by Jo Nesbo
Then he was lifted up and dropped and there was no time to wait for the pain as he landed softly, with a crunch. He stared up. He was lying on his back in the freezer; he could feel the ice that had broken off burn the skin on his forearms and face. Above him stood the monster with his head angled to one side.
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet on the other side before very long.’
The lid was slammed down and there was total darkness. Oleg could hear the key being turned in the lock and swift steps fading into the distance. He tried to lift his tongue, tried to get it behind the cloth, had to get it out. Had to breathe. Had to have air.
Rakel had stopped breathing. She stood in the bedroom doorway knowing that what she saw was insanity. An insanity that made her flesh creep, her mouth drop and her eyes bulge.
The bed and other furniture had been pushed against the walls, and the floor was covered by an almost invisible surface of water that was only broken when a new drop fell on it. But Rakel didn’t notice; the only thing she saw was the enormous snowman dominating the centre of the room.
The top hat on the head with the grinning mouth almost touched the ceiling.
When she finally recovered her breathing and the oxygen rushed to her brain she recognised the smell of wet wool and wet wood and heard the sound of melting snow dripping. A wave of cold surged towards her, but this was not what gave her goose pimples. It was the body heat of the man standing behind her.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ Mathias said. ‘I’ve made it just for you.’
‘Mathias …’
‘Shh.’ He placed a kind of protective arm around her throat. She looked down. The hand was holding a scalpel. ‘Don’t talk, my love. There’s so much to do and so little time.’
‘Why? Why?’
‘This is our day, Rakel. The rest of life is so unbelievably short, so let’s celebrate, not waste time explaining. Please put your arms behind your back.’
Rakel did as he said. She hadn’t heard Oleg come up from the cellar. Perhaps he was still in the cellar; perhaps he could get out if she could just detain Mathias. ‘I’d like to know why,’ she said and could hear emotion tugging at her vocal cords.
‘Because you’re a whore.’
She felt something thin and hard tighten around her wrists. Felt his warm breath on her neck. His lips. And then his tongue. She gritted her teeth, knowing that if she screamed he might stop and she wanted him to go on, to waste time. The tongue worked its way round and up to her ear. A little nibble.
‘And the son from your whoring is in the freezer,’ he whispered.
‘Oleg?’ she said, feeling herself lose control.
‘Relax, my darling, he won’t die of cold.’
‘Wo-won’t he?’
‘Long before his body has cooled down the son of a whore will have died from asphyxiation. It’s simple mathematics.’
‘Mathema –’
‘I did the calculations ages ago. It’s all calculated.’
A revving motorbike skidded up the winding roads of Holmenkollen in the dark. The roar reverberated between the houses and onlookers considered it madness in these snowy conditions. The rider should have his licence taken off him. But the rider didn’t have one.
Harry accelerated up the drive to the black timber house, but in the sharp turn the wheels spun on the fresh snow and he felt the bike losing speed. He didn’t try to correct the skid, he jumped off and the bike rolled down the slope, burst through a few low spruce branches before coming to a halt against a tree trunk, tipped onto its side and, spitting snow from the back wheel, breathed its last.
By then Harry was already halfway up the steps.
There were no footprints in the snow, neither to nor from the house. He took out his revolver as he bounded up to the door.
It was unlocked. As promised.
He slipped into the hall and the first thing he saw was the cellar door wide open.
Harry stopped to listen. There was a noise, a kind of drumming. It seemed to be coming from the kitchen. Harry hesitated. Then he opted for the cellar.
With his revolver pointing in front of him he sidled down the staircase. At the bottom he stopped to let his eyes get accustomed to the dark and listened. He had a sense that the whole room was holding its breath. He spotted the garden chair under the door handle. Oleg. His eyes delved further. He had decided to go upstairs again when his attention was caught by the dark stain on the brick floor by the freezer. Water? He took a step closer. It must have come from under the freezer. He forced his thoughts away from where they wanted to go and pulled at the lid. Locked. The key was in, but Rakel didn’t usually lock the freezer. Images from Finnøy emerged in his brain, but he hurried, twisted the key and lifted the lid.
