The Owl Always Hunts At Night

by Samuel Bjork

  Damn.

  Mia got up from the bed and staggered into the bathroom; she was still wearing her leather jacket and her shoes. Splashed water on her face. The nightmare lingered, refusing to let go, so she continued to dunk her hands and face in the cold water until she calmed down, then she stumbled into the living room, where she collapsed on the sofa. Her dream had been about Sigrid. Not the beautiful dream she usually had. Her sister smiling at her, running through a field.

  Come, Mia, come.

  No, she had been in the basement. In the basement in Tøyen, where Sigrid had sat on a filthy mattress with a rubber strap around her arm and a syringe by her side, ready for her fix, the one which had killed her that night just over ten years ago. Mia had been there. Or so it had felt. She had been present in the same room. Seen all the rubbish around her sister, felt the stench of urine sting her nostrils; the contrast to pretty Sigrid could not have been greater. Mia had tried talking to her, but no words had come out of her mouth. She had tried to move, to come to her sister’s rescue, but her body had been paralysed. Panic was what she had felt, and it lingered in her still. Mia tried to breathe more calmly, and fished her mobile out of her jacket pocket. It was almost midnight. She had missed the team briefing, but there were no calls or messages from Munch. Some from Kim Kolsø, but nothing from Holger. Strange. Why not? For a moment she wondered if she was still dreaming. The possibility that what she was experiencing now might not be real either scared her, that the shadow might be here now, the shadow she had seen on the wall behind Sigrid. She tried checking her mobile again, but it slipped between her fingers and fell on to the floor, and she was unable to bend down to retrieve it. Too frightened to look. To take her eyes off the room she was in.

  The shadow on the wall.

  Damn it, it had to be the pills.

  She did not usually take them. When she took pills, it was always to escape. To rest. But she had fooled herself. Swallowed pills she should not have. And now they had wrecked her mind. Mia bent down to get her phone, still without taking her eyes off the wall in front of her, trembling fingers fumbling on the floor, but she could not find it.

  Because she had changed her mind. Sigrid. That was what she had done. Mia had stood there, helpless in the filthy stench, and watched as her sister sank her teeth into the rubber strap. Tied it around her scrawny arm just above the elbow. She had seen her place the lump in the small spoon. The heroin. Hold the lighter underneath it until it bubbled. A ball of cotton wool and a little water; Mia did not know why, did not know enough about how junkies shoot up, but the ritual had seemed familiar, as if she had seen it before. Close-ups of bubbles in the dip of the spoon. The tip of the needle sucking the liquid into the syringe. The stench. Mia pinched her nose now; the stench was so strong that she could not shake it off. This had to be a dream, surely? Would it come here, too?

  The shadow.

  Mia continued to search for her mobile, still not taking her eyes off the wall opposite her, and finally she found it. She picked it up and placed it on the table in front of her. Almost too scared to look at the display. Why had Munch not called her? She moved her hand to her nose. The stench. It was still here. Excrement and rubbish. The smell of human misery. And her twin sister there, on the mattress right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do. No sounds came out of her mouth, no matter how hard she screamed; her legs refused to move across the filthy floor, no matter how desperately she tried.

  Close-ups again. Fingers tapping the white skin hard in order to find a vein. Her thumb on the plunger, and then an image of the tip as a little of the heroin trickled out – not much, just enough to make sure there was no air trapped inside. Don’t get air in your veins. An air bubble in the syringe can kill you. And then she saw Sigrid’s lovely eyes. And her pretty lips. And her arm raising the syringe towards the blue vein, which had swelled up under the yellow rubber strap. But then, she had changed her mind.

  Sigrid.

  She had wanted to live.

  And Sigrid had looked at her. She had looked deep into Mia’s eyes. And then she had nodded to her. Smiled like she used to. Winked at her. Put down the syringe on the mattress. She had started to loosen the rubber strap around her arm when the shadow on the wall appeared. And it had looked as if Sigrid was about to stand up. Wanting to come over to her, to stroke her hair like she used to when Mia was sad. When she had hurt herself. If someone at school had been mean to her. Sigrid’s hand on her hair; and Mia could feel how much she missed it, as she had stood there in her nightmare, surrounded by the stench of human degradation: Sigrid’s warm, lovely hand over her hair.

  It’s going to be all right, Mia.

  We have each other.

  You and me for ever, OK?

  But then Sigrid could no longer see her. Mia had tried listening to the conversation, because she could see lips moving, but her ears did not work, she could not understand what was going on, but she saw Sigrid look down at the filthy floor, nod and sit down again on the urine-stained mattress. More close-ups. The syringe was back in her hand. The tip of the needle heading for the bulging, blue vein.

  The shadow on the wall.

  It was the same shadow as in the basement where Camilla Green had been held prisoner.

  A human being with feathers.

  A feathered man.

  And then the close-ups started again, with Sigrid in the centre. Her thumb on the syringe. Injecting into the vein. Her eyes, which first opened like a smile, only to close slowly until the girl Mia loved more than anything in the whole world lay lifeless on the mattress in front of her.

  No.

