The Owl Always Hunts At Night

by Samuel Bjork

  Chapter 70

  Mia Krüger put the white plastic cup into the slot, pressed the button and watched as something that was supposed to be coffee poured out of the ancient machine. It would have to do. She carried the hot plastic cup down the corridor and into the small room where Anette Goli and Kim were sitting with Munch, who was looking unusually gloomy.

  ‘OK?’ Munch said. ‘Anette?’

  Mia raised the cup to her lips, only to put it straight back down on the table again. The coffee tasted even worse than it looked.

  ‘As I was saying,’ Goli said, looking across to Kim Kolsø.

  ‘Henrik Eriksen, he wasn’t here,’ Kim Kolsø said.

  ‘What!’ Mia exclaimed.

  ‘Last summer. When the girl disappeared,’ Kolsø explained.

  Mia looked at Munch.

  ‘He has a house in Tuscany,’ Anette Goli went on. ‘Goes there for three months every summer. He wasn’t in Norway.’

  Mia looked at Munch again, and he gave a light shrug.

  ‘So we have nothing on him,’ Kim said. ‘He wasn’t here. When it happened. I think—’

  ‘But, for Pete’s sake,’ Mia burst out. ‘The man glues feathers all over his body, he thinks he’s a bird …’

  She glanced at Munch, who merely shrugged again and pressed his hand against his temple.

  ‘His lawyer says,’ Goli continued, ‘that he can produce witnesses who will confirm that he was in Italy all summer.’

  ‘No way,’ Mia said.

  ‘He wasn’t in the country. We have nothing on him.’

  ‘But Helene Eriksen has already confirmed it? I mean, the feathers. The sect they belonged to? That he was sick in the head. Wanted to be an owl. Come on, people, I don’t understand what we’re—’

  ‘He wasn’t in Norway,’ Anette repeated.

  ‘Tuscany,’ Kim Kolsø added.

  ‘Well, he could just have flown back, couldn’t he?’

  ‘No, sorry,’ Anette said. ‘He was abroad the whole time.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ Mia challenged her.

  Anette slid a piece of paper towards Munch.

  The fat investigator looked at it and nodded.

  ‘What?’ Mia said.

  ‘His phone records.’ Munch sighed, pushing the paper back across the table.

  ‘He didn’t do it,’ Kim Kolsø said.

  ‘But seriously, Holger,’ Mia said, ignoring the piece of paper they had now pushed towards her. ‘The feathers? An owl? She admitted it!’

  Munch was standing with his hands pressed against his temples now, not saying anything.

  ‘That he was sick in the head? Come on, Holger?’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Munch said after a pause.

  ‘One hundred per cent,’ Goli replied.

  ‘He wasn’t here,’ Kim insisted.

  Mia felt crushed with disappointment. The phone in her pocket vibrated, as it had done a hundred times in the last hour. She took out her mobile and looked at it.

  ‘So what do we do? Do we have to let them go?’

  A long list of calls from Ludvig Grønlie. And an MMS with a picture.

  Why don’t you pick up your phone?

  Who is this young man?

  Watch his expression.

  Looking at the camera.

  ‘Yes, we have no choice,’ Anette Goli said. ‘We thought we might be able to keep Helene Eriksen, because she, well, thought that her brother might have done it, but how long do you think that will stand up?’

  ‘OK.’ Munch nodded. ‘We’ll release them.’

  A photograph of a school group. A place Mia had visited. The Natural History Museum. Everyone looking at the guide, some animals in a display cabinet. Except for one person. A young man with round spectacles and wearing a white shirt. With curious eyes. Directed at the surveillance camera.

  ‘So is that it?’ Munch said.

  ‘We can keep them overnight, if we like,’ Goli said.

  ‘I need a few minutes with Helene Eriksen,’ Mia said.

  ‘Why?’ Munch wanted to know.

  ‘I want to know who this is.’

  She slid her mobile across to Munch, who narrowed his eyes and clutched his head again.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.

