Blood on Snow (10 page)

The Dane twisted the hair on the head a couple of times, took a short run-up, swung his arm by his side as though he was in a bowling alley, and let go. The head sailed upwards, hair flailing, but the angle was too tight and it hit the ceiling, fell onto the steps and bounced back down with little cracking sounds like when you tap a hard-boiled egg with a spoon.

“Just need to get my eye in,” the Dane muttered as he grabbed the head again, shifted his feet, closed his eyes in concentration and took a few deep breaths. I realised I was on the edge mentally now, because I was about to burst out laughing. Then he opened his eyes, took two steps forward and swung his arm. Let go. Four
and a half kilos of human head described a fine arc up to the top of the steps and hit the floor. We heard it bounce and roll down the passageway.

The Dane nudged me with a look of triumph, but managed not to say anything.

We waited. And waited.

Then we heard a car start. Revving. The gears crunched badly. Reversing. More revving. Far too much for first gear. It screamed off, driven by someone who wasn't used to driving it.

I looked at the Dane. He puffed his cheeks and let out the air, shaking his right hand as if he'd been holding something hot.

I listened. Listened hard. It was like I could feel them before I heard them. Police sirens. The sound carried a long way in the cold air. It could still be a good while before they got here.

I glanced behind me. Saw the young girl in her grandmother's lap. It was impossible to say if she was breathing, but judging by the colour of her face she was drained of blood. I took in the whole room before I left. The family, death, blood. It reminded me of a picture. Three hyenas and a zebra with its stomach torn open.

I
t's not true that I don't remember what I said to her on the train. I don't remember if I've said that I can't remember, but I certainly thought of saying it. But I do remember. I told her I loved her. Just to see how it felt to say it to someone. Like shooting at targets in the shape of human torsos; it's obviously not the same, but it still feels different from shooting at plain round targets. Obviously I didn't mean it, just as little as I meant to kill the torso-people on the targets. It was practice. Familiarisation. One day maybe I'd meet a woman I loved and who loved me, and then it would be good if the words didn't catch in my throat. Okay, so I hadn't actually
told
Corina
that I loved her yet. Not out loud, like that, honestly, with no possibility of retreat, just going for it, letting the echo fill the vacuum, inflating the silence so much that it made the walls bulge. I had only said it to Maria at the exact point where the tracks met. Or divided. But the thought that I would soon be saying it to Corina made my heart feel like it was going to explode. Was I going to say it that evening? On the plane to Paris? At the hotel in Paris? Over dinner, perhaps? Yes, that would be perfect!

That was what I was thinking as the Dane and I walked out of the church and I breathed in the raw, cold winter air that still tastes of sea salt even when ice has settled on the fjord. The police sirens could be heard clearly now, but they came and went like a badly tuned radio, still so far off that it was impossible to tell which direction they were coming from.

I could see the headlights of the black van on the road below the church.

I was walking across the frozen path with
short, quick steps, my knees slightly bent. That's something you learn as a child in Norway. Maybe not as early in Denmark—they don't have so much snow and ice—and I sensed that the Dane was falling behind. But that might not be true. Maybe the Dane had walked on more ice than I had. We know so little about each other. We see a nice round face and open smile, and hear cheerful Danish words that we don't always understand, but they soothe the ear, calm the nerves, and tell us a story of Danish sausages, Danish beer, Danish sunshine and the gentle, sedate life on the flat farmland way down south. And it's all so nice that it makes us lower our guard. But what did
I
know? Maybe the Dane had fixed more people than I ever would. And why did that thought pop up just then? Maybe because it suddenly felt like time was waiting for something again, another squeezed second, a spring coiled tight.

I was about to turn round, but never made it.

I couldn't blame him. After all—like I said—I'm usually willing to go to any lengths to be in a position to shoot an armed man in the back.

The shot echoed across the churchyard.

I felt the first bullet as pressure on my back, and the next like a jaw clamping hard round my thigh. He had aimed low, just as I had done with Benjamin. I fell forward. Hit my chin on the ice. I rolled over and stared up into the barrel of his pistol.

“Sorry, Olav,” the Dane said, and I could tell he meant it. “It's nothing personal.” He'd aimed low so he could tell me that.

