Emma was writing.
Trying to write, at least. Trying to believe this was just an ordinary article she was working on, but her fingers were cold and her thoughts far from the words in front of her. It didn’t help that the man the piece described was pacing impatiently to and fro across the kitchen floor with a pistol in his hand. Her mind continually returned to the idea that this would be absolutely the last thing she would do in life. She would function as a microphone for him, a killer.
The thought made her feel sick. She tried to think of a way to smuggle information into the text to reveal where she was, and who the man was standing at the kitchen window. But she knew neither his name nor their location. She had no messages to hide.
Emma tried to build up the article in chronological order, focusing on the murder victims. He’d simply pushed Mona Kleven in front of a subway train after sabotaging the CCTV cameras. She’d been given many chances in life, but according to the killer her fame had brought her nothing but sharp elbows she used to push other people aside so that she could get ahead.
She included a digression he’d interjected about how unfair life was. That someone could smoke and drink and live a morally reprehensible life until they were a hundred, while others ate and lived healthily, but nevertheless died before they were thirty. She wove in the preposterous information that someone could win 183 million kroner in the Viking Lottery, while others struggled to balance their books. She described how he’d killed Thor Willy Opsahl by hanging him from a hook in the roof of his garage, and leaving him dangling there while he drove away in the dead man’s elegant Audi.293
She repeated word for word his contemptuous words about the televangelist, together with his description of how satisfying it had been to see him ‘meet his Maker far earlier than he’d ever imagined’.
She refrained from mentioning that the numbers two and ten were missing from his great project.
‘You can call me the Stage Master,’ he said all of a sudden.
‘The Stage Master?’ she asked.
‘Use it as your headline,’ he said, as if he had been considering this for a while. ‘That’s what I’ve done – put all this on a public stage.’
Emma did as he requested. She typed the headline and inserted a paragraph to explain the title.
‘Don’t make it long-winded or elaborate,’ he warned her, looking at the clock. ‘You’ll have to round it off now.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ Emma asked meekly.
‘You’ve got two minutes,’ was all he said.
‘Two minutes?’
Emma was overwhelmed by panic again. She felt as if she were being strangled. In two minutes he would no longer have any use for her.
She tried to swallow, force back the tears, but she couldn’t resist them; she began to sob and shake. When he aggressively told her to quit that, she just began to cry even more.
Emma had thought, and hoped, that she would be able to offer more resistance, to fight him, physically even, but it was as if the muscles in her body failed to obey or even understand what they were supposed to do. Her brain didn’t function either; she was unable to think rationally.
‘What…?’ Her throat was dry. ‘What will happen afterwards?’ she asked in a quivering voice. ‘To me?’
He did not answer. The tears poured from her eyes. He put his hand down into his trouser pocket and took out the panic alarm. Left it on the table in front of her and smiled.
‘They’ll think you’re the one who’s set it off,’ he said.
Emma looked at him in disbelief. ‘Have you switched it on?’294
He nodded, still with a smile on his face. Emma couldn’t understand any of it; this would summon the police here. Immediately.
‘I did it ten minutes ago,’ he said, sounding pleased with himself. ‘They’ll be here in…’ he glanced at the clock again ‘…twenty minutes or so. Maybe a bit more.’
Emma shook her head. She understood nothing of what was going on in this man’s head. Unless his plan all along had been to be shot and killed by the police when his work was complete. Then he’d avoid being tried for any of the things he’d done. Or else he had a plan for the police as well when they arrived on the scene.
Twenty minutes, she thought. She must stay alive for twenty minutes.
She looked at the text in front of her. Far from finished.
All at once she closed the screen. Snapped it shut.
‘Are you done?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said.
‘But…’
She grabbed the laptop and hit it hard on the table, over and over again, trying to smash the screen. Without an interview he wouldn’t achieve what he desired.
It was clear from the panic in his eyes that he understood, and he launched himself at her. Emma shoved the table towards him, but it was big and heavy. She couldn’t manage to move it more than a few centimetres, but it was enough to slow him down a bit and provide more room for her own legs, so that she could get to her feet. Then she threw the laptop at the window with all her might.
The laptop bounced back and fell on the floor. It didn’t shatter, only cracked. It seemed as intact as ever.
The man leapt around to the other side of the table to retrieve it. Seizing her chance, Emma stormed out into the dark hallway, making for the front door, but before she could reach it he’d caught up with her, jerking her backwards as he grabbed her jacket with one hand and her hair with the other.
The movement made her wig come loose and it slid off in his hand. 295He was so astonished that he let go of her jacket as well. Emma propelled herself towards the door and tore it open.
She took the steps in two desperate leaps, hungrily devouring the cool air as she ran towards the dense forest.
She hadn’t covered much ground when she heard him on the gravel behind her. In blind panic, she ran for all she was worth, but the past twenty-four hours had drained her. He was upon her before she’d reached the trees. He flung her to the ground and pressed her head into the grass.
Emma felt one arm locked in his grip behind her back. He pushed his other arm over against her neck, and she realised he was trying to block an artery. He was strong; she understood now how little chance the others had had. She was trapped; she couldn’t fight him.
Without warning he let go.
Then she heard a noise. As if someone was striking sparks. Then came the pain, and her muscles were paralysed. Her eyes saw only darkness.