Three Dog Night (48 page)

‘Felix?'

He fumbled for her pulse. It was hard to find, and she was freezing cold. There was a quilt over her but she was naked underneath it.

‘I've got you now.'

It wasn't until then that he saw the chain. She was caught like an animal in a trap. He had to lay her down again. Then he pulled off his jacket, wrapped her in it and the blanket, and took out his Swiss Army knife. He started unscrewing the fitting on the wall. The shackles had cut right through to the bone.

He picked her up and stood with her in his arms. He staggered out with his light burden and felt the pain shooting through his whole body. Outside, he stayed close to the walls. The car was still parked in the yard, but Lily and her helper were nowhere to be seen. He managed to get Felix inside the house, went back to their silver 4x4 and took out his knife.

I
T WAS DARK
by the time they reached Konkylien.

Kir thought about the past as a weightless number of hours and days spent with a man now lying in a grave at the bottom of the sea. Everything else had been destroyed; everything she had believed and hoped for with her parents and brothers. But she still had the memory: the tiny oasis of Uncle Hannibal, precious time which had flown by as quickly as his boat had taken her and Mark ashore.

There was an oppressive silence about the place when they got out of the car. The light was on in one room. In the middle of the yard there was a battered old 4x4 with flat tyres. She touched the bonnet.

‘Warm,' she said to Mark, who had his service weapon ready. She was holding Red's gun in her hand.

They had seen Peter Boutrup's white van parked around a bend in Nørrevangsvej, but they hadn't seen the man himself. Apart from the 4x4, Konkylien appeared to be deserted.

‘We're going in.'

Mark made a move to go, but she stopped him.

‘Let me.'

She sidled along the wall to the front door, holding Red's gun in front of her. He copied her and followed. She kicked open the door.

‘Police,' Mark shouted into the house, grabbing her shoulder.

She sent him a look.

‘In here,' they heard from the inside.

They entered the living room. Peter Boutrup was stooped over a figure lying on a mattress on the floor. There was another person on the sofa. They needed an ambulance.

‘I've already called them,' Peter said.

He straightened up. His face was racked with pain, and there were blotches of blood on his jumper.

‘Tomas fled. The others went after him,' he said. ‘The people in the car outside.'

‘Who are they?' Kir asked.

‘Women,' Peter said. ‘Two of them. One's called Lily Klein. She's the ex-girlfriend of a biker called Grimme and she's in his bad books for leaking a drugs deal.'

Mark nodded as if everything made sense.

‘Tora was their friend – another girl who wanted to break free from the gang.'

‘And Anja here,' Peter said, looking at the girl lying on the sofa wrapped in an old duvet he must have found in the bedroom, ‘her boyfriend is in a gang.'

‘What about Tomas?' Mark asked.

Peter shook his head.

‘I don't think there's anything else you can do.'

The same women had robbed the shops in town and been caught on the surveillance camera, Mark told them. They were the women looking for the treasure at the bottom of the Kattegat.

‘They would do anything to get hold of that heroin,' Peter said. ‘They want to use it to fund their own gang.'

‘It's war: men against women,' Kir said.

‘They're desperate,' Mark said.

Peter didn't look in the least sympathetic.

‘They're killers. They killed Ramses and my friend Stinger. They attacked Felix in my house.'

Kir thought about the packet she had been looking for in the wreck of
Molly
. Everyone had believed Brian had hidden the heroin in the boat. All the rumours, all the information pointed that way, but
Molly
was empty. Hannibal and Brian were friends. Brian would never have risked hiding heroin in his own house, but he would have had no problems hiding it in the house of someone he knew.

She found an old torch in a cupboard. It still worked, even though the beam was faint. Mark followed her outside. They both had their weapons at the ready.

‘What happens now, soldier?'

She smiled.

‘Patience, police officer.'

Close on her heels, he followed her to the well.

‘The bucket is down the bottom,' she said, almost to herself. ‘Shine the torch here.'

He held it while she grabbed the rope and started hoisting up the bucket. She had done it so often as a child, hoisting up a bucket full of bottles. The pulley creaked, but this time there were no bottles. When the bucket reached the top of the well, they could both see its contents.

She reached out and took the packet wrapped in plastic.

‘I think you'll find this is seven million kroners' worth of heroin.'

She had only just spoken when a salvo from an automatic pistol echoed between the walls of Konkylien and they felt the bullets whistle past. Kir dropped the bucket and its contents on the ground and they took cover behind Mark's car, but they could see nothing in the darkness. They waited. Holding their weapons, they scanned the area, but there was nothing to see.

‘Drop your guns,' a woman's voice shouted. ‘You don't stand a chance.'

Mark fired a shot in the direction of the voice. The response was another salvo from the automatic. Plaster was blown off the walls, sending dust everywhere. They huddled close to the ground.

‘We can see you,' a woman shouted. ‘You can't move a millimetre without us hitting you.'

‘They're serious,' Kir said.

Mark nodded.

‘They bought night-vision goggles from the Poles. They're equipped like elite soldiers.'

‘That would have been helpful to know.'

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I forgot to mention it.'

She heard footsteps as they were attacked from both sides. The figures were so fast and difficult to see it was impossible to fight both of them. She fired and heard Mark do the same. Neither of them hit anything and a second later she was knocked to the ground by a big, heavy figure with a rifle butt. She heard a semi-strangled noise from Mark as the same happened to him. Then she blacked out and slumped into the snow.

P
ETER HAD HEARD
the shots and the screaming outside and knew what was about to happen.

In a moment they would kick down the door. The women had automatic weapons. They would take Anja and then they would drive off, if they could. He checked his gun. He only had two bullets left.

