The Owl Always Hunts At Night

by Samuel Bjork

  Shit.

  He leaned against the wall, managed to kick off his shoes, staggered into the living room and steered himself in the direction of the sofa.

  Fiji, that was her idea, but why did they have to fly halfway round the world for a drink? They could do that at home. Curry stumbled across the living-room floor before crashing his muscular body on to the white Ikea sofa. He put his head on one of the scatter cushions and tried to pull a blanket over himself, only getting it as far as his knees, then was woken up by the sound of his mobile, without realizing that he had even been asleep.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was daylight outside.

  ‘Are you awake?’ Munch said.

  ‘Awake?’ Curry mumbled, unable to lift his head from the cushion.

  Munch sounded stressed and bad-tempered. ‘We’re calling everyone in, can you be here for a team briefing in an hour?’

  ‘On a Sunday?’ Curry yawned.

  ‘Are you in a fit state for that?’ Munch asked him.

  ‘I’m …’ Curry tried.

  He had been dribbling in his sleep. His cheek was wet. He struggled to get the words down from his brain and out through his mouth.

  ‘The office in one hour?’

  ‘Sure,’ Curry mumbled, and managed to half sit up on the sofa before his body sent him a brutal reminder of last night and forced him to lie down again.

  ‘I just need to … talk to Sunniva … cancel our Sunday walk … We were heading up to the hills for a bit of fresh air, but that …’

  Curry peered anxiously around the living room through eyes he could not open fully for his fiancée, who seemed not to be at home.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb your romantic plans, but I need you to come in,’ Munch said, without sounding at all apologetic.

  ‘What … what happened?’

  ‘Not on the phone. One hour, OK?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’ll be there, I just need to —’ But Munch had already rung off.

  Curry staggered to the kitchen, found three painkillers, which he washed down with almost a litre of water. Stumbled into the shower, where he stood until the hot water ran out.

  Once he reached 13 Mariboesgate, he was about to enter the code to the front door when Anette Goli arrived. Curry liked Anette. She was a fairly quiet person, never drew much attention to herself, but she was a gifted lawyer, always straight and no-nonsense. Some people felt that Mikkelson favoured her because she sucked up to him, but he had never seen any evidence of that.

  ‘Morning,’ Anette said, stepping in front of him into the lift.

  ‘Yep,’ Curry mumbled.

  The whisky-and-cigar voice, he could hear it now, and he coughed to clear his throat.

  ‘Late night?’ Anette asked, flashing him a droll smile.

  ‘No … why?’

  ‘You stink,’ Anette said.

  ‘A few drinks, that’s all,’ Curry muttered, and felt last night return with a vengeance as the slightly wobbly lift started to make its way up to the second floor.

  ‘So, what’s up?’ he said, attempting a smile.

  ‘Teenage girl found in Hurum,’ was all Anette said.

  ‘I see. Any … leads?’ Curry tried, as the lift reached the second floor.

  Anette looked at him with a frown, then shook her head lightly and walked in front of him into the office.

  Curry took that as a sign that he was better off keeping his mouth shut today. He walked into the kitchen, where he poured himself a large coffee, which he tried not to spill on his way to the incident room.

  He nodded briefly to everyone in the team: Kim Kolsø, Ludvig Grønlie, Gabriel Mørk, the new woman Munch had hired recently – now, what was her name again? Something starting with Y? Short, blonde hair, pretty in her own way, although her clothes were a little too boyish for his taste. Ylva, that was it. Curry found a seat at the back of the room and carefully put his coffee cup on the table in front of him.

  Munch had already taken up position by the lectern and was holding the remote control to the projector in his hand. His brow was furrowed and he was not smiling, as he usually did during team briefings.

  ‘Ludvig, lights off, please,’ he said curtly, pressing the button in his hand.

