Nemesis (34 page)

Enlightenment came that very second.

Roger jumped when he heard the sudden sound of flushing water from the bathroom. The guy had been sitting on the toilet! Roger grabbed the pistol with both hands and with outstretched arms pointed it at where he knew the bathroom door was. Five seconds passed. Eight. Roger couldn’t hold his breath any longer. What the fuck was the guy waiting for? He had flushed. Twelve seconds. Perhaps he had heard something. Perhaps he was trying to escape. Roger remembered there was a little window in one wall. Shit! This was his chance; he couldn’t let the guy get away. Roger crept past the wardrobe containing the dressing gown which looked so good on Petra, stood in front of the bathroom door and rested his hand on the handle. Took a deep breath. He was about to press when he felt a tiny
draught. Not from a fan or an open window. It was something else.

‘Freeze,’ said a voice directly behind him. And after raising his head and looking in the mirror on the bathroom door, Roger did just that. He froze so much his teeth were chattering. The door of the wardrobe had come open and inside, between the white dressing gowns, he could make out a powerfully built figure. But this wasn’t what caused the sudden bout of freezing. The psychological effect of discovering someone has a much bigger weapon trained on you than the one you are holding is not diminished by having some understanding of weaponry. On the contrary. You know how much more efficiently large-bore bullets destroy a human body. Roger’s Taurus PT92C was a peashooter compared with the large, black monster he glimpsed in the moonlight behind him. A squeaking noise made Roger look up. What seemed to be a fishing line glistened. It went from the crack over the bathroom door to the wardrobe.

‘
Guten Abend
,’ Roger whispered.

Six years later, when Roger happened to be waved over to a bar in Pattaya, only to discover Fred behind all the whiskers, he was at first so surprised that he stood there without reacting until Fred pulled over a chair.

Fred ordered drinks and told him he no longer worked in the North Sea. Disability allowance. Roger sat down hesitantly and explained, without going into detail, that for the last six years he had been running a courier business from Chang Rai. After a couple of drinks Fred cleared his throat and asked what had actually taken place the evening Roger suddenly upped sticks from d’Ajuda.

Roger peered into his glass, took a deep breath and said he hadn’t had a choice. The German, who incidentally wasn’t German, had tricked him and been on the point of dispatching him into the beyond there and then. However, at the last moment Roger had struck a deal with him. Roger would have thirty minutes to clear out of d’Ajuda, if he told him where Lev Grette lived.

‘What kind of gun did you say the guy had?’ Fred asked.

‘Too dark to see. It wasn’t a well-known make, anyway. I can promise you, though, it would have blown my head all the way down to Fredo’s.’ Roger threw a quick glance in the direction of the door.

‘I’ve found a pad here,’ Fred said. ‘Have you got somewhere to stay?’

Roger looked at Fred as if he hadn’t given the idea a moment’s thought. He rubbed his stubble for a long time before replying.

‘Actually, I haven’t.’

L
EV’S HOUSE WAS AT THE END OF A CUL-DE-SAC.
I
T WAS LIKE
most in the vicinity, a simple structure, the difference being that this house did actually have glass in the windows. One solitary streetlamp cast a yellow cone of light over an impressive variety of fauna fighting for living space as gluttonous bats dived in and out of the dark.

‘Doesn’t look like anyone is at home,’ Beate whispered.

‘Perhaps he’s saving electricity,’ Harry said.

They stopped in front of a low, rusty iron gate.

‘How do we do this then?’ Beate asked. ‘Go up and knock on the door?’

‘No. You switch on your mobile and wait here. When you can see I’m under the window, ring this number.’ He gave her a page torn out of a notebook.

‘Why?’

‘If I hear a mobile phone ringing inside the house, we can assume Lev is at home.’

‘Right. And how were you thinking of arresting him? With that?’ She pointed to the black bulky object Harry held in his right hand.

‘Why not?’ Harry said. ‘It worked on Roger Person.’

‘He was in a dark room and only saw it in a fairground mirror, Harry.’

‘Well, since we aren’t allowed to carry weapons in Brazil, we have to use what we have.’

‘Like fishing line tied to the loo and a toy?’

