Boat. Harry clenched his teeth and swore silently. The boathouse. The boathouse Smith had said had formed part of his wife’s inheritance. That was where they were going.
‘The Skagerrak is 130 nautical miles across. Average speed, twenty knots. How long would that take, Harry, seeing as you’re so good at maths?’ Smith laughed. ‘I’ve already worked it out. On a calculator. Six and a half hours. And from there you can get all the way across Denmark by bus, that won’t take long. Then Copenhagen. Nørrebro. Red Square. Sit on a bench, hold up a bus ticket and wait for the travel agent. What do you think about Uruguay? A nice little country. It’s a good thing I’ve already cleared the road all the way to the boatshed, and made enough space inside for a car. Otherwise these stripes on the roof would have been easy to spot from a helicopter, wouldn’t they?’
Harry closed his eyes. Smith had had his escape route planned for a while. Just in case. And there was only one reason why he was telling Harry about it now. Because Harry wasn’t going to get the chance to tell anyone else.
‘Turn left up ahead,’ Steffens said from the back seat. ‘Block 17.’
Oleg turned and felt the wheels lose their grip on the ice before regaining it again.
He had a feeling there was a speed limit in the hospital grounds, but was well aware that time and blood were both running out for Berntsen.
He braked in front of the entrance, where two men in yellow paramedics’ tunics were waiting with a trolley. With practised movements they lifted Berntsen out of the back seat and up onto the trolley.
‘He’s got no pulse,’ Steffens said. ‘Straight into the hybrid room. The crash team—’
‘Already in place,’ the older paramedic said.
Oleg and Anders followed the trolley and Steffens through two sets of doors to a room where a team of six people in caps, plastic glasses and silver-grey tunics were standing waiting.
‘Thanks,’ a woman said, and made a gesture that Oleg interpreted as meaning that he and Anders could go no further. The trolley, Steffens and the team disappeared behind two wide doors that swung shut behind them.
‘I knew you worked at Crime Squad,’ Oleg said when everything was quiet again. ‘But I didn’t know you’d studied medicine.’
‘I haven’t,’ Anders said, looking at the closed doors.
‘No? It sounded like it in the car.’
‘I read a few medical books on my own when I was at college, but I never studied medicine properly.’
‘Why not? Grades?’
‘I had the grades.’
‘But?’ Oleg didn’t know if he was asking because he was interested, or to keep his mind off what was happening to Harry.
Anders looked down at his bloody hands. ‘I suppose it was the same for me as it is for you.’
‘Me?’
‘I wanted to be like my father.’
‘And?’
Anders shrugged. ‘Then I didn’t want that any more.’
‘You wanted to join the police instead?’
‘At least then I could have saved her.’
‘Her?’
‘My mother. Or people in the same situation. Or so I thought.’
‘How did she die?’
Anders shrugged again. ‘Our house got broken into, and it turned into a hostage situation. My father and I just stood there and watched. Dad got hysterical, and the burglar stabbed my mother and got away. Dad ran around like a headless chicken, shouting at me not to touch her while he looked for a pair of scissors.’ Wyller swallowed. ‘My father, the senior consultant, was looking for a pair of scissors while I stood there and watched her bleed to death. I talked to a few doctors afterwards, and found out that she could have been saved if we’d only done what needed to be done straight away. My father’s a haematologist, the state’s invested millions into teaching him everything there is to know about blood. Yet he still didn’t manage to do the simple things that were needed to stop it draining out of her. If a jury had known how much he knows about saving lives, they’d have convicted him of manslaughter.’
‘So your father made a mistake. Making mistakes is human.’
‘Even so, he sits there in his office and thinks he’s better than other people just because he can say he’s a senior consultant.’ Anders’s voice started to tremble. ‘A policeman with average qualifications and a week-long course in close combat could have overpowered that burglar before he stabbed her.’
‘But he didn’t make a mistake today,’ Oleg said. ‘Steffens is your father, isn’t he?’
Anders nodded. ‘When it comes to saving the life of a corrupt, lazy piece of shit like Berntsen, of course he doesn’t make mistakes.’
Oleg looked at his watch. Pulled out his phone. No message from his mum. He put it back. She’d told him there was nothing he could do to help Harry. But that he could help Truls Berntsen.
‘It’s none of my business,’ Oleg said. ‘But have you ever asked your father how much he’s given up? How many years of hard work he’s devoted to learning everything there is to learn about blood, and how many people that work has saved?’
Anders shook his bowed head.
‘No?’ Oleg said.
‘I don’t talk to him.’
‘Not at all?’
Anders shrugged. ‘I moved. Changed my name.’
‘Is Wyller your mother’s name?’
‘Yes.’
They saw a man dressed in silver rush into the hybrid room before the doors closed again.
Oleg cleared his throat. ‘Like I said, it’s none of my business. But don’t you think you’re being hard on him?’
Anders raised his head. Looked Oleg in the eye. ‘You’re right,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘It’s none of your business.’ Then he got up and walked towards the exit.
‘Where are you going?’ Oleg asked.
‘Back to the university. Will you take me? If not, I’ll catch the bus.’
Oleg stood up and followed him. ‘There are enough cooks there. But there’s a police officer here who might be about to die.’ He caught up with Anders and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘And as a fellow police officer, right now you’re his next of kin. So you can’t leave. He needs you.’
When he turned Anders round he saw that the young detective’s eyes were wet.
‘They both need you,’ Oleg said.
Harry needed to do something. Fast.
Smith had turned off the main road and was driving carefully down a narrow forest road with banks of snow on both sides. Between them and the frozen water was a red-painted boathouse with a white wooden plank across its double doors. He could see two houses, one on either side of the road, but they were partially hidden by trees and rocks, and were so far away that there was no way he could alert anyone there by shouting for help. Harry took a deep breath and felt his top lip with his tongue; it tasted metallic. He could feel sweat running under his shirt, even though he was freezing. He tried to think. Think the way Smith was thinking. A small, open boat all the way to Denmark. It was obviously perfectly possible, yet still so daring that no one in the police would consider it as a likely escape route. And what about him – how was Smith thinking of solving that problem? Harry tried to shut out the voice that was desperately hoping he would be spared. And the comfortably apathetic voice telling him everything was lost, and that fighting against the inevitable would only mean more pain. Instead he listened to the cold, logical voice. Which said that Harry no longer had any value as a hostage and would only hold Smith back in the boat. Smith wasn’t scared of using the gun, he’d already shot Valentin and a police officer. And it was likely to happen in here, before they got out of the car, because that would muffle the noise best.
Harry tried to lean forward, but the fixed, three-pointed belt was pinning him to the seat. And the handcuffs were pressing against the small of his back and rubbing through the skin of his wrists.
There was a hundred metres to go to the boathouse.
Harry bellowed. A guttural, rattling sound that came from the depths of his stomach. Then he rocked from side to side and hit his head against the side window. It cracked and a white rosette appeared in the glass. He roared as he butted it again. The rosette grew larger. A third time. A piece of glass fell out.