Closing her eyes, she pictured the crime scene while he spoke. Answered that, no, she didn’t need to see it herself, she would dispatch a couple of detectives, then study photos of the scene. And, yes, she apologised for not being available by phone. She had switched it off while putting the child to bed and must have performed a very good rendition of ‘Blueman’, because she had fallen asleep too.
‘Maybe you’re working too hard,’ Sung-min said.
‘You can scratch
‘All right. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Sung-min.’
Katrine rang off and sat staring at the phone.
Bertine Bertilsen was dead. That was as expected. Now she had been found. That was as hoped. The place and way she had been found confirmed the suspicion that it was the same killer. That was as feared. Because that meant there might be more murders.
Katrine heard a whimper from behind the open door to his bedroom. She told herself she would stay sitting where she was listening for more, but wasn’t able, stood up from the kitchen chair and tiptoed over to the doorway. It was quiet in there, just the sound of Gert’s steady slumberous breathing. She had lied to Sung-min. She had read that on average we hear two hundred lies every day, most of them white fortunately, the sort that keep the social wheels turning. This had been one of them. It was true she had switched off the phone to put the child to bed, but not about falling asleep herself. She hadn’t switched it back on because Arne usually called right after Gert’s bedtime, knowing that was when he would catch her. That was nice, of course it was. After all, he just wanted to hear how her day had been. Listen to her small joys and petty frustrations. Lately — with the missing girls — she had been mostly sharing her frustrations, naturally enough. But he had listened patiently, asked follow-up questions that showed he was interested, did everything a good, supportive friend and potential boyfriend should do. It was just that tonight she really wasn’t in the mood, she needed to be alone with her thoughts. Had decided to serve up the same white lie about having fallen asleep when Arne asked tomorrow. She had been thinking about Harry and Gert. How she was going to solve it. Because she had seen it in Harry’s eyes, the same helpless love she had seen in Bjørn’s when they looked at their son. Bjørn’s son and Harry’s son. How much should and could she include Harry in things? For herself, she wanted to have as little as possible to do with Harry and Harry’s life. But what about Gert? What right did she have to take yet another father from him? Hadn’t she herself had an unstable drunkard for a father, one she had loved in her own way and would not have been without?
She had switched the mobile back on before going to bed, hoping there wouldn’t be any messages. But there were two. The first, from Arne, was a declaration of love of the kind the younger generation obviously had a lower threshold for:
She saw it had been sent recently and that he hadn’t actually tried to call her while the phone was off, so he had probably been busy with something.
The other was from Sung-min and conformed to a style she was more familiar with:
Katrine went into the bathroom and picked up her toothbrush. Looked in the mirror.
Sung-min was giving his tweed jacket the once-over with a clothes brush. It was a waterproof Alan Paine hunting jacket, which Chris had given him for Christmas. After his conversation with Katrine, he had tapped in a text to him to say goodnight. It had bothered him in the beginning that he was always the one sending goodnight messages while Chris just responded. But it was fine now, that was just how Chris was, he needed to believe he had the upper hand in the relationship. But Sung-min knew that if he skipped texting one night, Chris would be a drama queen on the phone the very next day, nagging about something being wrong, about Sung-min having met someone else or losing interest.
