Nemesis

'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.

'Drink,' Harry said. 'There's loads of lemon in it. It numbs the muscles and relaxes them so you can breathe more easily.'

Trond obeyed. To Harry's great surprise, the drink seemed to work. After a few sips and a couple of coughing fits a hint of colour returned to Trond's pale cheeks.

'Ulkterbl,' he wheezed.

'Sorry?' Harry sank back in the other kitchen chair.

'You look terrible.'

Harry smiled and felt the towel he had tied around his neck. It was already soaked in blood. 'Was that why you threw up?'

'Can't stand the sight of blood,' Trond said. 'I go all…' He rolled his eyes.

'Well, it could have been worse. You saved my bacon.'

Trond shook his head. 'I was a fair distance away when I saw you. I just shouted. I'm not sure that was what made him call off the dog. Sorry I didn't get the registration number, but I did see it was a Jeep Cherokee they made off in.'

Harry dismissed this with a wave of his hand. 'I know who he is.'

'Oh?'

'He's under investigation. But perhaps you'd better tell me what you were doing around here, Grette.'

Trond fidgeted with his teacup. 'You should definitely go to casualty with that wound.'

'I'll consider it. Have you had a little think since we last talked?'

Trond nodded slowly.

'And what conclusion did you come to?'

'I can't help him any longer.' It was difficult for Harry to determine whether it was only the sore larynx which made Trond whisper the last sentence.

'So where's your brother?'

'I want you to tell him it was me who told you. He'll understand.'

'Alright.'

'Porto Seguro.'

'Uhuh.'

'It's a town in Brazil.'

Harry wrinkled his nose. 'Fine. How will we find him there?'

'He's just told me he has a house there. He refused to give me an address, only a telephone number.'

'Why? He's not a wanted man.'

'I'm not sure that is correct.' Trond took another sip. 'At any rate, he said it would be better if I didn't have his address.'

'Mm. Is it a large town?'

'About a million, according to Lev.'

'Right. You haven't got anything else? Other people who knew him and might have his address?'

Trond hesitated before shaking his head.

'Out with it,' Harry said.

'Lev and I went for a coffee last time we met in Oslo. He said it tasted even worse than usual. Said he'd taken to drinking cafezinho at a local ahwa.'

'Ahwa? Isn't that an Arab coffee house?'

'Correct. Cafezinho is a kind of strong Brazilian variant of espresso. Lev says he goes there every day. Drinks coffee, smokes a hookah and plays dominoes with the Syrian owner who has become a kind of pal. I can remember his name-Muhammed Ali. Like the boxer.'

'And fifty million other Arabs. Did your brother say which coffee bar it was?'