MY FATHER, IAN BROWN, was a keen, though not a very good, chess player. He had been taught to play by his father when he was five, and he read chess manuals and studied classic games. However, he didn’t teach me to play chess until I was fourteen, when my most receptive years were over. I had an aptitude for chess, though, and when I was sixteen I beat him for the first time. He smiled as though he were proud of me, but I know he hated it. He reassembled the pieces and we began a revenge match. I played with the white pieces as usual; he tried to make me believe that he was giving me an advantage. After a few moves he excused himself and went into the kitchen, where I knew he took a swig from a bottle of gin. When he returned I had swapped two pieces, but he didn’t realise. Four moves later he sat gawping at my white queen opposite his black king. And he saw that the next move would be checkmate. He was so funny to look at that I couldn’t restrain myself and started to laugh. And I could see from his expression that he knew what had happened. He stood up and swept all the pieces off the board. Then he hit me. My knees gave way and I fell, more out of terror than the force of the blow. He had never hit me before.
‘You switched some pieces,’ he hissed. ‘My son does not cheat.’
I could taste blood in my mouth. The white queen lay on the floor in front of me. The crown was chipped. Hatred burned like bile through my throat and chest. I picked up the damaged queen and put it back on the board. Then the other pieces. One by one. Replaced them exactly as they had been.
‘Your move, Dad.’
For that is what the player with the most cold-blooded hatred does when he has been on the point of winning and his opponent has unexpectedly hit him in the face, struck somewhere it hurts, found his terror. He doesn’t lose his overview of the board but puts his terror aside and keeps to his plan. Breathes in, reconstructs, continues the game, walks away with the victory. Leaves the scene without any triumphant gestures.
I sat at the end of the table and saw Clas Greve’s mouth moving. Saw his cheeks tensing and relaxing and forming words that were obviously comprehensible to Ferdinand and the two Pathfinder representatives, at any rate they were clearly satisfied, all three of them. How I hated that mouth. Hated the grey-pink gums, the solid tombstone teeth, yes, even the shape of that revolting orifice; a straight cleft between two upward-pointing corners suggesting a smile, the same incised smile with which Bjørn Borg had charmed the world. And with which Clas Greve was now seducing his future employer, Pathfinder. But most of all I hated his lips. The lips that had touched my wife’s lips, my wife’s skin, probably her pale red nipples and for certain her dripping wet, open vagina. I imagined I could see a blonde pubic hair in a crease in the fleshy part of his lower lip.
I had sat silently for almost half an hour while Ferdinand with imbecilic commitment had reeled off idiotic questions from the interview guide as though they were his own.
At the beginning of the interview Greve had exclusively addressed himself to me. But increasingly he realised that I was only there as an unannounced, passive monitor and that his job today was to enlighten the other three with the gospel according to Greve. He had, however, at regular intervals sent me quick questioning looks as though searching for a hint as to my role.
After a while the two representatives from Pathfinder, the company chairman and the public relations manager, had asked their questions, which naturally enough had centred around Greve’s time with HOTE. And Greve had given an account of how he and HOTE had taken a leading role in the development of TRACE, a lacquer containing around a hundred transmitters per millilitre which could be applied to any object. Its advantage was that the varnish was almost invisible and just like normal varnish it adhered so firmly to the object that it was impossible to get rid of it without using a paint scraper. The disadvantage was that the transmitters were so small that their signals were too weak not to penetrate any matter denser than air that might cover the transmitters, such as water, ice, mud or the extremely thick layers of dust to which vehicles in desert wars might be subject.
On the other hand, walls, even made of thick bricks, were seldom a problem.
‘Our experience was that soldiers painted with TRACE lost contact with our receivers when the dirt on them reached a certain point,’ Greve said. ‘We don’t yet have the technology to make microscopic transmitters more powerful.’
‘We do at Pathfinder,’ the chairman said. He was a sparse-haired man in his fifties who kept twisting his neck at various junctures as though afraid it would stiffen, or else he had swallowed something big that he couldn’t quite get down. I suspected it was an involuntary spasm caused by a muscular disease for which there was only one outcome. ‘But unfortunately we don’t have the TRACE technology.’
‘Technologically speaking, HOTE and Pathfinder would have made the perfect married couple,’ Greve said.
‘Just so,’ the chairman said pointedly. ‘With Pathfinder as the housewife, receiving a few miserable titbits from the monthly pay packet.’
Greve chuckled. ‘Quite right. Besides, HOTE’s technology would be easier for Pathfinder to acquire than the other way round. That’s why I believe there is only one viable route for Pathfinder. And that is to undertake the journey on its own.’
I saw the Pathfinder representatives exchange glances.
‘Anyway, you have an impressive CV, Greve,’ the chairman said. ‘But what we set great store by at Pathfinder is that our CEO should be a stayer… what do you call it in your recruitment-speak?’
‘A farmer,’ Ferdinand sprang to the rescue.
‘A farmer, yes. A good image. In other words, someone who cultivates what is already there, who builds things up, brick by brick. Who is tough and patient. And you have a record which is erm…, spectacular and dramatic, but it doesn’t tell us if you have the stamina and doggedness that is necessary for the director we are seeking.’
Clas Greve had listened to the chairman with a serious expression and now he was nodding.
‘First of all, I would like to say that I share your view of the type of director Pathfinder should be looking for. Secondly, I wouldn’t have shown any interest in this challenge if I had not been that type.’
‘You are that type?’ the second representative from Pathfinder asked carefully, a diplomatic type I had already pigeonholed as a public relations boss before he introduced himself. I had nominated a number of them.
Clas Greve smiled. A hearty smile that not only softened the flinty face, but changed it totally. I had seen this trick of his a few times now, which was intended to show the boyish rascal he could also be. It had the same effect as the physical contact that Inbau, Reid and Buckley recommended, the intimate touch, the vote of confidence, the one that says I am laying myself bare here.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ Greve said, still smiling. ‘It’s about a matter I find hard to admit. Namely, that I am a dreadful loser. I’m the sort of person who finds it difficult to lose at heads or tails.’
Chuckles round the room.
‘But I hope it will tell you something about my stamina and staying power,’ he continued. ‘In the BBE I was once chasing a, sad to say, pretty insignificant drug smuggler in Suriname…’
I could see the two Pathfinder men unconsciously leaning forward a tad. Ferdinand took care of the coffee refills while sending me a confident smile.
And Clas Greve’s mouth moved. Crept forward. Devoured greedily where it had no right to be. Had she screamed? Of course she had. Diana simply couldn’t hold back, such easy meat for his lusts. The first time we had made love I had been reminded of the Bernini sculpture in the Cornaro Chapel: The Ecstasy of S. Teresa di Avila. Partly because of Diana’s half-open mouth, the suffering, almost pain-filled facial expression, the tensed vein and the concentrated furrow in her forehead. And partly because Diana screamed, and I have always thought that Bernini’s Carmelite saint is screaming as the angel pulls the arrow from her chest, ready to thrust it in again. That is what it looks like to me at any rate, in-out-in, an image of divine penetration, fucking at its most sublime, but fucking nevertheless. But not even a saint could scream like Diana. Diana’s scream was a pained enjoyment, an arrow-point in the eardrum that sent shivers throughout your body. It was a lament and an enduring moan, a tone that merely rose and fell, like a model aeroplane. So piercing that after the first act of love I had woken up with a ringing in my ears, and after three weeks of lovemaking I thought I could detect the first symptoms of tinnitus; a continual torrent of water falling, or at least a brook, accompanied by a whistling sound that came and went.
I had happened to express concern about my hearing, as a joke of course, but Diana had not seen the funny side. On the contrary, she had been horrified and on the point of tears. And when we made love the next time, I had felt her soft hands around my ears, which I first perceived as a slightly unusual caress. But when they cupped around my ears forming two warm protective domes, I realised what an act of love this was. The effect was limited, from an auditory point of view – the scream still bored into the cerebral cortex – but all the greater emotionally. I am not a man given to tears, but as I came I began to sob like a baby. Probably because I knew that no one, no one else would ever love me as much as this woman.
So watching Greve now, in the certainty that she had screamed in his embrace too, I tried not to think of the question this threw up. But, just like Diana, I couldn’t hold myself back: Had she covered his ears, too?
‘The track led mostly through thick jungle and swampland,’ Greve said. ‘Eight-hour marches. Nevertheless, we were always a bit behind, always just too late. The others gave up, one by one. Fever, dysentery, snake bites or sheer, utter exhaustion. And the guy was, of course, of minor significance. The jungle devours your reasoning. I was the youngest, yet in the end I was the one who was given the command. And the machete.’
Diana and Greve. When I had parked the Volvo in the garage, after driving home from Greve’s apartment, I had for a second considered rolling down the window, letting the motor run and breathing in carbon dioxide, monoxide, or whatever the fuck it is you breathe in; anyway, it is supposed to be a pleasant death.
‘After following his trail for sixty-three days over three hundred and twenty kilometres of the worst terrain you can imagine, the hunting pack was reduced to me and a young stripling from Groningen who was too stupid to go mad. I contacted HQ and had a Niether terrier flown in. Do you know the breed? No? It is the best hunting dog in the world. And infinitely loyal, it attacks everything you point to, whatever the size. A friend for life. Literally. The helicopter dropped the dog, a whelp of just over a year old, in the middle of the jungle in the vast Sipaliwini district, that’s where they drop cocaine, too. The drop zone turned out to be ten kilometres from where we were hiding, though. It would be a miracle if it survived for twenty-four hours in the jungle, let alone tracked us down. It took the dog just under two hours to find us.’
Greve leaned back in his chair. He was in total control now.
‘I called it Sidewinder. After the heat-seeking missile, you know? I loved that dog. That’s why I have a Niether terrier today. I went to collect it from Holland yesterday; in fact, it is Sidewinder’s grandchild.’
Diana had been sitting in the living room watching the news when I came home after burgling Greve. There was a press conference with Inspector Brede Sperre behind a forest of microphones. He was talking about a murder. A murder that had been solved. A murder he alone had solved by the sound of it. Sperre’s voice had a masculine jar to it, like a radio with interference, specks of outage, a typewriter with a worn letter you could just make out on paper. ‘The perpe-rator will appear before court to-orrow. Any other questions?’ Every trace of east Oslo was gone from his language now, but according to Google he had played basketball for Ammerud for eight years. He had left Police College as the second highest performer in his year’s intake. In a personal interview for a women’s magazine he had refused to say whether he had a significant other, for professional reasons. Any partner would be subject to undesirable attention from the media and the criminal elements he was chasing, he said. But nothing in the pin-up photos for the same magazine – half-unbuttoned shirt, half-closed eyes, trace of a half-smile – signalled a partner.
I had stood behind Diana’s chair.
‘He’s started in Kripos now,’ she said. ‘Murder and all that.’
I knew that of course, I googled Brede Sperre every week to find out what he was doing, whether he had made an announcement to the press about a clampdown on art thieves. On top of that, I made my own enquiries about Sperre whenever an occasion presented itself. Oslo is not a big town. I knew things.
‘A shame for you,’ I said, relieved. ‘No more visits to the gallery from him.’
She had laughed and looked up at me, and I had looked down at her, smiled, and our faces were upside down in relation to each other. And for an instant I thought that the business with Greve had not happened, it had just been something I had painted in slightly too vivid colours, the way people do sometimes, trying to imagine the worst thing that can happen, if for no other reason than to feel what it is like, to see if it would be tolerable. And as if to confirm that it was just a dream, I had said I had changed my mind, she was right, we really ought to book the trip to Tokyo in December. But she had looked at me in surprise and said that she couldn’t close the gallery right before Christmas, that was the peak period, wasn’t it? And no one went to Tokyo in December, it was freezing cold. What about spring then? I said. I could book tickets. And she had said that was a little too much long-range planning, wasn’t it, couldn’t we just wait and see? Fine, I had answered and said I was going to bed, I was really tired.
And when I was downstairs, I had gone into the nursery, over to the mizuko jizo figure and knelt down. The altar was still untouched. Too much long-range planning. Wait and see. Then I had taken the little red box out of my pocket, run my fingertips over the smooth surface and placed it beside the little stone Buddha that kept an eye on our water child.
‘Two days later we found the drug smuggler in a small village. He was being kept hidden by a very young foreign girl who, it later transpired, was his girlfriend. They usually find themselves such innocent-looking girls and then use them as couriers. Until the girl is caught by customs and gets life. Sixty-five days had passed since the hunt had started.’ Clas Greve drew a deep breath. ‘For my part, another sixty-five would have been fine.’
In the end it was the public relations manager who broke the ensuing silence. ‘And you arrested the man?’
‘Not only him. He and his girlfriend gave us enough information to arrest twenty-three of his colleagues at a later point.’
‘How…’ the chairman started. ‘How do you arrest someone like that?’
‘In this case it wasn’t so dramatic,’ Greve said with his hands behind his head. ‘Equality has come to Suriname. When we stormed the house he had laid down his weapons on the kitchen table and was helping his girlfriend with a mincer.’
The chairman burst into laughter and glanced across at the public relations manager who obediently chimed in with a jerky, though more tentative, laugh. The chorus became a three-part harmony as Ferdinand added to the merriment with his bright squeal. I studied the four shiny faces while thinking about how dearly I wished I had a hand grenade at this very moment.
After Ferdinand had rounded off the interview, I made it my job to escort Clas Greve out while the other three took a break before summing up.
I accompanied Greve to the lift doors and pressed the button.
‘Convincing performance,’ I said, folding my hands in front of my suit trousers and peering up at the floor indicator. ‘You’re a big hit with your seduction skills.’
‘Seduction… not sure about that. I assume you don’t perceive it as dishonourable to sell yourself, Roger.’
‘Not at all. I would’ve done exactly the same if I’d been you.’
‘Thank you. When will you be writing the report?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Good.’
The lift doors opened, we stepped in and stood waiting.
‘I was just wondering,’ I said. ‘The person you were pursuing…’
‘Yes?’
‘It wasn’t by any chance the same person who had tortured you in the cellar?’
Greve smiled. ‘How did you know?’
‘Pure guesswork.’ The lift doors slid into place. ‘And you confined yourself to arresting him?’
Greve raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you find that difficult to believe?’
I shrugged. The lift began to move.
‘The plan was to kill him,’ Greve said.
‘Did you have so much to avenge?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how do you answer to murder charges in the Dutch army?’
‘You make sure you aren’t caught. Curacit.’
‘Poison? As in poison-tipped arrows?’
‘That’s what headhunters use in our part of the world.’
I assumed the ambiguity was deliberate.
‘A solution of Curacit in a rubber ball the size of a grape with a barely detectable sharp needle. You hide it in the target’s mattress. When he goes to bed the needle pricks the skin and the weight forces the poison in the rubber ball into his body.’
‘But he was at home,’ I said. ‘And had a witness in this girl.’
‘Precisely.’
‘So how did you get him to snitch on his pals?’
‘I offered him a deal. I got my colleague to hold him down while I fed his hand into the mincer and said we would grind it into pieces and let him watch our dog eat the minced flesh. Then he talked.’
I nodded, visualising the scene. The lift doors opened and we walked to the front entrance. I held the door open for him. ‘And what about after he talked?’
‘What about it?’ Greve squinted up at the sky.
‘Did you keep your part of the deal?’
‘I…’ Greve said, fishing out a pair of Maui Jim titanium sunglasses from his breast pocket and putting them on, ‘always keep my part of the deal.’
‘A measly arrest then? Was it worth two months of chasing and risking your own life?’
Greve laughed softly. ‘You don’t understand, Roger. Giving up a chase is never an option for types like me. I’m like my dog, a result of genes and training. Risk doesn’t exist. Once fired up, I’m a heat-seeking missile that cannot be stopped, that basically seeks its own destruction. Put your first-year psychology course to the test on that.’ He placed a hand on my arm, gave a thin smile and whispered: ‘But keep the diagnosis to yourself.’
