14 MASSEY FERGUSON
I CAUTIOUSLY POKED my head around the side of the outhouse and looked towards the cabin. The windowpanes were black and gave nothing away. So he hadn’t switched on the light. OK. I couldn’t stay here. I waited until a breath of wind rustled through the trees, then I ran. Seven seconds later I had reached the edge of the forest and was hidden behind the trees. But the seven seconds had almost knocked me out, my lungs ached, my head throbbed, and I was as dizzy as the first and only time my father had taken me to an amusement park. It was my ninth birthday, this was the present, and Dad and I had been the only visitors apart from three half-drunk teenagers sharing a Coke bottle with clear liquid in it. In his furious, broken Norwegian Dad had haggled down the price of the sole attraction that was open: a hellish machine, the point of which apparently was to sling you round and round until you spewed up candyfloss and your parents consoled you by buying popcorn and fizzy drinks. I had refused to risk my life on the rickety machinery, but my father had insisted and fastened the belts that were supposed to protect me. And now, a quarter of a century later, I was back at the same filthy, surrealist amusement park where everything stank of urine and rubbish and I was frightened and gagging the whole time.
A stream gurgled beside me. I pulled out my mobile phone and dropped it in. Trace me now, you bloody urban Red Indian. Then, on the soft forest floor, I jogged in the direction of the farm. Night had fallen between the pine trees, but there was no other vegetation, so it was easy to find the way. After no more than a couple of minutes I saw the outside light on the farmhouse. I ran down a bit further, so that the barn was between me and the farmhouse before I left the forest. There was every reason to believe that Aa would demand an explanation if he saw me in this state, and a call to the local police station would be the next step.
I crept towards the barn door and slipped the bolt. Pushed the door open and entered. My head. My lungs. I blinked in the darkness, could hardly make out the car and the tractor. What was it actually that methane gas did to you? Did you go blind? Methane. Methanol. There was a connection somewhere.
Behind me, panting and the soft, barely perceptible sound of paws. Then the sound was gone. I already knew what it was but didn’t have time to turn. It had jumped. Everything was quiet, even my heart had stopped beating. The next moment I fell forward. I don’t know whether a Niether terrier would be able to jump up and sink its teeth into the neck of an average-sized basketball player, but I am not – I may have mentioned this before – exactly a basketball player. So I was knocked forward as the pain exploded in my brain. Claws lacerated my back and I heard the noise of flesh giving way with a groan, bones crunching. My bones. I tried to grab the animal, but my limbs wouldn’t obey, it was as if the jaws locked round my neck had blocked all the communication from my brain. Commands were simply not getting through. I lay on my stomach unable even to spit out the sawdust filling my mouth. Pressure on the main artery. My brain was being drained of oxygen. My field of vision was narrowing. Soon I would lose consciousness. So this is how I was to die, between the jaws of a fat, ugly lump of a dog. It was depressing, to put it mildly. Yes, it was enough to make you see red. My head began to burn, an ice-cold heat filled my body, seeped through to the tips of my fingers. A joyful curse and a sudden quiver of life-giving strength that presaged death.
I stood up with the dog dangling from my neck and down my back like a living fur stole. Staggering around, I swung my arms, but was still unable to get a hold of it. I knew this outburst of energy was my body’s last desperate chance and that soon I would be out for the count. My field of vision had now shrunk to the beginning of a James Bond film, when they play the intro – or, in my case, the outro – and everything is black except for a little round hole in which you see a guy in a dinner jacket aiming at you with a pistol. And through the hole I could see a blue Massey Ferguson tractor. And a last thought reached my brain: I hate dogs.
Swaying, I turned my back to the tractor, let the weight of the dog tip me off the balls of my feet onto my heels, and I stepped back hard. I fell. The sharp steel prongs on the rear loader met us. And I knew from the sound of tearing dog fur that I would not be leaving this world on my own. My field of vision closed and the world went black.
I must have been out for some time.
I lay on the floor staring into the open mouth of a dog. Its body appeared to be hovering in mid-air, bent into what looked like a foetal position. Two steel prongs were sticking into its back. I got to my feet, the barn spun round and I had to take a couple of steps to the side to gain balance. I put a hand on my neck and felt a fresh stream of blood from where the dog’s teeth had punctured my skin. And realised I was bordering on madness because instead of getting in the car, I was just standing and staring in fascination. I had created a work of art. Speared Calydonian Dog. It was truly beautiful. Especially the mouth still open in death. Maybe the shock had locked its jaws or maybe this breed of dog died in this way. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed the furious yet gawping expression it wore, as though in addition to having lived a foreshortened dog life, it had had to endure this final insult, this humiliating death. I wanted to spit at it, but my mouth was too dry.
Instead I rooted around in my pocket for the car keys and tottered over to Ove’s Mercedes, unlocked it and turned the key in the ignition. No response. I tried again and pressed the accelerator. Dead as a dodo. I peered through the windscreen. Groaned. Then I got out and whipped up the bonnet. It was so dark now that I could barely make out the slashed leads that were sticking up. I had no idea what purpose they served, just that they were probably vital for the little miracle that makes cars go. Sod that bloody half-breed, Greve! I hoped he was still sitting in the cabin waiting for me to return. But he must have started to wonder what had happened to his animal. Take it easy, Brown. OK, the only way I could get away from here now was on Sindre Aa’s tractor. Too slow. Greve would soon be after me again. So I would have to find the car he came in – the silver-grey Lexus must be somewhere down the road – and put it out of action just as he had the Mercedes.
I walked at a brisk pace to the farmhouse, half expecting Aa to come out onto the steps – I could see the front door was ajar – but he didn’t. I knocked and then nudged the door open. In the porch I saw the rifle with the telescopic sights leaning against the wall beside a pair of filthy rubber boots.
‘Aa?’
Aa, pronounced ‘oh’, didn’t sound like a name, but as if I was asking him to continue the story he was telling. Which, in a way, was true. So I entered the house persistently repeating the idiotic monosyllable. I thought I caught a movement and turned. Any blood I had left froze to ice. A black monster on two legs had stopped at the same moment as me and was now staring back with enlarged white eyes shining out of all the black. I raised my right hand. It raised its left. I raised my left hand, it raised its right. It was a mirror. I let out a sigh of relief. The crap had dried and covered all of me: shoes, body, face, hair. I kept going. Pushed open the sitting-room door.
He was recumbent in a rocking chair wearing a grin on his face. The fat cat was lying in his lap and peered at me with its sluttish almond-shaped Diana-eyes. It rose and jumped down. Its paws landed softly on the floor and it slunk over to me with swaying hips before coming to an abrupt halt. Well, I didn’t smell of roses or lavender. But after a brief hesitation it continued to pad towards me with a deep, inviting purr. Adaptable animals, cats, they know when they need a new provider. The previous one was dead, you see.