The Owl Always Hunts At Night

by Samuel Bjork

  ‘OK, and when did you say she was reported missing?’

  ‘The nineteenth of July. But this is the strange thing, and it explains why it took some time to find her in the register.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The woman who reported her missing, Helene Eriksen, must have reported her – er, what’s the term, “not missing”? – only a few days later.’

  ‘You mean, she was found?’

  Grønlie disappeared for a few seconds, as if he was checking his screen again.

  ‘No, not found. The report was merely withdrawn.’

  ‘But that makes no sense,’ Munch said, glancing up at Mia’s flat.

  Both windows were dark. He had tried calling her, but she had not answered her phone, which was why he had made the decision to drive up to see her.

  ‘… but she isn’t picking up,’ Grønlie said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Helene Eriksen. There’s a number listed here, but she isn’t answering her phone.’

  ‘OK,’ Munch said, crossing the street. ‘Did you say Camilla’s parents were dead? Surely somebody must have been responsible for her? What else do we know about her?’

  ‘That’s all I’ve got for now,’ Grønlie replied. ‘Only this place, Hurumlandet Nurseries.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Munch went up to the entrance and studied the array of doorbells, though he knew it was pointless; Mia would not want people to know where she lived. He took a few steps back and looked up at the windows again. Funny, really. They did not live all that far from each other – his flat in Theresesgate was only a few minutes away – and yet he had never visited Mia at home. Well, it was not funny; more sad, really. He chucked his cigarette stub on the ground, lit another one, and felt guilty again. Ever since Mikkelson had suspended her, they had met up only a few times. Brief, almost superficial meetings at Justisen. Mia had seemed distant, monosyllabic. No wonder, after everything she had been through. A few telephone calls. A few cups of tea. Perhaps he should have done more for her. Been a better boss. And friend. But Mia was like that. She valued her privacy, hated intrusion, and so he had left her alone.

  ‘We haven’t found out a great deal yet, but it looks like it’s a kind of home for troubled teenagers,’ Grønlie went on.

  They have a website, but it’s a bit—’

  ‘1990s,’ Ylva piped up in the background.

  ‘Needs updating,’ Grønlie said.

  ‘But it is a gardening business?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grønlie said. ‘As far as we can gather. A place for young people who, well, have problems. They go there to work. That’s pretty much all I know for now, that’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘Great,’ Munch said. ‘Keep trying – what’s her name?’

  ‘Helene Eriksen.’

  ‘OK, keep trying until she picks up. And see what else you can find on Camilla Green.’

  ‘We’re already on it,’ Grønlie said.

  ‘Fine,’ Munch said, and rang off.

  He tried Mia’s number again, but there was still no reply. He stood for a moment, wondering whether to try all the bells without names by them to see if he might chance upon the right person, but caught a lucky break when the door suddenly opened. A young woman in tight, colourful exercise clothes appeared, and Munch just had time to discard his cigarette and slip through the door before it closed again.

  It was the second floor, this much he knew. They had walked home from Justisen once, and she had pointed it out.

  That’s where I live. My new home.

  She had been drunk and spoken sarcastically.

  Home.

  She had not sounded as if she had meant it. Munch was wheezing as he took the stairs up to the second floor. Fortunately, there were only two flats. One had a sign on the door: ‘Gunnar and Vibeke live here’. There was nothing on the other door.

  Munch unbuttoned his duffel coat, pressed the doorbell twice and waited.

  Chapter 10

  Miriam Munch had woken up in a strange flat. Not in a strange bed, no. She had not done that; he had been a gentleman, he had not even suggested it. He had fetched a duvet and made up a bed on the sofa in the charming little flat, which looked nothing like her own.

