Fear Not (22 page)

‘Don’t joke. I’m interested. What are you up to?’

He took a sip from his cup. The blend of tea was fresh and light, with a slightly acidic scent.

‘I was thinking,’ she said slowly, then paused. ‘I was thinking of approaching the concept of hatred from the outside. From the inside, too, of course, but in order to say anything meaningful about hate crime I think we have to delve deeply into the concept itself. With all this money that’s suddenly raining down on us …’

She looked up as if it really was.

‘… I can bring in that girl I mentioned, for example.’

‘Girl?’

‘Charlotte Holm. She specializes in the history of ideas. She’s the one I told you about, the one who wrote … this.’

She glanced around quickly before picking up a booklet.

‘
Love and Hatred: A Conceptual Historical Analysis
,’ Adam read slowly.

‘Exciting,’ she said, tossing the booklet aside. ‘I’ve spoken to her, and she’s probably going to start working with me in February.’

‘So how many of you will that make?’ asked Adam with a frown, as if the thought of a bunch of researchers using taxpayers’ money to immerse themselves in hatred made him deeply sceptical.

‘Four. Probably. It’ll be cool. I’ve always worked alone, more or less. And this …’

She picked up a piece of paper in one hand and waved the other hand at the rest of the papers surrounding her.

‘This is all legal hatred. Verbal hatred that is protected by the concept of freedom of speech. Since malicious comments against
minorities correspond to a significant extent with what is clearly hate crime, I think it’s interesting to see how it all hangs together. Where the boundaries are.’

‘What boundaries?’

‘The boundaries for what is covered by freedom of speech.’

‘But isn’t that almost everything?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

‘Unfortunately? Surely we should thank God for the fact that we can say more or less anything we like in this country!’

‘Of course. But listen …’

She tucked her feet underneath her. He looked at her. When he got home he had just wanted to fall into bed, even though it wasn’t even ten o’clock. He was still tired after a day that had been much too long and not particularly productive, but he no longer had any desire to sleep. Over the years he and Johanne had fallen into a pattern where most of their life together revolved around his work, her concerns and the children. When he saw her like this, sitting amidst a sea of paper without even mentioning the children, he remembered in a flash what it had been like to be intensely in love with her.

‘Freedom of speech goes a long way,’ she said, searching for an article among the chaos. ‘As it should. But as you know, it has some limitations. The most interesting comes under paragraph 135a in the penal code. I don’t want to bore you with too much legal stuff, but I just want to—’

‘You never bore me. Never.’

‘I’m sure I do.’

‘Not at the moment, anyway.’

A fleeting smile, and she went on. ‘A few people have been convicted for overstepping the law. Very few. The issue – or perhaps I should say the question of priorities – relates to freedom of speech. And judging by everything I have here …’

She waved her hands wearily before she found the book she was looking for.

‘… then freedom of speech rules. End of story.’

‘Well, isn’t that obvious?’ said Adam. ‘Fortunately. We’re a modern society, after all.’

‘I don’t know about modern. I’ve ploughed through everything these homophobic idiots have said recently—’

‘I’m not sure your conclusions are entirely scientific.’

She allowed herself to be interrupted. Sighed and put her hands behind her neck.

‘I’m not feeling particularly scientific at the moment. I’m tired. Worn out. In order for something to be classified as hate crime, it isn’t enough for the perpetrator to hate the victim as an individual. The hatred must be directed at the victim as the representative of a group. And if there’s one thing I have difficulty in grasping, it’s the idea of hatred against groups in a society like Norway. In Gaza, yes. In Kabul, yes. But here? In safe, social democratic Norway?’

She took a mouthful of tea and held it there for a few seconds before swallowing.

‘First of all I spent two months going through public pronouncements about Muslims, blacks and other ethnic and cultural minorities. What I found was generalization of the worst kind. It’s “they” and “we” right down the line.’

She drew quotation marks in the air with her fingers.

‘In the end I felt sick. I felt sick, Adam! I don’t know how an ordinary Norwegian Muslim mother or father can sleep at night. How they feel each night when they put their children to bed and settle them down and read to them, knowing how much crap people are saying and writing and thinking and feeling about them …’

Her eyes narrowed and she took off her glasses.

