back in her chair. This man, this killer, is here. In Oslo. There is a file on him, but no charges against him. No warrant for his arrest. No request from the Serbs for extradition. He is here with the Norwegian government’s blessing, using taxpayers’ money to take the tram and buy cigarettes. It might not have incensed her so much had all the facts not been laid out so clearly in the file. Immigration knew he was KLA, knew he’d been in death squads, knew he was fleeing from the Serbian government. Somehow, all that information had been used to make the case
Why haven’t the Serbs tried to get him? She can only speculate. Maybe they have, and she doesn’t know the story. Maybe they plan to kill him off the books, given that Serbia abolished the death sentence in 2002. Maybe they’re happy to be rid of him, and want to call it a day. Maybe they know about his own family, and worry that a prosecution against him will only open up their own crimes to further international scrutiny.
So much falls through the cracks. This veil of equal justice under the law is always breeched by those who practise
Families. Such a loose term. Sigrid picks up the woman’s file. Background, birthday, education, date of immigration — all of this is now stapled to her new file. Date of the murder, location, cause of death. It’s still an open file, of course. New information is being added all the time.
There is a list of her personal effects. Everything is remarkably common. A Pulsar wristwatch. Some costume jewellery from Arts and Crafts in Oslo. Clothing. A little key for a lock box of some kind — maybe a diary or even the mailbox key. A lovely little white gold ring with a single blue sapphire that must have been a gift, or something of sentimental value. No earrings. No money.
Despite the buzz and energy of the main office, she hears only silence as she imagines Enver placing the cord around the woman’s throat and squeezing the life out of her.
‘Where’s my file on the boy?’ she shouts.
Some officer yells something about it being on the way. Sigrid shakes her head. Things should be moving faster than this.
‘Where’s my information on Horowitz?’
‘The records from the Marines are in archives and haven’t been digitised yet, because they’re so old, so some private is spelunking for them with a flashlight.’
‘I need to know what we’re actually dealing with from that end, OK?’
Whether he was a sniper or a clerk, Sheldon Horowitz had been a Marine. And this being a murder case, involving — one way or another — a former US soldier, Sigrid has had the idea of placing the request for information through the Foreign Ministry, given that Norway and the US were NATO allies, to see how that worked out. To her surprise, the Americans were getting right on it.
Her theory was that the staff at the massive, fortified American embassy in Oslo on Henrik Ibsen’s gate were bored. Yes, Norway is in NATO, and there is a lot of fish and oil and gas here. But… really. What could they possibly be doing in there?
‘Nothing from the terminals?’
‘What about the granddaughter?’
‘They’re at the summer house at Glamlia,’ replies yet another officer. ‘They have a phone. They’ve been calling in like we told them to.’
‘Maybe the old man is headed there,’ Sigrid says.
Everyone is quiet.
But no one says anything. Then someone suggests, ‘They’ll call us, won’t they? They’ve been staying in touch like we asked.’ And some people agree. Others mumble.
‘Call the local police and send someone out there tomorrow morning. Let them know there’s a problem. What about car rentals?’
Faxes were sent around. We’ve got nothing there.
Sigrid would be content to have nothing if there was nothing to have. She was always reasonable about aligning her expectations with reality. But surely, in a search for an old man, a younger man, and a small boy in such a small city, there had to be something out there?
The conversation with the immigration official grated on her. This was no time to be thinking about it, sure, but how could the authorities put the safety of the Norwegian people and their general welfare — the ones who are citizens, and vote, and have struggled for their democracy — after those of the foreigners? Surely it should not come at their expense, but it shouldn’t come after, either.
And how can the aspirational ideals of good Norwegians be allowed to eclipse the data? Good, hard data? How can we be this foolishly optimistic about the world only sixty years after having been occupied by the Nazis? Are we thick?
Or maybe it’s a generational thing, which explains why older people are voting for the more conservative parties.
It’s enough to encourage a trip to the Vinmonopolet.
Sigrid isn’t political — except when the politicians irritate her — but it strikes her that there are two ways you can act. On faith or on evidence. And if it’s going to be faith, then the liberals and the conservatives alike have to be grouped in the same camp as people who govern from their hearts and not their heads. The only decision to be made about them is whether their views give you a warm feeling. And on the other side are those trying to make things better by facing the way that things are, and working from there. It doesn’t seem like just a coincidence to Sigrid that doctors and engineers bicker less than politicians.
Enver Bardhosh Berisha. KLA. Let into the country by Immigration on the basis of legitimate threats to his life in Serbia, and with a son in the country.
KLA. The Kosovo Liberation Army. It was a paramilitary group that started off with Western and NATO support because of their armed struggle against Serbian ethnic cleansing, but eventually lost the backing of the West because of their drug running, and the executions, mass murders, and other atrocities they committed that undermined any moral standing they might have had. It all confounded the rest of Europe, and, without a clear good guy or bad guy, we just changed the channel.
Sigrid puts down the file, rubs her eyes, and then shouts, ‘My light bulb’s burnt out,’ which for some reason causes laughter among her staff. So she adds, ‘I need a new light bulb,’ and this only make them laugh more.
The thing about military people is that they have social standing. You work your way up, and people recognise your status. When the group breaks up, you lose the one thing that was precious during the rebellion: respect.
Would a man like Enver — a senior soldier with confirmed kills but no family, no money, no roots — turn his back on his own status and reputation, and suddenly flee the fight to a remote Scandinavian country to become a peaceful family man? What kind of woman would have a man like that anyway?
Sigrid’s thoughts leave the station and go to her father at their kitchen table. She recalls a conversation they had once when he explained something useful, which she has since had a hard time explaining to others.
‘It’s all artifice,’ he’d said with uncharacteristic seriousness.
‘You mean it’s all meaningless?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean that at all.’ He paused for a very long time before he spoke again. Her father was not an affected man and did not indulge in dramatic pauses. Rather, he was motivated to be precise. And sometimes, he said, that requires time to collect one’s thoughts. If the other people walk off in the meantime, then clearly they are not interested in the right answer.
‘What I mean,’ he’d continued, ‘is that the buildings, the desks, the great structures are all products of ideas.