  ‘A CCTV photo from the Natural History Museum.’

  ‘OK,’ Munch said. ‘We’ll keep them overnight.’

  ‘Holger?’ Anette Goli said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘What? Yes, yes, of course. I just need … A glass of water would be good,’ Munch mumbled, and left the room.

  The three investigators looked at each other.

  ‘Is he ill?’ Anette asked.

  Kim Kolsø shrugged as Mia went out into the corridor and back to the interview room where Helene Eriksen sat slumped over the table with her head resting on her hands.

  ‘Who is this?’ Mia said, placing her mobile on the table in front of her.

  ‘What?’ Helene mumbled.

  ‘This young man,’ Mia said, pointing to the picture Ludvig had sent her.

  Helene Eriksen seemed completely distracted, as if she had no idea what Mia had just asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This boy? In the picture? Who is he?’

  Helene Eriksen slowly picked up the mobile and sat staring at it, perplexed, as if she did not know why she was here.

  ‘You went on a school trip, didn’t you? To the Natural History Museum? In August?’

  ‘How did you get this?’ Helene said.

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yes? Why?’

  ‘Who is the young man?’

  Helene frowned and looked up at Mia, then back down at the picture.

  ‘Do you mean Jacob?’

  ‘His name is Jacob?’ Mia said.

  ‘Yes,’ Helene nodded. ‘But …?’

  ‘Why did he go on the trip? He’s not a resident, is he? And he doesn’t work there either?’

  ‘No – or, yes …’

  ‘Why was his name not on the lists we were given?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You were supposed to send us lists of all the residents and staff, only this boy didn’t appear in either of them.’

  ‘Jacob used to live with us,’ Helene Eriksen said slowly, looking down at the picture again. ‘But that was many years ago.’

  ‘And yet he was on the school trip?’

  ‘Yes, yes. He often visits us. Jacob was our youngest ever resident, and one of those who lived with us the longest. He’s practically family. He often stops by, and we’re all pleased to see him. He helps us with our computers – he doesn’t want any money for it, so he’s not an employee, but …’

  ‘Computers? He’s good with them?’

  ‘Jacob? I should say so.’ Helene Eriksen was starting to smile. ‘He’s a genius. A child prodigy. Incredible, really, given everything he has been through.’

  ‘What’s his full name?’ Mia said, trying not to show Helene Eriksen how keen she was to know it.

  ‘Jacob Marstrander.’ Helene said, seeming confused. ‘Surely you don’t think that …?’

  Chapter 71

  There was something attractive about the lights along the E18. Miriam did not quite know why, but she had always liked them; a childhood memory, she supposed, from the back of the family Volvo on the way to visit her grandparents. The warm glow from the lamps. Wheels against tarmac. Soft voices from the front. Her parents. The way they would flirt with each other with the radio in the background, always after a mild quarrel: she wanted jazz, he wanted classical. How safe she had felt in those days.

  ‘More coffee?’ Jacob said, pushing his round glasses up his nose.

  ‘I still have some left, so no, not just now.’ Miriam smiled, taking another sip from the metal cup. They had to stay awake, after all; this could take all night.

  ‘I brought two Thermos flasks.’

  He turned up the heating a little inside the car.

  It was
cold outside. Practically winter. But Miriam still felt warm. She leaned back against the headrest and looked up at the lights again. The naivety she had had as a child almost made her smile now; how innocent and pretty everything had been. Her mother’s hands softly stroking her father’s hair. The way he had smiled at her. Time without end. Childhood was like that. Every single moment would last for ever. She emptied the coffee cup and smiled to herself, a little sleepy now; with every streetlight they passed she got flashbacks to the lovely trips of the past. She had given it a great deal of thought recently, what she had been like as a teenager. She couldn’t wait to grow up. Now, she realized how good her life had been back then. She smiled, and poured herself another cup of coffee from the Thermos.

  ‘Odd, isn’t it?’ Jacob said.

