Jo Nesbo - Nemesis

The shadow from the cap fell across the approaching man's face.

'Good evening, Harry. Frightened of dogs?'

Harry looked down at the red jaws in front of him. A fragment of trivia floated to the surface. The Romans had used the Rottweiler's forefathers in the conquest of Europe. 'No, what do you want?'

'To make you an offer. An offer you…what's the phrase again?'

'That's fine, just make me the offer, Albu.'

'Truce.' Arne Albu flipped up the peak of his cap. He tried his boyish smile, but it didn't sit as well as the previous time. 'You keep away from me and I'll keep away from you.'

'Interesting. And what would you do to me, Albu?'

Albu nodded towards the Rottweiler, which was not sitting but on its haunches ready to pounce. 'I have my methods. And I'm not completely without resources.'

'Mm.' Harry patted his jacket pocket for cigarettes, but stopped when the growling became menacing. 'You look drained, Albu. Is all the running tiring you?'

Albu shook his head. 'It's not me who's running, Harry. It's you.'

'Oh? Vague threats against a police officer in a public place. I call that signs of fatigue. Why don't you want to play any more?'

'Play? Is that how you see it? A kind of ludo with human fate.'

Harry saw the anger in Arne Albu's eyes. Something else, too. His jaw was working and the blood vessels in the temples and forehead stood out. It was desperation.

'Do you realise what you've done?' he almost whispered, no longer making any attempt to smile. 'She's left me. She's…taken the children and gone. Because of a petty affair. Anna didn't mean a thing to me any more.'

Arne Albu stood close to Harry. 'Anna and I met when a friend of mine was showing me round his gallery and she happened to have a private viewing there. I bought two of her paintings, I don't really know why. I said they were for the office. Of course they were never hung up anywhere. When I went to fetch the pictures the next day, Anna and I fell into conversation and suddenly I had invited her to lunch. Then it was dinner. And two weeks later a weekend trip to Berlin. Things got out of hand. I was stuck and didn't even make an attempt to extricate myself. Not until Vigdis discovered what was going on and threatened to leave me.'

His voice had begun to tremble.

'I promised Vigdis it was just a one-off, an idiotic infatuation men of my age occasionally pursue when they meet a young woman. She reminds them what it had been like once. To be young, strong and independent. But you aren't any more. Independent, least of all. When you have children, you'll know…'

His voice gave way and he was breathing heavily. He buried his hands in his coat pockets and went on.

'Anna was an intense lover. It verged on the abnormal. It was as if she could never let go. I literally had to tear myself away; she ruined one of my jackets as I was trying to get out of the door. I think you know what I mean. She once told me about what it was like after you left. She almost went to pieces.'

Harry was too surprised to answer.

'But I probably felt sorry for her,' Albu continued. 'Otherwise I wouldn't have agreed to meet her again. I'd said quite clearly it was over between us, but she just wanted to give me back a few things, she said. I wasn't to know you would come and blow everything out of proportion. Make it look as if we had…taken up where we'd left off.' He bent his head. 'Vigdis doesn't believe me. She says she'll never be able to trust me again. Not another time.'

He lifted his face and Harry saw the despair in his eyes. 'You took the only thing I had, Hole. They're all I have left. I don't know if I can get them back.' His features distorted in pain.

Harry thought of the pressure cooker. Any moment now.

'The only chance I have is if you…if you don't…'

Harry reacted instinctively when he saw Albu's hand moving in his coat pocket. He kicked out and hit Albu in the side of the knee, sending him into a kneeling position on the pavement. Harry swung his forearm into the face of the Rottweiler as it attacked; he heard the sound of material being ripped and felt teeth puncturing his skin, sinking into the flesh. He hoped its jaws would lock, but the smart bastard let go. Harry aimed a foot at the black mound of naked muscle and missed. He heard its claws scratch at the tarmac as it launched itself and saw the jaws open to meet him. Someone had told him that Rottweilers know before they are three weeks old that the most effective method of killing someone is to tear open the throat, and now the seventy-kilo muscle machine was past his arms. Harry used the momentum the kick had given him to spin round. As the dog's jaws locked it was thus not around his throat, but his neck. Not that that meant his problems were over. He reached behind him and grabbed the upper jaw with one hand and the lower with the other and pulled with all his strength. Instead of opening, however, the jaws sank a few more millimetres into his neck. The sinews and muscles of the dog's jaws were like steel. Harry charged backwards and threw himself against the wall. He heard the dog's ribs crack, but the jaws didn't yield. He felt himself panicking. He had heard about jaws locking, about the hyena whose jaws were fastened onto the male lion's throat long after it had been torn to shreds by lionesses. He felt the warm blood running down his back inside the T-shirt and discovered he had fallen to his knees. Had everything begun to lose sensation? Where was everyone? Sofies gate was a quiet street, but Harry had never seen it as deserted as now, he thought. It struck him how everything had happened in silence, no shouts, no barking, just the sound of flesh against flesh and flesh being torn. He tried to shout, but couldn't force out a sound. His field of vision was beginning to darken at the margins; he knew an artery was being squeezed and he was getting tunnel vision because his brain wasn't receiving enough blood. The shiny lemons outside Ali's shop were losing their shine. Something black, flat, wet and solid came up and exploded in his face. He tasted gravel. Far away, he could hear Albu's voice: 'Let go!'

The pressure around his neck eased. Harry's position on earth moved slowly away from the sun and it was pitch dark when he heard someone say: 'Are you alive? Can you hear me?'

Then a steel click close to his ear. Gun parts. Cocking the trigger.

'Fu…' He heard a deep groan and the splat of vomit as it hit the tarmac. More steel clicks. Safety catch being removed…In a few seconds it would all be over. That was how it felt. Not despair-not fear-not even regret. Only relief. There wasn't much to leave behind. Albu was taking his time. Time for Harry to realise there was something after all. Something he was leaving behind. He filled his lungs with air. The network of arteries absorbed the oxygen and pumped it up to the brain.

'Right, now…' the voice began, but it stopped abruptly as Harry's fist struck the larynx.

Harry got to his knees. He didn't have much strength left. He tried to retain consciousness while waiting for the final onslaught. A second passed. Two seconds. Three. The smell of vomit burned in his nose. The streetlights above him came into focus. The street was empty. Deserted. Apart from a man lying beside him in a blue quilted jacket and what looked like a pyjama top sticking out from the neck, gurgling. The light shone on metal. It wasn't a gun; it was a lighter. Only now did Harry see that the man was not Arne Albu. It was Trond Grette.

With a scalding hot cup of tea in his hand, Harry sat at the kitchen table opposite Trond, whose breath was still laboured and wheezy, and whose panic-stricken goitre eyes bulged out of his skull. As for himself, he was dizzy and nauseous, and the pains in his neck throbbed like burns.