Killing Moon полностью

But the lift didn’t break down. She walked out into the street. The night was oddly warm for one so late in September, especially as the sky was cloudless.

Jonathan leaned across the passenger seat and pushed open the door for her. She got in. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi, Thanh.’

The car pulled out. It struck her that he had used her name, which he never did when they were in the shop.

When they came to the main road, he headed west.

‘What was it you wanted to show me?’ she asked.

‘Something beautiful. Something just for you.’

‘For me?’

He smiled. ‘And for me too.’

‘Can’t you tell me what it is?’

He shook his head. She sat looking at him out of the corner of her eye. He was so different. For one thing he used her name, but she had never heard him use a word like ‘beautiful’ or say something was for her. She had been fretting, yes, frightened almost, before getting into the car but something — perhaps the way he spoke — calmed her.

And now he smiled as though he was aware of her peeking over at him. Maybe this is how he is when he’s not at work, she thought. But then she remembered that she was an employee, and he was the boss, so this was work, in a way. Or maybe it wasn’t?

Hovseter was on the west side of the city, and after a few minutes they had passed Røa, the golf course at Bogstad, and were deep into Sørkedalen with extensive, dense spruce forest on both sides.

‘Did you know bears have been sighted around here?’ he asked.

‘Bears?’ she said in alarm.

He didn’t laugh at her, merely smiled. He had a nice smile, Jonathan, she hadn’t noticed before. Or maybe she had, just not let the thought fix in her mind. After all, it was so seldom he smiled in the shop you could easily forget how it looked in the intervening time. As though he were afraid of exposing something he didn’t want to show her if he smiled. But now he did want to show her something. Something ‘beautiful’.

Her phone rang, giving her a start once again.

She looked at the display, declined the call and put the phone back in her bag.

‘Feel free to answer it if you want,’ he said.

‘I don’t answer if I don’t know who’s calling,’ Thanh said. That was a lie, she had recognised the number of the policeman, Sung-min. But, of course, she couldn’t take it and risk Jonathan becoming angry again.

He indicated and slowed down. Thanh couldn’t see any turn-off but suddenly it was there. Her heart beat faster as the wheels crunched along a narrow gravelly road. The headlights were the only light on a wall of black forest.

‘Where...’ she began but stopped for fear he would hear the tremor in her voice.

‘Don’t be scared, Thanh. I just want to make you happy.’

She had been found out. Just make you happy? She wasn’t so sure she liked him saying strange things like that to her any more.

He stopped the car, switched off the engine and the lights, and suddenly they were sitting in total darkness.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’re getting out here.’

She drew a deep breath. It must be that calm in his voice, it was almost hypnotic, because now she wasn’t frightened any longer, just excited. Show her alone. Something beautiful. She didn’t know why, but it suddenly occurred to her that this really wasn’t so strange. That it was something she had been waiting for, yes, hoping for. That the intense anxiety she had felt all day must be like how a bride feels on her wedding day. She stepped out of her side of the car and inhaled the fresh evening air and the smell of spruce. Then the panic returned. Since he had been so emphatic about her not telling a soul, she had — being the idiot she was — not told anyone. Absolutely no one knew she was there. She swallowed. At what point would she say stop, that she wanted to go home? If she did it now, wouldn’t that just make him very angry and maybe... maybe what?

‘You can leave the bag,’ he said, opening the rear door on his side.

‘I’d like to bring my phone,’ she said.

‘Suit yourself, but you should put it in the pocket of this, it could be cold.’ He handed her a padded jacket. She put it on. It smelled. Of Jonathan, probably. And of campfire. At least of recently being near to an open fire.

Jonathan had put on a headlamp and turned away before switching it on so as not to blind her. ‘Follow me.’

He stepped over a shallow roadside ditch right into the woods, and Thanh had no choice but to jump over after him. They made their way into the forest. If there was a trail, she couldn’t see it. The terrain rose and he stopped here and there to hold branches aside so she could make her way through more easily.

They emerged onto open moorland bathed in moonlight and she took the opportunity to take her phone out and check it. Her heart sank. The coverage wasn’t just poor, there was no coverage.

When she looked up again, she realised the light from the phone had ruined her ability to see in the dark, and all she saw was a black wall. She stood blinking.

‘Over here.’