Eusden’s most recent experience of two-wheeled transport lay many years in the past and even then it had not been motorized. His wobbly ride through the mercifully empty streets of Copenhagen on Wijayapala’s scooter would ordinarily have been a nightmarish ordeal. As it was, its hazards and difficulties paled into insignificance compared with the other anxieties his mind was grappling with. Marty had vanished and Clem’s attaché case had been stolen. It had very possibly already been sold to a sinister and anonymous buyer. Certainly Eusden’s chances of preventing the sale were negligible. Logically, there was no point even trying to prevent it. So far, the attempt had involved behaving despicably as well as criminally. And he was still breaking the law by riding without a crash helmet – not to mention jumping a succession of red lights.
He could not simply give up, however. An admission of defeat at this stage would be more painful than pressing on until he had done everything he could, even if it was to no avail. The blow to his head had scrambled his thought processes and he was aware he might be acting irrationally, but he felt helpless in the grip of his determination to hit back at Kjeldsen and Norvig. One had cheated him. The other had betrayed him. He could not simply let them get away with it – and pocket their ill-gotten half shares of twenty million kroner.
The docks were separated from the city centre by a dual carriageway and a railway line. The route into them by road involved a double-back after passing Nordhavn S-tog station. This brought Eusden out on to one of the harbour basins, with a vast warehouse complex between him and Marmorvej. He left the scooter there, conscious that he could not afford to advertise his arrival with the mosquito-whine of its engine, and jogged along the narrow road between the warehouse and the dual carriageway.
Beyond lay another basin, with a huge car ferry moored at a jetty on the far side. Marmorvej was the quay to his left and he heard the thrumbling note of a boat’s engine as he turned on to it. A launch was moving away from the quayside, heading out into the harbour. And two men were walking towards a car parked in the lee of the warehouse. Widely spaced security lights cast a jumble of deep shadows and shallow reflections across the snowmelt-puddled wharf and the launch’s ghostly wake. For a second, Eusden could not be sure what he was actually seeing. His perceptions were sluggish, his reactions slow. Then the scene became clear and obvious in his mind.
The two men were Norvig and Kjeldsen. They were walking towards Kjeldsen’s Volvo. The lawyer was carrying a case that was marginally the wrong size and shape to be Clem’s. They had handed his over, of course, in exchange for this case, containing their pay-off. The buyer was leaving in the launch. Eusden was too late. It had always been likely he would be. His heart sank. He strode forward, unsure of what he meant to do but set on doing something to sour the pair’s victory.
Clunk, clunk: the doors of the Volvo slammed shut as Kjeldsen settled behind the wheel and Norvig in the passenger seat beside him. The engine coughed into action. The headlamps flared. The car was facing towards the sea, so they would not yet be able to see him. As Kjeldsen forwarded and reversed into a multi-point turn, Eusden broke into a run.
Almost at once, however, he stopped, confused by other movements and noises intruding on his senses, swifter than the manoeuvring car, louder than its muffled engine – or that of the departing launch, which by now had left the basin. An unlit motorbike sped into view round the seaward flank of the warehouse. Its rider and his pillion passenger were black-leathered, sleek-helmeted shadows. The machine closed on the Volvo, fast and dark. Eusden guessed Kjeldsen and Norvig were unaware of its approach. And he also guessed its approach spelt danger for them. ‘Look out!’ he shouted.
The warning was in vain. Time was about to slow yet accelerate in front of him. Kjeldsen had reversed towards the warehouse wall as the motorbike reached them. It braked sharply. Its rear light bled into the night. The pillion passenger jumped off as the bike halted, wielding what looked like a gun in his hand. Doubt on the point was snuffed out by the sharp cracks of repeated shots. Glass splintered. The gunman yanked open the driver’s door and unloaded more shots. Six, seven; ten, twelve: they came in rapid succession. The car horn blared. Eusden glimpsed slumped figures behind the windscreen. The gunman leant into the car. He pushed one of the figures aside. The horn died. Then the engine stopped. And the headlamps faded. Several more shots followed, less rapidly. They sounded calm and deliberate: a fail-safe guaranteeing of a specified result. The gunman recoiled from the car, holding the case, and climbed aboard the bike.
