by Jo Nesbo
He held the edge of the door, cast a final glance at the TV before trying to close it. 00.01.47.
Wanted to close it but his hand wouldn’t obey. It wouldn’t obey because his brain refused to reject what his eyes had seen, but the rationally controlled section of his brain tried to ignore. To ignore because it had no relevance for the only thing that was important now, surviving, saving itself. To ignore because he couldn’t afford to do otherwise, didn’t have the time, didn’t have the empathy.
The mincemeat on the chair.
It had acquired two white spots.
White as in the whites of the eyes.
Staring straight at him through the cling film.
The bugger was alive.
Harry let out a yell and squeezed out of the fridge. Ran to the chair with the TV screen at the margin of his vision. Ripped the cling film off the face. The eyes in the mince blinked and he heard a shallow breath. He must have got some air through the hole where the bone had punctured the film.
‘Who did this?’ Harry asked.
Got no more than breath by way of an answer. The mincemeat mask began to trickle down like melting candle wax.
‘Who is he? Who’s the cop killer?’
Still only breath.
Harry looked at the clock. 00.01.26. It would take time to squeeze back in.
‘Come on, Truls! I can catch him.’
A bubble of blood began to grow where Harry guessed the mouth had to be. As it burst there was an almost inaudible whisper.
‘He wore a mask. Didn’t speak.’
‘What kind of mask?’
‘Green. All green.’
‘Green?’
‘Sur . . . geon . . .’
‘Surgeon’s mask?’
A small nod, then the eyes closed again.
00.01.05.
No more to be gleaned. He ran back to the kitchen. He was faster this time. He closed the door and the light went out.
Shivering in the darkness, he counted the seconds. Forty-nine.
The bastard would have died anyway.
Forty-eight.
Better that someone else did the job.
Forty-seven.
Green mask. Truls Berntsen had given Harry what he knew without asking for anything in return. So there was a bit of policeman left in him.
Forty-six.
No point thinking about it. There wasn’t any more room for him in here anyway.
Forty-five.
Besides, there was no time to release him from the chair.
Forty-four.
Even if he’d wanted to, there was no time left now.
Forty-three.
All over now.
Forty-two.
Shit.
Forty-one.
Shit, shit, shit!
Forty.
Harry kicked open the fridge door with one foot and squeezed himself out with the other. Pulled open the drawer under the worktop, grabbed what had to be a bread knife, ran to the chair and cut off the tape on the arms of the chair.
Avoided glancing at the TV, but heard the ticking.
‘Fuck you, Berntsen!’
He walked round the chair and cut the tape on the back and around the chair legs.
Put his arms round his chest and heaved.
Needless to say, the bugger was extremely heavy.
Harry pulled and cursed, dragged and cursed, no longer hearing the words coming from his mouth, hoping only they offended heaven and hell enough so that at least one of them would intervene in this idiotic but inevitable course of events.
He aimed at the open fridge, manoeuvred Truls Berntsen through the opening. The bloodstained body slumped and slipped out again.
Harry tried to stuff him in again, but it was no use. He pulled Berntsen out of the fridge, leaving trails of blood along the linoleum, let go, dragged the fridge from the wall, heard the plug come out, pushed the fridge over onto its back between the worktop and the stove. Grabbed Berntsen and thrust him up and in. Crawled in after him. Used both legs to push him as close to the back of the fridge as possible, to where the heavy refrigeration motor was housed. Lay on top of Berntsen, inhaling the smell of sweat, blood and piss that comes from sitting in a chair knowing your death is imminent.
Harry had hoped there would be room for them both, as it had been the height and width of the fridge that had been the problem, not the depth.
But now it was the depth.
He couldn’t close the bloody door behind them.
Harry tried to force it, but it wouldn’t close. There was less than twenty centimetres to go, but unless the fridge was hermetically sealed they didn’t have a hope. The shock waves would burst the liver and the spleen, the heat would burn out the eyeballs, every unattached object in the room would turn into a bullet, a machine gun spraying salvos and lacerating everything to pieces.
