The Stranger

‘All the best!’

Detective Inspector Silje Sørensen ran up the steps, waving goodbye to a colleague who had stopped for a chat after leaving the police headquarters, which was now virtually empty. All the public departments were closed apart from the main desk, where a yawning officer had nodded to her through the glass wall as she dashed in through the entrance to Grønlandsleiret 44.

‘I’ve got the kids in the car!’ she shouted by way of explanation. ‘Just going to fetch my skis, I left them in the office and …’

Silje Sørensen ran up to her floor. She was out of breath as she rounded the corner and set off along the corridor, then slowed down as she approached the door of her office. She fumbled with her keys. They were ice cold after lying in the car for a whole day. Besides which she had far too many keys on the bunch; she had no idea what half of them were for. Eventually, she found the right one and unlocked the door.

Once upon a time the architect had won an award for this building. It was hard to understand why. Once you were inside the narrow entrance, you were fooled into thinking that light and space were key. The vast foyer extended several floors up, surrounded by galleries in an angular horseshoe formation. The offices, however, were little cubes linked to long, claustrophobic corridors. Silje always felt it was cramped and stuffy, however much she opened the windows.

From the outside, police headquarters looked as if it had not withstood the changing seasons well, but simply clung on at an odd angle to the hill between Oslo’s main prison and Grønland Church. During her fifteen years with the police service, Silje Sørensen had seen the community, the state and optimistic city enthusiasts slowly attempt to upgrade the area. But the beautiful Middelalder Park lay much too far away to cast its glow over the battered building housing police headquarters. The Opera House was no more than a slanting white roof, just visible from her office beyond seedy areas beneath a lid of exhaust fumes.

She would have liked to open the window, but she didn’t have much time.

Her eyes swept over the desk. She was pedantically tidy when it came to her office, unlike every other area of her life. The overfilled in-tray at the edge of the desk had pricked her conscience when she left on the Friday before Christmas. Her out-tray was empty, and she shuddered at the thought of the stress that was waiting for her on the first day back after the holiday.

In the middle of the desk lay a file she didn’t recognize. She leaned over and read the yellow Post-it note stuck to the front.

DI Sørensen

Enclosed please find documentation relating to Hawre Ghani, presumed date of birth 16.12.1991. Please contact me asap.

DCI Harald Bull tel. 937***** / 231*****

The kids would be bad-tempered and impossible if she was away too long. On the other hand, they were sitting quietly, each with their Nintendo DS when she left them in the back of the car, illegally parked and with the engine running. They had received the games yesterday and were still fascinated by something new, so she thought she might be OK for a while.

She sat down, still wearing her coat, and opened the file.

The first thing she saw was a photograph. It was black and white and grainy, with pronounced shadows. It looked like an enlargement of a picture from some kind of ID document, but didn’t exactly fulfil the new criteria for passport photographs. The boy – because this was definitely a boy rather than a grown man – had his eyes half-closed. His mouth was open. Sometimes people who had been taken into custody pulled faces when they had their photo taken in order to make themselves unrecognizable. For some reason she didn’t think this boy had been playing up. It struck her that the picture had been taken in a rush, and that the photographer simply couldn’t be bothered to take another one.

Hawre Ghani was of no significance.

He hadn’t been important enough.

The photograph moved her.

The boy’s lips were shining, as if he had licked them. There was something childish and vulnerable about the full upper lip with its pronounced Cupid’s bow. The skin around his eyes was smooth, and there was no sign of stubble on his cheeks. The shadow of a moustache beneath a nose that was so large it almost obscured the rest of his face was the only indication that this was a boy well on his way through puberty. In general there was something youthfully disproportionate about the face. Something puppyish. A quick calculation told her that Hawre Ghani had just turned seventeen.

As she looked through the papers she realized he hadn’t, in fact, lived long enough to do so.