“Smart move by the Fisherman,” I whispered. “He knew I'd be keeping an eye on Klein, so he gave you the job.”

“That's pretty much it, Olav.”

“But why fix me?”

The Dane shrugged. The wailing police sirens were getting closer.

“The usual, I suppose,” I said. “The boss doesn't want someone out there who's got something on him. That's worth bearing in mind. You have to know when to quit.”

“That's not why, Olav.”

“I know. The Fisherman's a boss, and bosses are scared of people who are prepared to fix their own bosses. They think they're next in line.”

“That's not why, Olav.”

“For fuck's sake, can't you see I'm bleeding to death here? How about we skip the guessing game?”

The Dane cleared his throat. “The Fisherman said you have to be a bloody cold businessman not to bear a grudge against someone who has fixed three of your men.”

He took aim at me, his finger tightening round the trigger.

“Sure you haven't got a bullet jammed in the magazine?” I whispered.

He nodded.

“One last Christmas wish. Not in the face. Please, grant me that.”

I saw the Dane hesitate. Then he nodded again. Lowered the pistol slightly. I closed my eyes. Heard the shots. Felt the projectiles smash into me. Two lead bullets. Aimed at where normal people have their heart.

“M
y wife made it,” he had said. “For the play.”

Loops of metal, all hooked together. How many thousands of them could there be? Like I said, I thought I'd got something out of the exchange with the widow. A coat of chain mail. It's hardly surprising Pine had thought I looked sweaty. I was dressed up like a fucking medieval king under my suit and shirt.

The metal top had dealt fine with the shots to my back and chest. My thigh wasn't so fortunate.

I could feel the blood pumping out as I lay there motionless and watched the tail lights of the black van flare off into the night and disap
pear. Then I tried to stand up. I almost passed out, but managed to get to my feet, and staggered towards the Volvo that was parked in front of the church door. The chorus of sirens was getting closer with each passing second. There was at least one ambulance in the choir. The gravedigger must have worked out what was going on when he called them. Maybe they'd be able to save the girl. Maybe not. Maybe I'd be able to save myself, I thought as I yanked open the door of the Volvo. Maybe not.

But the brother-in-law had been telling the truth to his wife: he had left the key in the ignition.

I squeezed myself in behind the wheel and turned the key. The starter motor whined in complaint before giving up. Fuck, fuck. I let the key click back, then tried again. More whining. Start, for fuck's sake! If there's any point in making cars up here in this snowy shithole, surely it has to be that they start even if it's a few lousy degrees below freezing. I thumped the steering wheel with one hand. I could see the blue lights flare like the aurora borealis in the winter sky.

There! I put my foot down. I let go of the
clutch and the wheel spun through the ice until the studded tyres got a grip and sent me swerving towards the churchyard gate.

I drove a couple of hundred metres down among the villas before turning the car round and heading back towards the church at a snail's pace. I'd hardly set off again before I saw the blue lights in the rear-view mirror. I obediently signalled to pull over and turned into the driveway of one of the villas.

Two police cars and an ambulance went past. I could hear at least one more police car on its way, and waited. And realised that I had been here before. Bloody hell. It was right in front of this house that I had fixed Benjamin Hoffmann.

There were Christmas decorations and plastic tubes that were supposed to look like candles in the living-room window. A sliver of cosy family life shone out onto the snowman in the garden. So the boy had managed it. Maybe he'd had some help from his father; maybe he used a bit of water. The snowman was properly done. Adorned with a hat, a blank stone grin, and stick arms that seemed to want to embrace the whole
of this rotten world and all the crazy shit that happened in it.

The police car passed and I reversed out onto the road again and drove away.

Luckily there were no more police cars. No one to see the Volvo desperately trying to drive normally, but which still—without it quite being possible to put your finger on why—was being driven differently from all the other cars on the streets of Oslo on the day before Christmas Eve.

I parked right next to the phone box and turned off the engine. My trouser leg and the seat cover were soaked in blood, and it felt like I had some sort of evil heart in my thigh, pumping out black animal blood, sacrificial blood, satanic blood.

Corina widened her big blue eyes in horror when I opened the door of the flat and stood there swaying.

“Olav! Dear God, what happened?”

“It's done.” I pushed the door shut behind me.

“He…he's dead?”