‘It’s as if everything is allowed these days, somehow. And of course most things should be. Political freedom of speech in Norway is getting close to the absolute. But this culture of expressing opinions …’

She breathed on the lenses and rubbed them with her shirt sleeve.

‘Sorry,’ she said, with a strained smile. ‘It’s just that I’d be so scared if I belonged to a distrusted minority and had children.’

Adam laughed. ‘I’m sure you could teach them a lot in that particular respect,’ he said. ‘On the subject of worrying about children, I mean. But …’

He stood up and pushed his tea cup to the other side of the table. He quickly swept aside the papers closest to Johanne on the sofa, and
sat down beside her. Put his arm around her. Kissed her hair, which smelled of pancakes.

‘But what’s this got to do with hate crime?’ he asked. ‘I mean, we’re agreed that this isn’t a criminal issue, but is protected by the law governing freedom of speech.’

‘It’s …’

She searched for the right words.

‘Since the substance in what is said,’ she began again, before breaking off once more. ‘Since the content of what is written and said corresponds exactly with … with what the others claim, those who attack, those who kill … then in my opinion …’

She lifted the glass without drinking.

‘If we’re going to succeed in saying anything meaningful about hate crimes, then we have to know what triggers them. And I don’t mean just the traditional explanations about the conditions in which a person grew up, experiences of loss, a history of conflict, the allocation of resources, religious opposition and so on. We have to know what …
triggers
them. I want to investigate whether there’s a connection between statements that could be regarded as full of hatred, but entirely legal, on the one hand, and hate-filled illegal crime on the other.’

‘You mean whether the former facilitates the latter?’

‘Among other things.’

‘But isn’t that obvious? Even though we can’t ban such statements because of it?’

‘We can’t actually make that assumption. The connection, I mean. It has to be investigated.’

‘Daddy!
Daddy!
’

Adam shot up. Johanne closed her eyes and prayed for all she was worth that Kristiane wouldn’t wake up. All she could hear was Adam’s calm, quiet voice interspersed with Ragnhild’s sleepy fretfulness. Then everything went quiet again. The neighbours down below must have already gone to bed. Earlier that evening the noise of some film that was clearly action-packed had got on her nerves; it had sounded as if she were actually in the line of fire.

‘She’s fine,’ Adam said, flopping down on the sofa beside her. ‘Probably just a dream. She wasn’t really awake. Now, where were we?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘I don’t actually know.’

‘I thought you were pleased about this project.’

She laid her hand on his stomach and crept into his embrace.

‘I am,’ she murmured. ‘But I’ve had an overdose of hatred at the moment. I haven’t even asked you how your day went.’

‘Please don’t.’

She could feel him slowly beginning to relax under her weight. His breathing became deeper, and she fell into the same rhythm. She could tell his belt was too tight from the roll of flesh bulging over the waistband of his trousers.

‘What do you think about some curtains, Adam?’

‘Hm?’

‘Curtains,’ she repeated. ‘Here in the living room. I just think the windows seem so big and dark in the winter.’

‘As long as I don’t have to choose them, go and buy them or hang them up.’

‘OK.’

They ought to get up. She ought to tidy all these papers. If the girls got up first tomorrow morning, as they usually did, things would be even more chaotic than they already were.

‘You smell so good,’ she whispered.

‘Everything about me is good,’ he said sleepily, and in his voice there was a feeling of security she hadn’t felt for a long time. ‘Besides which I am the best detective in the whole wide world.’

*

‘Police! Stop!
Stop, I said!
’

A young lad had just tumbled out of a dark green Volvo XC90. The number plates were so dirty they were illegible, despite the fact that the rest of the vehicle was quite clean. The oldest trick in the book, thought DC Knut Bork as he jumped out of the unmarked police car and set off in pursuit.

‘Stop that car!’ he yelled to his colleague, who was already striding across the carriageway.

