Scarred Read Online Free PDF Page B

in just four weeks. The current post holder is taking leave to write a book; a crime novel, Bjarne believes. Bjarne thinks this job could give him an opportunity to gain valuable management experience. Everything is about experience.
    And that’s the rub. He hasn’t been a detective for very long, but he has been with the police force all his life and is regarded as a safe pair of hands. He has studied management and he has recently made a name for himself with his analytical skills. Previously he always felt he had something to prove whenever he spoke up in a meeting, especially to his boss Arild Gjerstad, Head of Investigation, but he has got over that, thank God.
    He has no idea how Anita would react if he were to get the job. It would mean him being away from home, from her and Alisha even more; it would take him further away from the ideal of family life that is so important to his wife. Isn’t he making enough sacrifices as it is?
    He can see it in his daughter’s eyes and hear it in the conversation around the kitchen table on the rare occasions they are all there at the same time. He has absolutely no idea how she is getting on. What she learns at nursery, who her friends are. Who is mean to her and who is nice. It’s not easy being a kid, he remembers that from his own childhood. But it’s not easy being a dad, either. Or a dad and a policeman at the same time.
    Alisha deigned to let him put her to bed last night as long as he played with her first. Playing covers everything that makes her laugh out loud. He read to her from a Karsten and Petra book, scratched her on the back with sharp nails, something she loves. But he wasn’t allowed to lie next to her when she finally settled down. Only Anita gets to do that.
    And maybe it makes no difference how much he plays and reads and scratches. He will always come second. And, yes, that’s still a spot on the podium, but Bjarne has never enjoyed not being first. He has always loathed the thought that someone might be better at something than he is.
    I need more hours in the day , he thinks, and turns off towards Grønland. If you could buy time, he would have ordered it by the shed load. Then there would be time for trips to Legoland, a seaside holiday to Sørlandet, he could have gone camping in the mountains, caught those fish. He could have given Anita the children she always said she wanted.
    But if he’s going to do his job properly, if he’s going to be as good a policeman as he wants to be, then he has to live the job. He has to be the job. And the job has to be him. All of him.
    And soon they will turn forty, both him and Anita. And even if time isn’t running out for him, then it is definitely running out for her. Exactly what that means they haven’t yet sat down to discuss. They haven’t had the time.
    Bjarne met Anita at Idretthøgskolen, the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, in the mid-nineties. She was in the year below him and not really his type; she was into Aerosmith and TV soaps such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place , she was twenty-two centimetres shorter than him and played football from time to time. But with her shoulder-length blonde hair, a slightly crooked front tooth and her echoing, infectious laughter, she grew increasingly irresistible to him. He was happy to ignore the fact that she had grown up in Hamar and kept declaring her intention to move back east, to the home of the Hamar Olympic Hall even though she was born in the beautiful scenic fishing village of Henningsvær in the Lofoten Archipelago. She had charm. The raw charm of Arctic Norway. He simply had to have her.
    At first she resisted him, primarily because she already had a boyfriend, but she surprised him by going for what she could get, rather than holding on to what she had. Six years later they got married, and because of Bjarne’s job they now live in a semi-detached house on Tennisveien in Slemdal. Their car is a Volvo estate with a fan belt that never