Sung-min hurried after the girl from the pet shop.
He was annoyed. Clearly, this wasn’t leading anywhere, she had her guard up and wasn’t going to talk. It was a waste of a day off, and his mood was not improved by the fact he and Chris had argued yesterday.
A flower seller was standing by the monumental main gate to Frogner Park, proffering his sad specimens to the tourists.
‘A rose for the beautiful beloved.’
The seller had taken a step forward so that he was blocking one of the smaller side gates which Sung-min and Thanh had headed towards.
‘No thank you,’ Sung-min said.
The seller repeated his sales pitch in broken Norwegian, as though Sung-min must have misheard him.
‘No,’ Sung-min said, and followed Thanh and Kasparov, who had skirted round the man and walked through the gate.
But the seller came after him.
‘A rose for the beautiful—’
‘No!’
The man obviously thought that Sung-min, judging by his attire, could afford it, and that Sung-min and Thanh were a couple since they both looked Asian. Not an unreasonable assumption, of course, and neither was it one that would have bothered Sung-min on another day. He rarely, if ever, allowed himself to be provoked by preconceptions, they were just a part of how people dealt with a complicated world. In fact, Sung-min was more often provoked by people who were so self-centred that they took offence every time they believed themselves the victim of even the most innocuous preconception. ‘A rose for—’
‘I’m gay.’
The seller stopped and stared blankly at Sung-min for a moment. Then he moistened his lips and held out one of the plastic-wrapped, pallid flowers.
‘A rose for the beau—’
‘I’m gay!’ Sung-min roared. ‘Do you understand? Gay as gay can be!’
The flower seller backed away and Sung-min saw that people going in and out of the gates had turned to look at them. Thanh had come to a halt, a startled expression on her face, and Kasparov gave a brief bark and pulled at the lead to come to his owner’s rescue.
‘I’m sorry.’ Sung-min sighed. ‘Here.’ He took the flower and handed the seller a hundred-krone note.
‘I don’t have any...’ the man began.
‘It’s fine.’ Sung-min walked over to Thanh and held out the rose to her.
At first she just looked at him in surprise. Then she began to laugh.
Sung-min hesitated a moment before seeing the funny side of the situation then laughed as well.
‘My dad says it’s largely a European tradition, giving flowers to your sweetheart,’ Thanh said. ‘The Greeks in antiquity, the French and English in the Middle Ages.’
‘Yes, but the rose is originally from the same continent as us,’ Sung-min said. ‘The place where I was born in South Korea, Samcheok, has a very well-known rose festival. And mugunghwa, the rose of Sharon, is the national symbol of Korea.’
‘Yes, but is mugunghwa strictly speaking a rose?’
Before they reached the Monolith, the conversation had moved on from flowers to pets.
‘I don’t know if Jonathan really likes animals that much,’ she said when they were standing at the top of the park looking down towards Skøyen. ‘I think he just ended up in this business. It could just as easily have been, like, a grocery or electronics store.’
‘But you don’t know anything about him continuing to stock Hillman Pets after the import ban?’
‘What makes you so sure he has?’
‘He was very stressed when I called round to the shop.’
‘Maybe he was scared of...’
‘Yes?’
‘No, nothing.’
Sung-min took a deep breath. ‘I’m not a customs officer. I’m not going to charge him with illegal importation. What I’m working on is following a lead, which in a roundabout way could maybe help us to apprehend the man who killed those two girls who disappeared. And prevent any more from dying.’
Thanh nodded. Looked like she hesitated slightly before making up her mind. ‘The only illegal thing I’ve seen Jonathan do was when he agreed to take a fox cub someone had taken with them from London — apparently foxes live in the city there. It’s an offence to bring foxes into the country, of course, and I think that when they found out they got scared. They couldn’t face going to the vet to have it put down and they weren’t able to do it themselves, so they gave the cub to Jonathan instead. Had to reimburse him generously to take the problem off their hands, no doubt.’
‘People do things like that?’
‘You don’t know the half of it. Twice I’ve had owners not bothering to pick up their dogs and vanish into thin air.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Took them home. But we don’t have much space, so eventually I had to take them to the animal shelter. It’s so sad.’
‘What happened to the fox cub?’
‘I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to. I loved that cub.’ Sung-min could see her eyes becoming moist. ‘Suddenly one day it was gone. He probably flushed it down the toilet...’
‘The toilet?’
‘No, of course not. But like I said, I don’t want to know how he got rid of Nhi.’ They continued walking while Thanh told him of her plans, about her dream of becoming a vet. Sung-min listened. It was hard not to like this girl. Besides she was bright, and there was no longer any reason to pretend he had got in touch to have his dog looked after, so he accompanied her the entire way. His questioning had proved fruitless, but he consoled himself with the fact that he had at least got to spend time with someone who appreciated a four-legged friend as much as he did.
‘Oh,’ Thanh said as they approached Mons again. ‘There’s Jonathan.’
The door of the shop was open, and a Volvo estate was parked outside. A man was leaning in the open door on the passenger side. He probably couldn’t hear them due to the sound of the vacuum cleaner. By his feet was a bucket of water, suds spilling over the brim, and the car was wet and glistening. Water still trickled from the hose lying on the tarmac.
Sung-min took Kasparov’s lead and wondered whether he should slip away unnoticed and leave it up to Thanh to decide if she wanted to tell him about their meeting. But before he had a chance to make up his mind, the shop owner straightened up and turned in their direction.
Sung-min saw the man’s eyes blaze as he took in and undoubtedly interpreted the situation correctly.
‘Isn’t it unchristian to wash your car during church-service hours,’ Sung-min said before the others had a chance to say anything.
The man’s eyes narrowed.
‘We’ve just been for a walk in the park,’ Thanh added quickly. ‘Dog minding.’
Sung-min wished she hadn’t sounded so anxious. As though they were the ones who had cause to be on the defensive and not him.
Without a word, the man carried the vacuum cleaner and hose into the shop. Reappeared, picked up the bucket and emptied the contents out onto the pavement. Soapsuds and dirty water pooled around Sung-min’s handmade shoes.
Sung-min didn’t notice, just concentrated on the man marching into the shop with the empty bucket. The anger he saw, was that merely down to a policeman being a nuisance? Or was it because the man was scared? Sung-min didn’t know exactly what nerve he had hit, but he had hit something, of that he was in no doubt. The man came back out and locked the door of the shop, then walked towards the car without gracing them with a glance. Sung-min saw the remains of some clods of earth in the water that had run from the tyres to the manhole cover.
‘Been driving in the forest?’ Sung-min asked.
‘Been barking up the wrong tree?’ the shop owner asked, slipping into the driving seat, shutting the door and starting the engine.
Sung-min watched the Volvo as it accelerated down the Sunday calm of Neuberggata.