The next moment I fell forward. I don’t know whether a Niether terrier would be able to jump up and sink its teeth into the neck of an average-sized basketball player, but I am not – I may have mentioned this before – exactly a basketball player. So I was knocked forward as the pain exploded in my brain. Claws lacerated my back and I heard the noise of flesh giving way with a groan, bones crunching. My bones. I tried to grab the animal, but my limbs wouldn’t obey, it was as if the jaws locked round my neck had blocked all the communication from my brain. Commands were simply not getting through. I lay on my stomach unable even to spit out the sawdust filling my mouth. Pressure on the main artery. My brain was being drained of oxygen. My field of vision was narrowing. Soon I would lose consciousness. So this is how I was to die, between the jaws of a fat, ugly lump of a dog. It was depressing, to put it mildly. Yes, it was enough to make you see red. My head began to burn, an ice-cold heat filled my body, seeped through to the tips of my fingers. A joyful curse and a sudden quiver of life-giving strength that presaged death.
I stood up with the dog dangling from my neck and down my back like a living fur stole. Staggering around, I swung my arms, but was still unable to get a hold of it. I knew this outburst of energy was my body’s last desperate chance and that soon I would be out for the count. My field of vision had now shrunk to the beginning of a James Bond film, when they play the intro – or, in my case, the outro – and everything is black except for a little round hole in which you see a guy in a dinner jacket aiming at you with a pistol. And through the hole I could see a blue Massey Ferguson tractor. And a last thought reached my brain: I hate dogs.
Swaying, I turned my back to the tractor, let the weight of the dog tip me off the balls of my feet onto my heels, and I stepped back hard. I fell. The sharp steel prongs on the rear loader met us. And I knew from the sound of tearing dog fur that I would not be leaving this world on my own. My field of vision closed and the world went black.
I must have been out for some time.
I lay on the floor staring into the open mouth of a dog. Its body appeared to be hovering in mid-air, bent into what looked like a foetal position. Two steel prongs were sticking into its back. I got to my feet, the barn spun round and I had to take a couple of steps to the side to gain balance. I put a hand on my neck and felt a fresh stream of blood from where the dog’s teeth had punctured my skin. And realised I was bordering on madness because instead of getting in the car, I was just standing and staring in fascination. I had created a work of art.
Instead I rooted around in my pocket for the car keys and tottered over to Ove’s Mercedes, unlocked it and turned the key in the ignition. No response. I tried again and pressed the accelerator. Dead as a dodo. I peered through the windscreen. Groaned. Then I got out and whipped up the bonnet. It was so dark now that I could barely make out the slashed leads that were sticking up. I had no idea what purpose they served, just that they were probably vital for the little miracle that makes cars go. Sod that bloody half-breed, Greve! I hoped he was still sitting in the cabin waiting for me to return. But he must have started to wonder what had happened to his animal. Take it easy, Brown. OK, the only way I could get away from here now was on Sindre Aa’s tractor. Too slow. Greve would soon be after me again. So I would have to find the car he came in – the silver-grey Lexus must be somewhere down the road – and put it out of action just as he had the Mercedes.
I walked at a brisk pace to the farmhouse, half expecting Aa to come out onto the steps – I could see the front door was ajar – but he didn’t. I knocked and then nudged the door open. In the porch I saw the rifle with the telescopic sights leaning against the wall beside a pair of filthy rubber boots.
‘Aa?’
Aa, pronounced ‘oh’, didn’t sound like a name, but as if I was asking him to continue the story he was telling. Which, in a way, was true. So I entered the house persistently repeating the idiotic monosyllable. I thought I caught a movement and turned. Any blood I had left froze to ice. A black monster on two legs had stopped at the same moment as me and was now staring back with enlarged white eyes shining out of all the black. I raised my right hand. It raised its left. I raised my left hand, it raised its right. It was a mirror. I let out a sigh of relief. The crap had dried and covered all of me: shoes, body, face, hair. I kept going. Pushed open the sitting-room door.
He was recumbent in a rocking chair wearing a grin on his face. The fat cat was lying in his lap and peered at me with its sluttish almond-shaped Diana-eyes. It rose and jumped down. Its paws landed softly on the floor and it slunk over to me with swaying hips before coming to an abrupt halt. Well, I didn’t smell of roses or lavender. But after a brief hesitation it continued to pad towards me with a deep, inviting purr. Adaptable animals, cats, they know when they need a new provider. The previous one was dead, you see.