I stood holding the door. ‘And the girl? How did you get her to talk?’
‘She was fourteen years old.’
‘And?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Greve released a deep sigh. ‘I don’t know how you’ve got such an impression of me, Roger. I don’t interrogate underage girls. I took her with me to Paramaribo, bought a ticket with my soldier’s wage and put her on the first plane home to her parents before the Surinamese police got their hooks into her.’
My eyes followed him as he strode over to a silver-grey Lexus GS 430 in the car park.
The autumn weather was stunningly beautiful. It had rained on my wedding day.
I PRESSED LOTTE MADSEN’S doorbell for the third time. In fact, her name was not on the bell, but I had rung at enough doors in Eilert Sundts gate to know that it was hers.
Darkness and the temperature had fallen early and fast. I was shivering in my shoes. She had hesitated for a long time when I rang her from work after lunch to ask whether I could visit her at around eight. And when, at length, she had, with a monosyllable, granted me an audience, I knew she must have broken a vow she had made to herself: not to have anything more to do with this man who had left her so emphatically.
The lock buzzed and I tore at the door as if frightened it was the only chance I would get. I went upstairs; I didn’t want to risk ending up in the lift with some nosy neighbour who had time on their hands to gawp, take note and draw conclusions.
Lotte had opened the door a crack and I glimpsed her pale face.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
‘Here I am again.’
She didn’t answer. She usually didn’t.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
Lotte Madsen shrugged. She looked just the way she had the first time I saw her: a timid whelp, small and scruffy with fearful, brown puppy eyes. Greasy hair hung lifelessly down on both sides of her face, her posture was stooped, and shapeless, colourless clothes gave the impression that she was a woman who spent more time concealing rather than drawing attention to her body. Which she had no reason to do; Lotte was slim, shapely and had smooth, perfect skin. But she radiated the kind of submissiveness I imagine you find in those women who are always being beaten up, always being left, never getting the deal they deserve. That may have been what aroused something that I had hitherto never guessed I possessed: a protective instinct. As well as the less platonic feelings that were the springboard for our short-term relationship. Or affair. Affair. Relationship is present tense, affair past.
The first time I saw Lotte Madsen was at one of Diana’s private views in the summer. Lotte had stood at the other end of the room, fixed her gaze on me and reacted a little too late. Catching women in the act like this is always flattering, but when I saw that her gaze was not going to return to me, I ambled over to the picture she was studying and introduced myself. Mostly out of curiosity, of course, since I have always been – considering my nature – sensationally faithful to Diana. Malicious tongues might claim that my fidelity was based more on risk analysis than love. That I knew Diana played in a higher league than I did, attraction-wise, and that consequently I was not in a position to take such risks unless I was willing to play in lower divisions for the rest of my days.
Maybe. But Lotte Madsen was in my division.
She looked like a freaky artist, and I automatically assumed that was what she was, or possibly the lover of one. There was no other way of explaining how a pair of limp, brown cord jeans and a boring, tight grey sweater could have gained admission to the private view. But it turned out she was a buyer. Not with her own money, naturally, but for a company in Denmark needing to fit out its new rooms in Odense. She was a freelance translator from Norwegian and Spanish: brochures, articles, user manuals, films and the odd specialist book. The firm was one of her more regular customers. She spoke softly and with a tentative little smile as if she didn’t understand why anyone would waste their time talking to her. I was immediately taken with Lotte. Yes, I think taken is the right word. She was sweet. And small. One fifty-nine. I didn’t need to ask, I have a good eye for heights. By the time I left that evening, I had her phone number to send her photographs of other pictures by the exhibiting artist. At that point I probably thought my intentions were honest.
The next time we met was over a cappuccino at Sushi &Coffee. I had explained to her that I would rather show her printouts of the pictures than email them because screens – just like me – can lie.
After quickly flicking through the pictures, I told her I was unhappy in my marriage, but I was sticking it out because I felt obliged to do so because of my wife’s boundless love for me. It’s the world’s oldest cliché in the married-man-picking-up-unmarried-woman or vice versa scenario, but I had an inkling she hadn’t heard it before. I hadn’t either for that matter, but I had definitely heard of it and presumed it worked.
She had checked her watch and said she had to go, and I had asked if I could pop round one evening to show her another artist I considered a much better investment for her customer in Odense. She had hesitantly agreed.
I had taken along some poor pictures from the gallery and a bottle of good red wine from the cellar. She had appeared resigned to her fate from the moment she had opened the door to me that warm summer evening.
I had told her amusing stories about my blunders, the kind that seem to put you in a bad light, but actually show that you have enough self-confidence and success to be able to afford self-deprecation. She said she was an only child, had travelled round the world with her parents when she was young and that her father was the chief engineer for an international waterworks company. She didn’t belong to any particular country; Norway was as good as anywhere. That was it. For someone who spoke several different languages she said very little. Translator, I had thought. She preferred other people’s stories to her own.
She had asked me about my wife. Your wife, she said, even though she must have known Diana’s name as she had been invited to the private view. In that sense she certainly made it easier for me. And for herself.
I had told her that my marriage had received a buffeting when ‘my wife’ became pregnant and I didn’t want to have the baby. And, according to her, had persuaded her to have an abortion.
‘Did you?’ Lotte had asked.
‘I suppose so.’
I had seen something change in Lotte’s expression and asked what it was.
‘My parents persuaded me to have an abortion. Because I was a teenager and the child would not have a father. I still hate them for that. Them and myself.’
I had gulped. Gulped and explained. ‘Our foetus had Down’s syndrome. Eighty-five per cent of all parents who go through this experience opt for abortion.’
I had instantly regretted saying that. What had I been thinking? That Down’s syndrome would make my not wanting to have a child with my own wife more understandable?
‘There is a great probability that your wife would have lost the child anyway,’ Lotte had said. ‘Down’s syndrome often goes hand in hand with a heart condition.’
Heart condition, I had thought, and inwardly thanked her for being a team player, for making things simple for me once again. For us. An hour later we had taken off all our clothes and I was celebrating a victory that for a person more accustomed to conquests certainly would have appeared cheap but which put me on cloud nine for days. Weeks. To be more precise, three and a half. I had a lover, nothing less. Whom I left after twenty-four days.
As I looked at her now, in front of me in the hall, it seemed quite unreal.
Hamsun wrote that we humans are soon sated with love. We don’t want anything that is served up in excessively large portions. Are we really so banal? Apparently. But that wasn’t what happened to me. What happened was that I was assailed by a bad conscience. Not because I couldn’t return Lotte’s love but because I loved Diana. It had been an ineluctable realisation, but the final blow came in something of a bizarre episode. It was late summer, the twenty-fourth day of sin, and we had gone to bed in Lotte’s cramped two-room flat in Eilert Sundts gate. Before that we had been talking all evening – or, to be more precise, I had been talking. Describing and explaining life the way I see it. I’m good at that, in a Paulo Coelho kind of way, that is, a way which fascinates the intellectually amenable of us and irritates the more demanding listener. Lotte’s melancholic brown eyes had hung on my lips, swallowed every word, I could literally see her stepping into my world of homespun fantasy, her brain assimilating my reasoning into hers, her falling in love with my mind. As for myself, I had long fallen in love with her love, the loyal eyes, the silence and the low, almost inaudible, moaning during lovemaking that was so different from the whine of Diana’s circular saw. Falling in love had put me in a state of constant wantonness for three and a half weeks. So when I finally stopped the monologue, we just looked at each other, I bent forward, placed my hand on her breast, a shiver ran through her or perhaps me – and we made a charge for the bedroom door and the 101-centimetre-wide IKEA bed with the inviting name of Brekke, or break. This evening the moaning had been louder than usual, and she had whispered something Danish in my ear that I didn’t understand, since from an objective standpoint Danish is a difficult language – Danish children learn to speak later than any other children in Europe – but nonetheless I found it uncommonly erotic and increased the tempo. Usually, Lotte had been somewhat against these increases in tempo, but on this evening she had grabbed my buttocks and pulled me into her, which I interpreted as a wish for a further step-up both in thrust and frequency. I obeyed while concentrating on my father in the open coffin during the funeral, a method that had proved to be effective in preventing premature ejaculation. Or, in this case, any ejaculation at all. Even though Lotte said she was on the pill, the thought of pregnancy gave me palpitations. I didn’t know whether Lotte reached an orgasm when we made love; her quiet, controlled manner suggested to me that an orgasm would only manifest itself as tiny ripples on the surface, which I might simply fail to notice. And she was much too delicate a creature for me to expose her to any stress by asking. That was why I was totally unprepared for what happened. I sensed I had to stop but allowed myself a final hard poke. And sensed that I had hit something deep inside. Her body stiffened as her eyes and mouth were thrust open wide. This was followed by some trembling and for one tiny insane moment I was afraid I had induced an epileptic fit. Then I felt something hot, even hotter than her vagina, enveloping my genitals, and then a tidal wave washed against my stomach, hips and balls.
I levered myself up with my arms and stared in disbelief and horror at the point where our bodies were conjoined. Her lower abdomen was contracting as if she wanted to eject me, she gave a deep groan, a kind of lowing I had never heard before, and then came the next wave. The water poured out of her, spurted out between our hips and ran down into the mattress that still had not succeeded in absorbing the first wave. My God, I thought. I have poked a hole in her. Panicking, my brain searched for causal connections. She’s pregnant, I thought. And I have just poked a hole in that bag containing the foetus, and now all of the crap is soaking into the bed. My God, we’re swimming in life and death, it’s a water child, another water child! Well, I might have read about women’s so-called wet orgasms, OK, I may have seen it in the odd porn film too, but I had considered it a trick, a sham, a male fantasy about having a partner with equal ejaculation rights. All I could think as I lay there was that this was the retribution, the gods’ punishment for my persuading Diana to have an abortion: for my killing another innocent child with my reckless prick.
I struggled onto the floor, pulling the duvet off the bed with me. Lotte gave a start, but I didn’t notice her huddled-up naked body, I just stared at the dark circle still spreading outwards on the sheet. Slowly I realised what had happened. Or, even more important, what by a happy chance had not happened. But the damage was done, it was too late, there was no way back.
‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘This cannot go on.’
‘What are you doing?’ Lotte, barely audible, whispered from her foetal position.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘But I have to go home and beg Diana for forgiveness.’
‘You won’t get it though,’ Lotte whispered.
I didn’t hear a sound from the bedroom while rinsing the smell of her off my hands and mouth in the bathroom, and I left, closing the front door carefully behind me.
And now – three months later – I was standing in her hall again, and I knew that it was not Lotte but me who had puppy eyes this time.
‘Can you forgive me?’ I asked.
‘Couldn’t she?’ Lotte asked in a monotone. But perhaps it was just Danish intonation.
‘I never told her what happened.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s very likely that I have a heart condition.’
She sent me a long searching look. And I caught the suggestion of a smile at the back of those brown and much too melancholic eyes of hers.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Because I can’t forget you.’
‘Why are you here?’ she repeated with a firmness I had not heard before.
‘I just think we should-’
‘Why, Roger?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t owe her anything any more. She has a lover.’
A long silence ensued.
She jutted out her bottom lip a fraction. ‘Has she broken your heart?’
I nodded.
‘And now you want me to put it together for you again?’
I hadn’t heard this woman of few words express herself in such a light, effortless fashion before.
‘You can’t, Lotte.’
‘No, I suppose not. Do you know who her lover is?’
‘Just a guy who’s applied for a job with us he won’t get, let me put it like that. Can we talk about something else?’
‘Just talk?’
‘You decide.’
‘Yes, I will. Just talk. And that’s your department.’
‘Yep. I brought a bottle of wine.’
She gave an imperceptible nod of the head. Then she turned, and I followed.
I talked us through the wine and fell asleep on the sofa. When I awoke, I was lying with my head in her lap and she was stroking my hair.
‘Do you know what the first thing I noticed about you was?’ she asked when she spotted that I was awake again.
‘My hair,’ I said.
‘Have I told you before?’
‘No,’ I said, looking at my watch. Half past nine. It was time to go home. Well, the ruins of a home. I dreaded it.
‘May I come back?’ I asked.
I saw her hesitate.
‘I need you,’ I said.
I knew this argument didn’t carry much weight. It was borrowed from a woman who chose QPR because the club had made her feel wanted. But it was the only argument I had.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’
Diana was sitting in the living room reading a large book when I went in. Van Morrison was singing ‘… someone like you makes it all worth while’, and she didn’t hear me until I was standing in front of her and reading the title on the front cover out loud.
‘A Child is Born?’
She gave a start, but brightened up and hurriedly put the book back on the shelf behind her.
‘You’re late, darling. Have you been doing something nice or just working?’
‘Both,’ I said, walking over to the living-room window. The garage was bathed in white moonlight, but Ove wasn’t due to collect the painting for several hours. ‘I’ve been answering a few phone calls and thinking a bit about which candidate to nominate for Pathfinder.’
She clapped her hands with enthusiasm. ‘So exciting. It’s going to be the one I helped you with, that… oh, what’s his name again?’
‘Greve.’
‘Clas Greve! I’m becoming so forgetful. I hope he buys a really expensive painting from me when he finds out. I deserve that, don’t I?’
She gave a bright laugh, stretched out her slim legs which had been tucked beneath her and yawned. It was like a claw tightening round my heart and squeezing it like a water balloon, and I had to turn quickly back to the window so that she wouldn’t see the pain in my face. The woman I had believed devoid of all deception was not only successfully maintaining the mask, she was playing the role like a professional. I swallowed and waited until I was sure I had my voice under control.
‘Greve is not the right person,’ I said, scrutinising her reflection in the window. ‘I’m going to select someone else.’
Semi-professional. She didn’t tackle this one quite so well. I saw her chin drop.
‘You’re joking, darling. He’s perfect! You said so yourself…’
‘I was mistaken.’
‘Mistaken?’ To my great satisfaction I could hear a low screech in her voice. ‘What in the name of God do you mean?’
‘Greve is a foreigner. He’s under one eighty. And he suffers from serious personality disorders.’
‘Under one eighty! My God, Roger, you’re under one seventy. You’re the one with the personality disorder!’
That hurt. Not the bit about the personality disorders, she might have been right about that, of course. I strained to keep my voice calm.
‘Why the passion, Diana? I had hopes for Clas Greve too, but people disappointing us and not living up to expectations is something that goes on all the time.’
‘But… but you’re wrong. Can’t you see that? He’s a real man!’
I turned to her with an attempt at a condescending smile. ‘Listen, Diana, I’m one of the best at what I do. And that is judging and selecting people. I may make mistakes in my private life…’
I saw a tiny twitch in her face.
‘But never in my work. Never.’
She was silent.
‘I’m exhausted,’ I said. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night. Goodnight.’
Lying in bed, I heard her footsteps above. Restless, to and fro. I didn’t hear any voices, but I knew she tended to pace the floor when she was on the phone. It struck me that this was a feature of the generations that had grown up without cordless communication, that we moved about while talking on the telephone as though still fascinated that it was possible. I had read somewhere that modern man spends six times as many hours communicating as our forefathers. So we communicate more, but do we communicate any better? Why, for example, had I not confronted Diana with the fact that I knew she and Greve had made love in his apartment? Was it because I knew she would not be able to communicate why, that I would be left to my own assumptions and conjecture? She might have told me it was a chance meeting, for example, a one-off, but I would have known it was not. No woman tries to manipulate her husband into giving a well-paid job to a man because she has had casual sex with him.
There were other reasons for keeping my mouth shut, though. For as long as I pretended not to know about Diana and Greve, no one could accuse me of being too partial to assess his application, and instead of having to leave Alfa’s appointment to Ferdinand, I could enjoy my pathetic little revenge in peace and quiet. Then there was the matter of explaining to Diana how I had come to have suspicions. After all, revealing to Diana that I was a thief and regularly broke into other people’s homes was out of the question.