Harry just caught the glint of metal from the murky depths before a burning pain in his face made him throw himself backwards. A knife? He had fallen on his back between two dirty-laundry baskets and a figure, speedy and nimble, was already out of the freezer and standing over him.
‘Police!’ Harry shouted and quickly raised his gun. ‘Don’t move!’
The figure stopped with one hand raised over his head. ‘H-Harry?’
‘Oleg?’
Harry lowered the revolver and saw what the boy was holding in his hand. A speed skate.
‘I … I thought Mathias had come back,’ he whispered.
Harry got to his feet. ‘Where is Mathias?’
‘I don’t know. He said we would meet soon, so I assumed …’
‘Where did the skate come from?’ Harry tasted metallic blood in his mouth and his fingers found the cut on his face, which was bleeding profusely.
‘It was in the freezer.’ Oleg gave a sly grin. ‘I was getting so much hassle for leaving the skates on the steps, so I keep them under the peas where Mum won’t see them. We never eat peas, as you know.’
He followed Harry who was already on his way up the stairs.
‘Luckily I’d had the blades sharpened, so I could cut the ties. The lock was impossible, but I managed to stab a couple of holes in the plate at the bottom to get some air. And I smashed the bulb so that the light wouldn’t come on when he opened the lid.’
‘And your body heat melted the ice that ran out of the hole,’ Harry said.
They emerged in the hall, and Harry pulled Oleg over to the front door, opened it and pointed.
‘See the neighbours’ light? Run over and stay there until I come and get you. OK?’
‘No!’ said Oleg firmly. ‘Mum –’
‘Shh! Now listen. The best thing you can do for your mum right now is to get away from here.’
‘I want to find her!’
Harry grabbed Oleg’s shoulders and squeezed until tears of pain formed in the boy’s eyes.
‘When I say run, you run, you bloody idiot.’
He said it in a low voice but with such repressed fury that Oleg blinked in confusion and a tear rolled over his eyelashes and onto his cheek. Then the boy turned on his heel, rushed out of the door and was swallowed up by the darkness and the driving snow.
Harry grabbed the walkie-talkie and pressed the talk button. ‘Harry here. Are you far away?’
‘We’re by the stadium. Over.’ Harry recognised Gunnar Hagen’s voice.
‘I’m inside,’ Harry said. ‘Drive up to the front of the house, but don’t enter until I say. Over.’
‘Roger.’
‘Over and out.’
Harry went towards the sound that was still coming from the kitchen. From the doorway he stood watching the thin stream of water falling from the ceiling. It had been tinted grey by the dissolved plaster and was drumming furiously on the kitchen table.
Harry took the staircase to the first floor in four long strides. Tiptoed to the bedroom door. Swallowed. Studied the door handle. From outside he could hear the distant sound of police sirens approaching. Blood from his cut dripped onto the parquet floor with a gentle plop.
He could feel it now, as pressure on
his temples; this was where it would end. And there was a kind of logic to it. How many times had he stood like this in front of the bedroom door, at daybreak, after a night when he had promised to be at home with her, how often had he stood there with a bad conscience knowing she was inside asleep? Carefully he pressed the door handle which he knew would creak halfway down. And she would wake up, look at him with sleepy eyes, try to punish him with her glare, until he slipped under the duvet, snuggled up to her body and felt its stiff resistance melt. And she would grunt with pleasure, but not too much pleasure. And then he would stroke her more, kiss and nibble at her, be her servant until she was sitting on him, no longer the queen in her slumbers, but purring and moaning, wanton and offended at the same time.