The flight response kicked in belatedly for Eusden. It was only now that he turned and ran. As he did so, he separated himself from the stationary shadows on the quay. To flee was also to become visible. He heard a shout from behind him, in a language that was neither Danish nor English. The motorbike engine revved, then roared. They were coming after him. At best a witness, at worst a confederate of the men they had just killed, he could not be allowed to escape.
Granted more time, Eusden would have cursed the instincts that had brought him to this place. If he had not been so obsessed with striking back at Norvig and Kjeldsen, he might have foreseen that they too could be double-crossed. But murder? The clinical executions he had just watched? His foresight would never have stretched so far. There was more at stake than he could ever have envisaged. And now that included his own life.
He turned the corner into the narrow road that led back to the other quay, where he had abandoned the scooter. A glance over his shoulder confirmed he would be overtaken before he got there. He was running to the end of a short leash. He had nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.
Then he saw the gate in the fence. It gave on to a path that led to a footbridge over the dual carriageway. They could not use the bike to pursue him over that. He dodged through the gate and sprinted for the steps, not daring to look behind him.
He ran up the steps and out along the span of the bridge. There was enough traffic on the road below to blot out the noise of the motorbike. He let himself believe for a moment that they might have given up the chase. But a sharp ping against the parapet of the bridge told a different tale. He crouched forward as he turned on to the steps down, ducking and dodging as he descended. He thought he heard a second shot, then a third.
There was a subway ahead of him, leading under the railway line. It was a brightly lit tunnel in which he would be a clear target. But only to someone at ground level. His pursuers would have to cross the footbridge to reach such a position. He could not afford to hesitate. He plunged along it, bracing himself for the jab of pain that would herald the shot that did not miss.
It never came. He emerged from the subway on Østbanegade, the road he had ridden along earlier before entering the docks. He risked a backward glance as he jinked right. There was no one coming after him. Maybe they had given up after all.
A short distance up the road was the bright-red hexagon of the S-tog station. Eusden did not know when the trains stopped running. If one happened to be due, it would be as quick and safe a getaway as he could hope for. But it was a big if. On the other side of the road there were apartment blocks and residential streets where he could hope to lose himself. Maybe they were the better bet. He stood on the pavement debating the point with himself as he panted for breath. His heart was thumping. Blood was singing in his ears. He did not know what to do. He took a chance with another glance into the subway. It was still empty. It was beginning to look as if-
Then he heard the familiar growl of the motorbike. He whirled round and saw it heading towards him down Østbanegade. They had taken the road route out of the docks, calculating – correctly – that they could cut him off. He had delayed too long. They would be on him in a matter of seconds.
To retreat along the subway was to become a rat in a maze. Eusden’s only chance of escape was to make it to the street opposite and pray one of the residents would open their door to him. He launched himself across the road.
He heard the blast of its horn before he saw the lorry thundering towards him from the left. He had forgotten Østbanegade was one-way at this point. But he could not stop now. He lowered his head and lunged on, reaching the pavement in a vortex of rushing air as the lorry swallowed the space behind him, its horn still blaring, its brakes squealing.
In the same breath there was a screech of tyres and a deafening thump of metal crunching into metal. Eusden shrank from the sound, stooping so far forward that he lost his footing and fell to the ground in three stumbling strides. The sound grew and extended itself into a yowl of squealing rubber and crumpling steel as he tumbled against the nearest wall and looked back, winded, into the road.
The lorry had struck the motorbike with crushing force as it crossed in front of it. The rider must have gambled on making the turn before the lorry could shield Eusden from the gunman. But he had misjudged fatally. Now, as the lorry slewed to a halt, jack-knifing slowly across the road in the process, the bike was a twisted shape juddering beneath the cab, the rider and passenger broken dolls bouncing and rolling to rest along the pavement ahead of it. The case had broken free and been split open. Fistfuls of kroner were whirling like autumn leaves in a gale.
The bikers did not move once they had come to rest and the lorry was thirty or forty yards away by the time it stopped. The driver pushed open the door of his cab and commenced an awkward clamber out, moving numbly, like a man in shock. Eusden could see the gun lying in the gutter, glimmering coldly in the lamplight. He rose unsteadily to his feet and edged back into the shadows as the lorry driver looked vaguely in his direction. A Transit van was braking to a halt as it approached. Windows were opening in the apartments nearby. Soon the alarm would be raised.
Eusden headed down the side street, away from the scene, moving as fast as he dared without breaking into a run. He did not know where the street would lead. But it did not matter. It led away. It led to safety.