Nemesis(132)

There was no disagreement about what happened next. The man under the light reacted by putting his hand inside his jacket and taking out a gun which, it would transpire, was a Glock 23 with the serial number filed off and therefore impossible to trace. Waaler, who was, according to SEFO, the independent police authority, one of the best marksmen in the police force, screamed and fired three shots in quick succession. Two hit Alf Gunnerud. One in the left shoulder, the other in the hip. Neither of them was fatal, but they knocked Gunnerud backwards and he stayed on the ground. Waaler ran towards Gunnerud with his gun raised and shouting: 'Police! Don't touch the gun or I'll shoot! Don't touch the gun, I said!'





From this point on Stein Thommesen's report had little of any substance to add since he was thirty-four metres away, it was dark and, in addition, Waaler was in his line of vision. On the other hand, there was nothing in Thommesen's report–or in the evidence at the scene–which contradicted the next events as described in Waaler's report: Gunnerud grabbed the gun, pointed it at him despite the warnings and Waaler got his shot in first. The distance between the two was between three and five metres.





* * *





I'm going to die. And there's no sense in it. I'm staring down a smoking barrel. This wasn't the plan, not mine at any rate. I might have been heading this way all the time, though. But it wasn't my plan. My plan was better. My plan made sense. The cabin pressure is falling and an invisible force is pressing against my eardrums from inside. Someone leans over and asks me if I'm ready. We're landing now.





I whisper I've been a thief, liar, pusher and fornicator. But I've never killed anyone. The woman in Grensen I hurt, that was just one of those things. The stars beneath are shining through the fuselage.





'It's a sin…' I whisper. 'Against the woman I loved. Can it be forgiven, too?' But the stewardess has already moved away and the landing lights are ablaze on all sides.





It was the evening Anna said 'No' for the first time and I said 'Yes' and shoved the door open. It was the purest junk I had ever got my hands on and we weren't going to spoil the fun by smoking it. She protested but I said it was on the house and prepared the syringe. She had never injected heroin and I gave her the shot. It was harder to do it to others. After a couple of failures she looked at me and murmured: 'I've been drug-free for three months. I was cured.' 'Welcome back,' I said. She laughed and said: 'I'm going to kill you.' I found the vein the third time. Her pupils opened, slowly like black roses. Drops of blood from her forearm landed on the carpet with weary sighs. Then her head tipped backwards. The day after she rang me and wanted more. The wheels are screaming on the tarmac.





We could have made something good out of our lives, you and I. That was the plan, it made sense. I have no idea what the sense of this is.





* * *





According to the post-mortem the 10-millimetre bullet hit and smashed Alf Gunnerud's nasal bone. Fragments of the bone followed the projectile through the thin tissue in front of the brain, and the lead and bone destroyed the thalamus, the limbic system and the cerebellum before the bullet penetrated the rear cranium. Finally, it bored a hole in the tarmac which was still porous after the road-maintenance people had repaired the car park two days before.





40

Bonnie Tyler





IT WAS A DISMAL, SHORT AND GENERALLY UNNECESSARY DAY. Leaden clouds heavy with rain swept across the city without releasing a drop and occasional gusts of wind tugged at the newspapers in the stand outside Elmer's Fruit&Tobacco kiosk. Headlines on the newspaper stand implied that people had begun to get sick of the so-called war on terror, which now had the somewhat odious connotation of an election slogan and had furthermore lost momentum since no one knew where the principal offender was. Some even thought he was dead. The newspapers had thus begun to give column space to reality-TV stars, minor foreign celebrities who had said something nice about Norwegians and the Royals' holiday plans. The only drama to break the monotony was a shooting incident by the container terminal where a wanted murderer and drug pusher had raised a gun at a policeman and been killed before firing a shot. The Head of the Narcotics Unit reported a substantial heroin seizure in the dead man's apartment while the Head of Crime Squad commented that the murder the thirty-year-old was alleged to have committed was still under investigation. The newspaper with the latest editorial deadline had, however, added that the evidence against the man, who was not of foreign origin, was compelling. And, oddly enough, the policeman involved was the same one who had shot dead the neo-Nazi Sverre Olsen in his home in a similar case over a year ago. The policeman had been suspended until the independent police authorities had finished making their inquiries, the paper wrote, and quoted the Chief Superintendent, who said this was routine procedure in such situations and had nothing to do with the Sverre Olsen case.