by Jo Nesbo
And when the light came back on his only thought was that he wanted to return to that space. Pain radiated from all over his body. He was lying on his back in icy-cold water. But he must have been dead because he was looking up at an angel dressed in blood red, seeing her shining halo glow in the dark. Slowly sound returned. The scratching. The breathing. Then he saw the distorted face, the panic, the gaping mouth stuffed with the yellow ball, the feet scrambling up the snow. He just wanted to close his eyes. A noise, like low moaning. Wet snow crumbling.
In retrospect, Harry couldn’t really account for what happened; he could only remember the nauseating smell as the cutting loop burned through flesh.
At the very moment the snowman collapsed he stood up. Rakel fell forward. Harry raised his right hand as he fastened his left arm around her thighs to hold her up. He knew it was too late. Flesh sizzled, his nostrils were filled with a sweet, greasy smell and blood ran down his face. He looked up. His right hand was situated between the white glow of the loop and her neck. The weight of her neck forced his hand down against the white-hot wire which ate through the flesh of his fingers like an egg slicer through a hard-boiled egg. And when it was right through it would cut open her throat. The pain came, delayed and dull, like an initially reluctant then insistent steel hammer on an alarm clock. He fought to stay upright. Had to have his left hand free. Blinded by blood, he hauled her up onto his shoulders and stretched his free hand over his head. Felt her skin against his fingertips, her thick hair, felt the loop burn into his skin before his hand found the hard plastic, the handle. His fingers found a flip switch. Moved it to the right. But stopped as soon as the noose started tightening. His fingers found another switch and pressed. The sounds disappeared, the light flickered and he knew he was on the point of losing consciousnessness again. Breathe, he thought, the important thing was to get oxygen to the brain. But his knees were giving way nevertheless. The white glow above him changed to red. And then gradually to black.
At his back he heard the sound of glass being crushed under several pairs of boot heels.
‘We’ve got her,’ a voice said behind him.
Harry sank to his knees in the blood-tinged water, with clumps of snow and unused plastic ties floating around him. His brain engaged and disengaged as if the power supply to it were failing.
Someone said something behind him. He caught fragments of it, inhaled air and groaned, ‘What?’
‘She’s alive,’ the voice repeated.
His hearing stabilised. And sight. He turned. The two men clad in black had laid Rakel on the bed and cut the plastic ties. The contents of Harry’s stomach came up without warning. Two heaves and it was all out. He stared down at the vomit floating in the water and felt a hysterical urge to laugh out loud. Because the finger seemed to have been spewed up with everything else. He lifted his right hand and looked at the bleeding stump as confirmation. It was his finger floating in the water.
‘Oleg …’ It was Rakel’s voice.
Harry picked up a plastic tie, wrapped it round the stump of his middle finger and tightened it as hard as he could. Did the same with his index finger which had been sliced through to the bone but was still firmly attached.
Then he went to the bed, spread the duvet over Rakel and sat beside her. The eyes staring up at him were large and black with shock, and blood ran from the wounds where the loop had come into contact with the skin on both sides of her neck. He took her hand with his uninjured left.
‘Oleg,’ she repeated.
‘He’s OK,’ Harry said and responded to her hand pressure. ‘He’s with the neighbours. It’s over now.’
He saw her trying to focus her eyes.
‘Promise me?’ she whispered, barely audible.
‘I promise you.’
‘Thank God.’
She sobbed once, buried her face in her hands and began to cry.
Harry looked down at his injured hand. Either the ties had stopped the bleeding or he was empty.
‘Where’s Mathias?’ he said quietly.
Her head bobbed up, and she gawped at him. ‘You just promised me that –’
‘Where did he go, Rakel?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he say anything?’
Her hand squeezed his. ‘Don’t go now, Harry. I’m sure someone else can –’
‘What did he say?’
He could tell by the way her body recoiled that he had raised his voice.
‘He said that it was finished now and he would bring it to a conclusion,’ she said as tears welled in her dark eyes again. ‘And that the end would be a homage to life.’
‘A homage to life? Those were the words he used?’