Sindre Aa’s grin was caused by a blood-rimmed extension to his lips. A bluish-black tongue protruded from the slash in his cheek, and I could see the gums and teeth of his lower jaw. The grumpy farmer reminded me of a good, old-fashioned Pac-Man the way he was sitting, but the new ear-to-ear smile was unlikely to have been the cause of his death, since two corresponding blood-streaked lines formed an X across his throat. Strangulation from behind with a garrotte: thin nylon rope or steel wire. I wheezed through my nose as my brain produced a swift spontaneous reconstruction: Greve had driven past the farm, seen my car tracks turn off into the muddy yard. He may have driven on, parked some distance away, returned, peeped into the barn and confirmed that my car was there. Sindre Aa must have been standing on the steps by this time. Suspicious and cunning. He had spat and given an evasive answer to Greve’s enquiry concerning me. Had Greve offered him money? Had they gone into the house? In any case, Aa must still have been on his guard because when Greve placed the garrotte over his head from behind Aa had managed to lower his chin so that it had not gone round his neck. They had struggled, the wire had slipped into his mouth and Greve had pulled, slicing Aa’s cheeks. But Greve was strong, and in the end he had tightened the death-bringing wire round the neck of the desperate old codger. A silent witness, a silent murder. But why had Greve not taken the simple course of action and used a gun? After all, it was several kilometres to the nearest neighbour. Perhaps to avoid giving himself away? The obvious answer hit home: he hadn’t brought a firearm with him. I cursed under my breath. For now he had one. I had served him up a new murder weapon by leaving the Glock on the work surface in the cabin. How stupid can you be!
My attention was caught by a dripping sound and the cat which had positioned itself between my legs. Its pink tongue shot in and out as it lapped up the blood falling from the edge of my shirttail and onto the floor. A stupefying tiredness had begun to creep up on me. I took three deep breaths. Had to concentrate. Keep thinking, acting, it was the only thing I could do to hold the numbing fear at arm’s length. First of all, I had to find the tractor keys. I wandered aimlessly from room to room pulling out drawers. In the bedroom I found one solitary empty cartridge box. In the hall I found a scarf which I knotted around my neck, and at least that staunched the flow of blood. But no tractor keys. I glanced at my watch. Greve really must have been wondering about the dog. In the end I went back into the sitting room, bent over Aa’s body and searched his pockets. There they were! They even had the words Massey Ferguson on the key ring. I was pressed for time, but I couldn’t afford to be sloppy now, had to do everything right. Which meant when they found Aa, this would be a crime scene and they would look for DNA evidence. I hurried into the kitchen, wet a towel and cleaned my blood off the floors of all the rooms I had entered. Wiped possible fingerprints off all the things I had touched. Standing in the porch, ready to go, I noticed the rifle. What if some luck had finally come my way, what if there was a cartridge in the chamber after all? I grabbed the rifle and went through what I thought were loading motions, tugged and pulled and heard the bolt click, the socket or whatever the hell it’s called, until at length I managed to open the chamber where a little red cloud of rust stood out in the dark. No cartridge. I heard a sound and looked up. The cat was standing on the threshold to the kitchen, staring at me with a mixture of grief and accusation: I couldn’t just leave her here, could I? Cursing, I kicked out at the faithless creature, which shrank back and scurried towards the sitting room. Then I rubbed down the rifle, put it back, went outside and slammed the door shut.
The tractor started with a roar. And continued to roar as I drove out of the barn. I wasn’t bothered about closing the door. Because I could hear what the tractor was roaring: ‘Clas Greve! Brown’s getting away! Hurry, hurry!’
I hit the accelerator. Drove the same way I had come. It was pitch black now, and the light from the tractor’s headlamps danced over the bumpy road. I looked in vain for the Lexus, it had to be parked here somewhere! No, now I wasn’t thinking clearly, he could have left it further up the road. I slapped my face. Blink, take a deep breath, you’re not tired, not knackered. That’s the way.
Pedal down hard. A persistent, continuous roar. Where to? Away.
