arms from underneath him. It was the noise of the
garage door that had awoken him. He heard the car
revving up and just caught the blue Volvo being
swallowed up by the dark garage. His right arm
had gone to sleep. In a few seconds the man would
come out again, stand in the light, close the garage
door and then . . . it would be too late.
The old man fumbled desperately with the zip on
the sleeping-bag and pulled out his left arm. The
adrenaline was coursing through his veins, but
sleep wouldn’t let go, like a layer of cotton wool
muffling all the sounds and preventing him from
seeing clearly. He heard the sound of the car door
being closed.
Now he had both arms out of the sleeping-bag and
fortunately the starlit sky gave him enough light
quickly to locate the rifle and put it in position.
Hurry, hurry! He rested his cheek against the cold
rifle butt. He squinted through the sights. Blinked,
couldn’t see a thing. With trembling fingers he took
off the cloth he had wrapped around the sights to
keep the frost off the lens. That’s it! Rested his
cheek against the butt again. What now? The
garage was out of focus, he must have moved the
rangefinder. He heard the bang of the garage door
as it was closed. He twisted the rangefinder and
the man below came into focus. He was a tall,
broad-shouldered man wearing a wool coat and
standing with his back to him. The old man blinked
twice. The dream still hung like a thin mist in front
of his eyes.
He wanted to wait until the man turned, until he
could establish beyond all doubt that he was the
right one. His finger curled around the trigger,
pressed it carefully. It would have been easier
with the weapon he had trained on for years, when
the trigger pressure had been in his blood and all
the movements had been automatic. He
concentrated on his breathing. Killing someone is
not difficult. Not if you have trained to do it. At the
opening of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 two
newly recruited companies had stood fifty metres
apart and fired off round after round at each other
without anyone being hit – not because they were
bad marksmen, but because they had aimed above
one another’s heads. They simply had not been
able to cross the threshold to killing another
person. But when you have done it once . . .
The man in front of the garage turned. He seemed
to be looking directly at the old man. It was him,
no doubt about it. His upper body almost filled the
whole of the rifle sights. The mist in the old man’s
head was beginning to disperse. He held his breath
and increased the pressure on the trigger slowly
and calmly. The first shot had to hit because it was
pitch-black away from the circle of light by the
garage. Time froze. Bernt Brandhaug was a dead
man. The old man’s brain was utterly clear now.
That was why the feeling that he had done
something wrong came a thousandth of a second
before he knew what it was. The trigger wouldn’t
move. The old man pressed harder, but the trigger
wouldn’t budge. The safety catch. The old man
knew it was too late. He found the safety catch
with his thumb, flicked it open. Then he stared
through the sights at the empty cone of light.
Brandhaug was gone, was walking towards the
front door on the other side of the house, facing the
road.
The old man blinked. His heart was beating
against the inside of his ribs like a hammer. He let
the air out of his aching lungs. He had fallen
asleep. He blinked again. His surroundings seemed
to be swimming in a kind of haze now. He had
failed. He punched the ground with his clenched
fist. It wasn’t until the first hot tear fell on to the
back of his hand that he realised he was crying.
73
Klippan, Sweden. 10 May 2000.
HARRY WOKE UP.
It took a second before he knew where he was.
After he had let himself into the flat the first thing
that had occurred to him was that it would be
impossible to sleep. There was only a thin wall
and a single pane of glass separating the bedroom
from the busy road outside. But as soon as the
supermarket on the other side of the road had
closed for the night, the place seemed to go dead.
Hardly a car had passed and the local population
seemed to have been swallowed up.
In the supermarket Harry had bought a pizza
grandiosa which he heated in the oven. He thought
how odd it was to be sitting in Sweden, eating
Italian food made in Norway. Afterwards, he
switched on the dusty TV which was standing on a
beer crate in the corner. There was obviously
something wrong with the TV because all the
people’s faces had this strange green shimmer. He
sat watching a documentary. A girl had put together
a personal account of her brother, who had spent