Killing Moon

16 Tuesday

Seamaster

‘She’s sitting there,’ the old lady in the white coat said, pointing into the laboratory. Harry saw a back, also in a white coat, sitting on a high stool hunched over a microscope.

He walked over, stood behind the back and coughed quietly.

The woman turned impatiently, and Harry saw a face that was hard, closed, still concentrated on work. But it changed to a sudden sunrise when she saw it was him.

‘Harry!’ She stood up and threw her arms around his neck.

‘Alexandra,’ Harry said, slightly perplexed; he’d been unsure what sort of reception he could expect.

‘How did you get all the way in here?’

‘I was here a little early, and Lilly at reception remembered me, so she—’

‘Well, what do you think?’ Alexandra proudly stood up straight, even twirled a little.

Harry smiled. ‘You still look fantastic. Like a cross between a Lamborghini—’

‘Not me, you idiot! The laboratory.’

‘Oh. Yeah, it’s new, I see.’

‘Isn’t it amazing? Now we can do everything here that we used to have to send abroad. DNA, chemistry, biology, we cover so much that when Krimteknisk lack analysis capacity, they just send it up here. We’re allowed to use the lab for personal research as well. I’m working on my doctoral thesis on DNA analysis at the moment.’

‘Impressive,’ Harry said, letting his gaze sweep over trays of test tubes, flasks, computer screens, microscopes, and machines whose functions he had no clue about.

‘Helge, say hello to Harry!’ Alexandra called out, and the other person in the room turned on his stool, smiled and waved before returning to his microscope.

‘We’re competing to see who gets their doctorate first,’ Alexandra whispered.

‘Mm. Sure you have time for a coffee in the canteen?’

She slipped her hand under his arm. ‘I know a better place. Come on.’

‘So, Katrine knows that you know,’ Alexandra summed up. ‘And now she’s offered to let you babysit the boy at some stage.’ She put down her empty cup on the roofing felt in front of the chairs they had taken out from inside the roof door. ‘That’s a start. Are you scared?’

‘Scared stiff,’ Harry said. ‘Besides, I don’t have the time right now.’

‘Fathers have probably been saying that since time began.’

‘Yeah. But I need to solve this case in the next seven days.’

‘Did Røed only give you seven days? That’s a bit optimistic, isn’t it?’

Harry didn’t answer.

‘Do you think Katrine would like you and her...?’

‘No,’ Harry said firmly.

‘Those kinds of feelings never die completely, you know.’

‘Yes, they do actually.’

Alexandra looked at him without saying anything, just pulled away a black corkscrew of hair which had blown across her face.

‘Anyway,’ Harry said. ‘She knows what’s in the boy’s and in her own best interests.’

‘And that is?’

‘That I’m not worth having around.’

‘Who else knows you’re the father?’

‘Just you,’ Harry said. ‘And Katrine doesn’t want anyone else to know Bjørn wasn’t.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Alexandra said. ‘I only know because I did the DNA analysis, and I have an oath of confidentiality. Got a cig we can share?’

‘I quit.’

‘You? Really?’

Harry nodded and looked up at the sky. Clouds had appeared. Leaden grey on the underside, white where they grew upward and the sunlight hit them.

‘So you’re single,’ Harry said. ‘Happy with that?’

‘No,’ Alexandra said. ‘But I probably wouldn’t be happy if I was with someone either.’ She laughed that husky laugh of hers. And Harry could feel that it had the same effect now as then. So perhaps it was true. Perhaps those kinds of feelings never quite died, no matter how fleeting they had seemed.

Harry cleared his throat.

‘Here it comes,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘The reason you wanted to have a coffee.’

‘Maybe,’ Harry said, pulling out the plastic box with the square of kitchen roll inside. ‘Could you analyse this for me?’

‘I knew it!’ she snorted.

‘Mm. And yet you still agreed to meet me for coffee?’

‘I suppose I was hoping to be wrong. That you’d been thinking about me.’

