‘You can ask me,’ Aune said sharply, opening his eyes. ‘I’m fair to middling. I asked Harry to come but don’t the two of you have something better to do on a Friday night?’
Truls and Øystein looked at one another.
‘Nope,’ Øystein said.
Aune shook his head. ‘Where were you, Eikeland?’
‘Yeah,’ Øystein said. ‘So, I had a fare from Oslo to Trondheim, five hundred kilometres, and this guy was playing a cassette with a panpipe version of “Careless Whisper”, and in the middle of the Dovrefjell mountain range I snapped, ejected the tape, rolled down the window...’
Harry’s phone rang. He presumed it was Alexandra wondering if he was going to make it over for the lunar eclipse at 10.35 p.m., but he saw it was Sung-min. He hurriedly stepped out into the corridor.
‘Yeah, Sung-min?’
‘No. Say talk to me.’
‘Talk to me.’
‘I will. Because it doesn’t add up.’
‘What doesn’t add up?’
‘Kevin Selmer. He had an alibi.’
‘Oh?’
‘I was at the Custody Unit and it was right in front of me. Selmer’s ticket to Romeo and Juliet. If my brain was a little more efficient I’d have realised it there and then. That is to say, my brain tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. Not until Mona Daa spelled it out for me on the phone.’
Sung-min paused.
‘On the date Susanne Andersen was reported missing, Kevin Selmer was at Romeo and Juliet at the National Theatre. I’ve traced the ticket, it was one of several sponsor tickets that were sent to Markus Røed, the same type as Helene used.’
‘Yeah. She told me she handed out a few of them at the party. Probably where Selmer got his. And I assumed that was where he found out when Helene would be going to the theatre too — her ticket was stuck to the fridge door.’
‘But it wasn’t him. Not if it was the same man who killed Susanne Andersen. Because the ticket office at the theatre contacted the people next to Selmer that night and they confirmed the man in the seat beside them fitted his description, they remembered because he sat there in his parka. And he didn’t disappear at the interval.’
Harry was surprised. Mostly by the fact he wasn’t more surprised.
‘We’re back where we started,’ Harry said. ‘It’s the other guy, the Greenhorn.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The killer, it’s the amateur with the green coke. It’s him after all. Fuck, fuck!’
‘You sound... eh, sure.’
‘I am sure, but if I were you, I wouldn’t trust someone who’s been wrong as many times as me. I need to call Katrine. And Krohn.’
They hung up.
Katrine was in the process of putting Gert to bed when she took the call, so Harry quickly informed her of the development in the case. After that he called Krohn and explained the indications were that the case wasn’t solved after all. ‘Put Røed back under house arrest. I don’t know what this guy’s planning, but he’s had us fooled the whole way, so we’ll take every precaution.’
‘I’ll call the Guardian company,’ Krohn said. ‘Thanks.’
44
Friday
Interview
Prim checked the time.
One minute to six.
He had taken a seat at one of the window tables at Weiss. From where he was sitting, he had a view of the two freshly pulled half-litre beers in front of him, the Munch Museum in the light of the low sun outside, and the building where he had gatecrashed the terrace party.
A half-minute to six.
He let his eyes drift around. The customers looked so happy. They were standing in groups, smiling, chatting, laughing and patting each other on the shoulders. Friends. It looked nice. It was nice to have someone. To have Her. Then they would drink beer, and Her friends would be his.
A man wearing a porkpie hat came in. Terry Våge. He stopped and scanned the room as the door slid to behind him. At first he didn’t notice Prim discreetly waving his hand, his eyes no doubt needing to adjust to the dimly lit premises. But then he gave a brief nod and steered towards Prim’s table. The reporter looked pale and out of breath.
‘You’re...’
‘Yes. Sit down, Våge.’
‘Thanks.’ Våge took his hat off. His forehead glistened with sweat. He nodded at the beer on his side of the table.
‘Is that for me?’
‘I was going to leave as soon as the head was beneath the rim of the glass.’
Våge smirked in response and lifted the glass. They drank. Put down the beers and wiped the foam from their lips with the backs of their hands in an almost synchronised motion.
