Killing Moon

49 Friday

The ring

Frognerseteren restaurant was situated high above Oslo, between the villas of its more bourgeois inhabitants and the hiking terrain of those same inhabitants. The people on their way to the restaurant were wearing suits and dresses; those going to the cafe adjacent were dressed in trekking attire. It was a six-minute walk from the terminus of the metro, and when Katrine arrived, she had no trouble spotting Arne, he was sitting alone outside at one of the large, solid wooden tables. He had stood up and spread his arms wide, smiling with those nice, sad eyes from under his flat cap, and she had stepped slightly reluctantly into his imperious embrace.

‘Won’t it get a little cold?’ she asked when they had sat down. ‘They haven’t put out any patio heaters. It looks like they have tables inside.’

‘Yes, but if we’re in there we won’t get to see the blood moon.’

‘I see,’ she said, shivering. It was unseasonably warm in the city below, but up here the temperature was considerably lower. She looked up at the white moon. It was full but looked normal otherwise. ‘When’s the blood coming out?’

‘It’s not blood,’ he said with a chuckle.

For a while she had found it irritating that he took everything she said so literally, as if he thought she were a child. But tonight she found it perhaps a little extra irritating when so many stressful thoughts were swirling in her head, and she had a nagging feeling that she should be at work, because time was at work — and not in their favour.

‘The eclipse occurs because the earth is between the sun and the moon. So for a short time the moon is in the earth’s shadow,’ he said. ‘Ergo the moon should be black. But the direction of light changes when it strikes something with a different density. Don’t you remember this from your school physics, Katrine?’

‘I took languages.’

‘Oh, well, when the sunlight strikes the earth, the atmosphere bends the red portion of the light inwards, around the earth, and it hits the surface of the moon.’

‘Aha!’ Katrine said with ironic exaggeration. ‘So it’s light and not blood.’

Arne smiled and nodded. ‘Man has been staring at the sky in wonder since time immemorial. But we continue to do so even now when we have so many answers. And I think it’s because there’s a comfort of sorts in the vastness of space. It makes us and our short lives seem so small and insignificant. Ergo our problems also seem small. We’re here one moment and gone the next, so why spend what little time we have worrying? We need to use it as best we can. That’s why I’m now going to ask you to switch off your mind, switch off your phone, switch off this world. Because just for tonight you and I are only going to relate to the two greatest things. The universe...’ He placed his hand on hers. ‘And love.’

The words touched Katrine’s heart. Of course they did, she was a simple soul. At the same time, she knew they would have probably touched her more deeply if someone else had said them. She also didn’t know if she was comfortable about turning off her phone; she had a babysitter at home and responsibility for a murder investigation that might not turn out to be as cut and dried as they had believed only hours before.

But she had done as he said, switched off her phone. That was an hour ago. Since then they had eaten and drunk and there had only been one thing on her mind: sneaking off to the toilet and turning on her phone to check for missed calls or texts. She could of course have said it straight out, that just like Arne’s planets didn’t stop rotating, reality in Oslo didn’t stop to take a break. As though to emphasise the thought she heard the low sing of the distant siren of a fire engine far below in the urban cauldron. But she didn’t want to ruin this night for Arne. After all, he didn’t know it would be his last one with her. Yes, all those things he said were sweet, but it was too much. Too Paulo Coelho, as Harry would have said.

‘Shall we go?’ Arne asked after he had paid.

‘Go?’

‘I know a place up here where there’s less light and we’ll get an even better view of the blood moon.’

‘Up where?’

‘By Tryvann. It’s only a few minutes’ walk. Come on, the eclipse is starting in...’ He checked his watch. ‘Eighteen minutes.’

‘Well, let’s walk then,’ she said, getting to her feet.

Arne pulled on a small rucksack. He just gave her a sly wink and offered her his arm when she asked what he had in it. They set off towards Tryvann. On the mountaintop right over the lake they could see the radio and TV tower stretching over a hundred metres into the sky. It had ceased transmitting signals years ago and now just stood there like a disarmed guard at the gate of Oslo. The occasional car and jogger passed them, but when they turned onto the path along the lake there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

‘That’s a good spot,’ he said, pointing at a log.

They sat down. The moonlight ran like a yellow median line over the tarmac-black water in front of them. He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Tell me about Harry.’

‘Harry?’ Katrine answered, taken aback. ‘Why?’

‘Do you two love each other?’

She laughed, or coughed, she wasn’t sure herself. ‘What on earth would make you think that?’

‘I’ve got eyes.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When I saw Harry in that bar, it hit me that he’s the image of Gert. Or the other way round.’ Arne laughed. ‘But don’t look so alarmed, Katrine. Your secret’s safe with me.’

‘How do you know what Gert looks like?’

‘You showed me pictures. Don’t you remember?’

She made no reply, just listened to the siren in the city below. It was burning somewhere, and this wasn’t where she needed to be. Simple as that, but how was she to explain that to him? Could she use the cliché about it not being him but her? After all, it was true; apart from Gert she had managed to destroy everything good in her life. It was obvious that the man sitting next to her loved her, and she wished she was able to love him back. Because not only did she yearn to be loved but yearned to love someone. Just not the man now pulling her closer, the man with sad eyes who knew so much. She opened her mouth to tell him, without having decided exactly how to phrase it, just knew she had to say it. But he beat her to it.

