She moved in the direction of the voice. Made out Jonathan standing at the edge of the forest holding his hand out to her. She took it without thinking. It was warm and dry. He led her further in. Should she peel off and run? Where? She no longer had any idea in which direction the road or the city were, and here in the forest he would catch up with her anyway. If she were to resist, it would probably only accelerate the plans he had for her. She felt a welling in her throat, but defiance at the same time. She wasn’t some helpless, naive little girl, there had to be some part of her brain telling her this was OK, so why feed her fear with paranoid thoughts? Soon she would understand what it was he wanted, and it would be like those nightmares you wake from and realise that you’ve been lying safely in bed the entire time. He was going to show her something beautiful and that was that. And instead of letting go, she held a little tighter around his hand, which in spite of everything felt strangely safe.
She was startled when he stopped.
‘We’ve arrived,’ he whispered. ‘Lie down here.’
She looked at the place his headlamp illuminated, it was a sort of lair, a bed of pine-needle branches. As if sensing her hesitation and wanting to show it was safe, he lay down himself and motioned for her to lie down next to him. She drew a deep breath. Wondered how to formulate her refusal. Moistened her lips. Saw that he had placed his forefinger over his own lips and was looking at her with a happy, boyish expression. It put her in mind of her little brother when the two of them did something they weren’t allowed, that bond of conspiratorial delight. Whether it was that or something else she didn’t know, but she suddenly found she had lain down beside him. She could see the remains of a small fire next to them, as though someone had been here a few times before, even though it was in the middle of the forest and hardly a logical place to make camp. From where they were lying, she could see the sky and the moon between the treetops. What was there here for him to show her?
She felt his breath close to her ear. ‘You must be completely quiet, Thanh. Can you turn over onto your stomach?’ His voice, his smell, yes, it was as if the person she had always known had been inside Jonathan had finally stepped out into the light. Or rather, into the dark.
She did as he said. She wasn’t afraid. And when she saw his hand right in front of her face, her only thought was this is it, now it’s going to happen.
Sung-min raised his glass to Chris. After Harry had rung, Sung-min had drawn a line under the working week by calling Thanh’s number to book a dog walker and hear if she wanted to take the opportunity to tell him anything about her boss. She hadn’t answered. It didn’t matter much; he had checked out this Jonathan very thoroughly without finding a trace of anything criminal, either past or present. He had made up his mind there and then to put suspicion aside. After all, that was the method he had always sworn by: follow rigorous and proven principles of investigation. He should have learned by now that listening too much to that so-called gut feeling was only tempting due to it being so easy. He had also learned that if you wanted to survive as a homicide detective, you had to put the case aside in your free time. And in order to do that, you had to focus on something else. So now he was focusing on Chris. On them. On this meal and the evening they were going to spend together. Things had been slightly strained when he had arrived, the echo of their argument still lingering. But the atmosphere had already improved. It was going to be a nice dinner, and afterwards there was going to be good make-up sex.
So when he felt the phone vibrate, saw it was Harry again and Chris looked at him with one eyebrow raised as if to let him know that make-up sex was at stake, Sung-min decided not to take the call. Surely it was something that could wait. Couldn’t it? Sung-min had instructed his right forefinger to press Decline but it didn’t obey. He sighed heavily and made an apologetic face.
‘If I don’t answer they’re just going to keep on ringing all night. I promise, this will only take twenty seconds.’ Without waiting for a reply, he pushed his chair back and ran out to the kitchen to show Chris that he meant it literally when he said twenty seconds.
‘You need to make this quick, Harry.’
‘OK. Is there anyone working at Krimteknisk by the name of Arne?’
‘Arne. Not that I can think of. What’s his second name?’
‘I don’t know. Could you find out who at Krimteknisk analysed the seizure of green cocaine?’
‘Sure, I’ll get on it tomorrow.’
‘I was thinking now.’
‘Now tonight?’
‘Now within the next fifteen minutes.’
Sung-min paused to allow Harry time to realise how unreasonable such a request was on a Friday night, and to someone who was technically his superior to boot. When neither an emendation nor an apology was forthcoming, Sung-min cleared his throat.
