Killing Moon

27 Saturday

‘So, the police work at weekends too,’ Weng said, studying the empty packet.

‘Some of us,’ Sung-min said, crouching by the basket in the corner, scratching the bulldog behind one ear.

‘Hillman Pets,’ the farmer read aloud. ‘No, can’t say it’s something I give my dog.’

‘All right.’ Sung-min sighed, rising to his feet. ‘I just had to check.’

Chris had suggested they take a walk around Sognsvann today and was peeved when Sung-min had said he needed to work. Because Chris knew that it wasn’t true, he didn’t need to work. Sometimes that sort of thing was hard to explain to other people. Weng handed the packet back to Sung-min.

‘But I have seen that packet before,’ Weng said.

‘You have?’ Sung-min said in surprise.

‘Yes. A few weeks ago. There was a chap sitting on a fallen tree trunk in the woods at the end of the field there.’ He pointed towards the kitchen window. ‘He was holding a packet like that.’ Sung-min peered out. It had to be at least a hundred metres to the edge of the woods.

‘I was using these,’ said Weng, clearly noticing Sung-min’s scepticism, and picked up a pair of Zeiss binoculars which had been lying on a stack of car magazines on the kitchen table.

‘Magnifies twenty times. Like standing right next to the guy. I remember it now because of the Airedale terrier on the packet, but at the time I didn’t think it was an anti-parasitic. I mean, the guy was eating it.’

‘He was eating it? Are you sure?’

‘Oh yeah. What was left, obviously, because he crumpled up the packet and threw it on the ground afterwards. Bastard. I went out to give him a piece of my mind, but he got up and made off the moment I went outside. I walked over to the spot but there was a brisk north wind that day, so the packet must have already been blown into the woods.’

Sung-min could feel his pulse beating faster. This was the sort of police work that paid off one out of a hundred times, but when it did it could mean hitting the jackpot, solving an entire case where hitherto they hadn’t a single lead. He swallowed.

‘Does that mean, Weng, that you can give me a description of the man?’

The farmer looked at Sung-min. Then smiled sadly and shook his head.

‘But you said it was like standing right next to him.’ Sung-min could hear the frustration in his own voice.

‘Ye-es. But the packet was directly in my line of sight, and when he threw it away, he put on a face mask before I had a chance to take a good look at him.’

‘He wore a face mask?’

‘Yeah. And sunglasses and a baseball cap. Didn’t really see much of his face at all.’

‘You didn’t think it strange that a man alone in the forest was wearing a face mask long after everyone else has stopped?’

‘Yes. But there are a lot of strange people out here in the forest, aren’t there?’

Sung-min understood that Weng was being self-deprecating, but he wasn’t in the mood to smile.

Harry stood in front of the headstone and could feel the rainwater in the soft ground seep into his shoes. Grey morning light filtered through the clouds. He had stayed up until five o’clock reading reports. Slept for three hours, then continued reading. And understood now why the investigation had come to a standstill. The work that had been done seemed good, seemed thorough, but there was nothing there. Absolutely nothing. He had come out here to clear his head. He wasn’t even a third of the way through the reports.

Her name was carved in white on the grey stone. Rakel Fauke. He didn’t quite know why, but right now he was glad she hadn’t taken his surname as well.

He looked around. There were some people by other graves, probably more than usual since it was a Saturday, but they were so far away that he presumed he could speak out loud without them hearing him. He told her he had spoken to Oleg on the phone. That he was well, liked it there up north, but was considering applying for a position at Police HQ.

‘PST,’ Harry said. ‘He wants to follow in his mum’s footsteps.’

Harry told her he had called Sis. She’d had some health problems but was better now and back at work at the supermarket. Wanted him to come visit her and her boyfriend in Kristiansand.

‘I said I’d see if I could make it down before... before it’s too late. I’m having a bit of bother with some Mexicans. They’re going to kill me and a woman who looks like my mother unless I, or the police, solve this murder case within the next three days.’ Harry chuckled. ‘I’ve got a fungal nail infection, otherwise I’m doing fine. So there you go, all is well with your people. That was always what was most important to you. You yourself were less important. You wouldn’t even have wanted to be avenged if it’d been up to you. But it wasn’t. And I wanted revenge. That no doubt makes me a worse human being than you, but I’d be that even without the fucking thirst for revenge. It’s like sexual desire. Even though you’re disappointed every time you exact revenge, even though you know you’re going to be disappointed the next time as well, you just need to go on. And when I feel it, feel that fucking urge, I think now I’m standing in the shoes of a serial killer. Because that feeling of avenging something that’s been taken from me is so good that sometimes I want to lose something, something I love. Just so I can take my revenge. You understand?’

