‘Five… hundred?’
He grinned. ‘You can leave it on the road for nothin’.’
I pulled out three of Ove’s two-hundred notes, went up the steps to where Aa was waiting with a bony outstretched hand. He stuffed the money into a bulging wallet and spat again.
‘You can give me the change later,’ I said.
He didn’t answer, just slammed the door hard behind him as he went in.
I reversed into the barn, and in the dark I almost skewered the car on the line of sharp steel prongs on a silage loader. Fortunately, the loader, which was attached to the back of Sindre Aa’s blue Massey Ferguson tractor, was in the raised position. So instead of piercing the rear fender or puncturing the tyres, the lower edge scraped the boot lid and warned me just in time to avoid getting ten steel prongs through the rear window.
I parked beside the tractor, took the portfolio and ran across to the cabin. Luckily, the spruce forest was so dense that not much rain seeped through, and after letting myself into the simple log cabin, my hair was still surprisingly dry. I was going to light the fire but rejected the idea. Having taken the precaution of hiding the car, I didn’t think it was a good idea to send up smoke signals to say the cabin was occupied.
It was only now that I noticed how hungry I was.
I hung Ove’s denim jacket over a chair in the kitchen, went through the cupboards and at length found a solitary can of stew from the last time Ove and I had been here. There was neither cutlery nor a can-opener in the drawers, but I managed to bang a hole in the metal lid with the barrel of the Glock. I sat down and used my fingers to shovel down the greasy, salty contents.
Then I stared out of the window at the rain falling on the forest and the tiny yard between the cabin and the outside toilet. I went into the bedroom, put the Rubens portfolio under the mattress and lay down on the lower bunk to think. I didn’t get to do much thinking. It must have been all the adrenalin I had produced that day because all of a sudden I opened my eyes and realised I had been asleep. I checked my watch. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I fished out my mobile and saw there were eight missed calls. Four from Diana who probably wanted to play the concerned wife and, with Greve listening over her shoulder, would ask where on earth I was. Three from Ferdinand who was probably waiting to hear about the nomination or at least instructions on what they should do now with the Pathfinder job. And one I didn’t recognise immediately because I had deleted her from my address book. But not from my memory or heart. And while examining the number, it struck me that I – a person who in the course of his more than thirty years on this planet had assembled enough student friends, ex-girlfriends, colleagues and business connections for a network that filled two megabytes in Outlook – had one single acquaintance I could trust. A woman I had known, strictly speaking, for only three weeks. Well, shagged for three weeks. A brown-eyed Dane who dressed like a scarecrow, answered in monosyllables and had a name consisting of five letters. I don’t know which of us this was more tragic for.
I rang directory enquiries and asked for a number abroad. Most switchboards close down at four in Norway, most likely because the majority of the receptionists have gone home, to a sick partner according to statistics, in the country with the shortest working hours in the world, the biggest health budget and the highest proportion of sick leave. The HOTE switchboard answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I didn’t have a name or a department, but took a risk.
‘Can you put me through to the new guy, please?’
‘New guy, sir?’
‘You know, head of technical division.’
‘Felsenbrink is hardly new, sir.’
‘To me he is. So, is Felsenbrink in?’
Four seconds later I was talking to a Dutchman who was not only at work but sounded both fresh and polite despite it being one minute after four.
‘I’m Roger Brown from Alfa Recruiting.’ True. ‘Mr Clas Greve has given us your name as a reference.’ False.
‘Right,’ said the man, not sounding in the least bit surprised. ‘Clas Greve is the best manager I’ve ever worked with.’
‘So you…’ I started.
‘Yes, sir, my most sincere recommendations. He’s the perfect man for Pathfinder. Or any other company for that matter.’
I hesitated. Then changed my mind. ‘Thank you, Mr Fenselbrink.’
‘Felsenbrink. Any time.’
I put the phone in my trouser pocket. I didn’t know why, but something told me that I had just committed a blunder.
Outside, the rain was relentless and for lack of anything better to do, I took out the Rubens painting and studied it in the light from the kitchen window. The furious face of the hunter, Meleager, as he speared the beast. And discovered who he had reminded me of when I first saw the picture: Clas Greve. A thought struck me. A coincidence, of course, but Diana had once told me that the name Diana was the Roman name of the goddess of hunters and childbirth, known as Artemis in Greek. And it was Artemis who had sent out Meleager, wasn’t it? I yawned and made up my own role in the painting until I realised I had been mixing things up. It was the other way round; Artemis had sent out the beast. I rubbed my eyes; I was still tired.
At that moment I noticed that something had happened, there was a change, but I had been so absorbed by the painting that it had slipped my attention. I looked out of the window. It was the sound. It had stopped raining.
I put the picture back in the portfolio and decided to find a hiding place. I had to leave the cabin to do some shopping and a few other things, and I definitely didn’t trust that snake in the grass, Sindre Aa.
I looked around and my gaze was drawn to outside the window, to the toilet. The ceiling consisted of loose boards. Walking across the yard, I could feel I should have put on a jacket.
The toilet was a shed with just the basic requirements: four walls with cracks between the upright boards to give natural ventilation, and a wooden box in which had been sawn a circular hole, covered with a square, roughly hewn lid. I removed three toilet roll tubes and a magazine featuring a photo of Rune Rudberg with pinhole pupils from the lid and clambered up onto it. Stretched up to the boards lying loose across the beams, wishing for the nine millionth time that I was a few centimetres taller. But in the end I managed to loosen a board, shove the portfolio up under the roof and replace the board. And while standing there, straddling the toilet, I froze as I stared out through a gap between the planks.
It was deafeningly quiet outside now, just occasional drips from weighed-down branches. Nevertheless, I hadn’t heard a sound, not a single twig breaking, not a squelchy footstep on the muddy path. Or as much as a whimper from the dog standing by his master at the edge of the forest. Had I been sitting in the cabin, I would not have seen them; from the window they would have been in a blind spot. The dog looked like a collection of muscles, jaws and teeth packed into the bodywork of a boxer, just smaller and more compact. Let me repeat: I hate dogs. Clas Greve was wearing a camouflage-patterned cape and a green army hat. He didn’t have a weapon in his hands; what he had under his cape I could only guess at. It struck me that this was the perfect place for Greve. Deserted, no witnesses, hiding a body would be child’s play.
Master and mastiff set off as one, as though obeying an inaudible command.
My heart pounded with terror, yet I could not help but stare with fascination at how fast and how completely soundless their progress from the edge of the wood was, up to and alongside the cabin wall and then – without any hesitation – in through the door, which they left wide open.
I knew I had only a few seconds before Greve discovered that the cabin was empty, before he found the jacket over the back of the chair telling him I was close by. And… shit!… saw the Glock, which was lying on the worktop beside the empty can of stew. My brain was working overtime and could only reach this one conclusion – that I had nothing: no weapon, no means of retreat, no plan, no time. If I ran for it, it would be ten seconds tops before I had twenty kilos of Niether terrier at my heels and nine millimetres of lead in my skull. In short, things were going down the pan. Then my brain suggested panicking. But instead it did something I would never have believed. It simply stopped and took a step back. Back to ‘going down the pan’.
An idea. A desperate and revolting idea in all ways. But nonetheless an idea which had one big thing going for it: it was the only one I had.
I grabbed one of the toilet roll tubes and put it in my mouth. Felt how tightly I could close my mouth around it.