Despite the fact that Silje Sørensen had worked in the violent crime and sexual offences unit for many years, and had seen more than she could have ever imagined when she was a young police cadet, the next picture came as a shock. Something that must be a face lay inside a hood made of dark fabric. All the features had been smoothed out, the skin was discoloured and badly swollen. One eye socket was distended and empty, the other barely visible. The corpse’s upper lip was partially missing in a ragged tear, revealing four white teeth and one made of silver. At least she assumed it was silver; in the photograph it was more like a black, illogical contrast to the rest of the chalk-white teeth.

She moved on quickly.

The penultimate sheet in the thin file was a report written by an officer from the immigration squad. She had never heard of him. The report was dated 23 December 2008.

Two days ago.

I was at police headquarters this morning in order to transfer two illegal immigrants to the detention centre in Trandum. During the arrest I happened to hear two colleagues discussing an unidentified body which had been found in the harbour early on Sunday 20 December. One of them mentioned that the corpse, which had partially disintegrated, had a silver tooth in the upper jaw. I reacted immediately, because for the past six weeks I have been trying without success to track down Hawre Ghani, a Kurdish asylum seeker below the age of consent, in connection with his application to remain in Norway. During a fight between gangs in Oslo City in September (see my report number 98*****37/08), the right front tooth in Hawre Ghani’s upper jaw was knocked out. He was brought in after this incident, and I accompanied him to the dentist’s the following day. He requested a silver tooth instead of a porcelain crown, and as far as I am aware this was arranged in collaboration with social services, the asylum seekers’ council and the aforementioned dentist.

Since no registered enquiries have come to light regarding a missing person who might correspond to the body found in the harbour, I would suggest that the officer leading the investigation should contact the dentist, Dag Brå, Tåsensenteret, tel. 2229****, in order to compare the dead man’s teeth with his X-rays / records.

Silje Sørensen turned to the final page in the file. It was a copy of a handwritten document addressed to Harald Bull.

Hi Harald!

Due to the Christmas holiday I ran a quick and highly unscientific check today, Christmas Eve, based on the tip from the immigration squad. Dag Brå agreed to meet me at his surgery this morning. I showed him some pictures of the deceased’s teeth which I took myself (I took a few shots on Aker Brygge on Sunday morning, not brilliant quality but worth a try). He compared these with his own notes and X-rays, and we can assume until further notice that the deceased probably is the underage Kurdish asylum seeker as indicated. All documents have been copied to forensics. I presume that a formal identification will take place immediately after New Year – or perhaps between Christmas and New Year if the gods are on our side. I’ll write a report as soon as I’m back in the office. But now I need a HOLIDAY!

Merry Christmas!

Bengt

P.S. I spoke to forensics yesterday. There are indications that the deceased was killed using something resembling a garrotte. The guy I spoke to said it was a miracle the head was still attached. Perhaps we should consider sending the case over to the violent crimes squad straight away.

B

Silje Sørensen closed the file and leaned back in her chair. She was sweating. The good mood she had been in on her way to work had been swept away, and she wished she had left the damned file alone.

Now she felt a strong urge to open it again, just to look at the young man: this rootless, homeless Kurdish boy without any parents, with his silver tooth and smooth cheeks. Regardless of how many times she came across these children – and God knows it happened all too often – she just couldn’t distance herself. Sometimes in the evenings, when she looked in on her own two sons who had now decided they were too old for goodnight kisses, but who still couldn’t get to sleep until she had tucked them in, she experienced something that resembled guilt.

Perhaps even shame.

The sound of a car horn shattered the silence, making her heart miss a beat. She opened the window and looked down at the turning area in front of the entrance and the main desk.

‘Mum! Mum, will you be much longer?’

Her youngest son was hanging out of the car window, yelling. Silje immediately felt cross. Quickly she placed Hawre Ghani’s file on top of her in tray, pulled off the Post-it note with Harald Bull’s number and tucked it in her pocket.

As she locked the door behind her and ran towards the foyer in the hope of reaching the car in time to stop her son sounding the horn again, she had completely forgotten why she had gone to the office early on the afternoon of Christmas Day on the way to dinner with her in-laws.

