The Owl Always Hunts At Night

by Samuel Bjork

  ‘Number one,’ Gabriel said, ‘I’m sure Skunk can manage just fine on his own. Number two, we’re no longer friends. Number three, even if we had still been friends, if I thought that he was involved in something that we – yes, I say we because I’m a part of this team, although it’s clear that you don’t think so – something that we were working on, I would never have held anything back. Is that what you really think of me, Mia? And here was I thinking that we were—’

  ‘Gabriel,’ Mia said, looking truly sorry now. ‘Of course you’re a part of the team. Everyone likes you, and thinks you’re doing a fantastic job, I mean, you’ve only been here six months and we can’t manage without you, OK? Please believe that’s how we see it.’

  ‘Well, clearly it’s not.’

  ‘OK, please bear with me for a moment.’

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘A film appears right out of the blue. A hacker just happens to have found it. On a server he can’t point us to. He gives it to an old colleague who works for the police. This colleague doesn’t know how to contact him. I mean, if you were me? You would look into this? Wouldn’t you?’

  Gabriel mulled it over, and conceded that she did have a point.

  ‘So?’ Mia said, smiling at him. ‘Are we good now? Interview over? Everything is all right? And you understand why? So we’re done?’

  ‘OK.’ Gabriel nodded, smiling a little. ‘So who have you been talking to?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About this? Your suspicion that I wasn’t telling the truth?’

  ‘Only Munch,’ Mia said. ‘And he thought I was wrong, just so you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I forget to think before I speak sometimes, and everybody here likes you. Have I done enough grovelling?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘Great.’ Mia smiled. ‘Now I want to talk to you about the real reason I asked you in here. He tracked me down.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Skunk.’

  ‘You’re kidding? No. He hates the police.’

  ‘I’m not joking,’ Mia said. ‘I was in the pub, and suddenly he just appeared.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’ Gabriel sounded puzzled.

  ‘No, it’s weird, isn’t it?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. And he said some things which only you can help me with. Can we take a look at it?’

  ‘Sure.’ Gabriel nodded.

  Chapter 58

  It was much warmer here, in the new bed they had let him sleep in. He had been here for some days now, and still he did not know where he was, or who these people were, but they had told him that he was safe, and that he did not need to be scared any longer.

  The little boy did not understand them, but they had given him food, and he was pleased about that, because he had not eaten for a long time.

  The strange faces seemed nice, but they were also quite stupid. For example, they did not realize that the walls in their house were very thin and that he could hear them talking about him once he had gone to bed. His mum had always said that he should be wary of people, that they could not be trusted. He could see now that she had been right. Because these strangers said one thing to him when he was in the room and another when they were on the other side of the wall.

  This is insane.

  She has kept him a prisoner in that cabin for ten years.

  He has never met other children.

  Christ Almighty.

  He sat underneath her for over a week.

  Starving.

  He tried to understand what they were talking about; he was no fool, they were clearly talking about him, but he could not grasp the full implications. Nor could he understand why his mum was not here. They had taken her down from the roof beam, the people who had turned up, and he had been looking forward to seeing her again, but she didn’t seem ready, or maybe he was meant to wait for her here in this house with the strangers who could not be trusted. They were stupid, but their food was good. And the rooms were warm. And he was especially excited about the books. They had lots and lots of books.

  They said that he had to talk to a man with a thin moustache who had a job as something called a psychologist. The man with the thin moustache said that he was allowed to eat the sweets in the bowl on the table between them, probably to trick him, like people did, but he ate them anyway, because they tasted nice, and he nodded in all the right places, while the man talked.

  The man told him about something called death. That his mum was gone, and that she would never come back. To begin with, he did not believe him, of course, but as time passed, he began to think that maybe there was a grain of truth in it after all. Because no matter how long he waited and how much he hoped that she would be there when he opened his eyes under the duvet in the morning, she did not come. So this death place must exist after all, and his mum clearly intended to spend some time there. He did not know for how long, nor did he ask because, every time he opened his mouth, whether it was to the women who brought his food, or the psychologist man with the sweets, they would look at him strangely.

  As if he were stupid.

  They never said so outright, but he could see it in their eyes. So he stopped asking questions. He learned to nod instead. He smiled and he nodded, and they liked that. And the walls in the house were very thin, but because he became very good at not telling anyone how he felt, the words on the other side of the wall began to change when they discussed him.

  He’s doing incredibly well.

  What a relief.

  What a nightmare, can you imagine? All alone with a crazy mother in a cabin for ten years?

  But now he’s doing so well.

  Have you noticed how clever he is? How much reading he’s doing?

  Did you hear what Nils said?

  No, what did he say?

  About the laptop?

  What about it?

  At first he didn’t know what it was.

  Really?

  I mean, he has never seen one before, but now he uses it all the time. Nils said he has never seen anybody pick up something that quickly.

  By now he had been there for a year. He had read all the books in the house several times, including the books the people told him were just for grown-ups.

