Bad Intentions (20 page)

"Axel?" he whispered.

No reply. All he heard was the wind. It had dropped considerably, and the morning was not far off. He eased himself into a sitting position, keeping the weapon ready. His heart was pounding and it was difficult to keep the revolver still. Was that a glimmer of light in the darkness, the blade of a knife, or the gleam in Axel's eye? He could not be sure. He wriggled out of the sleeping
bag and stood up. He could no longer make out the black mass by the door. He tiptoed across the floor. Every nerve on edge. There was no one there. His hands felt only timber with the occasional splinter in the walls. He opened the door as noiselessly as he could and peeked into the living room. A barely perceptible gray light fell through the windows, and the back of a chair was just visible. Reilly still thought he heard breathing. He crept across the room and stopped at Axel's door. It was a simple pine door with a plastic handle. He clutched the butt of the revolver and eased the door open. Gray light from the living room seeped in. The green sleeping bag on the bed reminded him of a limp cucumber. He had no idea how long he stood like that, his arms dangling, the mouth of the gun pointing toward the floor.

Axel came at him from behind. Reilly was yanked backward and crashed to the floor. The revolver slipped out of his hand, skidded across the floor and hit the wall with a bang.

"Are you trying to shoot me?" Axel cried. "Eh?"

He put his arm around Reilly's neck and squeezed as hard as he could. Axel was strong. Reilly could hardly breathe. All he could do was kick his legs, but that did not help him get air into his lungs.

"I'm always one step ahead!" Axel screamed. "Don't you understand?"

The grip around his neck tightened. Reilly tried to force out a reply, he could only manage to produce some unintelligible grunts, and while he lay there, growing weaker because of oxygen deprivation, it dawned on him that he wanted to give up, that it no longer mattered to him either way. Jon couldn't cope with being alive and neither can I, Reilly thought. He was starting to black out. His head felt very hot.

"I understand people and I see through them," Axel snarled. Reilly felt his breath in his ear. The smell of Axel, his raw strength.

"You can't even put up a proper fight," Axel said. "You don't deserve to live."

Reilly wanted to beg for mercy. He wanted to explain and to put forward a proposal, but he couldn't get a word out. Finally Axel let go of him. Reilly filled his lungs with air, but he was too terrified to move. Something in his throat had been badly hurt and he did not know if he still had a voice.

Axel got up and stared at Reilly lying on the floor.

"So what the hell were you doing?"

"I was unsettled," Reilly said. "I heard something." He tried to work out what he was feeling. He realized he did not feel much of anything. Now I know why people kill, he thought. They're scared.

"Would you have shot me?" Axel asked. "You would have, wouldn't you?"

He picked up the revolver. He opened the chamber and looked inside.

"Six bullets. Goddamn it."

Reilly propped himself up. He massaged his neck for a while, then staggered to a chair and collapsed. Then he began to recover slowly; he got up and fetched the kitten. He put it inside the travel kennel. He gathered up his belongings and packed them in his bag, along with his toiletries, his spare sweater and the Koran. Finally he put on his long coat.

Reilly did everything at a very slow pace.

Axel watched him calmly. "And where do you think you're going?" he asked.

"Home," Reilly replied. "I'm going home to my apartment."

"Walking, are you? You intend to plod along the road with that cage in your hand? Do you know what time it is?"

Reilly opened the front door and went outside onto the grass bank.

"You look like a ghost in that coat," Axel shouted after him. "No one's going to give you a lift."

Reilly left. His coattails flapped, the travel kennel swung in his hand. After an hour trudging along the narrow track through the woods, he reached the main road, and later that morning a truck driver transporting timber gave him a lift.

H
E FED THE KITTEN.

He watched it eat.

I've dithered my whole life, he thought, but now I'm going to be a man of action.

When the kitten had finished its food, it curled up in a corner and went to sleep. Reilly looked around the apartment. He had made a decision and he was determined. His eyes fell on the Viking ship bottle his mother had given him. It sat on a shelf above the window. Carefully he took it down, held it up to the light and admired the color of the liquid. The day has come when I need a stiff cognac, he said to himself.

