‘If you shoot from there, Tangen will have the murder on film,’ Harry said.
He heard Waaler’s deep laugh.
‘Tell me, Harry. If this cavalry of yours really exists, shouldn’t it have ridden in before now?’
‘Daddy…’ Oleg moaned.
Harry closed his eyes.
‘Listen, Tom. The lift won’t move as long as the grille isn’t properly shut. Your arm is between the bars, so you had better let Oleg go so that we can get it into position.’
Waaler laughed again.
‘Do you think I’m stupid, Harry? The grille only needs to move a few centimetres. You can manage that without me letting go of the boy.’
Harry looked at Sven, but only received an unfocused, faraway look in return.
‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘But I’ve got cuffs on, so I’ll need Sven’s help. And at this moment it looks as if he’s freaked out.’
‘Sven!’ Waaler shouted. ‘Can you hear?’
Sven barely raised his head.
‘Do you remember Lodin, Sven? Your predecessor in Prague?’
The echo rumbled down to the entrance. Sven swallowed.
‘Head fell in a lathe, Sven. Fancy trying that?’
Sven staggered to his feet. Harry grabbed his collar and pulled him up close.
‘Do you know what you’ve got to do, Sven?’ he shouted into wan, trance-like features as he put his hand into his back pocket and brought out a key.
‘Make sure the grille stays in position. Do you hear? Hold the grille tight when we start.’
Harry pointed to one of the worn, round, black buttons on the panel.
Sven gazed intently at Harry as he put the key in the lock for the handcuffs and twisted. Then he nodded.
‘OK,’ Harry shouted. ‘We’re ready. We’re putting the grille in position.’
Sven stood with his back to the grille. He took hold with both hands and pushed to the right. Waaler groaned as the latticework pulled his arm the same way. There was a gentle click as the contact points on the floor and the grille met.
‘There!’ Harry shouted.
They waited. Harry took a step across the lift and stared up. In a small crack between the round window and Waaler’s shoulder two eyes glared down at him. One, Waaler’s enraged, wide-open eye; the other, the black, unseeing eye of the gun.
‘Come back up,’ Waaler said.
‘If you spare the boy,’ Harry said.
‘It’s a deal.’
Harry nodded slowly. Then he pressed the button.
‘I knew you would do the right thing in the end, Harry.’
‘One usually does,’ Harry said.
He saw Waaler’s one eyebrow suddenly darken. Maybe it was because he had just discovered that the handcuffs were hanging from one of Harry’s wrists. Maybe it was something in Harry’s intonation. Or maybe he felt it too. That the moment had come.
There was an ominous scream in the steel wires as the lift jerked into action. At the same moment Harry took a quick pace forward and stretched up on his toes. There was a dry click as the handcuff locked into place around Waaler’s wrist.
‘Bloody h -’ Waaler began.
Harry lifted one leg. The handcuffs were biting into both of their wrists as Hole’s 95 kilos dragged Waaler down. Waaler tried to take the strain, but his arm was pulled through the window until it was blocked by his shoulder.
A shit day.
‘Let me go, for fuck’s sake!’ Tom screamed, as his chin pressed against the iron door. He tried to pull his arm back, but it was too heavy. He bellowed with rage and slammed his gun against the iron door. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were ruining everything for him. They’d destroyed the sandcastle, kicked it to pieces and now stood there laughing. But they would see, one day they would see. That was when he noticed. That the bars of the grille were touching his lower arm, that the lift was moving. But the wrong way. Downwards. He felt his throat tighten when he realised. That he was going to be crushed. That the lift was now a slow motion guillotine. That he too was about to meet his fate.
‘Hold the grille tight, Sven!’ Harry shouted.
Tom let go of Oleg and tried to pull his arm away. But Harry was too heavy. Tom panicked. He made another desperate attempt to free himself. And another. His feet skidded on the slippery floor. He felt the inside of the lift roof against his shoulder. All reasoning deserted him.
‘Don’t, Harry. Stop.’
He meant to shout, but sobs stifled his words.
‘Mercy…’
43
Monday Night. Rolex.
Tick, tick, tick.
Harry sat listening to the second hand with his eyes closed while he counted. He mused that the time would have to be pretty accurate since the ticking was coming from a gold Rolex watch.
Tick, tick, tick.
If he had counted correctly he had been sitting in the lift for a quarter of an hour now. Fifteen minutes. Nine hundred seconds since he had pressed the stop button between the ground floor and the basement and announced that now they were safe and would have to wait. For nine hundred seconds they had sat as quiet as mice, listening. For footsteps. Voices. Doors being opened and closed. While Harry, his eyes closed, had counted the nine hundred ticks from the Rolex watch on the wrist of the blood-covered arm on the lift floor, and still attached to his handcuffs.
Tick, tick, tick.
Harry opened his eyes. He unlocked the handcuffs and wondered how he was going to get into the boot of the car now that he had swallowed the key.
‘Oleg,’ he whispered and gently shook the sleeping boy’s shoulder. ‘I need you to help me.’
Oleg got to his feet.
‘What’s the point?’ Sven asked, looking up at Oleg who was standing on Harry’s shoulders and detaching the strip lighting from the roof of the lift.
‘Take it,’ Harry said.
Sven reached up to Oleg and took one of the two tubes.
‘Firstly, so that my eyes get used to the dark before I go out into the basement,’ Harry said. ‘Secondly, so that we don’t stand here in the light blinking when the lift door opens.’
‘Waaler? In the basement?’ Sven’s voice was full of disbelief. ‘Come on, no-one can survive that.’
He pointed with the light tube to the already pale, wax-like arm on the floor.
‘Imagine how much blood he lost. And the shock.’
‘I’m trying to anticipate every eventuality,’ Harry said.
Then it went dark.
Tick, tick, tick.
Harry stepped out of the lift, moved quickly to the side and crouched down. He heard the door close softly behind him. He waited until he heard the lift start. The arrangement had been that they should stop the lift between
