She was startled when he stopped.
‘We’ve arrived,’ he whispered. ‘Lie down here.’
She looked at the place his headlamp illuminated, it was a sort of lair, a bed of pine-needle branches. As if sensing her hesitation and wanting to show it was safe, he lay down himself and motioned for her to lie down next to him. She drew a deep breath. Wondered how to formulate her refusal. Moistened her lips. Saw that he had placed his forefinger over his own lips and was looking at her with a happy, boyish expression. It put her in mind of her little brother when the two of them did something they weren’t allowed, that bond of conspiratorial delight. Whether it was that or something else she didn’t know, but she suddenly found she had lain down beside him. She could see the remains of a small fire next to them, as though someone had been here a few times before, even though it was in the middle of the forest and hardly a logical place to make camp. From where they were lying, she could see the sky and the moon between the treetops. What was there here for him to show her?
She felt his breath close to her ear. ‘You must be completely quiet, Thanh. Can you turn over onto your stomach?’ His voice, his smell, yes, it was as if the person she had always known had been inside Jonathan had finally stepped out into the light. Or rather, into the dark.
She did as he said. She wasn’t afraid. And when she saw his hand right in front of her face, her only thought was this is it, now it’s going to happen.
Sung-min raised his glass to Chris. After Harry had rung, Sung-min had drawn a line under the working week by calling Thanh’s number to book a dog walker and hear if she wanted to take the opportunity to tell him anything about her boss. She hadn’t answered. It didn’t matter much; he had checked out this Jonathan very thoroughly without finding a trace of anything criminal, either past or present. He had made up his mind there and then to put suspicion aside. After all, that was the method he had always sworn by: follow rigorous and proven principles of investigation. He should have learned by now that listening too much to that so-called gut feeling was only tempting due to it being so easy. He had also learned that if you wanted to survive as a homicide detective, you had to put the case aside in your free time. And in order to do that, you had to focus on something else. So now he was focusing on Chris. On them. On this meal and the evening they were going to spend together. Things had been slightly strained when he had arrived, the echo of their argument still lingering. But the atmosphere had already improved. It was going to be a nice dinner, and afterwards there was going to be good make-up sex.
So when he felt the phone vibrate, saw it was Harry again and Chris looked at him with one eyebrow raised as if to let him know that make-up sex was at stake, Sung-min decided not to take the call. Surely it was something that could wait. Couldn’t it? Sung-min had instructed his right forefinger to press Decline but it didn’t obey. He sighed heavily and made an apologetic face.
‘If I don’t answer they’re just going to keep on ringing all night. I promise, this will only take twenty seconds.’ Without waiting for a reply, he pushed his chair back and ran out to the kitchen to show Chris that he meant it literally when he said twenty seconds.
‘You need to make this quick, Harry.’
‘OK. Is there anyone working at Krimteknisk by the name of Arne?’
‘Arne. Not that I can think of. What’s his second name?’
‘I don’t know. Could you find out who at Krimteknisk analysed the seizure of green cocaine?’
‘Sure, I’ll get on it tomorrow.’
‘I was thinking now.’
‘Now tonight?’
‘Now within the next fifteen minutes.’
Sung-min paused to allow Harry time to realise how unreasonable such a request was on a Friday night, and to someone who was technically his superior to boot. When neither an emendation nor an apology was forthcoming, Sung-min cleared his throat.
‘Harry, I’d like to help, but right now I have some private matters I need to prioritise, and the truth isn’t going to disappear in the space of twelve hours. My lecturer at Police College maintained he was quoting you when he said that the investigation of a serial killer wasn’t a sprint but a marathon. That you need to pace yourself. But now my twenty seconds are up, Harry. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow.’
‘Mm.’
Sung-min wanted to take the phone from his ear, but again his hand refused to obey.
‘Katrine is together with this Arne guy at the moment,’ Harry said.
Chris had counted the seconds. It annoyed him that over thirty of them had passed when Sung-min sat down across from him again. And it annoyed him even more that his boyfriend did not look him in the eye. At least not until he had taken a mouthful of the red wine Chris had already forgotten the name of. He could sense Sung-min’s restlessness, which always made him feel like — at best — number two.
‘You’re going to work, aren’t you?’
‘No, no, relax. Tonight, you and I are going to enjoy ourselves, Chris. Why don’t you take that glass of wine to the sofa and I’ll put on that recording of Brahms’s third symphony I brought with me?’
Chris looked at Sung-min suspiciously, but they went into the living room. It was Sung-min who had persuaded him to buy a vinyl turntable and while Sung-min put the record on he sat back on the sofa.
‘Close your eyes!’ Sung-min ordered.
Chris did as he was told and a moment later the music streamed out into the room. He waited to feel the sofa yield to the weight of Sung-min where he had left space but it didn’t happen. He opened his eyes.
‘Hey! Sung! Where are you?’
The reply came from the kitchen. ‘Just making a few quick calls. Listen in particular to the cellos.’
49
Friday
The ring
Frognerseteren restaurant was situated high above Oslo, between the villas of its more bourgeois inhabitants and the hiking terrain of those same inhabitants. The people on their way to the restaurant were wearing suits and dresses; those going to the cafe adjacent were dressed in trekking attire. It was a six-minute walk from the terminus of the metro, and when Katrine arrived, she had no trouble spotting Arne, he was sitting alone outside at one of the large, solid wooden tables. He had stood up and spread his arms wide, smiling with those nice, sad eyes from under his flat cap, and she had stepped slightly reluctantly into his imperious embrace.
‘Won’t it get a little cold?’ she asked when they had sat down. ‘They haven’t put out any patio heaters. It looks like they have tables inside.’
‘Yes, but if we’re in there we won’t get to see the blood moon.’
‘I see,’ she said, shivering. It was unseasonably warm in the city below, but up here the temperature was considerably lower. She looked up at the white moon. It was full but looked normal otherwise. ‘When’s the blood coming out?’
‘It’s not blood,’ he said with a chuckle.
For a while she had found it irritating that he took everything she said so literally, as if he thought she were a child. But tonight she found it perhaps a little extra irritating when so many stressful thoughts were swirling in her head, and she had a nagging feeling that she should be at work, because time was at work — and not in their favour.