Blood on Snow
- Автор: Несбё Ю
- Серия: Blood on Snow #1
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: Knopf, Doubleday Publishing Group
- ISBN: 978-0-385-35419-6
- Переводчик: Neil Smith
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Blood on Snow». Краткое содержание книги:
I held the Dane back as he made to follow him.
“Wait a moment,” I whispered. Then started to count to ten.
The salvo of shots came before I got to two.
It hit Klein and threw him back over the edge of the stairs.
He landed halfway down and slid towards us, already so dead that his muscles weren’t even spasming, as gravity pulled him from step to step like a freshly slaughtered carcass.
“Fucking hell,” the Dane whispered, staring at the corpse as it stopped at our feet.
“Hello!” I called in English. The greeting bounced between the walls as if it were being answered. “Your boss is dead! Job is over! Go back to Russia! No one is going to pay for any more work here today!”
I waited. Whispered to the Dane to look for Pine’s car keys. He brought them over and I threw them up the stairs.
“We are not coming out until we hear the car leaving!” I called.
Waited.
Then finally an answer in broken English: “I don’t know boss is dead. Maybe prisoner. Give me boss, I will leave and you will live.”
“He is very dead! Come down and see!”
He laughed, then said: “I want my boss come with me.”
I looked at the Dane. “What do we do now?” he whispered, as if he were some sort of fucking chorus.
“We cut his head off,” I said.
“What?”
“Go back in and cut Hoffmann’s head off. Pine’s got a serrated knife.”
“Er... which Hoffmann?”
Was he a bit thick? “Daniel. His head is our ticket out of here, get it?”
I could tell he didn’t get it. But at least he did as I asked.
I stood in the doorway keeping an eye on the stairs. I could hear quiet voices behind me. It seemed like everyone had calmed down so I took the opportunity to assess what I was thinking. As usual in stressful situations, it was a random mixture of odd things. Like the fact that the jacket of Klein’s suit had twisted on the way down, so I could see from the label inside that it was hired, but it was now so full of bullet holes that they were unlikely to want it back. That it was very practical that Hoffmann’s, Pine’s, and Klein’s corpses were already in a church and that there were spare coffins for each of them. That I’d booked seats on the plane just in front of the wings, with a window seat for Corina, so she’d be able to see Paris when we were coming in to land. Then a couple more useful thoughts. What was our van driver doing now? Was he still waiting for us on the road below the church? If he’d heard the shots, he would have heard that the last ones were from an automatic, which wasn’t part of our arsenal. It’s always bad news when the last shot you hear is the enemy’s. His orders were clear, but could he keep a cool head? Had anyone else in the neighbourhood heard the shots? How did the gravedigger fit into all this? The job had taken much longer than planned. How much time did we have before we had to be out of there?
The Dane came back to the doorway. His face was pale. But not as pale as the face of the head dangling from his hand. I checked that it was the right Hoffmann, then indicated that he should throw it up the stairs.
The Dane twisted the hair on the head a couple of times, took a short run-up, swung his arm by his side as though he was in a bowling alley, and let go. The head sailed upwards, hair flailing, but the angle was too tight and it hit the ceiling, fell onto the steps and bounced back down with little cracking sounds like when you tap a hard-boiled egg with a spoon.
“Just need to get my eye in,” the Dane muttered as he grabbed the head again, shifted his feet, closed his eyes in concentration and took a few deep breaths. I realised I was on the edge mentally now, because I was about to burst out laughing. Then he opened his eyes, took two steps forward and swung his arm. Let go. Four and a half kilos of human head described a fine arc up to the top of the steps and hit the floor. We heard it bounce and roll down the passageway.
The Dane nudged me with a look of triumph, but managed not to say anything.
We waited. And waited.
Then we heard a car start. Revving. The gears crunched badly. Reversing. More revving. Far too much for first gear. It screamed off, driven by someone who wasn’t used to driving it.
I looked at the Dane. He puffed his cheeks and let out the air, shaking his right hand as if he’d been holding something hot.
I listened. Listened hard. It was like I could feel them before I heard them. Police sirens. The sound carried a long way in the cold air. It could still be a good while before they got here.
I glanced behind me. Saw the young girl in her grandmother’s lap. It was impossible to say if she was breathing, but judging by the colour of her face she was drained of blood. I took in the whole room before I left. The family, death, blood. It reminded me of a picture. Three hyenas and a zebra with its stomach torn open.
Chapter 19
It’s not true that I don’t remember what I said to her on the train. I don’t remember if I’ve said that I can’t remember, but I certainly thought of saying it. But I do remember. I told her I loved her. Just to see how it felt to say it to someone. Like shooting at targets in the shape of human torsos; it’s obviously not the same, but it still feels different from shooting at plain round targets. Obviously I didn’t mean it, just as little as I meant to kill the torso-people on the targets. It was practice. Familiarisation. One day maybe I’d meet a woman I loved and who loved me, and then it would be good if the words didn’t catch in my throat. Okay, so I hadn’t actually told Corina that I loved her yet. Not out loud, like that, honestly, with no possibility of retreat, just going for it, letting the echo fill the vacuum, inflating the silence so much that it made the walls bulge. I had only said it to Maria at the exact point where the tracks met. Or divided. But the thought that I would soon be saying it to Corina made my heart feel like it was going to explode. Was I going to say it that evening? On the plane to Paris? At the hotel in Paris? Over dinner, perhaps? Yes, that would be perfect!
That was what I was thinking as the Dane and I walked out of the church and I breathed in the raw, cold winter air that still tastes of sea salt even when ice has settled on the fjord. The police sirens could be heard clearly now, but they came and went like a badly tuned radio, still so far off that it was impossible to tell which direction they were coming from.
I could see the headlights of the black van on the road below the church.
I was walking across the frozen path with short, quick steps, my knees slightly bent. That’s something you learn as a child in Norway. Maybe not as early in Denmark — they don’t have so much snow and ice — and I sensed that the Dane was falling behind. But that might not be true. Maybe the Dane had walked on more ice than I had. We know so little about each other. We see a nice round face and open smile, and hear cheerful Danish words that we don’t always understand, but they soothe the ear, calm the nerves, and tell us a story of Danish sausages, Danish beer, Danish sunshine and the gentle, sedate life on the flat farmland way down south. And it’s all so nice that it makes us lower our guard. But what did I know? Maybe the Dane had fixed more people than I ever would. And why did that thought pop up just then? Maybe because it suddenly felt like time was waiting for something again, another squeezed second, a spring coiled tight.
I was about to turn round, but never made it.
I couldn’t blame him. After all — like I said — I’m usually willing to go to any lengths to be in a position to shoot an armed man in the back.
The shot echoed across the churchyard.