Free Scarred by Thomas Enger Page B

observing?
    Henning has been asking himself those same questions in the last few weeks. Last month Pulli contacted Henning and told him he had information about what happened on the night that Jonas died. But before Pulli was able to tell him, he was murdered in Oslo Prison. Because of what he was about to tell Henning? And what did the original Indicia report say about Pulli’s movements on the night in question? Who might that information have incriminated – unless it was damaging to Pia Nøkleby herself?
    Henning was tempted, of course he was, to confront Nøkleby when he discovered what she had done, but he has since had second thoughts. He decided to protect his source who had told him Nøkleby had edited the report and find another way to proceed. There must be others who know something.
    He looks at Nøkleby as she stops on the fourth step from the bottom and surveys the crowd. TV camera lights are switched on. Microphones are stretched out. Mobile telephones switched to recording mode.
    Henning knows the police are not about to disclose anything that he doesn’t already know. They might release a photograph of the victim, tell them a little about her background and confirm the information that Henning has already included in the article he filed earlier today. But Nøkleby won’t say anything about how the victim was maimed. Instead she will say that the investigation is looking at every aspect, technical as well as tactical, and that they have solid evidence that they are following up. But no one will be told what that solid evidence is, obviously.
    Henning is there mainly to see how Nøkleby behaves, if her face gives anything away. He tries to catch her eye, but her gaze glides across the large room and the reporters assembled there.
    When she has finished her statement and everyone has gone their separate ways, Henning sends her a text message asking politely for a private chat. He sits down on a bench outside the police station from where he has an uninterrupted view of Oslo Prison and waits for her to reply. This is the place they usually meet. Occasionally she invites him to her office, but only when she has information she officially wants the media to know about.
    While he clutches his mobile waiting for her to get back to him, life in Oslo rushes by on the roads below. The sky is just as restless as satellite images played back at high speed. And he wonders how long it will be before another gigantic bucket of water will be tipped over the city.
    He thinks about the murder of Erna Pedersen. Given the number of potential witnesses it’s odd that no one saw anything. On the other hand – all the patients on Ward 4 were suffering from some form of dementia, so even if they had seen something, there is no guarantee that they would have remembered it. It is even possible that one of them might have killed her and not even know it.
    He tries to visualise Erna Pedersen, old and grey, in her wheelchair when she met her killer. He must have been known to her. No stranger would enter the room of an eighty-three-year-old woman, strangle her and then proceed to whack knitting needles into her eyes afterwards.
    But why do it when the woman was already dead?
    The killer must have suffered an enormous, pent-up rage. Killing her wasn’t enough. This gives Henning an idea. The murder is unlikely to have been planned in advance. Not in detail, at any rate. Then the killer would have used something other than the victim’s own knitting needles – unless he knew that she always had them by her side.
    There can be no doubt that this was a crime of passion. And everyone who commits a crime of passion is affected by it one way or another. It takes time to recover from such raw emotions. How can the killer have found an outlet for such tremendous pressure without anyone noticing a change in him?
    Since no one at the care home saw the killer, they must have been distracted. Or did the killer switch from being Mr Hyde one