Bad Intentions

CHAPTER 3

Reilly woke up early.

The light cut through a gap in the curtains and he shuddered as he recalled the night just past. He believed that Jon had died for him and Axel, that he had assumed the blame because he was the weakest, because he was the link that might break. But surely none of us deserves to die, he thought, we aren’t bad people.

The day was coming through the window like a beam of light and it pinned him to the mattress. His first thought was to huddle against the wall, close his eyes and never get up, never deal with any of it. Instead he wriggled out of his sleeping bag, put on his old corduroy trousers and went into the living room. Axel Frimann was standing there staring out of the window.

‘I went down to the lake,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Just wanted to check that everything was all right.’

Reilly gave him a baffled look. His long hair was a tangled mess after the hours spent in bed. With his protruding chin and pointed nose he looked like a troll from a fairy tale.

‘Nothing is all right.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ Axel said.

‘But it’s the truth.’

Axel sat down on the sofa and put his feet on the coffee table.

‘We’ve talked about the nature of truth before,’ he said. ‘Many things are true, but they still need to be left alone. Imagine if people always told the truth, it wouldn’t work. Society would fall apart. We need to start each day from scratch,’ he argued. ‘Build something that people can see, that they can cope with and believe in.’

‘You can’t speak for everyone,’ Reilly said. ‘Not everyone agrees with you.’

Axel gave him a challenging look.

‘Then think about Jon’s mum, when she finds out that she has lost him. Imagine how awful that will be. And imagine if she were to learn that her son was not the boy she thought he was and his memory was horribly tarnished. How would she cope with that? Don’t talk to me about truth: people can’t handle it. And they don’t want to hear it, either. Listen to me!’

He leapt to his feet and went out into the kitchen. Reilly heard him clattering with the coffee pot and pouring water from a bucket. He went back into his bedroom and put on a T-shirt. He went over to the window and stared down at Dead Water, which lay there like a green and black mirror. Perhaps a layer of mud had already settled on Jon’s skinny body and the divers would not find him with their torches. Jon was small and thin. Jon could be mistaken for a branch, a modest bump on the bottom.

He snapped out of his trance and left the cabin, but collapsed on the two large stones which served as the front steps.

Axel came outside.

‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘Jon had been ill for a long time. We could see it coming.’

Reilly remained sitting with his head buried in his hands, incapable of speech. He badly needed something to calm him down, but Axel had banned him from getting high until it was all over and done with. The expression ‘over and done with’ echoed in his head as though they had committed a crime, as though they had personally pushed Jon out of the boat.

‘Of course I’ve wondered about it,’ Axel continued. ‘I don’t mind admitting it. What do you think Jon did at the hospital? He had therapy and he talked. He talked for four weeks. He was encouraged to open up about everything, the most intimate things that tormented him, that had led to his breakdown. The truth would have come out sooner or later. It would have taken us with it and we wouldn’t be sitting here by the water now. Do you hear what I’m saying?’

‘We don’t know anything about what he did or how he would have handled it,’ Reilly said. ‘You’re just guessing. People get through all sorts of things.’

Axel found a stick and began stabbing the ground in front of the steps.

‘There’s unlikely to be much fuss made over this,’ he said. ‘Jon had been admitted to Ladegården Psychiatric Hospital with anxiety and depression and he was on medication. The police will soon join the dots. Meanwhile, we need to cherish our freedom.’

‘If that freedom is a torment,’ Reilly said, ‘then it’s not worth much. You don’t feel pain like other people,’ he added.

He sat there staring into the forest. From where he was sitting the black spruce trees looked dark and mysterious. The light fell through the treetops in long, slanted columns. A pine had keeled over, roots spiking up dramatically amidst all the green like a claw. Then he spotted something between the trees, a flash of white. Axel followed his pointing hand.

‘Someone’s there,’ Reilly said.

‘Oh, shut up,’ Axel replied.

Reilly panicked.

‘What if someone saw us last night? There are bound to be more cabins up here, someone could have watched us through binoculars. It was a full moon.’

‘The crows saw us,’ Axel said. ‘And they’re bound to tell the magpies and the lapwings, and before you know it will be all over the forest.’

Reilly paced up and down on his long legs.

‘Something’s moving,’ he stated. ‘In the heather over there, to the right of the pine. There’s definitely something moving.’