  A completely different life, a life that looked like the one she had lived before she got pregnant; a freer life, somehow. Her and Johannes’s newly bought flat in Frogner had Italian floor tiles and downlighters in the bathroom. A fridge that could make ice cubes, and a special drawer to keep vegetables fresher for longer. A dishwasher with a digital display. They had electric radiators they could remote-control through their phones, so they could come home to the perfect temperature. A new car – Miriam did not even know what make it was, but it apparently had all the things you are supposed to have these days: GPS, four-wheel drive, airbags front and rear, DVD screens, sunroof and ski box. This flat represented something completely different. Old posters stuck to the walls with Sellotape. A record player in one corner. Clothes everywhere. She could feel a draught from the window as she sat up on the sofa; it was so cold in here that she tightened the duvet around her. She reached for the cigarettes on the coffee table.

  October in Oslo. Winter was coming and, normally, she would have turned up the thermostat in the kitchen, which controlled the temperature throughout the flat, so Marion would be warm when she appeared bleary-eyed from her bedroom and sat down at the kitchen table to eat her breakfast, and Miriam’s guilty conscience returned. She wasn’t a good person, was she? Going to a party. And then to come back here afterwards, sitting up all night on a stranger’s sofa, drinking red wine, talking for hours about things she could barely remember ever telling anyone before. About her dad. The divorce. How she had really felt about it. About Johannes. The sneaking suspicion that she had picked him to get away, to rebel, to have a child while she was very young with a man who was the complete opposite of her father.

  Miriam lit a cigarette, fumbled for her phone in her handbag on the table, but there was nothing from Johannes. No: I miss you. No: Where are you? Just a message from her mother: Is it all right if Marion stays another night? She would like us to take her to school tomorrow.

  Miriam texted a reply: OK, Mum, sure, give her a kiss from me. She put down the mobile, stayed huddled under the duvet and studied the posters again.

  Animal freedom is our freedom.

  Stop Løken Farm.

  A poster of a farm in Mysen. A place in Norway where people made money buying unwanted animals, keeping them in cages before selling them for testing abroad.

  It was how they had met.

  Ziggy.

  Miriam felt riddled with guilt again, and yet she could not make up her mind whether to get up, get dressed, take a taxi home to Frogner, greet Johannes when he returned from his shift at the hospital, like a good girlfriend, a good mum, the person she ought to be, or whether to pull the duvet over herself in this tiny but vibrant flat which reminded her strongly of the life she had once led.

  Stop Løken Farm.

  She had been at the Animal Protection League shelter on Mosseveien, because she felt she ought to do something with her life. Something other than just being a mum. Tove and Kari, two decent women with no other ambition than to care for cats no one wanted. Feed them. Cuddle them. Make sure they knew they mattered. It was simple, but it had been enough for her.

  And suddenly he had been there.

  They had almost turned into giggling teenagers, Tove and Kari, the first time he came, blushing as if some celebrity were visiting them. And to begin with, Miriam could not see why he was any different from the other volunteers.

  But she could see it now.

  Damn.

  Miriam reached for another cigarette, and had just lit it as the bedroom door opened.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ Miriam said.

  ‘Did you get any sleep?’

  He rubbed his eyes, walked softly across the floor, and sat down in the chair opposite her, wrapping
the duvet he had brought with him more tightly around himself.

  ‘Not much, a little,’ Miriam blushed.

  ‘Good,’ he smiled, reaching out for a cigarette from the packet on the table.

  Ziggy lit the cigarette and tilted his head slightly to one side, studied her over the glowing tip with his fine, smiling eyes, then he opened his mouth and came straight to the point.

  ‘What do you think we should do, Miriam? About this?’

  Suddenly, she felt a little queasy. She stayed where she was, studying her cigarette without seeing anything. She had thought that this intoxicating feeling of sitting up a whole night with someone who made her feel like herself would pass.

  ‘I need coffee. Do you want some?’

  Please.

  ‘I think I’d better leave.’

  I want to stay here all day.

  ‘I understand.’ Ziggy smiled. ‘I just didn’t think I could let you leave without breakfast but, obviously, it’s your choice.’

  Please stop talking, or I won’t be able to go.

  ‘No, I should probably be going.’

  ‘Of course. You must do what’s right for you.’

