Halfway into the soup and the third track the telephone rang. He had decided to let it ring. But at the eighth ring he got up and turned down the music.
'Harry.'
It was Astrid. 'What are you doing?' She spoke in a low voice, but there was still an echo. He guessed she had locked herself into the bathroom at home.
'Eating and listening to music.'
'I have to go out. Not far from you. Plans for the rest of the evening?'
'Yes.'
'And they are?'
'Listening to more music.'
'Hm. You make it sound like you don't want company.'
'Maybe.'
Pause. She sighed. 'Let me know if you change your mind.'
'Astrid?'
'Yes?'
'It's not you. OK? It's me.'
'You don't need to apologise, Harry. If you're labouring under the illusion that this is vital for either of us, I mean. I just thought it could be nice.'
'Another time perhaps.'
'Like when?'
'Like another time.'
'Another time, another life?'
'Something like that.'
'OK. But I'm fond of you, Harry. Don't forget that.'
When he had put down the phone, Harry stood without moving, unable to take in the sudden silence. Because he was so astonished. He had visualised a face when Astrid rang. The astonishment was not because he had seen a face, but the fact that it was not Rakel's. Or Astrid's. He sank into the chair and decided not to spend any more time reflecting. If this meant that the medicine of time had begun to work and that Rakel was on her way out of his system, it was good news. So good that he didn't want to complicate the process.
He turned up the volume on his stereo and emptied his head.
* * *
He had paid the bill. He dropped the toothpick in the ashtray and looked at his watch. Three minutes to seven. The shoulder holster rubbed against his pectoral muscle. He took the photograph from his inside pocket and gave it a final glance. It was time.
None of the other customers in the restaurant – not even the couple at the neighbouring table – took any notice of him as he got up and went to the toilet. He locked himself in one of the cubicles, waited for a minute without succumbing to the temptation of checking the gun was loaded. He had learned that from Bobo. If you got used to the luxury of double-checking everything, you would lose your sharpness.
The minute had passed. He went to the cloakroom, put on his raincoat, tied the red neckerchief and pulled the cap down over his ears. Opened the door onto Karl Johans gate.
He strode up to the highest point in the street. Not because he was in a hurry, but because he had noticed that was how people walked here, the tempo that ensured you didn't stand out. He passed the litter bin on the lamp post where he had decided the day before that the gun would be dropped on the way back. In the middle of the busy pedestrian street. The police would find it, but it didn't matter. The point was that they didn't find it on him.
He could hear the music long before he was there.
A few hundred people had gathered in a semicircle in front of the musicians who were finishing a song as he arrived. A bell pealed during the applause and he knew he was on time. Inside the semicircle, on one side and in front of the band, a black cooking pot hung from three wooden sticks, and beside it the man in the photograph. In fact, street lamps and two torches were all the light they had, but there was no doubt. Especially as he was wearing the Salvation Army uniform coat and cap.
The vocalist shouted something into the microphone and people cheered and clapped. A flash went off as they started up again. Their playing was loud. The drummer raised his right hand high in the air every time he hit the snare drum.
He manoeuvred his way through the crowd until he was standing three metres from the Salvation Army man and checked his back was clear. In front of him stood two teenage girls exhaling white chewing-gum-breath into the freezing air. They were smaller than he was. He had no particular thoughts in his head, he didn't hurry, he did what he had come to do, without any ceremony: take out the gun and hold it with a straight arm. It reduced the distance to two metres. He took aim. The man by the cooking pot blurred into two. He relaxed and the two figures merged back into one.
'
Skål
,' Jon said.
The music oozed out of the speakers like viscous cake mixture.
'
Skål
,' said Thea, obediently lifting her glass to his.
After drinking, they gazed into each other's eyes and he mouthed the words:
I love you
.
She lowered her eyes with a blush, but smiled.
'I've got a little present for you,' he said.
'Oh?' The tone was playful, coquettish.
