Killing Moon

10 Monday

Horses

The young taxi driver looked in confusion at the pieces of paper Harry was holding out.

‘It’s called money,’ Harry said.

The taxi driver took the notes and studied the numbers on them. ‘I don’t have... like... eh...’

‘Change.’ Harry sighed. ‘That’s all right.’

Harry began making his way towards the entrance of Bjerke Racecourse as he stuffed the receipt in his back pocket. The twenty minutes from the Radium Hospital had cost as much as a plane ticket to Málaga. He needed a car, preferably one with a driver, as soon as possible. But first and foremost he needed a policeman. A corrupt one.

He found Truls Berntsen in Pegasus. The large restaurant had space for a thousand patrons, but today — the weekly lunchtime race day — only the tables with a view of the track were filled to capacity. There was one table with a customer seated alone, as though he exuded a smell. But a closer look might reveal the reason was in his eyes and also his bearing. Harry pulled out one of the empty chairs and looked out at the racetrack where horses trotted around pulling sulkies with drivers atop, while from the loudspeakers information was spat out in a continuous, monotone voice.

‘That was quick,’ Truls said.

‘Taxi,’ Harry replied.

‘Must be flush then. We could have done this over the phone.’

‘No,’ Harry said, sitting down. They had exchanged exactly twelve words when Harry called. Yes? Harry Hole here, where are you? Bjerke Racecourse. On my way.

‘Is that so, Harry? Have you got involved in shady business?’ Truls let out his grunting laughter, which along with his weak chin, protruding brow and general passive-aggressive demeanour had earned him the nickname Beavis. He and the cartoon character also shared a nihilistic outlook and an almost admirable absence of any sense of social responsibility or morality. The subtext of his question was of course if Harry had also got involved in shady business.

‘I might have an offer for you.’

‘The kind I can’t refuse?’ Truls said, casting a dissatisfied glance out at the track, where the announcer was listing the order of finishers.

‘Unless your betting selection comes in, yeah. You’re out of work, I hear. And have gambling debts.’

‘Gambling debts? Says who?’

‘It’s not important. You’re unemployed, in any case.’

‘I’m not that unemployed. I’m receiving a salary without doing shit. So as far as I’m concerned they can take as long as they like trying to find some evidence, I couldn’t give a toss.’

‘Mm. I heard it was something to do with the skimming of a cocaine seizure at Gardermoen?’

Truls snorted. ‘Me and two others from Narcotics picked up the stuff. This weird, green cocaine. Customs reckoned it was green because it was so pure, as if they were like walking crime labs or something. We delivered it to Seizures who discovered there was a small anomaly in the weight in relation to what Gardermoen had reported. So they sent it for analysis. And the analysis showed that the cocaine, which was just as green as before, had been stepped on. So then they think we cut some of the cocaine with something else green, but screwed up by getting the weight slightly wrong. Or rather me, as I was the only one alone with the dope for a few minutes.’

‘So not only do you risk being fired but prison time?’

‘Are you stupid, or something?’ Truls grunted. ‘They don’t have anything close to proof. A few morons from Customs who think the green stuff looked and tasted like pure cocaine? A difference of a milligram or two in weight that everyone knows could be down to all sorts of things? They’ll bang on about it for a while, and then the case will be dismissed.’

‘Mm. So you’re ruling out them finding another guilty party?’

Truls leaned his head back slightly, looked at Harry as though taking aim at him. ‘I’ve got some stuff involving horses to take care of here, Harry, so if there was something you wanted to talk about?’

‘Markus Røed has hired me to investigate the case of the two girls. I want you on the team.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Truls stared at Harry in surprise.

‘What do you say?’

‘Why are you asking me?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘No idea. I’m a bad cop, and you know that better than most.’

‘All the same, we’ve saved each other’s lives on at least one occasion. According to an old Chinese proverb that means we have a responsibility for one another for the rest of our lives.’

‘Really?’ Truls sounded unsure.

‘Plus,’ Harry said, ‘if you’re only suspended, then you still have full access to BL96?’

Harry noticed Truls flinch when he heard mention of the makeshift, antiquated system for investigation reports in use since 1996.

‘So?’

‘We need access to all the reports. Tactical, technical, forensics.’

‘Right. So this is...?’

‘Yep, shady business.’

‘The kind of thing that can get cops kicked off the force.’

‘If it’s discovered, definitely. And that’s why it’s well paid.’

‘Yeah? How well?’

‘Give me a number and I’ll pass it along.’

Truls looked at Harry for a long time, thoughtfully. Lowered his gaze to the betting slip on the table in front of him. Crumpled it up in his hand.

It was lunchtime at Danielle’s, and the bar and the tables were beginning to fill up. Although situated a few hundred metres from the city centre and the hell of office complexes, it never ceased to surprise Helene that a restaurant located in a residential area got so many patrons on their lunch break.

