‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘at least you know where you are with me.’
‘Reality calls, my dear.’
Harry turned to see the roll of Isabelle Skøyen’s voluminous beam-end as she headed for the horses.
He followed. Got his feet in the stirrups. Mounted Balder. Looked up and met Isabelle’s eyes. There was a small provocative smile in the middle of that hard, handsomely chiselled face. She pouted a kiss. Made an obscene sucking sound and dug her heels into Medusa’s sides. And her back swayed as the great beast leapt forward.
Balder reacted without warning, but Harry managed to hold on tight.
Isabelle led again, and wet clods of earth from Medusa’s hooves rained down. Then the mare upped her pace, and Harry saw Isabelle’s ponytail standing upright as she disappeared round a bend. He gripped the reins further up, the way his grandfather had taught him, without tightening them. The path was so narrow that branches whipped at him, but he crouched down in the saddle and squeezed his knees hard against the horse. He knew he would not be able to stop, so he concentrated on keeping his feet in the stirrups and his head low. At the margins of his vision, trees flashed past in yellow and red stripes. Automatically he rose in the saddle and put his weight on his knees and the stirrups. Beneath him muscles rippled and undulated. He had the feeling he was sitting on a boa constrictor. And now they had slipped into a kind of rhythm, accompanied by the thunderous drumming of the hooves on the ground. A sense of horror competed with a sense of obsession. The path straightened, and fifty metres in front of them Harry saw Medusa and Isabelle. For a moment it was as if the image was freeze-framed, as if they had stopped, as if horse and rider were floating above the ground. Then Medusa resumed her gallop. Another second passed before Harry realised.
And it had been a valuable second.
At Police College he had read scientific reports showing that in catastrophes the human brain tries to process enormous quantities of data in seconds. For some officers this can lead to a paralysis; for others to a feeling that time is going slower, that life passes before them, and they manage to make an astonishing number of observations and evaluations of the situation. Such as that at a speed of almost seventy kilometres an hour they had covered twenty metres and there were only thirty metres and ninety seconds left to the chasm that Medusa had just crossed.
That it was impossible to see how wide it was.
That Medusa was a trained, fully grown dressage horse with an experienced dressage rider while Balder was younger and smaller and had a novice of close on ninety kilos on his back.
That Balder was a herd animal and of course Isabelle Skøyen knew that.
That it was too late to stop.
Harry relaxed his hands on the reins and dug his heels into Balder’s sides. Felt a last surge of pace. Then all went still. The drumming stopped. They were floating. Far beneath them he saw a treetop and a stream. Then he was thrust forward and banged his head against the horse’s neck. They fell.
23
WERE YOU A thief as well, Dad? Because I’d always known I was going to be a millionaire. My motto has been to steal only when it’s worthwhile, so I had been patient and waited. And waited. Waited so long that when the opportunity finally offered itself I thought I bloody deserved it.
The plan was as simple as it was brilliant. While Odin’s biker gang was meeting the old boy at McDonald’s, Oleg and I would steal part of their heroin store in Alnabru. First of all, there would be no one in the clubhouse as Odin would take the muscle they had with them. Second, Odin would never find out that he had been robbed as he would be arrested at McDonald’s. When he was sitting in the witness box he would in fact thank Oleg and me for reducing the number of kilos the heavies had found in the raid. The only problem would be the cops and the old boy. If the cops realised that someone had been a step ahead of them and nabbed the stash, and this came to the old boy’s ears, we would be fucked. The problem solved itself in the way the old boy had taught me: castling, a strategic alliance. I went straight to the block of flats in Manglerud, and this time Truls Berntsen was at home.
He stared at me sceptically as I explained, but I wasn’t concerned. Because I had seen it in his eyes. The greed. Another of these people after payback, who believe that money can buy them medicine for despair, loneliness and bitterness. That there is not only something called justice, but that it’s a consumer product, sort of. I explained we needed his expertise to cover any clues we left for the police, and to burn anything they found. Perhaps even direct suspicion on others if necessary. I saw the glint in his eye when I said we would take five of the twenty kilos in the stash. Two for me and him, one for Oleg. I watched him doing the calculations, one point two mil times two, two point four for him.