Eva had to steady herself on the wall. “I did not kill her!”
He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “I don’t give a fuck about that! The money’s mine!”
She backed into the hallway and slammed the door shut. It had a night latch. She stumbled through the living room, hearing him begin to work on the lock, quietly at first, as if he had a picklock. She wasted no time. She shot down the cellar steps, ran through it, squeezing past the old carpenter’s bench, and found the main electricity switch. Everything went black. Now, from up above, she heard him attacking the door with heavier tools, there was banging and scraping. She fumbled her way to the cellar door, ran her hands over the woodwork, her temples pounding. The door hadn’t been used for years, perhaps it was locked, perhaps with a padlock, she couldn’t remember, but it led out into a wilderness of garden, and just behind the hedge was her neighbor’s garden and a side street she could escape into. More violent blows upstairs: the sound of metal splintering woodwork, perhaps he was wielding an axe. She found the bar that ran across the door and hoped it wasn’t padlocked, she couldn’t feel anything, but it wouldn’t budge, it had probably rusted fast. Quickly, she removed a shoe and used the heel to hit it from below, she struck it again and again while the man upstairs smashed his way through the door and tramped into the living room, and at last it gave. She lifted it carefully, because now he’d halted, he stood still listening, at any moment he’d see the stairs down to the cellar and realize that she was standing down here in the dark, that perhaps there was a way out, she couldn’t open it now that he was so silent. She waited for him to move again, and he did, he approached the stairs, the soles of his shoes sighing on the parquet flooring, she popped her shoe back on and pushed the door open with one shoulder, she hoped it wouldn’t creak, but it gave a squeal that reverberated in the cellar’s space. Now there was only the cellar hatch above her. She thought it was open, she’d never normally locked it, so she ascended the four steps and had begun to push at it with her shoulder when she heard his footfall on the stairs, he’d realized now that she’d fled this way, so he began to hurry, while Eva used her shoulder as a battering ram and drove it up against the hatch again and again. It opened a crack, then closed again, through the gap she saw that someone had put a peg through the steel catch outside, perhaps it had been Jostein, he’d always been so practical. But if it were a wooden peg it would break, sooner or later it would break, so she continued to attack the hatch with her shoulder, the chink got larger, it felt as if her shoulder would break before the peg, it was numb, almost without feeling, so she continued, and suddenly she saw his foot on the bottom step of the cellar stairs, a light-colored moccasin, and his white teeth in the dark. He moved a few paces and stretched out an arm, and Eva battered her shoulder into the hatch with all her might. Just then the peg broke and the hatch flew up with a crash. She fell down the four steps, got up them again, shot out of the opening and was making for the hedge when she felt his hands around her ankle, he had a firm hold, he yanked her toward him, her chin bumped down the steps. The cement floor was icy. She couldn’t feel her shoulder anymore. The inside of her mouth was bleeding. He dropped her foot with a little thud.
Eva lay on her stomach. He stood astride her and she caught the scent of his after-shave, a strangely alien smell in the musty cellar. Her thoughts swam for an instant, then she thought: he isn’t particularly large, he’s quite slender, and the cellar hatch is open. I’ve got longer legs, if I could only surprise him...
“Lie still,” he snarled.
She tried to make a plan. She had to think of something, ruin his concentration, catch him off balance. There were four steps up to the garden, if she took two at a time...
“Tell me where you’ve hidden the money, and nothing will happen to you.” His voice was almost comforting. “But if you don’t, things will heat up, in lots of places.”
He struck a match. She gulped back the beginnings of nausea and tried to think, how many seconds would she need to stand up and dash out, get through the hedge, and cross her neighbor’s lawn? She went through the movement in her mind, drawing her arms and legs under her, leaping up, two steps, into the hedge, across the lawn, down the street, traffic, people...
“I can’t hear you,” he said huskily.
“I don’t keep it here,” she groaned. “You didn’t really think I would, did you?”
He laughed softly. “It doesn’t matter to me where it is. Provided you show me the way.”
What would surprise him, she thought, some unexpected action, perhaps a loud scream, the scream that never materializes from the throat when you’re truly frightened, but sticks there blocking the breath? A scream. Perhaps that would paralyze him for a couple of seconds, just long enough to get halfway up from the floor.
She raised her head.
“Yes?” he said.
She drew air into her lungs, filled them to capacity and got ready.
“Which will it be?”
The match went out. And then she screamed. Her scream reverberated, bouncing off the cellar walls in piercing waves from room to room, she jumped up, drew in more air and screamed again, and now he collected himself, sprang after her just as she took the four steps in two bounds, she crossed the garden and dived into the hedge, felt it catching and tearing at her skin and hair, and heard her coat ripping and his panting right behind her, as she pushed her way through and suddenly was out again, picking up speed, went on around her neighbor’s house and out through the gate, down the street, which was silent now, cut in through another gate, she was covering the distance with her long legs, the pain and the fear gave her strength, she heard his feet a little way behind, ran around the house, found a further hedge, she could go through it and continue across another property, but she decided against it, ran instead around the house and stopped at the opposite corner, just in time to see him in pursuit. He thought she’d carried on through the next hedge, but she ran out on to the road again, following the ditch so that her shoes wouldn’t make a noise on the asphalt, caught a glimpse of the main road far ahead, and the first car lights, then she put on speed, no longer looking back, but drove on, with lungs bursting and gasping for breath, and at last caught sight of a car, it was moving slowly, she leapt out into the road and heard the screeching of brakes. She collapsed on to the bonnet like a sack. Sejer stared at her in alarm through the windshield. It was several seconds before she recognized him. Then she spun around, cut across the road and turned into a drive on the other side, she heard his car make a U-turn to that side of the road. It halted, a car door opened, she heard his feet on the pavement. Eva’s strength was exhausted, but still she ran, with her skirt flapping around her legs, Sejer followed her into the garden, he was running on gravel, she could hear him clearly although her ears were ringing, and then another sound, a well-known sound that made her throat tighten. A dog. Kollberg wanted to join in the game. He watched lovingly as his master sped off, it took the dog a few seconds to catch up, he wagged his tail eagerly, jumping up and tugging at his jacket, then he suddenly noticed the woman running a little way ahead and the flapping of her long skirt in the twilit garden. He forgot Sejer and bounded after her. Eva turned and saw the huge dog and its red jaws, steam was coming from its mouth, its tongue was lolling from side to side like a pendulum as it tore through the garden. She had no thought of Sejer now, she was just running from the dog, from those yellow teeth and big canine paws which cut through the long grass in huge strides, ate up the distance in great bites. There was a small Wendy house amongst the old apple trees. She careered toward it with the very last of her strength, yanked open the door, and slammed it shut behind her. Inside here she was safe from the dog. At least she was safe from the dog.