“Have all these animals always been here?” Harry asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Liz said. “I’m a city kid.”
Harry felt something cold brush against his skin and pulled his hand away.
Løken chuckled. “It’s just the frogs out on their evening promenade,” he said. And, sure enough, soon there were frogs all around them apparently jumping wherever the mood took them.
“Well, so long as it’s only frogs that’s fine,” Harry said.
“Frogs are food too,” Løken said. He pulled a black hood over his head. “Where there are frogs there are also snakes.”
“You’re kidding!”
Løken shrugged.
Harry had no desire to know the truth, but couldn’t stop himself from asking. “What sort of snakes?”
“Five or six different varieties of cobra, a green adder, a Russell’s viper plus a good many more. Watch out. They say of the thirty most common varieties in Thailand twenty-six are poisonous.”
“Shit. How do you know if they’re poisonous?”
Løken gave him his poor-recruit look again. “Harry, bearing the odds in mind, I think you should just assume they’re all poisonous.”
It was eight o’clock.
“I’m ready,” Liz said impatiently and checked for the third time that her Smith & Wesson 650 was loaded.
“Frightened?” Løken asked.
“Only of the Police Chief finding out what’s going on before we get this done,” she said. “Do you know the average life expectancy of a traffic cop in Bangkok?”
Løken laid a hand on her shoulder.
“OK, let’s go.” Liz ran head down through the tall grass and disappeared into the darkness.
Løken studied the house through his binoculars while Harry covered the front with the elephant rifle Liz had requisitioned from the police arms depot, along with a gun, a Ruger SP101. He wasn’t used to wearing a calf holster, but shoulder holsters aren’t worn where jackets are an impractical item of clothing. A full moon was high in the sky and gave him enough light to make out the contours of the windows and doors.
Liz flashed her torch once, the signal that she was in position under one window.
“Your turn, Harry,” Løken said when he noticed him hesitate.
“Shit, did you have to mention the snakes?” Harry said, checking he had a knife in his belt.
“Don’t you like them?”
“Well, the ones I’ve met made a very bad first impression.”
“If you get bitten, make sure you catch the snake, so you’re given the right antidote. Then it doesn’t matter if you’re bitten a second time.”
Harry couldn’t see if Løken was smiling in the darkness, but guessed he was.
Harry ran toward the house that loomed out of the night. Because he was running, it looked as if the silhouette of the fierce dragonhead on the roof ridge was moving. Yet the house looked very dead. The shaft of the sledgehammer in his rucksack banged against his back. He had stopped thinking about snakes.
He arrived at the second window, signaled to Løken and crouched down. It was a while since he had run so far; that was probably why his heart was pounding so hard. He heard light breathing next to him. It was Løken.
Harry had suggested tear gas, but Løken had rejected the idea point-blank. The gas would prevent them from seeing anything, and they had no reason to believe that Klipra was waiting for them with a knife to Runa’s throat.
Løken raised a fist to Harry as a signal.
Harry nodded and could feel his mouth was dry, a sure sign that adrenalin was pumping through his veins in the right quantities. The butt of the gun was clammy in his hands. He checked that the door opened inward before Løken swung the sledgehammer.
The moonshine was reflected on the iron, and for a brief second he resembled a tennis player serving before the hammer came down with immense power and smashed the lock with a bang.
The next moment Harry was inside, and his torchlight was circling the room. He saw her immediately, but the light moved on, as if acting off its own instructions. Kitchen shelves, a fridge, a bench, a crucifix. He couldn’t hear the animal noises anymore. He was transported back to Sydney, and heard only the sound of chains, waves smacking against the side of a boat in a marina, and the gulls screaming, perhaps because Birgitta was lying on the deck and forever dead.
A table with four chairs, a cupboard, two beer bottles, a man on the floor, not moving, blood under his head, his hand hidden by her hair, a gun under the chair, a painting of a dish of fruit and an empty vase. Stilleben. Nature morte. Still life. The torchlight swept over her and he saw it again: the hand, pointing upward against the table leg. He heard Runa’s voice: “Can you feel it? You can have eternal life!” As though she was trying to summon energy for a final protest against death. A door, a freezer, a mirror. Before he was blinded he saw himself for a brief instant—a figure in black clothes with a hood over his head. He looked like an executioner. Harry dropped the torch.