The Bat Page 32

  In a life-and-death race, Harry sprinted up the pontoon. Toowoomba’s body was jerking. Jerks that made the whole pontoon writhe. At first Harry thought something had bumped into it, but then he realised he was being cheated of his quarry.

  It was the Great White.

  It raised its white skull from the water and opened its jaws. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Harry was sure it was going to take Toowoomba, but it couldn’t get a proper grip and only succeeded in dragging the screaming body further into the water before having to dive again.

  No arms, Harry thought, recalling a birthday with his grandmother in Åndalsnes a long, long time ago when they were doing apple bobbing, trying to grab apples with their mouths from a tub of water, and his mother had laughed so much she’d had to lie down on the sofa afterwards.

  Thirty metres to go. He thought he would make it, but then the shark was back. It was so close Harry saw it roll its cold eyes, as if in ecstasy, as it triumphantly showed its double row of teeth. This time it managed to catch hold of one foot and tossed its head from side to side. Water shot up in a jet of spray, Toowoomba was flung through the air like a limbless doll and his screaming was cut short. Harry arrived.

  ‘You bloody monster, he’s mine!’ he wailed through tears, pointing his gun and emptying the magazine into the pool in one burst. The water was suffused with a reddish colour, similar to a red squash drink, and down below Harry saw the light of the underwater tunnel where adults and children were thronging round to see the finale, a genuine drama in all its true horror, a feast that would compete with ‘The Clown Murder’ for tabloid event of the year.

  56

  The Tattoo

  GENE BINOCHE LOOKED and sounded exactly like what he was – a guy who had lived a rock’n’roll lifestyle to the full and didn’t intend to stop until he was at his journey’s end. And he was well on the way.

  ‘I guess they need a good tattooist down there too,’ Gene said, dipping the needle. ‘Satan appreciates a bit of variety when he’s torturing, don’t you think, mate?’

  But the customer was plastered and his head was drooping, so he probably couldn’t comprehend Gene’s philosophical observations or feel the needle puncturing his shoulder.

  At first Gene had refused to deal with this bloke who’d entered his little boutique and slurred his request in an odd sing-song accent.

  Gene had answered that they didn’t tattoo people in his condition and asked him to return the following day when he’d sobered up. But the bloke had slapped 500 dollars on the table for what he reckoned was a 150-dollar job, and to tell the truth business had been a bit slack in recent months, so he took out his Ladyshave and Mennen stick deodorant and started the job. But he refused when the bloke offered him a swig from the bottle. Gene Binoche had been tattooing customers for twenty years, was proud of his work and in his opinion serious professionals didn’t drink on the job. Not whiskey at any rate.

  When he’d finished he taped a bit of toilet paper over the rose tattoo. ‘Keep out of the sun and, for the first week, wash with water only. The good news is the pain will subside this evening and you can take this off tomorrow. The bad news is you’ll be back for more tattoos,’ he said and grinned. ‘They always come back.’

  ‘This is the only one I want,’ the bloke said and staggered out of the door.

  57

  Four Thousand Feet and an End

  THE DOOR OPENED and the roar of the wind was deafening. Harry crouched down on his knees by the opening.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he heard a voice shout in his ear. ‘Pull the ripcord at four thousand feet and don’t forget to count. If you haven’t felt the chute within three seconds something’s wrong.’

  Harry nodded.

  ‘I’m going!’ the voice yelled.

  He saw the wind take hold of the black outfit worn by the little man climbing out onto the stay under the wing. The hair protruding from under his helmet flapped. Harry glanced at the altimeter on his chest. It showed a little over ten thousand feet.

  ‘Thanks again!’ he shouted to the pilot. The pilot turned. ‘No worries, mate! This is a lot better than taking snaps of marijuana fields!’

  Harry stuck out his right foot. It felt like when he was small and they were driving up Gudbrandsdalen Valley on their way to another summer holiday in Åndalsnes, and he opened the side window and stuck out his hand to ‘fly’. He remembered the wind catching his hand when he turned the palm into it.

  The wind outside the plane was extraordinary, and Harry had to force his foot forward onto the stay. He counted internally as Joseph had told him – ‘right foot, left hand, right hand, left foot’. He was standing beside Joseph. Small patches of cloud floated towards them, speeded up, surrounded them and were gone in the same second. Beneath them lay a patchwork quilt of different nuances of green, yellow and brown.

  ‘Hotel check!’ Joseph screamed into his ear.

  ‘Checking in!’ Harry shouted and glanced at the pilot in the cockpit, who gave him the thumbs up. ‘Checking out!’ He glanced at Joseph, who was wearing a helmet, goggles and a big smile.

  Harry leaned away from the stay and raised his right foot.

  ‘Horizon! Up! Down! Go!’

  Then he was in the air, feeling like he was being blown backwards as the plane continued its undisturbed flight ahead. From the corner of his eye he saw the plane turn before realising that he was the one turning. He looked towards the horizon where the earth arced and the sky gradually became bluer until it merged into the azure Pacific Ocean that Captain Cook had sailed to get here.

  Joseph grabbed him and Harry adopted a better free-fall posture. He checked the altimeter. Nine thousand feet. My God, they had oceans of time! He twisted his upper torso and held his arms out to make a half-turn. Jeez, he was Superman!

  Ahead, to the west, were the Blue Mountains, which were blue because the very special eucalyptus trees gave off a blue vapour that could be seen from far away. Joseph had told him that. He had also said that behind them was what his forefathers, the semi-nomadic Indigenous people, called home. The endless, arid plains – the outback – constituted the greatest part of this immense continent, a merciless furnace where it seemed improbable that anything could survive, yet Joseph’s people had done so for thousands of years until the whites came.

  Harry looked down. It seemed so calm and deserted below, it had to be a peaceful and kind planet. The altimeter showed seven thousand feet. Joseph let go of him as they’d agreed. A serious breach of training rules, but they’d already broken any rules there were by coming out here alone and jumping. Harry watched Joseph put his arms to his sides to gain horizontal speed and swoop down to his left at an amazing rate.

  Then Harry was alone. As we always are. It just feels so much better when you’re in free fall six thousand feet above the ground.

  Kristin had made her choice in a hotel room one grey Monday morning. Perhaps she had woken up, exhausted by the new day before it had even started, looked out of the window and decided enough was enough. What mental processes she had gone through Harry didn’t know. The human soul was a deep, dark forest and all decisions are made alone.

  Five thousand feet.

  Perhaps she had made the right choice. The empty bottle of pills suggested that at least she’d had no doubts. And one day it would have to end anyway; one day it would be time. The need to leave this world with a certain style bore testimony, of course, to a vanity – a weakness – only a few people had.

  Four thousand, five hundred feet.

  Others just had a weakness for living. Simple and uncomplicated. Well, not only simple and uncomplicated perhaps, but all that lay far below him right now. Four thousand feet below, to be absolutely precise. He grabbed the orange handle to the right of his stomach, pulled the ripcord with a firm wrench and began to count: ‘A thousand and one, a thousand and . . .’

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  Epub ISBN: 9781409019480

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  Published by Harvill Secker 2012

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  Copyright © Jo Nesbo 1997

  English translation copyright © Don Bartlett 2012

  Jo Nesbo has asserted his right under the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  Lyrics from ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ by Nick Cave reprinted by

  kind permission of Nick Cave and Mute Song

  First published with the title Flaggermusmannen in 1997

  by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), Oslo

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

  HARVILL SECKER

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