by Jo Nesbo
And on this evening Truls woke up and discovered that he was lying in a hospital bed. He looked around and discovered Trym lying awake in the bed next to him.
“What happened?” Truls asked. “Why do you have a bandage around your head?”
“A manhole cover,” Trym said. “And you have a bandage around your head too.”
“We were supposed to sell fart powder to the kids and make a fortune today!” Truls said. “Independence Day is tomorrow!”
“And we were supposed to play the trumpet,” Trym said, dazed.
Right then the door to the room opened and a nurse came in.
“Hi, boys,” she said. “There are two people here to see you.”
“Daddy!” Truls yelled, on the verge of tears, he was so relieved.
“And Mommy!” Trym whimpered.
“Not quite,” the nurse said, stepping to the side.
Truls and Trym stiffened in their beds. Before them stood two men that we have met before. They were wearing their police uniforms, and tucked under their arms each of them was holding a mason jar that we’ve also seen before.
“Good evening, boys,” Mr. Fu Manchu said. “I trust your head injuries won’t be permanent.”
“And,” Mr. Handlebar added, “that you’ll be able to confess right away that you were the ones who broke into Doctor Proctor’s cellar.”
“And stole these mason jars,” Mr. Handlebar continued.
“It wasn’t me,” Truls blurted.
“Or me,” whimpered Trym.
“We followed a tip and found them in your garage,” Mr. Handlebar said.
“And we also found two pairs of shoes there with glass shards in the soles. Like the glass shards that came from the broken glass in the cellar. You’re done for.”
“But if you’ll give us a confession now, you may be able to avoid winding up in the Dungeon of the Dead.”
“It was me,” Truls blurted.
“No, it was me,” Trym whimpered.
“And Dad,” Truls said.
“Yes, Dad,” Trym said. “He … he … tricked us.”
“We were duped.” Truls sniffed.
“We’re so easily tricked,” Trym sobbed. “Poor us!”
“Hmm,” Mr. Fu Manchu said. “Mr. Trane, you say. Just as we thought. We should put out an A.P.B.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Handlebar said. “And fast. Neither he nor that dreadful Hummer of his were home when we checked.”
Mr. Fu Manchu got out his cell phone and called the police station. “Put out an A.P.B. for all patrol cars to stop any black Hummers they see. We’re looking for a man named Mr. Trane. He’s incredibly dangerous. I repeat: incredibly dangerous.”
And with that he started the biggest car chase in Oslo’s history. We won’t go into details, but more than one hundred police cars chased Mr. Trane’s black Hummer as it raced through the streets of Oslo, spewing out more carbon dioxide than two locomotives. Every time the police blocked off a street and thought they had him, Mr. Trane just gave the Hummer more gas and broke through the barricades, speeding past the police cars, the police horses, and the policemen all over downtown Oslo.
And that’s what they were still doing when the sun rose and Independence Day was finally here.
Independence Day
FOR THE LAST time in this story the sun rose in a cloudless sky. It had already shone for a while on Japan, Russia, and Sweden, and now it was starting to shine on the very small capital city of a very small country called Norway. The sun got right to work shining on the yellow and fairly small palace that was home to the king, who didn’t rule over enough for it to amount to anything, but who was looking forward to waving at the children’s parade as it marched by and to listening to the Big and Almost World-Famous Royal Salute in his honor. And of course the sun shone on Akershus Fortress, on the old cannons that were aimed out over the Oslo Fjord, and onto the most remote of all the doors. The door that ultimately led to the city’s most feared jail cell, the Dungeon of the Dead.
And just at this moment the door to the Dungeon of the Dead opened, and out onto the grassy embankment stepped Doctor Proctor, who had to squint in all that sunlight. He was followed by two prison guards.
“Hip hip hurrah!” yelled Nilly and Lisa, who were standing there waiting for him. They jumped up and down and waved their Norwegian flags.
