Death In Oslo

IX

At last, it was half past seven in the morning. Luckily it was a Thursday and both girls had to be at school early. Louise was going to play chess before her classes started and Catherine was going to do circuit training. They asked after their uncle, but believed it when their father hinted that he had had a bit too much to drink the night before and was sleeping it off.

The house in Rural Route # 4 in Farmington, Maine, was never quiet. The woodwork creaked. Most of the doors were warped. Some of them were difficult to open, whereas others hung loose in their frames and bumped and slammed in the continual draught from the windows that were not properly insulated. The great maple trees at the back were planted so close to the house that the branches tapped on the roof with the slightest hint of wind. It was as if the house was alive.

Al Muffet didn’t need to tiptoe around any more. He knew that no one would turn up before the postman came by on his round. And that wasn’t normally until two. After taking the girls to school, Al had dropped by the office. He told his secretary that he wasn’t feeling well. Sore throat and slight temperature, so they would unfortunately have to cancel today’s appointments. She had looked at him with sad eyes and great sympathy, and told him to get better.

He had picked up what he needed, coughed a goodbye and gone home.

‘Are you comfortable?’

Al Muffet looked over at his brother. His arms were fastened to the head of the bed with masking tape around each wrist. His feet were tied together with a rope that was then coiled around one of the posts at the foot of the bed, and tightened into great knots. Al had put a piece of grey sticky tape over his brother’s mouth.

‘Mmffmm,’ his brother said, shaking his head frenetically. The sound was muffled by the face cloth that was held in place by the tape.

Al Muffet opened the curtains and the morning light poured in. The dust in the guest room danced over the worn wooden floor. He smiled and turned towards his brother on the bed.

‘You’re fine. You barely woke up when I injected a sedative into your butt last night. You were so easy to overpower that I almost didn’t recognise you, Fayed. Once upon a time it was you who was the fighter. Not me.’

‘Mmmfff!’

There was a wooden chair by the window. It was old and rickety, and the seat had been worn by a century of use. It had come with the house. When Al Muffet bought the house, it had been full of old, beautiful things that had helped the family to settle in faster than could have been hoped.

He pulled the chair over to the bed and sat down.

‘This,’ he said, calmly, holding a syringe in front of his brother’s eyes, which stared back at him, wide with disbelief, ‘this is a lot more dangerous than what I gave you last night. This, you see…’

He pushed the plunger down slowly until a couple of fine drops came out of the thin needle.

‘This is ketobemidone, an effective and strong opioid preparation. Very effective, in fact. And here I’ve got…’ he squinted and held the syringe up to the light, ‘one hundred and fifty milligrams. In other words, a lethal dose.’

Fayed rolled his eyes and tried unsuccessfully to pull free his hands.

‘And this,’ Al continued, unperturbed, holding up another syringe from the bag he had put down on the floor beside him, ‘is Naloxone, the antidote.’

He put the second syringe down on the bedside table and pushed it out of reach, just to be on the safe side.

‘I’m going to undo your gag soon,’ he explained and tried to catch his brother’s eye. ‘But first I’m going to give you some of the morphine. You’ll feel the effects very quickly. Your blood pressure and pulse will fall. You’ll feel ill. You might have problems breathing. After that, it’s up to you. You can either answer my questions, or I’ll give you more. And so we’ll continue. Very simple, isn’t it? When you’ve given me the information I need, I’ll give you the antidote. But only then. Do you understand?’

His brother twisted and turned desperately on the bed. There were tears in his eyes. Al noticed that his pyjama bottoms were wet around the crotch.

‘And one more thing,’ Al said as he injected the needle into his brother’s thigh, straight through the fabric of his pyjamas. ‘You can scream and shout as much as you like, but it’s a waste of time. It’s a good mile to the next neighbour. And he’s away. It’s a weekday, so no one will be out walking. Forget it. There now…’

He withdrew the needle and checked how much he had injected. He nodded, satisfied, and put the syringe down with the other one on the bedside table, then pulled the gag off in one go. Fayed tried to spit the face cloth out, but had to retch and turned his head to one side. Al pulled the cloth out with two fingers.

Fayed gasped for air. He sobbed and was obviously trying to say something, but all he managed to do was hawk and retch.

‘We haven’t got much time now,’ Al said. ‘So you should answer as fast as you can.’

He licked his lips and paused for thought.

‘Is it true that Mother thought you were me before she died?’ he asked.

Fayed just managed to nod.

‘Did she tell you something that you knew was meant for my ears only?’

