Kasparov tugged hard at the leash. There was no longer any track where they were walking. It had become cloudy earlier in the day, and now the only light came from the beam of Sung-min’s torch. It stopped on a wall of tree trunks and low-hanging branches which he had to bend down to negotiate. He had lost any sense of where they were or how far they had walked. He heard Kasparov panting below the carpet of ferns, but couldn’t see him and had the feeling of being pulled by an invisible force into increasingly deep darkness. This could have waited. It could have. So why? Because he alone wanted to get the credit for finding Bertine? No. No, it wasn’t as banal as that. He had just always been like this — when he was wondering about something he had to find out about it at once, to wait was unbearable.
But now he was having second thoughts. Not only did he risk messing up a crime scene should he stumble over a body here in the darkness, it was also the fact he was afraid. Yes, he could admit it. Right now he was that little boy who was scared of the dark, who had arrived in Norway not knowing what he was afraid of, but had a feeling that other people, his adoptive parents, his teachers, the other children in the street, they knew. They knew something he didn’t know about himself, about his past, about what had happened. He never found out what that was, if indeed there was anything. His adoptive parents had no dramatic story to relate about his biological parents or how he had been adopted. But ever since, he had been consumed with a need to know. Know everything. Know something they, the others, did not.
The leash slackened. Kasparov had stopped.
Sung-min felt the beating of his heart as he pointed the torch at the ground and pushed the fern leaves aside.
Kasparov had his muzzle to the ground, and the light found what he was sniffing at.
Sung-min crouched down and picked it up. At first he thought it was an empty crisp packet, but then he recognised it and understood why Kasparov had stopped. It was a Hillman Pets bag, an anti-parasitic powder that Sung-min had bought in a pet shop once when Kasparov had roundworm. There was a flavour added to the powder which dogs liked so much that Kasparov only had to catch sight of a bag of the stuff and he would wag his tail so wildly that Sung-min thought he was going to take off. Sung-min crumpled it and put in his pocket.
‘Will we go home, Kasparov? Supper time?’
Kasparov looked up at him as if he understood the words and thought his owner insane. He turned, Sung-min felt a hard tug and knew he didn’t have a prayer, they were going deeper in to where he no longer wanted to go.
‘What’s most amazing is that when some of these parasites reach your brain, they begin to take over,’ Prim said. ‘Control your thoughts. Your desires. And the parasite will command you to do what’s necessary for it to continue its natural cycle. You become an obedient soldier, willing to die if that’s what it takes.’ Prim sighed. ‘As so very often it does, unfortunately.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, you think this sounds like a horror story or science fiction? But you should know that some of these parasites aren’t even rare. Most hosts live and die without knowing the parasite is present, as is likely the case with Boss and Lisa. We believe we struggle, work, and sacrifice our lives for our family, our country, our own legacy. While in reality it’s for the parasite, the bloodsucker ensconced in the headquarters of the brain deciding things.’
Prim refilled their glasses with red wine.
‘My stepfather accused my mother of being just such a parasite. Claimed she began turning down roles because he had wealth so she could just sit at home drinking up his money. Of course that wasn’t true. Firstly, she didn’t turn down parts, but they did stop offering them to her. Because she sat at home all day drinking and had begun to forget lines. My stepfather was a very wealthy man, so her drinking could never have rendered him destitute, to put it mildly. Besides, he was the parasite. He was the one inside my mother’s brain, making her see things the way he wanted her to see them. So she didn’t see what he was doing to me. I was only a child and thought a father had the right, could demand that sort of thing from his son. No, I didn’t think every six-year-old was forced to lie naked in bed with their father and satisfy them, or face threats about their mother being killed if they said a word about it to anyone. But I was frightened. So I said nothing, but tried to show my mother what was going on. I had always been bullied at school because of my teeth and... yes, the way a victim of sexual assault behaves, I suppose. Rat, they called me. But now I began to lie and steal. I started skipping school, ran away from home, and began taking money from men to wank them off in public toilets. I robbed one of them. Put simply, my stepfather was nestled in both my and my mother’s brains, destroying us bit by bit. Speaking of which...’
Prim pronged the last piece on his plate. Sighed. ‘But now it’s over, Bertine.’ He turned the fork while he studied the pale pink piece of meat. ‘Now I’m the one nestling in the brain and giving orders.’
Sung-min had to run to keep up with Kasparov, who was straining even harder. A sort of hacking cough began coming from the dog, as if he were trying to dislodge something stuck in his throat.
Sung-min did something he had learned as an investigator. When he was almost entirely sure of something he tested his own deduction by trying to turn everything on its head. Could it be that what he had thought was impossible was possible all the same? Could, for example, Bertine Bertilsen still be alive? She might have run off, gone abroad. She may have been abducted and was now sitting locked up in a basement or an apartment someplace, was perhaps together with the perpetrator at this very moment.
Suddenly they were out of the woods and in a clearing. The light from the torch glittered on water. They were by a small lake. Kasparov wanted to get to the water and pulled Sung-min with him. The light flickered over a birch tree standing bowed over the water, and Sung-min momentarily caught sight of something that looked like a thick branch reaching all the way down to the water, as though the tree were drinking. He pointed the light at the branch. Which was not a branch.
‘No!’ yelled Sung-min, yanking Kasparov back.
The shout echoed back from the other side of the lake.
It was a body.
It was hanging folded at the hips over the lowest branch of the birch tree.
The bare feet were just above the surface of the water. The woman — because he could see at once that it was a woman — had, like Susanne, no clothes on her lower body. Her stomach was also exposed, because her dress was pulled up, stopping underneath her bra, and was hanging down towards the water, covering her head, shoulders and arms. Only her wrists were visible below the inside-out hem of the dress, and her fingers were reaching down below the surface of the water. Sung-min’s first thought was to hope there were no fish in the lake.
Kasparov sat still. Sung-min patted him on the head. ‘Good boy.’
He took out his phone. The coverage at the farm had been poor, but up here the signal indicator was down to one bar. But the GPS was working, and as he registered his position, he noticed he was breathing through his mouth. Not that there was much of a smell, it was just something his brain — after a couple of unpleasant experiences — had begun to do automatically upon understanding it was at a crime scene. His brain had also worked out that in order to establish that this was Bertine Bertilsen, he would have to position the torch on the ground and hold on to the tree trunk with one hand while leaning out over the water to pull up the hem of her dress so he could see her face. The problem was he might then place a hand on the trunk in the same place as the perpetrator and spoil a fingerprint.