“Freedom, sunshine, Independence Day, and my assistants,” Doctor Proctor said, laughing and hugging them. “Could the day get any better?”
“For some,” mumbled the Commandant, who was standing a few steps behind Lisa and Nilly and rocking back and forth on his heels.
“But nobody’s told me why I was set free,” the professor said after he set Nilly and Lisa down.
“Truls and Trym admitted everything,” Lisa said. “That they bullied Nilly into giving them the fartonaut powder that day.”
“And that you never sold fartonaut powder to children,” Nilly said.
“And the police are going to have Mr. Trane in custody soon,” Lisa said. “For stealing the powder and passing it off as his own. They just have to finish racing around the city first.”
“Good heavens!” the professor said. “Then all of the problems are solved!”
“Not quite all,” Lisa said, nodding toward the Commandant. “Dad?”
“Of course, of course,” rumbled the Commandant, stepping forward. He seemed embarrassed; maybe that was why he spoke a little louder and more commandingly than necessary. “Yes, well, we are so sorry for this idiotic imprisonment, Doctor Proctor. It won’t happen again. Unless you do something very illegal, of course. Like stuffing bananas in exhaust pipes, for example. Or hoisting infants up to the tops of flagpoles. Or …”
“Get to the point, Dad,” Lisa said sternly.
“Of course, of course, the point,” rumbled the Commandant, his neck reddening a little. “As you can see, we have some old cannons over there. And as you can’t see, we don’t have any special gunpowder from Shanghai, which we need for the Big and Almost World-Famous Royal Salute that was supposed to be fired off from these cannons later today. It has never happened before in the modern era that the Royal Salute hasn’t been fired off, and we’re afraid the whole world will laugh at us. Well, all of northern Europe, anyway … except maybe Finland … and … and …”
“Dad!”
“Of course, of course. The question is—”
“The question is,” Doctor Proctor interrupted, “whether I can help you with the Royal Salute. And the answer, my dear Commandant and neighbor, is: Yes!”
And with that, cheering broke out for the second time in a very short period. But Lisa and Nilly weren’t able to cheer for very long, because of course they were about to go perform in the Dølgen School Marching Band in the Independence Day parade.
THE DØLGEN SCHOOL Marching Band marched and played like never before. They hit a ton of the right notes and had never been closer to playing in time. And Nikolai Amadeus Madsen led the way in his aviator glasses and grinned his biggest smile as he dreamed of the marching band competition at Eidsvoll that summer.
And Lisa played the clarinet, and every once in a while she glanced over at Nilly, who practically had to do splits to keep up with everyone else. But he played amazingly well as his fingers danced over the keys, his eyes hurriedly scanning the music.
The band had reached Sverdrup Street, and Nilly was concentrating so hard that he didn’t hear the wailing sirens on the police cars that were approaching. And he didn’t see the big, roaring Hummer round the corner on squealing tires and slam on its brakes when it saw that its path was finally blocked by something it couldn’t just run over or push out of the way: a whole Independence Day parade marching toward it. And the noise the school marching band was making sent shivers down the spine, because it was the sound of an explosion, a plane crash, and an avalanche at the same time.
And after the Hummer roughly a hundred police cars came around the corner with blue lights and sirens.<
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A man jumped out of the Hummer.
Lisa stopped playing. “But isn’t that … ,” she said. “It is! It’s Mr. Trane.”
Nilly stopped playing too and looked up.
Mr. Trane was standing in the middle of the street, looking around frantically. There was nowhere to hide. It seemed like this was the end of the chase.
“Ha!” Mr. Trane yelled. “You’ll never get me, you idiots, you worthless turds!” And with that, he yanked up the manhole cover next to him and jumped down into the hole.
“Hey!” Lisa said.
The policemen ran over, peered down into the hole, scratched their heads, and discussed the situation. Nilly and Lisa could make out a few random snippets of the conversation:
“I’m wearing my Independence Day uniform today, and I don’t want to go down in the sewer and get it all dirty.”
