Killing Moon

29 Saturday

Tapetum lucidum

It was an hour to midnight, and the wet pathways glistened under the lamplights in the Palace Gardens.

Harry was pleasantly anaesthetised and reality appropriately distorted. He was, in short, in the sweet spot of intoxication, where he was conscious of the deception, yet still mentally pain-free. He and Alexandra were walking through the park. The faces they met drifting past. In order to support him, she had put his arm over her shoulder and her own arm around his waist. She was still angry.

‘It’s one thing to refuse to serve us,’ she hissed.

‘Refuse to serve me,’ Harry said, his diction considerably steadier than his gait.

‘Another thing throwing us out.’

‘Throwing me out,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve noticed barmen don’t like customers going to sleep with their heads on the counter.’

‘Still. It was the way they did it.’

‘There’re worse ways, Alexandra. Believe me.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Oh yeah. That was one of the more tactful ways I’ve been thrown out. I think it might sneak into my top-five-most-pleasant-ejections-list.’

She laughed, putting her head against his chest. With the result that Harry swerved off the pathway out onto the royal lawn, where an elderly man holding the retractable lead of his dog while it relieved itself glared disapprovingly at them.

She got Harry back on an even keel. ‘Let’s stop at Lorry and get a coffee,’ she said.

‘And a beer,’ Harry said.

‘Coffee. Unless you want to get thrown out again.’

Harry thought it over. ‘OK.’

Lorry was crowded, but they got seats with two French-speaking men in the third booth to the left of the entrance door and were served large cups of steaming coffee.

‘They’re talking about the murders,’ Alexandra whispered.

‘No,’ Harry said, ‘they’re talking about the Spanish Civil War.’

At midnight, they left Lorry after sticking to coffee, and were a little less drunk.

‘Back to mine or back to yours?’ Alexandra asked.

‘Can I get some other alternatives?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Back to mine. And we’re walking. Fresh air.’

Alexandra’s apartment was in a building on Marcus Thranes gate, halfway between St Hanshaugen and Alexander Kiellands plass.

‘You’ve moved since the last time,’ Harry said as he stood lightly swaying in the bedroom while she tried to undress him. ‘But the bed is still the same, I see.’

‘Good memories?’

Harry paused to think.

‘Idiot,’ Alexandra said, pushing him onto the bed and getting to her knees to unbutton his trousers.

‘Alexandra...’ he said, placing a hand on hers.

She stopped and looked up at him.

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘Too drunk, you mean?’

‘That too, probably. But I was at her grave today.’

He waited for the anger of humiliation. Coldness. Contempt. Instead only tired resignation was detectable in her eyes. She pushed him under the duvet with his trousers on, switched off the light and crawled in after him. Snuggled up to him.

‘Does it still hurt?’ she asked.

Harry tried to think of another way to describe the feeling. Emptiness. Loss. Loneliness. Fear. Panic, even. But she had actually hit the nail on the head, the overarching feeling was one of pain. He nodded.

‘You’re lucky,’ she said.

‘Lucky?’

‘To have loved someone so dearly that it can hurt so much.’

‘Mm.’

‘Sorry if that sounded banal.’

‘No, you’re right. Our emotions are banal.’

‘I didn’t mean it was banal to love somebody. Or to want to be loved.’

‘Me neither.’

They held each other. Harry stared into the darkness. Then shut his eyes. He had half of the reports left. The answer might be in there. If not he would have to try the desperate plan he had discarded, but which had resurfaced again and again after the conversation with Truls at Schrøder’s. He drifted off.

He was riding a mechanical bull. It flung his body this way and that while he held on tightly and tried to order a drink. He tried to focus on the barman behind the counter, but the jerks were too sharp, and the facial features in front of him blurred.

‘What is it you’d like, Harry?’ It was Rakel’s voice. ‘Tell me what you want.’

Was it really her? I want the bull to stop. I want you and me to be together. Harry tried to shout it, but he couldn’t make a sound. He pressed the buttons on the back of the bull’s neck, but the tossing and rotations only grew in intensity and speed.

He heard a sound like a knife cutting through meat and she screamed.

The bull began moving more slowly. Until it stopped completely.

He couldn’t see anyone behind the bar, but blood was running down over the mirror shelves, the bottles and the glasses. He felt something hard being pressed against his temple.

‘I can tell you’re in debt,’ a voice whispered right behind him. ‘Yes, you owe me a life.’

He looked up at the mirror. In the cone of light coming from above he saw his own head, the barrel of a pistol and a hand holding a finger on the trigger. The face of the man holding the gun lay in darkness, but he could see something white shimmer. Was he naked? No, it was a white collar.

‘Wait!’ Harry said and turned round. It wasn’t the man in the lift. Or the man behind the tinted glass of the Camaro. It was Bjørn Holm. His red-haired colleague pressed the pistol to his own temple and pulled the trigger.

‘No!’

Harry discovered he was sitting up in bed.

‘Jesus!’ a voice mumbled, and he saw black hair against the white pillow beside him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ Harry said hoarsely. ‘I was just dreaming. I’m going to go now.’

‘Why?’

‘I have reports to read. And I promised to go for a walk in the park with Gert early in the morning.’ He pushed himself out of bed, found his shirt on a chair, put it on and began to button it. Felt the nausea rising.

‘Are you excited about seeing him?’

‘I just want to be there on time.’ He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Sleep tight and thanks for a lovely evening. I’ll let myself out.’

When Harry made it down to the inner courtyard he had to throw up. He managed to push his way between two green wheelie bins by a wall before his stomach knotted itself and the contents slapped on the dirty cobblestones. As he stood collecting himself, he saw something glowing red in the darkness at the wall on the other side of the yard. It was a cat’s eyes. Tapetum lucidum, Lucille had explained to him, a layer at the back of the eye that was now reflecting the light from one of the windows on the ground floor. He could discern the cat as well, sitting quietly and looking at him. Or rather, when Harry’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw it was not him, but a mouse between them that had captured the cat’s attention. The mouse moved slowly from the wheelie bins towards the cat. It was like a déjà vu from that last morning in the bungalow on Doheny Drive. It dragged its long, glossy tail after itself, like a condemned man forced to lug his own rope to the gallows. The cat leaned forward slightly and with a swift manoeuvre sank its teeth into the back of the rodent’s neck. Harry threw up again and supported himself against the wall as the cat dropped the already dead mouse on the ground in front of him. The glowing eyes looked at Harry as though expecting applause. It’s a theatre, Harry thought. A fucking theatre where, for a brief while, we just play the roles someone has written for us.