  Don’t say mean things about my mum.

  Once or twice, whatever was inside him had almost slipped out and made them take back the bad things they had said about his mum, but he had managed to control himself. He became very good at it. They never noticed.

  Oh, he’s so cute.

  Yes, isn’t he?

  The voices through the wall. And that was how he wanted it. He did not like the words he had overheard the first nights. They had made him shiver under the duvet, even though he was quite warm.

  But being here was nice in some ways.

  Mostly because of the books.

  And the other children.

  Not to begin with. The children’s faces had been strange, like those of the grown-ups, but once he had worked out how to copy them, learned not to be himself but merely smile and never show them how he felt on the inside, things had improved.

  Still, it was the laptop that fascinated him more than anything.

  It was a man called Nils who had first shown it to him. The small plastic rectangle which opened to reveal a whole new world.

  ‘Have you really never seen a laptop before?’

  And the little boy had felt it then, how the rage inside him nearly came out, but he had managed to keep his face clear of expression.

  You would not believe the head on that boy.

  Amazing, isn’t it? Growing up in those circumstances, and doing as well as he is.

  No, I mean it. He’s like Beethoven.

  I don’t follow?

  The moment Beethoven saw a piano, he knew what to do with it.

  What?

  Some people have to learn, but Beethoven, he just looked at i
t, sat down and started playing. He knew immediately what to do.

  What are you talking about, Nils?

  That boy had never seen a computer in all his life. But the moment he sat down in front of it, it was as if he just instinctively knew how it worked.

  I’m so glad he’s doing so well.

  No, you don’t understand. This boy is exceptional.

  Two years passed. He grew used to all the different flavours of sweets. And although the children would come and go, he enjoyed being with them. Death was clearly an important person who was looking after his mum until she was ready to come back. In time he began to feel that this place was almost his home. It was nothing like life with his mum, obviously, but it was all right. The voices behind the wall now said only nice things about him. The children in the school playground were happy to play football with him or climb on the climbing frame. He was content to wait here. For death to finish with his mum. He slept better at nights. He felt happy every time he woke up.

  Right until the day when a car pulled into the yard outside the house and one of the women who looked after him came over to him.

  ‘I want you to meet someone.’

  ‘Yes?’ he had replied with his smiling face.

  ‘You’re going to get a new home.’

  He struggled to make sense of the words.

  ‘Hello,’ said a woman with blonde hair who had emerged from the unfamiliar car.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, holding out his hand and bowing like he had been taught he should.

  ‘My name is Helene,’ the smiling woman said. ‘Helene Eriksen.’

  ‘Why don’t we all go inside and get to know each other?’ said the woman who looked after him.

  So that is what they had done, gone inside, and there were crusty rolls on a plate on the table and red squash for him to drink, and then the face of the new woman had grown serious and she had put her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘We’re so happy about it, we really are. That you are going to be a part of our family now.’

  The boy did not understand what was happening, and the thing inside him bared its teeth, but he had managed to smile at her all the same, with that face he had learned to show the outside world.

  Chapter 59

  Mia Krüger carried her coffee cup back to the table and picked up a newspaper along the way. She flicked through it, but the articles depressed her, so she put it down and focused on something positive. The taste of her cortado. And the fact that she had struck gold with her first attempt. She was always reluctant to call other departments for help, but the investigator from Kripos had been more than willing.

  Police clueless.

  Who killed Camilla Green?

  She got this feeling every time she flicked through the tabloids, that it was a kind of battle. The police versus the killer. It was childish. Firstly, if the police did not catch the killer immediately, they were vilified. Secondly – and this was possibly her pet hate – this adulation of criminals. No matter how dreadful their crimes, endless column inches were devoted to them. Mia took another sip of her coffee and started to think that Munch might have a point after all: he despised reporters. She had never really minded them before. Even when they had hounded her back when she shot Markus Skog and she had been forced to hide out in a hotel in Majorstuen. Idiots, did they not see they were part of the problem? That there were people out there who would do anything for their fifteen minutes of fame?

  Mark Chapman, who had shot John Lennon.

  Just to get his name in the papers.

  John Hinckley, who had shot Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impress the actress Jodie Foster.

  Were reporters really that ignorant about recent history? Did they not realize the part they played?

  Ritual murder unsolved.

  Police outwitted.

  She tried not to read the headlines, but it was hard not to. She had put down her newspaper, but people around her were still holding theirs up, normal people out for lunch, with an unswerving belief that the media told the truth.

  Mia had never seen him before, but he was not difficult to spot; he might as well have worn a sign as he came through the doors and scouted for her across the room.

  Kripos.

  Cybercrime Unit.

  The man in the suit nodded when he saw her, made a beeline for her table, and they shook hands.

  ‘Robert Larsen,’ he introduced himself, and sat down.

  ‘Mia Krüger.’

  ‘How nice to finally meet you.’ The man smiled. ‘And how convenient that you called today, of all days.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Kristian Karlsen,’ Larsen said with another small smile.

