Trophy

by Steffen Jacobsen

  ‘Grab hold of my foot! Take a deep breath, close your eyes and follow me, Lene, now, it’s our only chance! Understand?’

  He blinked away his tears and could see that she nodded with her eyes closed. She breathed in.

  The heat was dense and textured like a wall. Michael pushed aside tables and chairs and burned his palms; his eyeballs dried out and shrank in the fierce heat and he struggled to see. It was Lene who located the iron ring that was sunk into the floorboards and who managed to raise the heavy trapdoor to the crawlspace under the kitchen. She must be incredibly strong, he thought. She slid down the short ladder on her stomach and Michael followed right behind her.

  There was air down there and they curled up, coughing, pumping oxygen to their lungs while the tears flowed. He was able to see again and gazed at the white trails that the tears drew down her sooty face. Her hair was still filled with glass fragments. The floor groaned and warped above them when more of the roof fell into the kitchen and a cloud of sparks landed on Michael’s back. He instinctively rolled onto the concrete and threw his shoulders against the floor to extinguish the embers. Lene pulled him towards the wall and away from the trapdoor.

  He hawked, spat soot out of his mouth and got up on his hands and knees.

  ‘I’ve got to get back up there,’ he grunted.

  ‘What?! What did you just say?’

  ‘Got to go back up. The CD.’

  ‘No!’

  He pulled off his anorak and wrapped it around his head. She tried to restrain him, but he pushed aside her hands and began climbing the ladder. The top steps were on fire.

  Michael raised his head up above the floor and felt like a clay figure in a kiln. He watched the hairs on his hands curl up and fall off. The once white kitchen walls were blackened, golden and ablaze. He hadn’t known that stone and mortar could burn like that. He stuck his head back down in the basement, swallowed a mouthful of air and went back up straight away because he knew he would never be able to do it if he allowed himself time to think. He crawled across the black, smouldering floorboards and spotted the computer under one of the Tripp Trapp highchairs. Without thinking he reached for it and howled in agony when melting plastic stuck to his fingers and palms. He grabbed a tea towel, wrapped it around the laptop and dragged it back to the trapdoor. Michael had almost reached the ladder when something heavy and burning crashed down from the roof and landed diagonally across his shoulders. He couldn’t move and knew that the clothes on his back were on fire. He pushed the laptop towards the opening and spotted Lene’s face in the gap.

  Michael stared at her, and signalled that he very much wanted her to take the damned laptop, disappear with it and leave him to his fate.

  Small, blue flames started frizzing her hair, but she reached her arms across the floor, got a hold of his shoulders and the anorak around his head, and dragged him across the floorboards and down through the hole. The trapdoor slammed shut behind them.

  He hit the concrete floor in the basement headfirst and was granted a few seconds of merciful darkness. He desperately wanted a break, some peace and quiet, but it was not to be. She was just as brutal as he knew she would be. She kept hitting him on the back with the palms of her hands; she pulled the anorak off his head and continued putting out the flames in his shirt and hair.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ he mumbled.

  She wouldn’t appear to have heard him because he was dragged further into the darkness and laid down along an end wall where there was still a small amount of oxygen. Then the indefatigable superintendent started bashing the water pipes under the ceiling with a hammer she must have found down there.

  A dazed Michael watched her efforts uncomprehendingly until she suddenly cried out in triumph. Something metallic gave way with a welcome bang and cold, wonderfully cold, water splashed down in a wide, hard stream from the broken water pipe. He elbowed closer, stuck his face under the water and let it wash over his back.

  He had never been this close to paradise before and knew that he never would be again.

  Lene sat with her back to the wall. She had pulled her knees up to her chest and poked her head straight into the jet. She smiled. Michael smiled too. The water rose and it was black and filled with golden reflections from the fire raging above them because strips of light fell through the floor planks. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

  Then he rolled onto his back and sat up.

  The laptop.

  He looked around frantically and spotted it on an old crate. He put it on his lap, out of the water’s reach, opened the lid, and saw with almost religious awe the little lamps and buttons glow white and blue under the keyboard.

  He clicked the CD out of the drive and looked around for something that could protect it from the fire and water. He emptied a plastic bag of old toys, carefully wrapped the bag around the disc and his wallet, and stuck it into what was left of his anorak. The water now reached to his knees and poured foaming white from the broken pipe with remarkable force. He drank a little from his cupped hands and looked at Lene who was still sitting up against the wall, now resting her chin on her chest and with her eyes closed.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  She raised her head and looked at him. Her face was ghostly white and occasionally golden when the reflected flames danced across it.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she mumbled. ‘How did they know we were here?’

  Michael flinched instinctively every time something heavy hit the floor above him. He reached out his hand and touched the rough floorboards with his fingertips. They were warm, and the ladder below the trapdoor was steaming, hissing and contracting.

  ‘Your boss’s car,’ he said. ‘I was an idiot; I should have checked it for GPS transmitters.’

  ‘So they could have attacked us in the scout hut while we were asleep. While you were asleep!’