‘This is not just any toy, Beate. This is a Namco G-Con 45.’ He patted the super-lifesize plastic pistol.

‘At least take off the Playstation sticker,’ Beate said, shaking her head.

Harry undid his shoes and ran stooped across the dry, cracked ground which once had been laid as a lawn. He arrived, sat with his back to the wall under the window and signalled with his hand to Beate. He couldn’t see her, but knew she could see him against the white wall. He gazed up at the sky where the universe was on display. Seconds later, the faint but distinct ringtone of a mobile phone sounded in the house. ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’.
Peer Gynt
. The man had a sense of humour.

Harry focused on one of the stars and tried to empty his head of all other thoughts than what he had to do. He couldn’t. Once Aune had asked why we wonder if there is life out there, when we know there are more suns in our galaxy alone than grains of sand on the average beach? We ought to be asking ourselves if there was a chance they were peace-loving, then weigh up whether it was worth taking the risk of contacting them. Harry squeezed the handle of the gun. He was asking himself the same question now.

The telephone had stopped playing Grieg. Harry waited. Then he breathed in and tiptoed to the door. He listened but all he could hear was crickets. He wrapped his hand around the door handle, expecting it to be locked.

It was.

He cursed to himself. He had made up his mind beforehand that if it was locked and they lost the element of surprise, they should wait until the following day and buy some ironware before going back. He doubted it would be a problem buying two decent handguns in a
place like this. But he also had the feeling Lev would soon be informed of the day’s events and they didn’t have a lot of time.

Harry jumped as a pain seared through his right foot. He automatically pulled his foot away and looked down. In the frugal light from the stars he could make out a black line down the whitewashed wall. The line ran from the door, across the stairs where his foot had been, and down the step, where he lost sight of it. He rummaged around in his pocket for a mini Maglite torch and switched it on. Ants. Large, yellow, semi-transparent ants formed into two columns – one down the steps and one in under the door. They were clearly a different order of ant from the black ants of home. It was impossible to see what they were transporting, but Harry knew enough about ants – yellow or not – to know there was something.

Harry switched off the torch. Had a think. And left. Down the steps and towards the gate. He stopped halfway, turned and began to run. The simple, rotting wooden door flew off the frame on both sides as it was struck by ninety-five kilos of Harry Hole, doing just under thirty kilometres an hour. He had one elbow tucked underneath him as he and the remains of the door smacked down on the stone floor and the pain shot up his arm and into his neck. Lying on the floor in the dark, he waited for the smooth click of a trigger. When it didn’t come, he stood up and switched on his torch. The narrow path of light found the column of ants along the wall. Harry could feel from the heat beneath the bandage that he was bleeding again. He followed the glistening bodies of the ants across a filthy carpet into the next room. There the column took a sharp turn to the left and continued up the wall. The light of the torch caught a
Kama Sutra
picture on the way up. The caravan of ants forked off and continued across the ceiling. Harry leaned back. His neck hurt like never before. Now they were directly above him. He had to turn. The torch beam wandered around until it found the ants again. Was this really the shortest way for them? That was Harry’s final thought before he stared into Lev Grette’s face. Lev’s body loomed over
Harry, who dropped the torch and reeled backwards. His brain might have told him it was too late, but his hands fumbled in a mixture of shock and stupidity for a Namco G-Con 45 to hold onto.

B
EATE COULDN’T STAND THE STENCH FOR MORE THAN A
couple of minutes and had to dash out. She was bent double as Harry strolled out and sat down on the steps for a cigarette.

‘Couldn’t you smell it?’ Beate groaned, with saliva dribbling down from her mouth and nose.

‘Dysosmia.’ Harry contemplated the glow of his cigarette. ‘Partial loss of smell. There are some things I can’t smell any more. Aune says it’s because I’ve smelt too many bodies. Emotional trauma and so on.’

Beate retched again.

‘I apologise,’ she groaned. ‘It was the ants. I mean, why do the disgusting creatures have to use the
nostrils
as a kind of two-lane highway?’

‘Well, if you insist, I can tell you where you’ll find the richest protein sources in the human body.’

‘No, thank you!’

