Killing Moon

50 Friday

Missed calls

The head waiter lifted the handset of the ringing telephone. ‘Frognerseteren Restaurant.’

‘This is Harry Hole. I’m trying to get hold of Inspector Katrine Bratt who’s dining with you tonight.’

The head waiter was taken aback. Not only because the loudspeaker on the phone was on, but because there was something familiar about the man’s name. ‘I’m looking at the guest list now, Mr Hole. But I can’t see a reservation in her name.’

‘It’s probably under the gentleman’s name. He’s called Arne, I don’t know his surname.’

‘No Arne, but I do have several surnames here with no first names.’

‘OK. He’s blond, might be wearing a flat cap. She’s dark-haired, Bergen accent.’

‘Aha. Yes, they ate outside, that was my table.’

‘Ate?’

‘Yes, they’ve left the restaurant.’

‘Mm. Did you happen to hear anything that could give you some idea where they might be going?’

The head waiter hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if I—’

‘This is important, it’s concerning the police investigation of the murdered women.’

The head waiter realised where he had heard the name before.

‘The gentleman arrived early and asked to borrow two wine glasses. He had a bottle of Remoissenet Chassagne-Montrachet and said he was going to propose to her up by Tryvann after dinner, and then I gave him the glasses. It was a 2018 vintage, you see.’

‘Thanks.’

Harry reached out to the phone lying on Aune’s duvet and ended the call.

‘We need to get up to Tryvann right away. Truls, will you contact Emergency Control and get them to send a patrol car there? Blues and twos.’

‘I’ll try,’ Truls said, whipping out his own phone.

‘Ready, Øystein?’

‘Oh, may Mercedes be with us.’

‘Good luck,’ Aune said.

The three of them were on their way out the door when Harry took out his phone, looked at the display and stopped with one foot either side of the threshold. The door swung back and knocked the phone from his hand. He bent down and picked it up from the floor.

‘What’s going on?’ Øystein called from outside.

Harry took a deep breath. ‘It’s a call from Katrine’s number.’ He noticed he had automatically jumped to the possibility that it wasn’t her ringing.

‘Aren’t you going to take it?’ Aune asked from the bed.

Harry looked grimly at him. Nodded. Tapped Accept and put the phone to his ear.

‘You sure?’ Commander Briseid asked.

The older firefighter nodded.

Briseid sighed, glanced at the burning villa his crew were busy hosing. Looked up at the moon. It looked strange tonight, as though something wasn’t right with it. He sighed again, tipped the fire helmet back a little on his head and began making his way towards the solitary patrol car. It was from the Police Traffic and Sea Division and had pulled in shortly after their own fire engines were in place. From the time the station had been alerted of the villa on fire in Gaustad at 20.50, it had taken ten minutes and thirty-five seconds until Briseid and his colleagues arrived at the scene. Not that the situation would have been critical had it taken them a few minutes longer. The house was fire-damaged from before and had been unoccupied for years, so there was little chance of lives being at risk. Nor was there any danger of the blaze spreading to the surrounding villas. Badly raised youths setting fire to houses like this wasn’t that uncommon, but whether it was arson or not was something they could look at later; right now putting it out was the main concern. In that sense it could almost be deemed an exercise. The problem was the house was situated right next to Ring 3 and thick black smoke was drifting across the motorway, hence the presence of the Traffic Division. Fortunately, the usually busy traffic from out of the city on Fridays had died down, but from the hill Briseid was on he could still see the headlights of cars — those not enveloped in smoke at least — standing stock-still on the motorway. According to the Traffic Division there was congestion in both directions from the Smestad junction to Ullevål. Briseid had told the female police officer that it would take time before they got the fire under control, at least until the smoke cleared, so it might be a while before people could get to where they were going. They had at any rate closed the access roads now, so no more vehicles were coming onto the motorway.

Briseid approached the police car. The female officer lowered the window.

‘You should probably get some of your colleagues up here after all,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘See him?’ Briseid pointed at the older firefighter standing over by one of the fire engines. ‘We call him Sniff. Because he’s able to pick up that smell out of all the other smells when something’s burning. Sniff is never wrong.’

‘That smell?’

‘That smell.’

‘Which is?’

Was she slow? Briseid cleared his throat. ‘You have the smell of barbecue. Then you have the smell of barbecue.’

He could tell by her face that the penny had dropped. She reached for the police radio.

‘So, what is it now?’

‘What is it?’ Harry’s slightly bewildered voice said on the other end.

‘Yes! What’s up? I just turned on my phone and there’s seven missed calls from you.’

‘Where are you and what are you doing?’

‘Why do you ask? Is something wrong?’

‘Just answer.’

Katrine sighed. ‘I’m on my way to Frognerseteren station. From there I was planning to go straight home and knock back a couple of stiff drinks.’

‘And Arne? Is he with you?’

‘No.’ Katrine strode downhill the same way they had come, although now at a faster pace. The moon was being slowly devoured up above, maybe that sight was what had made her decide to drop the slow torment and drive the knife right into his heart. ‘No, he’s not with me any more.’

‘As in not where you are now?’

‘As in both meanings.’

‘What happened?’

‘Yeah, what happened? The short version is that Arne lives in a different, and no doubt a better, world from me. He knows everything about the elements of the universe, and yet for him the world is a rose-tinted place where you see things how you want them to be and not how they actually are. My world and yours, Harry, it’s an uglier place. But it’s real. In that sense we should envy all the Arnes. I thought I could put up with him tonight but I’m a bad person. I snapped and had to tell him how it was and that I couldn’t stand another second.’