The skis.

They were still behind the door of her office. By the time she eventually remembered them, it was too late.

*

It wasn’t too late yet, the duty editor established. The bulletin was going out in two minutes, but since this was anything but a lead story, they could easily put together a short item from the studio with a picture of the Bishop towards the end of the broadcast. He quickly rattled off a message to the producer.

‘Get something written for Christian right away,’ he ordered the young temp. ‘Just a short piece. And double check with NTB that it’s correct, of course. We can do without announcing someone has died when they haven’t, even on a slow news day.’

‘What’s going on here?’ said Mark Holden, one of NRK’s heavyweights on home affairs. ‘Who’s died?’

He grabbed the piece of paper from the temp, read it in one and a half seconds and shoved it back in the young woman’s hand. She didn’t really have time to realize he’d taken it.

‘Tragic,’ said Mark Holden, without a scrap of empathy. ‘She can’t have been all that old. Sixty? Sixty-two? What did she die of ?’

‘It doesn’t say,’ the news editor replied absently. ‘I hadn’t heard she was ill. But right now I need to concentrate on this broadcast. If you could …’

He waved away the much older reporter, his gaze fixed on one of the many monitors in the large room. The brief news headlines were shown, with all the captions as agreed. The presenters were more smartly dressed than usual, in honour of Christmas.

The editor leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.

‘Are you still here?’ he said to the young woman. ‘The idea is to put out the item today, not next week.’

Only now did he notice that her eyes were about to brim over with tears. Her hand was shaking. She took a quick breath and forced a smile.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it right away.’

‘Did you know her?’ There was still no warmth in Mark Holden’s voice, just a deeply rooted curiosity and almost automatic desire to ask everybody questions about everything.

‘Yes. She and her husband are friends of my parents. But it’s also the fact that she …’

Her voice broke.

‘She’s … she was very popular after all,’ said the news editor gently. He chewed on his pencil and lowered his feet to the floor. ‘Give that to me,’ he said, holding out his hand for the small piece of paper. ‘I’ll write the piece, and you can start putting together an item with archive pictures for the nine o’clock bulletin. A minute, something like that. OK?’

The young woman nodded.

‘The Bishop of Bjørgvin, Eva Karin Lysgaard, passed away suddenly on Christmas Eve, at the age of sixty-two.’ The editor spoke the words out loud as his fingers flew over the keys. ‘Bishop Lysgaard was born in Bergen and was a student priest in the town before later becoming a prison chaplain. For many years she was the pastor of Tjenvoll parish in Stavanger. In 2001 she was anointed bishop, and has become well known as …’

He hesitated, smacked his lips then suddenly continued.

‘… a mediator within the church, particularly between the two sides in the controversial debate on homosexuality. Eva Karin Lysgaard was a popular figure in her home town, something that was particularly evident when she held a service at Brann Stadium after Brann won their first league title in forty-four years in 2007. Bishop Lysgaard is survived by her husband, one son and three grandchildren.’

‘Is it absolutely necessary to mention that business with the football match?’ asked Mark Holden. ‘Not entirely appropriate in the circumstances, is it?’

‘I think it is,’ said the editor, sending the text to the producer with one click. ‘It’s fine. But listen …’

Mark Holden was scrabbling around in a huge bowl of sweets.

‘Mmm?’

‘What does a person die of at that age?’

‘You’ve got to be joking. Anything, of course. I haven’t a clue. It’s odd that it doesn’t say anything about it. No “after a long illness” or something like that. A stroke, I suppose. A heart attack. Something.’

‘She was only sixty-two …’

‘So what? People die much younger than that. Personally, I give thanks for every single day on earth. As long as I can have some chocolate now and again.’

Mark Holden couldn’t find anything he liked. Next to the bowl lay three rejected liquorice sweets and two coconut chocolates.

‘You’ve taken all the best ones,’ he mumbled sourly.