  And when she had got dressed and was outside the flat, Miriam Munch realized she had a problem.

  She had fallen in love.

  It was more than just a crush.

  What if I don’t contact him again?

  She hailed a cab and tried to hold on to this thought all the way home.

  It’ll pass.

  She put her keys down on the console table by the front door, undressed as she walked to the bedroom, slipped under the duvet and was asleep almost before her head touched the pillow.

  Chapter 11

  Holger Munch had rung the bell again, knocked a couple of times and was about to leave, when the door finally opened and Mia appeared.

  ‘What time do you call this?’

  Mia flashed him a wry smile and let him into the flat.

  ‘Four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon?’ Munch said.

  He took off his shoes and looked in vain for a peg for his coat, so he put it on the floor and followed her into the living room.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ Mia said. ‘I haven’t got round to unpacking yet. Can I get you something? A cup of tea? I take it you’re still not drinking alcohol?’

  Munch looked for an undertone in the last sentence, a hint that it had been too long, that he should have visited her sooner, but he could find none.

  ‘I was just about to have a shower. Do you mind waiting?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Munch said.

  ‘Good. I’ll be two minutes.’

  Mia disappeared into the bathroom, while Munch stayed in the middle of the living room, not knowing quite what to do with himself. Haven’t got round to unpacking was an understatement. The place reminded him of his old flat in Hønefoss. He had never unpacked either, never had the motivation to turn the bedsit into a home, and this flat was the same. There was a mattress on the floor under the window with a duvet and a pillow. Stacks of cardboard boxes were dumped about the place. Some looked as if an attempt had been made to open them, before they were closed again. The walls were bare, and there was hardly any furniture.

  It looked as if Mia had made an effort at some point. There were Ikea boxes here and there, a white chair partly assembled, the legs still on the floor next to the instructions, a small table she had at least managed to put together. Munch sat down heavily on a low couch, put the case file on the table. He did not like what he saw here.

  She looked extremely ill. Again. Almost as bad as on Hitra. He had shuddered at the sight of her then, and he got the same feeling now. Mia, normally strong, brimming with energy and clear-eyed, reduced to a ghostly version of herself. There was a half-empty bottle of Armagnac and a glass on the floor next to the mattress; three empty pizza boxes were stacked in a corner. Munch felt guilty again. He should have visited her sooner. She looked dreadful. The last time they had met, that evening down at Justisen, she had seemed more cheerful, harbouring some kind of hope that things would work out, but now her eyes looked just like they had out on Hitra. Absent. Lifeless.

  Munch got up and fetched his cigarettes from his duffel coat in the hallway.

  ‘Can I smoke inside or shall I go out on the balcony?’ he called out towards the bathroom, but she had turned on the shower and there was no reply, so he opted for the balcony. He stood outside, freezing, as he watched the last of the daylight disappear, and Bislett Stadium and the rest of the city descend into mute darkness.

  A sick bastard.

  Munch allowed himself a minute to process it all.

  Not in front of the team. Never. Professional. Measured. Calm. Resourceful. It was why he was the boss, he never let the others see what the cases did to him, but he could feel it creeping up on him now; the memory of what he had seen in Hurum disturbed him greatly. They had had many cases. And Munch always felt compassion for the victim, the family; he felt the extreme tragedy that hit people who lost a loved one, but most of them had a rational explanation. Random arguments with unhappy outcomes. Scores being settled among the city’s criminal gangs. Jealousy. Sometimes the cases he worked had an element of humanity. Saying that a killing could be human did not make it acceptable, but in his profession – and he never said it out loud, but he often thought it – he was always relieved when there was, ultimately, an explanation he could understand.

  Not this time.

  This was not human.