  A photograph appeared on the overhead screen behind him. Curry jumped when he saw it. The alcohol shakes. They hit him hard now, and he regretted coming to work. He should have lied. Said he was ill. Stayed on the sofa. The sweat started pouring under his shirt; his hands were trembling, he could not control his fingers. Curry clung to his coffee cup, hoping that no one had noticed.

  ‘Yesterday, at 12.40, the body of a young girl was found in the woods on the far side of Hurumlandet,’ Munch said. ‘Some way beyond the path leading to a place called Haraldsfjellet. The body was discovered by Tom Petterson, a forty-six-year-old botanist who works at the University of Oslo. Petterson had gone there to photograph some plants and stumbled across the girl by accident.’

  Curry had seen a lot in his lifetime and thought he must be immune by now, but this was completely different, and his hangover did not help. The naked girl. She looked terrified. Her eyes were wide open. Her body was twisted into an impossible position – a shape really – one arm pointing upwards, the other sticking out strangely from her side.

  Munch clicked again. Another picture appeared.

  ‘According to the pathologist, the girl was strangled, possibly at the location where she was found, and posed the way we found her after death. We will look more closely at the details later, but at this stage it’s worth noting this …’

  Munch clicked more quickly now, and a series of pictures appeared on the screen behind him.

  ‘Feathers.’

  Another picture.

  ‘Candles.’

  Another picture.

  ‘A wig.’

  Another picture.

  ‘The posing of her arms.’

  Another picture.

  ‘This tattoo. It’s a horse’s head with the letters A and F below it.’

  Curry tried to drink some coffee but was unable to swallow and spat it back into the cup as discreetly as he could. He was struggling to keep up with the briefing. His eyes were swimming, and he was overcome by desperate craving for fresh air. He had still been drunk when Munch called. It was the reason he had managed to make his way to the office without collapsing completely, but now it hit him like an avalanche, and he had to steel himself in order not to flop across the table. Hooch? Had he been drinking hooch? A vague image appeared in his mind, a lift in a block of flats up by … Østerås, was it? Some guy with a moustache, women in high heels wearing much too heavy perfume, and a big jug of alcohol on the table. Christ, no wonder he felt like crap. And where was Sunniva? Had she already worked out the truth? Had she gone to stay with her mother again, for good this time?

  ‘And last, but not least, this.’

  Munch’s voice sounded very far away.

  Another picture.

  ‘The flower in her mouth. Her eyes wide with fear.’

  ‘Bloody psycho,’ Kim Kolsø hissed behind him.

  Curry was unable to hold it back for much longer. All of yesterday wanted up and out of his body. He looked around desperately for the door; he wanted to run outside, but his legs refused to obey him. So he stayed where he was and took deep breaths while continuing to cling to the cup.

  ‘The preliminary pathology report,’ Munch continued, taking no notice of the reactions across the room, ‘shows a series of peculiarities which we’ll also look at individually, but, for now, there’s this.’

  New pictures. Curry was unable to look at any of them.

  ‘One final picture. Grazing to her knees and elbows. The palms of her hands are heavily blistered. In addition, the girl is strangely thin. Emaciated, in fact, as you can see – practically anorexic – and we think this might be the reason.’

  Munch left the last picture on the screen while he flicked through some papers in front of him.
r />   ‘According to the pathologist, the only substance found in her stomach was pellets.’

  ‘What?’

  Now there were more reactions across the room.

  ‘Animal feed?’ Ludvig Grønlie asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Munch nodded.

  ‘But Jesus Christ …’

  ‘Pellets?’

  ‘How is that possible …?’

  ‘I don’t get it?’ said Ylva, the new girl. She looked genuinely confused.

  ‘There’s nothing in her stomach that resembles normal food,’ Munch said. ‘Like I said, this is just the preliminary report. Vik has promised me more tomorrow, so we’ll just have to wait for that. Meanwhile …’

  Munch looked as if he were about to say something, but he was interrupted by his mobile ringing. He checked the display and decided to take the call.