The editor didn’t reply. He was deep in thought, and bit on his pencil so hard that it broke. His eyes were fixed on the monitor in front of him, although he didn’t really seem to be following what was going on.

‘Beate!’ he suddenly shouted to the young temp. ‘Beate, come over here!’

She hesitated for a moment, then got up from her desk and did as he said.

‘When you’ve finished your little piece,’ he said, pointing the broken pencil at her, ‘I want you to make a few phone calls, OK? Find out what she died of. I can smell …’

His nose twitched like a rabbit’s.

‘… a story. Maybe.’

‘Phone people after the programme? That late on Christmas Day?’

The editor sighed loudly. ‘Do you want to be a journalist or not? Come on. Get going.’

Beate Krohn’s face was expressionless.

‘You said your parents knew her,’ the editor insisted. ‘So give them a call! Ring whoever you damn well like, but find out what the bishop died of, OK?’

‘OK,’ mumbled the young woman, dreading it already.

*

Johanne never really dreaded doing anything. It was just so difficult to get going. Since she took her doctorate in criminology in the spring of 2000, she had completed two new projects. After submitting her thesis on ‘Sexualized violence, a comparative study of conditions during childhood and early experience among sexual and financial offenders’ she was awarded a grant which enabled her to write an almost equally comprehensive study of miscarriages of justice in Norway. Ragnhild came along towards the end of this project. She and Adam agreed that Johanne would stay at home with their daughter for two years, but before her maternity leave was over she had made a start on her latest project: a study of underage prostitutes, their background, circumstances and chances of rehabilitation.

Last summer she had been given a piece of work to do for the National Police Directorate.

Ingelin Killengreen herself had contacted Johanne. The Commissioner had obviously been given clear political directives on the issue of putting hate crime on the agenda.

The problem was that this particular type of criminal activity hardly existed at all.

Well, of course it did.

But not when it came to figures. Not statistically speaking. Working in tandem with the Oslo police force, the National Police Directorate had already started mapping all reports made during 2007 where the motive for the crime could be linked to race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. The final report was just around the corner and Johanne had already seen most of the material.

The number of crimes was small, and dwindling.

During 2007 in the whole of Norway 399 cases of hate-motivated crime were registered. Of this number more than 35 per cent were simply the result of an incorrect code being entered in the police register. In other words, just over 250 cases could be classified as hate crime.

For an entire year, in a country with a population of almost five million. Compared with the total number of reported crimes, 256 cases was too small a number to be of any interest.

But it was, at least to politicians. Since just one hate crime was one too many; since the hidden statistics for hate crime must be significant; and since the Red-Green coalition government wanted to enter the election in autumn 2009 with a trump card up its sleeve when it came to minority groups that sounded off whenever a homosexual was assaulted in the street or a synagogue was sprayed with graffiti. That’s why Johanne had been asked to undertake a closer study of the phenomenon.

The task was formulated so vaguely that she had spent the entire autumn defining her parameters and limiting the work that lay ahead. She had also started collecting the relatively comprehensive quantities of data available from other countries. Mainly the United States, but also several European countries had been cataloguing and to some extent working on this particular form of law breaking for quite some time. The material was growing, and she still didn’t really have a proper grasp of what she was going to do and where she wanted to go.

Then came the financial crisis.

And all those billions in public money.

Certain branches of Norwegian research were drowned in funds. Since the police were included in the many initiatives aimed at keeping the wheels moving and preventing economic collapse, Johanne found herself with four times as much money at her disposal as a few weeks before. This opened up new opportunities, including the possibility of hiring younger researchers and scientific assistants. At the same time, this extra money created fresh problems. She had been on the point of finalizing a framework for her project, and now she had to start all over again.

It was hard work, and it was always difficult to get going. But she was looking forward to it.

