Killing Moon

26 Friday

Cement

It was nine o’clock when Mikael Bellman unlocked the door to his house in Høyenhall. It was a nice house; he had built it on the edge of a hill so that he, Ulla and their three children had a view over the city all the way to Bjørvika and the fjord.

‘Hi!’ Ulla called from the living room. Mikael hung up his new coat and walked into the living room where his petite, beautiful wife, his sweetheart since childhood, was sitting with their youngest boy watching TV.

‘Sorry, that meeting dragged on.’ He hadn’t heard any suspicion in her voice, neither was there any in her eyes, as far as he could see. Nor was there any reason to be; right now Ulla was actually the only woman in his life. If you disregarded that young TV2 reporter, but that was something he had more or less discontinued. He wasn’t ruling out future indiscretions, but if so they needed to be something he was guaranteed to get away with. A married woman with power. Someone with as much to lose as himself. They say power corrupts, but it had only made him more cautious.

‘Truls is here.’

‘What?’

‘He came by to talk to you. He’s out on the terrace.’

Mikael closed his eyes and sighed. As he had risen through the ranks, from head of Orgkrim to Chief of Police and on to Minister of Justice, he had gradually ensured there was more and more distance between him and his friend and former co-conspirator. He was, again, more cautious.

Mikael went out to the large terrace and closed the sliding door behind him.

‘Quite a view you’ve got from here,’ Truls said. His face was red in the light from the heat lamps. He raised a bottle of beer to his mouth.

Mikael sat down next to him and accepted the bottle Truls opened and handed to him.

‘How’s the investigation going?’

‘The one into me?’ Truls asked. ‘Or the one I’m on?’

‘You’re working on an investigation?’

‘You didn’t know? Good, means we don’t have a leak at least. I’m working with Harry Hole.’

Mikael let it sink in. ‘You are aware that if it comes out you’re taking advantage of your position as a police officer to assist—’

‘Yeah, yeah. But that’s not going to matter much if someone does close us down. Which would be a shame, by the way. Hole is good. You know the chances of this nutcase getting caught are greater if Hole is allowed to continue.’ Truls stamped his shoes on the concrete floor of the terrace.

Mikael didn’t know if his friend’s feet were cold or if it was an unintentional reminder of their shared past and shared secrets.

‘Did Hole send you?’

‘No, he has no idea I’m here.’

Mikael nodded. It was unusual for Truls to take the initiative himself; Mikael had always been the one who decided what they would do, but he could hear by Truls’s voice he was telling the truth.

‘This is about something bigger than apprehending one individual criminal, Truls. This has to do with politics. With the big picture. Principles, you know?’

‘People like me don’t get politics,’ Truls said, belching discreetly. ‘Don’t get why the Minister of Justice would rather let a bloody serial killer run free than allow Norway’s best-known detective to get away with lying about being Officer Hans fucking Hansen. Especially when it was that very lie that led to Bertine Bertilsen being found.’

Mikael took a sip of the bottle. He may have liked beer at one time, but he didn’t any longer, not really. But those in the Labour Party and the Labour movement were generally sceptical of people who didn’t drink beer.

‘Do you know how you become Minister of Justice and retain that position, Truls?’ Mikael continued without waiting for an answer. ‘You listen. You listen to those you know are looking out for your best interests. Listen to those who have the experience you do not. I have good people who will present this in the right way. They’ll make it look like the Minister of Justice’s office stopped a millionaire from forming his own private army of investigators and lawyers. It will show that we don’t allow American-style conditions where the wealthy enjoy all manner of privileges, where only the most expensive lawyers win, where the claim that everyone is equal before the law is just some patriotic tripe. Here, in Norway, we don’t have equality just on paper, and that’s something we’re going to carry on working for.’ Mikael made a mental note of a couple of the points, perhaps they could be used in a future speech, albeit in a more sublime form.

Truls laughed that grunted laugh that always put Mikael in mind of a pig.

‘What?’ Mikael could hear he sounded more annoyed than he had intended. It had been a long day. Serial killers and Harry Hole might get column inches, but they weren’t the only things a Minister of Justice had on his plate.

‘I’m just thinking how great it is we have that whole equality before the law,’ Truls said. ‘Imagine, in this country even a Minister of Justice couldn’t prevent the police from investigating him if they were to get a tip-off. And it might come out that there was a body encased in the concrete on his terrace. Not anyone society really missed, just a member of a biker gang who smuggled heroin and was connected to two dirty cops. Equality before the law would mean the investigation would reveal that the Minister of Justice was once a young policeman more concerned with money than power. That he had a slightly naive childhood friend who one night helped him cover up the evidence in the much smarter friend’s new house.’ Truls stamped his foot on the cement again.

