The girls are waiting for you to decide whether you want to drive on right away or take a break. A break would be good, but you don’t want to stand somewhere on the roadside and invite the police to pick you up. They’d just have to ask for your driver’s license, and that would be that. You want to keep moving. It’s still exactly eight hours and forty-two minutes to Ulvtannen, you’re going to manage that, and then you can sleep for three whole days. Promise.
“Let’s go,” you say.
It’s just after nine when you finally get going. You’ve bought drinks and snacks, you went to the bathroom quickly, and now you’re on course. The navigation system guided you out of Kristiansand and you turned off the E18 to Route 41 northbound. The sky is completely starless, the air oppressively close. You’ve been on the road for a whole twenty minutes, and you’ve just driven over a bridge when the rain catches you. Rain is the wrong word in this case. It rains in Germany, in Norway it pours. The wind rises, the clouds open without warning, and the road disappears behind a curtain of water. You keep driving for a minute after the first squall before turning off to the right. The windshield wipers fail completely. The rain hammers down on the car and it sounds as if each drop is leaving a dent. You feel as if you’re trapped in a tin can. Stink thumps the roof from inside as if to defy the rain.
“Shit, that’s noisy!”
“Look, there’s light up ahead.”
Taja leans past you and points, as if you didn’t know front from back. There really is light. You start the engine again. The car advances like a listing snail. The light gets brighter and bigger and reveals itself as a gas station with a restaurant next to it.
Of course all the covered parking spots are full, so you drive past and squeeze yourself in beside a trailer opposite the restaurant. Through the rain you can just make out the outlines of people at the tables. The place is crowded. What you wouldn’t do to be one of them.
“Turn on your hazard lights,” says Schnappi, “otherwise someone is going to back into us.”
You look in the rearview mirror. The road is awash, the rain is everywhere, and the gas station reminds you of a pale light flickering through seaweed under water. Schnappi’s right. You’re a few feet away from the driveway. It would be a nasty surprise if a car rammed you in passing. You turn on the hazard lights.
“What’s that?” Stink says crossly.
The ticking of the hazard lights is immediately irritating. There is the pouring rain, there is the ticking, and there you are in this tin box called a car. Stink wants you to turn the hazard lights off again. Taja says better safe than sorry. A few people walk past you. They move like sleepwalkers toward the entrance of the restaurant. The women wear bikinis and dance in the rain. Summer in Norway. One man has opened a pink umbrella, and gives you a stupid peace sign. Now you’re very glad you’re still sitting in the car.
“And how long are we going to be waiting around here?” Schnappi asks.
Nobody answers, you stare into the rain, the hazard lights tick away, and you don’t know what’s worse—the rattling of the rain or this ticking—when a new noise is suddenly added from the backseat and it startles all four of you and makes you screech like mad.
“GIRLS, SHUT THE FUCK UP, IT’S JUST THE PHONE!” yells Stink, and takes Neil’s cell phone out of her jeans. Neil has set the volume extra loud so that you wouldn’t miss his call. Stink presses receive and holds the phone to her ear.
“What? Hello? Speak louder, it’s pissing down here.”
Stink listens, then she puts the phone away again and looks at Schnappi.
“Two hours ago Neil tried to get through to us, but some fish-eating slut must have been playing around with the phone.”
“I was just on the internet for a minute,” Schnappi says, defending herself.
You don’t believe it.
“What were you looking for on the internet?”
“Just checking my mail.”
“Schnappi, we’re on the run and you’re checking your mail?”
“One of us has to keep her feet on the ground.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Taja wants to know what Neil said. Stink replies, “We’ve got to get rid of the car.”
“What?”
You all say it at the same time, you’re like one of those Greek choruses announcing the decline of the west. Stink tells you Neil met Taja’s uncle and gave him the key to the safe-deposit box. Taja thinks she’s misheard.
“What did he do that for?”
“Because he’s crazy,” Schnappi says contentedly. “I’ve said so the whole time. First he takes our phones away, then my gun, and now he gives Taja’s uncle the key to the safe-deposit box. The guy’s definitely crazy.”
“He isn’t crazy,” you say. “I bet he was trying to protect us.”
“Whatever Neil wanted,” says Stink, “he thinks one of those tracking devices is built into our car.”
“This isn’t a James Bond movie,” says Schnappi.
“It’s not a toy car either,” says Stink. “If it was my ride I’d have put in an alarm and a tracking device.”
You look around the car.
“If the car has a tracking device, we’ll find it,” says Taja and opens the glove compartment. There’s a pair of sunglasses, a bag of candies, and a few crumpled pieces of paper.
“Give me a candy,” says Schnappi.
Taja hands the bag around.
“What do you think it would look like?” you ask.
“It’s probably got a blinking red button,” says Taja.
“It’s probably hidden under one of the seats,” says Stink.
You look under the seats, you strain to see, nothing’s blinking, nothing looks like a tracking device. You all look at the back. Taja puts it into words.
“We need to examine the trunk.”
