Burned

He knows that people will read this story, even though it is not very exciting. There is something about a man’s last words. They appeal, no matter what he said. And when it is as exclusive as this, everyone with even a vague interest in the story will click on it. Other media will trawl the story for quotes they can use. This means ‘…, said Tariq Marhoni to 123news, only minutes before he died.’

Quotes. Apart from advertising revenue and profit, being quoted in rival media is what matters to many newspapers. At the same time, it is possibly also the greatest source of irritation, especially among smaller publications, when the big fish use a quote from someone else’s story and fail to credit them.

This happens every day. The big fish are so afraid of the little fish growing bigger that they sacrifice both good manners and press ethics in the process. If it isn’t a case of downright theft, they will often contact the source to obtain the same quotes which enables them to insist — often with a large portion of indignation — that ‘we just happened to have the same idea’. NRK, for example, has a standard policy that if a story appears in two media, at least, there is no reason to credit either of them.

He doesn’t know if this policy has changed during the two years he has been out of the game, but it’s impossible not to quote the Tariq story. He guesses that Heidi Kjus will be particularly pleased about it. Possibly Iver Gundersen, too.

No, on second thoughts, no. Not Gundersen.

He thinks about BBB. Bad Boys Burning. What a name for a gang. Some gangs have a great need to send out warnings. Bandidos. Hell’s Angels. And yet, Henning can feel himself growing curious about BBB. He googles the full name and gets thousands of hits, many of which are irrelevant and inaccurate. Reviews of the film Bad Boys, articles about a Swedish crooner who had a hit with a song called ‘Burning’ a couple of years ago, people who are described as ‘bad boys’ and a gang from the Furuset area of Oslo, who also call themselves that. Little of relevance.

However, he finds an article from Aftenposten from six months ago about a gang confrontation in Furuset, coincidentally. The Google text doesn’t mention BBB in the link, but he clicks on it anyway.

He gasps for air. Nora wrote this story. She has ventured into dangerous territory. Gangs are usually associated with drugs and debt collecting. Its members are wannabe criminals, people searching for an identity, usually. That’s one of the reasons they become hooligans. To have a place to belong.

Nora’s headline is ‘ BRUTAL GANG CLASH IN FURUSET ’. He looks at the story. No photos from the crime scene. Only an archive photo of an axe against a baseball bat. He guesses that Nora worked the night shift and that Aftenposten wasn’t prepared to fork out on a new picture from Scanpix. Or that Scanpix has had to make cuts, too.

Nevertheless, he can see that Nora did a good job. She interviewed terviewed the officer in charge of the investigation, the head of Oslo’s Operation Gangbuster, got hold of two eyewitnesses, spoke to a high-profile ex-gang member who knows what this kind of confrontation is about and delivered fifty lines on a subject which normally gets only a mention in most newspapers.

People don’t usually care about gang fights. They think: ‘great, let them kill each other, get a few idiots off our streets’. He isn’t sure why he does it, but he decides to call her. It is possible she has fresh information about these morons, but he suspects he might have an ulterior motive.

He wants to know where she is.

He knows that it is stupid and beyond all reason, but he can’t help it. He wants to know if she is with Gundersen, if her voice is happy or sad, if there is a hint of longing when she hears him speak. They haven’t spoken on the telephone since the day Jonas died. She called to ask him if he could pick up Jonas from nursery and look after him until the following morning, even though it was actually her week to have him. She wasn’t feeling very well. He replied: yes, of course, don’t worry about it.

And he knows it is not the fire itself, or that Jonas died, which is eating Nora. She will never forgive herself for falling ill that day and asking him to swap. If she hadn’t felt unwell, Jonas wouldn’t have been with Henning. And their son would still be alive.

He is convinced that whenever Nora feels a touch of ’flu or a twinge somewhere, she dismisses it as unimportant. She will be fine. I’m all right, I’m going to work. And every time, the same thought haunts her: why didn’t I just pull myself together and pick him up? How ill was I really?