He didn’t even need to make a decision, it was too late.
Which also meant there was nothing to lose.
Harry kicked the door open, jumped out, got behind the fridge and pushed it upright again. Saw from over the edge that Truls Berntsen had slid out onto the floor. Couldn’t help looking past him at the TV screen. The clock showed 00.00.12. Twelve seconds.
‘Sorry, Berntsen,’ Harry said.
Then he seized Berntsen around the chest, dragged him to his feet and backed into the upright fridge. Put his hand out past Truls, pulled the door half to. And began to rock. The heavy motor was so high up that the cabinet had a high centre of gravity, and that, he hoped, would help him.
The fridge tipped backwards. They were teetering on the cusp. Truls flopped against Harry.
They mustn’t fall that way!
Harry resisted, tried to push Truls back, against the door.
Then the fridge made up its mind, fell into place and tipped the other way.
Harry caught a final glimpse of the TV screen as the fridge toppled and fell forwards.
The breath was knocked out of him as they crashed to the floor, and he panicked as he couldn’t get any oxygen. But it was dark. Pitch black. The weight of the motor and the fridge had done what he hoped, closed the door against the floor.
Then the bomb went off.
Harry’s brain imploded, shut down.
Harry blinked into the darkness.
He must have been out for a few seconds.
His ears were howling and his face felt as if someone had thrown acid into it. But he was alive.
So far.
He needed air. Harry squeezed his hands between him and Truls, pressed his back against the back of the fridge and shoved as hard as he could. The fridge swung round on its hinges and fell on its side.
Harry rolled out. Stood up.
The room looked like some kind of dystopian wasteland, a grey dust-and-smoke hell, without a single identifiable object; even what once had been a fridge looked like something else. The metal door in the hall had been blown off its frame.
Harry left Berntsen where he was. Hoping only that the bastard was dead. Staggered down the steps, into the street.
Stood gazing down Hausmanns gate. Saw the sirens on the police cars, but heard only the whistling in his ears, like a printer without paper, an alarm that someone would have to switch off soon.
And while he stood there gazing at the silent police cars he had the same thought as when he had been listening for the metro in Manglerud. That he couldn’t hear. He couldn’t hear what he should have heard. Because he hadn’t been thinking. Until he had been in Manglerud and had considered where the Oslo metro network ran. And then he finally realised what it was, what had been submerged in the darkness and hadn’t wanted to surface. The forest. There was no metro in the forest.
46
MIKAEL BELLMAN STOPPED.
Listened and stared down the empty corridor.
Like a desert, he thought. Nothing to catch your eye, only a quivering white light that erased all contours.
And this sound, the vibrating hum of ne
on tubes, the desert heat, like a prelude to something that nonetheless never happens. Only an empty hospital corridor with nothing at the end. Perhaps it is all a Fata Morgana: Isabelle Skøyen’s solution to the Asayev problem, the phone call an hour ago, the thousand-krone notes that had just spewed out of an ATM in the city centre, this deserted corridor in an empty wing of the hospital.
Let it be a mirage, a dream, Mikael thought and started walking. But checked in his coat pocket that the safety catch on the Glock 22 was off. In the other pocket he had the wad of notes. If the situation demanded, he would have to pay up. If there were several of them, for example. But he didn’t think there would be. The amount was too small to be shared. The secret too great.
He passed a coffee machine, rounded a corner and saw the corridor continue with this same flat whiteness. But he also saw the chair. The chair that Asayev’s guard had sat on. It hadn’t been removed.
He turned to be sure that no one was behind him before he went on.
Took long paces and placed his soles softly, almost soundlessly, on the floor. Felt the doors as he passed. They were all locked.
Then he was there, in front of the door, by the chair. A sudden intu-ition made him put his left hand on the chair seat. Cold.
