Penelope stands at the window. The skies flash bright from lightning and thunder rolls over the sea. The rain pours down. Björn has disappeared into the wheelhouse of the police launch. She watches Ossian limp down towards the water, a yellow umbrella over his head. The metal door of the wheelhouse opens and a uniformed police officer steps out onto the foredeck, hops onto the dock, and ties up the boat.
Not until the policeman begins to walk up the gravel path does Penelope see who it is.
Her pursuer does not bother to answer Ossian’s greeting. His left hand snakes out to clutch Ossian under the chin.
Penelope’s phone drops from her hand unnoticed.
With professional ease, the man in uniform turns Ossian’s face to one side, slides a dagger into his own right hand, turns Ossian’s face further awry, and then, in seconds, sends the dagger into Ossian’s neck right above the atlas vertebra and directly into the brain stem. The yellow umbrella falls to the ground and rolls down the slope. Ossian is dead before his body touches the earth.
The man strides closer. A pale flicker of lightning illuminates his face and Penelope meets his eyes. Before the darkness falls again, she can see the worried expression on his face, his exhausted, sad eyes, and his mouth, disfigured by a deep scar. The thunder rolls. The man never pauses. Penelope stands by the window, absolutely paralysed. Her breaths come quick, but she can’t flee.
The rain batters the window frames and the glass panes. The world outside seems far away. Suddenly the man is silhouetted by a bright yellow light that seems to brighten the dock, the water, even the sky. As if a massive oak tree had sprouted from the boat behind him, a column of fire shoots up with a bellow. Metal scraps fly into the air. The cloud of fire grows and pulsates with an eerie, internal flickering. Its heat sets nearby brush, even the dock, afire. The explosion pounds against the house.
With shattered glass falling around her, Penelope is finally able to act. She whirls around, running so fast she just races up and over the sofa and down the hallway with all its signed portraits. Out the back door and over the ragged lawn. She slips but keeps going, through the pounding rain along the trampled path, around the grove of birches, and out onto a meadow. A family with children—all dressed in bright yellow rain gear, life vests, and carrying fishing poles—is braving the downpour. Penelope runs straight between them and down to the sandy beach. She’s out of breath and feels she might faint. She has to stop, and yet she can’t. Instead, she drops down behind a small wheelbarrow and vomits into the nettles. She whispers the Lord’s Prayer. Thunder rumbles from far away. Shakily she rises to a crouch, wiping the rain from her face with her sleeve, to peer back across the meadow. The man is rounding the birch grove. He pauses next to the family group and they immediately point in her direction. She ducks, creeps backwards, sliding down the shallow cliff to run close to the water. Her footsteps leave a white track behind her in the churned-up wet sand. A long pontoon bridge seems to offer the only distance she can reach, and she runs along it as far as she can. She hears the thud of helicopter blades and keeps on running. It takes only a quick glance to see her pursuer heading straight for her. At the far end of the bridge, a man is being winched down from the sky, from a rescue helicopter. He lands there, waiting for her. The water around him is whipped up in concentric circles from the wash of the helicopter’s blades. Penelope runs straight to him. Quickly he fastens a harness to her, shouting instructions, and then circles his hand in a gesture to the aircraft above them. They are lifted free from the bridge, swept to one side close over the water as the line lifts them towards the helicopter. Penelope’s view of the beach is almost immediately blocked by the encroaching spruce trees, but just before that moment, she sees her pursuer go down on one knee. He’s setting down a black backpack and swiftly assembling something. He’s out of her sight then; she sees only the tight tops of trees and the turbulent surface of the sea.
A short bang. She hears a crash overhead. The cable jerks and Penelope’s stomach turns over as the man cabled to her yells something to the helicopter pilot. The helicopter swerves crazily. Horror sweeps over Penelope. The pilot has been shot. Instinctively, with no thought at all, she jerks at the security harness, wriggles free, and simply drops away.
She can see the helicopter stall in the air, tip to one side, and flip over. The cable with her rescuer still dangling on it is entangled in the large rotor. She plunges through the air, unable to look away. The machine rattles deafeningly, and, with a two-part bang, the enormous rotor blades are ripped from the axle. Penelope falls about twenty metres before she smacks into the water. She sinks down deep, semiconscious with the impact and the cold. It is a long time before she’s able to move. Reaching the surface, her lungs react automatically and her body takes a deep breath. Almost without sight, she dully looks around. Then she begins to swim away from the island and out into the open sea.