The Owl Always Hunts At Night

by Samuel Bjork

  When his mobile rang and he went out on the balcony to answer it, she did not even notice.

  ‘Yes? Munch speaking.’

  ‘It’s Ludvig. We got her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Helene Eriksen. The woman who reported the girl missing. She’s coming in.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Munch said swiftly, and rang off.

  When he returned to the living room, Mia had already refilled her glass.

  ‘So?’ he asked.

  ‘So what?’ Mia said, looking up at him with glazed eyes.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’ll be in the office tomorrow. For now, I want to be alone with these.’

  ‘OK,’ Munch said. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? Do you want me to – well, get you some food or something?’

  Mia waved him away, her eyes already back on the pictures.

  ‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Chapter 12

  A forty-year-old woman in a short, red puffa jacket was standing under a streetlight by Bislett Stadium, watching a fat man in a beige duffel coat leave the block of flats. He lit a cigarette and looked as if he was pondering something before getting into a black Audi and driving off.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’

  The young lad next to her, twenty years her junior, glanced around warily, pulling his beanie further down over his ears.

  ‘I’m freezing.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ the woman said, sticking a hand into her pocket to check that it was still there.

  The bracelet.

  ‘How hard can it be?’ the young lad said, and lit a roll-up dangling from the corner of his mouth with trembling fingers. ‘I thought you said she was going to give us money?’

  The woman in the red jacket regretted bringing him along; after all, they did not know each other well. This was something she should have done on her own, something she ought to have done a long time ago.

  She tightened the jacket around her and continued to look up at the second-floor flat. There was a faint light up there, so she must be home, and yet something did not feel right.

  ‘I need a hit,’ the lad said with a light cough.

  ‘Be quiet,’ the woman said again, because now she could feel it, too.

  The craving for the needle that would make her misery disappear, that would give her the warmth she wanted.

  ‘Show me,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘The bracelet. I thought you said she would pay us for it?’

  She looked up at the flat again and showed the boy what was in her pocket.

  ‘That thing?’ The boy sounded incredulous as he held up the bracelet to the light from the street lamp.

  ‘How can that be worth anything? Looks like tat to me, something a kid would wear. Shit. We could have robbed a kiosk or something, a 7-Eleven, in and out in five minutes; what are we going to make from this? Come on, have you gone mental?’

  The woman snatched back the bracelet and slipped it into her jacket pocket.

  A silver bracelet, a heart, an anchor, and a letter. M.

  ‘Sentimental value,’ she said quietly, the craving hitting her with full force now.

  ‘Eh?’

  The young lad glanced around nervously and took another drag on his roll-up.

  ‘Sod it, let’s do a 7. Or see if Leffe will give us some. He owes me a favour. I’m sure he’ll give us a fix, and he lives nearby – how about it? Fuck it, that bracelet isn’t even worth a fiver – what’s the point of that? I’m not hanging around here.’

  The woman in the red jacket looked up as a door opened and the dark-haired girl appeared on the balcony. She had a drink in one hand. She stayed there for a little while; she seemed to be peering into the city darkness, then she went back inside, closing the door behind her.

  Mia Krüger.

  She should have done this a long time ago.

  A long, long time ago.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ the young lad said, almost pleading now, tossing aside his cigarette butt. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here, all right? I’m bloody freezing.’

  ‘Shut up. It’s not just about the money.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ the boy said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But for fuck’s sake, you said that—’

  ‘We used to be friends,’ the woman interrupted him, irritated now.

  She should have come alone.

  ‘Friends? Who? You and that woman up there?’

  ‘Shut up, will you?’

  ‘If you’re friends, why don’t you just ask her for money? Christ, Cisse, this is ridiculous! Why are we standing out here?’

  ‘No, not her. Sigrid.’

  ‘Who is Sigrid?’

  ‘Her sister.’

  The boy fetched a nearly empty tobacco pouch from his pocket and tried making another roll-up with the crumbs that remained, his eyes darting frantically.

  ‘Bloody hell, Cisse, I wasn’t kidding, I can’t wait any longer, I need something now. Don’t you?’

  ‘I was there,’ the woman in the red jacket said, without taking her eyes off the shadow in the flat above them.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I saw him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw him kill her.’

  He grew quiet now. Stopped with the thin roll-up between his lips and the lighter in front of it without lighting up.

  ‘Christ, Cisse, you’re freaking me out. Killed who?’

  Sigrid.

  She could feel it coming back.

  She should have come a long time ago.

  She was there.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Cisse, I just wanna get high. I thought you said we were going to get some cash?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know Leffe will give us credit. It’s not far. Come on. This is a total waste of time.’

  The forty-year-old woman carefully curled her fingers around the small silver bracelet in her pocket once more, feeling it between her fingers as the light in the flat above them suddenly went out and only darkness was left.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Do you think you could shut up for a moment?’

  ‘Fuck you, Cisse! Are you coming, or what?’

  ‘You’re sure Leffe will give us credit?’

  ‘Of course, he owes me. This is useless. Let’s go.’

  She threw a final glance up at the dark windows of the flat.

  And followed the twitchy young man down towards Pilestredet.

