For a long time he said nothing.
Then he cleared his throat and spoke with a surprisingly calm voice: “All right. I have a lot of cash on me. You can take some of the antiques. All the silver. Nobody saw us. You drove with the meter off. Nobody needs to know a thing. All you have to do is do it.” A crooked smile. “For once in your life just do it, Klaus.”
“Okay,” I said.
Surprised, Rutzou stared at me.
After another moment of silence, I was afraid he was getting cold feet, but then, in the same composed, toneless voice as before, he said: “Do what you will, just do it quick. Goddamn quick. Understood?”
I nodded politely.
“One second.” He disappeared down the hall, rustled around in his office, and came back with a thick envelope that, excited now, he handed to me.
I looked. Nothing but large bills, lots of them. I stuck the envelope in my pocket and put the gloves on that I’d pulled out of my leather jacket.
Rutzou had poured himself an extra large whiskey, and he drank so it ran down his chin and throat and stained the elegant white shirt under his tux.
“Let’s get it over with, goddamnit,” he gasped.
I started right in. Before any regrets came along. It’s not nearly as easy to strangle someone as you might think. It requires a lot of strength and grisly patience. But that I had! Rutzou’s eyes started to bulge, the whites popped out, he gurgled and, I couldn’t believe it, turned an even more ghostly white than before. He put up a little resistance, but most likely that was a natural reflex. For the bastard really wanted to die. Though he wouldn’t be getting his wish, not yet.
“Shhoke harr-er, gaw-dammuh!” he babbled.
“Can you say please?”
“Puh-eeeze.”
His blue tongue hung halfway out of the preposterous, already putrefied chasm of his mouth, his eyes had shifted from white to violently bloodshot, life slowly faded from them; it was a fantastic sight, he hissed and gasped and drooled like a goddamn snake, and then I abruptly dropped my stranglehold.
“Did you really think I’d do it, you idiot?”
Rutzou tumbled backward, grabbed his throat, and gasped deeply for breath. He stood and swayed in his ridiculous patent-leather shoes, completely groggy; he’d pissed his pants, I noticed, and I was already celebrating my little stunt when he suddenly threw himself upon me in a rage and bombarded my face with rock-hard punches, his anger apparently increasing his strength because I was starting to see black. Now it was me on the edge of being knocked unconscious. I had no choice but to hit back. I slugged him straight on the chin.
Rutzou fell his entire length and banged his head on the sharp corner of the coffee table. It sounded ugly. My knuckles ached in my gloves. Rutzou was on the floor, lifeless. I prayed that he was only unconscious, when I saw a thin trickle of blood appear. More of it came, and more, until it was a small, dark lake.
Desperate, I fell to my knees and shook him, but there was no doubt.
Rutzou was dead.
The asshole had tricked me after all.
For several minutes I sat and stared into space, unable to think or act. Then I downed a shot and began removing all traces of my fingerprints: I was on file. One of the last things I did before leaving the apartment was to empty my glass and wash it carefully. It was like being in a film, or no, a grainy documentary…
Then I left.
Down the stairs, the wide, red stairs.
And there I sat. It was still pitch dark and incredibly cold. I took my gloves off and fumbled around for the pack of cigarettes, only two left. The moment the flame rose from the lighter, I saw a flash of my gaunt and battered face in the rearview mirror. It was the stupidest possible thing I could do, to sit here smoking; someone might see me. But I really needed that cigarette. The money in the envelope, I’d completely forgotten about it. What had I done with it? Yeah, the money was safe and sound in my pocket, and in a moment I would be gone, headed for the hills, nobody would connect me with his death. I stuck the key in the ignition.
But then another thought hit me, harder than Rutzou’s fist. His girlfriend! They’d had a fierce fight earlier that evening. There were conspicuous signs of strangulation on his neck, anyone could see that he hadn’t just fallen down drunk. Suspicion would immediately fall on her. Maybe she had an alibi, maybe not. And if she didn’t, what would I do?
It was her or me. This would never end. Except for the one who was dead.
LAST TRAIN FROMCENTRAL STATION BY GUNNAR STAALESEN
Istedgade lay like a painted corpse as I emerged from Central Station late in the afternoon one Friday in November, the year the U.S.A. elected its first black president and the world immediately looked much brighter than it had the previous eight years.
For a long time, Europe has begun for most Norwegians in Copenhagen, and Central Station is the gateway to the rest of the continent. There you can buy an aquavit in the cafe at eight in the morning, even on Sunday, and you realize at once that you have arrived in another world.
Norway’s capital was located in Denmark for four hundred years. The despotic Danish sovereigns ruled from Copenhagen with an iron hand. At the beginning of the 1700s, a young man traveled from Norway to Denmark and became the first modern Nordic writer: Ludvig Holberg. Danes claim him for their own, Norway says he is Norwegian, but we in Bergen don’t take the debate all that seriously. We know exactly where he came from. The Danish encyclopedias also put it quite correctly: Danish writer, born in Bergen.
I had followed in Holberg’s footsteps many times myself, not in the pursuit of happiness, but usually to search for some young person who had run away from home. Copenhagen was also the most natural place for those on the run to hide out. It wasn’t so difficult to get there, but still you felt you were far away from home.
After the regular ferry route between Oslo and Copenhagen had developed into a floating orgy of alcohol and the night train from Oslo had been discontinued, most traveled by air to Kastrup, Copenhagen’s airport. Generally I had taken the train. Now the only train ride was the one from the airport, but Central Station was still the customary place to get off. You took the escalator up from the platform to the main hall, where the big city’s noise and commotion hit you immediately. Arrivals and departures were announced over the speakers at regular intervals. Travelers of all nationalities and age groups passed by, some with backpacks, others with heavy suitcases that rolled on nifty little wheels, everyone on their way somewhere, even when waiting impatiently in groups. A railway station of this caliber is like a monument to the restlessness of the times, partings and farewells, greetings and embraces, teary smiles and sparkling laughter, noisy outbreaks of anger and murmured, intense confessions. All types of figures meet here, from the poorest beggar with outstretched hands to the richest businessman with the world’s fattest cigar clenched between his teeth like a lighthouse.
As for me, I didn’t stand out in any particular way. From the moment I walked into the hall, my gaze wandered from face to face, without much hope of finding the right one. After all, I hadn’t seen her for twenty-three years.
Heidi Davik was her name in 1985, and Heidi Davik was her name still. In the years between she had been married and divorced and changed her name back and forth. But both times it was her father who had given me the assignment.
The first thing he asked when he came to my office on that Thursday in November was if I remembered him. He was short, white-haired, and not too dissimilar from the candidate who had lost the American presidential
