Killing Moon полностью

‘Or what?’ The tip of Røed’s tongue emerged, he smiled, and his voice became a hoarse whisper. ‘Or else you’ll put me in a chokehold?’

‘No,’ Harry said.

‘No?’

‘I can put you in a chokehold if you tell me.’

Røed laughed. ‘Finally, a man that understands me. It’s just that I have a little confession to make now that the case is solved. I lied when I said Susanne and I had sex on the same day as she was killed. I didn’t meet her at all.’

‘No?’

‘No. I only said it to give the police a plausible explanation as to why my saliva was found on her body. It was what they wanted to hear, and it was also going to save me a lot of trouble. The path of least resistance, you might say.’

‘Mm.’

‘Can we keep that between ourselves?’

‘Why? The case has been cleared up. And you hardly want it known you were screwing another woman behind your wife’s back?’

‘Ah,’ Røed said, and smiled. ‘I’m not worried about that. There are... other rumours to consider.’

‘Are there?’

Røed twirled the empty glass in his hand. ‘You know, Harry, when my father died, I was both devastated and relieved. Can you understand that? What a release it was to be rid of a man you didn’t want to disappoint for anything in the world. Because you know that sooner or later the day will come when you have to disappoint him, when he has to find out who you really are. And so you hope to be saved by the bell. And I was.’

‘Were you afraid of him?’

‘Yes,’ Røed said. ‘I was afraid. And I suppose I loved him too. But above all...’ he put the empty glass to his forehead, ‘...I wanted him to love me. You know, I would happily have let him kill me if I just knew that he loved me.’

Terry Våge blinked. He had slept poorly. And was in a bad mood. Anyway, no one liked press conferences that started at nine in the morning. Or perhaps he was mistaken, the other journalists in the Parole Hall looked annoyingly perky. Even Mona Daa — the seats next to her already occupied when he arrived — appeared wide awake and animated. He had tried to make eye contact but to no avail. None of the other journalists had paid any attention to him when he entered either. Not that he was expecting a standing ovation, but you would think that going into the woods in the middle of the night and running the risk of encountering a serial killer might garner you a modicum of respect. Especially when you came back alive with pictures that had been sold to media outlets and appeared all around the world. Happiness is short-lived, as they say. A real win would have meant his getting that exclusive interview, but that scoop had been snatched away at the last minute. So yes, he had more reason than the rest to be on bad form today. Moreover, Dagnija had called last night to say she couldn’t come at the weekend after all. When she told him she couldn’t make it — although he wasn’t convinced that she couldn’t — he had naturally grown keener and attempted to persuade her, which had ended in an argument.

‘Kevin Selmer,’ Katrine Bratt said from the podium. ‘We’ve chosen to go public with the name because the suspect is deceased, because of the seriousness of the crime, and in order to spare others who have been under police scrutiny from public suspicion.’

Terry Våge watched the other journalists take notes. Kevin Selmer. He searched his brain. He had the list of car owners on the PC at home but couldn’t remember anyone with that name offhand. But his memory wasn’t what it once was, not like when he was able to reel off the name of every notable band, their members, records and release dates from 1960 to... well, 2000?

‘I’ll now hand over to Helge Forfang from the Forensic Medical Institute,’ Head of Information Kedzierski said.

Terry Våge was slightly puzzled. Wasn’t it uncommon for forensic scientists to be present at press conferences? Didn’t they usually just have their reports quoted? And he was puzzled by what Forfang presented. That at least one of the victims had been infected with a mutated or manipulated parasite and the evidence suggested the killer had been responsible. And that the killer had also been infected.

‘The post-mortem carried out on Kevin Selmer last night revealed a high concentration of the Toxoplasma gondii parasite. High enough for us to say with a large degree of certainty that the parasite was the cause of death, not the self-inflicted injuries to the head and face. Although speculative, it might appear as if Kevin Selmer acted as a primary host for the parasite and was able for a time to control the population, perhaps by use of antiparasitic agents, but, again, we don’t know that for sure.’

Terry Våge stood up and left when they opened for questions from the floor. He had found out what he needed to know. He was no longer puzzled. He just needed to get home and confirm it.