“Well I have asthma; the smell of excrement just isn’t good for me.”
“And I’m signed up for a sack race.”
So they shoved the manhole cover back into place, checked to make sure it was on tight, canceled the whole police chase, and waved the Independence Day parade on.
ANNA CONDA WAS lying in the pipe, listening to its stomach rumble with hunger. It could hear the noise of a marching band and smell the scent of boiled hot dogs from up on the street. And now suddenly it heard a huge splash in the Oslo sewer system. The creature was so hungry that it was only just barely able to swim toward the sound. But when it got there, it saw something it recognized. Two-legged food glowing a faint green. The last time it had eaten something like this, Anna Conda had been blasted all the way out to the Nesodden Peninsula. But that wasn’t the only thing it recognized. There was something about this two-legged food, something familiar from when the creature was a little anaconda snakeling in a cage in Hovseter. Because wasn’t there a certain similarity between this fat, fleshy, sausagelike man and that fat boy who used to poke sticks in his side back then? Yes, that was it! And now the anaconda could see that the man had noticed it and that the recognition was mutual. And that the man had opened his mouth to scream. That his mouth was as far open as it would go. Which was very far. But of course nowhere near as far open as Anna Conda’s mouth now was.
“WOW, THAT WAS good!” Nilly yelled as he chewed. He was holding a steaming hot dog in a bun.
“Really good!” Lisa said, taking a bite of her hot dog.
They were sitting on the grassy embankment at Akershus Fortress, watching the seven brave guardsmen who were pacing nervously in front of the table where Doctor Proctor was standing with a big mason jar of Doctor Proctor’s Totally Normal Fart Powder. The seven of them had signed up as volunteers for this honorable assignment.
“Assistant Nilly!” Doctor Proctor yelled, glancing up at the clock on the tower at City Hall, which was approaching the time of the Big and Almost World-Famous Royal Salute. “Can you help me dole out the portions?”
“Of course,” Nilly said, and scarfed down the rest of his hot dog, ran over to the table, grabbed the wooden ladle that was lying there, and stuck it down into the mason jar.
“I’m Nilly,” he told the guardsmen. “What do you have to say about that?”
One of the guardsmen started swaying back and forth and singing “Silly Nilly.” Two more quickly joined in.
“Shut up,” Nilly said, looking at the clock. “Or rather, open up. And bend over. Quick, we only have seconds to go.”
“Is it dangerous?” one of the guardsmen asked nervously, opening his mouth.
“Yes,” Nilly said, and stuck a whole ladleful of powder into the guardman’s mouth. “But it tastes like pears. Nine … eight …”
“Thanks, assistant,” the professor said, adjusting his motorcycle goggles. “My dear guardsmen, please assume your positions.”
The guardsmen, who were not used to following commands that included words like “dear” and “please,” looked at each other in confusion.
“I feel a little tickle in my stomach,” one of them said.
“Listen up!!” the small red-haired boy bellowed. “Point your rear ends in the same directions as the cannons, now! And bend over!”
This was a language the guardsmen understood, and they followed the orders immediately.
And right then the clock on the Town Hall tower started to toll twelve times.
IT WAS SUCH a funny sight that Lisa had to laugh out loud. Seven guards bending over forward with their rear ends aimed out over the wall of the fortress at the Oslo Fjord as the Town Hall clock chimed.
