He looked at the moon.
Only a sliver remained until it was completely covered. But the sirens were approaching, they were close now.
‘Can you hear him on his way to save you?’ Prim ran a finger down the back of Alexandra’s jacket. ‘Does it make you happy? That someone loves you so much they’re willing to die for you? But you must know that I love you more. I’d actually been planning to die, but I decided to live for your sake, and I’d say that’s a greater sacrifice.’
The siren stopped abruptly.
Prim stood up and took the two steps over to the edge of the roof. Yellow cones of light swept across the deserted car park below.
It was an ambulance.
Two people alighted from the vehicle. He recognised Hole by the black suit. The other person was wearing something light blue, resembling hospital attire. Had Hole brought along a nurse or a patient? The detective turned round so his back faced the roof, and although Prim couldn’t make out the handcuffs, he saw the glint of metal from the light of the street lamps. The two people below walked slowly side by side towards the entrance, which was right below Prim.
Prim dropped Alexandra’s Camel packet, watched it fall along the facade and land with a soft smack in front of the two. They gave a start but didn’t look up. The man in the hospital clothes picked up the cigarette pack and opened it. Took out Prim’s ID card and the note where he had written the security code, which floor they were to take the lift to and that the door to the roof was up the stairs to the right.
Prim walked back and sat down on the chair behind Alexandra’s, both of them facing the door ten metres away.
Prim pondered. Was he fearful of what was about to happen? No. He had already killed three women and three men.
But he was nervous. Because it would be his first time physically attacking someone not already reduced to a programmed, predictable robot controlled by the parasites he had infected them with. They had all been tricked into infecting themselves, so to speak. Helene Røed and Terry Våge had drunk it down with alcohol, Susanne and Bertine had snorted it at the party. And the cocaine dealer at Jernbanetorget had also snorted it from Bertine’s snuff bullet. It was on the day they brought in the seizure of green cocaine that he had got the idea. That is to say, he had long since heard the rumours about Markus Røed’s penchant for cocaine and wondered if it could provide a way to introduce the parasite into his body. But it was only when the seizure arrived, coupled with Alexandra telling him a few days previously about the roof party at Røed’s, that he realised what an opportunity this was. The paradox was of course that three other people ingested the cocaine and had to pay for it with their lives before he was finally able to infect his stepfather with his Toxoplasma gondii variant. And then by mixing it with one of the healthiest, most natural and most life-sustaining essentials a person needs. Water. He had to smile when he thought about it. He was the one who had called Krohn to say Markus Røed needed to come to the Forensic Medical Institute to identify the body of his wife. And he had a glass of water waiting for Røed. He could even recall verbatim what he had said to get Røed to drink it before he entered the autopsy room:
‘Experience suggests it can be a good idea to have fluid in the body when we’re dealing with a case such as this.’
The moon was almost consumed, and it had grown even darker when Prim heard slow — very slow — footsteps on the stairs.
He checked again that the syringe in his inside pocket was ready to be used.
The hinges on the metal door shrieked. It opened a crack. A hoarse voice sounded from inside.
‘It’s us.’
Harry Hole’s voice.
A strangled sob escaped Alexandra. Prim felt his anger rise and he leaned forward and whispered in her ear.
‘Don’t move and stay completely still, my love. I want you to live, but if you don’t do as I say, you’ll force me to kill you.’
Prim rose from the chair. Cleared his throat. ‘Do you remember the instructions?’ He heard with satisfaction that his own voice sounded loud and clear.
‘Yeah.’
‘Then come out. Slowly.’
The door opened.
As the figure in the suit stepped backwards over the raised threshold, Prim realised that the eclipse was total. He instinctively glanced up at the moon, vertically above the rooftop entrance. The face of the moon wasn’t black but had taken on a magical red colour. It looked like a pale jellyfish, desaturated, with only enough light for itself and nothing for the people down here.
The figure in the doorway took the first of the agreed eight steps backwards towards Alexandra and Prim, shuffling slowly as though wearing shackles. Like a condemned man to the scaffold, Prim thought. Trying to prolong his pitiful life by a few seconds. He could see the resignation and defeat in the now hunched form. That night Prim had spied on Harry Hole and Alexandra when they had been out and eaten dinner and had seen them walking closely together — like a couple — through the Palace Park, Hole had looked big and strong. The same as the night he had spied on them in the Jealousy Bar. But now it was as though Hole had shrunk to his actual size within his suit. He was sure Alexandra saw the same as him, that the suit tailor-made for the man she believed Harry Hole to be, no longer fitted.
Four paces in front of Hole the other figure backed out with his hands folded behind his head. Did the last of the moonlight glint faintly on something? Had the man in hospital clothes a weapon in his hand? No, it was nothing, a ring on a finger, perhaps.
Hole stopped. It looked like his handcuffed hands behind his back were giving him problems getting to his knees without toppling forward. The man was already behaving like a corpse. Prim waited until the man in hospital clothes also kneeled.
Then he approached Hole and raised his right hand, holding the syringe. Aimed at the pale, almost white, sagging skin on the back of the neck above his shirt collar.
In a second it would be over.
‘No!’ Alexandra screamed behind him.
Prim swung his hand. Harry Hole had no time to react before the tip of the syringe hit his neck and the needle sank in. He jerked but did not turn round. Prim pressed his thumb on the plunger, knew that the job was done, that the parasites were already on their way, that he had given them the shortest route to the brain, that this could go even quicker than with Våge. He saw the other man, the one in the hospital clothes, turn in the gloom. Again, something glimmered faintly in his hand, and Prim saw it now. It wasn’t a ring. It was the finger itself. It was metal.