He put his hand in his jacket pocket. Beneath the mobile phone he could feel the hard plastic of the jeweller's box against his fingertips. His heart beat faster. Lord above, how he had looked forward to, yet dreaded, this evening, this moment.
The phone began to vibrate.
'Anything the matter?' Thea asked.
'No, I . . . sorry. I'll be back in a sec.'
In the toilet he took out the phone and read the display. He sighed and pressed the green button.
'Hi, sweetie. How's it going?'
The voice was jokey, as though she had just heard something funny which had made her think of him and then rung, on an impulse. But his log showed six unanswered calls.
'Hi, Ragnhild.'
'Weird sound. Are you—?'
'I'm in a toilet. At a restaurant. Thea and I are here for a meal. We'll have to talk another time.'
'When?'
'A . . . another time.'
Pause.
'Aha.'
'I should have called you, Ragnhild. There's something I have to tell you. I'm sure you know what.' He breathed in. 'You and I, we can't—'
'Jon, it's almost impossible to hear what you're saying.'
Jon doubted that was true.
'Can I see you tomorrow night at your place?' Ragnhild said. 'Then you can tell me?'
'I'm not free tomorrow night. Or any other—'
'Meet me at the Grand for lunch then. I can text you the room number.'
'Ragnhild, not—'
'I can't hear you. Call me tomorrow, Jon. Oh, no, I'm in meetings all day. I'll call you. Don't switch your mobile off. And have fun, sweetie.'
'Ragnhild?'
Jon read the display. She had rung off. He could go outside and ring back. Get it over with. Now that he had started. That would be the proper thing to do. The wise thing to do. Give it the
coup de grâce
, kill it off.
They were standing opposite each other now, but the man in the Salvation Army didn't appear to see him. His breathing was calm, his finger on the trigger, then he slowly increased the pressure. And it flashed through his mind that the soldier showed no surprise, no shock, no terror. On the contrary, the light of understanding seemed to cross his face, as though the sight of the pistol gave him the answer to something he had been wondering about. Then there was a bang.
If the shot had coincided with the bang on the snare drum, the music might have drowned it, but, as it was, the explosion made many turn round and look at the man in the raincoat. At his gun. And they saw the Salvation Army soldier, who now had a hole in the peak right under the A of his cap, fall backwards as his arms swung forwards like a puppet's.
Harry jerked in his chair. He had fallen asleep. The room was still. What had woken him? He listened, but all he could hear was the low, reassuringly even rumble. No, there was another sound there, too. He strained to hear. There it was. The sound was almost inaudible, but now that he had identified it, it rose in magnitude and became clearer. It was a low ticking sound.
Harry remained in his chair with closed eyes.
Then a sudden fury surged through him, and without thinking, he had marched into the bedroom, opened the bedside-table drawer, snatched Møller's wristwatch, opened the window and hurled it into the dark with as much force as he could muster. He heard the watch hit first the wall of the adjacent block and then the icy tarmac in the street. He slammed the window shut, fastened the catches, went back to the sitting room and turned up the volume. So loud that the speaker membranes vibrated in front of his eyes, the treble was wonderfully bright in his ears and the bass filled his mouth.
The crowd had turned away from the band and looked at the man lying in the snow. His cap had rolled away and come to a halt in front of the singer's mike stand while the musicians, who still had not realised what had happened, continued to play.
The two girls standing closest to the man in the snow retreated. One of them started to scream.
The vocalist, who had been singing with her eyes shut, opened them and discovered she no longer had the audience's attention. She turned and caught sight of the man in the snow. Her eyes sought a guard, an organiser, a gig manager, anyone who could deal with the situation, but this was just an ordinary street concert. Everyone was waiting for everyone else and the musicians kept playing.
Then there was a movement in the crowd and people cleared a path for the woman elbowing her way through.
'Robert!'
The voice was rough and hoarse. She was pale and wore a thin, black leather jacket with holes in the sleeves. She staggered through to the lifeless body and fell on her knees beside him.
'Robert?'
She placed a skinny hand against his throat. Then she turned to the musicians.