  Munch fetched his duffel coat from the corridor, went back outside on the balcony and lit another cigarette. He saw Mia slip out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and disappear towards one of the bedrooms, presumably to a wardrobe, or a box of clothes; he felt a little uneasy again, about everything, the whole situation. Not so long ago, she had chosen to leave reality behind. Hide away, all alone on an island in the sea. And he had brought her back. They had used her because they needed her, and then they had tossed her aside, leaving her unsupported. No, not them. It was Mikkelson who had left her high and dry. The department. The system. Not him. Had it been up to Holger Munch, Mia Krüger would have stayed on doing whatever the hell she wanted, as long as she carried on working with him.

  ‘If you’re going to leave the door open, you might as well be smoking inside.’

  Mia appeared from one of the bedrooms, smiling, wearing tight black trousers, a white roll-neck jumper and a towel wrapped around her head, which she removed and used to start drying her hair.

  ‘Oh, right, sorry.’ Munch smiled. He hadn’t thought about it; his mind had been on other things.

  He chucked the cigarette into the street below him and went inside, closing the balcony door behind him this time.

  ‘If I were still working as an investigator,’ Mia smiled, sitting down on the mattress below the window, ‘I would have deduced that if Holger Munch happened to drop by on a Sunday afternoon with a file full of photographs, it meant that something horrendous had occurred in the outside world, that the department was desperate, and that I might be needed back at work?’

  Munch sank back into the sofa.

  ‘Unofficially. And it’ll cost you,’ he said.

  ‘So you want me to grovel, is that it?’

  Again Munch searched for an undertone in her voice, but again he failed to find it. She seemed relieved, happy, almost. The dead eyes that had met him in the doorway had regained a little life, and she appeared to welcome his visit.

  ‘So, what have we got?’ she said, dropping the towel on to the floor.

  ‘Do you want to see for yourself, or do you want my take on it?’

  ‘I have a choice?’ Mia said, taking the file from the table.

  Munch saw her eyes change as she opened it and started arranging the pictures on the floor in front of her.

  ‘We found her yesterday morning,’ Munch began. ‘On the far side of Hurumlandet. A few hundred metres into the woods. A hiker – no, some kind of biologist, a bo
tanist, out photographing plants – came across her, found her like this, in the middle of—’

  ‘A ritual,’ Mia said. She sounded distant.

  Munch sat quietly as Mia placed the last pictures on the floor.

  ‘Seems like it. But …’

  ‘What?’ Mia said, without looking up.

  ‘Do you want me to be quiet, or do you want …?’ Munch said, with a sudden feeling that he was intruding.

  ‘Yes, no, sorry. Carry on, please,’ Mia mumbled, opening the Armagnac bottle on the floor and filling a filthy glass to the brim.

  ‘At the moment, as you said, it looks like a ritual,’ Munch continued. ‘The wig. The feathers. The candles. The posing of her arms.’

  ‘A pentagram,’ Mia said, raising the glass to her lips.

  ‘Yes, that was what Ylva said.’

  ‘Ylva?’

  ‘Kyrre was reassigned,’ Munch said. ‘And Ylva had just graduated from the police college, so …’

  ‘Like me?’ Mia smiled, shifting her gaze to the pictures once more.

  ‘No, because you never finished, did you?’ Munch said kindly.

  ‘You didn’t give me a chance! So what’s the deal?’

  ‘With Ylva?’

  ‘No, with me,’ Mia said, holding up a picture from the floor.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘With Mikkelson. What’s the deal this time? Wait, let me guess: I’m back – if I agree to continue seeing the psychologist?’

  ‘Yep,’ Munch said, shifting in the chair.

  ‘You can smoke in here. There’s an ashtray somewhere – in one of the kitchen cupboards over there, I think.’ Mia pointed. She still hadn’t taken her eyes off the pictures.

  ‘Camilla Green,’ Munch said, once he had lit his cigarette. ‘Aged seventeen. Reported missing three months ago from some kind of institution for troubled teenagers. The preliminary autopsy report shows that her stomach contained animal feed.’

  ‘What?’ Mia said, looking up at him.

  ‘Pellets.’

  ‘Christ.’ Mia turned her gaze back to the photographs.

  She took a big swig of the Armagnac. Her eyes were distant now. He had seen this so many times before. She was no longer here.