He took a deep breath in and his gun out. Looked at his hand. It wasn’t trembling, was it?
Best at decisive moments.
He put the gun back in his pocket, pressed the handle of the door, and it opened.
No reason to surrender whatever surprise element there was, Mikael Bellman thought, pushing open the door and stepping in.
The room was bathed in light but was empty and bare, apart from the bed where Asayev had been. It had been pushed into the centre of the room and there was a lamp over it. Beside it, sharp, polished instruments gleamed on a metal trolley. Perhaps they had converted the room into a basic operating theatre.
Mikael caught a movement behind the one window and his hand squeezed his gun as he squinted. Did he need glasses?
By the time he had focused, realised it was a reflection and the movement was behind him, it was much too late.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and reacted at once, but it was as if the stab of pain in his neck instantly severed the connection to his gun hand. And before the darkness descended he saw the man’s face close to his own in the black reflection from the window. It wore a green cap and a green mask over its mouth. Like a surgeon. A surgeon about to operate.
Katrine was too busy with the computer to react to the fact that she hadn’t received an answer from the person who had walked in behind her. But she repeated the question when the door closed, locking out the noises from the culvert.
‘Where have you been, Bjørn?’
She felt a hand on her shoulder and neck. And her first thought was that it was not at all unpleasant to feel a hot hand on the bare skin of her neck, a man’s friendly hand.
‘I’ve been to the crime scene to lay some flowers,’ the voice behind her said.
Katrine frowned in surprise.
No files found, the screen said. Really? No files anywhere showing the statistics for dead key witnesses? She pressed Harry’s name on the phone. The hand had started massaging her neck muscles. Katrine groaned, mostly to show she liked it, closed her eyes and leaned her head forward. Heard it ring at the other end.
‘Down a bit. Which crime scene?’
‘A country road. A girl. Hit-and-run. Never solved.’
Harry didn’t answer. Katrine took the phone from her ear and tapped in a message. No files found for statistic. Pressed Send.
‘That took a long time,’ Katrine. ‘What did you do afterwards?’
‘Helped the other person there,’ the voice said. ‘He broke down, you might say.’
Katrine had finished doing what she had to do, and it was as though the other things in the room finally had access to her senses. The voice, the hand, the aroma. She swivelled slowly in her chair. Looked up.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Who am I?’
‘Yes, you’re not Bjørn Holm.’
‘No?’
‘No. Bjørn Holm is prints, ballistics and blood. He doesn’t do massages that leave you with your mouth tasting of sugar. So, what is it you want?’
She saw the blush shoot up the pale, round face. The cod-eyes bulged even more than usual, and Bjørn drew back his hand and started frenetically scratching one mutton chop.
‘Er, well, sorry, I didn’t mean . . . I just . . . I . . .’
The redness of his cheeks and the stuttering became more intense until finally he just dropped his hand and looked at her with a desperate expression of capitulation. ‘Goddamn, Katrine, this is pathetic.’
Katrine looked at him. Started laughing. The prat looked so sweet when he was like that.
‘Did you drive here?’ she asked.
Truls Berntsen woke up.
Staring ahead of him, around him, everything was white and well lit. And he no longer felt any pain. On the contrary, it felt wonderful. White and wonderful. He had to be dead. Of course he was dead. Strange. Or even stranger that he had been sent to the wrong place. To the good place.
He felt his body turn. Perhaps he was a bit premature about the good place, he was still on the way there. And now he could hear sounds as well. The distant lament of a foghorn rising and falling. The ferryman’s foghorn.
Something appeared in front of him, something that shielded him from the light.
A face.
Another face appeared. ‘He can have more morphine if he starts screaming.’
And then Truls felt it return. The pain. His whole body ached, his head felt like it was about to explode.
They turned again. Ambulance. He was in an ambulance with its sirens wailing.
‘I’m Ulsrud from Kripos,’ the face above him said. ‘Your ID card says you’re Officer Truls Berntsen.’