  ‘Hello, Rikard. Did you get my message?’ he said.

  Rikard Mikkelson. Curry had never heard Munch address their boss by his first name before. He saw that many of the others also exchanged looks and shrugged their shoulders in blank incomprehension.

  Munch stuck a cigarette in his mouth and pointed to the balcony to indicate that they could all take a break.

  Chapter 8

  Mia Krüger was kneeling on the floor in her flat, a line of pill jars in front of her, looking for a reason not to open the lids.

  She had paced up and down the empty flat all night, spent hours going back and forth, her arms hugging her cold body, before finally passing out on the mattress in front of the window.

  There, she had dreamt happily. About Sigrid. A recurring dream. Her twin sister in a white dress, running through a yellow wheat field, smiling, waving.

  Come, Mia, come.

  And it had been so soothing. It had made her so calm. So warm. Made her feel that life really was worth living after all. But then she had woken up. To the sound of the city. The noise of reality. To this overwhelming darkness, and now she could not remember why she had agreed to try living. Because she had made up her mind, hadn’t she? Out at the house by the sea. On that lonely island, Hitra. To leave this world behind. She had decided a long time ago – did she really have to go through all this again?

  Come, Mia, come.

  Yes.

  At least try?

  No.

  Come, Mia, come.

  Mia was so cold her whole body was trembling. She tightened the duvet around her and reached a thin, white arm towards one of the jars. Tried reading the label, but was unable to see it properly. She had not turned on the light. She couldn’t be sure she had paid the electricity bill.

  She got up to get a drink.

  I don’t drink.

  She had been good, put all the bottles away, in an attempt at living, being healthy and virtuous; hidden them at the bottom of the laundry basket.

  I just hide bottles among filthy clothes I hope to wash, in a washing machine I haven’t even connected, in a flat, in a city, in a world I don’t want to be a part of.

  She caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror and remembered seeing herself some months earlier in one in her house out on Hitra.

  Back then, she had barely had the guts to look herself in the eye, but she did so now, staring at herself, a kind of ghost, deep inside the mirror.

  Sparkling, blue Norwegian eyes. Long, dark hair cascading over skinny, white shoulders. The scar by her left eye. A three-centimetre cut, a scar that would never disappear. The tiny butterfly she had had tattooed just above her knicker line on her hip after a night of youthful stupidity in Prague. She stroked the small silver bracelet on her right wrist. They had been given one each at their confirmation, her and Sigrid. A child’s bracelet with charms, a heart, an anchor, and a letter. M on hers. S on Sigrid’s. That evening when the party was over and the guests had gone home they had been sitting in their shared bedroom in Åsgårdstrand when Sigrid had suddenly suggested that they swap.

  You take mine, and I’ll have yours?

  Mia had never taken the silver bracelet off.

  Mia Moonbeam.

  Her grandmother’s pet name for her.

  You’re very special, did you know that? The other children are fine, but you know things, Mia, don’t you? You see the things that other people overlook.

  Granny had not been her biological grandmother, yet she had loved her as if she were her own. Sigrid and Mia. Mia and Sigrid. Two gorgeous twins adopted by a middle-aged couple, Eva and Kyrre Krüger, when their birth mother, who was too young, did not want to, could not look after them.

  Mum. Dad. Granny. Sigrid.

  Four graves in the same cemetery; all that was missing was hers. Mia poked her arm through the pile of dirty laundry, retrieved a bottle and carried it, still shivering in her underwear, back to the mattress on the floor in front of the line of pill jars.

  See a therapist?

  Screw that.

  She had tried, hadn’t she?

  Mattias Wang. With his wispy moustache and in the smartest part of Oslo, kind and good, clever and committed, educated and trained to within an inch of his life, and yet he knew absolutely nothing.

  ‘Do you know what I think, Mia?’

  Mia twisted the cap off the bottle. ‘No?’ And raised the bottle to her lips.