‘I’m not even sure if I want to know what it was you and Harry had. The only thing that matters to me is that you and I are together now. And that we love each other.’ He took her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it. ‘I want you to know that I have more than enough space in my life for both you and Gert. But not for Harry Hole, I’m afraid. Is it too much to ask for you and him not to have any contact?’

She stared at him.

He was holding both her hands in his now. ‘What do you say, darling? Is that all right?’

Katrine nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said. Arne’s face lit up in a big smile and he opened the rucksack before she finished the sentence. ‘...it is too much to ask.’

His smile faded at the edges, but he managed to retain a rictus of it in the middle.

She regretted it immediately, for now he just sat there looking like a wretched beaten dog. And she noticed that the bottle he had lifted halfway out of the rucksack was a Montrachet, the white wine he had got into his head was her favourite. OK, so maybe this wasn’t the man for her. But he could at least be her man for one night. She could grant him that much. She could grant herself that much. One night. Then she could take stock in the morning instead.

Arne reached back down into the rucksack.

‘And I brought this along as well...’

‘Gregersen.’

‘Sung-min Larsen, Kripos. Sorry to call you at home on a Friday night, but I’ve tried all the direct lines at Krimteknisk without getting an answer.’

‘Yes, we’ve closed for the weekend. But that’s OK, go ahead, Larsen.’

‘I was wondering about the cocaine seizure at Gardermoen, the one that landed the officers who took possession of it in trouble.’

‘I know the one you mean, yeah.’

‘Do you know who analysed it at your end?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘OK.’

‘No one did.’

‘Pardon?’

‘No one.’

‘What do you mean, Gregersen? Are you saying that batch was never analysed?’

Prim looked at her. At the Woman, at his chosen one. Had he heard correctly? Had she said she didn’t want the diamond ring?

At first, she had put her hand to her mouth, cast a quick glance at the little box he was holding up in front of her and exclaimed: ‘I can’t accept it.’

Such a spontaneous, panicky response is of course not surprising when you’re taken unawares, Prim thought. When someone holds something up in front of you, a symbol of the rest of your life, an object representing something too great to be squeezed into one sentence.

So he had allowed her to draw breath before repeating the words he had decided would accompany the presentation.

‘Take this ring. Take me. Take us. I love you.’

But again, she shook her head. ‘Thank you. But it wouldn’t be right.’

Wouldn’t be right? What could be more right? Prim explained to her how he had scrimped and saved and just waited for this occasion, precisely because it was right. More than that, perfect. Look, even the celestial bodies up in the velvet blackness above them were marking this as a special occasion.

‘It’s a perfect ring,’ she said. ‘But it’s not for me.’

She tilted her head and gave him this mournful look to let him know what a sorry situation this was. Or rather, how sorry she felt for him.

Yes, he had heard right.

Prim could hear a rushing sound. Not the swish of a gentle breeze through the treetops as he had imagined, but the sound of a TV no longer receiving any transmission, alone, without contact, without purpose and meaning. The sound continued to rise, the pressure in his head increased, though already unbearable. He needed to disappear, to be no more. But he couldn’t disappear, couldn’t just nullify himself. So she needed to disappear. She needed to be no more. Or — that was when it occurred to him — he, the other man, needed to disappear. The cause. The man who poisoned her, blinded her, confused her. The man who made it so that she was no longer able to tell the difference between his, Prim’s, true love and the man’s, the parasite’s, manipulation. It was he, the policeman, that was her toxoplasma.

‘Well, if it’s not for you,’ Prim said, closing the box with the diamond ring, ‘then this is.’

The eclipse had begun above them, like a ravenous cannibal the night had started to gnaw at the left edge of the moon. But there was still more than enough moonlight where the two of them sat, and he could see her pupils dilate as she stared at the knife he had produced.

‘What...’ she said. Her voice sounded dry, and she swallowed before continuing: ‘...is... that?’

‘What do you think it is?’

He could tell by her eyes what she was thinking, saw her lips form the words, but they wouldn’t come out. So he said them for her.

‘It’s the murder weapon.’

She looked like she was going to say something but he got to his feet quickly and was behind her. Pulled her head back and pressed the knife to her throat.

‘It’s the murder weapon that opened the jugulars of Susanne Andersen and Helene Røed. And which will open yours. If you don’t do exactly as I say.’

He pulled her head so far back that he could look her in the eyes.

The way in which the two of them were viewing each other now, upside down, was probably the way they viewed each other’s worlds too. Yes, so perhaps it would never have worked. Perhaps he had known that too. Perhaps that was why, despite everything, he had planned this alternative solution if she didn’t accept the ring. He had expected her to look at him with disbelief. But she didn’t. She looked like she believed every word he said.

Good.

‘Wh-what will I do?’

‘You’re going to call your policeman with an invitation he can’t refuse.’