‘I can see that telling you now that I have thought about you isn’t going to look good, but actually I have.’

‘Say it anyway.’

Harry gave a crooked smile. ‘I’ve thought about you.’

She took the box from him. ‘What is it?’

‘Mucus and saliva. I just want to know if it originates from the same person as the samples you lifted from Susanne’s breast.’

‘How do you know about that? No, I don’t want to know. What you’re asking for might be within the law, but you know I’ll still be in trouble if anyone finds out?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why should I do it?’

‘You tell me.’

‘OK, I will. Because you’re going to take me to the spa at that snooty hotel you’re staying at. And after that you’re going to treat me to a bloody nice dinner. And you’re going to dress up.’

Harry pinched the lapels of his suit jacket. ‘You don’t think I’m presentable?’

‘A tie. You’re going to wear a tie as well.’

Harry laughed. ‘Deal.’

‘A nice tie.’

‘A millionaire like Røed setting up his own investigation is contrary to our democratic traditions and idea of equality,’ Chief Superintendent Bodil Melling said.

‘Aside from the purely practical inconvenience of having an outside party treading on our toes,’ said Ole Winter, Kripos’s senior inspector. ‘It simply makes our job more difficult. Now, I’m aware you can’t prohibit Røed’s investigation based on paragraphs in the penal code, but the department must have some way of stopping this.’

Mikael Bellman stood looking out the window. He had a nice office. Large, new and modern. Impressive. But it was located in Nydalen. Far from the other departments in government buildings downtown. Nydalen was a sort of business park on the outskirts of the city; continue further north and you wound up in dense forest after just a few minutes. He hoped the new government quarter would soon be finished, that his Labour Party would still be in power and that he would still hold the post of Minister of Justice. There was nothing to suggest otherwise. Mikael Bellman was popular. Some had even hinted that he should already begin to position himself, because the day the Prime Minister suddenly decided to step down could be upon us. And at one morning meeting, the day after one political journalist had written that someone in government, Bellman for example, should seize the highest office in the land in a coup, the Prime Minister had, to everyone’s laughter, asked if someone could check Mikael’s briefcase, a reference to Bellman’s eyepatch and resemblance to Claus von Stauffenberg, the Wehrmacht colonel who attempted to assassinate Hitler with a bomb. But the Prime Minister had nothing to fear. Mikael simply didn’t want the job. Of course, being Minister of Justice meant you were exposed, but being Prime Minister — numero uno — was something else entirely. The pressure was one thing, but it was the light he feared. Too many stones being turned and too much of the past being uncovered, even he didn’t know what they might find.

He turned to face Melling and Winter. Many levels of hierarchy separated him from them, but the two must have believed they could go straight to Bellman on account of him being a former police detective in Oslo, meaning he was one of them.

‘Obviously, as a Labour Party man I’m all in favour of equality,’ Bellman said. ‘And of course the Department of Justice wants the police to have as good working conditions as possible. But I’m not so sure we can expect a very sympathetic response among...’ he searched for a different word to the giveaway ‘voters’ — ‘the public in general if we impede one of the few renowned investigators we have. Especially when he wants to tackle a case in which your departments have made so little headway. And, yes, you’re right, Winter. There are no laws which proscribe what Røed and Hole are doing. But you can always hope that Hole does what he eventually always did in my time.’

He looked at the bemused expressions on the faces of Melling and Winter.

‘Break the rules,’ Bellman said. ‘All you need to do is watch him closely, then I’m fairly certain you’ll see it happen. Send me a report when it does, and I’ll personally make sure he’s frozen out.’ He glanced at his Omega Seamaster watch. Not because he had another meeting, but to show that this one was over. ‘Does that sound OK?’

On their way out they shook his hand as though he had gone along with their suggestion and not the other way round. Mikael had that effect. He smiled and held eye contact with Bodil Melling a half-second longer than necessary. Not because he was interested, more out of habit. And noticed that she’d finally got a bit of colour in her face.