The Redbreast(131)

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