She cast a glance around, scanning the large, open-plan premises from her small round table in the centre. Found no one of interest. Then turned her attention back to the screen of her laptop. She had found a site with equestrian equipment. There appeared to be no limit to the amount of products available for horses and riders, or the prices demanded for them. After all, most people involved with horses were well-to-do, and riding was an opportunity to flaunt that. The drawback for most people was of course that the bar to impress in this milieu was set so high that most people had already lost before they even got started. But was importing equestrian equipment really what she wanted to do? Or would she be better off trying her hand at arranging riding tours in Valdres, Vassfaret, Vågå or other scenic shitholes beginning with V? She slammed the laptop shut, sighed deeply and looked around again.

Yes, there they were, sitting perched along the bar that ran the length of the establishment. The young men in whatever suit they were flogging to estate agents at the moment. The young women wearing skirts and jackets or something else to make them look ‘professional’. Some of the women actually had jobs, but Helene could point out the others, the ones who were a bit too pretty, wearing skirts which were a bit too short who were more interested in what made a job superfluous, in short a man with money. She didn’t know why she continued to come here. Ten years ago, the Monday lunches at Danielle’s had been legendary. There had been something so deliciously decadent and couldn’t-give-a-fuck about getting drunk and dancing on the tables in the middle of the first day of the working week. But, of course, it had also been a statement about status; an excess only the rich and privileged could allow themselves. These days it was quieter. Now the former fire station was a combination of bar and Michelin-starred gourmet restaurant, a place where the elite of Oslo’s west side ate, drank, talked business, discussed family matters, built relationships and entered alliances that drew the distinction between those allowed within and those who would remain outside.

It was here, during a wild Monday lunch, that Helene had met Markus. She had been twenty-three years old, he was over fifty and filthy rich. So rich that people moved aside when he walked to the bar, everyone seemed to know what the Røed family were good for. And bad for. She had not been as innocent as she made out, of course, something Markus could probably tell after the first couple of times she stayed the night at his villa in Skillebekk. Could tell by her soundtrack to lovemaking, which was akin to something lifted straight from Pornhub, could tell by the pings from incoming messages on her phone all night and could tell by the way she arranged the cocaine in such even lines that he never knew which he should take. But he didn’t seem to mind. Innocence wasn’t something that turned him on, he claimed. She didn’t know if that was true, but it wasn’t so important. What was important, or one of the things that was important, was that he could facilitate the lifestyle she had always dreamt about. That dream was not about being a stay-at-home trophy wife investing all her time on the upkeep and improvement of the house, holiday home, social network and her own body and face. Helene left that sort of thing to the other parasitic bimbos on the hunt for a suitable host at Danielle’s. Helene had a brain and was interested in things. In art and culture, especially theatre and the visual arts. In architecture — she had long considered studying that. But her big dream was to run the best riding school in the country. It wasn’t a pipe dream indulged in by a stupid, fanciful girl, but a realistic plan drawn up at a young age by an academically capable and hard-working girl who had mucked out at more than one stable, progressed through the ranks, and eventually become a riding school instructor, a girl who despised the term ‘horse mad’ and knew what was required in terms of effort, money and expertise.

And still it had all gone to shit.

It hadn’t been Markus’s fault. Well, yes, it had, he had cut off the money just as some horses at the riding school fell ill, which combined with unexpected competition and unforeseen expenses made the hurdle too high. She’d had to close down the school, and it was time to find something new.

In more ways than one. She and Markus were not going to last much longer either.

Some say that when a couple start having sex less than once a week, it’s only a question of time before it’s over. Nonsense of course, it had been years since she and Markus had had sex more than once every six months.

Not that it bothered her. But the possible consequences bothered her. She had gone all out on this, on a life with Markus, on the riding school, to the extent that she had abandoned all her plan Bs and Cs. She hadn’t taken any of the educational paths so open to someone with her school grades. Hadn’t saved up money, but had in a sense made herself dependent on his. Not in a sense — she was dependent on his money. Not in order to survive, maybe, but... yes, in order to survive. In fact.

When was it she had lost her hold on him? Or to be more precise: when was it he had lost interest for her in bed? It could of course have to do with the reduced production of testosterone in a man who was over sixty, but she believed it had started when she began expressing a desire for children. She knew that for a man there was hardly a bigger turn-off than duty sex. But when he had informed her that children were out of the question, the celibacy merely continued. Given that her own appetite for sex with Markus, which had never been voracious, had also waned, it was no big problem. Even though she suspected he had begun to look other places to satisfy his needs. As long as he was discreet and didn’t make her a laughing stock, it was all right.

No, the problem was the two girls from the party. One had been found dead, and the other was still missing. And both of them could be connected to Markus. Their sugar daddy. The words had even appeared in print. The idiot — she could have ripped his head off! She wasn’t Hillary Clinton and this wasn’t the nineties, she couldn’t just ‘forgive’ her husband. Because these days women weren’t allowed to let the bastards get away with that sort of thing, it had to do with respect for yourself, your gender and the zeitgeist. Just her bloody luck not to be born a generation previous.

