’re going to have to,’ Katarina Hatlem argues. ‘The media won’t stop clamouring until they get something and you won’t be able to go anywhere or do anything without this becoming the story.’
‘I’ll talk to the Prime Minister’s office and get them to drop you from question time on Wednesday,’ Ullevik says.
‘That’s probably wise,’ Hatlem says and nods. ‘I also think we should issue a press release as soon as possible—’
‘No,’ Trine interrupts her and clenches her fists so hard her knuckles go white.
‘No to what?’
‘We’re not going to issue a press release. If I have to refute these allegations, then they’ve already won. I’m being accused of something I haven’t done, and I can’t respond without knowing the source. Nor has the matter been reported to the police.’
‘Not yet.’
‘What are you saying?’ says Trine, glowering at her political adviser.
‘I’m just saying that could happen before we know it. There’ll certainly be a public demand for it.’
Trine snorts.
‘This is bullshit,’ she shouts. ‘I’ve no idea where it’s coming from. But I can promise you, I’m going to find out.’
Harald Ullevik clears his throat.
‘Let’s take this one step at a time,’ he says, calmly. ‘This incident is supposed to have taken place at last year’s party conference in Kristiansand. Everyone who has ever attended a party conference knows that things go on there, all sorts of things.’
‘Are you saying that—’
‘No, no, Trine, I’m not saying anything, but I know what people will think. That’s why I’m asking you: what do you remember from that day?’
Trine exhales hard through her mouth while she thinks back. She has been to so many party conferences that they all blur together.
‘Not very much. But I know what I didn’t do.’
Silence falls around the table. Her Permanent Secretary sips her coffee while she glances furtively at Henriksen across the table.
She has doubts
, Trine thinks.
That woman doesn’t believe me
.
‘Okay, I have a suggestion,’ Katarina Hatlem says. ‘Even though this story is very much about you, we won’t involve you at this stage. We’ll deal with each press request in turn and repeat the same message: that you refuse to respond to anonymous allegations, you’re not going to waste your time on this, and blah blah blah. If that doesn’t take the sting out of what’s coming towards you, we’ll select one or two journalists we know are sympathetic towards us and give them a little more.’
‘There
is
nothing more,’ Trine insists. ‘ I didn’t do it.’
‘No, no, but we can say something about your work in recent years specifically to crack down on sexual assaults and domestic violence. We can probably produce some statistics to prove our commitment to these particular issues.’
Trine nods, so far so good.
‘If the allegations remain vague, I don’t think it’ll do us any harm to take the moral high ground,’ Hatlem continues.
‘
VG
refers to a “young, male politician”,’ Truls Ove Henriksen says. ‘Could the alleged victim have been someone from the Party’s youth branch?’
Trine shrugs her shoulders.
‘I assume most people would think so, yes. But I’ve no idea how
VG
got its story. I’ve been married to Pål Fredrik for four years and I’ve never been unfaithful to him. I haven’t even been tempted.’
Henriksen makes no reply. His shiny head is now sprinkled with beads of sweat.
‘But at some point you may have to provide an explanation,’ Ullevik says.
‘We won’t say anything about that now,’ Hatlem maintains. ‘We don’t want to create expectations that Trine will make a statement.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ Ullevik says. ‘I’m just saying that you need to review your movements that day very carefully. Who did you sit next to during dinner? Who did you speak to? When did you go to bed? Can anyone give you an alibi – things like that. The more details you can provide about what you actually did on 9 October last year, the better. And if you do say something, you must be absolutely sure that it’s true. If you make even one little mistake, the press will question everything else you’ve said and done.’