It was evening. Kristiane had been unusually co-operative while they were visiting Isak’s parents, and Ragnhild had cheered up as soon as the children each received a big bag of Christmas sweets. As Kristiane was staying with her paternal grandparents so that she could spend the next three days with her father, Ragnhild had also insisted on staying. As usual, Isak had smiled broadly and said that was fine. Presumably he had realized the same thing as Adam and Johanne quite some time ago: Kristiane was calmer, slept better and was more cheerful when Ragnhild was around.

The building was quiet. The neighbours downstairs must have gone away. When Johanne got home at about eight o’clock, the ground floor was in darkness. In her own apartment she went from room to room, switching on all the lights. She left all the doors open; the dog liked to wander around if he wasn’t shut in Kristiane’s room at night. The soft pattering of his paws and the cheerful thud every time Jack settled down on the floor always made her feel slightly less lonely on the rare occasions when she actually was alone. Eventually she took her laptop into the living room, sat down on the sofa and sipped a glass of wine as she surfed the net, without concentrating on anything in particular. She was looking for some kind of Scrabble game when the phone rang.

‘Hi, it’s me.’

It was a long time since she had been so pleased to hear his voice.

‘Hi darling. How’s it going up there?’

Adam laughed.

‘Well, basically I’ve trodden on the toes of the Bergen police; I called to see the widower just a few hours after he’d been told that his wife was dead. I’ve already fallen out with his son, I think, and on top of all that I’ve eaten so much for dinner that I feel ill.’

Johanne laughed too.

‘That doesn’t sound good. Where are you staying?’

‘At the SAS Hotel on Bryggen. Nice room. They moved me to a suite when they found out where I was from. It’s not exactly packed out here at Christmas.’

‘So did they know why you were there?’

‘No. It’s a miracle. It’s almost exactly twenty-four hours since Bishop Lysgaard was murdered, and so far not a single bloody journalist has got wind of it. All that Christmas food must have finished them off.’

‘Or the schnapps. Or maybe it’s just that the Bergen police are better at keeping quiet than their colleagues in Oslo. By the way, I’ve just been watching the evening news. They had a little piece about the case, but they more or less just said she was dead.’

On the other end of the line she could hear noises that indicated Adam was taking off his tie. She suddenly felt quite emotional. She knew him so well she could hear something like that on the phone.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to take off my shoes and this damned noose around my neck. That’s better. What kind of a day have you had? Was it horrible having to do all that clearing up with the kids around? You must be worn out. I’m sorry I—’

‘It was fine. As you know I can get by perfectly well without one night’s sleep. The kids played in the garden for a couple of hours and I just …’

She had managed to push away the thought of the strange man for the entire afternoon and evening. Now a feeling of unease stabbed through her, and she fell silent.

‘Hello? Johanne?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘Is something wrong? Johanne?’

Adam would simply dismiss it. He would sigh his weary sigh and tell her not to be so worried about the children all the time. Adam would have very little understanding of the fact that Johanne had discovered that a complete stranger knew the name of her elder daughter. Besides which, the man had been so well wrapped up in his overcoat, hat and scarf that Adam would maintain it could have been a neighbour if she told him about the incident; and that horrible little coldness would come between them and make it more difficult for her to get to sleep later, alone, with no other sounds around her apart from Jack’s snuffling and constant farting.

‘No, no,’ she said, trying to make her voice smile. ‘Except that you’re not here, of course. Ragnhild wanted to stay over with Isak’s parents.’

‘That’s good. Isak really is generous. He puts—’

‘As if you weren’t every bit as kind to his daughter! As if—’

‘Calm down, Johanne! That wasn’t what I meant. I’m glad you all had a nice evening, and that you’ve got some time for yourself. That certainly doesn’t happen very often.’

She moved the laptop on to the coffee table and drew the blanket more tightly around her.

‘You’re right,’ she said, this time with a genuine smile. ‘It’s actually really nice to be all on my own. Apart from Jack, of course. By the way, there must be something wrong with his food. He’s farting like mad.’

Adam laughed. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Doing a little bit of work. Surfing the net a little bit. Drinking a little drop of wine. Missing you.’