He closed his fist around the handle, noticed how his hand recognised the flat angular shape. He pressed with infinite care. Waited for the familiar creak. But it was not forthcoming. Something was different. There was resistance. Had someone tightened the springs? Gingerly, he let go. Stooped down to the keyhole and tried to peep in. Black. Someone had blocked the hole.
‘Rakel!’ he shouted. ‘Are you there?’
No answer. He placed his ear against the door. Thought he could hear a scratching sound, but wasn’t sure. He held the handle again. Wavered. Changed his mind, let go and hastened into the adjacent bathroom. Pushed open the little window, forced his body through and leaned out backwards. Light was streaming from between the black iron bars of the bedroom window. He wedged his heels against the inside of the frame, tensed his leg muscles and stretched out of the bathroom and along the outside wall. His fingers groped in vain to find a hold between the rough logs as the snow settled on his face and melted into the blood running down his cheek. He applied greater force; the window frame was pressing into his leg so hard it felt as if the bone would crack. His hands crept along the wall like frenetic five-legged spiders. His stomach muscles ached. But it was too far, he couldn’t reach. He stared down at the ground beneath him, knowing that under the thin layer of snow there was tarmac.
He felt something cold against his fingertips.
An iron bar.
Got two fingers round the bar. Three. Then the other hand. Let his aching legs swing free, dangled and hurriedly found a boothold to relieve the pressure on his arms. At last he could see into the bedroom. And he saw. His brain struggled to absorb the sight while it knew immediately what it was looking at: the finished work of art, the prototype of which he had already seen.
Rakel’s eyes were wide open and black. She was wearing a dress. Crimson. Like Campari. She was ‘cochineal’. Her head strained towards the ceiling as though she were standing by a fence trying to see over, and from this position she stared down and out at him. Her shoulders were pulled back and her arms hidden. Harry assumed her hands were tied behind her back. Her cheeks bulged as though she had a sock or a cloth in her mouth. She sat astride the shoulders of an enormous snowman. Her bare legs were crossed in front of the snowman’s chest, and he could see her tensed leg muscles quivering. She mustn’t fall. She couldn’t. For around her neck there was not a grey, lifeless wire, as with Eli Kvale, but a white glowing circle, like an absurd imitation of an old toothpaste advertisement promising a ring of confidence, good fortune in love and a long and happy life. A wire ran from the black handle of the cutting loop to a hook in the ceiling above Rakel’s head. The wire continued to the other end of the room, to the door. To the door handle. The wire was not thick, but long enough to have provided noticeably more resistance when Harry had begun to press the handle. If he had opened the door, indeed if he had even pressed the handle right down, the white glowing metal would have cut into her throat, right under her chin.
Rakel was staring back at Harry without blinking. The muscles in her face were twitching, alternating between fury and naked fear. The loop was too narrow for her to remove her head unscathed; instead she held her head down so that it did not touch the death-bringing glow that hung almost vertically around her neck.
She looked at Harry, down at the floor and back to Harry. And Harry understood.
Grey clumps of snow were already lying in the water covering the floor. The snowman was melting. Fast.
Harry got a good foothold and shook the bars as hard as he could. They didn’t budge, didn’t even offer a hopeful creak. The iron was thin but firmly attached to the timber.
The figure inside was swaying.
‘Hold on!’ Harry shouted. ‘I’ll be there soon!’
Lies. He wouldn’t even be able to bend the bars with an iron lever. And he didn’t have time to start sawing them off. Fuck her father, the mad bastard! His arms were aching. He heard the ear-piercing siren of the first car turning into the drive. He looked round. It was one of Delta’s special vehicles, a large, armoured beast of a Land Rover. A man dressed in a green flak jacket jumped out of the passenger seat, took cover behind the vehicle and held up a walkie-talkie. Harry’s handset crackled.
‘Hello!’ Harry shouted.
The man, taken aback, looked left and right.
‘Up here, boss.’
Gunnar Hagen straightened up behind the vehicle as a patrol car swung up in front of the house with the blue light swirling.