  Mia tried breathing calmly now and felt the real world slowly return around her. The unopened cardboard boxes. The kitchen counter with the leftovers of the food she had failed to eat. She carefully took her hand away from her nose, but the smell was still there, and then she realized that it was coming from her. The pills. Synthetic poison that her body did not want and was trying frantically to rid itself of in a bath of sweat; chemical smells not from the basement, but from her. Mia stood up carefully and stepped out of her foul-smelling clothes, saw her garments fall one by one until she stood naked on the floor in the cold flat. She wrapped the blanket from the sofa around her as her mobile rang, a vibrating little creature on the table in front of her.

  Kim Kolsø.

  Mia sat down on the sofa again, tightened the blanket around her and pressed the green button.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mia?’ Kim Kolsø said. He sounded like someone from another world.

  Someone from far away.

  ‘Are you there, Mia?’

  Mia nodded.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, yes, sorry, I’m here, Kim, how are things?’ Mia said, pulling her legs up under the blanket.

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No, of course not, I was already up.’

  ‘OK, I just thought I ought to check in. Is everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, of course, and how about you?’

  She answered on autopilot, but she could feel that her body and her brain were starting to wake up now. She was no longer in her nightmare. She was in her flat. Naked under the blanket, and with Kim Kolsø on the phone. No shadows on the walls.

  ‘I’m good. Did Munch call you?’

  ‘No, I haven’t heard from him,’ she said.

  ‘Same here. I’ve tried, but I haven’t managed to get hold of him. I thought it might be just as well to let him sleep. I couldn’t get hold of Gabriel either, so I thought the same might apply to him. He’s had a shock.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mia replied, without fully paying attention.

  It grew quiet for a moment, as if Kim expected her to add something.

  ‘So we just had a short meeting, mainly a summing-up; we wanted to wait for you, of course, but I did the best I could. Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Yes, yes, everything is fine,’ Mia said, getting up.

  She padded across the floor, sti
ll with the blanket around her, and touched the radiators below the window. They were cold. She had remembered to pay her electricity bill, hadn’t she? She turned on the radiators and staggered back to the sofa.

  ‘Well, it’s just …’ Kim Kolsø went on. ‘I think the team was a bit worried about you. You know, after we watched that video.’

  The shadow on the wall.

  The feathered human being.

  ‘Well, I’m fine. So what did you talk about at the meeting?’ Mia cleared her throat.

  ‘Only about what we’ve got. Forensic evidence from the note you found in the equestrian centre. No other fingerprints apart from Camilla’s own. Her phone records. That someone at the Nurseries must have sent the message saying she was fine.’

  ‘Or someone nearby,’ Mia said. She was awake now.

  ‘Yes, of course, but what are the chances of that?’

  ‘No, I know. But even so.’

  ‘And then, new information from the post-mortem report.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing we can use, sadly. It’s as we thought. She was strangled. Vik thinks it happened at the crime scene, but he can’t be one hundred per cent sure.’

  ‘So she walked into the forest of her own free will?’

  ‘No, he didn’t say that, but, yes, it’s possible; or not of her own free will exactly …’

  Mia knew what he meant. Camilla Green had walked on her own two feet through the forest. But obviously not of her own free will.

  After three months in a wheel in a basement.

  ‘Then we have some evidence that the guys from Forensics discovered out at Hurumlandet Nurseries, which I don’t really know what we do with.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘They found cannabis plants in one of the greenhouses.’

  ‘Really?’ Mia said. ‘How many?’

  Mia had a sudden flashback to her meeting with Sebastian Larsen. In the flat that had reeked as if someone had decided to move Amsterdam to Oslo. She had not had time to process it yet. OTO, the Freemasons. The meaning behind the pentagram. She did not know how much importance to attach to it. If Larsen’s mind had left this planet for good, or whether he had said something that was actually useful.

  ‘I think they found eight.’

  ‘So, for personal consumption?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kim yawned.

  ‘We can talk about it tomorrow.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Have we been asked to turn up for a specific time?’

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t manage to get hold of Holger, so I told everybody nine o’clock. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Mia said, tightening the blanket around her naked body.

  ‘And another thing. I paid Olga Lund another visit.’

  ‘Olga who?’

  ‘The old lady who lives in Hurum?’

  ‘Of course. The woman who used TV programmes to tell her the time. Did you learn anything?’

  ‘No, sadly, she couldn’t tell us anything besides what we already knew: a white van with some sort of logo on the side, could be a flower.’

  ‘From the Nurseries?’ Mia wondered out loud, waking up a little more.

  ‘That was my hope, too,’ Kim said. ‘But she said she thought it could have been an orange.’

  ‘I think we should forget about her for now. But she was sure it was a white van?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kolsø said. ‘Only the problem is, according to Ludvig, that thousands of white vans are registered in Oslo and Buskerud, so where do we start?’

  ‘Quite,’ Mia said. ‘No, let’s drop it. Unless we have nothing else.’

  She could feel that the flat was starting to heat up now. She stretched out her legs towards the table, and yawned faintly. The chemical sleep had not helped. She needed real sleep.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Kim said, disappearing again, as if leafing through something. ‘The wig.’

