And the smell.
My God, the smell!
I was born, and my life started with a fall, a bang on the head and then total darkness.
Total darkness.
Darkness.
Oxygen?
Light.
I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back and above me I saw the back seat where the twins and I had been sitting clamped together. I must have been lying on the inside of the car roof, on the chessboard. And I was breathing. There was a stench of death, of human viscera. I peered around. It looked like a slaughterhouse, a sausage-making factory. But the strange thing was that instead of doing what my nature is predisposed to do – repressing, denying, fleeing – it seemed that my brain had expanded in order to take in the full range of sensual impressions. I decided to stay here. I breathed in the smell. I looked. I listened. Picked up the chess pieces from the floor. Put them into position on the board, one by one. Finally, I raised the chipped white queen. Studied her. Then I put her directly opposite the black king.
PART FOUR The Selection
18 WHITE QUEEN
I SAT IN the wreckage of the car gazing at the electric shaver. We have bizarre thoughts. The white queen was broken. She whom I had used to keep my father, my background, yes, the whole of my life in check. She who had said she loved me, and to whom I had vowed, even if it was a lie, that a part of me would always love her merely for saying that. She whom I had called my better half because I had really believed she was my Janus face: the good part. But I had been mistaken. And I hated her. No, not even that; Diana Strom-Eliassen no longer existed for me. Yet I was sitting in a wrecked car with four corpses around me, an electric shaver in hand and one single thought in my head:
Would Diana have loved me without my hair?
We have – as I said – bizarre thoughts. Then I dismissed the thought and pressed the on button. The shaver – which had belonged to Sunded, the man with the prophetic name that sounded like soon dead – vibrated in my hand.
I would change. I wanted to change. The old Roger no longer existed anyway. I set to work.
A quarter of an hour later I examined myself in the fragment that was left of the mirror. It was – as I had feared – not a pretty sight. My head looked like a peanut with the shell on, oblong with a slight kink in the middle. The shaven skull glistened, white and pale, above the more tanned skin of my face. But I was me: the new Roger Brown.
My hair lay between my legs. I swept it into the transparent plastic bag, which I then stuffed into the back pocket of Eskild Monsen’s uniform trousers. There I also found a wallet. Which contained some money and a credit card. And since I had no intention of allowing myself to be traced after using Kjikerud’s card, I decided to take the wallet with me. I had already found a lighter in the pocket of the black nylon jacket belonging to Pimples and once again I considered whether to set fire to the petrol-marinated wreck. It would delay the job of identifying the bodies and perhaps give me a day’s respite. On the other hand, the smoke would trigger the alarm before I had a chance to get out of the area, whereas without the smoke and with a bit of luck several hours could pass before anyone found the car. I eyed the meat-like surface where Pimples’ face had been and made my decision. I spent almost twenty minutes getting his trousers and jacket off and then dressing him in my green jogging outfit. And it is strange how quickly you get used to cutting people up. When I snipped the skin off both of his index fingers (I couldn’t remember whether fingerprints were taken from the left or the right hand) it was with the concentrated efficiency of a surgeon. Finally, I snipped at the thumb too so that the damage to his hands looked more random. I took two steps back from the wreck and studied the result. Blood, death, silence. Even the brown river beside the copse seemed frozen in mute immobility. It was worthy of a Morten Viskum installation. If I’d had a camera I would have taken a picture, sent it to Diana and suggested she hang it in the gallery. As an augury of what was to come. For what was it Greve had said? It’s the fear, not the pain, that makes you malleable.
I walked along the main road. Of course I ran the risk of being seen by Greve if he drove this way. But I was not concerned. First of all, he wouldn’t have recognised the bald-headed guy in a black nylon jacket with ELVERUM KO-DAW-YING CLUB on the back. Secondly, this person walked differently from the Roger Brown he had met; with a more erect back and at a slower pace. Thirdly, the GPS tracker would show in all its clarity that I was still in the wreck and hadn’t moved a metre. Obviously. After all, I was dead.
I passed a farm, but continued on my way. A car passed me, braked, wondering perhaps who I was, but accelerated again and disappeared into the sharp autumn light.
It smelt good out here. Earth and grass, coniferous forest and cow muck. My neck wounds ached a little, but the stiffness in my body was receding. I strode out, taking deep breaths, deep and life-affirming.
After half an hour’s walking I was still on the same endless road, but I saw a blue sign and a hut in the distance. A bus stop.
A quarter of an hour later I got onto a grey country bus, paid cash from Eskild Monsen’s wallet and was told that the bus went to Elverum, from where there was a train connection to Oslo. I sat down opposite two platinum blondes in their thirties. Neither of them graced me with a glance.
I dozed off, but woke up to the sound of a siren and the bus slowing down and pulling in. A police car with a blue light flashing passed us. Patrol car zero two, I mused, noticing one of the blondes look at me. Meeting her gaze, I noted that she instinctively wanted to avert her eyes – I was too direct; she thought I was ugly. But she couldn’t do it. I sent her a wry smile and turned to the window.
The sun was also shining on the old Roger Brown’s home town when the new one alighted from the train at ten minutes past three. But an icy cold wind was blowing into the snarling mouths of the disfigured tiger sculptures in front of Oslo Central Station as I crossed the square and continued towards Skippergata.
The dope dealers and whores in Tollbugata looked at me, but didn’t yell after me with their offers as they had done for the old Roger Brown. I stopped in front of the entrance to Hotel Leon and glanced up at the facade where the plaster had crumbled, leaving white sores. Beneath one of the windows hung a poster promising a room for four hundred kroner a night.
I went inside to the reception desk. Or RESEPTION as the sign hanging above the man behind the counter said.