He took a clean glass from a cupboard and poured himself a drink. This will do the job, he thought. Next he needed a notepad and a pen, which he found in the kitchen. He pottered around for a while. He had several things to take care of. He still felt a strong determination calmly propelling him on.

The kitten was sleeping. Reilly opened the kitchen window to get some fresh air. He looked down on the black tarmac. It was wet after a brief shower, but the sun shone now. Reilly sat down to write his confession. He forced himself to think back, to try to comprehend how the party at Skjæret had led him to this point. Again he looked out of the window. He spotted a seagull soaring on a current of air. The sight of the white bird moved him. He got the idea that someone had sent it as a sign. The bird was proof of a purpose, which had finally made itself known elegantly.

He looked at the kitten.

John Coffey had a mouse, he thought, it had lived in his cell and he had called it Mr. Jingles. Perry Smith had a squirrel. And I have a kitten. What will become of you? Perhaps you'll be put down and then ground into pet food. Perhaps a Rottweiler will eat you for breakfast, literally. For a long time such thoughts tormented him. Then he started to write. The pen moved swiftly, the words came easily. He forgot time and place because he was back in the apartment with Irene. Philip Reilly wrote. The sun rose in the sky, sending a beam through the window. It warmed his neck. He lived on a quiet street and today was a Saturday, but every now and then a car would drive past. At times he could hear people's voices. And then there was the sound of a car door slamming. The car seemed to have stopped outside his block, but no one was likely to visit him at this time of the morning. He wasn't expecting anyone so he carried on writing. When the doorbell rang, he sat chewing his pen for a while. The interruption weakened his resolve. But someone did see us, he thought. I have been expecting this moment.

He went to open the door. Axel burst in.

"God's peace, Reilly. That's how you Muslims greet each other, isn't it?"

Axel was holding the revolver. He went inside and sat down at the kitchen table where he instantly noticed the Viking ship filled with cognac.

"Good God, what have you got here? I didn't know you had such a tacky side to you," he said. "Cognac in a ship?"

He twisted and turned the ship, and after studying it thoroughly, he put it down again.

"Do you remember when we were kids?" he asked. "Do you remember what we did on rainy days?"

Reilly was unable to answer. Axel had disrupted his momentum and he lost his train of thought.

"We would go outside and squash snails," Axel said. "When it rained they would crawl out of the ditch and onto the tarmac. Once we saw more than a hundred just on the way to the corner shop."

Reilly knew what was coming next.

"And we would step on them," Axel said. "A trail of slime followed us all the way to the sweetshop."

"Why all this talk about the snails now?" Reilly asked.

"Because you distinguished yourself even then," Axel said. "You were so calculating. If you put your foot on the snail's head, a kind of green slime would come out. But if you placed your foot on its tail, some disgusting yellow substance that looked like butter would squirt out. It was a choice you made every time you lifted your foot. Green or yellow."

"They were just snails," Reilly protested.

Axel noticed the notepad on the table.

"What are you writing?" he asked. "I hope you're not snitching?"

He grabbed the notepad.

"It's just some nonsense I'm writing for myself," Reilly mumbled.

Axel read a few lines and then slammed his fist on the table.

"Could we help it?" he barked. "Did we intend to hurt Kim?"

"No," Reilly stuttered.

Axel lost his composure. Reilly had never seen him so furious. His anger has been latent the whole time, he thought, and now it's come to the surface.

"Do you know what evil is?" Axel yelled. "What is evil, Reilly? Do you want me to show you?"

Reilly had no time to react. Axel strode to the corner and grabbed the kitten. He held it in his hands, in his fists of steel. The kitten started to squeal. A high-pitched, heartbreaking wail that broke Reilly's heart. Axel moved to the open kitchen window. He held the kitten by the neck, leaned out and looked down at the tarmac.

"This is evil," he said.

And he hurled the kitten out of the window.

It flew through the air like a small gray and white ball.

