Stabbed in the back

A girl lies dead at Kjerringjordet. A hiker finds her late in the evening. No one has seen anything. No one has heard anything. A knife sticks out of her dress-clad back. Large. Sharp. An expensive brand. Perfect for fine chopping, filleting, and murder. The police identify her quickly; Anne-Marie Guttormsen – veterinary student, volunteer at Samfunnet, football player. Friends describe her as thoughtful, serious, and smart. None of them can understand who could have done something like that to her. Or almost none. Some names begin to recur. First cautiously, then a bit more determined: her boyfriend Brage, her ex Jonas, and her best friend Sofie. All in Anne-Marie’s innermost circle. All with reasons to hate her.

Crime author: Isabelle Damhaug

Illustrator: Marwa Nader

Translator: Helene Edith Nylehn

Brage

At the beginning, their relationship was perfect. They met at a party in Oslo and bonded over their shared love of cooking. Brage was a trained chef and dreamed of opening his own restaurant, and Anne-Marie had a TikTok account where she shared recipes with a small following. They fell in love quickly, and the relationship developed fast. It did not take long before she had persuaded him to move in with her in a small couple’s apartment in Ås. He worked late evenings in a restaurant in Oslo, but the commute did not bother him, and besides, he liked the rural municipality he now lived in. The only thing he did not like was Jonas – Anne-Marie’s ex and first love. It takes some doing to run into someone you want to avoid in Oslo, but in Ås you do not even have to try. Wherever he and Anne-Marie went, Brage felt that they ran into Jonas. At the grocery store, at the gym, in the woods. Even when they went on a date at Bistroen, he might show up. And what really bothered him was how friendly Anne-Marie was with Jonas. They always stopped and chatted. Smiled and laughed. Reminisced about old times. Sometimes Brage felt that she forgot he was there. He did not want to be the jealous boyfriend, but he became one. He always wanted to know where she had been, who she had been with, what they had done – and it took a toll on the relationship. Anne-Marie withdrew further and further, spent less time at home, and became vaguer about where she was going. Brage could not prove it, but deep down he knew where she was.

Jonas

It had been three years since she broke up with him, but he thought about her every day. The smile, the eyes, the feeling. He thought the breakup was the hardest thing he would ever go through, but that was not true. Because when he found out that Anne-Marie had found herself a new boyfriend, and on top of that, that they had already moved in together, he wanted to die. Or kill someone. Who even was this new guy? A loser from Oslo who spent all day in a kitchen – the opposite of what a man should do, if you asked Jonas. He spent a lot of time online these days. He read forum after forum about how a real man should behave, how he could become irresistible to the opposite sex, and how he would never be humiliated like that again. Dumped as if he were nothing. He, who had been the perfect boyfriend; given her flowers, paid for dinner, bought jewelry. He felt a storm brewing inside when he thought about it. About her. He was always friendly when he ran into them. Big smile and a hug. “Everything is good with me, yes.” “I still enjoy living here, yes.” “Those were good memories, yes.” But the second they turned their backs, it felt as if someone had punched him in the face. And he wanted to hit someone back.

Sofie

For as long as she could remember, Sofie had been jealous of Anne-Marie. She spent a lot of time in the couple’s apartment with the couple – a third wheel on a cart that kept trying to assure her that she was welcome. She always felt a little pathetic when she crashed their dinners, just sitting there watching the lovebirds cook: Brage expertly chopping ingredients with his expensive knives, while Anne-Marie filmed for TikTok. But she had no one else to be with, and no matter how sickening the perfect couple could make her feel, it was better than being alone. She and Anne-Marie had always been good friends, best friends even, but Sofie could never shake the feeling that she was a little worse, a little uglier, a little less interesting. Sometimes Sofie felt sick from how badly she wished the two of them could switch lives, and it did not help when Anne-Marie got into Sofie’s dream programme – veterinary medicine – while she herself fell just short of the required grades and had to wait a year. But she used to care for her too. No matter how inferior she felt, her friend had always been there for her, and Anne-Marie had never shown any sign of noticing this imbalance in their friendship. But one drop can make a cup overflow, and for Sofie, that drop was Jonas. She was madly inlove with him from the second they met at Samfunnet, and she should never have introduced him to Anne-Marie, who was also on shift that night. But she did, and they fell in love. Or Jonas fell in love. Sofie was never convinced that Anne-Marie actually liked him – she only liked the attention he gave her. Because Jonas was obsessed with Anne-Marie. Even years after they broke up, she was everything to him, while Sofie did not exist, not in the way she so desperately wanted to. If only she could make him stop thinking about Anne-Marie. Then everything would be perfect.

Who killed Anne-Marie – and why? Send in your theory, with both murderer and motive on ‘Har du hørt at?’! The murdered will be revealed in the next edition