‘I'll be back. You'll be all right.'

He took a last look at Felix and Anja. Felix looked at him. Anja had slipped into a coma-like sleep.

He crept out of the back door just as the boot-clad women stomped in with a roar: ‘Don't anyone move.'

He ran behind the house, across the fields covered in deep snow, and couldn't remember when he had last done anything quite as exhausting. One of his legs was barely working and his shoulder was injured, but he thought of Stinger. Old Stinger had never hurt a fly. Lily and co. had tracked him down and beaten him to a pulp to get the coordinates after failing to get them from Ramses.

Finally he reached the road and ran around the bend to his car. He felt dizzy and had to lean against it, gasping for breath like a drowning man. Somewhere in the distance he heard sirens. Ambulances, he thought. Or police. But he couldn't wait. Four flat tyres weren't enough to stop a desperate and angry Lily Klein.

He climbed into the van with difficulty, put on his seatbelt and started the engine. He pulled out and drove up the drive to Konkylien and immediately saw a set of headlights coming towards him from the yard. He revved the engine and saw at once they weren't driving the 4x4. They had taken Mark Bille's police car.

He stamped the accelerator to the floor and clung to the steering wheel. The tyres gripped the snow. The headlights from the oncoming car blinded him and he was glad he was sitting high up. The other car sounded its horn, but he clenched his teeth and held his course. Neither of them was prepared to move. So he closed his eyes and hoped for the best.

The collision shook everything. The world went under. He let go of the pain in his body and the tightrope between the past and the present. It all evaporated in the cold air to be swallowed up by darkness.

He regained consciousness with the airbag pressed into his forehead and an irritating ringing in his ears. It was coming from his car. He was slumped across the steering wheel. Blood blurred his vision. He wiped it away with his jumper, pushed the airbag aside and stared straight into Mark's patrol car, which appeared to be welded to his own in a bizarre sculpture, one bonnet entangled in the other. A door had been forced open and there was light inside. Two airbags had inflated in the faces of both the women, who stirred, groggy.

He forced himself to act, but his head was on the point of exploding and his body protested violently when he loosened the seatbelt, grabbed Manfred's rifle and jumped out. His knees buckled and he struggled to get back to his feet. The women came to with a rifle pointing at them and the sound of sirens approaching. His eyes met Lily Klein's and he could read her mind.

‘Forget it,' he shouted. ‘It's over.'

He could see she was evaluating the situation. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes. Seconds later the road behind them was jammed with a whole motorcade of ambulances and police cars, and the sirens fell silent.

I
F POSSIBLE, WINTER'S
grip had tightened still further and the frost had locked the countryside in an icy embrace. Yet it didn't feel quite as desperate as before. It was as if the weather was showing some signs of ceding, or perhaps he just wanted to believe it was.

‘Have you heard they've found Nina?'

Manfred was walking alongside him with the dachshund sniffing and scenting the air. It was the 31st of January. The last day of the hunting season.

‘It was on the radio,' Peter said, ducking to avoid the branches at the edge of the forest. ‘She was caught in the net of a Norwegian trawler off the coast of Bergen.'

‘How awful,' Manfred said. ‘But a relief to her family – all things considered.'

They walked on in silence, searching for tracks. Then Peter said: ‘How did you know I wasn't going to shoot you?'

Manfred turned to him with a quiet smile.

‘You'd just put the cartridges in your pocket. The rifle wasn't loaded.'

‘Was that the only reason?'

His friend shook his head as they trudged along. Peter was happy to walk and talk.

‘Not the only one. You wouldn't have done it, Peter. You might think so, but I think differently.'

Was it at this point he should say thank you? Probably, but it wasn't what they did. Their friendship was of another kind, and silence could also express gratitude.

‘How's Felix?' Manfred asked after a pause.

‘She's in Spain. Her recovery is going well, but she says she needs some time away.'

So many questions could follow. Will we see her again? What's happening with the two of you? But it wasn't Manfred's style, and Peter wouldn't be able to give him a clear answer anyway. Instead his boss said: ‘This winter seems like it'll never end. But it will one day. One day it'll go and the world will become itself again.'

Peter muttered something positive.

‘By the way, I've started a new book,' Manfred said.

He turned now and his face cracked in a grin.

‘Victor Hugo.
Les Misérables.
'

‘The one about the convict being persecuted by the police?'

Peter had read it several times.

‘Why don't you read something cheerful for a change?
Tortilla Flat
, for example?'

Manfred smiled.

‘And you? Any news?'

‘Mark seems to think I may get off lightly. It was a set-up, after all.'

‘But you killed a man.'

‘He reached for his gun first.'

Self-defence. They were hoping to make the judge see it that way. Mark seemed to think it was possible in view of what had happened in the forest and at Konkylien.

They were interrupted by the dog whining. They could see it had got a scent. Its whole body trembled with excitement as it rushed off with its nose in the snow. They followed it and found tracks and droppings. The dog took them deeper into the clearing and led them over a hilltop. And there it was again, the fourteen-pointer, with its head raised and its antlers high in the air. Its nostrils were flared and its muscles quivered under the winter coat. They stood very still for a long time; everything else ceased to matter and the past and the future fused into the here and now. Then Manfred passed him the rifle. Their eyes met briefly. Peter shook his head and Manfred lowered the weapon.

‘Go on, take it,' Peter whispered. ‘It's your last chance. Tomorrow it'll be too late.'

Manfred half-turned towards him.

‘It's also his last chance.'

They continued to watch the animal in front of them. Then it seemed as if the stag sensed that humans were nearby. It shook its head nervously, stamped the ground and trotted off across the fields.