Sung-min hung up and wondered if he had managed to sound as calm as he had been trying to. His heart was beating wildly, and the thoughts and conclusions — which had obviously been lying in wait, but had not been given leeway before now — went sliding through his mind like an avalanche. Could the perpetrator have murdered Bertine on familiar territory, in the same area where he had killed Susanne? The thought had, of course, occurred to him before, but then it had been in the form of a question as to why the killer hadn’t done that. And the answer had been obvious. Everything indicated that the killer had arranged to meet the girls — why else would they go all alone to places they’d never been to previously? And because the media had been writing page after page about the missing girl in Skullerud, the killer had invited Bertine to a totally different part of town so she wouldn’t make the connection. What Sung-min had not thought, or at least not all the way through, was that the killer could have arranged to meet Bertine at Grefsenkollen, and then driven her in his car to Skullerud. Before setting off, he must have convinced her to leave her phone behind in the car in Grefsenkollen. Maybe presented it as a romantic notion, something along the lines of let’s-be-all-on-our-own-without-anyone-disturbing-us. Yes, this could make sense. He checked the time. Half past nine. It would have to wait until tomorrow. Or? No, it was only a tip-off, and chasing after every fire engine in a murder inquiry soon tired you out. All the same. It wasn’t only his own intuition telling him that rather too many pieces fitted, Harry Hole himself had called him because he thought the same. Yes, the very same thoughts had gone through Harry’s mind as had gone through his own.
Sung-min looked at Kasparov. He had taken in the retired police dog because it had outlived its previous owner. It had suffered from hip trouble in the past couple of years and didn’t like to walk too far or uphill. But unlike bulldogs, Labrador retrievers had one of the keenest senses of smell in the canine world.
His mobile vibrated. He looked at the screen. A phone number and the name Weng. Half past nine. If they got in the car now, they could probably be there in thirty minutes.
‘Come, Kasparov!’ Sung-min tugged at the lead, his palms already sweaty from adrenaline.
‘Hey!’ A voice boomed from a darkened balcony, the sound echoing between the fashionable facades. ‘We pick up the shit after us in this country!’
<p>18</p><p>Tuesday</p>Parasite
‘Parasites,’ Prim said, lifting the fork to his mouth. ‘We die of them and live off them.’ He chewed. The food had a spongy consistency and didn’t taste of much, even with all the spices. He raised his glass of red wine to his guest before washing down the mouthful and swallowing hard. He placed his palm on his chest, waiting for the food to go down before continuing. ‘And we’re all parasites. You. Me. Everyone out there. Without hosts like us the parasites would die, but without the parasites we would also die. Because there are good parasites and there are malign parasites. The good ones come from blowflies, for instance, which deposit their parasite eggs into a corpse so that the larvae eat it up in no time.’ With a grimace, Prim cut off another piece and commenced chewing on it. ‘If they didn’t, we’d literally be wading in corpses and carcasses. No, I’m not joking! The maths is simple. We would, in the space of a few months, have died from the noxious gases from corpses if not for the blowfly. Then you have the interesting parasites which are neither particularly useful nor do any great harm. Among these you have, for example, Cymothoa exigua. The tongue-eating louse.’
Prim stood up and walked over to the aquarium.
‘It’s such an interesting parasite that I deposited a few in Boss’s tank here. What happens is that the louse attaches itself to the tongue of the fish and sucks blood from it until the tongue eventually decomposes and disappears. Then the louse attaches itself to the stub of the tongue, sucks more blood, grows and develops into a completely new tongue.’
Prim’s hand shot down into the water and grabbed the fish. He brought it over to the table, squeezed the fish’s mouth so it was forced open, and held it up in front of her face.
‘Do you see it? Do you see the louse? Can you see that it has eyes and a mouth of its own? Yes?’
He walked quickly back and released the fish back into the aquarium.
‘The louse — which I’ve named Lisa — functions just fine as a tongue, so no need to feel so sorry for Boss. Life goes on, as they say, and he has company now. It’s a lot worse to cross paths with the malign parasites. Ones like this one here are packed with...’
He pointed at the large pink slug he had placed on the dining table between them.
‘The dog and I live alone,’ Weng said, hefting his jeans up under his paunch.
