Midnight Sun

Chapter 6

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

I stared at the horizon. Mostly in the direction of Kåsund. But they might take the long way round, through the woods, and attack me from the rear.

I only let myself have little shots, but even so I finished the first bottle during the course of the first day. I managed to wait partway into the next day before opening the second one.

My eyes were stinging worse now. When I eventually lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, I told myself that I would hear the reindeer’s knee tendons if anyone approached.

Instead I heard church bells.

At first I couldn’t work out what it was. It was carried on the wind, a thin remnant of a sound. But then — when the gentle breeze was blowing steadily from the village — I heard it more clearly. Bells ringing. I looked at the time. Eleven. Did that mean it was Sunday? I decided it was, and that I would keep track of what day it was from now on. Because they would come on a weekday. On a working day.

I kept drifting off to sleep. I couldn’t help it. It was like being alone on a boat on the open sea — you fall asleep and just hope you don’t hit anything or capsize. Maybe that’s why I dreamed I was rowing a boat full of fish. Fish that would save Anna. I was in a hurry, but the wind was blowing off the land, and I rowed and rowed, pulled at the oars until I wore the skin off my hands and the blood meant I couldn’t grip them properly, so I ripped my shirt up and wound strips of fabric round the oars. I fought against the wind and current, but I was getting no closer to land. So what good was it that the boat was full to the gunwales with lovely fat fish?

The third night. I woke up wondering if the howling I had heard was a dream or reality. Either way, the dog, or whatever it was, was closer. I went out for a pee and looked at the sun as it shuffled over the clump of trees. More of the disc was behind the thin treetops than yesterday.

I had a drink and managed to fall asleep for another couple of hours.

I got up, made coffee, buttered a slice of bread and went and sat outside. I don’t know if it was the oil or the alcohol in my blood, but the midges had finally got fed up of me. I tried to entice the buck to come closer with a crust of bread. I looked at it through the binoculars. It raised its head and was looking back at me. Presumably it could smell me as well as I could see it. I waved. Its ears twitched, but apart from that its expression remained unchanged. Like the landscape. Its jaws kept churning like a cement mixer. A ruminant. Like Mattis.

I searched along the horizon with the binoculars. I smeared damp ash on the lens of the rifle. I looked at the time. Maybe they would wait until it was darker so that they could creep up on me unseen. I had to sleep. I had to get hold of some Valium.

He came to the door at half past six one morning.

The doorbell almost didn’t wake me up. Valium and earplugs. And pyjamas. All year round. The useless old single-glazed windows in the flat let everything in: autumn storms, winter cold, birdsong and the sound of that bastard bin lorry which backed up into the entrance to the courtyard three days a week — right under my bedroom window on the first floor, in other words.

God knows, I had enough in that damn money belt to get proper double glazing, or move one floor higher up, but all the money in the world couldn’t bring back what I’d lost. And since the funeral I hadn’t managed to do anything. Apart from changing the lock. I’d installed a fuck-off great German lock. There had never been a break-in here before, but God knows why not.

He looked like a boy dressed up in one of his dad’s suits. A scrawny neck stuck up above his shirt, topped by a big head with a wispy fringe.

‘Yes?’

‘The Fisherman’s sent me.’

‘Okay.’ I felt myself go cold, despite the pyjamas. ‘And who are you?’

‘I’m new, my name’s Johnny Moe.’

‘Okay, Johnny. You could have waited until nine o’clock, then you’d have found me in the back room at the shop. Dressed and everything.’

‘I’m here about Gustavo King...’

Fuck.

‘Can I come in?’

As I considered his request I looked at the bulge in the left-hand side of his tweed jacket. A large pistol. Maybe that was why he was wearing such a big jacket.

‘Just to clear things up,’ he said. ‘The Fisherman insists.’

Refusing to let him in would have looked suspicious. And pointless.

‘Of course,’ I said, opening the door. ‘Coffee?’

‘I only drink tea.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t got any tea.’

He pushed his fringe to one side. The nail on his forefinger was long. ‘I didn’t say I wanted any, Mr Hansen, just that that is what I drink. Is this the living room? Please, after you.’

I went in, shoved some copies of Mad and a few Mingus and Monica Zetterlund albums off one of the chairs and sat down. He sank down on the wrecked springs of the sofa next to the guitar. Sank so low that he had to move the empty vodka bottle on the table to see me properly. And get a clear line of fire.

‘Mr Gustavo King’s body was found yesterday,’ he said. ‘But not in Bunnefjorden, where you told the Fisherman you’d dumped it. The only thing that matched was that he had a bullet in his head.’

‘Shit, has the body been moved? Where...?’

‘Salvador, in Brazil.’

I nodded slowly.

‘Who...?’

‘Me,’ he said, sticking his right hand inside his jacket. ‘With this.’ It wasn’t a pistol, it was a revolver. Big, black, and nasty. And the Valium had worn off. ‘The day before yesterday. He was definitely alive up to then.’

I carried on nodding slowly. ‘How did you find him?’

‘When you sit in a bar in Salvador every night boasting about how you managed to make a fool out of the drugs king of Norway, the drugs king of Norway is going to find out about it sooner or later.’

‘Silly of him.’

‘But having said that, we’d have found him anyway.’

‘Even if you believed he was dead?’

