She waved her hands wearily before she found the book she was looking for.
‘… then freedom of speech rules. End of story.’
‘Well, isn’t that obvious?’ said Adam. ‘Fortunately. We’re a modern society, after all.’
‘I don’t know about modern. I’ve ploughed through everything these homophobic idiots have said recently-’
‘I’m not sure your conclusions are entirely scientific.’
She allowed herself to be interrupted. Sighed and put her hands behind her neck.
‘I’m not feeling particularly scientific at the moment. I’m tired. Worn out. In order for something to be classified as hate crime, it isn’t enough for the perpetrator to hate the victim as an individual. The hatred must be directed at the victim as the representative of a group. And if there’s one thing I have difficulty in grasping, it’s the idea of hatred against groups in a society like Norway. In Gaza, yes. In Kabul, yes. But here? In safe, social democratic Norway?’
She took a mouthful of tea and held it there for a few seconds before swallowing.
‘First of all I spent two months going through public pronouncements about Muslims, blacks and other ethnic and cultural minorities. What I found was generalization of the worst kind. It’s “they” and “we” right down the line.’
She drew quotation marks in the air with her fingers.
‘In the end I felt sick. I felt sick, Adam! I don’t know how an ordinary Norwegian Muslim mother or father can sleep at night. How they feel each night when they put their children to bed and settle them down and read to them, knowing how much crap people are saying and writing and thinking and feeling about them…’
Her eyes narrowed and she took off her glasses.
‘It’s as if everything is allowed these days, somehow. And of course most things should be. Political freedom of speech in Norway is getting close to the absolute. But this culture of expressing opinions…’
She breathed on the lenses and rubbed them with her shirt sleeve.
‘Sorry,’ she said, with a strained smile. ‘It’s just that I’d be so scared if I belonged to a distrusted minority and had children.’
Adam laughed. ‘I’m sure you could teach them a lot in that particular respect,’ he said. ‘On the subject of worrying about children, I mean. But…’
He stood up and pushed his tea cup to the other side of the table. He quickly swept aside the papers closest to Johanne on the sofa, and sat down beside her. Put his arm around her. Kissed her hair, which smelled of pancakes.
‘But what’s this got to do with hate crime?’ he asked. ‘I mean, we’re agreed that this isn’t a criminal issue, but is protected by the law governing freedom of speech.’
‘It’s…’
She searched for the right words.
‘Since the substance in what is said,’ she began again, before breaking off once more. ‘Since the content of what is written and said corresponds exactly with… with what the others claim, those who attack, those who kill… then in my opinion…’
She lifted the glass without drinking.
‘If we’re going to succeed in saying anything meaningful about hate crimes, then we have to know what triggers them. And I don’t mean just the traditional explanations about the conditions in which a person grew up, experiences of loss, a history of conflict, the allocation of resources, religious opposition and so on. We have to know what… triggers them. I want to investigate whether there’s a connection between statements that could be regarded as full of hatred, but entirely legal, on the one hand, and hate-filled illegal crime on the other.’
‘You mean whether the former facilitates the latter?’
‘Among other things.’
‘But isn’t that obvious? Even though we can’t ban such statements because of it?’
‘We can’t actually make that assumption. The connection, I mean. It has to be investigated.’
‘Daddy! Daddy!’
Adam shot up. Johanne closed her eyes and prayed for all she was worth that Kristiane wouldn’t wake up. All she could hear was Adam’s calm, quiet voice interspersed with Ragnhild’s sleepy fretfulness. Then everything went quiet again. The neighbours down below must have already gone to bed. Earlier that evening the noise of some film that was clearly action-packed had got on her nerves; it had sounded as if she were actually in the line of fire.
‘She’s fine,’ Adam said, flopping down on the sofa beside her. ‘Probably just a dream. She wasn’t really awake. Now, where were we?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘I don’t actually know.’
‘I thought you were pleased about this project.’
She laid her hand on his stomach and crept into his embrace.
‘I am,’ she murmured. ‘But I’ve had an overdose of hatred at the moment. I haven’t even asked you how your day went.’
‘Please don’t.’
She could feel him slowly beginning to relax under her weight. His breathing became deeper, and she fell into the same rhythm. She could tell his belt was too tight from the roll of flesh bulging over the waistband of his trousers.
‘What do you think about some curtains, Adam?’
‘Hm?’
‘Curtains,’ she repeated. ‘Here in the living room. I just think the windows seem so big and dark in the winter.’
‘As long as I don’t have to choose them, go and buy them or hang them up.’
‘OK.’
They ought to get up. She ought to tidy all these papers. If the girls got up first tomorrow morning, as they usually did, things would be even more chaotic than they already were.
‘You smell so good,’ she whispered.
‘Everything about me is good,’ he said sleepily, and in his voice there was a feeling of security she hadn’t felt for a long time. ‘Besides which I am the best detective in the whole wide world.’
‘Police! Stop! Stop, I said!’
A young lad had just tumbled out of a dark green Volvo XC90. The number plates were so dirty they were illegible, despite the fact that the rest of the vehicle was quite clean. The oldest trick in the book, thought DC Knut Bork as he jumped out of the unmarked police car and set off in pursuit.
‘Stop that car!’ he yelled to his colleague, who was already striding across the carriageway.
For precisely five days it had been illegal to pay for sex in Norway. The new law had been passed by Stortinget without too much fuss, despite the fact that there was much to suggest that the new regulations would cause a significant setback for the sex industry. Open street prostitution had gone into hiding, presumably to wait and see what happened. However, there were still plenty of whores of both sexes in Oslo, and the punters hadn’t stayed away either. Everything was just a little bit trickier for them all. Perhaps that was the idea.
The boy was unsteady on his feet, but fast. However, it took Bork only fifty metres to catch up with him.
The punter in the expensive car was terrified. He was about thirty-five and had tried to cover up two child seats in the back of the car with an old blanket. His designer jeans were still open at the fly when the driver’s door was yanked open. He stepped out on to the pavement as requested, and began to cry.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ yelled the boy on the other side of the street. ‘You’re killing me!’
‘No, I’m not,’ said DC Bork. ‘And if you’re a good boy I won’t need to use the handcuffs, will I? OK? They’re not particularly comfortable, so if I were you…’
He could feel that the boy was reluctantly beginning to resign himself to the situation. The skinny body gradually relaxed. Bork slowly loosened his grip, and when the boy turned around he seemed younger than he had from a distance. His face was childish and his features soft, although he weighed no more than sixty kilos. A cold sore extended from his top lip right up into his left nostril, which was distended with scabs and pus. Bork felt sick, and was tempted to let the boy run away.