I tossed and turned in bed, listening to her stiletto heels banging down their monotonous, incomprehensible Morse signals to me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to dream. I wanted to escape. And wake up having forgotten everything. For that was of course the most important reason for not saying anything to her. As long as things remained unsaid, there was still a chance that we could forget. That we could sleep and dream in such a way that when we awoke it had disappeared, become something abstract, scenes from something that only took place in our heads, on the same level as those treacherous thoughts and fantasies that are the daily infidelity in every – even the most all-consuming – loving relationship.
It occurred to me that if she was talking on a mobile phone now, she must have bought a new one. And that the sight of the new one would be irrefutable, concrete, commonplace evidence that what had happened was not just a dream.
When at last she entered the bedroom and undressed, I pretended I was asleep. But in a pale strip of moonlight that crept in between the curtains, I managed to catch a glimpse of her switching off the phone before slipping it into her trouser pocket. And that it was the same one. A black Prada. So I might have been dreaming. I felt sleep catch hold of me and begin to drag me down. Or perhaps he had bought one just like it. The drift downwards came to a halt. Or perhaps she had found her phone and they had met again. I rose upwards, broke the surface and knew that I was not going to sleep tonight.
At midnight I was still awake and through the open window I thought I heard a faint noise from the garage which might have been Ove, come to collect the Rubens. Even though I tried, I did not hear him leaving. Perhaps I had gone to sleep after all. I dreamed about a world under the sea. Happy, smiling people, silent women and children with speech bubbles rumbling and rising out of their mouths. Nothing pointing towards the nightmare that was awaiting me at the other end of my sleep.
I GOT UP at eight o’clock and ate breakfast on my own. For someone sleeping the sleep of the guilty Diana slept extremely well. I had only had a couple of hours myself. At a quarter to nine I went down to the garage and unlocked it. From an open window nearby I recognised the tones of Turbonegro, not by the music, but by the English pronunciation. The light came on automatically and shone on my Volvo S80 waiting majestically but subserviently for its master. I grabbed the door handle and immediately recoiled. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat! After the first fright had passed I saw that it was Ove Kjikerud’s oar-blade face. Night work over the last few days had clearly taken its toll for he was sitting there with closed eyes and a half-open mouth. And he was obviously fast asleep because when I opened the door he still didn’t react.
I used the voice from the three-month sergeants’ course I had gone on, against my father’s wishes: ‘Good morning, Kjikerud!’
He didn’t stir an eyelid. I inhaled to blow a reveille when I noticed that the ceiling liner was open and the edge of the Rubens was sticking out. A sudden chill, as when a fluffy spring cloud sails past the sun, made me shudder. And instead of making more noise, I grabbed his shoulder and shook him lightly. Still no reaction.
I shook harder. His head frolicked to and fro on his shoulders, without any resistance.
I placed my first finger and thumb against where I thought the main artery ran, but it was impossible to determine whether the pulse I felt came from him or my wildly racing heart. But he was cold. Too cold, wasn’t he? With trembling fingers I opened his eyelids. And that settled the matter. Involuntarily, I backed away when I saw the lifeless black pupils staring at me.
I have always thought of myself as the kind of person who can think clearly in critical situations, someone who won’t panic. Of course, that could be because there have never really been any situations in my life that were critical enough for me to panic. Apart from the time when Diana became pregnant, of course, and on that occasion I hadn’t found it difficult to panic. So perhaps I was a panicky type after all. In any case, at this moment decidedly irrational thoughts entered my head. Like the car needing a wash. That Kjikerud’s shirt – with a Dior label sewn on – had presumably been bought on one of his holidays in Thailand. And that Turbonegro were actually what everyone thought they were not, that is, a decent band. But I knew what was happening, that I was about to lose my grip, and I clenched my eyes shut and blasted the thoughts out of my head. Then I opened my eyes again and had to concede that a tiny little bit of hope had managed to sneak in. But no, the realities were the same, the body of Ove Kjikerud was still sitting there.
The first conclusion I drew was simple: Ove Kjikerud had to go. If anyone found him here, all would be revealed. Resolutely, I pushed Kjikerud forward against the steering wheel, leaned over his back, grabbed him round the chest and dragged him out. He was heavy and his arms were pulled upwards as though he was trying to wriggle out of my grasp. I lifted him up again and took a new hold, but the same thing happened; his hands swung up in my face and a finger got caught in the corner of my mouth. I felt a bitten-down nail scrape against my tongue and in horror I spat, but the taste of bitter nicotine remained. I dropped him onto the garage floor and opened the car boot, but when I tried to pull him up, only his jacket and fake Dior shirt followed; he remained firmly on the cement floor. I cursed, grabbed the inside of his trouser belt with one hand, jerked him up and shoved him head first into the 480-litre boot. His head hit the floor with a soft thud. I slammed the boot lid and rubbed my hands together, the way one often does after a manual job well done.
Then I went back to the driver’s side. There were no traces of blood on the seat, which was covered with one of those wooden-ball mats, the type that taxi drivers use the whole world over. What the hell had caused Ove’s death? Heart failure? Brain haemorrhage? Overdose of some substance or other? I realised that an amateur diagnosis was wasted time now, got in and, strange to say, noted that the wooden balls had retained body heat. The mat was the only thing of value I had inherited from my father, who had used it because of piles, and I did too as a precaution against the affliction in case it was hereditary. A sudden pain in one buttock made me jerk forward and hit my knee against the wheel. I eased myself out of the car. The pain had already gone, but something had undoubtedly stung me. I bent over the seat and stared, but could not see anything unusual in the dim compartment lighting. Could it have been a wasp? Not this late in the autumn. Something flashed between the rows of wooden balls. I bent closer. A thin, almost invisible, metal point protruded. Sometimes the brain reasons too fast for comprehension to keep abreast. That is the only explanation I have for the vague premonition that made my heart race even before I had raised the mat and caught sight of the object.
Sure enough, it was the same size as a grape. And made of rubber, just as Greve had elucidated. Not completely round; the base was flat, apparently so that the tip of the needle always pointed straight up. I held the rubber ball against my ear and shook it, but could hear nothing. Fortunately for me the entire contents had been pressed into Ove Kjikerud when he sat down on the rubber ball. I rubbed my buttock and checked for any effects. I was a bit dizzy, but who wouldn’t have been after shifting the body of a colleague and being stabbed in the arse by a bloody Curacit needle, a murder weapon that had, in all likelihood, been meant for me? I could feel myself getting the giggles; now and then fear has that effect on me. I closed my eyes and breathed in. Deep. Concentrated. The laughter disappeared; anger took its place. It was fucking unbelievable. Or was it? Wasn’t it exactly what one should expect, that a violent psychopath like Clas Greve would get rid of any husband? I kicked the tyre hard. Once, twice. A grey mark appeared on the tip of my John Lobb shoe.
But how had Greve gained access to the car? How the hell had…?
The garage door opened and the answer walked in.
DIANA STARED AT me from the garage door. She had obviously got dressed in a hurry and her hair was sticking out in all directions. Her voice was a barely audible whisper.
‘What’s happened?’
I stared at her with the same question shooting through my brain. And felt my already broken heart being crumbled into even smaller bits from the answer I received.
Diana. My Diana. It couldn’t have been anyone else. She had put the poison under the seat mat. She and Greve had colluded.
‘I saw this needle sticking up from the seat as I was about to sit down,’ I said, holding out the rubber ball.
She approached me, the murder weapon carefully held in her hand. Tellingly careful.
‘You saw this needle?’ she said without managing to hide the scepticism in her voice.
‘I have sharp eyes,’ I said, although I don’t think she picked up on, or could be bothered with, the bitter double meaning.
‘Lucky you didn’t sit on it then,’ she said, examining the small object. ‘What is it actually?’
Yes, she certainly was a professional.
‘I don’t know,’ I said airily. ‘What did you want here?’
She looked at me, her mouth dropped open and for a second I was staring into a void.
‘I…’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘I was lying in bed and I heard you go down to the garage, but the car didn’t start up and drive off. Naturally enough, I wondered if something had happened. And in a sense I was right.’
‘Well, nothing really happened. It’s just a little needle, darling.’
‘Needles like that can be dangerous, my love!’
‘Can they?’
‘Didn’t you know? HIV, rabies, all sorts of viruses and infections.’
She came closer, I recognised the movements, the way her eyes softened, the lips pouted; she was going to hug me. But the embrace was interrupted, something had stopped her, something in my eyes perhaps.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, looking down at the rubber ball and putting it on the workbench I would never, ever use. Then she took one quick pace towards me, put her arms around me, stooped a little to reduce the height difference, laid her chin on the side of my neck and ran her left hand through my hair.
‘I’m a bit worried about you, you know, my love.’
It was like being embraced by a stranger. Everything was different with her now, even her smell. Or was it his? It was revolting. Her hand went back and forth in a slow massaging movement as if she were shampooing me, as if her enthusiasm for my hair was reaching new heights at precisely this moment. I felt like hitting her, hitting her with a flat hand. Flat so that I could feel the contact, the smack of skin on skin, feel the pain and the shock.
Instead I closed my eyes and let her do it, let her massage me, soften me, please me. I may be a very sick man.
‘I have to go to work,’ I said when she didn’t seem to want to stop. ‘I have to have the nomination tied up by twelve o’clock.’
But she wouldn’t let go, and in the end I had to release myself from her embrace. I saw a glint in the corner of her eye.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
But she wouldn’t answer, just shook her head.
‘Diana…’
‘Have a good day,’ she whispered with a little quiver to her voice. ‘I love you.’
Then she was out of the door.
I wanted to run after her, but stood still. Comforting your own murderer, where was the sense in that? Where was the sense in anything? So I got into the car, exhaled deeply and looked at myself in the rear-view mirror.
‘Survive, Roger,’ I whispered. ‘Pull yourself together and survive.’
Then I shoved the Rubens back under the lining, closed it up, started the car, heard the garage door go up behind me, reversed out and drove slowly round the bends down towards Oslo.
Ove’s car was parked by the pavement four hundred metres away. Good, it could stay there for weeks without anyone reacting, until the snow and the snow ploughs came. I was more concerned that in my car I had a corpse to dispose of. I considered the problem. Paradoxically enough, it was now that my precautions when dealing with Kjikerud would receive their full reward. Once I had dumped the body somewhere, no one would be able to establish a link between the two of us. But where?
The first solution that came to mind was the waste incineration plant at Grønmo. Before I did anything else I would have to find something to wrap the body in, then I could drive right up to the plant, open the boot and manoeuvre the body onto the ramp and from there down into the crackling sea of flames. There was a risk that other waste-disposers would be standing around me, not least staff, monitoring the incinerator. What about burning it myself in some far-flung spot? Apparently human bodies burn pretty badly. I had read that in India they reckon it takes ten hours to burn an average funeral pyre. What about driving back to the garage after Diana had left for the gallery and finally using the workbench and compass saw that my father-in-law without any apparent irony had given me as a Christmas present? Hack the body up into suitably sized chunks, wrap them in plastic together with a rock or two and then sink the packs in some of the hundreds of woodland lakes around Oslo?
I banged my fist against my forehead several times. What the hell was I thinking of? Hack the body up, why? First of all: hadn’t I seen enough episodes of CSI to know that that was asking to be found out? A drop of blood here, marks from the teeth of father-in-law’s saw there and I would be up shit creek. Secondly: why make any effort to hide the body? Why not just find a relatively deserted bridge and hoist Kjikerud’s earthly remains over the parapet? The body would perhaps float to the surface and be found, but so what? There was nothing that could link me to the murder, I didn’t know any Ove Kjikerud, and I couldn’t even spell the word ‘Curacit’.
The choice fell on Lake Maridal. It was only a ten-minute drive from town; no one would be around on a midweek morning. I rang Ida-Oda and said I would be late in today.
I drove for half an hour and had passed a few million cubic metres of forest and two hill billy settlements lying at such a shockingly short distance from Norway’s capital. But there, on a gravel byroad was the bridge I was after. I stopped the car and waited for five minutes. No people, cars or houses were in seeing or hearing range, just the odd chilling bird cry. A raven? Something black, anyway. As black as the mysterious still water only a metre beneath the low wooden bridge. Perfect.
I got out and opened the boot. Ove was lying as I had left him, face down, his arms by his sides and his hips at an angle with his backside sticking up. I took a last glance around to make sure I was alone. Then I acted. With speed and efficiency.
The splash as the body hit the water was surprisingly restrained, more like a squelch, as if the lake had decided to be my fellow conspirator in this dark deed. I leaned against the railing and stared down at the silent, closed lake. I considered what to do next. And while I was doing that Ove Kjikerud seemed to be rising up to meet me; a pale green face with wide eyes that wanted to surface, a ghost with mud in its mouth and seagrass in its hair. I was thinking that I needed a whisky to steady my nerves when the face broke the surface of the lake and continued to rise towards me.
I screamed. And the corpse screamed, a rattling noise that seemed to drain the air around me of oxygen.
Then it was gone again, swallowed up by the black lake.
I stared down into the dark. Had it happened? Of course it had bloody happened, the echo was still rolling round the treetops.
I swung myself over the railing. Held my breath, waited for my body to be enclosed by ice-cold water. A shock ran through me from my heels to my head. And I discovered that I was standing with the water just over my waist, and that there was something moving under one foot. I stuck my hand down in the muddy water, grabbed hold of what I at first thought was seagrass until I felt the scalp beneath and pulled. Ove Kjikerud’s face reappeared, he blinked water off his eyelashes, and again it was there, the deep rattle of a man who was drawing air for all he was worth.
It was too much. And for a moment I just wanted to let go of him and run away.
But I couldn’t do that, could I?
In any event I started to drag him towards the bank by the end of the bridge. Ove’s consciousness took another timeout and I had to fight to keep his head above water. Several times I almost lost my balance on the soft, slippery bed that shifted under my now ruined John Lobb shoes. But after a few minutes I had managed to haul both of us onto the bank and then into the car.
I rested my head against the wheel and breathed out.
The sodding bird cackled in derision as the wheels spun in the direction of the wooden bridge and we drove away.
As I have said, I had never been to Ove’s home, but I had his address. I opened the glove compartment, took out the black GPS and tapped in the street name and number, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car. The GPS calculated, reasoned and reduced the driving distance. Analytically and without any emotional involvement. Even the woman’s gentle, controlled voice guiding me sounded unaffected by the circumstances. I had to be like that now, I told myself. Act correctly, like a machine, don’t make stupid mistakes.
Half an hour later I was at the address. It was a quiet, narrow street. Kjikerud’s small, old place lay at the far end, with a green wall of dark spruce forest in the background. I came to a halt in front of the steps, cast an eye over the house and established yet again that hideous architecture is not a modern invention.
Ove sat in the seat beside me, as hideous as sin as well, ashen and so wet that his clothes gurgled while I was searching his pockets and finally found a set of keys.
I shook some life into him and he stared at me through bleary eyes.
‘Can you walk?’ I asked.
He eyed me as though I were an alien. His jaw jutted forward even further than normal and made him look like a cross between the stone figures on Easter Island and Bruce Springsteen.
I walked round the car, dragged him out and leaned him up against the wall. Unlocked the door with the first key I tried on the ring, thinking that my luck might finally be on the turn, and pulled him inside.
I was on my way into the house when I remembered. The alarm. I definitely did not want security men from Tripolis swarming around here now, nor live camera surveillance of me with a half-dead Ove Kjikerud.
‘What’s the password?’ I shouted into Ove’s ear.
He lurched and almost slipped out of my grasp.
‘Ove! password?’
‘Eh?’
‘I have to deactivate the alarm before it goes off.’
‘Natasha…’ he mumbled with closed eyes.
‘Ove! Pull yourself together!’
‘Natasha…’
‘The password!’ I slapped him hard, and instantly he opened his eyes wide.
‘That’s what I’m telling you, you bastard. NATASHA!’