  ‘What is?’ Miriam said, her eyes starting to close.

  ‘Sometimes you can plan too much, and then it turns out there had been no need.’

  The young man with the round glasses smiled as he looked at her, but his face was a little odd; it was almost as if Miriam could not focus on it properly.

  ‘Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Miriam said, taking another sip of coffee.

  She needed to stay alert, clear-headed. It could take time. They might have to be there all night, and she was already starting to nod off. Not good. She drank more coffee as Jacob turned to her and smiled again.

  ‘Take the coffee, for example,’ Jacob said. ‘I packed Coke, Farris and bottled water, in case you didn’t want coffee.’

  Miriam didn’t know what he was talking about. She leaned back and looked up at the lights again. They seemed even warmer and more yellow than she remembered them. Billie Holiday. Her mother always loved her singing. Miriam smiled to herself and suddenly had to concentrate to keep hold of her cup, which seemed to be slipping out between her fingers.

  ‘But you said yes to coffee immediately, so the others were wasted.’ Jacob chuckled softly, and shook his head. ‘I could have spent that time doing other things, don’t you see?’

  Miriam looked drowsily in his direction, but his face was no longer there.

  ‘How long until … we … get there?’ she mumbled. ‘Until we join … the others?’

  It took her for ever to utter the last sentence.

  ‘Oh, they’ll have to manage without us.’

  ‘What … do you mean?’

  ‘We have more important things to do, don’t we?’

  The young man with the round glasses turned and smiled at her again.

  But Miriam did not see it.

  She was already asleep.

  EIGHT

  Chapter 72

  Hugo Lang from Switzerland felt almost like a little kid. He was tingling all over with excitement. He had not felt anything this strongly since he saw the last girl on the screen.

  The two of them together. The young woman in the basement and him. Two lonely people who had found one another. He had never felt such contentment. They were meant to be together. He had stroked her hair when she was asleep. He had smiled when she ran on the wheel – she was so good at it, making the food drop out of the dispenser – then suddenly she was gone, and his longing had been like a bottomless pit.

  But now she was back. Not the same woman – well, almost the same – yet he liked her already, perhaps even more than her predecessor.

  Hugo Lang smiled, and moved his chair closer to the big screen.

  Miriam Munch.

  That was a strange name, had been his first reaction, but then he felt bad because the name made no difference, she was his friend, held captive just for his sake, so that he could be with her. So that they could be together – together. The first day, she had got on his nerves because she had done nothing. She had just sat there. Fingers trembling at the end of her thin hands, hugging her pretty body. Eyes that hardly ever closed; confused, terrified eyes that did not understand where she was. And she had cried. Tears down her pretty, white cheeks. And then this desperate banging on the door or the windows, or whatever they were, and he had not liked it. He had been in his dressing gown, there was a log fire burning in the fireplace, he had a small glass of cognac – it was unnecessary, it really was: why could they not enjoy this moment together? But in the end she had come round, and now everything was fine.

  Hugo Lang smiled and trailed his hand over her cheek on the screen. He had been fond of her predecessor. But already now, after only two days, he was starting to feel that he liked this one better. Funny, really.

  She had been a bad girl on the first day.

  She had not understood it. How things were done. But then he had come into the cage, and after that she had done what she was told.

  Run on the wheel.

  Eat the food that comes out of the hole.

  Hugo Lang took another sip of his cognac, and moved his leather chair even closer. Placed his hand on the screen and stroked her hair gently before pressing his lips against the screen to kiss her.

  Nothing naughty, or intrusive, no, no.

  Just a little peck on the cheek.

  He leaned back in his chair, raised his glass in a toast and smiled to himself.

  Chapter 73

  Holger Munch washed down the painkillers with water from the tap and wheezed as he looked at his reflection in the mirror above the sink.

  What the hell?

  He splashed cold water on his face, but the pain still refused to ease. Perhaps his doctor had been right, after all. Unhealthy. Exercise more. Smoke less. Was that why he felt so bad?

