Burned

This is for all the women in the world. But especially for us in Norway.

Merete smiles. The camera moves slowly from Merete’s face to the ground behind her. We see the spade. We see the bag Mona brought with her. It is open. Next to it lies a large heavy stone.

Henriette can’t possibly have subjected herself to this, Henning thinks, and looks up. She can’t possibly have acted out a role, used her own script and let herself be stoned to death to promote a political message?

It’s only a movie, Henning. He hears his mother’s voice and remembers how he used to climb up on her lap when Detective Derrick solved murder mysteries every Friday evening. Someone must have used Henriette’s script against her. To mock her? To point the finger at someone?

He reads on: Caption against a black background: Two weeks later

13. INT — AN INTERVIEW ROOM AT THE POLICE STATION — LATE MORNING:

Yashid Iqbal sits at a table. Police officers sit opposite. The officers look grave.

OFFICER 1:

What did you do after you received the text messages, Yashid? Did you go over to confront her?

Yashid doesn’t reply.

OFFICER 2:

We know that you tried to call her. We also know that you left your flat just after eight o’clock that night.

OFFICER 1:

There’s evidence of a brutal sexual assault, Yashid.

OFFICER 2:

And we have your laptop. You checked her e-mail that afternoon. Why did you do that?

OFFICER 1:

We get it, Yashid. You got angry. It’s understandable. She was screwing around, you got angry and you taught her a lesson.

OFFICER 2:

You can make it much easier for yourself by talking, Yashid. Tell us what happened. You’ll feel better for it.

Yashid says nothing.

OFFICER 1:

After you got the text messages, you went to the place where she was filming. You raped her and buried her in a hole in the ground. Afterwards, you picked up some heavy stones and threw them at her until she died. That’s the appropriate punishment, isn’t it? For being unfaithful?

Yashid looks at the police officers. Yashid’s lawyer leans towards him and whispers into his ear. Yashid leans forward.

YASHID:

I love Mona. I’m innocent.

The police officers look at each other and sigh.

Caption against a black background: Five months later

14. INT — OSLO COURTHOUSE — NOON:

Yashid sits next to his lawyer. Harald Gaarder sits some rows behind him. He looks depressed and gloomy. Farouk Iqbal is there, too. He looks anxious. The judge enters. Everyone stands up.

JUDGE:

Sit down, please.

Everyone sits down. The judge looks at the jury.

JUDGE:

Has the jury reached a verdict?

FOREMAN OF THE JURY:

We have.

15. INT — OSLO COURTHOUSE — NOON:

Close-up of Yashid. He looks down. He is visibly nervous. The camera zooms out. Merete sits at the back of the courtroom. The picture of her grows sharper. She remains in focus while the foreman of the jury reads out the verdict.

FOREMAN OF THE JURY:

In the case against Yashid Iqbal we, the jury, find the defendant guilty of all charges.

The courtroom erupts with jubilation. Merete looks at Harald Gaarder. She smiles to him. Gaarder looks away and leaves. Merete takes out a mobile. She writes a text message. We see what she writes.

‘One down. Plenty more to go.’ She scrolls through her contacts, finds Mona, and presses ‘send’.

THE END

He puts down the script, slightly disappointed, and rubs his eyes. The trailer promised a blood-dripping thriller and all he got was a mediocre drama. The script was supposed to be his Pandora’s Box, but there was no mention of stun guns, floggings or severed hands. He begins to wonder if other, more brutal, versions of the script exist.

The initial premise was fine: Two women stage a ‘murder’ and make sure that one woman’s boyfriend is arrested and convicted of the murder, even though he is innocent. It is only a flight of fancy, Henning reasons, wishful thinking. Translated into real life, Mona and Merete will respectively be Henriette and Anette, while Mahmoud Marhoni is Yashid Iqbal. And Tariq is Farouk.

So far so good. And, so far, most of it matches Henning’s own theories. Mahmoud Marhoni is innocent, and someone is trying to set him up. Text messages, hinted infidelity, a last rough fuck which borders on rape. It won’t be easy for a suspect to distance himself from that kind of evidence, especially not if the suspect stays silent during interview.

But who is Harald Gaarder? His family and its fate were given so much space in the script that they must be important. But are they important in real life, too? As his mother said, it’s only a film. Not everything has to mirror reality.

He explores the possibility, anyway. Harald Gaarder had an affair with Mona — who else could it have been — and the infidelity is punished by stoning. But then why do Gaarder and Merete look at each other at the end? Why was she smiling?