But after the third chime, neither Lisa nor any of the other inhabitants of Oslo and the surrounding area heard the clock anymore. Because both it and Lisa’s laughter were drowned out by a bang so loud that frost formed on people’s eardrums and their eyes were pressed quite a ways into their heads. The next bang sent a rush of air up Rosenkrantz Street to Karl Johan Street, where it made all the flags stand out straight. The third bang shattered three windowpanes on the Nesodden Peninsula and made the grand, old apple trees in the Ullevål Garden town burst into bloom out of sheer fright. The fourth bang caused a girl Lisa knew in Sarpsborg to look up at the cloudless sky and wonder if a thunderstorm was approaching. The fifth wasn’t that loud at all; it just sounded like a fart and made the people in Oslo look at each other in surprise. But the sixth nearly caused a cruise ship in the middle of the fjord on its way to Denmark to capsize and a flight of swallows on their way to Norway changed their minds and decided to fly back to Africa. The sound wave reached all the way to Trafalgar Square in London, where it bent the spray from the fountain so that all the tourists standing around it got wet and children laughed with glee.
When the final and seventh bang rang out, the king in his castle nodded in satisfaction at the farting and thought he had never heard a finer salute. And before the last echo had faded into silence, the king’s adjutant was already on the phone to the Commandant of Akershus Fortress to tell him that the king would like to award him and his cannoneers the Royal Medal of Merit, a promotion to honorary cannoneer, and a long and happy life.
“Can he really give us a long life?” the Commandant asked skeptically.
“He’s the king,” the adjutant said, hanging up offended.
The Commandant walked out onto the embankment again, where seven guardsmen with rips in the seats of their pants, two policemen with their eyes wet from tears of laughter, and Lisa and Nilly and the professor were still dancing around in joy.
The Last Chapter
IT HAD BEEN a loooooong Independence Day, and there was still a little of it left.
The afternoon sun shone lazily on the pear tree in Doctor Proctor’s yard, and Lisa and Nilly sat underneath it, each in their own chair, clutching their stomachs. Along with the professor, they’d polished off a five-foot-long Jell-O, and now they were so full that the professor had gone inside to rest a little.
“You did great today,” Lisa said.
“You didn’t do so badly yourself,” Nilly admitted. “But it was all thanks to you.”
“You think?” Lisa smiled, closing her eyes to the rays of sunlight that filtered through the leaves.
“Yeah,” Nilly said. “You’re the smartest girl I know. And even more important, you’re the best …”
It got quiet and Lisa opened her eyes and was surprised to see that Nilly’s face had become really red. And she thought he might have gotten something stuck in his throat because he had to clear it three times before he was able to continue in a slightly hoarse voice.
“You’re the best friend anyone could have.”
“Thanks,” Lisa said, her whole body feeling warm. “So are you.”
And then neither of them knew what to say, so maybe it was just as well that there was a bang. Because there was. There was a final bang on this loooooong Independence Day, and they both turned toward Doctor Proctor’s cellar. Because this didn’t sound like Doctor Proctor’s normal fart powder.
“Oh no,” Lisa said,
dismayed.
“Not the fartonaut powder … ,” Nilly said.
“No,” said Doctor Proctor, appearing in the cellar doorway. His face was black with soot and oil. “Just a faulty muffler on a motorcycle that hasn’t been started in twelve years. But that just needed a little lubrication to run, well, like it had been lubricated.”
And with that the professor drove his motorcycle and sidecar out of the cellar and through the high grass, stopping in front of them. There was a brown, worn leather suitcase in the sidecar.
Nilly and Lisa stood up.
“Where are you going?” Nilly asked.
“Where do you think, my fartonaut assistant?” the professor asked, beaming under his hockey helmet and motorcycle goggles.
“You’re going to Paris,” Lisa said. “You’re going to try to find Juliette Margarine.”
“Wish me luck,” Doctor Proctor said. “And lock the cellar and keep an eye on my house until I get back.”
“Good luck,” Nilly said.
They walked ahead of the motorcycle and opened the gate.
The professor revved the engine and it gave a satisfying growl.
“And if you go through Sarpsborg … ,” Lisa said.
“Yes?”
“Then you can say hello to my second best friend.”
And the last rays of sunlight shone on the pear tree, on Nilly’s red hair, on Lisa’s smile, and maybe on a tiny tear as Doctor Proctor’s motorcycle and sidecar drove away down Cannon Avenue.