I let go of him, heard him topple to the floor as I dashed to the front of the house. I found the alarm box hidden behind the door; I had gradually understood how Tripolis operatives like to set them up. A little red light was flashing, showing the countdown to the tripping of the alarm. I tapped in the name of the Russian whore. And realised as I was about to press the final ‘a’ that Ove was dyslexic. Christ knows how he spelt her name! But my fifteen seconds were soon up and it was too late to ask him. I pressed the ‘a’ and shut my eyes, braced myself. Waited. No sound came. I opened my eyes again. The red light had stopped flashing. I breathed out, refrained from thinking about the margin of seconds I had had.
When I turned round, Ove was gone. I followed the wet footprints into a sitting room. It obviously served as a room for relaxing, working, eating and sleeping. At any rate, there was a double bed under a window at one end, a wall-mounted plasma TV at the other and in between a coffee table on top of which was a cardboard box containing the remains of a pizza. Against the longer wall there was a vice bench with a sawn-off shotgun he was clearly modifying. Ove had crawled up into the bed where he now lay groaning. With pain, I assumed. I haven’t the foggiest idea what Curacit does to a human body, but I doubt anything good.
‘How are you?’ I asked, moving closer. I kicked something that rolled across the worn parquet floor, looked down and saw that the area around the bed was littered with empty cartridges.
‘I’m dying,’ he moaned. ‘What happened?’
‘You sat on a syringe loaded with Curacit when you got into the car.’
‘CURACIT?!’ He raised his head and glared at me. ‘You mean the poison Curacit? I’ve got fucking Curacit in my body?’
‘Yes, but obviously not enough.’
‘Not enough?’
‘To kill you. He must have messed up the dosage.’
‘He? Who?’
‘Clas Greve.’
Ove’s head slumped back on the pillow. ‘Shit! Don’t tell me you’ve fucked up! Have you given us away, Brown?’
‘Not at all,’ I said, pulling a chair to the foot of the bed. ‘The needle on the car seat was about… another matter.’
‘Apart from us screwing the guy? What the hell would that be?’
‘I’d rather not talk about it. But it was me he was after.’
Ove howled. ‘Curacit! I have to go to hospital, Brown. I’m dying! Why the hell did you bring me here? Phone for an ambulance!’ He nodded to something on the bedside table that I had at first taken to be just a plastic model of two naked women in the so-called 69 position, but now I realised it was also a telephone.
I swallowed. ‘You can’t go to hospital, Ove.’
‘Can’t? I have to! I’m dying, you idiot! Dying!’
‘Listen to me. When they discover you’ve got Curacit in you, they’ll ring the police tout de suite. Curacit is not a medicine you get on prescription. We’re talking about the most deadly poison in the world here, on a level with prussic acid and anthrax. You’ll end up being interrogated by Kripos.’
‘So what? I’ll keep my mouth shut.’
‘And how will you explain this, eh?’
‘I’ll find something.’
I shook my head. ‘You don’t have a chance, Ove. Not when they get going on Inbau, Reid and Buckley.’
‘Eh?’
‘You’ll break down. You’ve got to stay here, do you understand? You’re better already, anyway.’
‘What the fuck do you know about that, Brown? You’re a doctor, are you? No, you’re a bloody headhunter and my lungs are burning up right now. My spleen is ruptured and in an hour my kidneys will give up the ghost. I have to get to a fucking hospital NOW!’
He had half sat up in bed, but I jumped up and pushed him back down.
‘Listen, I’ll go and find some milk in the fridge. Milk neutralises poison. They wouldn’t be able to do anything different for you at the hospital.’
‘Apart from pouring milk down me?’
He tried to sit up again, but I shoved him back roughly, and suddenly the breath seemed to go out of him. His pupils slid up into his skull, his mouth hung half open and his head lay on the pillow. I bent over his face and confirmed that he was exhaling stinking tobacco breath over me. Then I went round the house looking for whatever might help him with the pain.
All I could find was ammunition. And lots of it. The medicine cupboard, adorned with the officially prescribed red cross, was full of boxes that according to the label contained cartridges with bullets of nine-millimetre calibre. In the kitchen drawers there were more ammo boxes, some marked ‘blanks’, what we on the sergeants’ course called red farts: bulletless shells. These must have been the ones Ove used to fire at the TV programmes he didn’t like. Sick man. I opened the fridge and there – on the same shelf as a carton of Tine semi-skimmed milk – was a shiny silver pistol. I took it out. The stock was freezing cold. The make – Glock 17 – was engraved in the steel. I weighed the weapon in my hand. There was clearly no safety catch, nonetheless there was a bullet in the chamber. In other words the gun could be grabbed and fired in one movement, for example if you were in the kitchen and received an unexpected, unwanted visitor. I peered up at the CCTV cameras on the ceiling. I realised that Ove Kjikerud was a lot more paranoid than I had imagined, that perhaps we were talking about a diagnosis here.
I took the pistol along with the carton of milk. If nothing else, I could use the weapon to keep him in check if he became unruly again.
I rounded the corner into the sitting room and found him perched up in bed. The faint had just been an act. In his hand he was holding a plastic woman, bent over and licking.
‘You have to send an ambulance,’ he said into the receiver loud and clear, staring at me with defiance in his eyes. He seemed to think he could allow himself that since in the other hand he was holding a weapon I recognised from films. I thought the hood, gang warfare, black-on-black crime. In short: an Uzi. A machine gun that is so small and handy, so ugly and deadly that it isn’t even funny. And it was pointing at me.
‘No!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t do it, Ove! They’ll just ring the pol-’
He fired.
It sounded like popcorn in a saucepan. I had time to think that, time to think that this was the music I would die to. I felt something against my stomach and looked down. Saw the jet of blood spurting from my side hit the milk carton I was holding in my hand. White blood? I realised it was the other way round, that the hole was in the milk carton. Automatically and with a kind of despair, I raised the gun, somewhat surprised that I still could, and fired. The sound kick-started my fury: at least the bang was more potent than the bloody Uzi’s. And the Israeli homo pistol also went quiet then. I lowered the gun, in time to see Ove staring at me with a frown on his forehead. And there, right above the frown, was a small, elegant, black hole. Then his head fell back and hit the pillow with a soft thud. My fury was gone. I blinked and blinked, it was like having a rolling TV image on my retina. Something told me that Ove Kjikerud was not going to make any more comebacks.
I DROVE ALONG the E6 with my foot jammed down on the accelerator, the rain hammering against the windscreen and the wipers desperately sweeping to and fro in Kjikerud’s Mercedes 280SE. It was a quarter past one, five hours since I had got up, and I had already managed to survive my wife’s attempt on my life unscathed, dump the body of my partner in a lake, rescue said body, then alive and kicking, just to see my alive and kicking partner try to shoot me. Whereupon, with a flukey shot, I had seen to it that he became a corpse once again and I a murderer. And I was only halfway to Elverum.
The driving rain was bouncing off the tarmac like milk being frothed, and automatically I hunched over the wheel so as not to miss the sign for the turn-off. For the place I was going to now did not have an address I could tap into the Pathfinder GPS.
The only thing I had done before leaving Kjikerud’s house was to put on some dry clothes I found in a wardrobe, grab his car keys and remove the cash and credit card from his wallet. I left him lying on the bed as he was. If the alarm went off, the bed was the only spot in the house that was not covered by a camera. I also took the Glock with me as it seemed sensible not to leave the murder weapon at the crime scene. And the bunch of keys with the key to his house and to our regular meeting place, the cabin outside Elverum. It was a place for contemplation, planning and visions. And it was a place where nobody would come looking for me, as no one knew that I knew that this place existed. Not only that, it was the only place I could go, unless I wanted to get Lotte involved in this business. And this business, what the hell was all this business actually? Well, at this very moment it involved being hunted down by a crazy Dutchman whose very profession it was to hunt people down. And before long there would be the police, too, provided they were just a little bit smarter than I supposed. If I were to have any chance, I would have to make it difficult for them. I would have to change my car, for example, as there is little that makes it easier to identify a person than a seven-figure registration number. After hearing the beep from the alarm, which was automatically activated when I let myself out of Ove’s house, I drove back towards my own. I was aware that Greve might be waiting for me there, so I parked in a side street some way off. I put my wet clothes in the boot, took the Rubens from inside the roof lining and put it in my portfolio, locked the car and walked off. Ove’s car was still where I had seen it earlier. I got in, placed the portfolio on the seat next to me and headed for Elverum.
There was the turn-off. It came out of nowhere, and I had to concentrate on braking without losing control. Poor visibility, aquaplaning, it was easy to drive a car into a hedge, and I didn’t need the cops or whiplash right now.
Then I was in the country. Wisps of mist hung over the farms and the undulating fields on either side of the road that gradually became narrower and narrower and more winding. I was caught in the spray from the tyres of a lorry advertising Sigdal Kitchens, and it was a relief when the next turn-off came and I had the road to myself. The holes in the tarmac became bigger and more frequent, and the farms smaller and fewer. A third turn-off. Gravel road. A fourth. Fucking wilderness. Rain-heavy, low-hanging branches scraped against the car like a blind man’s fingers identifying a stranger. Twenty minutes more driving at a snail’s pace and I was there. That was how long it had been since I’d last seen a house.
I pulled the hood on Ove’s sweater over my head and jogged into the rain, past the barn with the strangely tilting extension. According to Ove, this was because Sindre Aa, the grumpy recluse of a farmer who lived here, was such a cheapskate that he hadn’t laid any foundations for the annexe, which over the course of years had sunk into the clay, centimetre by centimetre. I had never spoken to the bloody farmer myself, Ove had taken care of that side of things, but I had seen him from a distance a couple of times and recognised the lean, bent figure standing on the steps of the farmhouse. God knows how he could have heard the car approaching in this rain. A fat cat was rubbing itself against his legs.
‘Hello!’ I shouted well before I arrived at the steps.
No answer.
‘Hello, Aa!’ I repeated. Still no answer.
I stopped by the foot of the steps and waited in the rain. The cat padded down the steps towards me. And there was me thinking cats hated rain. It had almond-shaped eyes, just like Diana, and pressed itself against me as though I were an old friend. Or maybe as though I were a total stranger. The farmer lowered his rifle. Ove had told me Aa used a telescopic sight on the old rifle to see who was dropping by since he was too stingy to buy himself proper binoculars. But for the same reason he had never indulged in ammunition either, so it was probably quite safe. I assumed the rifle routine also had the intended effect on the number of visitors. Aa spat over the railing.
‘When’s that Kjikerud comin’, Brown?’ His voice creaked like an unlubricated door and ‘Kjikerud’ was spat out as if it were a form of exorcism. How he had got hold of my name I had no idea, but it certainly wasn’t from Ove.
‘He’s coming later,’ I said. ‘Can I park my car in the barn?’
Aa spat again. ‘It ain’t cheap. And that ain’t your car, it’s Kjikerud’s. How’s he gettin’ here?’
I took a deep breath. ‘On skis. How much is it?’
‘Five hundred a day.’
‘Five… hundred?’
He grinned. ‘You can leave it on the road for nothin’.’
I pulled out three of Ove’s two-hundred notes, went up the steps to where Aa was waiting with a bony outstretched hand. He stuffed the money into a bulging wallet and spat again.
‘You can give me the change later,’ I said.
He didn’t answer, just slammed the door hard behind him as he went in.
I reversed into the barn, and in the dark I almost skewered the car on the line of sharp steel prongs on a silage loader. Fortunately, the loader, which was attached to the back of Sindre Aa’s blue Massey Ferguson tractor, was in the raised position. So instead of piercing the rear fender or puncturing the tyres, the lower edge scraped the boot lid and warned me just in time to avoid getting ten steel prongs through the rear window.
I parked beside the tractor, took the portfolio and ran across to the cabin. Luckily, the spruce forest was so dense that not much rain seeped through, and after letting myself into the simple log cabin, my hair was still surprisingly dry. I was going to light the fire but rejected the idea. Having taken the precaution of hiding the car, I didn’t think it was a good idea to send up smoke signals to say the cabin was occupied.
It was only now that I noticed how hungry I was.
I hung Ove’s denim jacket over a chair in the kitchen, went through the cupboards and at length found a solitary can of stew from the last time Ove and I had been here. There was neither cutlery nor a can-opener in the drawers, but I managed to bang a hole in the metal lid with the barrel of the Glock. I sat down and used my fingers to shovel down the greasy, salty contents.
Then I stared out of the window at the rain falling on the forest and the tiny yard between the cabin and the outside toilet. I went into the bedroom, put the Rubens portfolio under the mattress and lay down on the lower bunk to think. I didn’t get to do much thinking. It must have been all the adrenalin I had produced that day because all of a sudden I opened my eyes and realised I had been asleep. I checked my watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I fished out my mobile and saw there were eight missed calls. Four from Diana who probably wanted to play the concerned wife and, with Greve listening over her shoulder, would ask where on earth I was. Three from Ferdinand who was probably waiting to hear about the nomination or at least instructions on what they should do now with the Pathfinder job. And one I didn’t recognise immediately because I had deleted her from my address book. But not from my memory or heart. And while examining the number, it struck me that I – a person who in the course of his more than thirty years on this planet had assembled enough student friends, ex-girlfriends, colleagues and business connections for a network that filled two megabytes in Outlook – had one single acquaintance I could trust. A woman I had known, strictly speaking, for only three weeks. Well, shagged for three weeks. A brown-eyed Dane who dressed like a scarecrow, answered in monosyllables and had a name consisting of five letters. I don’t know which of us this was more tragic for.
I rang directory enquiries and asked for a number abroad. Most switchboards close down at four in Norway, most likely because the majority of the receptionists have gone home, to a sick partner according to statistics, in the country with the shortest working hours in the world, the biggest health budget and the highest proportion of sick leave. The HOTE switchboard answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I didn’t have a name or a department, but took a risk.
‘Can you put me through to the new guy, please?’
‘New guy, sir?’
‘You know, head of technical division.’
‘Felsenbrink is hardly new, sir.’
‘To me he is. So, is Felsenbrink in?’
Four seconds later I was talking to a Dutchman who was not only at work but sounded both fresh and polite despite it being one minute after four.
‘I’m Roger Brown from Alfa Recruiting.’ True. ‘Mr Clas Greve has given us your name as a reference.’ False.
‘Right,’ said the man, not sounding in the least bit surprised. ‘Clas Greve is the best manager I’ve ever worked with.’
‘So you…’ I started.
‘Yes, sir, my most sincere recommendations. He’s the perfect man for Pathfinder. Or any other company for that matter.’
I hesitated. Then changed my mind. ‘Thank you, Mr Fenselbrink.’
‘Felsenbrink. Any time.’
I put the phone in my trouser pocket. I didn’t know why, but something told me that I had just committed a blunder.
Outside, the rain was relentless and for lack of anything better to do, I took out the Rubens painting and studied it in the light from the kitchen window. The furious face of the hunter, Meleager, as he speared the beast. And discovered who he had reminded me of when I first saw the picture: Clas Greve. A thought struck me. A coincidence, of course, but Diana had once told me that the name Diana was the Roman name of the goddess of hunters and childbirth, known as Artemis in Greek. And it was Artemis who had sent out Meleager, wasn’t it? I yawned and made up my own role in the painting until I realised I had been mixing things up. It was the other way round; Artemis had sent out the beast. I rubbed my eyes; I was still tired.
At that moment I noticed that something had happened, there was a change, but I had been so absorbed by the painting that it had slipped my attention. I looked out of the window. It was the sound. It had stopped raining.
I put the picture back in the portfolio and decided to find a hiding place. I had to leave the cabin to do some shopping and a few other things, and I definitely didn’t trust that snake in the grass, Sindre Aa.
I looked around and my gaze was drawn to outside the window, to the toilet. The ceiling consisted of loose boards. Walking across the yard, I could feel I should have put on a jacket.