But even if she was ‘permitted’ to forgive him, would Markus have let her? Was this not what he had been waiting for, an exit from her that was neither particularly shameful nor honourable, given there were both positive and negative associations about a man over sixty who screws around? For someone like Markus Røed there were definitely worse things to be labelled than a virile bastard and womaniser. So shouldn’t she get a move on and leave before he did? That, after all, would be the ultimate defeat.

So she was on the lookout. It was unconscious, but she had caught herself doing it. Getting an overview of the men among the clientele. Determining which of them could — in a notional future situation — be of interest. People think they can hide behind their secrets, but the truth of course is that we all exhibit what we think and feel, and those that pay close attention will take it in.

So perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised when a waiter stopped in front of her and placed a cocktail glass on the table.

‘Dirty martini,’ he said in Norrland-accented Swedish. ‘From him over there...’ He pointed towards a man sitting alone at the bar. He was looking out the window so she saw him in profile. The quality of his suit was perhaps a notch above the other male patrons, and he was a handsome man, no doubt about it. But young, probably around her own age, which was thirty-two. Though, it goes without saying, an enterprising man could have accomplished much in that time. She didn’t know why he wasn’t looking at her, maybe he was shy, or maybe it had been a while since he had ordered the drink and he didn’t think he could stare at her the whole time. Charming, if that was the case.

‘Were you the one who told him I usually drink a martini at the Monday lunch?’ she asked.

The waiter shook his head, but something in his smile made her doubt he was being completely sincere.

She nodded to the waiter that she accepted the drink, and he departed from her table. As things stood she was likely to be accepting several such drinks from admirers in the future, so why not start with someone that seemed appealing?

She raised the glass to her lips and noticed that it tasted different. Presumably it was the two olives at the bottom of the glass, the ingredients in making the drink ‘dirty’. Perhaps that was something she would also have to get used to, a different, dirtier taste to everything.

The man at the bar let his gaze drift over the room, as if he didn’t know where she was sitting. Helene raised her hand, caught his eye. Lifted the glass in a toast. He lifted his own, a plain glass of water, in response. But without smiling. Yes, he was probably the shy type. But then he got to his feet. Looked around as though making sure there were no others involved before approaching her.

Because of course he approached her. All men did sooner or later if Helene wanted them to. But as he drew closer, she felt that she didn’t want this, not yet. She had never been unfaithful to Markus, hadn’t even flirted with other men, and neither would she, not before everything was settled, finalised. She was upfront like that, a one-man woman, and always had been. Even if Markus was far from being a one-woman man. Because it wasn’t about what he thought of her, but about what she thought of herself.

The man stopped at her table, began to pull out the other chair.

‘Please don’t sit down.’ Helene looked up at him with a wide smile. ‘I just wanted to thank you for the drink.’

‘The drink?’ He smiled back, but looked confused.

‘This. Which you sent over. Yes?’

He shook his head with a laugh. ‘But shall we pretend as if I did? My name’s Filip.’

She laughed in return, and shook her head as well. He already looked a tiny bit smitten, poor guy. ‘Have a nice day, Filip.’

He gave a gentlemanly bow and left her. He would still be there the day it ended with Markus too. And hopefully without that wedding ring he had tried to conceal. Helene gestured to the waiter. He stood beside the table with his head bowed and a guilty smile.

‘You tricked me. Who really sent the drink over?’

‘Sorry, fru Røed. I thought it was a joke being played on you by someone you knew.’ He pointed to an empty table by the wall a little behind her. ‘He just left. I served him two martinis, but then he waved me over and asked me to give one to you and pointed out who I was to say it came from. The good-looking gentlemen at the bar, that is. I hope I didn’t go too far?’

‘It’s fine,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I hope he tipped you well.’

‘Of course, fru Røed. Of course.’ The waiter grinned, black snus showing between his teeth.

Helene picked out the olives before drinking the last of the martini, but the taste lingered.

It was on the way down towards Gyldenløves gate that the anger descended, and it struck her. That it was madness, utter insanity that she, an intelligent, grown woman, should accept that her existence was controlled by men, men she neither liked nor respected. What was it she was actually afraid of? Being alone? She was alone, for fuck’s sake, every one of us was alone! And it was Markus who had most reason to be afraid. If she told the truth, told what she knew... she shuddered at the thought, the same way presidents hopefully shuddered at the thought of pushing the button. While naturally at the same time the thought they could do it thrilled them. There was something so sexy about power! Most women sought it indirectly, by going after men with power. But why do that if you have a nuclear button? And why hadn’t the thought ever crossed her mind before now? Simple: because the boat had hit the rocks and was taking on water.

Helene Røed decided there and then that from now on she would be in control of her own life, and that in that life there would be very little space for men. And because Helene Røed was well aware that when she set her mind to something, then she saw it through, she knew that was how it was going to be. Now it was just a matter of drawing up a plan. Then, when this was all behind her, she would send a drink over to a man she liked the look of.