Scarred by Thomas Enger Read Free Book Online Page A

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