  TWO

  Chapter 13

  Gabriel Mørk stopped in front of the newspaper stand outside the kiosk on the corner of Mariboesgate and thought back to the very first time he had come here, six months ago, worried about starting his job with the police. Back then, the young hacker had had no real police experience – in fact, no job experience at all. The police had got his name from MI6. He had solved an extremely difficult code which the British security service had uploaded on the Internet: can you crack it? It had turned out to be a recruitment campaign, and he was informed that his solution was correct, but in order to get the job he had to be a British citizen. Gabriel had promptly forgotten all about it until, one day, he got a call from Holger Munch. How could he turn down a proper job with a baby on the way? His girlfriend would never have forgiven him.

  Gabriel found his card and swiped himself inside the yellow building. A teenage girl. Found naked in the woods in Hurum. He shuddered at the thought of the pictures he had seen. They had not had a case like this since the little girls who had been found hanged from the trees, and he had almost thrown up then. His first thought was that he had made a big mistake taking this job, but, luckily, they had solved the case.

  And he had contributed.

  Afterwards Munch had called him into his office and thanked him, said, ‘We couldn’t have done it without you, Gabriel.’ And he had felt proud; part of something important.

  Gabriel held up his
card to the lift panel and was about to press the button for the second floor when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

  ‘Wait for me.’

  Gabriel turned around and was both surprised and delighted when he saw Mia running towards him.

  ‘Thanks,’ she panted as the lift doors closed.

  Mia Krüger.

  ‘Are you back?’ Gabriel said, aware that he was blushing a little, but hoping that she would not notice.

  ‘So it would seem. I should have told them to go to hell, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Gabriel smiled.

  ‘Have you got hold of the records?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Her phone records? The victim?’

  ‘No,’ Gabriel said. ‘Things like that take time, but it’s in progress. Red tape and so on – you know what it’s like.’

  ‘Why don’t you just hack their system and get it yourself?’

  ‘Munch likes doing things by the book.’ Gabriel smiled, a little embarrassed.

  Mia laughed.

  She walked in front of him down the corridor, ran her card through the reader, held open the door for him and closed it behind them, just as Munch appeared.

  ‘I thought we said eleven? Eleven means eleven, not quarter past,’ Munch barked, and disappeared into the office.

  ‘He’s in a foul mood at the moment,’ Gabriel said, somewhat apologetically.

  ‘Clearly,’ Mia said, but she did not look as if it bothered her all that much.

  ‘Eleven means eleven. Seriously, people, let’s show some professionalism, shall we? Where are we? Where is everyone?’ Munch was now shouting from the incident room, his voice growling and deep like a bear someone had roused from hibernation.

  Mia Krüger.

  Gabriel was glad that she was back.

  Chapter 14

  ‘OK,’ Munch said, having taken up his usual spot in front of the overhead screen.

  Gabriel Mørk saw everyone’s face light up as Mia entered the incident room.

  ‘Moonbeam,’ Ludvig Grønlie called out, and got up to hug her.

  Anette Goli also rose in order to shake Mia’s hand, while Kim Kolsø grinned and gave her a thumbs-up from his chair.

  ‘OK,’ Munch said again. ‘As you can see, Mia is back, and we are all really pleased about that. And if you’re wondering who to thank, then you’re looking at him. And just so you know it: this is the first and last time I suck up to Mikkelson but, in my opinion, it was worth it.’

  Munch allowed himself a small smile as he turned on the projector.

  ‘Where is Curry?’ he suddenly said. ‘Kim? Ludvig?’

  Munch looked around the room but was met only with shaking heads.

  ‘Haven’t heard anything,’ Kim said.

  ‘OK,’ Munch said, clicking a button.

  A picture appeared on the screen. The dead girl, but alive now, smiling faintly at the camera in something that could be a school photo.

  ‘Last night we had it confirmed that the girl we found in Hurum is seventeen-year-old Camilla Green. Born in 1995. Grew up in care. Her mother died when she was little, in a car crash. Her father is French, his name is—’

  ‘Laurent Clementz,’ Ludvig Grønlie interjected.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Ludvig.’

  ‘So far we haven’t managed to contact him,’ Munch continued, ‘and, according to Helene Eriksen, Camilla Green had very little contact with him. She used to visit him in France during the summer holidays when she was younger, but she was looked after by social services in Norway.’

  ‘Sorry, who is Helene?’ asked Gabriel.

  ‘Yes, of course. It has been a long night, and I’m sorry that not everyone has been updated about recent developments.’

  He cleared his throat and drank some of the Farris mineral water on the table in front of him.

  ‘Helene Eriksen …’

  Munch looked across to Grønlie.

  ‘We don’t have a picture of her, do we?’

  Ludvig Grønlie shook his head.

  ‘OK, Camilla Green grew up in foster care with several different families, but she never seemed to settle with any of them.’

  Munch quickly flicked through his notes. ‘I think we have a list of four addresses here, all of which she ran away from, before she came to Hurumlandet Nurseries at the age of fifteen.’

  Munch seemed to expect questions, and he held up his hand towards the team.

  He strangled a yawn; he did not look as if he had had much sleep.

