In a development that has sent shivers down the spines of both the legal establishment and the nation's purveyors of flat-pack furniture, a Norwegian teenager has been accused of jetting into Britain for the express purpose of ‘undertaking a hit’. This is not a misguided attempt to purchase the latest Kill Bill Blu-ray box set, but rather a chilling allegation that young Harald (name changed to protect the overpriced legal representation) planned to dispatch a fellow citizen with all the enthusiasm of a gap year student booking a Ryanair flight to Magaluf.
Old Bailey, that grand mausoleum of British justice, was treated to the spectacle of a bespectacled youth who looked like he should be more interested in obscure Nordic death metal bands than actual death. The prosecution, with the solemnity of a man reading out the football scores at a funeral, alleged that Harald had travelled from the land of fjords and exorbitant seafood to “undertake a hit”. One can only assume his CV boasts skills in ‘target acquisition’ and ‘rapid egress’ alongside the usual ‘proficient in Excel’.
This is the modern world, ladies and gentlemen. Gone are the days when a young man would travel to a foreign country to find himself, drink himself into a stupor, and return home with a tattoo of a Chinese symbol he thinks means ‘strength’. Now, it seems, the gap year has evolved into a ‘contract killing internship’. Perhaps he was inspired by the gig economy: Uber for assassins, Deliveroo for doomsday. The logistics are certainly streamlined: no need to pack a suitcase, just a garrotte and a clean passport.
The court heard that Harald had been in contact with an individual known only as ‘The Fixer’, a shadowy figure who presumably operates out of a back room in an IKEA, offering meatballs and murder as a package deal. The plan, so the prosecution argued, was as sophisticated as a Lego instruction manual: fly in, eliminate the target, fly out. But alas, the dream of a quick and tidy assassination was shattered when Norwegian police intercepted communications on the encrypted app ‘Wickr’, which sounds less like a secure messaging service and more like a brand of candle you’d buy in a hipster market.
And what of the target? A 52-year-old man whose greatest crime, one imagines, might have been failing to return a library book or stealing the last parking space at Tesco. Now he finds himself at the centre of a transcontinental conspiracy, a pawn in a game of international thuggery. One can only hope he doesn't have a corner office with a window, as the view might now include a lurking Norwegian teenager.
The defence, in a masterstroke of legal chicanery, argued that their client was merely ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’ and that the whole affair was a ‘terrible misunderstanding’. He was, they claim, just a naive youth who thought ‘undertaking a hit’ meant participating in a Spotify playlist for a friend's funeral. The judge, a man whose face looked like it had been carved from a block of judicial granite, was unimpressed.
As the case continues, we are left to ponder the state of modern youth. In Norway, they have everything: oil wealth, stunning landscapes, and a prison system that looks like a boutique hotel. Yet still, a young man feels compelled to travel to the grey, rain-soaked isles of Britain to commit murder. It is a damning indictment of our times: even the contract killing business is being outsourced to cheaper labour markets.
One can only hope that Young Harald’s reign of terror is short-lived. Britain has enough problems without having to contend with Nordic hitmen on work experience. Perhaps the government should consider a new visa category: Tier 1 (Assassin) Entrepreneur. At least then we could tax them.
But until then, I shall raise a glass of overpriced airport gin to the British justice system. May it continue to baffle and bemuse, and may all aspiring assassins remember that the only thing you should be ‘undertaking’ in this country is a proper cup of tea.