The toilet was a shed with just the basic requirements: four walls with cracks between the upright boards to give natural ventilation, and a wooden box in which had been sawn a circular hole, covered with a square, roughly hewn lid. I removed three toilet roll tubes and a magazine featuring a photo of Rune Rudberg with pinhole pupils from the lid and clambered up onto it. Stretched up to the boards lying loose across the beams, wishing for the nine millionth time that I was a few centimetres taller. But in the end I managed to loosen a board, shove the portfolio up under the roof and replace the board. And while standing there, straddling the toilet, I froze as I stared out through a gap between the planks.
It was deafeningly quiet outside now, just occasional drips from weighed-down branches. Nevertheless, I hadn’t heard a sound, not a single twig breaking, not a squelchy footstep on the muddy path. Or as much as a whimper from the dog standing by his master at the edge of the forest. Had I been sitting in the cabin, I would not have seen them; from the window they would have been in a blind spot. The dog looked like a collection of muscles, jaws and teeth packed into the bodywork of a boxer, just smaller and more compact. Let me repeat: I hate dogs. Clas Greve was wearing a camouflage-patterned cape and a green army hat. He didn’t have a weapon in his hands; what he had under his cape I could only guess at. It struck me that this was the perfect place for Greve. Deserted, no witnesses, hiding a body would be child’s play.
Master and mastiff set off as one, as though obeying an inaudible command.
My heart pounded with terror, yet I could not help but stare with fascination at how fast and how completely soundless their progress from the edge of the wood was, up to and alongside the cabin wall and then – without any hesitation – in through the door, which they left wide open.
I knew I had only a few seconds before Greve discovered that the cabin was empty, before he found the jacket over the back of the chair telling him I was close by. And… shit!… saw the Glock, which was lying on the worktop beside the empty can of stew. My brain was working overtime and could only reach this one conclusion – that I had nothing: no weapon, no means of retreat, no plan, no time. If I ran for it, it would be ten seconds tops before I had twenty kilos of Niether terrier at my heels and nine millimetres of lead in my skull. In short, things were going down the pan. Then my brain suggested panicking. But instead it did something I would never have believed. It simply stopped and took a step back. Back to ‘going down the pan’.
An idea. A desperate and revolting idea in all ways. But nonetheless an idea which had one big thing going for it: it was the only one I had.
I grabbed one of the toilet roll tubes and put it in my mouth. Felt how tightly I could close my mouth around it. Then I lifted the toilet seat. The stench rose up to meet me. It was one and a half metres down to the tank with a viscous mixture of excrement, urine, toilet paper and rainwater running down the insides of the walls. It took at least two men to carry the tank to the pit in the forest and was a nightmare of a job. Literally. Ove and I had only been up to doing it once, and the three following nights I had dreamed about shit slopping around. And Aa had obviously shunned it too: the one-and-a-half-metre-deep tank was full to the brim. Which, as it happened, suited me fine. Not even a Niether terrier would be able to smell anything but muck.
I balanced the toilet lid on the top of my head, put my hands on either side of the hole and gingerly lowered myself.
It was an unreal feeling to sink into crap, to feel the light pressure of men’s shit against my body as I drilled my way down. The toilet seat stayed put as my head passed the edge of the hole. My sense of smell had perhaps already become overburdened, it had definitely gone on holiday, and I just registered an increased activity in my tear ducts. The top, the most fluid layer in the tank, was freezing cold, but lower down it was in fact quite warm, maybe because of the various chemical processes going on. Hadn’t I read something about methane gases developing in cesspits of this kind? And that you could die if you inhaled too much? Now I had firm ground under my feet and crouched. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and my nose was running. I leaned back, made sure that the tube was pointing straight upwards, closed my eyes and tried to relax so that I could control my retching reflexes. Then I carefully hunkered down. My ears were full of shit and silence. I forced myself to breathe through the cardboard tube. It worked. No need to go any deeper now. Of course it would have been a really symbolic way to die with my mouth and ears filled, drowning in Ove’s and my own faeces, but I felt no desire to die an ironic death. I wanted to live.
I seemed to hear the door opening from a long way away.
Here we go.
I felt the vibrations of heavy footsteps. Stamping. And then it went quiet. The padding of feet. The dog. The toilet lid was opened. I knew that right now Greve was staring down at me. Inside me. He was looking down the opening of a toilet roll tube that led directly to my innards. I breathed as quietly as I could. The cardboard of the tube had gone wet and soft; I knew it would soon wrinkle, leak and crumple.
I heard a bump. What was that?
The next sound was unmistakable. A sudden explosion that progressed into a hissing, lamenting bowel tone and eventually faded. It was rounded off with a groan of well-being.
Oh hell, I thought.
And sure enough. A few seconds later I heard the splash and felt a new weight on my upturned face. For a moment death appeared to be an acceptable alternative, but not for long. Actually it was a paradox: I had never had less to live for and yet I had never wished for life more.
A longer groan now, he was obviously applying pressure. He mustn’t land in the opening of the tube! I felt panic mounting, I didn’t seem to be getting enough air through the toilet roll. Another splash.
I was dizzy and my thigh muscles were already aching from maintaining a crouched position. I straightened up a tiny bit. My face broke the surface. I blinked and blinked. I was staring at Clas Greve’s hairy white backside. And against his skin was the outline of a substantial, well, more than substantial, indeed an impressive dick. And since not even fear of death can expel penis envy in a man, I thought of Diana. And there and then I knew that if Greve didn’t kill me first, I would kill him. Greve raised himself, light seeped in through the hole and I saw that there was something wrong, something was missing. I closed my eyes and dragged myself under again. The dizziness was almost overpowering. Was I dying of methane poisoning?
It was quiet for some time. Was it all over? I was in mid-inhalation when I realised that all of a sudden there was nothing there, that I was sucking at nothing. The air supply was blocked. Primary instincts took over and I was beginning to suffocate. I had to get up! My face broke the surface as I heard a thud. I blinked and blinked. Above, all was dark. Then I heard heavy footsteps, the door opening, padding feet and the door closing. I spat out the toilet roll tube and saw what had happened. There was something white lying across the opening: the toilet paper Greve had wiped himself with.
I hauled myself up out of the tank and peered through the gaps between the boards in time to see Greve sending the dog into the forest while he went back into the cabin. The dog was heading towards the top of the mountain. I watched until it was swallowed up by the forest. And at that moment – perhaps because for a minute I allowed relief, the hope of salvation to flicker into life – an involuntary sob escaped my throat. No, I thought. Don’t hope. Don’t feel. No emotional involvement. Analytical. Come on, Brown. Think. Prime numbers. Overview of the chessboard. OK. How did Greve find me? How the hell could he know? Diana had never even heard of this place. Who had he been talking to? No answer. Right. What were my options? I had to get away, and I had two advantages: night was beginning to fall, and, covered from top to toe in shit, my smell was camouflaged. But I had a headache and the dizziness was getting worse, and I couldn’t wait until it was pitch black.
I slid down the outside of the tank and my feet landed on the slope at the back of the outhouse. I squatted down and assessed the distance to the forest. From there I could make it to the barn and effect my escape by car. I had the car keys in my pocket, didn’t I? I rummaged. In my left-hand pocket I had a few banknotes, Ove’s credit card and my own and Ove’s house keys. Right hand. I heaved a sigh of relief as my fingers met the car keys under the mobile phone.
The mobile phone.
Of course.
Mobile phones are located by base stations. To an area, it is true, not a specific place, but if one of Telenor’s base stations had registered my phone out here, there wouldn’t have been many options; Sindre Aa’s house is the only one within the radius of a kilometre. Naturally that would mean Greve had a contact in Telenor’s operations department, but nothing surprised me any more. It had begun to dawn on me what had happened. And Felsenbrink, who had sounded as if he had been waiting for a call from me, had confirmed my suspicions. This was not about a love triangle with me, my wife and a randy Dutchman. If I was right, I was in more trouble than I could ever have imagined.
I CAUTIOUSLY POKED my head around the side of the outhouse and looked towards the cabin. The windowpanes were black and gave nothing away. So he hadn’t switched on the light. OK. I couldn’t stay here. I waited until a breath of wind rustled through the trees, then I ran. Seven seconds later I had reached the edge of the forest and was hidden behind the trees. But the seven seconds had almost knocked me out, my lungs ached, my head throbbed, and I was as dizzy as the first and only time my father had taken me to an amusement park. It was my ninth birthday, this was the present, and Dad and I had been the only visitors apart from three half-drunk teenagers sharing a Coke bottle with clear liquid in it. In his furious, broken Norwegian Dad had haggled down the price of the sole attraction that was open: a hellish machine, the point of which apparently was to sling you round and round until you spewed up candyfloss and your parents consoled you by buying popcorn and fizzy drinks. I had refused to risk my life on the rickety machinery, but my father had insisted and fastened the belts that were supposed to protect me. And now, a quarter of a century later, I was back at the same filthy, surrealist amusement park where everything stank of urine and rubbish and I was frightened and gagging the whole time.
A stream gurgled beside me. I pulled out my mobile phone and dropped it in. Trace me now, you bloody urban Red Indian. Then, on the soft forest floor, I jogged in the direction of the farm. Night had fallen between the pine trees, but there was no other vegetation, so it was easy to find the way. After no more than a couple of minutes I saw the outside light on the farmhouse. I ran down a bit further, so that the barn was between me and the farmhouse before I left the forest. There was every reason to believe that Aa would demand an explanation if he saw me in this state, and a call to the local police station would be the next step.
I crept towards the barn door and slipped the bolt. Pushed the door open and entered. My head. My lungs. I blinked in the darkness, could hardly make out the car and the tractor. What was it actually that methane gas did to you? Did you go blind? Methane. Methanol. There was a connection somewhere.
Behind me, panting and the soft, barely perceptible sound of paws. Then the sound was gone. I already knew what it was but didn’t have time to turn. It had jumped. Everything was quiet, even my heart had stopped beating. The next moment I fell forward. I don’t know whether a Niether terrier would be able to jump up and sink its teeth into the neck of an average-sized basketball player, but I am not – I may have mentioned this before – exactly a basketball player. So I was knocked forward as the pain exploded in my brain. Claws lacerated my back and I heard the noise of flesh giving way with a groan, bones crunching. My bones. I tried to grab the animal, but my limbs wouldn’t obey, it was as if the jaws locked round my neck had blocked all the communication from my brain. Commands were simply not getting through. I lay on my stomach unable even to spit out the sawdust filling my mouth. Pressure on the main artery. My brain was being drained of oxygen. My field of vision was narrowing. Soon I would lose consciousness. So this is how I was to die, between the jaws of a fat, ugly lump of a dog. It was depressing, to put it mildly. Yes, it was enough to make you see red. My head began to burn, an ice-cold heat filled my body, seeped through to the tips of my fingers. A joyful curse and a sudden quiver of life-giving strength that presaged death.
I stood up with the dog dangling from my neck and down my back like a living fur stole. Staggering around, I swung my arms, but was still unable to get a hold of it. I knew this outburst of energy was my body’s last desperate chance and that soon I would be out for the count. My field of vision had now shrunk to the beginning of a James Bond film, when they play the intro – or, in my case, the outro – and everything is black except for a little round hole in which you see a guy in a dinner jacket aiming at you with a pistol. And through the hole I could see a blue Massey Ferguson tractor. And a last thought reached my brain: I hate dogs.
Swaying, I turned my back to the tractor, let the weight of the dog tip me off the balls of my feet onto my heels, and I stepped back hard. I fell. The sharp steel prongs on the rear loader met us. And I knew from the sound of tearing dog fur that I would not be leaving this world on my own. My field of vision closed and the world went black.
I must have been out for some time.
I lay on the floor staring into the open mouth of a dog. Its body appeared to be hovering in mid-air, bent into what looked like a foetal position. Two steel prongs were sticking into its back. I got to my feet, the barn spun round and I had to take a couple of steps to the side to gain balance. I put a hand on my neck and felt a fresh stream of blood from where the dog’s teeth had punctured my skin. And realised I was bordering on madness because instead of getting in the car, I was just standing and staring in fascination. I had created a work of art. Speared Calydonian Dog. It was truly beautiful. Especially the mouth still open in death. Maybe the shock had locked its jaws or maybe this breed of dog died in this way. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed the furious yet gawping expression it wore, as though in addition to having lived a foreshortened dog life, it had had to endure this final insult, this humiliating death. I wanted to spit at it, but my mouth was too dry.
Instead I rooted around in my pocket for the car keys and tottered over to Ove’s Mercedes, unlocked it and turned the key in the ignition. No response. I tried again and pressed the accelerator. Dead as a dodo. I peered through the windscreen. Groaned. Then I got out and whipped up the bonnet. It was so dark now that I could barely make out the slashed leads that were sticking up. I had no idea what purpose they served, just that they were probably vital for the little miracle that makes cars go. Sod that bloody half-breed, Greve! I hoped he was still sitting in the cabin waiting for me to return. But he must have started to wonder what had happened to his animal. Take it easy, Brown. OK, the only way I could get away from here now was on Sindre Aa’s tractor. Too slow. Greve would soon be after me again. So I would have to find the car he came in – the silver-grey Lexus must be somewhere down the road – and put it out of action just as he had the Mercedes.
I walked at a brisk pace to the farmhouse, half expecting Aa to come out onto the steps – I could see the front door was ajar – but he didn’t. I knocked and then nudged the door open. In the porch I saw the rifle with the telescopic sights leaning against the wall beside a pair of filthy rubber boots.
‘Aa?’
Aa, pronounced ‘oh’, didn’t sound like a name, but as if I was asking him to continue the story he was telling. Which, in a way, was true. So I entered the house persistently repeating the idiotic monosyllable. I thought I caught a movement and turned. Any blood I had left froze to ice. A black monster on two legs had stopped at the same moment as me and was now staring back with enlarged white eyes shining out of all the black. I raised my right hand. It raised its left. I raised my left hand, it raised its right. It was a mirror. I let out a sigh of relief. The crap had dried and covered all of me: shoes, body, face, hair. I kept going. Pushed open the sitting-room door.
He was recumbent in a rocking chair wearing a grin on his face. The fat cat was lying in his lap and peered at me with its sluttish almond-shaped Diana-eyes. It rose and jumped down. Its paws landed softly on the floor and it slunk over to me with swaying hips before coming to an abrupt halt. Well, I didn’t smell of roses or lavender. But after a brief hesitation it continued to pad towards me with a deep, inviting purr. Adaptable animals, cats, they know when they need a new provider. The previous one was dead, you see.
Sindre Aa’s grin was caused by a blood-rimmed extension to his lips. A bluish-black tongue protruded from the slash in his cheek, and I could see the gums and teeth of his lower jaw. The grumpy farmer reminded me of a good, old-fashioned Pac-Man the way he was sitting, but the new ear-to-ear smile was unlikely to have been the cause of his death, since two corresponding blood-streaked lines formed an X across his throat. Strangulation from behind with a garrotte: thin nylon rope or steel wire. I wheezed through my nose as my brain produced a swift spontaneous reconstruction: Greve had driven past the farm, seen my car tracks turn off into the muddy yard. He may have driven on, parked some distance away, returned, peeped into the barn and confirmed that my car was there. Sindre Aa must have been standing on the steps by this time. Suspicious and cunning. He had spat and given an evasive answer to Greve’s enquiry concerning me. Had Greve offered him money? Had they gone into the house? In any case, Aa must still have been on his guard because when Greve placed the garrotte over his head from behind Aa had managed to lower his chin so that it had not gone round his neck. They had struggled, the wire had slipped into his mouth and Greve had pulled, slicing Aa’s cheeks. But Greve was strong, and in the end he had tightened the death-bringing wire round the neck of the desperate old codger. A silent witness, a silent murder. But why had Greve not taken the simple course of action and used a gun? After all, it was several kilometres to the nearest neighbour. Perhaps to avoid giving himself away? The obvious answer hit home: he hadn’t brought a firearm with him. I cursed under my breath. For now he had one. I had served him up a new murder weapon by leaving the Glock on the work surface in the cabin. How stupid can you be!
My attention was caught by a dripping sound and the cat which had positioned itself between my legs. Its pink tongue shot in and out as it lapped up the blood falling from the edge of my shirttail and onto the floor. A stupefying tiredness had begun to creep up on me. I took three deep breaths. Had to concentrate. Keep thinking, acting, it was the only thing I could do to hold the numbing fear at arm’s length. First of all, I had to find the tractor keys. I wandered aimlessly from room to room pulling out drawers. In the bedroom I found one solitary empty cartridge box. In the hall I found a scarf which I knotted around my neck, and at least that staunched the flow of blood. But no tractor keys. I glanced at my watch. Greve really must have been wondering about the dog. In the end I went back into the sitting room, bent over Aa’s body and searched his pockets. There they were! They even had the words Massey Ferguson on the key ring. I was pressed for time, but I couldn’t afford to be sloppy now, had to do everything right. Which meant when they found Aa, this would be a crime scene and they would look for DNA evidence. I hurried into the kitchen, wet a towel and cleaned my blood off the floors of all the rooms I had entered. Wiped possible fingerprints off all the things I had touched. Standing in the porch, ready to go, I noticed the rifle. What if some luck had finally come my way, what if there was a cartridge in the chamber after all? I grabbed the rifle and went through what I thought were loading motions, tugged and pulled and heard the bolt click, the socket or whatever the hell it’s called, until at length I managed to open the chamber where a little red cloud of rust stood out in the dark. No cartridge. I heard a sound and looked up. The cat was standing on the threshold to the kitchen, staring at me with a mixture of grief and accusation: I couldn’t just leave her here, could I? Cursing, I kicked out at the faithless creature, which shrank back and scurried towards the sitting room. Then I rubbed down the rifle, put it back, went outside and slammed the door shut.
The tractor started with a roar. And continued to roar as I drove out of the barn. I wasn’t bothered about closing the door. Because I could hear what the tractor was roaring: ‘Clas Greve! Brown’s getting away! Hurry, hurry!’
I hit the accelerator. Drove the same way I had come. It was pitch black now, and the light from the tractor’s headlamps danced over the bumpy road. I looked in vain for the Lexus, it had to be parked here somewhere! No, now I wasn’t thinking clearly, he could have left it further up the road. I slapped my face. Blink, take a deep breath, you’re not tired, not knackered. That’s the way.
Pedal down hard. A persistent, continuous roar. Where to? Away.
The light from the headlamps narrowed, the darkness was closing in. Tunnel vision again. Consciousness would soon fail me. I breathed in as deeply as I could. Oxygen to the brain. Be frightened, be alert, stay alive!
The monotonous roar of the engine was now accompanied by a higher tone.
I knew what it was and gripped the wheel tighter.
Another engine.
The lights flashed in my mirror.
The car approached from behind at a sedate pace. And why not? We were alone here in the wilds. We had all the time in the world.
My only hope was to keep him behind me so that he couldn’t block the way. I positioned myself in the centre of the gravel road and sunk over the wheel so as to make myself the smallest possible target for the Glock. We came out of a bend where the road suddenly straightened and widened. And, as though well acquainted with the area, Greve had already accelerated and was alongside me. I swung the tractor to the right to force him into the ditch. But it was too late, he had slipped past, and I was on my way into the ditch. I lunged desperately at the wheel and skidded on the gravel. I was still on the road. But ahead of me a blue light flashed. Or two red ones at any rate. The brake lights on the car in front showed that he had stopped. I stopped, but sat with the engine idling. I didn’t want to die here, alone in a bloody field, like a dumb sheep. My only chance now was to get him out of the car and run him over, flatten him with the ginormous rear wheels, crush him like a ginger snap beneath the huge tread.
The car door on the driver’s side opened. I revved up with the tip of my toe to get a sense of how quickly the engine would respond. Not quickly. I went dizzy, and my eyes began to blur again, but I could see a figure get out and come towards me. I took aim while clinging ferociously onto consciousness. Tall, thin. Tall, thin? Greve wasn’t tall and thin.
‘Sindre?’
‘What?’ I said in English, although my father had drummed it into me that I should say ‘I beg your pardon’, ‘Sorry, sir’ or ‘How can I help you, madam?’ I half slumped into the seat. He had forbidden Mum to have me on her lap. Said it would make the child soft. Can you see me now, Dad? Did I become soft? Can I sit on your lap now, Dad?’
I heard a voice with wonderful Norwegian sing-song intonation hesitate in the darkness.
‘Are you from the, er… er, reception centre for asylum seekers?’
‘Reception centre for asylum seekers?’ I repeated.
He had come up alongside the tractor and, still clinging to the steering wheel, I gave him a sidelong glance.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘You looked like a… erm… Did you fall into the muck heap?’
‘I did have an accident, yes.’
‘I can see that. I stopped you because I can see that’s Sindre’s tractor. And because there’s a dog hanging from the tail end.’
So much for my concentration then. Ha ha. I had forgotten all about the sodding dog, do you hear that, Dad? Not enough blood to the brain. Too much…
I lost the sensation in my fingers, watched them slip off the wheel. Then I passed out.
I WOKE UP and was in heaven. Everything was white and an angel with gentle eyes was looking down on me where I lay in the cloud, asking me if I knew where I was. I nodded and she said someone wanted to talk to me, but there was no hurry, he could wait. Yes, I thought, he can wait. For when he hears what I have done, he will throw me out on the spot, out of all this soft, lovely whiteness, and I will fall and fall until I am down where I belong, in the blacksmith’s workshop, in the smelting room, in the eternal acid bath for my sins.
I closed my eyes and whispered that I would prefer not to be disturbed just yet.
The angel nodded sympathetically, tucked the cloud in tighter around me and disappeared to the clatter of wooden clogs. The sound of voices in the corridor reached my ears before the door closed behind her.
I touched the bandaged wound around my throat. A few fragmented moments appeared in my memory. The tall, thin man’s face above me, the back seat of a car driving at great speed down winding roads, two men in white nurses’ uniforms helping me up onto a stretcher. The shower. I had been on my back having a shower! Lovely hot water, then I had drifted off again.
I felt like doing the same now, but my brain informed me that this luxury was very provisional, that the sands of time were still running, that the earth was still turning, that the course of events was inevitable. That they had just decided to wait for a while, hold their breath for a moment.
To think.
Yes, it hurt to think, it was easier to desist, to be resigned, not to rebel against the gravity of fate. It’s just that the stupid, trivial course of things is so irritating that you simply lose your temper.
So you think.
There was no way it could be Greve waiting outside, but it might be the police. I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock in the morning. If the police had already found Sindre Aa’s body and suspected me, it was unlikely they would send one man who would then, in addition, wait outside politely. It might be an officer who simply wanted to ask what had happened, perhaps it was because I had left the tractor in the middle of the road, perhaps… Perhaps I hoped it was the police. Perhaps I had had enough, perhaps all I could do now was save my skin, perhaps I should tell them everything as it was. I lay examining my feelings. And felt the laughter bubbling up inside me. Yes, an EXPLOSION!
At that moment the door opened, the sounds of the corridor reached me and a man in a white coat strode in. He was peering at something on a clipboard.
‘Dog bite?’ he asked, raising his head and smiling at me.
I recognised him instantly. The door slammed behind him, and we were alone.
‘Sorry I couldn’t wait any longer,’ he whispered.
The white doctor’s coat suited Clas Greve. God knows where he had got hold of it. God knows how he had found me; as far as I knew my mobile phone was at the bottom of a stream. But both God and I knew what was awaiting me. And as if to confirm my apprehensions Greve stuffed his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a pistol. My pistol. Or to be more accurate: Ove’s pistol. Or to be painfully accurate: a Glock 17 with nine-millimetre lead bullets which fragmented on impact with human tissue, splintering up in such a way that the collective mass of lead takes with it a disproportionately large mass of flesh, muscle, bone and cerebral matter which – after passing through your body – it plasters over the wall behind you like something not dissimilar to Barnaby Furnas’s paintings. The muzzle of the pistol was pointed at me. It is often alleged that your mouth goes dry in situations such as these. It does.
‘Hope it’s alright if I use your pistol, Roger,’ said Greve. ‘I didn’t bring mine with me to Norway. There’s so much hassle with planes and weapons nowadays. Anyway, I could hardly have anticipated -’ he opened his arms – ‘this. In addition, it’s pretty good that the bullet can’t be traced back to me, isn’t it, Roger?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Isn’t it?’ he repeated.
‘Why…?’ I started with a voice that was as hoarse as a desert wind.
Clas Greve waited with a genuinely interested facial expression for me to go on.
‘Why are you doing all this?’ I whispered. ‘Just because of a woman you have only known five minutes?’
He furrowed his brow. ‘Are you referring to Diana? Did you know that she and I-’
‘Yes,’ I interrupted to be spared the continuation.
He chuckled. ‘Are you an idiot, Roger? Do you really think this is about her and me and you?’
I didn’t answer. That was what I had thought. That it wasn’t about trivial matters like life, emotions and people one loved.
‘Diana was only a means to an end, Roger. I had to use her to get close to you. Since you didn’t take the first bait.’
‘Get close to me?’
‘You, yes. We’ve been planning this for more than four months, ever since we knew that Pathfinder was going to look for a new CEO.’
‘We?’
‘Guess who.’
‘HOTE?’
‘And our new American owners. We were – to be quite frank – a bit on our uppers, economically speaking, when they came to us this spring. So we had to accept a couple of conditions for what perhaps looked like a buyout, but in reality was a rescue operation. One of the conditions was that we would deliver Pathfinder to them as well.’
‘Deliver Pathfinder? How?’
‘You know what I know, Roger. That even though, on paper, it is the shareholders and board of directors who make the decisions in a company, in practice it is the CEO who is in charge. Who in the final analysis determines whether and to whom the company is to be sold. I led HOTE by consciously feeding the board with so little information and so much uncertainty that they would choose to trust me at all times. Which, by the way, was to their benefit, regardless of what happened. The point is that every relatively competent leader with the confidence of the board will be able to manipulate and persuade a gang of semi-informed shareholders to do exactly what he wants.’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘Am I? To my knowledge, you make your living from doing just that, talking round these so-called directors.’
Of course, he was right. And it confirmed the suspicion I had had after herr Felsenbrink in HOTE had recommended Greve so unreservedly for the post of CEO to HOTE’s greatest rival.
‘So HOTE wants to…’ I started.
‘Yes, HOTE wants to take over Pathfinder.’
‘Because the Americans have made it a proviso for getting you out of a fix?’
‘The money we HOTE shareholders have received in our accounts is frozen until the buyout conditions have been fulfilled. Although nothing of what we are discussing now appears anywhere in print of course.’
I nodded slowly. ‘So all that stuff about your resigning in protest against the new owners was just a masquerade to make you appear a credible candidate to take over the helm at Pathfinder?’
‘Right.’
‘And when you’ve got the job as CEO at Pathfinder your task is to force the company into American hands?’
‘Not sure force is the right word. When Pathfinder finds out in a few months’ time that their technology is no longer a secret to HOTE, they will see for themselves that they have no chance on their own and that cooperation is the best way forward.’
‘Because you will have secretly leaked this technology to HOTE?’
Greve’s smile was thin and as white as a tapeworm. ‘It is, as I said, the perfect marriage.’
‘The perfect forced marriage, you mean?’
‘If you like. But with the combined technologies of HOTE and Pathfinder we will capture all the defence contracts for GPS in the western hemisphere. And a couple in the eastern into the bargain… It’s worth a bit of manipulation, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘And so you had it planned that I would get you the job?’
‘I’d have been a strong candidate anyway, don’t you think?’ Greve had taken up a position at the foot of the bed with the pistol at hip height and his back to the door. ‘But we wanted to be absolutely sure. We soon found out which recruitment agencies they had contacted and did a bit of research. It turns out that you have something of a reputation, Roger Brown. If you recommend a candidate, that’s it, people say. You certainly hold some kind of record. So, naturally enough, we wanted to go via you.’
‘I’m honoured. But why didn’t you just contact Pathfinder directly and say you were interested?’
‘Come on, Roger! I’m the ex-CEO of the big bad buyout wolf. Have you forgotten? It would’ve caused all the alarm bells to ring if I’d gone to them. I had to be “found”. For example, by a headhunter. And then persuaded. It was the only way that would seem credible for me to get into Pathfinder without malicious intentions.’
‘I see. But why use Diana? Why not contact me direct?’
‘Now you’re playing dumb, Roger. You would’ve had the same suspicions if I’d put myself forward. You wouldn’t have touched me with a bargepole.’
He was right that I was playing dumb. And it was right as well that he was dumb. Dumb and so proud of his brilliant, greedy plans that he couldn’t resist the temptation to stand there boasting about them until someone came in through the damned door. Somebody had to come soon, I was sick for Christ’s sake!
‘You ascribe much too noble motives to me and my work, Clas,’ I said, thinking that you don’t execute people you’re on first-name terms with, do you? ‘I choose candidates I think will be appointed to the job, and they’re not necessarily the ones I think are best for the company.’
‘Really?’ said Greve with a frown. ‘Even a headhunter like you is not so amoral, is he?’
‘You don’t know much about headhunters, I guess. You should’ve kept Diana out of this.’
That seemed to amuse Greve. ‘Should I?’
‘How did you hook her?’
‘Would you really like to know, Roger?’ He had raised the pistol a touch. One metre. Between the eyes?
‘I’m dying to know, Clas.’
‘As you wish.’ He lowered the pistol a fraction again. ‘I dropped by her gallery a few times. Bought a number of works. At her recommendation, as time went on. Invited her out for coffee. We talked about all manner of things, about deeply personal things, the way that only strangers can. About marital problems…’
‘You talked about our marriage?’ It slipped out.
‘Yes, indeed. After all, I’m divorced, so I am full of sympathy. I can understand, for example, how a beautiful, fully mature and fertile woman like Diana may not be able to accept her husband’s unwillingness to give her a child. Or his persuading her to have an abortion because the baby has Down’s syndrome.’ Greve had a grin that was as broad as Aa’s was in the rocking chair. ‘Especially since I simply adore children myself.’
Blood and reason deserted my head, leaving behind one single thought: that I would kill the man standing before me. ‘You… you told her you wanted a child?’
‘No,’ Greve said quietly. ‘I said I wanted a child with her.’
I had to concentrate to control my voice: ‘Diana would never leave me for a charlatan like-’
‘I took her to the apartment and showed her my so-called Rubens painting.’
I was confused. ‘So-called…?’
‘Yes, the painting is not genuine, of course, just a very good copy painted in Rubens’s time. In fact, the Germans thought for a long time that it was genuine. My grandmother showed it to me when I was young and living there. Sorry for lying to you about its authenticity.’
The news should perhaps have had an effect on me, but I was already so emotionally drained that I just took it in, realising at the same time that Greve had not discovered that the painting had been switched.
‘Nevertheless the copy had its uses,’ Greve said. ‘When Diana saw what she thought was a genuine Rubens, she must have concluded there and then that I would not only give her a child but also provide for it and her in a more than adequate way. In a nutshell, give her the life she dreams about.’
‘And she…’
‘She, of course, agreed to ensure her future husband got the CEO post that would produce the respectability that ought to follow with money.’
‘You’re telling me… that evening in the gallery… it was a put-up job from beginning to end?’
‘Of course. Except for the fact that we didn’t achieve the end as easily as we had hoped. When Diana rang me to say that you had decided not to take me…’ He rolled his eyes in theatrical irony. ‘Can you imagine the shock, Roger? The disappointment? The anger? I simply could not understand why you didn’t like me. Why, Roger, why? What had I done to you?’
I gulped. He seemed so absurdly relaxed, as though he had all the time in the world to fire the bullet into my skull, heart or whichever part of my body he had designated.
‘You’re too small,’ I said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘So you got Diana to plant the rubber ball containing Curacit in my car? She was supposed to kill me so that I wouldn’t be able to write my negative report?’
Greve frowned. ‘Curacit? It’s interesting that you’re convinced your wife would be willing to commit murder for a child and a pot of gold. And for all I know you may be right. But in fact I did not ask her to do that. The rubber ball contained a mixture of Ketalar and Dormicum, a fast-acting anaesthetic which is so strong that, to be sure, it is not without risk. The plan was that you would be knocked out when you got into your car in the morning and that Diana would drive the car, with you in it, to a preordained place.’
‘What sort of place?’
‘A cabin I had rented. Not unlike the one where I had hoped to find you last night, in fact. Albeit with a more likeable and less inquisitive owner.’
‘And once there I would be…’
‘Persuaded.’
‘How?’
‘You know. Coaxed a bit. Little threats if necessary.’
‘Torture?’
‘Torture has its entertaining sides, but firstly I hate to inflict physical pain on anyone. And secondly after a certain stage it is less effective than one might suppose. So, no, not torture as such. Just enough for you to have a taste, enough to evoke that uncontrollable fear of pain all of us carry inside. You see, it’s fear, not pain, that makes you malleable. For that reason the businesslike, professional interrogator does not depart from light associative torture…’ He grinned. ‘… at least according to the CIA’s manuals. Better than the FBI model you use, eh, Roger?’
I could feel sweat forming under the bandage around my throat. ‘And what was it you would’ve wanted to achieve?’
‘We would’ve wanted you to write and sign a report the way we liked. We would even have put a stamp on and posted it for you.’
‘And if I had refused? More torture?’
‘We’re not inhuman, Roger. If you had refused, we would’ve just kept you there. Until Alfa had given the job of writing a report to one of your colleagues. Presumably Ferdinand – isn’t that his name?’
‘Ferdy,’ I said fiercely.
‘Exactly. And he seemed very positive. And so did the chairman of the board and the public relations manager. Does that tally with your impression, Roger? Don’t you agree that basically the only thing that could have stopped me was a negative report, and only then from Roger Brown himself? As you will appreciate we wouldn’t have needed to hurt you.’
‘You’re lying,’ I said.
‘Am I?’
‘You had no intention of letting me live. Why would you let me go afterwards and risk being exposed?’
‘I could have made you a good offer. Eternal life for eternal silence.’
‘Rejected husbands are not rational business partners, Greve. And you know that.’
Greve stroked the gun barrel against his chin. ‘True enough. Yes, you’re right. We would probably have killed you. But this at any rate was the plan I put before Diana. And she believed me.’
‘Because she wanted to.’
‘Oestrogen makes you blind, Roger.’
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Why the hell didn’t someone…?
‘I found a DO NOT DISTURB sign in the same wardrobe as this coat,’ Greve said as if he had been reading my mind. ‘I think they hang up the sign outside when the patient’s using the bedpan.’
The barrel was pointing straight at me now, and I saw his finger curl round the trigger. He hadn’t raised the gun: he was obviously going to shoot from the hip the way James Cagney had done in the gangster films of the forties and fifties, with unrealistic accuracy. Regrettably, something told me that Clas Greve belonged to this group of unrealistic expert marksmen.
‘I think this qualifies, too,’ Greve said, already squinting, in preparation for the bang. ‘Death is a private matter after all, isn’t it?’
I closed my eyes. I had been right all along: I was in heaven.
‘Apologies, Doctor!’
The voice rang out round the room.
I opened my eyes. And saw that three men were standing behind Greve, just inside the door that was closing gently behind them.
‘We’re from the police,’ said the voice belonging to the one in civilian clothes. ‘This is about a murder case, so I’m afraid we had to ignore the sign on the door.’
I could see that in fact there was a certain likeness between my saving angel and the said James Cagney. But perhaps that was just down to the grey raincoat, or the medicine they had been giving me, for his two colleagues wearing black police uniforms with checked reflective bands (which reminded me of jumpsuits) looked just as improbable: like two peas in a pod, as fat as pigs, as tall as houses.
Greve had stiffened and stared at me ferociously without turning. The gun, which was hidden from the policemen’s eyes, was still pointing straight at me.
‘Hope we aren’t disturbing you with this little murder of ours, Doctor?’ said the plain-clothes officer, not bothering to conceal his annoyance that the man in white seemed to be ignoring him completely.
‘Not at all,’ Greve said, still with his back to him. ‘The patient and I had just finished.’ He pulled his white coat to the side and stuffed the pistol into the waistband of his trousers.
‘I… I-’ I began, but was interrupted by Greve.
‘Take it easy now. I’ll keep your wife posted about your condition. Don’t worry, we’ll see that she’s alright. Do you understand?’
I blinked several times. Greve bent forward over the bed and patted the duvet over my knee.
‘We’ll be gentle, OK?’
I nodded mutely. It had to be the medicine, no question. This was just not happening.
Greve straightened up with a smile. ‘By the way, Diana’s right. You really do have wonderful hair.’
Greve turned, lowered his head, stared at the paper on the clipboard, and whispered to the policemen as he passed: ‘He’s all yours. For the time being.’
After the door slid to, James Cagney stepped forward.
‘My name’s Sunded.’
I nodded slowly and felt the bandage cutting into the skin of my throat. ‘You came in the nick of time, Sundet.’
‘Sunded,’ he repeated gravely. ‘Ded at the end. I’m a murder investigator and have been called here from Kripos in Oslo. Kripos is-’
‘Kriminalpolitisentralen, serious crime squad, I know,’ I said.
‘Good. This is Endride and Eskild Monsen from the Elverum police force.’
Impressed, I inspected them. Two twin walruses dressed in identical uniforms with identical moustaches. It was a lot of policeman for the money, no question.
‘First I would like to read your rights to you,’ Sunded began.
‘Hang on!’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Sunded gave a weary smile. ‘That means, herr Kjikerud, that you are under arrest.’
‘Kji-’ I bit my tongue. Sunded was waving what I recognised as a credit card. A blue credit card. Ove’s card. From my pocket. Sunded raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘Sh… it,’ I said. ‘What are you arresting me for?’
‘For the murder of Sindre Aa.’
I stared at Sunded as he, in everyday language, and using his own words, rather than the Lord’s Prayer-like rigmarole from American films, explained to me that I had a right to a solicitor and the right to keep my gob shut. He concluded by explaining that the consultant had given him the go-ahead to take me with them as soon as I was conscious. After all, I only had a few stitches in the back of my neck.
‘That’s fine,’ I said before he was finished explaining. ‘I’m more than happy to go with you.’
THE HOSPITAL WAS set in rural surroundings some way outside Elverum, it transpired. I was relieved to see the mattress-like white buildings disappear behind us. Even more because I couldn’t see a silver-grey Lexus.
The car we were in was an old, but well-kept Volvo with such a wonderful-sounding engine that I suspected it had been a hot rod before it was repainted in police colours.
‘Where are we?’ I asked from the back seat, wedged in between the impressive physiques of Endride and Eskild Monsen. My clothes, Ove’s, that is, had been sent to the dry-cleaner’s but a nurse had brought me a pair of tennis shoes and a green tracksuit bearing the hospital’s initials, with strict instructions to return it washed. Furthermore, I had been given back all the keys and Ove’s wallet.
‘Hedmark county,’ said Sunded from what Afro-American gang milieus reportedly call the shotgun seat: the passenger seat.
‘And where are we going?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ snarled the young, pimply driver, sending me an ice-cold glance via the rear-view mirror. Bad cop. Black nylon jacket with yellow letters on the back. ELVERUM KO-DAW-YING CLUB. I assumed it was a very mysterious, brand-new yet ancient martial art. And that it was his frenetic gum-chewing which had so disproportionately enhanced his jaw musculature. Pimples was so thin and narrow-shouldered that his arms formed a V when he had both hands on the wheel, as now.
‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ Sunded said in a low voice.
Pimples mumbled and glowered at the ramrod-straight strip of tarmac that sliced through the cultivated land, which was as flat as a pancake.
‘We’re going to the police station in Elverum, Kjikerud,’ said Sunded. ‘I’ve come up from Oslo and will interrogate you today and if necessary tomorrow. And the following day. I hope you’re a reasonable fellow because I don’t like Hedmark.’ He drummed his fingers on an overnight bag that Endride had passed forward to him because there simply wasn’t room with us three in the back.
‘I’m reasonable,’ I said, feeling both of my arms going to sleep. The Monsen twins breathed in rhythm, which meant that I was squeezed like a tube of mayonnaise every fourth second. I wondered whether to ask one of them to change their breathing pattern, but refrained. In a way, after standing in front of Greve’s pistol, this felt secure. It took me back to the time when I was small and had had to go to work with Dad because Mum was ill, and I sat between two serious but kind grown-ups on the back seat of the embassy’s limousine. And everyone had been elegantly dressed, but no one as elegantly as Dad, who wore a chauffeur’s cap and drove the car with such style and grace. And afterwards Dad had bought me an ice cream and told me I had behaved like a true gentleman.
The radio hissed.
‘Shh.’ Pimples broke the silence in the car.
‘Message to all patrol cars,’ crackled a nasal female voice.
‘Both patrol cars,’ Pimples muttered, turning up the volume.
‘Egmont Karlsen has reported a stolen truck and trailer…’
The rest of the message was drowned in laughter from Pimples and the Monsen twins. Their bodies shook, giving me a rather pleasant massage. I think the medicines were still working.
Pimples took the radio and spoke into it: ‘Did Karlsen sound sober? over.’
‘Not entirely, no,’ the female voice answered.
‘Then he’s been out drink-driving again and forgotten it. Ring Bamse’s. I bet it’s parked outside the pub. Eighteen-wheeler with Sigdal Kitchens on the side. Over and out.’
He replaced the radio, and I thought the atmosphere had noticeably lightened, so I took advantage of the opportunity.
‘I’ve worked out that someone has been murdered, but am I allowed to ask what this has to do with me?’
The question was met with silence, but I could see by Sunded’s pose that he was thinking. Then he turned towards the back seat and his eyes bored into me. ‘Fine, we might as well get this over with right away. We know you did it, herr Kjikerud, and there is no way of you wriggling out of it. You see, we have a body and a crime scene and evidence that ties you to both.’
I ought to have been shocked, horrified. I ought to have felt my heart skip a beat or sink or whatever it does when you hear a jubilant policeman tell you they have proof that will send you to prison for life. But I felt none of this. For I didn’t hear a jubilant policeman, I heard Inbau, Reid and Buckley. First step. Direct confrontation. Or, to paraphrase the manual: The detective should at the outset of the interrogation make it abundantly clear that the police know everything. Say ‘we’ and ‘the police’, never ‘I’. And ‘know’, not ‘believe’. Distort the interviewee’s self-image, address low-status persons with ‘herr’ and high-status persons by their first name.
‘And between you and me,’ Sunded continued, lowering his voice in a way that was clearly meant to signal confidentiality, ‘from what I hear, Sindre Aa was no loss. If you hadn’t used the rope on the old sourpuss, someone else hopefully would have.’
I stifled a yawn. Step two. Sympathise with the suspect by normalising the act.
When I didn’t answer Sunded went on. ‘The good news is that with a quick confession I could reduce your sentence.’
Oh my goodness, the Explicit Promise! It was a ploy Inbau, Reid and Buckley absolutely forbade, a legal trap that only the most desperate detective would use. This man really did want to get back home from Hedmark in a hurry.
‘So why did you do it, Kjikerud?’
I looked through the side window. Fields. Farms. Fields. Farms. Fields. Stream. Fields. Wonderfully sleep-inducing.
‘Well, Kjikerud?’ I heard Sunded’s fingers drumming on the overnight bag.
‘You’re lying,’ I said.
The drumming stopped. ‘Repeat.’
‘You’re lying, Sunded. I have no idea who Sindre Aa is, and you’ve got nothing on me.’
Sunded gave a brief lawnmower laugh. ‘Haven’t I? So tell me where you’ve been for the last twenty-four hours. Would you be so kind, Kjikerud?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘If you tell me what this case is all about.’
‘Smack ’im!’ Pimples spat. ‘Endride, smack-’
‘Shut up,’ Sunded said calmly, turning to me. ‘And why should we tell you, Kjikerud?’
‘Because then perhaps I’ll talk to you. If not, I’ll keep my mouth shut until my solicitor comes. From Oslo.’ I saw Sunded’s mouth tighten, and I upped the ante: ‘Sometime tomorrow if we’re lucky…’
Sunded angled his head and studied me as if I were an insect he was considering whether to add to his collection or just crush.
‘Fine, Kjikerud. It all started when the person sitting next to you received a phone call about a tractor abandoned in the middle of the road. They found the tractor and a flock of crows which had met for lunch on the rear loader. They had already made short work of the soft bits of a dog. The tractor belonged to Sindre Aa, but naturally he didn’t respond when we rang, so one of us popped over and found him in the rocking chair where you had put him. We found a Mercedes in the barn with a knackered engine and number plates that we traced to you, Kjikerud. At length Elverum police station made a connection between the dead dog and a routine report from the hospital about a semi-conscious man covered in muck who had been admitted with a nasty dog bite. They rang, and the duty nurse told us that the man had been unconscious, but in his pocket they had found a credit card bearing the name Ove Kjikerud. And hey presto – here we are.’
I nodded. So I knew how they had found me. But how on earth had Greve managed it? The question had been churning around in my admittedly dopey brain without yielding a result. Could Greve have contacts inside the local police as well? Someone who had made sure Greve could get to the hospital before the police? Wrong! They had just strolled into the room and saved me. Wrong! Sunded had done that, the uninitiated outsider, the Kripos man from Oslo. I could feel a headache coming on as the next thought announced its arrival: Suppose things were as I feared, what sort of protection would I have then in a remand cell? Suddenly the Monsen twins’ synchronised breathing did not feel so reassuring. Nothing was reassuring. I felt as though there was no one in this world I could trust any more. No one. Apart from perhaps one person. The outsider with the overnight bag. I would have to lay my cards on the table, tell Sunded everything, ensure he took me to a different police station. Elverum was corrupt, no doubt about that, probably there was more than one undercover schemer in this car.
The radio crackled again. ‘Patrol car zero one, come in.’
Pimples grabbed the radio. ‘Yes, Lise?’
‘There’s no truck outside Bamse’s. Over.’
Telling Sunded everything would of course involve revealing that I was an art thief. And how would I convince them that I had shot Ove in self-defence, indeed, almost by accident? A man who was so doped up by Greve’s potion that he must have been cross-eyed.
‘Get a grip, Lise. Ask around. No one can hide an eighteen-metre-long vehicle in this district, OK?’
The voice that answered sounded miffed. ‘Karlsen says you usually find his truck for him, since you’re a policeman and his brother-in-law. Over.’
‘I bloody well do not! You can forget that one, Lise.’
‘He says it’s not much to ask. You got the least ugly of his sisters.’
I was being shaken by the Monsen twins’ laughter.
‘Tell the idiot that we’ve got proper police work to do today for once,’ Pimples snarled. ‘Over and out.’
I really had no idea how to play this game. It was just a question of time before my true identity would be revealed. Should I tell them straight away or was it a card I could keep up my sleeve for later?
‘Now it’s your turn, Kjikerud,’ Sunded said. ‘I’ve done a bit of checking up on you. You’re an old acquaintance of ours. And according to our documents you’re unmarried. So what did the doctor mean when he said he would look after your wife? Diana, wasn’t it?’
That card went up in smoke. I sighed and looked through the side window. Wasteland, cultivated land. No oncoming traffic, no houses, just a cloud of dust from a tractor or a car on the distant horizon.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. I had to think more clearly. More clearly. Had to see the whole chessboard.