Harry felt a lump in his throat. Of course she understood. That was what he missed the most. His woman, Rakel, who understood and accepted most things about her weird husband. Not everything. But a lot. A hell of a lot.

‘The problem,’ Harry said, clearing his throat, ‘is of course that after you I have nothing left to lose. There’s nothing more to avenge, Rakel.’

Harry stood motionless. Looked down at his shoes, sunken down in the grass, the leather growing darker where the water had soaked in. He raised his eyes. Up by the church, on the steps, he saw a figure, just standing there watching. There was something familiar about the figure, and he realised it was a priest. He seemed to be looking in Harry’s direction.

The phone rang. It was Johan Krohn.

‘Talk to me,’ Harry said.

‘I’ve just been on another call. And not with just anyone. The Minister of Justice himself.’

‘It is a small country so don’t tell me you were that starstruck. Well, we’re finished then?’

‘That’s what I thought he was ringing to tell me, after that article in VG. But naturally I was surprised over Bellman delivering the message personally. This sort of thing is usually communicated via formal channels. That is to say, the people I expected to get in touch—’

‘Not that I’m unduly busy here on a Saturday morning, Krohn, but can we fast-forward to what Bellman said?’

‘Right. He said he couldn’t see that the Department of Justice had any legal argument for closing down our investigation, and they would not therefore be taking any action regarding this case. However, in light of the transgression that appears to have occurred, they would be watching us closely and the next time something of a similar nature took place, the police would take action.’

‘Mm.’

‘Yes, that’s not overstating it. Very surprising — I was certain they’d put a stop to us. Politically, it’s almost incomprehensible, Bellman will now have his own people and the media to deal with. Do you have any explanation for it?’

Harry pondered the question. Offhand he could only think of one person on their side who could possibly pressure Bellman.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Well, in any case, now you know we’re still in the game,’ Krohn said.

‘Thanks.’

Harry hung up. Reflected. They were able to continue. He had three more days and no good leads. How did that saying go? He who is born to be hanged will never drown?

‘Your mother had talent, you see.’

Uncle Fredric made his way along the narrow footpath on Slemdalsveien, seemingly oblivious to the fact people coming in the opposite direction had to step out onto the road to let them pass. Apart from that, he appeared lucid today.

‘That’s why it was so sad to see her throw away her career and jump into the arms of the first patron who came her way. Well, I say patron, but he abhorred the theatre, your stepfather, he only went once in a blue moon to put in an appearance, it was a family tradition for the Røeds to sponsor the National Theatre. No, he saw Molle onstage only the one time. In the title role of Hedda Gabler, ironically. Molle was a fine-looking woman and quite the little celebrity at that time. Perfect for a man to show off to the outside world.’

Prim had heard the story before but had asked his uncle to tell it all the same. Not so much to check if it was still lodged in the memory of his uncle’s diseased mind, but because he needed to hear it to be further reassured that the decision he had taken was the right one. He didn’t know why he had suddenly wavered in faith the night before, but apparently it was quite common ahead of big moments in life. Like when your wedding day was approaching. And this — revenge — was, after all, something he had thought about, dreamt about, since he was a boy, so not so strange his thoughts and emotions should play tricks on him as it drew closer.

‘That was how their relationship was,’ his uncle said. ‘She lived off him. And he lived off her. She was a beautiful young single mother who didn’t demand much. He was an unscrupulous fellow with enough money to give her everything except the one thing she needed. Love. That was why she became an actress, above all she wanted, as all actors do, to be loved. And when she didn’t get that love, neither from him nor, as time went on, from any audience, she fell apart. Of course, it didn’t help matters that you were an overactive, spoilt little shit. When her patron eventually left you both, your mother was a depressed, worn-out alcoholic who no longer got the parts her talent warranted. I don’t think she loved him. It was being left by someone — anybody at all — that was the final nail in the coffin. Your mother’s psyche had always been fragile, but I must admit I hadn’t expected she would set fire to the house.’

‘You don’t know if she did,’ Prim said.

His uncle stopped, straightened up and smiled broadly to a young woman coming towards them. ‘Bigger!’ he shouted, pointing at his own chest to illustrate. ‘You should have bought bigger ones!’

The woman looked at him aghast and hurried past.

‘Oh yes,’ his uncle said. ‘She started the fire. Yes, yes, it started in her bedroom and they found a high concentration of alcohol in her blood — the report said that the cause of the fire was probably smoking in bed while intoxicated. But believe me, she set the fire with the desire to burn both of you alive. When parents take their children with them into death it’s usually to spare them from life as orphans, and I know this is painful for you to hear, but in your mother’s case the reason was she thought you were both worthless.’

‘That’s not true,’ Prim said. ‘She did it so I wouldn’t be entrusted to him.’