‘That all sounds good. Apart from the work – it’s Christmas Day! I’m just about to go to bed. I’m worn out. Tomorrow I’m hoping to interview the Bishop’s son. God knows how that will go – he’s already taken a dislike to me.’

‘I’m sure he hasn’t. Everybody likes you. And because you are the very best detective in the whole wide world, I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

Adam laughed again.

‘You mustn’t keep saying that to the kids! Just before Christmas when we were queuing at the checkout in Maxi, Ragnhild suddenly stood up in the shopping trolley and announced at the top of her voice that her daddy was the very, very, very best – I think she must have said “very” ten times – detective in the world. Embarrassing. People laughed.’

‘But she’s right,’ said Johanne with a smile. ‘You’re the best in the world at most things.’

‘Idiot. Night-night.’

‘Night-night, my love.’

Adam’s voice disappeared. Johanne stared at the telephone for a while, as if she was hoping he might still be there and would reassure her that the man by the fence posed no threat. Then she got up slowly, put down the phone and went over to the window. The new moon was suspended at an angle above the apartment block next door. There was still frost on the ground. The cold had sunk its teeth into Oslo, but the sky was clear, day after day, and all week there had been the most breathtaking sunsets. The few sparse snowflakes that had fallen during the afternoon covered the garden like a thin film. The sky was clear once again, it was dark, and after a while Johanne felt ready for bed.

*

A woman stared out of a window, not knowing if she would ever sleep again. Perhaps she was already sleeping. Everything was strange and unreal, like a dream. She had been born in this house, in this room, she had always lived here and looked out of this leaded window, a cross dividing the view into four different parts of the world, as her father had told her when she was little and believed every word he said. Now everything was twisted and distorted. She was used to the rain against the window pane. It often rained, almost all the time. It was raining in Bergen and she wept and didn’t know what she was seeing. Life had been chopped into pieces. The view from the little house was no longer hers.

She had waited for twenty-four hours – a long night and an even longer day – in a state of not knowing which she could do nothing about. Just as her life had followed a course that had been determined by circumstances beyond her control, so these endless hours of waiting had been something she just had to suffer. There had been no way out, not until the woman on TV had told her what she had, in fact, already known when she woke up in the armchair in front of the screen exactly twenty-four hours earlier, with a fear that grasped her by the throat and made her hands shake.

Because she had waited before.

She had waited all her life, and she had got used to it.

This time everything was different. She had felt a confirmation of something that couldn’t be true – shouldn’t be true – and yet she still knew, because she had lived like this for such a long time, utterly, utterly alone.

The doorbell rang, so late and so unexpectedly that the woman gave a little scream.

She opened the door and recognized him. It was an eternity since they had last met, but the eyes were the same. He was weeping, like her, and asked if he could come in. She didn’t want him to. He wasn’t the one she wanted to see. She didn’t want to see anyone.

When she let him in and closed the door behind him, she asked God to let her wake up.

Please, please God. Please be kind to me.

Let me wake up now.

*

‘Surely nobody’s awake at this time of night?’

Beate Krohn looked at the news editor with a resigned expression. It was almost midnight. They were alone in the news office among silent, flickering monitors and the quiet hum of computers and the ventilation system. Here and there someone had hung up the odd Christmas decoration: a strand of red tinsel, a garland of little Norwegian flags. In one corner stood a sparse Christmas tree with a crooked star on top. Most of the chocolates and biscuits that had been provided as a consolation for those who had to work over Christmas had been eaten. Sheets of paper and old newspapers were strewn all over the place.

‘What about your parents?’

He just wouldn’t give up. He had lit a cigarette – such a blatant breach of the rules that she was quite impressed in spite of herself.

‘They’ll be asleep, too,’ she said. ‘Besides which, I’d frighten the life out of them if I rang this late. We have rules about that kind of thing in our family. Not before seven thirty in the morning, and not after ten at night. Unless somebody’s died.’