Reilly staggered to his bed and collapsed. The sight of the kitten being thrown from the window was more than he could take. He struggled to breathe. He clenched his fists so hard that his nails dug into his palms. The kitten fell out of the window, he thought, like a tiny flying squirrel with splayed legs. The kitten hitting the tarmac headfirst. He wanted to beat Axel to a pulp. He tensed every muscle as he sat there on the edge of the bed, gathering the necessary strength.

Axel was sitting down at the kitchen table again. He raised the glass of cognac and held it up to the light. What happened next was such a shock that Reilly forgot all about attacking Axel. He simply stared at him, barely able to believe his own eyes. It would appear that the kitten killer needed some Dutch courage. He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it in one gulp.

Reilly had watched closely and he was not mistaken. The glass was empty and the cognac was now inside Axel, where its considerable effect would soon manifest itself.

"What did you put in the cognac?" Axel frowned. "Seltzer? Did you add seltzer to the cognac?"

Reilly shook his head. He gripped the edge of the bed and fixed his gaze firmly on Axel's face, which was no longer white with anger, but red with astonishment.

"You shouldn't have touched the cognac," Reilly said.

Axel lifted the Viking ship and read the label. Then he sniffed the glass. "It tasted salty," he said.

"We have a problem now," Reilly said.

Axel licked his lips.

"That cognac was meant for me," Reilly said. "It was laced with drugs."

He held his breath. He was uncertain about what would happen next. It was a large dosage, and he had hoped that it might take him all the way to heaven, or hell—if that was where he belonged, he wasn't sure—but he wanted to confess and then he wanted to be gone. Axel disappeared into the bathroom. He turned on the taps. Nothing happened for a while, then Reilly heard dry retching. Then the sound of someone falling over followed by violent thrashing and some rasping noises which suggested that the overdose was inducing respiratory failure. He thought he heard the towel rack being knocked over, too, and more noise ensued. Reilly sat on his bed, waiting. He felt broken as though they were both taking a beating. It went on for a long time. There seemed to be so much life trying to leave Axel's large body. When it finally grew quiet, he went downstairs to collect the dead kitten.

Afterward he sat at the kitchen table holding the old Enfield revolver. He remembered when they played spin the bottle as children, and a funny idea came to him. He spun the revolver and it stopped with the barrel pointing at the window. He spun it again. This time the revolver pointed toward the bathroom. He
was about to spin it for a third time when he decided to check the chambers.

They were empty.

He had wrapped the dead kitten in a towel. The bundle lay in front of him on the table. He watched the light change outside, saw black clouds gather and block out the sun, and he felt the kitchen grow cooler. But he did not stir from his chair. Every now and then he patted the tiny bundle in the towel. As far as he was concerned, the sun could go down forever and darkness could cover the earth, he no longer cared. It was the sound of the doorbell that roused him from his apathy. He got up to open the door immediately. He knew they had come for him. It was a relief to move around, a relief to hear voices. That same day Philip Reilly made a full confession.

I
RENE SELMER WAS
used to getting her own way.

So was Axel Frimann.

"I'm not a taxi," he said. "I have to give Jon and Reilly a lift and that's more than enough. Nattmal is completely out of my way, and it's really late."

Jon cautiously intervened. His feeble appeal had little impact on Axel. "Surely we could make a small detour," he suggested. "It wouldn't be the end of the world. Perhaps his parents are waiting up for him."

Axel looked at Irene. "You let him in to your party," he said, "so he's your responsibility. You can't expect your guests to run a minicab service in the middle of the night."

"Stop being such a jerk," she said. "You'll drive Kim home and you'll do it now!"

Their shouting made Kim lift his head, but he was far too drunk to realize that the argument was about him.

Jon intervened for a second time. "It's really not a problem
to make that detour, Axel. I think we should get him home."

Irene tried a different tack. "Please," she begged. "Waking up with a stranger in your house is so awful, I just can't bear it."

"What's in it for me?" Axel said.

Irene groaned. "Nothing at all. Does there always have to be something in it for you?"

They lifted Kim and dragged him through the snow. With some effort they reached Axel's Mercedes. Axel looked through the windows at the white leather interior.