His brother had pulled himself together now and was calmer. It was as if he had finally understood that there was no point in trying to break free. He lay completely still for a moment. Only his mouth was moving. It looked like he was trying to produce some moisture after having had the cloth in his mouth for several hours.

‘Here,’ Al said and held a glass of water to his lips.

Fayed drank. He took several sips. Then he gave a deep cough and spat water, snot, phlegm and loose threads straight into his brother’s face.

‘Fuck you,’ he said hoarsely, and leant his head back.

‘Hmm, you’re not being very sensible here,’ Al said and dried his face with his sleeve.

Fayed said nothing. He seemed to be thinking, assessing what he needed to do to negotiate a deal.

‘We’ll try again,’ Al said. ‘Did Mother say something to you about my life because she thought you were me?’

Fayed still didn’t answer. But at least he lay still. The morphine had started to work. His pupils suddenly dilated visibly. Al went over to the chest of drawers by the bathroom door, opened the coded suitcase and pulled Fayed’s Filofax from under the clothes. He turned to the year planner for 2002 and pulled it out with a tug.

‘Here,’ he said and went back over to the bed. ‘Here’s the date Mother died. And what have you written there, Fayed? On the day Mother died, when you were sitting with her?’ He held the page up for his brother, who turned his head away.

‘June 1971, New York, is what you’ve written. What does that date mean to you? Did Mother tell you? Was Mother talking about that day when you were sitting with her?’

Still no answer.

‘You know what,’ Al said in a muted voice as he waved the calendar around. ‘Dying from a morphine overdose is not as pleasant as people might think. Can you feel your lungs struggling? Can you feel that it’s harder to breathe?’

His brother snarled and tried to tense his body like a bridge, but didn’t have the power.

‘Mother was the only one who knew,’ Al said. ‘But she didn’t judge me, Fayed. Ever. It was hard for her to accept my secret, but she never used it against me. Mother was my soulmate. She could have been yours too, if you’d behaved differently. You could at least have tried to be part of the family. Instead you did what you could not to belong.’

‘I never did belong,’ Fayed wheezed. ‘You made sure of that.’

He was pale now. He lay completely still and closed his eyes.

‘Me? Me? It was me who…’

He resolutely took the syringe of morphine and injected another ten milligrams into Fayed’s thigh muscle.

‘We haven’t got time for this. What’s going to happen, Fayed? Why are you here? Why have you come to see me after all these years, and what the hell have you used the information about Helen’s abortion for?’

It had started to look as if Fayed was really frightened. He tried to gasp for breath, but his muscles wouldn’t obey. A white froth appeared on his lips, as if he didn’t even have the capacity to swallow his own spit.

‘Help me,’ he said. ‘You have to help me. I can’t…’

‘Answer my questions.’

‘Help me. I can’t… Everything… according to plan.’

‘Plan? What plan? Fayed, what plan are you talking about?’

He was about to die. It was obvious. Al felt hot. He noticed that his hands were shaking as he grabbed the syringe with Naloxone and got it ready.

‘Fayed,’ he said and put his free hand under his brother’s chin so he could force him to look at him. ‘You really are in trouble now. I have the antidote here. Just tell me one thing. One thing! Why did you come here? Why did you come to me?’

‘The letters,’ Fayed mumbled.

His eyes looked completely dead now.

‘The letters are coming here. If anything goes wrong…’

He stopped breathing. Al gave him a good thump on the chest. Fayed’s lungs made another attempt to defy death.

‘I’ll pull you down with me,’ he said. ‘You were the one they loved.’

Al grabbed a knife from his bag and cut the tape that bound Fayed’s right arm to the headboard. He had injected the morphine straight into Fayed’s muscle, but now he needed a vein. He slowly emptied the antidote into a blue vein in his brother’s lower arm. Then quickly, so he wouldn’t lose heart again, he taped his arm back to the headboard. He got up and took a few steps. Now he couldn’t hold back the tears.

‘Fucking hell! Fucking hell! All I ever wanted in my life was peace and quiet. No quarrelling! No fuss! I found this little backwater where everything was going well for me and the girls, and then you have to come and…’

He was sobbing now. He wasn’t used to crying. He didn’t know what to do with his arms. They were just hanging at his sides. His shoulders were shaking.

‘What letters are you talking about, Fayed? What have you done? Fayed, what have you done?’

Suddenly he stormed across the floor and bent down over his brother. He put his hands to his cheeks. Fayed’s moustache, the great big ridiculous moustache that he had recently grown, tickled his skin as he stroked his brother’s face, again and again.

‘What have you done this time?’ he whispered.

But his brother didn’t answer, because he was dead.