For precisely five days it had been illegal to pay for sex in Norway. The new law had been passed by Stortinget without too much fuss, despite the fact that there was much to suggest that the new regulations
would cause a significant setback for the sex industry. Open street prostitution had gone into hiding, presumably to wait and see what happened. However, there were still plenty of whores of both sexes in Oslo, and the punters hadn’t stayed away either. Everything was just a little bit trickier for them all. Perhaps that was the idea.

The boy was unsteady on his feet, but fast. However, it took Bork only fifty metres to catch up with him.

The punter in the expensive car was terrified. He was about thirty-five and had tried to cover up two child seats in the back of the car with an old blanket. His designer jeans were still open at the fly when the driver’s door was yanked open. He stepped out on to the pavement as requested, and began to cry.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ yelled the boy on the other side of the street. ‘You’re killing me!’

‘No, I’m not,’ said DC Bork. ‘And if you’re a good boy I won’t need to use the handcuffs, will I? OK? They’re not particularly comfortable, so if I were you …’

He could feel that the boy was reluctantly beginning to resign himself to the situation. The skinny body gradually relaxed. Bork slowly loosened his grip, and when the boy turned around he seemed younger than he had from a distance. His face was childish and his features soft, although he weighed no more than sixty kilos. A cold sore extended from his top lip right up into his left nostril, which was distended with scabs and pus. Bork felt sick, and was tempted to let the boy run away.

‘I haven’t fucking done anything!’ He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his padded jacket. ‘It’s not illegal to sell yourself. It’s that bastard who should go to jail!’

‘He’ll probably be fined. But since you’re our witness, that means we need to talk to you as well. Let’s go over to our car. Come on. What’s your name?’

The boy didn’t reply. He stubbornly refused to budge when Knut Bork indicated they should move.

‘Right,’ said Bork. ‘There are two ways of doing this. There’s the nice, easy way, and then there’s the way that isn’t cool at all. Not for either of us. But it’s your choice.’

No response.

‘What’s your name?’

Still nothing.

‘OK,’ said Knut Bork, getting out the handcuffs. ‘Hands behind your back, please.’

‘Martin. Martin Setre.’

‘Martin,’ Bork repeated, putting away the handcuffs. ‘Have you any form of ID on you?’

A slight shake of the head and a shrug.

‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

Knut Bork grinned.

‘Seventeen,’ said Martin Setre. ‘Almost. Almost seventeen.’

The punter’s sobs grew louder. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning, and there was very little traffic. They could hear the rattle of a tram from Prinsens Gate, and a taxi hooted angrily at the two badly parked cars as it whizzed past on the hunt for passengers, its
FOR HIRE
sign illuminated. The Christmas party season and the financial crisis had strangled the city’s night life in January, and the streets were more or less deserted.

‘Knut,’ his colleague shouted. ‘I think you should come over here for a minute.’

‘Come on,’ said Knut Bork, grabbing the boy by the upper arm, which was so thin he could easily get his hand around it.

The boy reluctantly went with him.

‘I think we need to take this guy in,’ said his colleague as they drew closer. ‘Look what we’ve got here!’

Bork peered into the car.

Between the seats the central console was open. Under the armrest, in the space meant for sweets and snacks, lay a bulging bag that only just fitted. Knut Bork pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and opened one corner.

‘Well, well,’ he said, smacking his lips appreciatively. ‘Well I never. Hash, I presume?’

The question was unnecessary, and went unanswered. Bork weighed the bag in his hand; he seemed to be thinking.

‘Exactly half a kilo,’ he said eventually. ‘Not bad.’

‘It’s not mine,’ sobbed the man. ‘It’s his!’

He pointed at Martin.

‘What?’ howled the boy. ‘Thanks for fucking nothing! I asked him for five grams for the job, and look what I got!’

He unzipped his jacket and fumbled for something in the inside pocket. Eventually he managed to get hold of something between his index and middle fingers and pulled it out.

‘Three grams max,’ he said, dangling the little ball wrapped in cling film in front of his face. ‘Max! As if I’d have got out of the car if that big bag was mine! As if I wouldn’t have taken it with me if it belonged to me! Are you fucking crazy?’

‘There’s something in what he says, don’t you think?’