Sung-min watched the pine needles fall to the floor. Yawned. Knew he would sleep. That he wouldn’t have any nightmares about what he had experienced tonight. He never did. He wasn’t quite sure what that said about his personality. A colleague at Kripos said this ability he had to shut off indicated a lack of empathy and had compared him to Harry Hole, who apparently suffered from something they called parosmia, a defect hindering the brain from registering the smell of human remains that meant Hole remained unaffected at crime scenes where other people’s stomachs were turning. But Sung-min didn’t regard himself as having any defect, he merely believed he had a healthy ability to compartmentalise, to keep his private and professional worlds away from each other. He brushed at the pockets sewn to the outside of the jacket, noticed there was something inside one of them and took it out. It was the empty Hillman Pets bag. He was about to throw it in the bin when he remembered that when Kasparov had got another bout of worms, the vet had recommended a different anti-parasitic cure because Hillman Pets contained a substance now prohibited to import and sell in Norway. That had to have been at least four years ago. Sung-min turned the bag around, examining it until he found what he was looking for. The best-before date and the date of manufacture.
The bag was marked as produced last year.
Sung-min turned the bag over again. So what? Someone had bought a packet abroad and brought it home, probably without even knowing it was banned. He considered whether to throw it away. It had been lying several hundred metres from the crime scene, and it was extremely unlikely that the killer had had a dog with him. But there was something about breaches of the law, they were usually linked. A rule-breaker is a rule-breaker. The sadistic serial killer begins by killing small animals, like mice and rats. Starting small fires. Then torturing and killing slightly bigger animals. Setting fire to vacant houses...
Sung-min folded the bag.
‘Satan’s cunt!’ Mona Daa yelled, staring at her phone.
‘What is it?’ Anders asked, from the open bathroom door, as he brushed his teeth.
‘You don’t need to shout. And Satan doesn’t have a—’
‘Cunt. Våge is saying that Bertine Bertilsen has been found dead. Wenggården in Østmarka, only a few kilometres from where they found Susanne.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, oh. Oh as in why the fucking hell does
‘They probably don’t fuck—’
‘That much in hell? Yes, I think they do. I think whoever is down there gets fucked in the mouth, in the nose and the ear, and they can only think of one thing worse, and that’s working at
She tossed the phone on the bed as Anders slid under the duvet and snuggled up to her.
‘Have I told you that it gets me a little horny when you—’
She gave him a shove. ‘I’m not in the mood, Anders.’
‘—aren’t in the mood...?’
She pushed away his probing hand, but couldn’t help smiling a little as she picked up her phone. Began reading again. At least Våge didn’t have any details from the crime scene, so it was unlikely he had talked to anyone who had been there. But how had he found out about the discovery of the body so fast? Did he have an illegal police radio, could it be that simple? That he deduced what was going on from listening to those brief, half-coded messages the police used because they knew interlopers were always eavesdropping? And then Våge merely made up the rest based on what he heard, so it became a suitable blend of fact and fiction which could just about pass for real journalism? It had up to now at any rate.
‘Someone suggested I should ask you for a little inside information,’ she said.
‘Really? Did you tell them that I’m not on that case unfortunately, but that I can be bought for uninhibited sex?’
‘Stop it, Anders! This is my job.’
‘So you think I should give you free info and risk my own?’
‘No! I just mean... it’s so bloody unfair!’ Mona folded her arms. ‘Våge has someone feeding him while I’m sitting here... starving to death.’
‘What’s unfair,’ Anders said, sitting up in bed and his playful cheeriness dissipating, ‘is that girls in this city can’t go out without running the risk of being raped and killed. It’s unfair that Bertine Bertilsen is lying dead in Østmarka while two people sit here thinking the world is unfair because another journalist was first on the case or because the clearance rate of the department will go down.’
Mona swallowed.
And nodded.
He was right. Of course he was right. She swallowed again. Tried to suppress the question that was forcing its way up:
Helene Røed lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
