'She's sitting in the House of Pain going through it now.'
Ragnhild Gilstrup thought about Johannes. About how different everything could have been. If only she had followed her heart, which had always been wiser than her head. It was strange that she had never been that unhappy and yet she had never wanted to live as much as right now.
To live a bit longer.
Because she knew everything now.
She stared into a black muzzle and she knew what she saw.
And what would happen.
Her scream was drowned by the roar of a very simple motor of a Siemens VS08G2040. A chair fell to the floor. The muzzle with the powerful suction approached her eye. She tried to squeeze her eyelids shut, but they were held open by strong fingers that wanted her to see. And she saw. And knew, knew what was going to happen.
17
Thursday, 18 December. The Face.
THE WALL CLOCK OVER THE COUNTER IN THE BIG CHEMIST'S shop showed half past nine. People sat around the room coughing, closed sleepy eyes or alternated glances between the red digital figure on the wall and their queue number as though it were their lottery ticket for life and every ping a new draw.
He had not taken a number from the machine; he wanted to sit by the heaters in the shop, but he had a feeling the blue jacket was attracting unwanted attention because the staff were beginning to send him looks. He gazed out of the window. Behind the mist he could make out the contours of a feeble, impotent sun. A police car passed by. They had security cameras in here. He had to move on, but where to? Without any money he would be thrown out of cafés and bars. Now he didn't even have the credit card any more. Last night he had decided he would withdraw money even though he knew there was a risk the card would be traced. He had searched on his evening walk from the Hostel, and in the end found an ATM some distance away. But the machine had just eaten his card without giving him anything, except for confirmation of what he already knew: they were encircling him; he was under siege again.
* * *
The semi-deserted Biscuit restaurant was immersed in pan-pipe music. It was the quiet period after lunch and before evening meals, so Tore Bjørgen had positioned himself by the window and was staring dreamily out at Karl Johans gate. Not because the view was so appealing, but because the radiators were under the windows and he couldn't seem to get warm. He was in a bad mood. He had to pick up the plane ticket to Cape Town within the next two days and he had just concluded what he had known for a long time: he didn't have enough money. Even though he had worked hard, it wasn't there. There was the rococo mirror he had bought for the flat in the autumn, of course, but there had been too much champagne, cocaine and other expensive jollities. Not that he had lost his grip on things, but to be honest it was time he escaped from the vicious circle of coke for parties, pills to sleep and coke to give him the energy to do enough overtime to finance his bad habits. And right now he didn't have a bean in his account. For the last five years he had celebrated Christmas and New Year in Cape Town instead of going home to the village of Vegårdshei, to religious narrow-mindedness, his parents' silent accusations and his uncles' and his nephews' thinly disguised revulsion. He exchanged three weeks of unbearable freezing temperatures, dismal darkness and tedium for sun, beautiful people and pulsating nightlife. And games. Dangerous games. In December and January Cape Town was invaded by European advertising agencies, film crews and models, female and male. And this was where he found like-minded individuals. The game he liked best was blind date. In a place like Cape Town there was always a certain risk involved, but to meet a man amid the shacks in Cape Flats you were risking your life. And yet that was what he did. He didn't always know why he did these idiotic things; all he knew was that he needed danger to feel he was alive. The game had to have a potential penalty to be interesting.
Tore Bjørgen sniffed. His daydreams had been disturbed by a smell he hoped did not come from the kitchen. He turned.
'Hello again,' the man standing behind him said.
If Bjørgen had been a less professional waiter his face would have assumed a disapproving expression. The man in front of him was not only wearing the unbecoming blue jacket that was in fashion among the drug addicts on Karl Johans gate, he was also unshaven, red-eyed and stank like a urinal.
'Remember me?' the man said. 'In the men's room?'
At first Bjørgen thought he was referring to the nightclub of the same name before realising that the guy meant the toilet. It was only then that he recognised him. That is, he recognised the voice, while thinking that it was incredible what less than twenty-four hours without civilised necessities like a razor, a shower and a full night's sleep could do to a man's appearance.