“Yes.”

The room was slowly starting to spin. How much blood had I actually lost? Two litres? No, I'd read that we have five to six litres of blood, and pass out if we lose much more than twenty per cent. And that would be roughly…fuck. Less than two, at any rate.

I saw her case on the floor of the living room. She was packed and ready for Paris, the same things she had brought with her from her husband's flat. Former husband. I'd probably packed far too much. I'd never been farther than Sweden before. With my mum, that summer when I was fourteen. In the neighbour's car. In Gothenburg, just before we went into Liseberg amusement park, he had asked me if it was all right for him to hit on my mum. Mum and I took the train home the following day. Mum had patted me on the cheek and told me I was her knight, the only knight left in the whole world. The fact that I thought there was a false note in her voice was probably because I was so confused at the whole of this sick adult world. But, like I said, I'm com
pletely tone-deaf; I've never been able to tell the difference between pure and false notes.

“What's that on your trousers, Olav, is it…blood? Oh God, you're hurt! What happened?” She looked so bewildered and upset standing there that I nearly laughed. She gave me a suspicious, almost angry look. “What is it? Do you think it's funny that you're standing here bleeding like a stuck pig? Where've you been shot?”

“Only in the thigh.”

“Only? If the artery was hit, you'll soon bleed out, Olav! Get those trousers off and sit down on the kitchen chair.” She removed the coat she had been wearing when I came in and went into the bathroom.

Came out again with bandages, plasters, iodine, the whole shebang.

“I'll have to sew you up,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, leaning my head against the wall and closing my eyes.

She got going, trying to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. She made comments as she worked, explaining that she could only patch me
up provisionally. That the bullet was still in there somewhere, but that it was impossible to do anything about that now.

“Where did you learn to do this?” I asked.

“Shh, just sit still, or you'll break the stitches.”

“You're a proper little nurse.”

“You're not the first man to get a bullet in him.”

“Oh,” I said, in a matter-of-fact way. As a statement, not a question. There was no rush, we'd have plenty of time for stories like that. I opened my eyes and looked down at the bun at the back of her head as she knelt in front of me. Breathing in her scent. There was something different about it, something mixed in with the good smell of Corina close to me, Corina naked and passionate, Corina's sweat on my arm. Not much, but a hint of something, ammonia, maybe, something that almost wasn't there, but was there. Of course. It wasn't her, it was me. I could smell my own wound. I was already infected, I'd already started to rot.

“There,” she said, biting off the end of the thread.

I stared down at her. Her blouse had slid off
one shoulder and she had a bruise on the side of her neck. I hadn't noticed it before, it must be one Benjamin Hoffmann had given her. I felt like saying something to her, that it would never be allowed to happen again, that no one would ever lay a hand on her again. But it was the wrong time. You don't reassure a woman that she's safe with you while she's sitting there patching you up so you don't bleed to death in front of her.

She washed the blood away with a damp towel and wound a bandage round my thigh.

“It feels like you've got a temperature, Olav. You need to get to bed.”

She pulled off my jacket and shirt. Stared at the chain mail. “What's that?”

“Iron.”

She helped me off with it, then ran her fingers over the bruises left by the Dane's bullets. Loving. Fascinated. Kissed them. And as I lay in bed and felt the shakes come, and she wrapped the duvet around me, I felt just like before when I lay in Mum's bed. It almost didn't hurt any more. And it felt as if I could escape it all, but it wasn't up to me; I was a boat on a river, and the river was
in charge. My fate, my destination was already determined. Which just left the journey, the time it took and the things you saw and experienced along the way. Life seems simple when you're sufficiently ill.

I slipped into a dream world.

She was carrying me over her shoulder, running as the water splashed around her feet. It was dark and there was a smell of sewage, infected wounds, ammonia and perfume. From the streets above us came the sound of shots and shouting, and streaks of light filtered through the holes in the drain covers. But she was unstoppable, brave and strong. Strong enough for both of us. And she knew the way out of here, because she'd been here before. That was how the story went. She stopped at a junction in the sewers, put me down, said she had to take a look around but would soon be back. And I lay there on my back, listening to the rats scampering about me as I stared up at the moon through a drain. Drops of water hung from the grid pattern up above, revolving, shimmering in the moonlight. Fat, red, shiny drops.
They let go, hurtled down towards me. Hit me in the chest. Passed straight through the chain mail, to where my heart was. Warm, cold. Warm, cold. The smell…

I opened my eyes.

