‘Forgotten something?’ the officer asked.
‘Yes,’ Harry said and waited for her to let him through the locked door. ‘Sound the alarm!’ he shouted, dropped the briefcase and ran. ‘Oleg Fauke’s cell.’
His footsteps echoed through the empty gallery, the empty corridors and the much too empty common room. He was not out of breath, yet his breathing sounded like roaring inside his head.
Oleg’s scream reached him as he emerged from the last corridor. The door to his cell was half open, and seconds before he got there it felt like the nightmare, the avalanche, the feet that would not move fast enough.
Then he was inside and absorbing the scene.
The desk was on its side, paper and books were strewn across the floor. At the other end of the room, with his back to the cupboard, stood Oleg. The black Slayer T-shirt was drenched in blood. He was holding the metal lid of the waste-paper bin in front of him. His mouth was open, and he was screaming and screaming. Harry saw the back of a Gym Tech singlet, above it a broad, sweaty bull neck, above that a shiny skull and above that a raised hand holding a bread knife. Metal resounded against metal as the blade struck the bin lid. The man must have noticed the change of light in the room, for the next moment he whirled round. Lowered his head and held the knife low, pointing it towards Harry.
‘Out!’ he hissed.
Harry avoided the temptation of looking at the knife; instead he focused on the feet. He noted that behind the man Oleg had slid to the floor. Compared with martial arts practitioners Harry had a lamentably small repertoire of offensive moves. He had only two. And also only two rules. One: there are no rules. Two: attack first. And when Harry acted it was with the automatic movements of someone who has learned, practised and repeated only two methods of attack. Harry stepped towards the knife so that the man was forced to retreat in order to swing at him. And by the time the man had wound up his arm Harry had raised his right leg and angled his hip. As the knife was on its way forward, Harry’s foot was on its way down. It struck the man’s knee above the patella. And since the human anatomy is not very well protected against violence from that angle, the quadriceps immediately gave way, followed by the knee-joint ligaments and — as the kneecap was pressed down in front of the tibia — also the patellar tendon.
The man fell to the ground with a howl. The knife clattered to the floor as his hands groped for his kneecap. And his eyes saucered when he found it in a completely new position.
Harry kicked the knife away and raised his foot to finish off the attack as he had been taught: stamp on the opponent’s thigh muscles to cause such massive internal bleeding that he would not be able to get up again. But he saw that the job was already done and lowered his foot.
He heard the sound of running feet and the rattle of keys from outside in the corridor.
‘Over here!’ Harry shouted, stepping over the screaming man towards Oleg.
He heard panting from the door.
‘Get that man out and get hold of a doctor.’ Harry had to yell to drown the continuous screams.
‘Bloody hell, what-’
‘Never mind that now, get hold of the doctor.’ Harry tore the Slayer T-shirt and searched through the blood for the wound. ‘And the doctor should come here first. He’s only got a wonky knee.’
Harry held Oleg’s face between his bloodstained hands while listening to the screaming man being dragged away.
‘Oleg? Are you there? Oleg?’
The boy’s eyes rolled and the word that escaped his lips was so faint that Harry barely heard it. And felt his chest constrict.
‘Oleg, it’ll be alright. He hasn’t stabbed anything you really need.’
‘Harry-’
‘And soon it’ll be Christmas Eve. They’re going to give you morphine.’
‘Shut up, Harry.’
Harry shut up. Oleg opened his eyes. There was a feverish, desperate sheen to them. His voice was hoarse, but quite clear now.
‘You should have let him complete the job, Harry.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘You have to let me do this.’
‘Do what?’
No answer.
‘Do what, Oleg?’
Oleg placed a hand behind Harry’s head, pulled him down and whispered: ‘You can’t stop this, Harry. It’s all happened. It has to run its course. If you get in the way, more will die.’
‘Who’s going to die?’
‘It’s too big, Harry. It’ll swallow you up, swallow everyone up.’
‘Who’s going to die? Who are you protecting, Oleg? Is it Irene?’
Oleg closed his eyes. His lips barely moved. Then not at all. And Harry thought he looked like he had when he was eleven and had just fallen asleep after a long day. Then he spoke.
‘It’s you, Harry. They’re going to kill you.’
As Harry was leaving the prison the ambulances had arrived. He thought of how things used to be. The town as it used to be. His life as it used to be. While he had been using Oleg’s computer he had also looked for Sardines and Russian Amcar Club. He hadn’t found any signs to suggest they had been resurrected. Resurrection may be generally too much to hope for. Perhaps life doesn’t teach you much, apart from this one thing: there is no way back.
Harry lit a cigarette, and before he took the first drag, the brain already celebrating the fact that nicotine would accompany the blood, he heard the sound being played back, the sound he knew he would hear for the rest of the evening and night, the almost inaudible word that had first crossed Oleg’s lips in the cell:
‘Dad.’
PART TWO
16
The mother rat licked the metal. It tasted of salt. She gave a start as the fridge sprang into life and began to hum. The church bells were still ringing. There was a way into the nest she hadn’t tried. Hadn’t dared to try since the human blocking the entrance was not yet dead. But the high-frequency howls of her young were making her desperate. So she did. She darted up the jacket sleeve of the human. There was a vague smell of smoke. Not smoke from a cigarette or a bonfire, but something else. Something in gas form that had been in the clothes, but had been washed out so that only a few molecules of air were left between the innermost threads in the cloth. She approached the elbow, but it was too narrow there. She stopped and listened. In the distance there was the sound of a police siren.
There were all those brief moments and choices, Dad. Those I thought were unimportant, here today, gone tomorrow, as it were. But they pile up. And before you know it they have become a river that drags you along with it. That leads you to where you are going. And that was where I was going. In fricking July. No, I wasn’t going there! I wanted to go elsewhere, Dad.
As we turned in towards the main building Isabelle Skoyen stood on her drive, in her tight riding breeches, legs akimbo.
‘Andrey, you wait here,’ the old boy said. ‘Peter, you check the area.’
We got out of the limousine to a cowshed smell, the buzz of flies and distant cowbells. She shook hands stiffly with the old boy, ignored me and invited us in for a coffee, ‘a’ being the operative word.
In the corridor hung pictures of nags with the best bloodlines, the most racing cups and fuck knows what. The old boy walked along by the photos and asked if one was an English thoroughbred and praised the slim legs and