'Stop playing, for Christ's sake.'
One after another, the members of the band stopped playing.
'The man's dying. Get hold of a doctor. Quick!'
She put her hand back on his neck. Still no pulse. She had experienced this many times before. Sometimes it was fine. As a rule it wasn't. She was confused. This couldn't be an overdose; a Salvation Army soldier wouldn't be on the needle, would he? It had started to snow and the snowflakes were melting on his cheeks, the closed eyes and the half-open mouth. He was a good-looking young man. And she thought now – with his face relaxed – he looked like her own boy when he was asleep. Then she discovered the single red stripe going down from the tiny black hole in his head, across the forehead and temple and into his ear.
A pair of arms grabbed her and lifted her away while someone else bent over the young man. She caught a last glimpse of his face, then the hole, and it occurred to her with a sudden painful certainty that this fate was awaiting her boy, too.
He walked at a fast pace. Not too fast; he wasn't fleeing. Looked at the backs in front of him, spotted someone hurrying and followed in his wake. No one had tried to stop him. Of course they hadn't. The report of a gun makes people stand back. The sight of it makes them run away. And in this case most had not even absorbed what was going on.
The final job.
He could hear the band was still playing.
It had started to snow. Great. That would make people look down to protect their eyes.
A few hundred metres down the street he saw the yellow station building. He experienced a feeling that he had from time to time, that everything was floating, that nothing could happen to him, that a Serbian T-55 tank was no more than a slow-moving iron monster, blind and deaf, and that his town would be standing when he returned home.
Someone was standing where he was going to drop the gun.
The clothes looked new and fashionable, apart from the blue trainers. But the face was lacerated and scorched, like a blacksmith's. And the man, or the boy, or whatever he was, looked as if he was there to stay. He had stuffed the whole of his right arm in the opening of the green litter bin.
Without slowing down, he checked his watch. Two minutes since he had fired the shot and eleven minutes to the departure of the train. And he still had the weapon on him. He walked past the bin and continued towards the restaurant.
A man came towards him, staring. But didn't turn after they had passed each other.
He headed for the restaurant door and pushed it open.
In the cloakroom area a mother was bent over a boy, fiddling with a zip on a jacket. Neither of them looked at him. The brown camelhair coat was hanging where it should. The suitcase underneath. He took both into the men's toilet, locked himself in one of the two cubicles, took off his raincoat, put the hat in the pocket and put on the camel-hair coat. Even though there were no windows, he could hear the sirens outside. Many sirens. He cast around him. Must get rid of the gun. There wasn't a great deal of choice. He stood on the toilet seat, stretched up to the white ventilation gap in the wall and tried to push the gun in there, but there was a grid inside.
He stepped back down. He was breathing hard now, and getting hot inside his shirt. Eight minutes to the train. He could take a later one, of course; that wasn't critical. What was critical was that five minutes had passed and he still hadn't got rid of the weapon, and she always said that anything over four minutes was an unacceptable risk.
Naturally, he could leave the gun on the floor, but they always worked to the principle that the gun should not be found before he was safe.
He left the cubicle and went to the sink. Washed his hands while his eyes scrutinised the deserted room.
Upomoc!
And stopped at the soap container over the sink.
Jon and Thea left the restaurant in Torggata with arms entwined.
Thea let out a scream as she slipped on the ice under the treacherous new snow in the pedestrian zone. She almost dragged Jon down with her, but he saved them at the last minute. Her bright laughter pealed in his ears.
'You said yes!' he shouted to the sky and felt the snowflakes melting on his face. 'You said yes!'
A siren rang out in the night. Several sirens. The sounds came from the direction of Karl Johans gate.
'Shall we go and see what the fuss is?' Jon asked, taking her hand.
'No, Jon,' said Thea, with a frown.
'Yes, come on, let's!'
Thea dug her feet into the ground, but the slippery soles couldn't find any purchase. 'No, Jon.'
But Jon just laughed and pulled her after him like a sledge.