‘Sounds absolutely dreadful,’ I said.

The old boy sent me an admonitory look before continuing. ‘Her father was spokesperson for the Centre Party, but was thrown out when he tried to enter national politics. And my source tells me Isabelle has inherited his dreams and since the odds are best for the Socialist Party she’s left her father’s little party of farmers. In short, everything about Isabelle Skoyen is flexible and can be adapted to suit her ambition. Furthermore, she is single with a not insubstantial debt on the family farm.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ I asked as if I were part of the violin administration.

The old boy smiled as though he considered the remark charming. ‘We’re going to threaten her to come to the negotiating table, where we will entice her into an alliance. And you’re in charge of the threats, Gusto. That’s why you’re here now.’

‘Me? Threaten a woman politician?’

‘Precisely. A woman politician you’ve copulated with, Gusto. A council employee who has used her position and status for sexual exploitation of a teenager with considerable social problems.’

At first I couldn’t believe my ears. Until he produced a photo from his jacket and placed it on the table in front of me. It looked as if it had been taken from behind a tinted car window. It was of Tollbugata and showed a young boy getting into a Land Rover. The number plate was visible. The boy was me. The car belonged to Isabelle Skoyen.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. ‘How do you know…?’

‘My dear Gusto, I told you I was keeping an eye on you. What I want you to do is to contact Isabelle Skoyen on the private number I am sure you have and tell her this story we have prepared for the press. And then ask for an extremely private meeting between the three of us.’

He walked over to the window and looked at the drab weather.

‘You’ll find she has a gap in her calendar.’

15

In the course of the last three years in Hong Kong Harry had done more running than in the whole of his former life. Yet in the thirteen seconds he spent covering the hundred metres to the prison entrance, his brain was playing various scenarios with a common theme: he was too late.

He rang and resisted the temptation to shake the door while waiting for it to open. At last there was a buzz, and he ran to reception.

‘Forgotten something?’ the officer asked.

‘Yes,’ Harry said and waited for her to let him through the locked door. ‘Sound the alarm!’ he shouted, dropped the briefcase and ran. ‘Oleg Fauke’s cell.’

His footsteps echoed through the empty gallery, the empty corridors and the much too empty common room. He was not out of breath, yet his breathing sounded like roaring inside his head.

Oleg’s scream reached him as he emerged from the last corridor. The door to his cell was half open, and seconds before he got there it felt like the nightmare, the avalanche, the feet that would not move fast enough.

Then he was inside and absorbing the scene.

The desk was on its side, paper and books were strewn across the floor. At the other end of the room, with his back to the cupboard, stood Oleg. The black Slayer T-shirt was drenched in blood. He was holding the metal lid of the waste-paper bin in front of him. His mouth was open, and he was screaming and screaming. Harry saw the back of a Gym Tech singlet, above it a broad, sweaty bull neck, above that a shiny skull and above that a raised hand holding a bread knife. Metal resounded against metal as the blade struck the bin lid. The man must have noticed the change of light in the room, for the next moment he whirled round. Lowered his head and held the knife low, pointing it towards Harry.

‘Out!’ he hissed.

Harry avoided the temptation of looking at the knife; instead he focused on the feet. He noted that behind the man Oleg had slid to the floor. Compared with martial arts practitioners Harry had a lamentably small repertoire of offensive moves. He had only two. And also only two rules. One: there are no rules. Two: attack first. And when Harry acted it was with the automatic movements of someone who has learned, practised and repeated only two methods of attack. Harry stepped towards the knife so that the man was forced to retreat in order to swing at him. And by the time the man had wound up his arm Harry had raised his right leg and angled his hip. As the knife was on its way forward, Harry’s foot was on its way down. It struck the man’s knee above the patella. And since the human anatomy is not very well protected against violence from that angle, the quadriceps immediately gave way, followed by the knee-joint ligaments and — as the kneecap was pressed down in front of the tibia — also the patellar tendon.

The man fell to the ground with a howl. The knife clattered to the floor as his hands groped for his kneecap. And his eyes saucered when he found it in a completely new position.

Harry kicked the knife away and raised his foot to finish off the attack as he had been taught: stamp on the opponent’s thigh muscles to cause such massive internal bleeding that he would not be able to get up again. But he saw that the job was already done and lowered his foot.

He heard the sound of running feet and the rattle of keys from outside in the corridor.

‘Over here!’ Harry shouted, stepping over the screaming man towards Oleg.

He heard panting from the door.

‘Get that man out and get hold of a doctor.’ Harry had to yell to drown the continuous screams.

‘Bloody hell, what-’

‘Never mind that now, get hold of the doctor.’ Harry tore the Slayer T-shirt and searched through the blood for the wound. ‘And the doctor should come here first. He’s only got a wonky knee.’

Harry held Oleg’s face between his bloodstained hands while listening to the screaming man being dragged away.

‘Oleg? Are you there? Oleg?’

The boy’s eyes rolled and the word that escaped his lips was so faint that Harry barely heard it. And felt his chest constrict.

‘Oleg, it’ll be alright. He hasn’t stabbed anything you really need.’

‘Harry-’

‘And soon it’ll be Christmas Eve. They’re going to give you morphine.’

‘Shut up, Harry.’

Harry shut up. Oleg opened his eyes. There was a feverish, desperate sheen to them. His voice was hoarse, but quite clear now.

‘You should have let him complete the job, Harry.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘You have to let me do this.’

‘Do what?’

No answer.

‘Do what, Oleg?’

Oleg placed a hand behind Harry’s head, pulled him down and whispered: ‘You can’t stop this, Harry. It’s all happened. It has to run its course. If you get in the way, more will die.’

‘Who’s going to die?’

‘It’s too big, Harry. It’ll swallow you up, swallow everyone up.’

‘Who’s going to die? Who are you protecting, Oleg? Is it Irene?’

Oleg closed his eyes. His lips barely moved. Then not at all. And Harry thought he looked like he had when he was eleven and had just fallen asleep after a long day. Then he spoke.

‘It’s you, Harry. They’re going to kill you.’

As Harry was leaving the prison the ambulances had arrived. He thought of how things used to be. The town as it used to be. His life as it used to be. While he had been using Oleg’s computer he had also looked for Sardines and Russian Amcar Club. He hadn’t found any signs to suggest they had been resurrected. Resurrection may be generally too much to hope for. Perhaps life doesn’t teach you much, apart from this one thing: there is no way back.

Harry lit a cigarette, and before he took the first drag, the brain already celebrating the fact that nicotine would accompany the blood, he heard the sound being played back, the sound he knew he would hear for the rest of the evening and night, the almost inaudible word that had first crossed Oleg’s lips in the cell: