‘Shhh!’
Had I yelped or moved?
‘What was that noise?’
Total silence out there now. I held my breath. Dear God . . .
‘Church bells,’ Mattis said. ‘They’re burying William Svartstein today.’
What if it was a lemming? I’d heard that they were nervous little fuckers, and now it was approaching the crown jewels. Without making any obvious movement, I took hold of my trouser leg and pulled it tight in my clenched hand, making the fabric cling to my thigh and blocking the creature’s path.
‘Well, I’ve had enough of this stink,’ Johnny said. ‘Let’s check down by the stream. If the dogs are still confused by the smell of the reindeer, he might have hidden there.’
I heard them walk off through the heather. Inside my trousers the creature pushed against the blockage in the tunnel for a while, then resigned itself to going back the way it had come. Shortly after that I heard a voice call out from the cabin: ‘There’s nothing here, just a rifle and his suit!’
‘Okay, lads, let’s get back before the rain comes.’
I waited for what felt like an hour, but it could have been ten minutes. Then I pulled the knife out of the reindeer skin and peered out.
The coast was clear.
I crept through the heather towards the stream. I slid into the ice-cold water, letting it pour over me, washing me clean of death, shock and decay.
Slowly, slowly, I came back to life.
CHAPTER 16
DEAR GOD . . .
I hadn’t said it, but I thought it there inside the animal carcass, I thought it as loudly as if I’d stood on a street corner and shouted it. And the monsters had gone, the way they did when I was little and they were hiding under my bed, or in the toy box, or in the wardrobe.
Could it be that simple? Did you just have to pray?
I was sitting outside the cabin, smoking and looking up. The leaden grey clouds were covering the whole sky now, and had brought darkness with them. It was as if the weather were running a fever. It was oppressively muggy and warm, then the next moment icy cold when the wind gusted.
God. Salvation. Paradise. Eternal life. It was an appealing thought. Tailor-made for scared, battered hearts. So appealing that Grandfather finally gave in and abandoned his reason and staked everything on hope. ‘You don’t say no to something that’s free, you know,’ he told me with a wink. Like a broke sixteen-year-old sneaking into a disco with a forged ticket and a fake ID.
I packed the few things that would be coming with me. Clothes, shoes, suit, rifle and binoculars. The clouds hadn’t let go of any rain yet, but it couldn’t last much longer.
Johnny would be back. It was obvious that he didn’t believe Mattis. And that was clearly the right thing to do when it came to Mattis. A detour round the whole ridge. Wolves. Botulism. That he’d seen me sail away. William Svartstein’s funeral.
I didn’t remember much of my wasted years at university, but I did remember William Blackstone, the eighteenth-century legal philosopher who occupied much the same territory as Mattis, at the crossroads of justice and faith in God. I remembered him because Grandfather had used him, Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei and Søren Kierkegaard as examples of the fact that even the very sharpest minds are prepared to believe in the stuff and nonsense of Christianity if they think it offers a chance to escape death.
Mattis hadn’t betrayed me. On the contrary, he had saved me. So who had contacted Johnny and told him I hadn’t left Kåsund after all?
Another gust of wind, as if the weather wanted to tell me to get a move on. There was rumbling off to the west. Okay, okay, I was ready to leave now. It was night. If Johnny and the others hadn’t already left Kåsund, they would be asleep somewhere.
I stubbed my cigarette out on the cabin wall, picked up the leather case and slung the rifle over my shoulder. I walked down the path without looking back. Only forward. And that was how it was going to be from now on. Whatever was behind me could remain exactly that.
The sky rumbled and crackled with anticipation as I stepped out onto the gravel road. It was so dark that all I could see was the shapes of the houses and the few windows that were lit up.
I didn’t believe, expect or hope anything. I just wanted to call in and return the rifle and binoculars, and thank her for the loan. And for my life. And ask if she possibly felt like spending the rest of her life with me. And then leave, with or without her.
I passed the church. Anita’s house. The prayer hall. And then I was standing in front of Lea’s house.
A shining, crooked witch’s finger suddenly pointed down at me from the sky. The house, garage and wrecked Volvo were momentarily lit up by a ghostly blueish light. Then there was a crackling prelude before the storm broke loose.
They were in the kitchen.
I saw them through the window, the light inside was on. She was leaning against the worktop, her body arched back in a stiff, unnatural posture. Ove stood with his head thrust forward, holding a knife in his hand. It was larger than the one he had used on me. He was waving it in front of her face. Threatening her. She leaned back even further, away from the knife, away from her brother-in-law. He grabbed her neck with his free hand, I saw her cry out.
I put the rifle to my shoulder. Got his head in the sights. He was standing side-on to the window, so I could hit him in the temple. But a vague idea about the refraction of light through glass was whirling about my head, and I lowered my aim slightly. Chest height. I raised my elbows, took one deep breath – there wasn’t time for more – lowered my elbows again, breathed out, and slowly squeezed the trigger. I felt strangely calm. Then another finger of light tore at the sky, and I saw his head turn automatically towards the window.