They crossed the area in front of the cabin, passed some scrub and peered in between the pines. Reilly sped up and started to run, his long hair fluttering like a horse’s mane. On the ground, at the foot of a pine, lay a dead cat. And next to the cat, four kittens. They too were dead, but a fifth was crawling through the heather trying to get away.

Something happened to Philip Reilly. The sight of the helpless kitten moved him. He had never seen anything so small, so doomed as the tiny creature. The events of last night had shaken him and he melted like butter in the sun.

‘Have you seen it?’ he said. ‘Poor thing.’

Axel watched in amazement as Reilly bent down and picked up the kitten, which was white with grey specks, with his big hands. From its toothless mouth a weak mewing could be heard. Its eyes were just about open, surprisingly blue, its tail a stump as thin as a piece of string.

‘I’ll take him inside,’ Reilly said. ‘He needs something to eat.’

Axel snapped his fingers in front of his face to rouse him.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘we have a lot of things to do. We need to make that call. You can’t spend your time looking after a kitten now, are you out of your mind?’

Reilly paid no attention to him. He strode back to the cabin still holding the kitten. It weighed only a few grams. Reilly half closed his hand again. The kitten clawed his palm.

‘Do we have any milk?’

‘No,’ Axel said. ‘And cats aren’t supposed to drink milk anyway, they need water, otherwise they get fat. And anyway, cow’s milk is too hard for them to digest.’

‘Fat?’ Reilly opened his hand. ‘Do you see how skinny he is? He weighs nothing.’

Axel walked past him and into the cabin. Reilly followed him. He held the creature like a freshly laid egg, his entire lanky, lumbering body focusing on the tiny animal. He opened a cupboard and rummaged among boxes and bags.

‘Powdered milk?’ he said.

‘No,’ Axel said.

‘Condensed milk?’

‘We don’t have that either.’

Reilly was starting to look despondent.

‘We didn’t manage to save Jon,’ he said, ‘but we can save this one. One life for another. The Koran says so. We need a shoebox and a towel,’ he added. ‘Do we have a box?’

‘Put it down,’ Axel ordered him. ‘We need to talk. We need to get our story straight. Could you concentrate for five minutes, please? Why did you bring the kitten inside? What were you thinking? Are you on something?’

Reilly ignored him.

‘Water,’ he said. ‘Find a bowl. I’ll make mush out of some breadcrumbs. You brought a loaf of bread, didn’t you?’

He placed the kitten on the kitchen counter where it remained on wobbly legs. He found an empty cake tin decorated with Disney figures on the top shelf. He recognised Cinderella, Snow White and Pinocchio.

‘This will be fine,’ he said. ‘This box is crying out for an inhabitant.’

Axel was holding his mobile. He looked frazzled.

‘The question is who do we call?’ he said. ‘The police or the hospital? Or his mum? What do you think, Reilly? Hello! Could you pay attention for a moment, please, I’m trying to save your skin!’

‘Save my skin?’ Reilly said.

‘This would never have happened if you hadn’t started talking about Islam,’ Axel said. ‘You said time was running out. You said judgment was approaching.’

‘You were the one who wanted to go rowing,’ Reilly said.

He turned away from Axel Frimann. He gave the kitten something to drink. He found a tea towel on a hook and made a small nest in the cake tin. Then he carefully placed the kitten inside it. It coiled up instantly. For a while he admired the little animal, which had now quenched its thirst and settled down. He had been unaware that he had such a talent for care-giving. It was enormously inspiring.

‘What do we do about its mother?’ he said. ‘And the dead kittens?’

‘Who says you need to do anything about them?’ Axel held out his mobile. ‘Get real, will you?’

‘But the fox will get them,’ Reilly fretted.

‘Of course. That’s his nature.’

‘We could cover them up. Or bury them.’

‘The fox would sniff them out,’ Axel said. ‘You know that.’

Reilly admired the kitten in the cake tin. A grey and white ball of fluff on a chequered tea towel. A small furry miracle.

‘You do the talking,’ he mumbled. ‘You know best.’

Axel rang the number of the hospital where Jon had been a patient for four weeks. His voice was filled with concern while he explained what had happened.

‘We got up at nine,’ he said. ‘And discovered that his room was empty.’