Burned

‘How do you think he would have reacted to the film? Wouldn’t he have assumed that Mona, Henriette that is, might have been unfaithful in real life? Given that most of the plot mirrored reality?’

‘I don’t know,’ Anette responds. ‘And anyway, it doesn’t matter now.’

‘But didn’t Henriette consider this when she wrote the script? Wasn’t it something you discussed?’

‘Well, we — ’

She ponders this, but doesn’t expand on her reply.

‘So Henriette had no problem using her boyfriend as the basis of a character who is set up? How would you like it, if your boyfriend did that to you?’

‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’

‘No, no. But you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Of course. Maybe Henriette had talked to Mahmoud about it, what do I know? Explained to him that we didn’t mean it literally, that we don’t believe he’s an idiot who should be taken off our streets. I’ve no idea.’

She shrugs.

‘Does he support sharia and hudud punishments? Do you know?’

‘I can’t imagine that he does.’

‘So the Yashid character wasn’t a fanatical, fundamentalist Muslim?’

‘No.’

‘Then why was Mona stoned to death? Don’t you have to be a Muslim to be stoned to death in accordance with sharia and hudud?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, you still haven’t got it, have you?’

‘Then explain it to me. From the start.’

Anette sighs.

‘The point of the film is to highlight what’s going on in the world, something that might, one day, be commonplace in Norway, if extreme Islamic beliefs gain a foothold and are allowed to flourish. Soon it won’t matter whether we are Norwegians or Muslims. What do you think Oslo will look like in thirty or forty years? We’ll probably all be Muslims, indoctrinated and well behaved. That’s why Yashid is an ordinary Muslim and Mona is an ordinary Norwegian woman. To make people think.’

‘Right.’

‘Was that so difficult?’

She looks at him as if he is slow on the uptake.

‘No. But there’s nothing to suggest that might happen, Anette. Very few people believe that Norwegian law should give way to sharia.’

‘And?’

He frowns.

‘And? The premise for your film is wrong. It has no roots in reality. You’re not about to tell me that you also have a sick wish to be killed by eight gunshots?’

Anette looks up at the dark grey, ominous clouds.

‘I’m sure Henriette is up there with Theo van Gogh, as we speak. I didn’t know you were on their side.’

Henning sighs and forces the air through his nostrils. He looks frustrated.

‘There are aspects of Islam and sharia which I personally don’t care very much for, but what you’re doing only contributes to making matters worse. What about integration, multiculturalism and all that?’

‘Save it for the speeches. Besides, this has nothing to do with Stefan.’

He presses his lips together. He wants to carry on the discussion, but now is not the time. Instead, he thinks about Stefan and Romance. He remembers, from his own teenage years, how the boys doused themselves with excessive quantities of aftershave to impress the girls. Some even applied it to their clothes. It stank, in the changing rooms, in the classrooms, even in the school playground. That might have been why the smell was still in the tent when Thorbjorn Skagestad discovered the body.

He becomes aware that Anette is looking at him. She coughs anxiously.

‘I tried getting Henriette to drop the Gaarder storyline. I didn’t think it was relevant to the film’s message. But she wouldn’t listen to me. I also thought it was a bit weird, surely everyone would know who it was based on? The Foldvik family had suffered enough.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Stefan told me about his mother. That she had been raped and…’

‘Stefan told you about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you know Stefan?’

‘Stefan won a script competition last year. I wanted to film his script for one of my projects. It was a good story.’

‘Didn’t he get a prize?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, didn’t the organisers of the competition promise to film his script? That’s the usual prize in such competitions, isn’t it?’

‘It depends, but it wasn’t the case here. I think he got a few thousand kroner and an invitation to Zentropa in Denmark. Stefan was thrilled when I asked him. Stefan’s a nice guy, a smart guy. But dangerous, too. I got the feeling that he had some mental problems.’

‘What do you mean? What made you think that?’

‘I’m not really sure. It’s a little hard to explain. You needed to spend time with him to notice. Sometimes, he was over the moon. Laughed at everything, hyper, almost. Other times you could barely get a word out of him. Like he had shut down completely.’

Henning nods and thinks that the description fits a boy who takes his own life after taking someone else’s. What if the burden grew too heavy or the memories too powerful? Maybe he couldn’t bear to close his eyes at night without seeing her dead, without reliving what he had done?

Perhaps there is nothing suspicious about his death, after all? But then why have his parents gone missing?