‘Truls,’ Mikael said slowly. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Not at all,’ Truls said, putting the empty beer bottle down next to the chair and getting to his feet. ‘I just think what you said about listening sounded like a good idea. Listening to those who have your best interests at heart. Thanks for the beer.’

Katrine stood in the doorway of the nursery looking at them.

Gert asleep in his bed and Harry asleep on a chair with his forehead against the headboard. She squatted down so she could see Harry’s face too. And concluded that the resemblance was even more pronounced when they slept. She shook Harry gently. He smacked his lips, blinked and looked at his watch before getting to his feet and following her out into the kitchen, where she put the kettle on.

‘You’re home early,’ he said, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘Weren’t you having a good time?’

‘Yeah. He’d picked the restaurant because it had a Montrachet wine which, apparently, I’d said I liked the first time we went on a date. But a meal can only last so long.’

‘But you could have gone on someplace else. Had a drink.’

‘Or gone back to his place for a quickie,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

She shrugged. ‘He is sweet. He still hasn’t invited me back to his home. He wants to wait with the sex until we know for sure that the two of us are meant for one another.’

‘But you...’

‘Want to fuck as much as possible before we realise we’re not meant for one another.’

Harry laughed.

‘At first I thought he was playing hard to get.’ She sighed. ‘And that does work on me.’

‘Mm. Even when you know it’s a tactic?’

‘Sure. I’m turned on by anything I can’t have. Like you that time.’

‘I was married. Do all married men turn you on?’

‘Only the ones I can’t have. There aren’t many of those. You were annoyingly faithful.’

‘Could have been even more faithful.’

She made instant coffee for Harry and tea for herself. ‘I seduced you when you were drunk and in despair. You were at your weakest, and that’s something I’ll never forgive myself for.’

‘No!’

It had come so quickly and sharply it gave her a start and the tea sloshed and spilt.

‘No?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you take that guilt away from me. It’s—’ he took a sip, grimacing as though he had scalded himself — ‘all I have left.’

‘All you have?’ She felt tears and anger well up at the same time. ‘Bjørn didn’t take his life because you let him down, Harry, but because I did.’ She had been almost shouting, and stopped, listening for sounds from the nursery. Lowered her voice. ‘He and I lived together, he thought he was the happy father of our child. Yes, he knew how I felt about you. It wasn’t something we spoke about, but he knew. He also knew — or thought he knew — that he could trust me. Thanks for the offer of division of guilt, Harry, but this is mine alone. All right?’

Harry stared down into his cup. He obviously wasn’t planning on having this argument. Good. At the same time something wasn’t right. Guilt is all I have left. Was there something she had misunderstood here? Or something he wasn’t saying?

‘Isn’t it tragic?’ he said. ‘That love is what kills those we care about.’

She nodded slowly. ‘Shakespearean,’ she said, studying his face. Those we care about. Why the plural form?

‘Listen, I better go back to the hotel and get some work done,’ he said, the chair leg scraping the floor. ‘Thanks for letting me...’ He nodded in the direction of the nursery.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, pensively.

Prim lay underneath the duvet staring at the ceiling.

It was close to midnight, and on the police scanner the messages went back and forth in a regular, reassuring buzz. All the same, he couldn’t sleep. Partly because he was dreading tomorrow, but mostly because he was wound up. He had been together with Her. And he was almost certain now. She loved him too. They had talked about music. She was interested in that. And also in his writing, she had said. But they had avoided talking about the two dead girls. That was a topic the others around them had probably been discussing. But not with the insight the two of them could have brought to bear on it, of course, if they only knew! If she only knew that he knew more than her. At one point he had actually been tempted to tell her everything, tempted in the same way as when you feel that pull to launch yourself into the abyss when standing by the railings on a bridge. Like, for instance, the bridge from the mainland over to Nesøya at three in the morning on a Saturday in May when you had just realised the one you thought was Her did not want you. But that was a long time ago, he had got over that, had moved on. Further than her; last he checked everything she had been involved in had hit a wall, her marriage included. Perhaps she would read about him soon, about all those who lauded him, and then maybe she would think that he, he could have been mine. Yes, then she’d be sorry.

But there were things that needed doing before that.

Like what needed to be done tomorrow.

She would be the third.

No, he wasn’t looking forward to it. Only an insane person would. But it needed to be done; he needed to overcome the doubt, the moral resistance any normal individual had to feel when faced with such a task. Speaking of feelings, he needed to keep in mind that revenge was not the objective. Losing sight of that could risk his being sidetracked and lead to failure. Revenge was merely the reward he would grant himself, a by-product of the real purpose. And when it was completed, they would kiss his feet. Finally.