  The fat investigator wiped his face with the sleeve of his jumper and continued to breathe slowly in and out while he waited for the pills to work. They were taking a five-minute break in their briefing. The others were waiting for him. On edge. They all had been since this latest name had appeared.

  Jacob Marstrander.

  Munch had had his doubts to begin with; there had been so many false starts in this investigation, so many suspects already, but now he was sure: this was the man they were looking for.

  The only problem was that Jacob Marstrander would appear to have vanished into thin air. It had been two days now, and still nothing. They had turned over his flat in Ullevålsveien, but to no avail. They had raided his office, a small one-person operation, JM Consult, but found nothing which could tell them anything about his whereabouts.

  A sick bastard.

  Munch stuck his head under the tap and drank more water, finally feeling the painkillers taking effect. He took a last look in the mirror, ran his hand across his face, plastered on a smile and walked calmly back into the incident room.

  ‘OK, where were we?’ he said, taking up his position by the screen. ‘Ludvig?’

  ‘Still nothing from any of the airports,’ Grønlie said. ‘Of course, he could have tried to get away by train, or in a car, but we have no records of anyone by that name crossing the border.’

  ‘So he’s still in Norway?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Kim Kolsø said. ‘But we have alerted Interpol.’

  ‘Good.’ Munch nodded.

  ‘And Marstrander’s photograph?’

  ‘Was distributed this morning to all the newspapers – that was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’ Anette Goli said.

  ‘We all agreed, didn’t we?’ Munch said.

  ‘No, not all of us,’ Curry grunted.

  ‘Leave it, please, Curry. No more.’ Goli sighed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We did agree,’ Ludvig Grønlie interjected.

  ‘It’s stupid, that’s all I’m saying,’ Curry grunted again. ‘It happens every time. Once you put a picture in the media, the phones won’t stop ringing with calls from well-meaning idiots who think they have seen someone suspicious lurking around their garage. I mean—’

  ‘The last time I checked, I was in charge of this unit,’ Munch said sternly. ‘And I gave the order to release his picture today, didn’t I?’

  ‘I know,’ Curry went on. ‘
I just—’

  ‘It’s already on the Internet,’ Ylva said, holding up her mobile.

  ‘Good. Let’s hope it pays off.’

  Munch’s head throbbed. He took a sip of water from the bottle on the table. ‘OK, anything else?’ He looked around the room. ‘Where is Mia?’ he said with a frown.

  ‘I got a text message. She had something to do. She’ll be here later,’ Grønlie said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘All right.’ Munch sounded irritated, and had to take a moment before he continued. ‘It has been two days, and no one has seen neither hide nor hair of Jacob Marstrander. That’s just not good enough, people. Someone must know something. He must have been seen somewhere. Was his car registered leaving the capital?’

  ‘There’s nothing from any of the toll roads,’ Kim said.

  ‘What about his phone?’

  ‘According to Telenor, it was last used at his home address on Friday,’ Gabriel Mørk said. ‘Since then, not a squeak.’

  ‘And the computer we found in his office?’

  ‘Completely blank,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘Seriously, guys?’ Munch sighed. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Do you want us to interview the residents at the Nurseries again?’ Kim Kolsø wanted to know. ‘I know we were there yesterday, but some of the girls could be hiding something?’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ Munch said. ‘Will you do it?’

  Kim nodded.

  ‘That leaflet we found,’ Ylva ventured cautiously.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Stop Løken Farm. The Animal Protection League.’

  ‘Yes? Any luck?’

  ‘Nothing so far, but there’s something a bit odd …’

  Munch grew impatient as his headache returned with a vengeance. ‘Check it again,’ he said abruptly. ‘Check for any links to – what were they called again?’

  ‘The Animal Liberation Front.’

  ‘Yes. Good. Try again. See if we can rustle up something there. Three days, people, this isn’t good enough.’

  Munch took another sip of water from the bottle as his mobile vibrated on the table in front of him.