‘What happened?’ Truls whispered.
‘A bomb went off. It smashed all the windowpanes in the neighbourhood. We found you in the fridge inside the flat. What happened?’
Truls closed his eyes and heard the question repeated. Heard the other man, presumably a medic, telling the policeman not to push the patient. Who after all was on morphine, so could make up anything he liked.
‘Where’s Hole?’ Truls whispered.
He noticed the bright light was blocked again. ‘What did you say, Berntsen?’
Truls tried to moisten his lips, feeling he had no lips to moisten.
‘The other guy. Was he in the fridge too?’
‘There was only you in the fridge, Berntsen.’
‘But he was there. He . . . he saved my life.’
‘If there was anyone else in the flat I’m afraid whoever it was is now new wallpaper and paint. Everything inside was blown to smithereens. Even the fridge you were in was pretty smashed up, so you’re lucky to be alive. If you can tell me who was behind the bomb we could start looking for him.’
Truls shook his head. Imagined he was shaking his head at least. He hadn’t seen him, he had been behind him when he led him from his own car to another where he had sat at the back with the gun trained on Truls’s head while Truls drove. Drove them to Hausmanns gate 92. An address so tainted with narcotic criminality he had almost forgotten it was a crime scene. Gusto. Of course. And it was then that he knew what until then he had managed to repress. That he was going to die. That it was the cop killer behind him as they went up the steps, in through the metal door, who taped him to the chair, staring at him from behind the green mask. Truls had watched him walk around the portable TV and insert a screwdriver, noticed that the counter, which had started working on the screen when the door closed behind them, had stopped and was then turned back to six minutes. A bomb. Then the man in green had taken out a baton, identical to the one he himself had used, and had started hitting Truls in the face. With concentration, without any visible enjoyment or emotional involvement. Light blows, not enough
to break bones, but enough to burst veins and arteries, swelling the face with the blood pouring out and lying beneath the skin. Then he had started to hit him harder. Truls had lost all feeling in his skin, he could only feel that it burst, could feel the blood running down his neck and chest, the dull pain in his head, in his brain – no, even deeper than his brain – whenever the baton landed. And he saw the man in green, a dedicated church bell-ringer convinced of the importance of his work, swinging the hammer at the inside of the bronze bell, as little jets of blood spattered Rorschach blots on the green smock. Heard the crunch of nasal bone and cartilage being crushed, felt his teeth crack and fill his mouth, felt his jaw loosen and hang from its own nerve fibres . . . and then – finally – everything went black.
Until he woke again, to the pains of hell, and he saw him without the surgeon outfit. Harry Hole standing in front of a fridge.
At first he was confused.
Then it seemed logical. Hole would want to dispatch someone who knew his litany of sins in such detail and he would disguise it as one of the police murders.
But Hole was taller than the other man. His expression was different. And Hole was clambering into a damn fridge. Fighting his way in. They were in the same boat. They were just two officers at the same crime scene. Who would die together. The two of them, what irony! If he hadn’t been in such pain he would have laughed.
Then Hole got out of the fridge, cut the tape and lifted him into the fridge. Which is more or less when he lost consciousness again.
‘Can I have some more morphine?’ Truls whispered, hoping he would be heard over the bloody sirens, waiting impatiently for the wave of well-being he knew would wash through his body, washing away the unnerving pain. And thought it had to be the drug that was making him think what he was thinking. Because actually it suited him down to the ground. Nevertheless he thought it anyway.
How irritating that Harry Hole should die like this.
Like a bloody hero.
Giving his place to, sacrificing himself for, an enemy.
And the enemy would have to cope with the fact that he was alive because a better man had chosen to die for him.
Truls felt it coming from the small of his back, the chill the pain was pushing ahead of it. To die for something, anything, just something different from the wretchedness which was yourself. Perhaps that was what this was about ultimately. In which case, fuck you, Hole.