She nodded. Harry loosened his hand from hers, stood up and went to the window. Scoured the night sky. It had stopped snowing. He looked up at the illuminated monument that could be seen from almost everywhere in Oslo. The ski jump. Like a white comma against the black ridge. Or a full stop.
Harry went back to her bedside, bent down and kissed her on the forehead.
‘Where are you going?’ she whispered.
Harry raised the bloodstained hand and smiled. ‘ To see a doctor.’
He left the room. Stumbled down the stairs. Came out into the cold, white darkness of the yard, but the nausea and giddiness would not release their grip.
Hagen stood beside the Land Rover talking on a mobile phone.
He broke off the conversation and nodded when Harry asked if they could drive him.
Harry sat in the back. He was thinking about how Rakel had thanked God. She couldn’t know, of course, that someone else deserved her thanks. Or that the buyer had accepted the offer. And that payback time had already started.
‘Down to the city centre?’ the driver asked.
Harry shook his head and pointed upwards. The right index finger looked strangely alone between the thumb and the ring finger.
36
DAY 21.
The Tower.
IT TOOK THREE MINUTES TO DRIVE FROM RAKEL’S HOUSE TO Holmenkollen ski jump. They drove through the tunnel and parked on the viewing promontory among the souvenir shops. The slope looked like a frozen white waterfall that plunged down between the stands and broadened into a flat out-run a hundred metres below.
‘How do you know he’s here?’ Hagen asked.
‘Because he told me he would be,’ Harry said. ‘We were sitting by a skating rink and he said the day his life’s work was over and he was so ill he was close to death he would jump from that tower there. As a homage to life.’ Harry pointed to the illuminated ski tower and the in-run soaring up against the black sky above them. ‘And he knew I would remember.’
‘Insane,’ whispered Gunnar Hagen peering up at the darkened glass cage perched on the top of the tower.
‘Could I borrow your handcuffs?’ Harry asked, turning to the driver.
‘You’ve already got some,’ Hagen said, nodding towards Harry’s right wrist where he had attached one cuff. The other hung open. ‘I’d like two pairs,’ Harry said, taking the leather case from the driver. ‘Can you help me? I’m a couple of fingers short here …’
Hagen shook his head as he attached half of the driver’s handcuffs around Harry’s other wrist.
‘I’m not happy with you going on your own. It frightens me.’
‘There’s not a lot of room up there and I can talk to him.’ Harry produced Katrine’s revolver. ‘And I’ve got this.’
‘That’s what frightens me, Harry.’
Inspector Hole sent his boss a quick glance before twisting round and opening the car door with his healthy hand.
The police officer accompanied Harry to the entrance of the Skiing Museum which he had to pass through to get to the tower lift. They had taken along a crowbar to smash in the door. But as they approached, the torch light caught fragments of glass glinting on the floor over by the ticket counter. A distant alarm was inhaling and exhaling with a howl somewhere inside the museum.
>
‘OK, so we know our man’s here,’ Harry said, making sure his revolver was in position at the back of his waistband. ‘Place two men by the rear exit as soon as the next patrol car arrives.’
Harry took the torch, stepped into the dark rooms and hurried past the posters and pictures of Norwegian ski heroes, Norwegian flags, Norwegian ski grease, Norwegian kings and Norwegian Crown princesses, all accompanied by succinct texts proclaiming that Norway was one hell of a nation, and Harry remembered why he had never been able to stomach this museum.
The lift was right at the back. A narrow, enclosed lift. Harry studied the lift door. Felt the cold sweat on his skin. There was a steel staircase next to it.
Eight landings later he regretted his decision. Dizziness and nausea had returned and he was retching. The sound of footsteps on metal echoed up and down the flight of stairs, and the handcuffs dangling from his wrists played iron pipe music against the handrail. His heart ought to have been pumping adrenalin and preparing his body for action at this point. Perhaps he was too drained, too spent. Or perhaps he knew it was all over. The game was up, the outcome obvious.
Harry went on. Set his feet down on the steps, didn’t even bother to try to be quiet, knew he had been heard ages ago.