  He shook his head. ‘They had no reason to harm us until we found Kim Andersen’s hiding place. In their own insane way they’re rational, so they must have been disappointed that they failed to scare you off.’

  The water now reached up to his armpits. He let his hands glide through it and clenched and unclenched his fists. Right now they didn’t hurt, but he knew that the pain would return later when they dried.

  ‘I’m thinking of something,’ he said a little later. ‘Or rather … two things, Lene.’

  She smiled. She actually had a lovely smile, he thought.

  ‘Two things? Well done, Michael.’

  His hands were like two white fish in the black water.

  ‘Yes. One, we’re going to drown shortly, which is ridiculous and also really rather embarrassing. Drowning in a burning house – I mean, who does that. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  Lene considered it before she nodded. The water now reached up to her chin.

  ‘It is a bit ridiculous, Michael. What was the second thing?’

  ‘I don’t understand why we can still breathe. It shouldn’t be possible because the fire should already have consumed all the oxygen down here. Technically, we should have died a few minutes ago. At least.’

  He pulled one hand out of the water and looked at it. It dried faster on one side than the other. Down here in their sanctuary there was a draught. Above them the fire sucked up all the oxygen there was, but it also drew fresh air through the crawlspace from another source.

  ‘Perhaps we should turn off the water,’ she suggested.

  ‘Yes, if you would be so kind.’ He nodded amicably and lifted up his chin. He was floating now and his forehead bumped against the warm floor planks above him.

  Armed with her hammer Lene made her way through the water. She located the broken pipe and covered the hole with her hands. The water flowed with undiminished force past her palms. She tried pressing the handle of the hammer into the pipe, but the pipe simply broke off near the wall. The pipe would appear to have been badly corroded.

  ‘It’s not going very well,’ she said.

  ‘I
f you try to locate the grille,’ Michael said, ‘I’ll try to stop the water.’

  She nodded and moved slowly through the black and orange water with her nose above the surface. There were only ten centimetres between the water and the burning kitchen floor.

  Michael covered the pipe stump with his hands and managed to stop the flow, but water continued to seep in from the crumbling wall in several places. He fumbled for anything he could find in the water and got hold of some wet newspaper which he squashed into a ball and pressed against the hole where the pipe used to be. He couldn’t turn around, but he could hear Lene gurgle as she bashed away at the wall at the end of the crawlspace.

  ‘I think you need to hurry up,’ he called out in desperation.

  She made no reply, but started hacking at something that resisted. Michael stretched out in the water, succeeded in pressing the soles of his feet against the opposing wall and forcied the ball of newspaper into the open pipe until his arms quivered.

  ‘Now!’ she shouted.

  He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and kept pushing. There was no more clear space in the basement, they were both underwater and the only air he had left was in his lungs. He could feel air bubbles seep from his nose and disappear past his eyes and forehead. His badly scorched lungs stung and strange visions started playing at the back of his eyelids. His arms let go, he flapped impotently through the water, but he had neither the energy nor the willpower to find the pipe again. His oxygen-starved brain was shutting down in preparation for unconsciousness and the great darkness. He thought about Sara, their children running across the lawn in front of their house, and he smiled to them from the garden gate, the warm sunshine, he would just wave to them and then be on his way …

  Michael gulped helplessly and could do nothing but take the last, big, final breath which would fill his lungs with water.

  But it wasn’t cold water that flowed into his empty lungs; it was air – lovely, lovely, sooty, warm and filthy air, that couldn’t have tasted any better if he had been in the Alps. He tried breathing again and more of it came. Lots.

  He opened his eyes, kicked off with his legs and drifted down to Lene’s head.

  Michael embraced her wet figure and, little by little, his embrace was reciprocated. Just.

  Her eyes glittered yellow and green, but her face was waxy and her teeth chattered from the cold.

  She took his hand and guided it to an opening in the wall. Somehow she had managed to tear out the grille between the crawlspace and Kim Andersen’s hideout, and smash through part of the breezeblock wall, so the water could drain out of the basement.

  ‘The water is no longer rising,’ she called out.

  ‘Can we get through there?’ he asked.

  She pressed the hammer against his chest under the water.

  ‘Your turn,’ she said.

  *

  The remains of the roof collapsed with a boom that could be felt through the soles of their feet. Sparks whirled up against the dark sky and were snapped up by the light breeze. The sky was orange and deep blue. The two men in the forest heard the sirens in the distance and saw the first orange and blue flashing lights through the trees.

  ‘They’re finished,’ the taller of them said.

  ‘About bloody time,’ the other said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  He pulled a mobile out of his pocket and looked at the screen.

  ‘It’s a client,’ he said. ‘An Englishman. Norwegian ancestry. Magnusson. An oil man from Aberdeen. Big shot. Filthy rich.’

  ‘Has he been checked out?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They started walking. They still carried their automatic carbines ready and loaded. The barrels were smoking hot.

  ‘What does he want?’ the smaller of the two men asked.

  ‘One, preferably two.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He likes Norway and Finland. Alaska, possibly.’