‘To your stepfather?’ His uncle laughed. ‘Are you a fool? He didn’t want you, he was happy to be rid of you both.’

‘He did,’ Prim said, in a voice so low it was drowned by the noise of the metro train passing next to them. ‘He did want me. Just not in the way you think.’

‘Did he ever give you any presents, for instance?’

‘Yes,’ Prim said. ‘One Christmas when I was ten, he gave me a book about the torture methods of the Comanches. They were the most proficient. For example, they would hang their victims upside down from trees and light fires beneath them, so eventually their brains boiled.’

His uncle laughed. ‘Not bad. Anyway, my moral indignation has limits, both when it comes to Comanches and your stepfather. Your mother should have treated him better, he was her patron, after all. Just like the parasite that is humanity should treat this planet better. Well, no reason to be sorry about that either. People think we biologists wish to preserve nature unchanged, like an organic museum. But we seem to be the only ones who understand and accept that nature is in flux, that everything dies and disappears, that is what’s natural. Not the continued existence of the species, but its destruction.’

‘Shall we turn and go back?’

‘Go back? Back where?’

Prim sighed. His uncle’s mind was obviously clouding over again. ‘To the nursing home.’

‘I’m just messing with you.’ His uncle grinned. ‘That nurse who showed you up to my room. Bet you a thousand-krone note I fuck her by Monday. What do you say?’

‘Every time we make a bet and you lose, you claim not to remember we made a bet. When you win, however...’

‘Now don’t be unreasonable, Prim. Suffering from dementia must have its advantages.’

After they had rounded off their short walk and Prim had delivered his uncle back into the care of the nurse in question, he walked back the same way. He crossed Slemdalsveien, continuing east, before coming to a residential area with villas on spacious plots. The houses were expensive in this area, but the ones located next to the Ring 3 motorway were more reasonably priced due to the noise. That was where the ruins lay.

He lifted the latch on the rusty iron gate and walked up the gravelly incline to the grove of birch trees. On the other side of the rise, obscured behind trees, stood a burnt-out villa. The fact the house lay so hidden from the neighbours had been a help to him over the years in his stalling tactics with the council, who wanted the ruins demolished. He unlocked the door and went inside. The staircase up to the first floor had collapsed. Mother’s bedroom had been up there. His had been on the ground floor. Perhaps that was what had made it possible. The distance. Not that she hadn’t known, but it had made it possible for her to pretend she didn’t know. All the non-load-bearing internal walls had also burnt down, the entire ground floor was one big room covered in a carpet of ash. Here and there vegetation sprouted and grew in the ash. A bush. A seedling that would perhaps grow into a tree. He walked over to the burnt-out iron bed in what had been his room. A homeless Bulgarian had broken in and lived here for a while. If it wasn’t for the fact his presence would have inevitably led to complaints from the neighbours and more hassle about demolition, Prim would have let the poor wretch stay. He had given the Bulgarian some cash, and the man had left peacefully with what few possessions he had, apart from a pair of damp woollen socks with holes in them and the mattress on the bed. Prim had changed the lock on the front door and nailed new boards over the windows.

The metal springs creaked as he sat his full weight down on the dirty mattress. He shuddered. It was the sound of a childhood, a sound that was stuck in his mind, as undeniable as the parasites he had bred.

Yet ironically, this bed had been his salvation when he crept under it during the fire.

Though there had been days he had cursed that salvation.

The loneliness at the institutions. The loneliness at the different homes of foster parents he had run away from. Not because they weren’t good, well-meaning people, but because in those years he was unable to sleep in a strange room, but always lay awake, listening. And waiting. For fire. For the father in the house. And eventually couldn’t stand it any longer and would run. Soon he would be placed in a new institution where Uncle Fredric would visit him now and again, pretty much how he now visited Uncle Fredric. His uncle, who had made it clear that he was just an uncle after all and, as he lived alone, was in no position to take the boy in. The liar. Yet he was in a position to look after the boy’s modest inheritance from his mother. So Prim had seen precious little of that. Apart from this, the property. It was just one of the reasons he had been opposed to selling it — he knew all the proceeds would disappear into his uncle’s pocket.

Prim bobbed up and down on the bed. The springs screeched in protest, and he shut his eyes. Returned to the sounds, the smells, the pain and the shame. Needed those sounds now, needed them in order to be sure. After all, he had crossed all the lines, come so far, so why this recurring hesitation? They say taking a life is worst the first time, but he wasn’t so sure of that any more. He rocked back and forth on the bed. Reflected. Then finally the memories came, the sensations as clear as if it was all happening here and now. Yes, he was sure.

He opened his eyes and checked his watch.

He was going to go home and shower, get changed. Apply his own perfume. Then he was going to the theatre.