‘But somebody has died!’

‘Not like that. I mean—’

He interrupted her with a deep drag on his cigarette and an impatient wave of his hand.

‘Let me show you how it’s done,’ he grinned, the cigarette clamped between his teeth. ‘Watch and learn.’

His fingers flew over his mobile before he put it to his ear.

‘Hello Jonas, it’s Sølve.’

Silence for three seconds.

‘Sølve Borre. At NRK. Where are you?’

Beate Krohn had once read that the most common opening remark in the entire world when it came to mobile phone conversations was ‘Where are you?’ After that she had sworn never to ask the question herself.

‘Listen, Jonas. Bishop Lysgaard died last night, as you’ve no doubt heard. The thing is—’

He had obviously been interrupted, and took the opportunity to have another deep drag on his cigarette.

‘Sure. Sure. But the thing is, I just wanted to check what she died of. Just to satisfy my curiosity. I’ve got one of those feelings, you know …’

Pause.

‘But can’t you give one of them a ring? There must be somebody there who owes you a favour. Can’t you—?’

Once again he was interrupted. By now the cloud of smoke surrounding him was so dense Beate was afraid it would set off the alarm. She took a step back to avoid getting the smell in her clothes.

‘Nice one, Jonas! Nice one. Give me a ring later. Doesn’t matter what time it is!’ He ended the call. ‘There you go,’ he said, his fingers moving over the keys. ‘Come here and I’ll teach you something. Look at these messages.’

Beate leaned hesitantly over his shoulder and read the message saying that Bishop Lysgaard was dead. It hadn’t changed since she last saw it.

‘Notice anything odd?’ asked the editor.

‘No.’

She coughed discreetly and turned away.

‘I don’t know how many messages like that I’ve read in my life,’ he said, completely unmoved. ‘But it has to be a lot. By and large, they’re all exactly the same. The tone is slightly formal, and they don’t really say much. But they almost always say more than the fact that the person concerned is dead. “So-and-so passed away unexpectedly at home.” “So-and-so passed away after a short illness.” “So-and-so died in a car accident in Drammen last night.” That kind of thing.’

His fingers drew so many quotation marks in the air that ash went all over the keyboard. It was already so worn that the letters were barely visible.

‘But this one,’ he said, pointing at the display. ‘This one just says “Bishop Eva Karin Lysgaard died yesterday evening. She was sixty-two years old …” And so on and so on, blah blah blah.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ she said firmly.

‘Oh no,’ said the news editor, still smiling broadly. ‘Probably not. But it needs checking. How do you think a guy like me became a journalist at NRK before I was twenty-one, with no training?’

He pointed meaningfully at his nose.

‘I’ve got it, that’s how.’

The telephone rang. Beate Krohn stared at it in surprise, as if the editor had just shown her a conjuring trick.

‘Sølve Borre,’ he yapped, dropping his cigarette stub into a mineral water bottle. ‘Right. Exactly.’

He sat in silence for a few seconds. The mischievous expression disappeared. His eyes narrowed. He reached for a pen and made a few illegible notes in the margin of a newspaper.

‘Thanks,’ he said eventually. ‘Thank you, Jonas. I owe you big time, OK?’

He sat staring at his phone for a moment. Suddenly he looked up, completely transformed.

‘Bishop Lysgaard was murdered,’ he said slowly. ‘She was fucking murdered on Christmas Eve.’

‘How … ?’ Beate Krohn began, sinking down on to a chair. ‘How do you know … ? Who was that you were talking to?’

The chief news editor leaned back in his chair and looked her straight in the eye.

‘I hope you’ve learned something tonight,’ he said quietly. ‘And the most important thing of all is this: you’re nothing as a journalist without good sources. Work long and hard to cultivate them, and never, ever give them away. Never.’

Beate Krohn struggled in vain to control her blushes.

‘And now,’ said the editor with a disarming smile as he lit yet another cigarette, ‘now we’re really going to hit the phones. Time to start waking people up!’