‘The Fisherman never stops looking for his debtors until he sees the corpse. Never.’ Johnny’s thin lips curled into a hint of a smile. ‘And the Fisherman always finds what he’s looking for. You and I may not know how, but he knows. Always. That’s why he’s called the Fisherman.’

‘Did Gustavo say anything before you—?’

‘Mr King confessed everything. That’s why I shot him in the head.’

‘What?’

Johnny Moe made a gesture as if to shrug his shoulders, but it was barely visible in his outsized suit. ‘I gave him the option of quick or drawn out. If he didn’t lay his cards on the table, it would be drawn out. I’m assuming that you, as a fixer, are aware of the effects of a well-placed shot to the gut. Stomach acid in the spleen and liver...’

I nodded. Even if I had no idea what he was talking about, I did have a certain amount of imagination.

‘The Fisherman wanted me to give you the same choice.’

‘If I c-c-confess?’ My teeth were chattering.

‘If you give us back the money and drugs that Mr King stole from the Fisherman, which you received half of.’

I nodded. The disadvantage of the Valium wearing off was that I was terrified, and it’s seriously fucking painful being terrified. The advantage was that I was actually capable of a degree of thought. And it occurred to me that this was a direct copy of the attack-at-dawn scenario with me and Gustavo. So how about me copying Gustavo?

‘We can split it,’ I said.

‘Like you and Gustavo did?’ Johnny said. ‘So you end up like him, and me like you? No, thanks.’ He brushed his fringe aside. His fingernail scratched the skin on his forehead. Put me in mind of an eagle’s claw. ‘Quick or drawn out, Mr Hansen?’

I swallowed. Think, think. But instead of a solution, all I saw was my life — my choices, my bad choices — passing by. As I sat there quietly I heard a diesel engine, voices, untroubled laughter outside the window. The dustbin men. Why hadn’t I become a dustbin man? Honest toil, clearing up, serving society, and going home happy. Alone, but at least I could have gone to bed with a degree of satisfaction. Hang on. Bed. Maybe...

‘I’ve got the money and gear in the bedroom,’ I said.

‘Let’s go.’

We stood up.

‘Please,’ he said, waving the revolver. ‘Age before beauty.’

As we walked the few steps through the corridor to the bedroom I visualised how it would happen. I would go over to the bed with him behind me, grab the pistol. I’d turn round, not look at his face, and fire. Simple. It was him or me. I just mustn’t look at his face.

We were there. I headed towards the bed. Grabbed the pillow. Grabbed the pistol. Spun round. His mouth had fallen open. Eyes wide. He knew he was going to die. I fired.

That’s to say, I meant to fire. Every fibre of my being wanted to fire. Had fired. With the exception of my right forefinger. It had happened again.

He raised his revolver and aimed it at me. ‘That was silly of you, Mr Hansen.’

Not silly, I thought. Getting the money for treatment just a week or two after the illness had progressed so far that it was too late, that was silly. Mixing Valium and vodka was silly. But not managing to shoot when your own life is in the balance, that’s a genetic disability. I was an evolutionary aberration, and the future of humanity would only be served by my immediate extinction.

‘Head shot or stomach?’

‘Head,’ I said, and went over to the wardrobe. I got out the brown case containing the money belt and the bags of amphetamine. I turned to face him. Saw his eye above the sights of the revolver, the other one screwed shut, the eagle’s claw curled round the trigger. For a moment I wondered what he was waiting for before I realised. The dustbin men. He didn’t want them to hear the shot when they were standing right under the window.

Right under the window.

First floor.

Thin glass.

Perhaps my Darwinian creator hadn’t deserted me after all, because as I twisted round and ran the three steps towards the window there was just one thought in my head: survival.

I can’t swear that the details of what followed are entirely correct, but I think I was holding the case — or the pistol — in front of me as I penetrated and shattered the glass as if it were a soap bubble, and the next moment I was falling through the air. I hit the roof of the bin lorry with my left shoulder, rolled over, felt the sun-warmed metal against my stomach, then I slid down the side of the vehicle until my naked feet hit the ground and I was down on the tarmac.

The voices had fallen silent, and two men in brown overalls stood there frozen to the spot, just staring. I pulled up my pyjama trousers, which had slid down, and grabbed the case and pistol. I glanced up at my window. Behind a frame of broken glass, Johnny was standing looking down at me.

I nodded at him.

He gave me a crooked smile and raised the forefinger with the long nail to his forehead. A gesture which in hindsight has come to seem like a sort of salute: I had won that round. But we would meet again.

Then I turned and began to run down the street in the low morning sun.

Mattis was right.

This landscape, this tranquillity, was doing something to me.

I had spent years living on my own in Oslo, but after just three days here the isolation felt like a sort of pressure, a quiet sobbing, a thirst that neither water nor moonshine could sate. So as I stared out across the empty plateau with the grey, overcast sky above it, and no sign of the reindeer, I looked at the time.

The wedding. I had never been to a wedding before. What does that say about a thirty-five-year-old bloke? Friendless? Or simply the wrong friends, the sort of friends no one wanted, let alone wanted to marry?

So yes, I checked my reflection in the bucket of water, brushed my jacket down, tucked the pistol in my waistband at the small of my back, and set off towards Kåsund.