Everything around me was dark again, but he was still staring at the window. At me. He had seen me. He looked more ravaged than last time, he must have been drinking for days. Psychotic from lack of sleep, or mad with love, mad with grief for his brother, mad at being trapped in a life he didn’t want. Yes, perhaps that was it, perhaps he was like me.
You’re going to shoot the reflection.
So this was my fate: shooting a man, getting arrested by the police, convicted and sent to prison, where the Fisherman’s men would soon appear and put a definite end to it all. Fine. I could accept that. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I had seen his face.
I could feel my index finger start to weaken, as the spring in the trigger gained the upper hand and forced my powerless finger back. I wasn’t going to manage it. I wasn’t going to manage it, again.
There was another crack of thunder above me, like a voice barking an order.
Knut.
Even Futabayama kept on losing before he started to win.
I took another deep breath. I had got rid of my block. I aimed the sights straight at Ove’s ugly face and fired.
The blast echoed across the rooftops. I lowered the rifle. Looked through the shattered glass. Lea was holding her hands up in front of her mouth and staring down at something. Beside her, on the white wall above her head, it looked as though someone had painted a grotesque rose.
The last echo died away. The whole of Kåsund must have heard it; soon the village would be crawling with people.
I went up the steps. Knocked – I don’t know why. Went in. She was still standing in the kitchen, she hadn’t moved, was staring down at the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor. She didn’t look up, I don’t know if she even knew I was there.
‘Are you okay, Lea . . .?’
She nodded.
‘Knut . . .’
‘I sent him to Father’s,’ she whispered. ‘I thought that if they worked out why I was ringing the church bells, they’d come here and . . .’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You saved my life.’
I tilted my head and looked down at the dead man. He stared back with broken eyes. He was more suntanned than last time, and his face was otherwise unharmed. Just an almost innocent
-looking hole in his forehead, right under his blond fringe.
‘He came back,’ she whispered. ‘I knew he was going to come back.’
That was when it struck me. That his left ear was uninjured. That there wasn’t so much as a hint of a mark on it. And there should have been, the bite was only a couple of days old. Then it slowly dawned on me. When Lea said he had come back, she meant . . .
‘I knew there was no sea or earth that could hold this devil down,’ she said. ‘No matter how deep we buried him.’
It was Hugo. The twin brother. I had shot the reflection.
I shut my eyes tight. Opened them again. But nothing had changed, I hadn’t dreamed it all. I had murdered her husband.
I had to clear my throat to make my voice heard:
‘I thought it was Ove. It looked like he was trying to kill you.’
At last she stared at me.
‘Better you killed Hugo than Ove. Ove would never have dared touch me.’
I nodded towards the body. ‘But he would?’
‘He was one jab of the knife away from it.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I told him.’
‘What?’
‘That I want to get away from here. That I want to take Knut with me. That I never wanted to see him again.’
‘You didn’t want to see him again, either?’
‘I told him that I . . . I’m in love with someone else.’
‘Someone else.’
‘You, Ulf.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t help it. I love you.’
The words trembled round the walls like a hymn. And the blue light in her eyes was so strong that I had to look away. One of her feet was in the spreading pool of blood.
I took a step towards her. Two. Put both feet in the blood. Gently put my hands round her shoulders. I wanted to check first that it was okay for me to pull her towards me. But before I figured it out she had fallen towards me and buried her face under my chin. She sobbed once, twice. I felt her warm tears trickling down under the collar of my shirt.
‘Come,’ I said.
I ushered her into the living room, where a lightning flash lit up the room and showed me the way to the sofa. We lay down on it, close together.
‘I got such a shock when he was suddenly standing there in the kitchen door,’ she whispered. ‘He said he’d got drunk on his boat with the engine running. When he woke up, he was a long way out to sea and the petrol had run out. He had oars, but the wind just kept driving the boat further out. The first few days he thought it was probably for the best. After all, we had made him think everything was his fault, that he was worthless after he hurt Knut. But then the rain came, and he survived. And then the wind changed direction. And that was when he decided it hadn’t been his fault.’ She let out a bitter laugh. ‘He stood there and said he was going to sort everything out, that he’d sort me and Knut out. When I told him Knut and I were going to leave, he asked if there was someone else. So I said we would be leaving on our own, but that, yes, I did love someone else. I thought it was important for him to know that. That I was capable of loving a man. Because then he would realise that he could never get me back.’
While she was talking the temperature in the room had fallen, and she huddled closer to me. So far nobody had come to see why the rifle had been fired. And as the next clap of thunder broke, I realised why. And that no one was going to come.
‘Is anyone else aware he came back?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘He saw some familiar landmarks this afternoon and rowed home. He tied the boat up at the jetty and came straight here.’
‘When was that?’
‘Half an hour ago.’
Half an hour ago. When everything was dark, and the thundery weather would have kept everyone indoors. No one had seen Hugo, no one knew he was alive. Had been alive. With the possible exception of one man who was fond of rolling about at night. To everyone else Hugo Eliassen was just a fisherman who had been claimed by the sea. One they were no longer searching for. I wished it was me. Me that they were no longer searching for. But, as Johnny had said: The Fisherman never stops looking for his debtors until he sees the corpse.
