When it came to Katrine Bratt’s motive for wanting to delay the announcement, Sung-min was in more doubt. She’d had twenty-four hours, Hole’s family must have been informed by now, and she’d had time to prepare the news that one of their own colleagues was suspected of murder. The fact that she may have personal feelings for Hole didn’t explain the fact that she was prepared to expose herself and the Crime Squad Unit to criticism and accusations of special treatment for police officers by protecting him from publicity in this way. It was as if there had to be something else, some consideration that ran deeper than that of a lover. But what could that be?
Sung-min brushed it aside. Perhaps it was something else. A desperate hope for a miracle. That Harry Hole was still alive. Sung-min took a sip of his coffee and looked out at the Akerselva, where the morning sun was starting to shine on the tops of the grey buildings on the other side. If Harry Hole was sharing any of this, it was because he was sitting on a cloud with a halo round his head, listening to the angels singing and watching it all from above.
He looked down at the cloud below him.
Held up the fragment of mirror and looked at his face. He had a white band round his head. He could hear singing.
He looked down at the cloud again.
Ever since it had got light, that little clump of cloud had been lying down in the valley, obscuring the view of the frozen river, colouring the forest grey. But as the sun rose higher it started to burn off the cloud, improving the visibility. And hopefully the intense birdsong around him would calm down a bit.
He was freezing. That was OK. It made it easier to see.
He looked in the piece of mirror again.
The halo or bandage he had found in one of the drawers in the cabin had a red stain where the blood had seeped through. He was probably going to end up with another scar, in addition to the one running from the corner of his mouth to his ear.
He stood up from the chair that was leaning against the wall of the cabin and went inside.
Past the newspaper cuttings on the wall, one of them bearing the same face he had just seen in the mirror.
He went into the bedroom where he had spent the night. Pulled off the bloody sheets and duvet cover, just as he had pulled off the bloody duvet cover two weeks ago in his own flat. But this time it was his blood, and his alone.
He sat down on the sofa.
Looked at the High Standard pistol lying beside the Yahtzee game. Bohr had said E14 had got hold of them without them being registered. He turned the pistol over in his hand.
Was he likely to need it?
Maybe, maybe not.
Harry Hole looked at the time. Thirty-six hours had passed since he had stumbled out of the forest towards the cabin, to the broken window, and let himself in. He had got out of his wet clothes, cleaned himself off, found clean clothes, a sweater, long johns, a camouflage uniform, thick woollen socks. He’d put everything on and laid down under a blanket on the bunk bed, and stayed there until the worst of the shivering stopped. He had considered lighting the stove but decided against it; someone might see the smoke from the chimney and get it into their head to investigate. He had looked through the cupboards until he found a first-aid kit, and managed to staunch the bleeding from the wound on his forehead. He wrapped a bandage around his head, then used the remainder to cover his knee, which was already so swollen it looked like it had eaten an ostrich egg. He breathed in and out, and tried to figure out if the pain meant his ribs were broken, or if he was just badly bruised. Otherwise he was in one piece. Some would doubtless call it a miracle, but it was really just simple physics and a bit of luck.
Harry breathed in again, heard it whistle and felt a stab of pain in his side.
OK, more than a bit of luck.
He had tried to avoid thinking about what had happened. That was the new advice for police officers who had suffered serious trauma: not to talk about it, not to think about it until at least six hours had passed. Recent research showed — in marked contrast to previous assumptions — that “talking things through” directly after a traumatic experience didn’t reduce the probability of developing PTSD, but the opposite.
Obviously it hadn’t been possible to shut it out altogether. It kept playing in his head like a YouTube clip that’s gone viral. The way the car had toppled over the edge of the waterfall, the way he had hunched up in his seat to see out of the windshield; the weightlessness when everything was falling at the same speed, which had made it oddly easy to grip the seat belt with his left hand and the buckle with his right, it just made his movements slower because they were happening underwater. The way he had seen the white foam bursting from the huge black rock that was rushing towards him as he pushed the seat belt into the lock. And then the pressure. And then the noise.
And then he was dangling in the seat belt with his head against the airbag on the steering wheel, and realised he could breathe, that the sound of the waterfall was no longer muffled, but sharp, hissing as it crashed and spat at him through the shattered back window. It took him a few seconds to realise that he wasn’t just alive, but remarkably unharmed.
The car was standing on end, the front and the steering wheel pressed towards the seats, or the other way around, but not so badly that his legs were cut or trapped. All the windows were broken, so the water inside the car must have drained out within a second or two. But the resistance of the dashboard and front windshield had probably stopped the water draining away just long enough for it to act as an extra cushion for Harry’s body, counteracting the crumpling of the chassis. Because water’s strong. The reason deep-sea fish don’t get squashed flat in the depths of the ocean under pressure that would crumple an armoured tank to the size of a tin can is because the fishes’ bodies largely consist of something that can’t be compromised, no matter how much pressure it’s put under: water.
Harry closed his eyes and played the rest of the film.
The way he had hung from his seat, unable either to undo the buckle or slip out of the belt, because both the buckle and the spool mechanism were wrecked. He had looked around, and in the broken wing mirror it looked as if two waterfalls were crashing down on him. He managed to free one piece of the mirror. It was sharp, but his hands were shaking so much that it seemed to take him an eternity to cut through the seat belt. He fell against the steering wheel and what was left of the airbag, tucked the piece of mirror into his jacket pocket in case he needed it again later, then climbed carefully out through the windshield and hoped the car wasn’t going to fall on top of him. Then he swam the short distance from the black rock to the right-hand side of the river, waded ashore, and that was when he realised that his chest and left knee hurt. The adrenaline had probably acted as a painkiller, and the Jim Beam still was, so he knew it was only going to get worse. And as he stood there, so cold that his head was throbbing, he felt something warm running across his cheek and down his neck, pulled out the fragment of mirror and saw that he had a large cut on one side of his forehead.
He looked up at the hillside. Pine trees and snow. He waded one hundred metres down the river before he found somewhere the slope seemed easy enough to climb, and started to make his way upward, but his knee gave way and he slid on a mixture of mud and snow back towards the river again. The pain in his chest was so bad that he felt like screaming, but the air had gone out of him and all that came out was an impotent wheeze, like a puncture. When he opened his eyes again, he didn’t know how long he’d been out, ten seconds or several minutes. He couldn’t move. And it dawned on him that he was so cold that his muscles wouldn’t obey him. Harry howled up at the blue, innocent, merciless sky above him. Had he survived all that, only to freeze to death here on dry land?