  The virgin in the blonde wig.

  ‘Of course. Did we find anything on it?’

  ‘This is a bit strange …’ Kim said, pausing again, as if he could not quite believe the information in front of him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘No, this has to be a joke.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘The wig. As far as I’m aware, a wig is something you buy from a joke shop. For a fancy-dress party, right? “I want to go as Marilyn Monroe and I need a cheap wig” – are you with me?’

  Mia was even more awake now; she could hear that Kim was excited. ‘But this isn’t that kind of wig?’

  ‘No,’ Kim went on, and Mia imagined that he was still looking at the notes in front of him.

  ‘This is just the preliminary report, but even so …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The guy I spoke to at the lab – Tormod, or maybe he was called Torgeir, I don’t really remember – he said they found genuine hair from at least twenty different women in it.’

  ‘In the wig?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kolsø said.

  ‘Is that very unusual?’ Mia asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Kim continued. ‘But, if it’s very expensive, perhaps it was made to order? How many shops make something like that? Long, blonde wigs using real hair from that many women must be quite pricey, don’t you think? Maybe it’s something we should follow up?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Mia said, getting up from the sofa. She walked over to the radiator below the window and felt the heat against her naked body. She stood there, looking out across Bislett Stadium. Life outside. People who did not need to live like her. Who had had a beer with a friend and were now heading home to snuggle up with their loved one. A couple with their arms entwined; young people smiling, crossing the street without a care in the world. A woman in a red jacket under a streetlight, the hood pulled over her head, her hands stuffed into the pockets, gazing up at a window, probably the flat above or below hers, maybe waiting for a friend to let her in. Normal people. Normal life. And she realized that she envied them. Getting up in the morning. Going to work. Returning home in the evening. Turning on the TV. Having weekends off. Making pizza.

  ‘Are you still there?’ Kim said. He had said something she had missed.

  ‘Yes, I’m still here.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow morning?’ Mia said, shuffling back to the sofa.

  ‘Yes, sure,’ Kim Kolsø said, and again she got the feeling that he was holding something back.

  ‘Good job, Kim.’

  ‘What? Thanks, but …’

  He grew quiet again. It was a long time before he spoke.

  ‘You are keeping me in the loop, aren’t you?’

  At first Mia did not understand his question.

  ‘I mean, Holger and you?’

  ‘In the loop?’ Mia said. ‘How?’

  And out it came, the insecurity she had sensed below the surface of everything he had told her.

  ‘Well, it’s just that, Emilie and I …’ Kim Kolsø mumbled ‘… ever since I requested a transfer … perhaps I feel that … that I am already out? That you’re doing this without me?’

  Mia had nothing but deep respect for Kolsø. If she had to trust someone with her life, he would definitely have been near the top of the list. She had never heard him talk like this before.

  ‘Kim …?’ Mia said, tightening the blanket around her once more.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Of course we’re not.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ the normally confident man said, and again Mia was taken aback by the tone of his voice.

  ‘Why the hell would we do that? You’re the best member of the team. Of course you’re in the loop, Kim,’ Mia said, getting up again.

  ‘OK, good.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  ‘So team briefing at nine o’clock tomorrow.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Great,’ Kim said, and it sounded as if he was about to add
something, but he did not. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  ‘See you at nine,’ Mia said, pressed the red button, put down the phone, walked into the shower and stood there with her head bowed until the hot water ran out.

  Chapter 39

  Helene Eriksen turned off the ignition, got out of her car and lit a cigarette. She zipped her quilted jacket right up to her neck. A meeting in a deserted road, under the cover of darkness, this late at night? She shouldn’t be doing this. She took a deep drag on her cigarette, watched the red tip light up her fingers and realized that she was shivering. From cold, possibly – October had arrived and brought with it a darkness normally associated with November or December – but that was not the only reason. She pulled down her sleeves and continued to peer down the empty road after the headlights she knew would soon appear.

  ‘Show me.’

  Tongue out.

  ‘Good girl. Next.’

  It was more than thirty years ago, and still it had not lost its power over her. She continued to wake up in the middle of the night, sheets drenched in sweat from the nightmare where she was back sleeping on the old sofa again, scared of where her brother had been, scared of the consequences. The fear of being punished by the women, if she said the wrong thing. Thought the wrong thoughts. She had been seven years old then, she was over forty now, yet it had never left her.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  They were the first words he had said to her, the psychologist. She had been eleven years old, twelve maybe, she could not remember, only that his room had smelt strange, and she had struggled to speak.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Helene. I want you to begin with that. This is what you need to tell yourself: it was not your fault. Can you do this for me? Are you able to start with that?’

  Helene Eriksen climbed on to the bonnet, pulled up her legs and sat in the darkness, her eyes taking in the landscape around her. The shadows of the trees started to take on strange shapes. She tossed aside the half-finished cigarette and got back behind the wheel. It was safer inside. She stuck the key in the ignition and turned it ninety degrees so that she could switch on the heater and the radio.