green face with wide eyes that wanted to surface, a ghost with mud in its mouth and seagrass in its hair. I was thinking that I needed a whisky to steady my nerves when the face broke the surface of the lake and continued to rise towards me.
I screamed. And the corpse screamed, a rattling noise that seemed to drain the air around me of oxygen.
Then it was gone again, swallowed up by the black lake.
I stared down into the dark. Had it happened? Of course it had bloody happened, the echo was still rolling round the treetops.
I swung myself over the railing. Held my breath, waited for my body to be enclosed by ice-cold water. A shock ran through me from my heels to my head. And I discovered that I was standing with the water just over my waist, and that there was something moving under one foot. I stuck my hand down in the muddy water, grabbed hold of what I at first thought was seagrass until I felt the scalp beneath and pulled. Ove Kjikerud’s face reappeared, he blinked water off his eyelashes, and again it was there, the deep rattle of a man who was drawing air for all he was worth.
It was too much. And for a moment I just wanted to let go of him and run away.
But I couldn’t do that, could I?
In any event I started to drag him towards the bank by the end of the bridge. Ove’s consciousness took another timeout and I had to fight to keep his head above water. Several times I almost lost my balance on the soft, slippery bed that shifted under my now ruined John Lobb shoes. But after a few minutes I had managed to haul both of us onto the bank and then into the car.
I rested my head against the wheel and breathed out.
The sodding bird cackled in derision as the wheels spun in the direction of the wooden bridge and we drove away.
As I have said, I had never been to Ove’s home, but I had his address. I opened the glove compartment, took out the black GPS and tapped in the street name and number, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car. The GPS calculated, reasoned and reduced the driving distance. Analytically and without any emotional involvement. Even the woman’s gentle, controlled voice guiding me sounded unaffected by the circumstances. I had to be like that now, I told myself. Act correctly, like a machine, don’t make stupid mistakes.
Half an hour later I was at the address. It was a quiet, narrow street. Kjikerud’s small, old place lay at the far end, with a green wall of dark spruce forest in the background. I came to a halt in front of the steps, cast an eye over the house and established yet again that hideous architecture is not a modern invention.
Ove sat in the seat beside me, as hideous as sin as well, ashen and so wet that his clothes gurgled while I was searching his pockets and finally found a set of keys.
I shook some life into him and he stared at me through bleary eyes.
‘Can you walk?’ I asked.
He eyed me as though I were an alien. His jaw jutted forward even further than normal and made him look like a cross between the stone figures on Easter Island and Bruce Springsteen.
I walked round the car, dragged him out and leaned him up against the wall. Unlocked the door with the first key I tried on the ring, thinking that my luck might finally be on the turn, and pulled him inside.
I was on my way into the house when I remembered. The alarm. I definitely did not want security men from Tripolis swarming around here now, nor live camera surveillance of me with a half-dead Ove Kjikerud.
‘What’s the password?’ I shouted into Ove’s ear.
He lurched and almost slipped out of my grasp.
‘Ove! password?’
‘Eh?’
‘I have to deactivate the alarm before it goes off.’
‘Natasha…’ he mumbled with closed eyes.
‘Ove! Pull yourself together!’
‘Natasha…’
‘The password!’ I slapped him hard, and instantly he opened his eyes wide.
‘That’s what I’m telling you, you bastard. NATASHA!’
I let go of him, heard him topple to the floor as I dashed to the front of the house. I found the alarm box hidden behind the door; I had gradually understood how Tripolis operatives like to set them up. A little red light was flashing, showing the countdown to the tripping of the alarm. I tapped in the name of the Russian whore. And realised as I was about to press the final ‘a’ that Ove was dyslexic. Christ knows how he spelt her name! But my fifteen seconds were soon up and it was too late to ask him. I pressed the ‘a’ and shut my eyes, braced myself. Waited. No sound came. I opened my eyes again. The red light had stopped flashing. I breathed out, refrained from thinking about the margin of seconds I had had.
When I turned round, Ove was gone. I followed the wet footprints into a sitting room. It obviously served as a room for relaxing, working, eating and sleeping. At any rate, there was a double bed under a window at one end, a wall-mounted plasma TV at the other and in between a coffee table on top of which was a cardboard box containing the remains of a pizza. Against the longer wall there was a vice bench with a sawn-off shotgun he was clearly modifying. Ove had crawled up into the bed where he now lay groaning. With pain, I assumed. I haven’t the foggiest idea what Curacit does to a human body, but I doubt anything good.
‘How are you?’ I asked, moving closer. I kicked something that rolled across the worn parquet floor, looked down and saw that the area around the bed was littered with empty cartridges.
‘I’m dying,’ he moaned. ‘What happened?’
‘You sat on a syringe loaded with Curacit when you got into the car.’
‘CURACIT?!’ He raised his head and glared at me. ‘You mean the poison Curacit? I’ve got fucking Curacit in my body?’
‘Yes, but obviously not enough.’
‘Not enough?’
‘To kill you. He must have messed up the dosage.’
‘He? Who?’
‘Clas Greve.’
Ove’s head slumped back on the pillow. ‘Shit! Don’t tell me you’ve fucked up! Have you given us away, Brown?’
‘Not at all,’ I said, pulling a chair to the foot of the bed. ‘The needle on the car seat was about… another matter.’
‘Apart from us screwing the guy? What the hell would that be?’
‘I’d rather not talk about it. But it was me he was after.’
Ove howled. ‘Curacit! I have to go to hospital, Brown. I’m dying! Why the hell did you bring me here? Phone for an ambulance!’ He nodded to something on the bedside table that I had at first taken to be just a plastic model of two naked women in the so-called 69 position, but now I realised it was also a telephone.
I swallowed. ‘You can’t go to hospital, Ove.’
‘Can’t? I have to! I’m dying, you idiot! Dying!’
‘Listen to me. When they discover you’ve got Curacit in you, they’ll ring the police
‘So what? I’ll keep my mouth shut.’
‘And how will you explain this, eh?’
‘I’ll find something.’
I shook my head. ‘You don’t have a chance, Ove. Not when they get going on Inbau, Reid and Buckley.’
‘Eh?’
‘You’ll break down. You’ve got to stay here, do you understand? You’re better already, anyway.’
‘What the fuck do you know about that, Brown? You’re a doctor, are you? No, you’re a bloody headhunter and my lungs are burning up right now. My spleen is ruptured and in an hour my kidneys will give up the ghost. I have to get to a fucking hospital NOW!’
He had half sat up in bed, but I jumped up and pushed him back down.
‘Listen, I’ll go and find some milk in the fridge. Milk neutralises poison. They wouldn’t be able to do anything
