“No what?”
“I don’t want to have to carry you out of some bar later tonight.”
“I’ll send the audio file to your email address.”
—
Mona Daa stopped in the doorway of her editor’s office. He was talking on the phone.
“They’ve arrested someone for Rakel Fauke’s murder,” she said loudly.
“I’ve got to go,” the editor said, then hung up without waiting for a response and looked up. “Are you on it, Daa?”
“It’s already written,” Mona said.
“Get it out there! Has anyone else published it yet?”
“We got notification five minutes ago, there’s a press conference at four o’clock. What I wanted to talk to you about is whether or not we should name the suspect.”
“Did they give his name in the announcement?”
“Of course not.”
“So how have you got it?”
“Because I’m one of your best reporters.”
“Infiveminutes?”
“OK,thebest.”
“So who is it?”
“Svein Finne. Previous convictions for assault and rape, and a criminal record as long as a plague year. Do we publish his name?”
The editor ran his hand over his thinning hair. “Hm. Tricky.”
Mona was well aware of the dilemma. Under paragraph 4.7 of the Ethical Code of Practice for the Norwegian Press, the press agreed to deal sensitively with the publication of names in criminal cases, especially during the early stages of an investigation. Any identification had to be justifiable on grounds of public interest. On the other hand, her paper,VG, had published the name of a professor whose offense was that he had sent inappropriate text messages to women. Everyone had agreed that the man was a pig, but as far as they were aware no laws had been broken, and it was hard to claim that the publicneededto know the professor’s name. In Finne’s case they could obviously justify publication of his name by saying the public needed to know who they should be looking out for. On the other hand, was there any possibility of what the code called “imminent danger of offenses against innocent people, with serious and repeated criminal acts,” as long as Finne was in custody?
“We’ll hold back his name,” the editor said. “But include his criminal record and say thatVGknows who he is. Then at least we’ll get a gold star from the Press Association.”
“That’s how I’ve already written it, so it’s ready to go. We’ve also managed to get hold of a new, previously unpublished picture of Rakel as well.”
“Fantastic.”
Her editor wasn’t wrong. After a week and a half of intense press coverage of the murder, their choice of pictures was getting pretty repetitive.
“But maybe run a picture of the husband, the policeman, under the headline.”
Mona blinked. “You mean Harry Hole, right underSuspect Arrested for Rakel’s Murder? Isn’t that a bit misleading?”
The editor shrugged. “They’ll find out soon enough when they read the article.”
Mona nodded slowly. The shock effect of Harry Hole’s familiar, ruggedly attractive face below that sort of headline would obviously get more clicks than another picture of Rakel. And their readers would forgive them the ostensibly unintentional misunderstanding; they always did. Nobody wanted to be properly deceived, but people had nothing against being misled in an entertaining way. So why did Mona dislike this part of the job so much, when she loved the rest of it?
“Mona?”
“Will do,” she said, pushing herself off the door frame. “This is going to be big.”