‘So here we are at long last,’ Våge said. ‘Sitting drinking like two old friends.’
Prim understood what Våge was trying to do. Break the ice. Gain trust. Get under his skin as quickly as possible.
‘Like them?’ Prim nodded towards the boisterous people at the bar.
‘Oh, they’re pen-pushers. The Friday drinks they’re having now are the highlight of their week, before they head home to their dull family lives. You know: eat tacos with the kids, put them to bed and watch TV with the same woman until they’re both bored enough to fall asleep. Then it’s up in the morning to more nagging from the kids and a trip to playland. I imagine that’s not the sort of life you live?’
No, Prim thought. But it might not be far off the kind of life I could see myself living. With Her.
Våge knew there wouldn’t be much opportunity to drink once he had taken out his notebook, so he took a big mouthful of the beer. Jesus, he needed that.
‘What do you know about the kind of life I live, Våge?’
Våge looked at the other man, tried to read him. Was this resistance? Had being so direct so early been a mistake? Profile interviews were often a delicate dance. After all, he wanted the interviewees to feel safe, regard him as a friend who understood them, open up and tell him things they wouldn’t otherwise. Or to be more precise: say things they’d regret. But sometimes he could be a bit pushy, too overt in his intentions.
‘I know a little,’ Våge said. ‘It’s unbelievable what you can find online when you know where to look.’
He noticed the other man’s voice was different than on the phone. And that he smelled of something. An odour that conjured up memories of a childhood holiday, his uncle’s barn, the smell of the horses’ sweaty harnesses. Våge felt a slight sting of pain in his stomach. Probably the old ulcer saying hello, as was its wont following periods of stress and indulgence in bad habits. Or when he drank too quickly, like now. He pushed the glass away and placed the notebook on the table.
‘Tell me, how did it start?’
Prim didn’t know how long he had been talking when he mentioned that his uncle was also his biological father, but that he only found that out after his mother had died in the fire.
‘Initial inbreeding isn’t necessarily so unfortunate, it can, on the contrary, yield excellent results. It is through persistent inbreeding that family defects arise. I had noticed there were some distinguishing features that I and Uncle Fredric shared. Small things, like the way we both put our middle finger to the corner of our mouth when thinking. And larger things, like us both having an exceptionally high IQ. But it was only when I began to immerse myself in animals and breeding that I suspected there was a connection and sent in both our DNA for testing. I’d harboured thoughts of revenge long before that. I was going to humiliate my stepfather the way he’d humiliated me. And he was indirectly responsible for the death of my mother. But now I realised the two of them were to blame, Uncle Fredric had also left my mother and me in the lurch. So, I gave him a box of chocolates for Christmas. Uncle Fredric loves chocolates. I’d injected a subspecies of Angiostrongylus cantonensis into them, a rat lungworm that is especially fond of human brains and which is only to be found in the slime of the Mount Kaputar slug. The result is a slow, agonising death with increasing dementia. But I can see I’m boring you. So let’s cut to the chase. I spent years developing my own subspecies of Toxoplasma gondii, and once it was ready the plan also began to form. The first and biggest problem proved to be getting close enough to Markus Røed to plant the parasite in him. Wealthy people are so much less accessible, so much harder to get close to, as a journalist you’d know all about that, when you’re trying to get a few words out of rock stars, right? The solution cropped up more or less by accident. I’m not the kind of person who goes out on the town much, but I’d got wind of a party being held on the rooftop where Røed lives. Up there...’ Prim pointed out the window. ‘And at the same time, through my job, I happened to come across a batch of green cocaine that I realised I could skim. You’re familiar with the expression? Yes, so I mixed it with my gondii friends. Not much, just enough to be sure it would have the desired effect once Røed consumed it. The plan was to wait for a couple of days after the party and then visit him again. That would be enough for him to get a scent of me, of the primary host, and be unable to reject me. On the contrary, he’d have done exactly what I asked of him, because from then on, he’d only have had one thought on his mind. Having me. I may no longer have had that little boy’s arse he wanted, but no one with gondii in their brain can resist the primary host.’