Schnappi shakes her head energetically.
“I don’t want to go into the rain.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Stink. “Are you made out of sugar or something?”
“Do you see my hair?”
“Of course I see your hair.”
“If it gets wet I turn into a poodle that’s been given a hot bath.” Taja doesn’t want a discussion.
“Either everyone or no one,” she says.
You get out together and you’re all drenched in seconds. You open the trunk and stand by your luggage. It’s a painful sight, because of course there in the middle of your stuff is Ruth’s bag. No one told her things she’s never coming back, you find yourself thinking, and immediately feel like a total idiot for thinking such a thing.
Before you set off and before Stink came up with the idea of looking Neil up in Hamburg, you all stopped at your homes quickly. It was six in the morning, and it began with Schnappi, who didn’t think of waking her parents. She left a note saying she was staying at Taja’s for a week. Bag packed and out of the house. After that you drove to your place, and you just left a note as well. Bag packed and out of the house. Ruth’s mother sat bolt upright in bed when she tried to creep into the house. Ruth didn’t get away so easily. She was interrogated for a quarter of an hour, and tearfully admitted that she was a complete mess because Eric had split up with her. Ruth can do that kind of thing. Her mother gave her a hug and promised always to be there for her. And of course she understood that you girls had to stick together, and as school was over anyway a week at Taja’s would do Ruth good and help her forget Eric. Bag packed and out of the house. Stink got the record. Her aunt was asleep, her brother was sitting stoned in front of the TV watching morning cartoons and asked if she wanted a hit. Stink was back in the car before her brother could finish his sentence. And now you’re standing in the pouring rain with five suitcases and three rucksacks and Taja says, “It all has to come out.”
You put the luggage in the rain. You rummage through the first-aid box and a cardboard box full of odds and ends. Nothing. You open all the doors, shake out a blanket, lean in
to the car and look under the seats again. If there is a tracking device it doesn’t want to be found. The rain creeps down your butt cracks. There is nothing to be found. You put your stuff back in, and wonder whether you should get changed. Every time you move, you smell the fear that seeped from your every pore when those two fuckers appeared by your table. You can still see one of them grabbing Ruth, you see them chasing you …
Stink snaps her fingers in front of your face.
“Nessi, what are you still waiting for? We’re finished.”
You get back into the car, you slam the doors, and the rain is shut out.
“Christ, that was probably the most idiotic thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” says Schnappi and sneezes. Stink pats her head and says her new hairdo suits her. You’ve forgotten to take any dry clothes out of your bag. Your T-shirt is almost transparent from the rain. Taja turns the heat up. All four of you look wretched and frustrated. If it had occurred to one of you to lift the mat in the trunk and look under the spare tire, you’d have found the little box with the green blinking light and the day would have been saved.
Taja juts her chin.
“We still haven’t checked under the hood.”
You stare at the hood. The rain is exploding on the paintwork as if it were New Year’s Eve. You’re already so wet that it makes no difference. So you get out again and try to open the hood. Nothing happens. The hazard lights make you appear and disappear, appear and disappear. You nearly break your fingernails, but the hood won’t open. You get back in.
“Did you get wet?” asks Schnappi.
Taja says there must be a lever somewhere to open the hood. What you’d like to have now is one of those enormous, fluffy towels. Taja rummages around between your legs in search of the lever. You’re about to ask her if she couldn’t be a bit gentler, when the interior of the car is flooded with dazzling light.
“There’s a car coming,” says Stink.
“Don’t worry, he sees us,” you say.
The car parks right in front of you, its headlights stay on so that you can’t make anything out. Nothing in front of you, nothing beside you, however hard you stare, you’re looking into the middle of the sun. Suddenly there is panic. You want to get out and run away. This means danger, you think, and can’t react, because it’s like in one of those dreams where things happen to you that you’d be able to stop easily, but which are unstoppable because it is a dream.
“We have to get out,” you’re saying, when you all give a start because there’s a knocking on the driver’s-side window inches away from your left ear.
This day’s asking a lot of you. You aren’t as young as you once were, and you should be sitting in your house on the Wannsee, enjoying the evening and forgetting the rest of the world out there. You weren’t supposed to drive from Berlin to Hamburg and back, then climb the Teufelsberg hill and be irritated by a wasp. You weren’t supposed to watch breathlessly as Ragnar bowed his head and cried. You’re glad Leo and David weren’t there.
No one should see Ragnar like that.
You came back from Hamburg half an hour ago, and now the three of you are standing on the Teufelsberg. Darian is holding the urn, Ragnar is looking down on Berlin as if he’s never seen the city before. The Funkturm is a thin line against the sky. Oskar is dead.
“Let’s put it behind us,” says Ragnar.
Darian hands his father the urn. Over the next few minutes you watch the ash trickling from Ragnar’s hand and being carried away. Then he closes the urn again, hands it to Darian, and crouches down to wipe his dirty hand in the grass.
“Darian, you go on ahead.”