‘What was your relationship with Sindre Aa, Kjikerud?’
Being addressed by this alien name was beginning to wear me down. I was about to reply when I realised that I had been wrong. Again. The police really did think I was Ove Kjikerud! That was the name they had been given of the person admitted to hospital. But if they had passed the same message on to Greve, why had Greve visited this Kjikerud at the hospital? He had never heard of any Kjikerud; no one in the whole world knew that Kjikerud had anything to do with me – Roger Brown! It simply didn’t make sense. He must have found me via a different channel.
I saw the cloud of dust on the road approaching.
‘Did you hear my question, Kjikerud?’
First of all Greve had found me in the cabin. Then at the hospital. Even though I didn’t have the mobile on me. Greve didn’t have any contacts, either in Telenor or in the police. So how was that possible?
‘Kjikerud! Hello!’
The cloud of dust on the side road was travelling much faster than it had seemed from a distance. I saw the crossroads ahead of us and had a sudden sensation that it was bearing down on us and that we were on a collision course. I hoped the other car was aware that we had right of way.
But perhaps Pimples should give him a hint and use the horn. Give him a hint. Use the horn. What was it Greve had said at the hospital? ‘Diana’s right. You really do have wonderful hair.’ I closed my eyes and felt her hands running through my hair in the garage. The smell. She had smelt different. She had smelt of him, of Greve. No, not Greve. Of HOTE. Bearing down on us. And in slow motion everything fell into place. Why hadn’t I twigged before? I opened my eyes.
‘We’re in mortal danger, Sunded.’
‘The only person in danger here is you, Kjikerud. Or whatever your name is.’
‘What?’
Sunded peered into the mirror and raised the credit card he had shown me at the hospital.
‘You don’t look like this Kjikerud on the photo. And when I checked Kjikerud out in the files it said he was one metre seventy-three. And you are… what? One sixty-five?’
It had gone quiet in the car. I stared at the cloud of dust that was drawing near at speed. It was not a car. It was a lorry with a trailer behind. It was so close now that I could read the letters on the side. SIGDAL KITCHENS.
‘One sixty-eight,’ I said.
‘So who the hell are you?’ Sunded growled.
‘I’m Roger Brown. And on the left is Karlsen’s stolen lorry.’
All heads turned left.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ growled Sunded.
‘What’s going on,’ I said, ‘is that that lorry is being driven by a guy called Clas Greve. And he knows I’m in this car and is aiming to kill me.’
‘How…?’
‘He has a GPS tracker which means he can find me wherever I am. And he’s been doing that ever since my wife stroked my hair in the garage. With a handful of gel containing microscopic transmitters that adhere to your hair and are impossible to wash off.’
‘Cut the crap!’ the Kripos detective snarled.
‘Sunded…’ Pimples began. ‘It is Karlsen’s truck.’
‘We have to stop this car now and turn round,’ I said. ‘Otherwise he’ll kill all of us. Stop!’
‘Keep going,’ Sunded said.
‘Can’t you see what’s going to happen?!’ I shouted. ‘You’ll soon be dead, Sunded.’
Sunded started his lawnmower laugh, but the lawn seemed to be too high. He saw that now, too. That it was already too late.
A COLLISION BETWEEN two vehicles is basic physics. It all comes down to chance, but chance phenomena can be explained by the equation Energy x Time = Mass x difference in Velocity. Add values to the chance variables and you have a story that is simple, true and remorseless. It tells you, for example, what happens when a fully loaded juggernaut weighing 25 tonnes and travelling at a speed of 80 kph hits a saloon car weighing 1,800 kilos (including the Monsen twins) and moving at the same speed. Based on chance with respect to point of impact, construction of bodywork and the angle of the two bodies relative to one another, a multitude of variants to this story are possible, but they share two common features: they are tragedies. And the saloon car is in trouble.
When, at 10.13, the lorry and trailer driven by Greve hit patrol car zero one, a Volvo 740 manufactured in 1989, just in front of the driver’s seat, the car engine, both front wheels and Pimples’ legs were pushed sideways through the car body as the car was launched into the air. No airbags were activated as these had not been installed in Volvos before 1990. The police car – which was already a total wreck – sailed over the road, high above the crash barrier and landed on the compact clump of spruce trees lining the river at the bottom of the slope. Before the police car burst through the first treetops it had performed two and a half somersaults with one and a half twists. There were no witnesses present to confirm what I have said, but this is exactly what happened. It is – as I mentioned before – simple physics. The same as the fact that the relatively undamaged lorry continued straight over the deserted crossroads where it braked with a screech of bare metal. It snorted like a dragon as the brakes were finally released, but the smell of scorched rubber and burnt disc brake linings hung over the landscape for several minutes afterwards.
At 10.14 the spruce trees had stopped swaying, the dust had settled, the lorry stood with the engine idling as the sun continued to shine steadily down on the Hedmark fields.
At 10.15 the first car passed the crime scene, and the driver probably noticed nothing except for the lorry standing on the gravel side road and what might have been fragments of broken glass crunching under the car tyres. He would not have seen a trace of a police car lying on its roof down under the trees by the river.
I know all of this because I was in a position that enabled me to state that we were lying on the car roof, hidden from the road by the trees alongside the river. The times given depend on the accuracy of Sunded’s watch, which was ticking away right in front of me. At least I think it was his; it hung from the wrist of a severed arm protruding from a piece of grey raincoat.
A puff of wind wafted over carrying with it the resin smell of brake linings and the sound of a diesel engine idling.
The sunshine flickered down through the trees from a cloudless sky, but around me it was raining. Petrol, oil and blood. Dripping and draining away. Everyone was dead. Pimples no longer had any Pimples. Or any face for that matter. What was left of Sunded was squashed flat like a cardboard figure; I could see him peering out from between his own legs. The twins seemed more or less whole but had stopped breathing. That I was alive myself was solely down to the Monsen family’s aptitude for amassing body weight and forming it into perfect airbags. But those same bodies which had saved my life were now wresting it from me. The whole of the car body was crushed and I was hanging upside down from my seat. One arm was free, but I was squeezed in between the two policemen so tightly that I could neither move nor breathe. For the time being, however, my senses were functioning perfectly. Such that I could see petrol trickling out, feel it running down my trouser legs, along my body and out of my tracksuit neck. And hear the lorry up on the road, hear it snorting and clearing its throat and jerking. I knew he was sitting there, Greve, thinking, appraising. He could see on the GPS tracker that I wasn’t moving. He was thinking that he still ought to go down and make sure everyone was dead. On the other hand, it would be tricky getting down the slope and even trickier getting back up. And surely no one could have survived that crash? But you slept so much better knowing you had seen it with your own eyes…
Drive, I begged. Drive.
The worst thing about being fully conscious was that I could imagine what would happen if he found me soaked in petrol.
Drive. Drive!
The lorry’s diesel engine was chuntering away as though carrying on a conversation with itself.
Everything that had happened was clear to me now. Greve had not gone up to Sindre Aa on the steps to ask where I was, he could see that on the display of his GPS tracker. Aa had to be got rid of simply because he had seen Greve and his car. But while Greve had been walking up the path to the cabin, I had moved to the outside toilet, and as he hadn’t found me in the cabin, he had checked the tracker again. And discovered to his amazement that the signal had gone. Because the transmitters in my hair at that point were submerged under crap, which HOTE’s transmitters, as has been mentioned before, do not have signals powerful enough to penetrate. Idiot that I am, I had had more luck than I deserved.
Greve had then sent out the dog to find me while he waited. Still without a signal. Because the crap that dried round the transmitters was still blocking the signals while I was checking Aa’s body and then fleeing on the tractor. It was not until the middle of the night that Greve’s GPS tracker would have begun to receive signals again. Which was when I was lying on a stretcher in the hospital shower and the crap was being washed out of my hair. Greve had jumped into his car and was at the hospital by dawn. God knows how he had stolen the lorry, but anyway he had no problem finding me again, me, Brown, the babbling nutter who was veritably imploring to be caught.
The fingers on Sunded’s severed arm were still curled around the handle of his overnight case. His wristwatch was ticking. Ten sixteen. In a minute I would lose consciousness. In two I would be suffocated. Make up your mind, Greve.
And then he did.
I heard the lorry belch. The rpm sank. He had switched off the ignition; he was on his way here!
Or… had he put it into gear?
A low rumble. The crunch of gravel under the tyres bearing twenty-five tonnes. The rumble increased in volume. And increased. And became quieter. Disappeared into the countryside. Died away.
I closed my eyes and offered up my thanks. For not being burned, but only dying from a lack of oxygen. Because that is by no means the worst way to die. The brain closes down chambers one by one, you become dopey, you are numbed, stop thinking, and with that your problems cease to exist. In a way it is like taking a few stiff drinks. Yep, I thought, I can live with dying like that.
The idea of it almost made me laugh.
Me, who had spent my whole life trying to be my father’s opposite, would end my life as he had, in a wrecked car. And how different to him had I actually been? When I was too old for the bloody drunkard to hit me, I had begun to hit him. In the same way that he had hit Mum, without leaving any visible marks. As another example, when he had offered to teach me to drive, I had politely refused and informed him that I was not interested in having a driver’s licence. And I had got together with the ugly, pampered ambassador’s daughter Dad had driven to school every day, just so I could take her home for dinner and humiliate him. When I saw my mother in the kitchen crying between the main course and dessert, I had regretted that. I had applied to a college in London I had heard Dad say was a posh place for social parasites. But he hadn’t taken it as badly as I had hoped. He had even managed to put on a smile, seemed proud when I told him about it, the crafty bastard. So when later that autumn he had asked if he and my mother could travel from Norway to visit me on campus, I had said no, on the basis that I didn’t want my fellow students to discover that my father was not someone high up in the diplomatic corps but a plain chauffeur. That seemed to hit a tender spot. Not tender as in tenderness, of course, but sore.
I had rung my mother two weeks before the wedding to say that I was getting married to a girl I had met, explained that it would be a simple affair, just us and two witnesses. But my mother was welcome to come so long as she came without Dad. Mum had lost her temper and said that of course she wouldn’t come without him. Noble, loyal souls are often handicapped by loyalty to even the basest of individuals. Well, especially the base individuals.
Diana was going to meet my parents after the end of the semester that summer, but three weeks before we left London I had received news of the car accident. On the way home from their cabin, the policeman had said on the crackly telephone line. Evening, rain, the car had been going too fast. The old road had been temporarily re-routed, motorway extension. A new, perhaps somewhat illogical bend, but marked with danger signs. The newly laid tarmac absorbed light, naturally enough. A parked road-laying machine. I had interrupted the policeman and said they should breath-test my father. Just so that they could confirm what I already knew: that he had killed my mother.
That evening, alone in a pub in Barons Court, had been the first time I had tasted alcohol. And cried in public. The evening when I washed away my tears in the stinking urinals I saw my father’s limp, drunken face in the cracked mirror. And remembered that calm, attentive glow in his eyes when he had hit out at the chess pieces, hitting the queen which had whirled through the air – two and a half somersaults – before landing on the floor. Then he had hit me. Just the once, but he had raised his hand. Slapped me below the ear. And I had seen it then, in his eyes; what Mum called the Sickness. And it was a hideous, graceful and bloodthirsty monster that resided behind his eyes. But it was also him, my father, my own flesh and blood.
Blood.
Something which lay deep, that had lain under all the layers of denial for a long time, rose to the surface. A hazy memory of a thought that had gone through my head which would not let itself be held down any longer. It took a more concrete form. Became articulated through pain. Became the truth. The truth that hitherto I had managed to hold at arm’s length by lying to myself. For it wasn’t the fear of being supplanted by a child that made me not want to have children. It was the fear of the Sickness. The fear that I, the son, also had it. That it was there, behind my eyes. I had lied to everyone. I had told Lotte I didn’t want the child because it had a flaw, a syndrome, a chromosome irregularity. While the truth was that the irregularity was in me.
Everything was flowing now. My life had been a property left by the deceased, and now my brain had draped the furniture with dust sheets, closed the doors, prepared itself to switch off the current. My eyes dripped, ran and flooded, over my forehead, into my scalp. I was being suffocated by two human balloons. I thought about Lotte. And there, on the threshold, it dawned on me. I saw the light. I saw… Diana? What was the traitor doing here now? Balloons…
My free, dangling hand moved towards the overnight bag. My numb fingers loosened Sunded’s from the handle and opened it. Petrol was dripping off me into the bag as I rummaged around, pulled out a shirt, a pair of socks, underpants and a toilet bag. That was all. I opened the toilet bag with my free hand and emptied the contents on the roof. Toothpaste, an electric shaver, plasters, shampoo, a transparent plastic bag he must have used at airport security checks, Vaseline… there! A pair of scissors, the little pointed kind that bend upwards at the tip and which a number of people for some reason or another prefer to modern nail clippers.
My hand groped its way up one of the twins, over his gut, his chest, trying to find a zip or buttons. But I was losing sensation in my fingers and they would neither obey orders from nor send information to the brain. Then I grabbed the scissors and stuck the point in the belly of, well… let’s say it was Endride.
The nylon material gave with a liberating rip, slid back and revealed a bulging stomach packed into the light blue material of the police shirt. I snipped open the shirt and the flab covered in hairy, blue-white skin rolled forward. Now I had come to the part I dreaded most. But the thought of the possible reward – being able to live, to breathe – repressed all others, and I swung the scissors with maximum power, thrusting them into his stomach right above the navel. Retracted them. Nothing happened.
Strange. There was a clear hole in his stomach, but nothing came out, nothing that I hoped would relieve the pressure on me. The balloon was still as airtight as before.
I stabbed again. Another hole. Another dry well.
Like a madman, I swung the scissors again. Squelch, squelch. Nothing. What the hell were these twins actually made of? Were they lard right through? Was the obesity epidemic going to kill me, too?
Another car passed, on the road above.
I tried to scream but had no air.
With the last of my strength I slammed the scissors into his gut, but this time I didn’t retract them, I simply didn’t have the energy. After a pause I began to move them. Stretched my thumb and first finger and brought them back. Cut my way inside. It was surprisingly easy. And then something happened. A stream of blood ran from the hole, down the stomach, disappeared under the clothes, reappeared on the bearded throat, ran over the chin, over the lips and vanished up one nostril. I continued to cut. Frenzied now. And discovered that humans in reality are fragile creatures, because the body opened, slid open the way I had seen happen when they carved up whales on TV. And this was with a tiny pair of nail scissors! I didn’t stop until the stomach had a gash running from the waist to the ribs. But the mass of blood and intestines I had expected would pour out was not forthcoming. And the strength in my arm died, I dropped the scissors and an old friend, tunnel vision, was back. Through the opening I could see the inside of the roof. There was a grey chessboard pattern. The broken chess pieces lay scattered around me. I gave up. Closed my eyes. It was wonderful to have given up. I felt gravity dragging me down to the centre of the earth, head first, like a baby on its way out of its mother’s incubator, I would be squeezed out, death was rebirth. I could even feel the labour pains now, the quivering pains massaging me. Then the white queen. Heard the sound and the amniotic fluid splashing onto the floor.
And the smell.
My God, the smell!
I was born, and my life started with a fall, a bang on the head and then total darkness.
Total darkness.
Darkness.
Oxygen?
Light.
I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back and above me I saw the back seat where the twins and I had been sitting clamped together. I must have been lying on the inside of the car roof, on the chessboard. And I was breathing. There was a stench of death, of human viscera. I peered around. It looked like a slaughterhouse, a sausage-making factory. But the strange thing was that instead of doing what my nature is predisposed to do – repressing, denying, fleeing – it seemed that my brain had expanded in order to take in the full range of sensual impressions. I decided to stay here. I breathed in the smell. I looked. I listened. Picked up the chess pieces from the floor. Put them into position on the board, one by one. Finally, I raised the chipped white queen. Studied her. Then I put her directly opposite the black king.