‘Should we storm the house?’ Hagen shouted.
‘No!’ screamed Harry. ‘He’s got her strung up. Just …’
‘Just?’
Harry raised his eyes, stared. Not down to the city, but up to the illuminated Holmenkollen ski jump further up the ridge.
‘Just what, Harry?’
‘Just wait.’
‘Wait?’
‘I have to think.’
Harry rested his forehead against the cold bars. His arms were aching and he bent his knees to put most of his body weight on his legs. The cutting loop must have an off switch. On the plastic handle, probably. They could smash the window and poke a long pole in with a mirror attached so that they could perhaps … But how the hell would they be able to press the off switch without everything moving and … and …? Harry tried not to think about the ludicrously thin layer of skin and soft tissue that protected the carotid artery. Tried to think constructively and ignore the panic that was roaring in his ears telling him to get in and take control.
They could enter through the door. Without opening it. Just saw away the panel. They needed a chainsaw. But who would have one? Only the whole of bloody Holmenkollen. After all, they’ve each got a spruce forest in their garden.
‘Get hold of a chainsaw from the neighbour’s house,’ Harry yelled.
Down below he heard the sound of running. And a splash inside the bedroom. Harry’s heart stopped and he stared in. The whole of the snowman’s left side was gone. It had sheered off and landed in the water. The snowman was collapsing. He saw Rakel’s whole body tremble as she fought to maintain her balance to keep away from the white, tear-shaped gallows noose. They would never get back with the chainsaw in time, let alone cut through the door.
‘Hagen!’ Harry heard the shrill hysteria in his own voice. ‘The patrol cars have got a tow rope. Sling it up here and reverse the Land Rover to the wall.’
Harry heard a buzz of voices, the Land Rover’s engine revving in reverse and a car boot being opened.
‘Catch!’
Harry let go of the bar with one hand and turned to see the coiled rope coming towards him. He lunged in the dark, caught it and held on as the rest unfurled and fell back down to the ground with a thud.
‘Tie the end to the tow bar.’
There was a carbine hook attached to his end of the rope. As quick as lightning he smacked the hook against the junction of the bars in the middle of the window and the lock snapped shut. Speed-cuffing.
Another splash from inside the bedroom. Harry didn’t look. There was no point.
‘Go!’ he yelled.
Then he grabbed the edge of the gutter with both hands, using the bars as a ladder, and heard the Land Rover’s revs increase as he swung himself onto the roof. With hi
s chest on the roof tiles and his eyes closed he could hear the motor engage, the rev count fall and the iron bars groan. More groaning. And more. Come on! Harry was aware that time was passing more slowly than he thought. And yet not slowly enough. Then – as he was waiting for the auspicious crack – the rev count suddenly rose to a ferocious whine. Shit! Harry realised the tyres of the Land Rover were spinning round helplessly.
A thought fluttered through his brain: he could say a prayer. But he knew that God had made up His mind, that destiny was sold out, that this ticket would have to be bought on the black market. But his soul wouldn’t be worth much without her anyway. The thought was gone that very same second, interrupted by the sound of rubber on tarmac, a sinking rev count and an increasing groan.
The big heavy tyres had spun their way down to the tarmac.
Then came the crack. The rev count roared and died. A second of total silence followed. And then a hollow crash as the bars hit the car roof below.
Harry pushed himself up. He stood with his back to the yard on the edge of the gutter and felt it give way. Then he bent down, grabbed the gutter with both hands and kicked off. Swung like a pendulum from gutter to window. Jack-knifed. The moment the old, thin windowpane gave with a tinkle under his boots Harry let go. And for a few tenths of a second he had no idea where he would land: down in the yard, on the jagged glass teeth of the window or in the bedroom.
There was a bang, a fuse must have gone, and everything went black.
Harry sailed through a room of nothing, felt nothing, remembered nothing, was nothing.
