Her eyes swept over the desk. She was pedantically tidy when it came to her office, unlike every other area of her life. The overfilled in-tray at the edge of the desk had pricked her conscience when she left on the Friday before Christmas. Her out-tray was empty, and she shuddered at the thought of the stress that was waiting for her on the first day back after the holiday.
In the middle of the desk lay a file she didn’t recognize. She leaned over and read the yellow Post-it note stuck to the front.
DI Sorensen
Enclosed please find documentation relating to Hawre Ghani, presumed date of birth 16.12.1991. Please contact me asap.
DCI Harald Bull tel. 937***** / 231*****
The kids would be bad-tempered and impossible if she was away too long. On the other hand, they were sitting quietly, each with their Nintendo DS when she left them in the back of the car, illegally parked and with the engine running. They had received the games yesterday and were still fascinated by something new, so she thought she might be OK for a while.
She sat down, still wearing her coat, and opened the file.
The first thing she saw was a photograph. It was black and white and grainy, with pronounced shadows. It looked like an enlargement of a picture from some kind of ID document, but didn’t exactly fulfil the new criteria for passport photographs. The boy – because this was definitely a boy rather than a grown man – had his eyes half- closed. His mouth was open. Sometimes people who had been taken into custody pulled faces when they had their photo taken in order to make themselves unrecognizable. For some reason she didn’t think this boy had been playing up. It struck her that the picture had been taken in a rush, and that the photographer simply couldn’t be bothered to take another one.
Hawre Ghani was of no significance.
He hadn’t been important enough.
The photograph moved her.
The boy’s lips were shining, as if he had licked them. There was something childish and vulnerable about the full upper lip with its pronounced Cupid’s bow. The skin around his eyes was smooth, and there was no sign of stubble on his cheeks. The shadow of a moustache beneath a nose that was so large it almost obscured the rest of his face was the only indication that this was a boy well on his way through puberty. In general there was something youthfully disproportionate about the face. Something puppyish. A quick calculation told her that Hawre Ghani had just turned seventeen.
As she looked through the papers she realized he hadn’t, in fact, lived long enough to do so.
Despite the fact that Silje Sorensen had worked in the violent crime and sexual offences unit for many years, and had seen more than she could have ever imagined when she was a young police cadet, the next picture came as a shock. Something that must be a face lay inside a hood made of dark fabric. All the features had been smoothed out, the skin was discoloured and badly swollen. One eye socket was distended and empty, the other barely visible. The corpse’s upper lip was partially missing in a ragged tear, revealing four white teeth and one made of silver. At least she assumed it was silver; in the photograph it was more like a black, illogical contrast to the rest of the chalk-white teeth.
She moved on quickly.
The penultimate sheet in the thin file was a report written by an officer from the immigration squad. She had never heard of him. The report was dated 23 December 2008.
Two days ago.
I was at police headquarters this morning in order to transfer two illegal immigrants to the detention centre in Trandum. During the arrest I happened to hear two colleagues discussing an unidentified body which had been found in the harbour early on Sunday 20 December. One of them mentioned that the corpse, which had partially disintegrated, had a silver tooth in the upper jaw. I reacted immediately, because for the past six weeks I have been trying without success to track down Hawre Ghani, a Kurdish asylum seeker below the age of consent, in connection with his application to remain in Norway. During a fight between gangs in Oslo City in September (see my report number 98*****37/08), the right front tooth in Hawre Ghani’s upper jaw was knocked out. He was brought in after this incident, and I accompanied him to the dentist’s the following day. He requested a silver tooth instead of a porcelain crown, and as far as I am aware this was arranged in collaboration with social services, the asylum seekers’ council and the aforementioned dentist.
Since no registered enquiries have come to light regarding a missing person who might correspond to the body found in the harbour, I would suggest that the officer leading the investigation should contact the dentist, Dag Bra, Tasensenteret, tel. 2229*****, in order to compare the dead man’s teeth with his X-rays / records.
Silje Sorensen turned to the final page in the file. It was a copy of a handwritten document addressed to Harald Bull.
Hi Harald!
Due to the Christmas holiday I ran a quick and highly unscientific check today, Christmas Eve, based on the tip from the immigration squad. Dag Bra agreed to meet me at his surgery this morning. I showed him some pictures of the deceased’s teeth which I took myself (I took a few shots on Aker Brygge on Sunday morning, not brilliant quality but worth a try). He compared these with his own notes and X-rays, and we can assume until further notice that the deceased probably is the underage Kurdish asylum seeker as indicated. All documents have been copied to forensics. I presume that a formal identification will take place immediately after New Year – or perhaps between Christmas and New Year if the gods are on our side. I’ll write a report as soon as I’m back in the office. But now I need a HOLIDAY!
Merry Christmas!
Bengt
P.S. I spoke to forensics yesterday. There are indications that the deceased was killed using something resembling a garrotte. The guy I spoke to said it was a miracle the head was still attached. Perhaps we should consider sending the case over to the violent crimes squad straight away.
B
Silje Sorensen closed the file and leaned back in her chair. She was sweating. The good mood she had been in on her way to work had been swept away, and she wished she had left the damned file alone.
Now she felt a strong urge to open it again, just to look at the young man: this rootless, homeless Kurdish boy without any parents, with his silver tooth and smooth cheeks. Regardless of how many times she came across these children – and God knows it happened all too often – she just couldn’t distance herself. Sometimes in the evenings, when she looked in on her own two sons who had now decided they were too old for goodnight kisses, but who still couldn’t get to sleep until she had tucked them in, she experienced something that resembled guilt.
Perhaps even shame.
The sound of a car horn shattered the silence, making her heart miss a beat. She opened the window and looked down at the turning area in front of the entrance and the main desk.
‘Mum! Mum, will you be much longer?’
Her youngest son was hanging out of the car window, yelling. Silje immediately felt cross. Quickly she placed Hawre Ghani’s file on top of her in tray, pulled off the Post-it note with Harald Bull’s number and tucked it in her pocket.
As she locked the door behind her and ran towards the foyer in the hope of reaching the car in time to stop her son sounding the horn again, she had completely forgotten why she had gone to the office early on the afternoon of Christmas Day on the way to dinner with her in-laws.
The skis.
They were still behind the door of her office. By the time she eventually remembered them, it was too late.
