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Using hackneyed phrases drawn from similar blogs, as though they were her own watchwords and ideas, Hedina employed them with sincerity and indignation to describe the frustration of living in a world where looks were regarded as paramount, and bemoaned how that created so many insecurities in young women. It was of course a paradox that Hedina herself posted soft-porn pictures of beautiful, slim, breast-augmented Hedina, but that discussion had come up time and time again, and eventually — after winning every battle — exhausted reason had lost the war to stupidity. And speaking of stupidity, the reason Mona Daa had now wasted half an hour of her life reading Hedina’s blog was that Julia, the editor, had, due to people off sick and a lull in the Susanne case, assigned Mona to comment on the comments on Hedina’s comments. Julia had, without a hint of irony, told Mona to count which comments there were most of, the positive or the negative, and let that determine whether the heading for the article should begin with ‘praised for’ or ‘criticised for’. With a slightly — but not too — sexy picture of Hedina as clickbait below.

Mona was mortified.

Hedina wrote that all women are beautiful, it was just a matter of each and every one finding their own unique beauty and trusting in it. Only in this way would you stop comparing yourself with others, stop giving rise to the belief of losing in the beauty stakes, to eating disorders, depression and destroyed lives. Mona wanted to write what was obvious, that if everyone is beautiful, then no one is beautiful, because beauty is what stands out in a positive way. And that when she was growing up, a few movie stars and perhaps a classmate were privileged to be beautiful in the original meaning of the word, and it didn’t bother her or her friends significantly to be in the large majority of the ordinary and non-beautiful. There were other more important things to focus on and an ordinary appearance didn’t ruin anyone’s life. It was people like Hedina who accepted the premise that all women wanted and should want to be ‘beautiful’ as unquestionably true that created losers. If seventy per cent of the women around you have, through surgery, diet, make-up and exercise, achieved an appearance the other thirty per cent aren’t able to, it’s these ordinary women, who previously managed just fine, who are suddenly in a minority and have been given a reason to suffer from ever so slight depression.

Mona sighed. Would she have thought and felt this way if she herself had been born with the looks of a Hedina? Even though Hedina hadn’t been born the way she looked in pictures either? Perhaps not. She didn’t know. She only knew there was nothing she hated more than having to give column inches to a blogger with no brain and half a million followers.

A breaking-news notification popped up on her screen.

And Mona Daa realised that there was one thing she hated more. Being overtaken and left in the dust by Terry Våge.

‘Susanne Andersen’s brain removed,’ Julia read aloud from Dagbladet’s website, before fixing her eyes on Mona, who was standing in front of her desk. ‘And we have nothing on this?’

‘No,’ Mona said. ‘Not us or any of the others.’

‘I don’t know about the others, but we’re VG, Mona. We’re the biggest and the best.’

Mona thought Julia may as well say what they were both thinking. Were the best.

‘Someone in the police must be leaking this,’ Mona said.

‘In that case they’re obviously only leaking it to Våge, and then it’s called a source, Mona. And our job is to cultivate sources, isn’t it?’

Mona had never experienced Julia speaking to her in so patronising a manner. As though she were a junior, and not one of the newspaper’s most high-profile and respected journalists. But Mona also knew that if she herself had been the editor, the journalist wouldn’t have got off lightly either, rather the opposite.

‘Sources are one thing,’ Mona said. ‘But you don’t get that type of information out of someone in the police unless you have information to give in exchange. Or pay very well. Or...’

‘Yeah?’

‘Or have a hold over the person concerned.’

‘You think that’s the case here?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Julia rolled her chair back, looked out the window and down at the building site in front of the government buildings. ‘But maybe you also have someone at Police HQ you... have a hold over?’

‘If you’re thinking of Anders, forget about it, Julia.’

‘A crime journalist with a partner in the police is going to be suspected of getting inside information anyway. So why not—’

‘I said, forget it! We’re not that desperate, Julia.’

Julia cocked her head to the side. ‘Aren’t we, Mona? Ask management,’ she said, pointing towards the ceiling. ‘This is the biggest story we’ve had in months, in a year where more newspapers than ever have had to fold. Think about it, at least.’