On the way back, she had to hurry to keep up. Not that he appeared to be moving quickly, but he took ground-gaining strides and was clearly accustomed to being in the forest. As they were crossing the moor in the moonlight, she studied his back. His body language and bearing were also different out here compared to at the shop in town. He radiated a sort of contentment and happiness, an innateness, as though this was where he felt at home. Maybe the happiness was also due to the knowledge that he had made her happy, she suspected it was. He tried to hide it of course, but now he’d been rumbled, and his sour face wasn’t going to fool her any longer.

She increased her pace to a jog. Perhaps he thought that after just an hour in the forest she felt at home here too; he obviously didn’t feel it was necessary to lead her by the hand any more at any rate.

She let out a small cry and pretended to stumble. He stopped abruptly and she was dazzled by his headlamp. ‘Oh, sorry. I... are you all right?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ she said, and held out her hand.

He took it.

Then they walked on.

Thanh wondered if she was in love. In which case how long she had been. And — if she actually was — how difficult it was going to be to make him aware of it.

51

Friday

Prim

‘You ought to look more relieved, Harry,’ Aune said. ‘What is it now?’

Øystein and Truls had just left room 618 ahead of him.

Harry looked down at his dying friend. ‘There was an old woman in Los Angeles. She got into some trouble and I’ve been trying to... well, fix things.’

‘Is that why you came home?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I guessed the reason was something other than working for Markus Røed.’

‘Mm. I’ll tell you about it next time, I’d say it’ll be just a psychologist’s cup of tea.’

Aune chuckled and took his friend’s hand. ‘Next time, Harry.’

Harry was completely unprepared for the tears he suddenly felt welling up. He squeezed Ståle’s hand. Didn’t say anything because he knew his voice wouldn’t hold. Buttoned his jacket and walked quickly into the corridor.

Øystein and Truls, standing in front of the lift doors a few metres further along the corridor, turned towards him.

Harry’s phone rang. What would he say if it was the Los Angeles Police? He took out the phone and looked at it. It was Alexandra — he should of course have let her know he wouldn’t make it for the eclipse. He delayed answering while he tried to decide if he could face heading up there. Right now a drink or six on his lonesome in the bar at the Thief seemed much more tempting. No, not that. A lunar eclipse from the roof of the Forensic Medical Institute. That would be nice. As he tapped to take the call, a text message appeared on the screen. It was from Sung-min Larsen.

‘Hi,’ he said, as he began to read the text.

‘Hi, Harry.’

‘Is that you, Alexandra?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was just your voice,’ Harry said, letting his eyes wander over the text message. ‘You sounded so different.’

The cocaine wasn’t analysed at Krimteknisk because they didn’t have the capacity, so it was sent to the Forensic Medical Institute. There it was dealt with by a Helge Forfang, who has also dated and signed the analysis.

Harry felt like his heart had stopped beating. They flickered in front of his eyes, those fragmented pieces that had failed to fit with one another and which now, within a few astonishing seconds, dovetailed. Alexandra, showing him around the Forensic Medical Institute and informing him that when Krimteknisk couldn’t handle the analysis workload, they just sent it up there. Helge plainly telling Harry that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite was his field. Alexandra telling him she had invited Helge to the rooftop party, the sort people just crashed. The post-mortem technician could easily have placed DNA material on the corpses of Susanne and Bertine to steer suspicion towards a particular person, he could have done it in the autopsy room after the bodies were found. But above all: the odour of musk in the autopsy room when Helge had just been in there, and which Harry thought came from the body. The same odour as when Harry leaned closer to Helge, when he had just cut open Susanne Andersen’s eye and which Harry — idiot that he was — thought came from the eye.

Multiple pieces. And they all fitted together to form a mosaic, a large, but clear and sharp picture. And as always when things fell into their proper place, Harry wondered how he had not been able to see it before now.

Alexandra’s voice, so frightened that he had hardly recognised it, was there again.

‘Can you come over here, Harry?’

An imploring tone. Overly so. Not like the Alexandra Sturdza he knew.

‘Where are you?’ Harry asked, playing for time to think.

‘You know that. On the roof of—’