‘You... eh, broke up?’

‘I broke up.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘When I left, he was sitting in tears by Tryvann with a bottle of Montrachet and a pair of crystal glasses. But enough about men, why were you ringing?’

‘I’m calling because I think the cocaine was skimmed at Krimteknisk. And that Arne was the one who did it.’

‘Arne?’

‘We’ve sent a patrol car to have him picked up.’

‘Have you lost it, Harry? Arne doesn’t work at Forensics.’

Harry was quiet for a few moments.

‘Where...’

‘Arne Sæten is a researcher and lecturer in physics and astronomy at the university.’

She heard Harry whisper a quiet ‘bollocks’ under his breath and shout: ‘Truls! Cancel that patrol car.’

Then he was back on the line. ‘Sorry, Katrine. Seems I’m past my best-before date.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘This is the third time I’ve gone all in and been way off the mark in this bloody case. I’m ready for the scrapheap.’

She laughed. ‘You’re just a little overworked, like the rest of us, Harry. Switch off your brain and get some rest. Weren’t you going to watch the eclipse with Alexandra Sturdza and Helge Forfang? You can still make it; I see the moon is just a little more than half covered.’

‘Mm. OK. Bye.’

Harry hung up, leaned forward in the chair and put his head in his hands. ‘Fuck, fuck.’

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Harry,’ Aune said.

He made no reply.

‘Harry?’ Aune said cautiously.

Harry lifted his head. ‘I can’t let it go,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘I know I’m right. That I’m almost right. The reasoning is correct, there’s just one small mistake somewhere. I need to find it.’

This is it, Thanh had thought as she saw his hand draw close to her face.

Exactly what ‘it’ was, she was not entirely clear on. Just that it was something dangerous. Thrillingly dangerous. Something she should be afraid of, had been afraid of, but wasn’t any more. Because it wasn’t dangerous with a capital D, she was sure of that, everything about him told her that.

His hand had stopped. Had remained in the air, as if frozen, shaped like a gun. And then she had realised that he hadn’t reached for her but was pointing. She had turned her head in the direction his forefinger was trained, had to prop herself up on her elbows to see over the ridge. Involuntarily, she had taken a deep breath. And held it.

There, bathed in moonlight in a forest clearing at the bottom of the slope in front of them she saw four, no, five foxes. Four cubs playing soundlessly and an adult fox looking on. One of the cubs was slightly bigger than the others and that was the one she stared at especially.

‘Is that...?’ she whispered.

‘Yeah,’ Jonathan whispered. ‘That’s Nhi.’

‘Nhi. How did you know I called...?’

‘I saw you. You used the name when you played with him and fed him. You talked more to him than you did to me.’ In the darkness she could see he was smiling.

‘But how did this... happen?’ She nodded towards the foxes.

Jonathan sighed. ‘I’m the kind of idiot who takes in prohibited animals. Like that guy who had two Mount Kaputar slugs and got me to take one of them because he thought there was a better chance of at least one of them surviving if they were fed and cared for in two different locations. I should have refused. They would have closed my shop down if that policeman had discovered it. And I haven’t slept since I flushed it down the toilet. But at least with Nhi I had some time to think. I knew we couldn’t keep Nhi hidden indefinitely, and then the environmental health authorities would put him down. So, I took him to the vet’s, she pronounced him healthy, so I placed him with this pack of foxes I knew lived here. Now of course it certainly wasn’t a given that they’d take Nhi in, and I know how fond you are of that cub. So I didn’t want to say anything to you until after I’d made a few trips out here and was sure it was going to be all right.’

‘You didn’t want to tell me because you were afraid I’d be upset?’

She saw Jonathan squirm slightly. ‘I just figured it can be painful getting your hopes up, and even more painful when things don’t turn out the way you thought and dreamt they would.’

Because you know quite a bit about that, Thanh thought. And that one day she would find out more about that.

But right now she didn’t know if it was the darkness, the intoxicating joy and relief, the moon or just tiredness that made her want to put her arms around him.

‘It’s probably getting a little late for you to be still up,’ he said. ‘We can come back another day if you’d like.’

‘Yeah,’ she whispered. ‘I’d really like that.’

On the way back, she had to hurry to keep up. Not that he appeared to be moving quickly, but he took ground-gaining strides and was clearly accustomed to being in the forest. As they were crossing the moor in the moonlight, she studied his back. His body language and bearing were also different out here compared to at the shop in town. He radiated a sort of contentment and happiness, an innateness, as though this was where he felt at home. Maybe the happiness was also due to the knowledge that he had made her happy, she suspected it was. He tried to hide it of course, but now he’d been rumbled, and his sour face wasn’t going to fool her any longer.

She increased her pace to a jog. Perhaps he thought that after just an hour in the forest she felt at home here too; he obviously didn’t feel it was necessary to lead her by the hand any more at any rate.

She let out a small cry and pretended to stumble. He stopped abruptly and she was dazzled by his headlamp. ‘Oh, sorry. I... are you all right?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ she said, and held out her hand.

He took it.

Then they walked on.

Thanh wondered if she was in love. In which case how long she had been. And — if she actually was — how difficult it was going to be to make him aware of it.