The boy looks at you in surprise before he turns away. You wait until he’s out of sight, then you go and stand next to Ragnar and put your arm around his shoulder. He stiffens, he goes immediately into a defensive posture and holds his breath. Rigid. You feel him carefully breathing in again, his tension eases and he leans against you. You look out over Berlin. Our city, you think, and imagine it was Munich or Hamburg. No, it has to be Berlin. A soul of its own, a pulse of its own.
Ragnar Desche has become what he is because he listened to you. You were his teacher, he still looks up to you and respects you. A lot of people think you’re his right hand, but you’re his arm and shoulder at the same time. Your family is a family of men. Women were never important, they’re what comes with it, what gets in the way and is unavoidable. Like a sunrise or a good day after a series of bad days. You’ve always had difficulties with women, but we’re not going to roll out your life right now, we haven’t time. We’re going to go with you for the next few hours until you bid this story farewell. Like a tired handshake after a long evening or the quiver of an axe when it gets stuck in the wood. But before all this happens you have to talk to Ragnar and his son, otherwise we can’t let you go.
“Ragnar, we should leave this be, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve had enough time to think it through. We can’t go chasing after them.”
“Of course we can. Are you doubting me?”
“I didn’t say that. I just think time’s on our side. They can’t disappear forever. Think about it. How does this look? Why aren’t we keeping a clear head and waiting to see whether—”
“I’m not waiting, Tanner. My head is so clear you can’t imagine. That slut killed my brother. That’s why we’re staying here. It’s a private matter, and it has to be brought to its conclusion. How can you hesitate when a daughter kills her father?”
Ragnar knows there’s only one answer to that. You take your arm off his shoulders and try to find the right words.
“What’s really your problem?” he asks.
“We’re the problem. The fact that we’re getting involved. Let other people do the work. We have rules, and one of the rules is that we never get personally involved. Never. You’ve got Johannes Melben in Oslo, he could—”
“Forget the rules,” Ragnar cuts in. “When I say private, I mean private. Bruno and Oswald failed. We drove to Hamburg and failed. Tanner, we’re not a kindergarten here. Either we take charge of the problem ourselves or we chicken out. Do I look like the kind of guy who chickens out? What have you taught me? What did you hammer into me all those years?”
“That you should never lose sight of your goal.”
“I see my goal. I want to get there. How can you question my plans for even a second?”
“I’m sorry.”
“So you should be.”
You don’t look at each other. One breath, a second one. You have to ask.
“What did she do to Oskar?”
“She suffocated him with a cushion. They argued, and she suffocated him with a goddamn cushion. He was so high that he probably didn’t even notice.”
You feel a cold vise around your rib cage.
“She suffocated him? I don’t get it. What did she do that for?”
“That’s the very question I’m going to ask her when we’ve found her.”
It’s the pace that counts. Slowness is for losers. Somebody who says he’s got time has no time, he’s lying to you. Who stays on the move controls the world. But how does it feel when your own teachings turn on you? You feel like you’ve betrayed yourself. Like all the verve, like all the risk taking that was keeping you afloat has gone up in a puff of smoke. Or you could say you’ve got older.
Older and wiser and weaker.
You give yourself another two years. After that you’d like to marvel at the flight of migrating birds. You want to get so slow that the nights never end.
But that is then and this is now.
Now you’re standing at a private airport outside Potsdam. You’ve just dropped your car off and got out when David calls. Even though you know what Taja has done, you hope right up to the last second that you don’t have to fly to Norway. Your hope dissolves into nothing when you hear David saying, “There was a sports bag in the safe-deposit box, but there were only books in i
t.” You look at Ragnar. You could keep it to yourself. The situation is bad enough. He can find out later, you think, and wonder when that later is going to be. Don’t make a mistake now. Hand him the phone. Just do it.
“Ragnar?”
He raises his eyebrows quizzically.
“The merchandise isn’t in the safe-deposit box.”
He takes the phone, holds it to his ear, listens for a moment and just asks one question, “What color was the bag?”
After he’s hung up, he hands you back the phone.
“Do you think Neil Exner’s pulled a fast one on us?”
Ragnar shakes his head.
“We’ve been far too naïve about this whole thing. Those girls just used Exner to buy themselves time. Do you still think we shouldn’t go chasing after them?”
You give him the only acceptable answer.
“I’m completely behind you, you know that.”
Ragnar smiles and suddenly punches your shoulder, he says he didn’t expect anything else. He doesn’t say you’ve dodged his question.
Tomas Zenna has put one of his private jets at your disposal. He’s one of your most important customers. Weapon exports, drug imports. One phone call was enough. The pilot greets you with a handshake. Thirty-five minutes later you end up at a tiny airport near Amli. The airport is right on Route 41, which will bring you in an almost straight line down to the south.
It’s sultry and humid; summer here has a different smell. It’s your first time in Norway. Ragnar went to Oskar’s wedding on his own, because he needed some time alone. You’re aware that everything would’ve been different if you’d gone together.
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