Killing Moon полностью

‘All you have?’ She felt tears and anger well up at the same time. ‘Bjørn didn’t take his life because you let him down, Harry, but because I did.’ She had been almost shouting, and stopped, listening for sounds from the nursery. Lowered her voice. ‘He and I lived together, he thought he was the happy father of our child. Yes, he knew how I felt about you. It wasn’t something we spoke about, but he knew. He also knew — or thought he knew — that he could trust me. Thanks for the offer of division of guilt, Harry, but this is mine alone. All right?’

Harry stared down into his cup. He obviously wasn’t planning on having this argument. Good. At the same time something wasn’t right. Guilt is all I have left. Was there something she had misunderstood here? Or something he wasn’t saying?

‘Isn’t it tragic?’ he said. ‘That love is what kills those we care about.’

She nodded slowly. ‘Shakespearean,’ she said, studying his face. Those we care about. Why the plural form?

‘Listen, I better go back to the hotel and get some work done,’ he said, the chair leg scraping the floor. ‘Thanks for letting me...’ He nodded in the direction of the nursery.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, pensively.

Prim lay underneath the duvet staring at the ceiling.

It was close to midnight, and on the police scanner the messages went back and forth in a regular, reassuring buzz. All the same, he couldn’t sleep. Partly because he was dreading tomorrow, but mostly because he was wound up. He had been together with Her. And he was almost certain now. She loved him too. They had talked about music. She was interested in that. And also in his writing, she had said. But they had avoided talking about the two dead girls. That was a topic the others around them had probably been discussing. But not with the insight the two of them could have brought to bear on it, of course, if they only knew! If she only knew that he knew more than her. At one point he had actually been tempted to tell her everything, tempted in the same way as when you feel that pull to launch yourself into the abyss when standing by the railings on a bridge. Like, for instance, the bridge from the mainland over to Nesøya at three in the morning on a Saturday in May when you had just realised the one you thought was Her did not want you. But that was a long time ago, he had got over that, had moved on. Further than her; last he checked everything she had been involved in had hit a wall, her marriage included. Perhaps she would read about him soon, about all those who lauded him, and then maybe she would think that he, he could have been mine. Yes, then she’d be sorry.

But there were things that needed doing before that.

Like what needed to be done tomorrow.

She would be the third.

No, he wasn’t looking forward to it. Only an insane person would. But it needed to be done; he needed to overcome the doubt, the moral resistance any normal individual had to feel when faced with such a task. Speaking of feelings, he needed to keep in mind that revenge was not the objective. Losing sight of that could risk his being sidetracked and lead to failure. Revenge was merely the reward he would grant himself, a by-product of the real purpose. And when it was completed, they would kiss his feet. Finally.

‘So, the police work at weekends too,’ Weng said, studying the empty packet.

‘Some of us,’ Sung-min said, crouching by the basket in the corner, scratching the bulldog behind one ear.

‘Hillman Pets,’ the farmer read aloud. ‘No, can’t say it’s something I give my dog.’

‘All right.’ Sung-min sighed, rising to his feet. ‘I just had to check.’

Chris had suggested they take a walk around Sognsvann today and was peeved when Sung-min had said he needed to work. Because Chris knew that it wasn’t true, he didn’t need to work. Sometimes that sort of thing was hard to explain to other people. Weng handed the packet back to Sung-min.

‘But I have seen that packet before,’ Weng said.

‘You have?’ Sung-min said in surprise.

‘Yes. A few weeks ago. There was a chap sitting on a fallen tree trunk in the woods at the end of the field there.’ He pointed towards the kitchen window. ‘He was holding a packet like that.’ Sung-min peered out. It had to be at least a hundred metres to the edge of the woods.

‘I was using these,’ said Weng, clearly noticing Sung-min’s scepticism, and picked up a pair of Zeiss binoculars which had been lying on a stack of car magazines on the kitchen table.

‘Magnifies twenty times. Like standing right next to the guy. I remember it now because of the Airedale terrier on the packet, but at the time I didn’t think it was an anti-parasitic. I mean, the guy was eating it.’

‘He was eating it? Are you sure?’