Another flash of lightning lit up the room. Then it was dark again. But I had seen it. Seen it perfectly clearly. Like I said, the brain is a strange and remarkable thing.
‘Lea?’ I said.
‘Yes?’ she whispered against my neck.
‘I think I’ve got a plan.’
CHAPTER 17
SCORCHED-EARTH TACTICS.
That’s how I thought of my plan. I would retreat the way the Germans did. And then I would disappear. Disappear completely.
The first thing we did was wrap the body in plastic bags and tie them up with rope. Then we washed the floor and walls thoroughly. Dug the bullet out from the kitchen wall. Lea tipped the wheel rims out of the wheelbarrow and pushed it into the garage, where I was waiting with the body. I loaded it onto the barrow. Stuck the rifle in underneath him. We tied a rope to the front of the wheelbarrow so Lea could help pull it. I went into the workroom and found a small pair of pliers. Then we set off.
There wasn’t a single person around outside and it was still reassuringly gloomy. I reckoned it would be another three or four hours before people started to get up, but we had thrown a tarpaulin over the barrow just in case. It went easier than I had expected. When my arms were tired Lea would take a turn behind the barrow while I pulled it.
Knut had seen them pull up in a car with Oslo plates.
‘He came racing in and told me there were three men and two dogs,’ Lea said. ‘He wanted to run up and warn you, but I said it was too dangerous because of the dogs, they’d pick up his scent and maybe come after him as well. So I ran to Mattis and told him he had to help me.’
‘To Mattis?’
‘When you said he’d asked you for money for various services, I had a good idea of what those might be. He’d been paid not to contact Oslo and give you up.’
‘But how did you know he hadn’t already done that?’
‘Because it was Anita.’
‘Anita?’
‘She didn’t come to pass on her condolences. She came to find out if I had a good explanation for why I’d been sitting in a car with you. And I could see that my explanation wasn’t good enough. She knows I wouldn’t just go shopping in Alta with a stranger from the south. And I know what a woman scorned is capable of . . .’
Anita. No one makes a promise to Anita without keeping it.
She had a stake in my soul, Johnny’s phone number, and the sense to put two and two together. I had got whatever she was spreading after all.
‘But you trusted Mattis?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s a liar and a blackmailer.’
‘And a cynical businessman who never gives you a drop more than you’ve paid for. But he sticks to agreements. And he also owed me a couple of favours. I asked him to lead them away from you, or at the very least to delay them, while I went up to the church to ring the bells.’
I told her how Mattis had sworn blind that he’d seen me leave Kåsund by boat. And how, when they still insisted on checking the cabin, he’d led them on a long detour. Without that detour they’d probably have arrived before the wind changed and I heard the church bells.
‘A strange man,’ I said.
‘A strange man,’ she laughed.
It took us an hour to get to the cabin. The weather had turned noticeably colder, but the clouds were still hanging low. I prayed it wasn’t about to rain. Not yet. I wondered if this business of praying was going to become a habit.
As we got closer I thought I saw some shapes disappear without a sound, racing up the ridge at great speed. The reindeer’s guts had been pulled apart, and the carcass was fully open.
They had conducted a thorough search for the money and dope, the mattress had been torn open, the wall cabinet pulled down, the stove opened and the ashes dug th
rough. The last bottle of drink lay under the table, and the floorboards had been pulled up and the planks lining the walls torn off. Which suggested that the drugs hidden in Toralf’s flat weren’t going to be safe if they ever thought to look there. But that was fine, I wasn’t thinking of going to get them. I wasn’t actually planning to have anything to do with drugs from now on. For various reasons. Not many reasons, really, but those I had were all very good ones.
Lea waited outside while I cut the body free of the plastic. I put several layers of roofing felt on the bed before heaving the corpse onto it. I took his wedding ring off. Perhaps he’d lost weight while he was at sea, or perhaps it had always been a bit loose. I took off my chain with the ID dog tag and hung it round his neck. Then I felt around in my mouth with the tip of my tongue to check which tooth was broken, took out the pliers and fastened them round the matching tooth in his mouth, and snapped it off at the gum. I laid the rifle on his stomach and the misshapen bullet under his head. I glanced at my watch. Time was getting on.
I covered the body with another layer of roofing felt, opened the bottle of alcohol and soaked the bed, the felt and the rest of the cabin. There was a tiny bit left. I hesitated for a moment. Then I turned the bottle upside down and watched Mattis’s unholy liquor soak into the tinder-dry floorboards.
I took a match out of the box, shuddered as I heard the sulphur scrape against the side of the box and watched the flame flare up.
Now.
I dropped the match on top of the roofing felt.
I’ve read that bodies don’t burn well. We’re sixty per cent water, maybe that’s why. But as I saw how quickly the tar-covered felt burned, I didn’t expect there to be much meat left on the grill afterwards.
I went outside, leaving the door open so that the first flames would catch properly and really take hold.
I needn’t have worried.
It was as if the flames were talking to us. First with mumbling, restrained voices, then they gradually rose in volume and wildness, until eventually they were a cacophonous roar. Even Knut would have been happy with this blaze.