I said her name. No answer.

“Corina?”

I sat up in bed. My thigh was throbbing and aching. Laboriously I lowered my foot over the edge of the bed and switched on the light. Jumped up. My thigh had swollen so much it was almost creepy. It looked like it had just carried on bleeding, but all the blood had built up inside the skin and bandage.

In the moonlight I could see her case in the middle of the living-room floor. But her coat was gone from the chair. I got to my feet and limped over to the kitchen. I opened the drawer and lifted out the cutlery tray.

The sheets of paper were still there in their envelope, untouched.

I took the envelope over to the window. The thermometer on the outside of the glass showed that the temperature was still dropping.

I looked down.

There she was. She'd just gone out for a bit.

She was standing hunched in the phone box, with her shoulders facing the street, the receiver pressed to her ear.

I waved, even though I knew she couldn't see me.

Christ, my thigh hurt!

Then she hung up. I took a step back from the window so I wasn't standing in the light. She came out of the phone box and I saw her look up towards me. I stood completely still, and she did the same. A few snowflakes hung in the air. Then she started walking. Putting her feet down with her ankles straight, placing one foot close to the other. Like a tightrope-walker. She crossed the street back towards me. I could see footprints in the snow. Cat footprints. Rear feet in the same prints as the front ones. The thin light from the street lamps meant that the edge of each print cast a small shadow. No more than that. Just that…

When she crept back inside the flat I was in bed with my eyes closed.

She took her coat off. I had been hoping she might take the rest off as well and get into bed with me. Hold me for a while. Nothing else. Loose change counts as money. Because now I knew that she wouldn't come and carry me through the sewers. She wasn't going to rescue me. And we weren't going to Paris.

Instead of getting onto the bed, she sat on the chair in the dark.

She was watching. Waiting.

“Will it take him long to get here?” I asked.

I saw her jerk in the chair. “You're awake.”

I repeated the question.

“Who, Olav?”

“The Fisherman.”

“You're feverish, Olav. Try to get some sleep.”

“That's who you were calling from the phone box just now.”

“Olav…”

“I just want to know how long I've got.”

She was sitting with her head bowed, so her face was in shadow. When she spoke again it was
with a different, new voice. A harder voice. But even to my ears the notes sounded purer. “Twenty minutes, maybe.”

“Okay.”

“How did you know…?”

“Ammonia. Skate.”

“What?”

“The smell of ammonia, it sits in your skin after you've been in contact with skate, particularly before the fish has been prepared. I read somewhere that it's because skates store uric acid in their flesh, like sharks do. But what do I know?”

Corina looked at me with a distant smile. “I see.”

Another pause.

“Olav?”

“Yes.”

“It's nothing…”

“Personal?”

“Exactly.”

I felt the stitches tear. A stench of inflammation and pus belched out. I put my hand on my
thigh. The gauze bandage was soaked. And it was still stretched tight—there was loads more to come out.

“So what is it, then?” I asked.

She sighed. “Does it matter?”

“I like stories,” I said. “I've got twenty minutes.”

“This isn't about you. It's about me.”

“And what are you about, then?”

“Yes. What am I about?”

“Daniel Hoffmann was dying. You knew that, didn't you? And that Benjamin Hoffmann would be taking over?”

She shrugged. “You've pretty much got me there.”

“Someone who deceives the people she needs to deceive without a guilty conscience in order to follow the money and power?”

Corina stood up abruptly and went over to the window. Looked down at the street. Lit a cigarette.

“Apart from the bit about the guilty conscience, that's more or less right,” she said.

I listened. It was quiet. I realised that it was past midnight, that it was now Christmas Eve.

“You just gave him a call?” I asked.

“I went to his shop.”

“And he agreed to see you?”

I could see the silhouette of her pout against the window as she exhaled the smoke. “He's a man. Just like all other men.”

I thought about the shadows behind the frosted glass. The bruise on her neck. It was fresh. How blind can you be? The beatings. The submission. The humiliation. That was how she wanted it.

“The Fisherman's a married man. So what did he offer you?”