The officer steering the boat pulled the propeller out of the water.
The boat lurched as it hit the edge of the ice, and Falkeid heard it scrape the bottom of the boat, but they had enough speed to carry them far enough onto the ice for them to be able to walk on it.
Hopefully.
Sivert Falkeid climbed over the side and tentatively put one foot down on the ice. The melt-water reached just above his ankle.
‘Give me twenty metres before you follow,’ he said. ‘Ten metres apart.’
Falkeid started to splash towards the aluminium boat. He estimated the distance to be three hundred metres. It looked abandoned, but the report had said that the man they assumed had fired the shot had dragged it out of the boatshed belonging to Hallstein Smith.
‘The ice is holding,’ he whispered into his radio.
Everyone in Delta had been equipped with ice picks on a cord attached to the chest of their uniform, so that they could pull themselves out if they went through the ice. And that cord had just tangled itself around the barrel of Falkeid’s semi-automatic, and he had to look down to free his weapon.
And he therefore heard the shot without having any chance of seeing anything that might indicate where it had come from. He instinctively threw himself down in the water.
There was another shot. And now he saw a little puff of smoke rise from the aluminium boat.
‘Shots from the boat,’ he heard in his earpiece. ‘We’ve all got it in our sights. Awaiting orders to blast it to hell.’
They had been informed that Smith was armed with a revolver. Naturally the risk of him managing to hit Falkeid from more than two hundred metres away was fairly slim, but that was still the situation. Sivert Falkeid lay there breathing as the numbingly cold melt-water soaked through his clothes and covered his skin. It wasn’t his job to work out what it would cost the state to spare the life of this serial killer. Cost in the form of trials, prison guards, the daily rate at a five-star prison. His job was to work out how great a threat this individual posed to the lives of his men and others, and adapt his response accordingly. Not to think about nursery places, hospital beds and the renovation of rundown schools.
‘Fire at will,’ Sivert Falkeid said.
No response. Just the wind and the sound of a helicopter in the distance.
‘Fire,’ he repeated.
Still no acknowledgement. The helicopter was approaching.
‘Can you hear me?’ a voice said in his earpiece. ‘Are you wounded?’
Falkeid was about to repeat his order when he realised that what had happened when they were training in Haakonsværn had happened again. The salt water had ruined the microphone and only the receiver was working. He turned towards their boat and shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the helicopter, which was now hovering motionless in the air right above them. So he gave the hand signal to open fire, two rapid downward movements of his right arm with his fist clenched. Still no response. What the hell? Falkeid began to snake his way back to the inflatable when he saw two of his men walking towards him on the ice without even crouching in order to present a smaller target.
‘Get down!’ he yelled, but they kept walking calmly towards him.
‘We’ve got comms with the helicopter!’ one of them shouted over the noise. ‘They can see him, he’s lying in the boat!’
He was lying in the bottom of the boat, with his eyes closed against the sun that was shining down on him. He couldn’t hear anything, but he imagined the water lapping and splashing against the metal beneath him. That it was summer. That the whole family was sitting in the boat. A family outing. Children’s laughter. If he could just keep his eyes closed, maybe he could stay there. He didn’t know for certain if the boat was floating or if his weight meant it was caught on the ice. It didn’t really matter. He wasn’t going anywhere. Time was standing still. Perhaps it always had been, unless perhaps it had only just stopped? Stopped for him, and for the man who was still sitting in the Amazon. Was it summer for him too? Was he also in a better place now?
Something was shading the sun. A cloud? A face? Yes, a face. A woman’s face. Like a darkened memory that was suddenly illuminated.
She was sitting on top of him, riding him. Whispering that she loved him, that she always had. That she had been waiting for this. Asking if he felt the same, that time was standing still. He felt vibrations in the boat, her groans rose to a continuous scream, as if he had plunged a knife into her, and he released the air from his lungs and the sperm from his testicles. And then she died on top of him. Hit his chest with her head as the wind hit the window above the bed in the flat. And before time began to move again, they both fell asleep, unconscious, without memory, without conscience.
He opened his eyes. It looked like a big, hovering bird.
It was a helicopter. It was hovering ten, twenty metres above him, but he still couldn’t hear anything. But he realised that was what was making the boat vibrate.
Katrine was standing outside the boathouse, shivering in the shade as she watched the officers approach the Volvo Amazon inside the building.
She saw them open the front doors on both sides. Saw a suited arm fall out from one side. From the wrong side. From Harry’s side. The naked hand was bloody. The officer put his head inside the car, presumably to check for breathing or a pulse. It took a while, and eventually Katrine couldn’t hold back any longer, and heard her own trembling voice: ‘Is he alive?’
‘Maybe,’ the officer shouted above the noise of the helicopter out over the water. ‘I can’t feel a pulse, but he might be breathing. If he is alive, I don’t think he’s got long left, though.’
Katrine took a few steps closer. ‘The ambulance is on its way. Can you see the gunshot wound?’
‘There’s too much blood.’
Katrine went inside the boathouse. Stared at the hand dangling out of the door. It looked as if it was searching for something, something to hold on to. Another hand to hold. She stroked her own hand over her stomach. There was something she should have told him.
‘I think you’re wrong,’ the other officer said from inside the car. ‘He’s already dead. Look at his pupils.’
Katrine closed her eyes.
He stared up at the face that had appeared above him on both sides of the boat. One of them had pulled his black mask off, and his mouth was opening, forming words; from the way his neck muscles were tensing it looked like he was shouting. Perhaps he was shouting at him to drop the revolver. Perhaps he was shouting his name. Perhaps he was shouting for revenge.
Katrine went over to the door on Harry’s side of the car. Took a deep breath and looked inside. Stared. Felt the shock hit her even harder than she had prepared herself for. She could hear the siren of the ambulance now, but she had seen more dead bodies than these two officers, and knew from a brief glance that this body had been permanently vacated. She knew him, and knew that this was just the shell he had left behind.
She swallowed. ‘He’s dead. Don’t touch anything.’
‘But we ought to try to revive him, shouldn’t we? Maybe—’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Let him be.’
She stood there. Felt the shock slowly fade. Give way to surprise. Surprise at the fact that Hallstein Smith had chosen to drive the car himself rather than make his hostage drive. That what she had thought was Harry’s seat wasn’t.
Harry lay in the bottom of the boat, looking up. People’s faces, the helicopter that was blocking the sun, the blue sky. He had managed to stamp his foot down on the revolver again before Hallstein Smith pulled it free. And then Hallstein seemed to give up. Maybe it was his imagination, but he had thought he could feel through the teeth, in his mouth, how the other man’s pulse became weaker and weaker. Until in the end it was gone altogether. Harry had lost consciousness twice before he managed to get his hands and the handcuffs round to the front of his body again, loosened the seat belt and fished the key to the handcuffs out of his jacket pocket. The car key had broken off in the ignition and he knew he didn’t have the strength to climb the steep, ice-covered slope back to the main road, or get over the high fences of the properties on either side of the road. He had called for help, but it was as if Smith had beaten his voice out of him, and the weak cries he did manage to make were drowned by a helicopter somewhere, probably the police helicopter. So that they would be able to see him from the air, he had dragged Smith’s boat out onto the ice, lain down in it and fired several shots into the air.