Helene shook her head. She could see herself from outside, lying naked and freezing on a gravel track with a knife to her throat. She could feel the stones digging into her skin; she saw no way out, maybe this was where life ended. And yet she wanted to be here, yet she wanted him. Had she gone mad?
‘My mother disappeared into a depression,’ he said in a tremulous voice, and she could see that he too was freezing cold now. ‘It was only when she was emerging from it again that she had the energy to do what she’d promised me so many times when she was drunk. She took her own life and tried to take mine. The fire brigade classed it as an accident, smoking in bed. Neither I nor her brother, Uncle Fredric, saw any reason to inform them or the insurance company that she didn’t smoke, that the packet they found had been Markus Røed’s.’
He fell silent. Something warm hit her breast. A tear.
‘Are you going to kill me now?’ she asked.
He drew a shaky breath. ‘As I’ve said, I’m sorry, but the life cycle of the parasites needs to be completed. So that they can reproduce, you see. I need new, fresh parasites when a new individual is to be infected. You understand?’
She shook her head. She wanted to stroke his cheek, it felt like she had taken ecstasy, the love was all-encompassing. But it wasn’t love, it was lust, she was just so fucking horny.
‘And, of course, there’s the advantage that the dead tell no tales,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she said. She was breathing harder. As though she knew these were her final breaths.
‘But tell me, Helene, while we had sex, did you feel loved for a little while?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, smiling tiredly. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Good,’ he said, taking one of her hands in his free one. Squeezing it. ‘I wanted to give you that as a gift before you died. Because that’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it? To feel loved?’
‘Maybe,’ she whispered, closing her eyes.
‘Keep that in mind now, Helene. Say it to yourself: I am loved.’
Prim looked down at her. Saw her lips moving. Forming the words. I am loved. Then he lifted the knife, pointed the tip towards her carotid artery, leaned forward, placing all his weight over it as he let the blade sink in. The warm spurt of blood on his ice-cold skin made him shudder with elation and horror.
He held on tightly to the knife handle. The vibrations letting him know that life was leaving her. After the blood spurted for a third time it began to flow. A few seconds later the knife told him Helene Røed was dead.
He pulled out the knife and sat down on the ground next to her. Wiped his tears. He shivered with cold, fear and the release of tension. It didn’t get any easier, it got worse. But these were the innocent ones. The guilty one remained. That would be something entirely different. Taking the life of Markus Røed would be a joy. But first the bastard would suffer so much that death would come as a deliverance.
Prim felt something on his skin. Light rain. He looked up. Black. More rain was forecast tonight. It would wash away most of the traces, but he still had work to do. He looked at his watch, which was the only thing he hadn’t taken off. Half past nine. If he was efficient, he could be back in the city centre by half past ten.
29
Saturday
Tapetum lucidum
It was an hour to midnight, and the wet pathways glistened under the lamplights in the Palace Gardens.
Harry was pleasantly anaesthetised and reality appropriately distorted. He was, in short, in the sweet spot of intoxication, where he was conscious of the deception, yet still mentally pain-free. He and Alexandra were walking through the park. The faces they met drifting past. In order to support him, she had put his arm over her shoulder and her own arm around his waist. She was still angry.
‘It’s one thing to refuse to serve us,’ she hissed.
‘Refuse to serve me,’ Harry said, his diction considerably steadier than his gait.
‘Another thing throwing us out.’
‘Throwing me out,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve noticed barmen don’t like customers going to sleep with their heads on the counter.’
‘Still. It was the way they did it.’
‘There’re worse ways, Alexandra. Believe me.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Oh yeah. That was one of the more tactful ways I’ve been thrown out. I think it might sneak into my top-five-most-pleasant-ejections-list.’
She laughed, putting her head against his chest. With the result that Harry swerved off the pathway out onto the royal lawn, where an elderly man holding the retractable lead of his dog while it relieved itself glared disapprovingly at them.
She got Harry back on an even keel. ‘Let’s stop at Lorry and get a coffee,’ she said.
‘And a beer,’ Harry said.
‘Coffee. Unless you want to get thrown out again.’
Harry thought it over. ‘OK.’
Lorry was crowded, but they got seats with two French-speaking men in the third booth to the left of the entrance door and were served large cups of steaming coffee.
‘They’re talking about the murders,’ Alexandra whispered.
‘No,’ Harry said, ‘they’re talking about the Spanish Civil War.’
At midnight, they left Lorry after sticking to coffee, and were a little less drunk.
‘Back to mine or back to yours?’ Alexandra asked.
‘Can I get some other alternatives?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Back to mine. And we’re walking. Fresh air.’
Alexandra’s apartment was in a building on Marcus Thranes gate, halfway between St Hanshaugen and Alexander Kiellands plass.
‘You’ve moved since the last time,’ Harry said as he stood lightly swaying in the bedroom while she tried to undress him. ‘But the bed is still the same, I see.’
‘Good memories?’
Harry paused to think.
‘Idiot,’ Alexandra said, pushing him onto the bed and getting to her knees to unbutton his trousers.
‘Alexandra...’ he said, placing a hand on hers.
She stopped and looked up at him.
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘Too drunk, you mean?’
‘That too, probably. But I was at her grave today.’
He waited for the anger of humiliation. Coldness. Contempt. Instead only tired resignation was detectable in her eyes. She pushed him under the duvet with his trousers on, switched off the light and crawled in after him. Snuggled up to him.
‘Does it still hurt?’ she asked.
Harry tried to think of another way to describe the feeling. Emptiness. Loss. Loneliness. Fear. Panic, even. But she had actually hit the nail on the head, the overarching feeling was one of pain. He nodded.
‘You’re lucky,’ she said.
‘Lucky?’
‘To have loved someone so dearly that it can hurt so much.’
‘Mm.’
‘Sorry if that sounded banal.’
‘No, you’re right. Our emotions are banal.’
‘I didn’t mean it was banal to love somebody. Or to want to be loved.’
‘Me neither.’
They held each other. Harry stared into the darkness. Then shut his eyes. He had half of the reports left. The answer might be in there. If not he would have to try the desperate plan he had discarded, but which had resurfaced again and again after the conversation with Truls at Schrøder’s. He drifted off.