The staircase led directly to the dark cage. Harry switched off his torch and felt a cold current of air as soon as his head appeared above the floor. Pale moonlight fell into the room. It was about four metres square with glass all round and a steel railing that tourists clung onto with a mixture of terror and joy as they enjoyed the view of Oslo or imagined what it must be like to set off down the in-run on skis. Or fall off the tower, sink like a stone towards the houses and be smashed between the trees far below them.
Harry climbed to the top step, turned to the silhouette outlined against the blanket of light which was the town beneath. The figure was sitting on the railing, framed in the large open window from where the cold air was flowing.
‘Beautiful, eh?’ Mathias’s voice sounded light, almost cheerful.
‘If it’s the view you mean, I agree.’
‘I didn’t mean the view, Harry.’
One of Mathias’s feet was dangling outside, and Harry was standing by the stairs.
‘Did you or the snowman kill her, Harry?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you did it. After all, you’re a clever guy. I was counting on you. Feels dreadful, doesn’t it? Of course, it’s not so easy to see the beauty then. When you’ve just killed the person you love most.’
‘Well,’ Harry said, taking a step closer, ‘I don’t suppose you would know much about that, would you.’
‘Wouldn’t I?’ Mathias leaned his head back against the frame and laughed. ‘I loved the first woman I killed more than anything else on this earth.’
‘So why did you do it?’ Harry felt a stab of pain as he moved his right hand behind his back and round the revolver.
‘Because my mother was a liar and a whore,’ Mathias said.
Harry swung his hand round and raised the revolver. ‘Come down from there, Mathias. With your hands in the air.’
Mathias eyed Harry with curiosity. ‘Do you know there’s a twenty per cent chance that your mother was the same, Harry? A twenty per cent chance that you’re the son of a whore. What do you say to that?’
‘You heard me, Mathias.’
‘Let me make it easier for you, Harry. Firstly, I refuse to obey. Secondly, you can say you couldn’t see my hands, so I could have been armed. Right, fire away, Harry.’
‘Get down.’
‘Rakel was a whore, Harry. And Oleg’s the son of a whore. You should thank me for letting you kill her.’
Harry switched the gun to his left hand. The loose ends of the handcuffs banged against each other.
‘Think about it, Harry. If you arrest me I’ll be declared of unsound mind, pampered in some psychiatric ward for a few years before being released. Shoot me now.’
‘You want to die,’ Harry said, moving nearer. ‘Because you’re going to die of scleroderma.’
Mathias smacked a hand against the window frame. ‘Well done, Harry. You checked what I said about antibodies in my blood.’
‘I asked Idar. And afterwards I researched scleroderma. If you’ve got the disease it’s easy to choose another death. For example, a spectacular death that would appear to crown this so-called life’s work of yours.’
‘I can hear your contempt, Harry. But one day you’ll understand, too.’
‘Understand what?’
‘That we were in the same business, Harry. Fighting disease. But the diseases you and I are fighting can’t be eradicated. All victories are temporary. So it’s just the fight which is our life’s work. And mine finishes here. Don’t you want to shoot me, Harry?’
Harry met Mathias’s eyes. Then he turned the revolver round in his hand. Held it out to Mathias, butt first. ‘Do it yourself, you bastard.’
Mathias frowned. Harry saw the hesitation, the suspicion. Which gradually gave way to a smile.
‘As you wish.’ Mathias stretched across the railing and took the weapon. Caressed the black steel.
‘You made a great error there, my friend,’ he said, pointing the revolver at Harry. ‘You’ll make a nice full stop, Harry. The guarantee that my work will not be forgotten.’
Harry stared into the black muzzle watching the hammer raise its ugly little head. Everything seemed to move slower and the room began to revolve. Mathias took aim. Harry took aim. And swung his right arm. The handcuff made a low whine through the air as Mathias pressed the trigger. The dry click was followed by a metallic smack as the open cuff struck his wrist.
‘Rakel survived,’ Harry said. ‘You failed, you satanic bastard.’