  ‘Helene Eriksen,’ Ylva prompted him.

  Gabriel could see Ylva watching Mia Krüger furtively, and he recognized the feeling. He, too, had experienced it when he started working here. The sense of awe at being in the same room as Mia Krüger, not wanting to say or do the wrong thing.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Munch went on. ‘Yesterday, we met with Helene, the manager of Hurumlandet Nurseries, the woman who reported Camilla Green missing three months ago. Ludvig and I accompanied her to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and she confirmed that the girl we found is Camilla.’

  At this point, Munch stopped and looked across to Grønlie again. ‘How was she on the way back?’

  Ludvig sighed and shook his head. ‘Not good. She was in shock.’

  ‘And someone met her at the nurseries, someone who could look after her?’

  Ludvig nodded again. ‘A guy called Paulus. Her assistant.’

  ‘Good,’ Munch said, flicking through his notes again.

  Silence descended now, and Munch clicked the button again. This time, a photograph from the crime scene appeared, one they had seen earlier, Camilla lying on the heather, naked, in the strange pose, with the white flower in her mouth.

  ‘This Paulus …?’ Munch went on, glancing in the direction of Grønlie again.

  ‘No, we don’t have a picture yet.’

  ‘OK, anyway, Paulus appears to have been a former resident at Hurumlandet Nurseries, and now, as far as we can gather, he seems to be Helene’s right-hand man; it was he who sent us lists of residents, employees, teachers and everyone else with a link to the place. Ludvig, over to you?’

  ‘OK,’ Ludvig said, checking the papers on the table in front of him. ‘Hurumlandet Nurseries is a place for troubled teenagers. It was set up by Helene Eriksen in the autumn of 1999, and is privately owned but receives government support. The centre also works with mental-health services and the eating-disorder clinics at Ullevål and Dikemark hospitals. I’ve made a few calls, and no one has anything but good things to say about the place. It would appear that children and young people who have failed to settle elsewhere really benefit from a stay at Hurumlandet Nurseries. Some have lived there for several years.’

  He leafed through his papers again.

  ‘Yes, as you know, it’s early days yet, but everyone I’ve spoken to praises the place, and Helene Eriksen in particular. She seems to have become a substitute mother for these young people. I’ll carry on digging, but so far I haven’t come across any red flags.’

  ‘Great, Ludvig, thank you. Uh …’

  ‘My turn?’ Kim Kolsø said with a wry smile.

  ‘Yes, great, Kim.’ Munch nodded.

  ‘We’ve had officers at the crime scene ever since we found her,’ Kim said. ‘Knocked on doors, gone through the area with a fine-toothed comb, but, as far as forensic evidence goes, we have found little. The area is popular with hikers, so we can forget about footprints, unless we test the shoes of half the locals. The lack of much else is something I personally find a little odd, but we’re still on it. We’ve requested back-up from Svelvik, Røyken and Sande, and we’ll keep looking until we find something, because there has to be something useful out there. We’re talking about a huge area, so it will take some time, but we’ve started and we won’t stop until we’re done. Of course, we do have some forensic evidence, but you’ve already seen it. The feathers, the candles, the flower in her mouth – a lily, I believe. And then we have a witness.’

&
nbsp; He swiped his iPad.

  ‘A woman called Olga Lund, a pensioner, who lives on the road that leads to the path near where we found the victim, thought she saw a white van with a sticker on the side driving past, as she put it, just after the early-evening news, and coming back the same way, again as she put it, just before the eleven o’clock bulletin.’

  The team smiled at this. They could easily imagine the old lady, her sense of time measured by her TV schedule.

  ‘A sticker?’ Mia said. It was the first time she had opened her mouth.

  ‘Yes, that’s what she said.’

  ‘A logo?’

  ‘I think that must have been what she meant.’

  ‘Nothing about what kind of logo?’

  Kim scrolled down his iPad again. ‘There’s nothing written down here. I got the report from another officer, but I thought that I would drive up and talk to her myself.’

  ‘Great, Kim, thank you. Gabriel?’

  Gabriel Mørk had been lost in a world of his own and was startled when he heard his name spoken.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Telephone records?’

  ‘They’ve been requested, and are on their way.’ Gabriel nodded.

  ‘Good.’

  Gabriel looked across to Mia Krüger, who winked at him.

  ‘OK,’ Munch said. ‘Mia?’

  Mia rose and stepped up in front of the screen. Munch gave her the remote control and sat down on a chair beside the lectern. Mia swept her long, dark hair behind her ear before clearing her throat and clicking to bring up the first picture.

  ‘I haven’t had much time to study them, I only got these yesterday.’ She smiled, a tad apologetically.

  ‘But there are several things which I believe are vital for us.’

  Everyone in the room was silent now as Mia turned to face the screen.

  ‘There can be no doubt that this was planned, and that it had been planned for a long time. The first thing that struck me was that the crime scene is very contrived. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  Mia clicked through a few pictures without waiting for the team to reply.

  ‘The wig. The feathers. The candles placed around her. The fact that she’s naked. The way her arms have been arranged. The flower in her mouth. A ritual. The first thing to cross my mind was an offering. A sacrifice.’