Ю Несбё - Blood on Snow

The police car passed and I reversed out onto the road again and drove away.

Luckily there were no more police cars. No one to see the Volvo desperately trying to drive normally, but which still — without it quite being possible to put your finger on why — was being driven differently from all the other cars on the streets of Oslo on the day before Christmas Eve.

I parked right next to the phone box and turned off the engine. My trouser leg and the seat cover were soaked in blood, and it felt like I had some sort of evil heart in my thigh, pumping out black animal blood, sacrificial blood, satanic blood.

Corina widened her big blue eyes in horror when I opened the door of the flat and stood there swaying.

“Olav! Dear God, what happened?”

“It’s done.” I pushed the door shut behind me.

“He... he’s dead?”

“Yes.”

The room was slowly starting to spin. How much blood had I actually lost? Two litres? No, I’d read that we have five to six litres of blood, and pass out if we lose much more than twenty per cent. And that would be roughly... fuck. Less than two, at any rate.

I saw her case on the floor of the living room. She was packed and ready for Paris, the same things she had brought with her from her husband’s flat. Former husband. I’d probably packed far too much. I’d never been farther than Sweden before. With my mum, that summer when I was fourteen. In the neighbour’s car. In Gothenburg, just before we went into Liseberg amusement park, he had asked me if it was all right for him to hit on my mum. Mum and I took the train home the following day. Mum had patted me on the cheek and told me I was her knight, the only knight left in the whole world. The fact that I thought there was a false note in her voice was probably because I was so confused at the whole of this sick adult world. But, like I said, I’m completely tone-deaf; I’ve never been able to tell the difference between pure and false notes.

“What’s that on your trousers, Olav, is it... blood? Oh God, you’re hurt! What happened?” She looked so bewildered and upset standing there that I nearly laughed. She gave me a suspicious, almost angry look. “What is it? Do you think it’s funny that you’re standing here bleeding like a stuck pig? Where’ve you been shot?”

“Only in the thigh.”

“Only? If the artery was hit, you’ll soon bleed out, Olav! Get those trousers off and sit down on the kitchen chair.” She removed the coat she had been wearing when I came in and went into the bathroom.

Came out again with bandages, plasters, iodine, the whole shebang.

“I’ll have to sew you up,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, leaning my head against the wall and closing my eyes.

She got going, trying to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. She made comments as she worked, explaining that she could only patch me up provisionally. That the bullet was still in there somewhere, but that it was impossible to do anything about that now.

“Where did you learn to do this?” I asked.

“Shh, just sit still, or you’ll break the stitches.”

“You’re a proper little nurse.”

“You’re not the first man to get a bullet in him.”

“Oh,” I said, in a matter-of-fact way. As a statement, not a question. There was no rush, we’d have plenty of time for stories like that. I opened my eyes and looked down at the bun at the back of her head as she knelt in front of me. Breathing in her scent. There was something different about it, something mixed in with the good smell of Corina close to me, Corina naked and passionate, Corina’s sweat on my arm. Not much, but a hint of something, ammonia, maybe, something that almost wasn’t there, but was there. Of course. It wasn’t her, it was me. I could smell my own wound. I was already infected, I’d already started to rot.

“There,” she said, biting off the end of the thread.

I stared down at her. Her blouse had slid off one shoulder and she had a bruise on the side of her neck. I hadn’t noticed it before, it must be one Benjamin Hoffmann had given her. I felt like saying something to her, that it would never be allowed to happen again, that no one would ever lay a hand on her again. But it was the wrong time. You don’t reassure a woman that she’s safe with you while she’s sitting there patching you up so you don’t bleed to death in front of her.

She washed the blood away with a damp towel and wound a bandage round my thigh.

“It feels like you’ve got a temperature, Olav. You need to get to bed.”

She pulled off my jacket and shirt. Stared at the chain mail. “What’s that?”

“Iron.”

She helped me off with it, then ran her fingers over the bruises left by the Dane’s bullets. Loving. Fascinated. Kissed them. And as I lay in bed and felt the shakes come, and she wrapped the duvet around me, I felt just like before when I lay in Mum’s bed. It almost didn’t hurt any more. And it felt as if I could escape it all, but it wasn’t up to me; I was a boat on a river, and the river was in charge. My fate, my destination was already determined. Which just left the journey, the time it took and the things you saw and experienced along the way. Life seems simple when you’re sufficiently ill.

I slipped into a dream world.

She was carrying me over her shoulder, running as the water splashed around her feet. It was dark and there was a smell of sewage, infected wounds, ammonia and perfume. From the streets above us came the sound of shots and shouting, and streaks of light filtered through the holes in the drain covers. But she was unstoppable, brave and strong. Strong enough for both of us. And she knew the way out of here, because she’d been here before. That was how the story went. She stopped at a junction in the sewers, put me down, said she had to take a look around but would soon be back. And I lay there on my back, listening to the rats scampering about me as I stared up at the moon through a drain. Drops of water hung from the grid pattern up above, revolving, shimmering in the moonlight. Fat, red, shiny drops. They let go, hurtled down towards me. Hit me in the chest. Passed straight through the chain mail, to where my heart was. Warm, cold. Warm, cold. The smell...

I opened my eyes.

I said her name. No answer.

“Corina?”

I sat up in bed. My thigh was throbbing and aching. Laboriously I lowered my foot over the edge of the bed and switched on the light. Jumped up. My thigh had swollen so much it was almost creepy. It looked like it had just carried on bleeding, but all the blood had built up inside the skin and bandage.

In the moonlight I could see her case in the middle of the living-room floor. But her coat was gone from the chair. I got to my feet and limped over to the kitchen. I opened the drawer and lifted out the cutlery tray.

The sheets of paper were still there in their envelope, untouched.

I took the envelope over to the window. The thermometer on the outside of the glass showed that the temperature was still dropping.

I looked down.

There she was. She’d just gone out for a bit.

She was standing hunched in the phone box, with her shoulders facing the street, the receiver pressed to her ear.

I waved, even though I knew she couldn’t see me.

Christ, my thigh hurt!

Then she hung up. I took a step back from the window so I wasn’t standing in the light. She came out of the phone box and I saw her look up towards me. I stood completely still, and she did the same. A few snowflakes hung in the air. Then she started walking. Putting her feet down with her ankles straight, placing one foot close to the other. Like a tightrope-walker. She crossed the street back towards me. I could see footprints in the snow. Cat footprints. Rear feet in the same prints as the front ones. The thin light from the street lamps meant that the edge of each print cast a small shadow. No more than that. Just that...