  ‘Let’s find him a treat,’ the other said. ‘Fancy a trip to Norway?’

  Chapter 46

  ‘Is that her? Kim’s wife?’ Michael asked, and hugged himself tightly. The shivers came and went. Right now they were very violent and he could barely talk.

  ‘That’s Louise Andersen. Kim’s widow. And her children.’

  Lene was also shivering like a wet dog.

  The cottage was still burning under the long cascading jets of water from the fire hoses. Wherever the water landed, sparks flew and white steam rose towards the sky, which was cloudless and clear.

  He leaned against the nearest tree and watched a young, slim woman, with two small children pressed against her legs. The younger, a girl, had wrapped her arms around her mother’s legs and refused to look, while the boy stared numbly at the fire with a thumb in his mouth. The woman just stood there, her face impossible to interpret in the flickering light.

  The ambulance had left and the bearded police officer and the dog handler stood with their hands in their pockets, saying nothing – silent, black silhouettes against the flashing blue light from the patrol car.

  Finally, the last big flames began to die down. Clouds of sparks settled on the ground and the firemen reduced the pressure of the jets.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Lene said. ‘I’m freezing cold.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They walked in among the trees and in a wide curve behind the meadow. They stooped as they walked, lost in their own private world. Michael kept checking if the CD was still in his inside pocket, one of the few parts of his anorak still intact.

  They had had a brief, heated exchange, teeth chattering, about whether they should make themselves known to the firemen and the officers from Holbæk Police or simply disappear. Michael preferred the latter. Being dead gave you a certain amount of leeway, he argued; room for manoeuvre that he regarded as essential right now. Lene had given in eventually, but whether it was because of his powers of persuasion, or because she was too exhausted to carry on arguing with him, was hard to say.

  They left the forest a few hundred metres from the lay-by and ran the last stretch. Lene’s numb fingers dropped the car keys and Michael picked them up and managed on his third attempt to unlock the car. He sat down behind the steering wheel while she curled up on the passenger seat next to him. He started the car, turned the heating to maximum and held his hands above the warm air vents. Flat white blisters had started forming on his fingers and palms, but they didn’t hurt very much.

  ‘The seat heating! Hurry up,’ she urged him.

  ‘Hang on …’

  Michael turned off the engine when he saw the fire engines and the patrol car in the rear-view mirror pull out onto the main road with their flashing lights switched off. Shortly afterwards a white Alfa Romeo appeared, indicating right before disappearing behind a hill.

  ‘The wedding present?’ he asked.

  ‘Was it a white Alfa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She paid a high price for that,’ she said. ‘Let’s drive. It’ll help us warm up.’

  ‘Lene …’

  ‘Sorry. The GPS transmitter. I had forgotten all about it.’

  ‘Unless we have a serious death wish, we have to leave here on foot. I don’t know about you, but I was actually hoping to live a little longer.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ she asked. ‘We can arrest Thomas Berg. We have the film …’

  ‘And the others? He can’t be the only one left,’ Michael said.

  ‘I expect he’ll confess.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it. They have their crazy warrior code. I want to get everyone who belongs to that insane organization. Dead or alive. Thomas Berg clearly isn’t the only one. There were at least two of them at the cottage.’

  ‘Dead or alive?’ she asked.

  ‘Exactly. Preferably the latter. But the former will do.’

  She was silent for a long time. Perhaps she was thinking about her daughter. Then she took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes, Michael. Okay. So what do we do now?’

  ‘We walk.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the scout hut,’ he said.

  ‘But they know about the hut!’

  ‘They think we’re dead. So why would they watch it?’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘I hope,’ he admitted.

  ‘How about a hotel?’ she pleaded. ‘A lovely, warm hotel with real beds and duvets and … room service … and …’

  ‘We’re dead, Lene. Dead people don’t book hotel rooms.’

  She gave him a hateful stare.

  ‘If you have a better idea, then by all means let me hear it,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t think. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I miss my daughter.’

  ‘She’s fine, Lene,’ Michael said. ‘Flying her to Greenland was a good idea. It really was.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure.’

  She pulled her wet jacket around her more tightly.

  ‘Five more minutes?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Five more minutes won’t make any difference.’

  *

  They changed into dry clothes from the supplies Michael had bought earlier that morning. Lene went behind some trees to change and Michael shook his head at her modesty, which he regarded as rather misplaced. They had almost burned up and drowned together. How much closer could two people get? Then he searched their bags, weapons and wet clothes for electronic tell-tales without finding anything; afterwards he examined Charlotte Falster’s Passat and found the first bug a few minutes later: a small, black Garmin GTU-10 the size of a packet of cigarettes attached with Velcro to a dark, inaccessible corner of the spare tyre compartment. A small LED light bulb flashed green and happy at the back of the sender. The gadget was ideal to monitor teenage daughters claiming to be staying the night at a girlfriend’s – or stubborn superintendents and interfering security consultants. He put it back where he had found it. The whole exercise was pointless. Even if he found one, there could be many more. There were literally hundreds of hiding places in an ordinary saloon car.