Mia felt lucky. She had grown up in a stable environment. With a kind mother and a fantastic father, with her grandmother only a few doors away. A grandmother who had taken notice of her, seen who she was, told her she was special.
Fly like the ladybird, Mia. Never forget that.
Her grandmother’s last words on her deathbed, spoken with a wink to her very special friend. Mia raised the bottle towards the clouds.
Death isn’t dangerous.
Six days left.
The pills she’d taken from her anorak made her groggy. Mia Krüger took a few more and leaned back against the rock.
You’re very special, Mia, did you know that?
Perhaps that explained why she had chosen to go to Police College? To do something different? She had thought about this as well these last few days. Why had she applied? She could no longer make the pieces fit together. Time kept shifting. Her brain was out of kilter. Sigrid was no longer blonde, little Sigrid, she was junkie Sigrid now, the nightmare. Their parents had been devastated, withdrawn from the world, from each other, from her. She had moved to Oslo, started, with absolutely no enthusiasm, to study at Blindern University; she hadn’t even been able to summon up the energy to turn up for her exams. Perhaps Police College had chosen her? So that she might rid the world of people like Markus Skog?
Mia rose and staggered down to the jetty. She finished off the bottle and put it in the pocket of her anorak. Found another couple of pills, munched them without washing them down with anything. The seagulls had abandoned her in favour of the fishing boat, and the only sound out here now was the waves lapping gently against the rock.
She had shot him.
Markus Skog.
Twice. In the chest.
It had been a chance encounter; they had been out on another assignment, a girl had disappeared and the special unit had been called in – just sniff around and take a peek at things, as Holger had put it: We don’t have a lot on right now, Mia. I think we should check this one out.
Holger Munch. Mia Krüger thought fondly of her old colleague and sat down on the edge of the jetty with her boots dangling over the edge. The whole incident was bizarre. She had killed another human being, but she didn’t feel bad about it. She felt worse about the consequences. The media outrage and the row down at Grønland. Holger Munch, who had led the unit, who had cherry-picked her from Police College, had been reassigned, the special unit closed down. This had hurt her deeply, and it had cut her to the core that Holger had paid the price for her actions, but the actual killing, strangely enough, no. They had been following a lead that took them to Tryvann, some junkies or hippies – the public always had difficulty in telling the two apart when they rang to complain – anyway, someone had parked a campervan in Tryvann and was partying and making a racket. Holger thought the missing girl might be there. And, indeed, they did come across a young girl, not the girl who was missing, but another one, glazed eyes, a needle in her arm, inside the filthy campervan and, with her, unexpectedly, Markus Skog. And Mia had, as the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s report quite accurately stated, ‘Acted carelessly, with unnecessary use of force’.
Mia shook her head at her own immorality. Holger Munch had stood by her, said that Skog had attacked her first – after all, a knife and an axe were found at the crime scene – but Mia should have known better. She was trained to defend herself without backup against a frenzied junkie brandishing a knife or wielding an axe. She could have shot him in the foot. Or in his arm. But she hadn’t, she had killed him. A moment of hatred, when the rest of the world had simply disappeared. Two shots to the centre of his chest.
She would have gone to prison if it had not been for Holger Munch. She took the empty bottle from her anorak, licked the last few drops and raised it towards the clouds once more. It didn’t matter now. It would all be over soon.
At last.
Six days left.
She lay down, rested her cheek against the coarse, wooden planks that made up the jetty and closed her eyes.
Chapter 8
Tobias Iversen covered his younger brother’s ears so that he would not hear the row coming from downstairs. They tended to kick off at this time, when their mother came home from work and discovered that their stepfather had not done what he was supposed to do. Cook dinner for the boys. Tidy the house a bit. Find himself a job. Tobias did not want his brother to hear them, so he had invented a game.
I’ll cover your ears and you tell me what you can see inside your head, yeah?
‘A red lorry with flames on it.’ Torben smiled and Tobias nodded and smiled back at him. What else?
‘A knight fighting a dragon.’ His brother grinned and Tobias nodded again.
The noise level below increased. Angry voices crept up between the walls and slipped under his skin. Tobias could not handle what would happen next – things being thrown at the walls, the screaming getting louder; perhaps worse – so he decided to take his brother outside. He whispered between his hand and his younger brother’s ear.
‘Why don’t we go outside and hunt some bison?’
His brother smiled and nodded eagerly.
Hunt bison. Run around the forest pretending to be Indians. He would love that. Not many other children lived out here, so Tobias and his brother usually played together, even though Tobias was thirteen and his brother only seven. It was not a good idea to be inside most of the time. Outside was better.
Tobias helped his brother put on his jacket and trainers, then he hummed, sang and stomped hard on the back stairs as they made their way out. As usual, his brother gazed at him with admiration; his big brother always entertained him, making these weird, loud noises. Torben thought it was funny; he loved his big brother very much, loved joining him on all the exciting, strange adventures his brother came up with.
Tobias went to the woodshed, found some string and a knife and told Torben to run ahead without him. They had a secret place in the forest and it was perfectly safe, his brother was free to roam; further in, there was an clearing between the spruces where the two of them had built a hut, a little home away from home.
When they reached the hut, Torben was already settled on the old mattress, had found a comic and was absorbed by the pictures and all these exciting new letters and words which he finally, after a huge effort, both at school and with some help from his big brother, was beginning to grasp.
Tobias took out the knife and chose a suitable willow branch, cut it off at the base and stripped away the bark in the middle, the section that was going to form the handle of the bow. The grip improved when the bark was removed and the wood had time to dry slightly. He bent the willow over his knees, tied the thin rope to each end and, hey presto!, a new bow. He placed it on the ground and went off to find suitable material for arrows. They did not have to be willow, most types of wood would do, except for spruce: the branches were too limp. He returned with straight, narrow branches and started stripping off the bark. Soon four new arrows were lying near the tree stump he was sitting on.
‘Tobias, what does it say here?’
His brother came padding out from the hut with the comic in his hand.
‘Kryptonite,’ Tobias told him.
‘Superman doesn’t like that,’ his younger brother said.
‘You’re right,’ Tobias replied, wiping a bit of snot from his brother’s nose with the sleeve of his jumper.