  ‘I think it’s your job that’s making you ill.’

  She felt the warmth spread down her throat.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The feeling took her close to the dream. To Sigrid.

  ‘You’re not like other police officers.’

  Mia took a swig of the bottle and felt the warmth disperse through her body.

  ‘How is that?’

  She could barely feel the cold now.

  ‘You care too much. I think it’s killing you.’

  Mia tightened the duvet around her, anyway. It felt comforting and soothing.

  ‘Why, Mattias?’

  Five jars of white pills.

  ‘All the evil. Everything you have to see. Everything you have to feel. For other people, it’s just a job. For you, it’s, well, I don’t know … As if it’s happening to you, as if you’re the victim of all these cruelties – or do you think I’m being too dramatic?’

  Mia raised the bottle to her mouth again.

  ‘I think you’re wrong.’

  Five lids to open.

  ‘Obviously, we haven’t had many sessions – I can’t claim to know you, or know anything at all – but that was my – how can I put it? – my first impression of who you are.’

  This time, Mia let the bottle rest against her lips for a long time.

  ‘Shall we carry on next week?’

  No.

  ‘I think we can find a way out, don’t you, Mia?’

  No.

  Mia Krüger put down the bottle and calmly stroked the little silver bracelet around her wrist.

  No. I don’t think so.

  And she carefully started unscrewing the lids on the pill jars standing on the cold linoleum floor.

  Chapter 9

  Holger Munch was in a foul mood as he sat behind the wheel of his black Audi, driving towards Bislett. He stopped for a red light at Ullevålsveien and watched a smiling young couple push a pram across the junction in front of him. He lit a cigarette and shook his head. How had this happened? That had been him not so long ago. Marianne and him. With Miriam in the pram. And why could he not get it out of his head, her getting married again? Surely he had better things to think about. A seventeen-year-old girl. Murdered and left naked in the woods. On a bed of feathers. A flower in her mouth. And he had sucked up to Mikkelson; it was quite possible he was mostly annoyed about that. But from the moment he had stepped inside the white tent in the forest and seen the girl lying there, he had known what he had to do. He needed Mia Krüger back. He had a great team, he did, the best investigators in the country, but there was no one like her.

  A horn beeping behind him snapped him out of his reverie. The light was green, and the young cou
ple had gone. Munch put the car in gear and turned off down towards Bislett Stadium. Getting married? What on earth was the point of that?

  He had just parked the car and was about to get out when his mobile rang.

  ‘Munch?’

  ‘It’s Ludvig.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think we have identified her.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Munch had told Ludvig Grønlie and his new assistant, Ylva, to check the missing-persons lists.

  ‘Good work. So who is she?’

  ‘We still need to have it confirmed, but I’m fairly sure it’s her. Camilla Green. Reported missing three months ago. The description matches – height, eye colour, the tattoo – but something’s not quite right.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This is why it took some time,’ Grønlie continued.

  Munch smiled to himself and lit a cigarette. Some time. It was less than two hours since he’d made the request. He felt almost guilty for insisting to Mikkelson that he must have Mia back. He was already in charge of the country’s very best investigators.

  ‘Go on?’ Munch said, getting out of the car.

  ‘Camilla Green,’ Grønlie continued, and it sounded as if he was reading aloud from his screen. ‘Born 13 April 1995. Green eyes. Shoulder-length, dark-blonde hair. 1.68 metres tall. Weighs about seventy kilos. Parents dead. Reported missing by Helene Eriksen, she’s the manager of a place called Hurumlandet Nurseries.’

  ‘Seventy kilos?’ Munch said, taking the case file from his car before locking it. ‘Then it can’t be her, can it? The girl we found was skinny, don’t forget—’

  ‘I know,’ Grønlie interrupted him. ‘But I’ve got a picture, and it’s definitely her. Camilla Green. Everything else matches. The tattoo and everything.’