Harry saw Mathias’s eyes widen. Then narrow. Saw them stare at the revolver that had not fired, at the iron around his wrist binding him to Harry.
‘You … you removed the bullets.’
Harry shook his head. ‘Katrine Bratt never had bullets in her revolver.’
Mathias looked up at Harry and leaned backwards. ‘Come on.’
Then he jumped.
Harry was jerked forward and lost his balance. He tried to hold on but Mathias was too heavy and Harry a diminished giant, weakened by the loss of flesh and blood. The policeman screamed as he was dragged over the steel rail and sucked towards the window and the abyss. What he saw as he threw his free left arm above his head and behind him was a chair leg and himself sitting alone in a filthy windowless bedsit in Cabrini Green in Chicago. Harry heard the sound of metal on metal, then he tumbled through the night in free fall. The game was at an end now.
Gunnar Hagen stared at the ski jump tower but the swirling snowflakes that had started again obscured his vision.
‘Harry!’ he repeated on his walkie-talkie. ‘Are you there?’
He released the button, but again the answer was intense rustling nothingness.
There were four patrol cars in the open car park by the jump now, and total confusion had reigned when they had heard the scream from the tower a few seconds before.
‘They fell,’ said the officer beside him. ‘I’m sure I saw two figures falling out of the glass cage.’
Gunnar Hagen lowered his head in resignation. He didn’t quite know how or why, but for a moment it seemed to him there was an absurd logic in things ending this way; there was a kind of cosmic balance.
Nonsense. What utter nonsense.
Hagen couldn’t see the police vehicles in the drifting snow, but he could hear the lament of the sirens, like wailing women; they were already on their way. And he knew that the sound would attract the scavengers: the media vultures, the nosy neighbours, the bloodthirsty bosses. They would come to get their favourite titbit off the body, their delicacy. And this evening’s two-course meal – the repugnant snowman and the repugnant policeman – would be to their liking. There was no logic, no balance, just hunger and food. Hagen’s walkie-talkie crackled.
‘We can’t find them! Over.’
Hagen waited, wondering how he would tell his superiors that he had let Harry go alone. How he would explain that he was only Harry’s superior, not his boss and never had been. And that there was a logic there too, and that actually he didn’t give a stuff whether they understood or not.
‘What’s going on?’
Hagen turned. It was Magnus Skarre.
‘Harry fell,’ Hagen said, nodding towards the tower. ‘They’re searching for the body now.’
‘Body? Of Harry? No chance.’
‘No chance?’
Hagen turned to Skarre who was squinting up at the tower. ‘I thought you’d have known the guy by now, Hagen.’
Hagen could feel that despite everything he envied the young officer his conviction.
The walkie-talkie crackled again. ‘They’re not here!’
Skarre turned to him, their eyes met and Skarre rolled his shoulders in a What-did-I-tell-you? shrug.
‘Hey, you!’ Hagen shouted to the Land Rover driver and pointed at the searchlight on the roof. ‘Shine it on the glass cage. And get hold of some binoculars for me.’
A few seconds later a beam cut through the night.
‘Can you see anything?’ Skarre asked.
‘Snow,’ Hagen said, pressing the binoculars against his eyes. ‘Shine a bit higher. Stop! Wait … My God!’
‘What?’
‘Well, I’ll be damned.’
At that moment the snow retreated like a stage curtain being drawn. Hagen heard several policemen shout. It looked like two men shackled together were dangling from the rear-view mirror of a car. The lower of the two held a hand above his head in a kind of triumphant flourish; the other had both arms stretched out vertically as if he were being crucified sideways. And both were lifeless, with sunken heads as they slowly gyrated in the air.
Through the binoculars Hagen could see the handcuff holding Harry’s left hand to the railing on the inside of the glass cage.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Hagen repeated.
As chance would have it, the young officer from the Missing Persons Unit, Thomas Helle, was crouched down by Harry Hole when he regained consciousness. Four policemen had hauled him and Mathias Lund-Helgesen back up into the glass cage. And in the years to come Helle would tell the story of the infamous inspector’s strange first reactions again and again.