  ‘You mean Skunk?’

  ‘Yes, Skunk,’ the Kripos investigator said, then summoned the waiter and pointed to Mia’s cup to indicate that he wanted the same.

  He took a file from his briefcase and placed it on the table in front of her.

  ‘I must admit that I was surprised to get your call. We’ve had him on our radar for a while, but I didn’t know that it was that serious.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Murder,’ Larsen said. ‘I mean, we have a lot on him, but nothing that points in that direction.’

  ‘Like I said on the phone, we don’t know very much yet,’ Mia said. ‘But we thought it was worth checking out.’

  ‘I get it.’ The Kripos investigator smiled and winked at her. ‘Top secret, eh?’

  Mia did not like much about this man, but she decided not to let on.

  ‘So what have you got?’

  ‘Kristian Karlsen.’ Larsen cleared his throat and opened the file in front of him. ‘A black hacker. You’re familiar with the term?’

  Mia nodded. Skunk had used the term himself, so she had looked it up. There were different types of hackers. She believed that Gabriel was a white hacker. One of the good guys.

  ‘And you have heard of the group Anonymous? Lulz-Sec?’

  ‘I’ve heard about Anonymous,’ Mia said.

  ‘They’re becoming quite the celebrities these days,’ Larsen said, as the waiter brought his coffee. ‘They came from a place called 4chan/b/. Have you heard of that?’

  ‘Definitely not.’ Mia smiled, sensing this was the way forward with him. Feign ignorance, even though Gabriel had explained some of it to her. The man opposite her seemed to enjoy showing off, and all she cared about was the contents of the folder on the table.

  ‘The long or the short version?’ Larsen asked her.

  ‘Short version, please.’

  ‘OK. The website 4chan. Nothing but a bunch of young idiots, really. Misfits. Right up until they realized how many they were.’

  Larsen took a sip of his coffee.

  ‘I see,’ Mia said.

  ‘Yes, I’m talking about people who don’t fit in,’ he explained. ‘Who now hold the power. I mean, these guys, teenagers, they might be only fourteen or fifteen years old, but they can bring society to a halt if they want to.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Air traffic, streetlights, banks, water supply – seriously, everything is computerized now; nothing is written down on paper these days. Do you follow?’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Mia nodded.

  ‘DDOS,’ Larsen said.

  ‘What?’

  The man in the suit smiled. ‘A DDOS attack? Do you know what that is?’

  ‘No idea.’

  The suit from Kripos grinned again. He seemed enormously pleased with his opportunity to hold forth.

  ‘Basically, it’s what happens when hackers send an extreme number of requests to a website, so many that, ultimately, it can’t cope with them and it crashes. They’ve done this with big companies, who have been forced to take down their websites temporarily.’

  ‘I understand,’ Mia said and glanced at the file on the table in front of her. ‘But what does that have to do with Skunk?’

  ‘We believe that Kristian Karlsen is one of the people here in Norway who was
behind these attacks. And the FBI has asked us to make sure that he’s punished for it.’

  ‘Do you have any actual evidence?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That Skunk was a part of this?’

  ‘We’re almost one hundred per cent sure,’ Larsen said, taking another sip of his coffee.

  ‘That means no.’

  ‘Oh no, we’re just biding our time.’ The man in the suit winked at her.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What you have to realize is that these people are incredibly good at hiding. Online, I mean.’

  ‘But you already know where he is?’

  ‘In real life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course. We have had him under surveillance for a long time.’

  ‘So you know where Skunk lives?’

  ‘We would be pretty rubbish at our job if we didn’t, don’t you think?’

  ‘Any chance that I, well, that I might be …’

  Mia had not even completed her sentence before Larsen took a sheet of paper from his file and pushed it across to her.

  ‘That’s where he is?’ Mia said, staring incredulously at the address in front of her.

  The man in the suit nodded.

  ‘You owe me one.’ Larsen raised the coffee cup to his lips and winked at her again.

  ‘Definitely,’ Mia said, and forced a smile. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Any time. You’ll keep me posted?’

  ‘Absolutely. Again, thank you.’ Mia smiled, emptied her coffee cup, left the café as quickly as she could, found her mobile and rang Munch.

  Chapter 60

  Miriam Munch was in the car on her way back from Gardermoen Airport with Marion in the rear. She had felt guilty and dishonest, but it had gone better than expected, mainly because they had been late. Johannes had practically had to run through Security, so there had been no time for long goodbyes.

  ‘Don’t get eaten by a shark,’ Marion had said, giving her dad a big hug.

  ‘I promise.’ Johannes smiled, and just had time to give Miriam a quick kiss.

  They had waved him through and, a moment later, Marion had seemed a little sad at him leaving, but, sitting in the car now, she seemed to have bounced back. Mostly because Miriam had broken one of her rules and allowed the little girl to watch a movie on her iPad in the car.