I stood and listened.
Where had the sound come from, and what had I actually heard?
Did he have a torch like the others, which he was about to switch on? Or was he counting on having the upper hand for long enough to carry out the sentence, so that it would be all over before I could see properly again?
Should I try and talk him out of it?
But wouldn’t my voice betray where I was?
I tried to remember how the place looked from my glimpse of it in the light from Birger Bjelland’s torch. Bjelland had been standing about there, and the stairs leading to the upper floors had been – ten to fifteen yards behind him.
But had there been a stair rail? Or was it just a large open staircase?
What was he planning to kill me with? A firearm? With the weapon from which he’d got his nickname? Or with his bare fists?
Again I heard a faint sound, a movement in the darkness.
Instinctively I moved away from the sound. I tried to steal away, but the faint crunch of the gravel on the concrete floor betrayed where I was.
I opened my eyes wide and breathed as calmly as I could. Just as I felt I was starting to make out some shapes around me, it became darker. I heard the sound of heavy steps suddenly very close. Automatically I bobbed down and threw myself to one side.
He swore to himself as he lurched past me. I scurried away on tiptoe towards where I thought the stairs were. One of my feet brushed against something hard and sharp – a nail? – pulling with it the object it was protruding from.
I quickly bent down, seized something that felt like a piece of plank and ran my fingers over lumps of dried cement until I came to the nail. I set off again.
‘Veum!’ he yelled behind me. ‘You haven’t a chance, Veum!’ She’d been right. His accent was from somewhere just outside the city.
I didn’t give him any extra chances either. I kept quiet.
I’d reached the stairs now, my toes touching the first step. I moved my left hand, feeling for the wall.
There…
With the bottom of my arm against the wall, I followed the stair upwards to the first corner, then on towards the right until I came up against another wall, then right again.
Down below I heard heavy steps on the stairs. ‘You’re not going to get away, you bastard! I’ve got you now!’
I was on the first floor. From a window high up a faint glimmer of light fell into the great empty room. Just inside the doorway stood a large metal drum. I put my foot against it and pushed. With a colossal din it tipped over and rolled down into the room below.
Under cover of the racket I carried on up.
It had the desired effect. Confused, he stood in the doorway listening to the sound of the rolling drum.
‘Veum! Come on out! I can see you!’ he shouted.
But I didn’t come out. Not for him. I was already on the second floor. And now I could see where I was.
Here were the large broken windows, gaping nakedly out at the night. The sea air buffeted me through the long corridor leading into small individual rooms in what had probably once been the administrative wing of the factory.
I walked down the corridor and stood looking round me.
He must have changed tactics. Now I could no longer hear him.
I walked to the end of the corridor, where an entire pane of frosted wire glass hid the view. Surely there must be some back stairs somewhere?
Suddenly, there he was at the top of the stairs, a huge shadow in the dimness. I glimpsed something in one of his hands. In the other, there hung…
He was breathing heavily
… a bicycle chain?
We stood there, staring at each other like two boxers each in our corner of a ring, kept apart by our mutual fear of one another.
I felt utterly vulnerable as I stood there in my stockinged feet and with nothing to defend myself with but the pathetic bit of wood with the sharp nail in it.
‘It’s the end of the road, Veum.’
‘Literally. Can’t we say it ended in a draw? Then we can part and still remain good friends.’
‘When the fuck were we ever good friends?’
‘Well, you may be -’
‘All the years I was doing time, I looked forward to this moment, when you and me would meet again, in a dark room, with nothing else to do but settle old scores.’
‘I’ve none unsettled -’
‘But I have!’ He came a few steps closer.
I clutched the plank tight. ‘So you were part of this plot too, were you, Knife?’
‘I haven’t been in any fucking plot! I came back to Bergen to live. But before I can really feel at ease in the place there’s something that has to be got rid of, a rat that has to be exterminated, and that is -’ He waved one hand at me so the bicycle chain rattled.
I lifted the plank. ‘You shouldn’t believe what the old folks say. This town is more than big enough for the two of us.’
‘It’s too late for me, Veum.’
‘Yes, maybe it is. Pity your aim wasn’t better yesterday evening.’
‘Is it?’
‘And the same goes for your son! He’s going to be done for complicity!’
‘Nobody’s ever going to see the connection!’
‘Oh no? Muus knows about the threatening letter! And what’ll happen when they find your fingerprints in that truck you stole?’
‘Bjelland promised he’d give me an alibi. He…’
‘… is an expert in stuff like that from way back. Yeah, I know that, thanks.’
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he lunged forward. He swung the bicycle chain in the air in front of me while holding his knife well out to the side, in the death position, raising the point upwards.
I shielded myself with the plank. The bicycle chain got caught on it, and I gave a sharp tug to try and make him lose balance. With only partial success.
I moved forward to try and get round him. He snatched the bicycle chain back, and now I lost my balance. The knife flashed, I grabbed onto the nearest doorway, held on – and was hurled sideways into the room.
A cold blast of sea air hit me. With a shock I realised that the office had no end wall. I stopped and stood there swaying, overcome with sudden vertigo. Slowly I turned round.
He was standing in the doorway, baring his teeth in something almost like a smile. ‘Now you’re in the trap!’
I could see his face plainly now. He was wearing the same dark-blue knitted cap as the evening I’d recognised him in C Sundts Street. His features were just the same, as heavy as they had been in 1975, only tauter and more drawn, like a rubber mask discarded as a reject. His close-cropped hair looked completely white. His eyes had a feverish cast, as if he was on something, unless it was just a reflection of the mad existence he led.
The room was like a long narrow cell. One step at a time he came towards me, holding his arms out from his body: knife in one hand, chain in the other.
Now survival was all that counted.
I lashed out with my foot at his groin but missed, kicking the inside of his thigh instead. But it was enough to make him lose his balance, and he fell, first against the wall then towards me. In desperation, I swung the plank at the hand holding the bicycle chain.
The yell told me I’d struck home with the nail.
As he tumbled past me, he jerked his arm back so hard that the plank slipped from my grasp.
For a few absurd moments we stood there swaying, his face contorted with pain and the knife jerking about in his uninjured hand. In the other, he still had the bicycle chain. The plank with the nail lay on the floor between us. For a moment I wondered whether I might be able to reach it.
Then, almost in a reflex action, I took two quick steps forwards and gave him a sharp kick in the belly so that he fell backwards. Immediately I bitterly regretted it.
He threw up his arms for a second or two, clutching desperately around him. Then down he plunged backwards through the gap in the wall.
For the briefest of moments our eyes met, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that that look would haunt me for the rest of my days.