‘Sorry.’ Harry flicked the cigarette onto the dry ground. ‘You coped very well in there, Lønn. It’s not the same as videos.’ He stood up and went back in.

Lev Grette was hanging from a short piece of rope tied to the lamp hook in the ceiling. He hovered a good half-metre off the floor and the overturned chair, and that was the reason the flies had enjoyed the monopoly of the corpse before the yellow ants, who continued their procession up and down the rope.

Beate had found the mobile phone with the charger on the floor beside the sofa and said she could find out when he last had a conversation. Harry went into the kitchen and switched on the light. A blue metallic cockroach stood on an A4 piece of paper, swinging its feelers towards him, and then made a rapid retreat to the cooker. Harry lifted the piece of paper. It was handwritten. He had read all sorts of suicide letters and very few had been great literature. The famous last words were usually confused babble, desperate cries for help or prosaic instructions about who would inherit the toaster and the lawnmower. One of the more meaningful ones Harry had seen was when a farmer from Maridalen had written in chalk on the barn wall:
A man has hanged himself in here. Please call the police. Apologies.
In light of this, Lev Grette’s letter was, if not unique, then at least unusual.

Dear Trond,

I’ve always wondered how it felt when the footbridge suddenly disappeared beneath him. When the precipice opened and he knew something completely devoid of meaning was about to happen. He was going to die for no purpose. Perhaps he still had things he wanted to do. Perhaps someone was sitting and waiting for him that morning. Perhaps he thought that day would be the start of something new. In a way he was right about that …

I never told you I visited him in hospital. I took a large bunch of flowers with me and told him I had seen the whole thing from the window of my flat; I rang for the ambulance and gave the police a description of the boy and his bike. He lay there in bed, so small and grey, and he thanked me. Then I asked him a silly sports commentator question: ‘How did it feel?’

He didn’t answer. He just lay there with all the tubes and the drips, and watched me. Then he thanked me again and a nurse said I had to go.

So I never knew what it felt like. Until one day when the precipice opened beneath me too. It didn’t happen when I was running up Industrigata after the robbery. Or while I was counting the money afterwards. Or while I was watching the news. It happened the same way it happened to the old man. One morning I was walking along happily, unaware of any danger. The sun was shining, I was safely back in d’Ajuda, I could relax and began to think. I had taken from the person I loved most what they loved most. I had two million kroner to live off, but nothing to live for. That was this morning.

I don’t expect you to understand this, Trond. I robbed a bank, I saw she recognised me, I was caught in a game with its own rules, none of this has any place in your world. I don’t expect you to understand what I am doing now, but perhaps you can see that it is possible to get tired of this, too. Of living.

Lev

PS It didn’t strike me at the time that the old man didn’t smile when he thanked me. I thought about it today, though, Trond. Perhaps he didn’t have anything or anyone waiting for him after all. Perhaps he just felt relief when the precipice opened and he thought he wouldn’t have to do it himself.

Beate was standing on a chair beside Lev’s body when Harry came in. She was struggling to bend one of Lev’s fingers so she could press it against the inside of a small shiny metal box.

‘Blast,’ she said. ‘The ink pad has been standing in the sun at the hotel and it’s dried out.’

‘If you can’t get a good print, we’ll have to use the firemen’s method.’

‘And that is?’

‘People caught in a fire automatically use their hands. Even on
charred bodies the skin on the fingertips may be intact and you can use fingerprints to identify bodies. Sometimes, for practical reasons, firemen cut off a finger and take it to Forensics.’

‘That’s called desecration of a body.’

Harry shrugged. ‘If you look at his other hand, you can see he’s already missing one finger.’

‘I can see,’ she said. ‘Looks like it’s been cut off. What might that mean?’

Harry went closer and shone the torch. ‘It means the finger was cut off long after he hanged himself. Someone may have come here and seen he’d already done the job for them.’

‘Who?’

‘Well, in some countries gypsies punish thieves by cutting their fingers off,’ Harry said. ‘If they stole from gypsies, that is.’

‘I think I’ve got a good print,’ Beate said, wiping the sweat off her brow. ‘Shall we cut him down?’