HE HEARD A SHOT. It was distant but loud enough for Fabian to wake up and open his swollen eyes. He instantly recognized the sound of something hard clattering against plastic as the dice bouncing around the plastic dome Milwokh wore strapped around his left wrist.
But he couldn’t see anything. Only blurred patches of light. Pain was throbbing in practically every part of his body but nowhere more than his face and hip. It was as though his body had finally accepted all its injuries and instead of screaming in panic it had changed gear and was trying to heal.
He was lying on his side, that much he’d puzzled out, with his hands tied behind his back. Diagonally above him was a considerably lighter, round patch, which suggested he was still in the rectangular room with the domed skylight. Further away, he could also just about make out Milwokh, silhouetted against the triple window, aiming his rifle, then another shot rang out.
‘Why?’ he said, rubbing his eyes against his shoulder in an attempt to get some of the dried blood out of them. ‘Why are you still doing this?’ Pain seared his face, an indication of just how badly bruised and injured it must be, but at least he could see a bit better.
‘I’m not the one you should be asking.’ Milwokh, now wearing a black baseball cap over his wig, turned to him and started to shake his left arm.
‘The dice, I know. A one, and it’s all over. But what if it’s not a one?’
‘Then I’ll keep going. What else would I do?’
‘Cease and desist. Haven’t you done enough damage?’
‘Apparently not.’ Milwokh walked over to Fabian, sank into a squat and held his arm out so he, too, could see the dice bouncing around under the plastic dome. ‘But let’s see what it says. Maybe it’s had enough.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s hungrier than ever.’ He stopped shaking and held his arm completely still.
Four – Change colour
‘What do you know? A four.’ Milwokh started to shake his arm again. ‘Let’s see if your luck holds.’
He was wearing blue jeans, he knew that much. And his underwear was yellow and green. Three colours represented by numbers three, four and five. It was fifty-fifty. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘What makes you want to be a slave to chance?’
Milwokh put the muzzle of his rifle against Fabian’s forehead without letting the dice stop. ‘Ever given any thought to your own relationship with chance? Of the two of us, I’d say you’re more profoundly in its hands than me. Or what do you reckon?’
‘At least I have free will. That’s more than you can say.’
‘Free will? Milwokh sneered. ‘Your so-called free will is an illusion. Like most people, you’re just an algorithm that has got stuck on repeat, like a scratch in an old LP. I bet you’d rather be at home with your family than here, beaten all to hell with a rifle pointed at your head. But your algorithm has programmed you to want to arrest me at any cost. So no matter how much your so-called free will would prefer to stay home on the sofa and read about the Tivoli attack in the papers, this, a dice throw from death, is where you find yourself.’
‘It’s true I’m the one who’s tied up at gunpoint. But of the two of us, I’m not the victim, you are. Don’t you get that? You’re the sick one. You’re the one who has no say. Who can’t make the smallest decision without asking chance for permission. Like a little kid who has to beg for sweets.’
Instead of responding, Milwokh stopped shaking his arm and held it out so Fabian could see.
Two – Orange
‘You should hit a casino. With your luck, you could be rich.’ Milwokh stood up, went over to the window and immediately started to scan the area outside through the scope on his rifle. A minute later, a shot rang out, accompanied by scattered shouts and screaming.
‘You and me and everyone else, we’re all victims of chance whether we want to be or not,’ Milwokh went on, starting to shake his left arm again. ‘It’s everywhere, all the time. We might be run over by a bus. A plane could crash into this building before I finish this sentence. If you’re really unlucky, you get a bullet through the chest just for wearing an orange baseball cap.’
‘The former are tragic accidents. The latter is murder.’ Fabian managed to push himself up into sitting position despite his hands being tied behind his back. ‘You can blame chance and your damn dice all you want, but what you’re doing is murder, plain and simple.’
Milwokh came over and squatted down next to Fabian again while the dice danced under the plastic dome. ‘Just a few minutes ago you claimed I was a slave to chance. That I’m unable to make my own decisions and that I’m just a puppet whose strings are tied to the dice. The truth is, you’re the one who’s a slave to chance. You and everyone else. You’re all slaves. You just don’t know it. You think you’re in control. That you’re in charge of your own lives. That you genuinely want to get up early every morning, sit around in traffic and once you get to some bland open-plan office with terrible ventilation you actually want to write reports you know no one’s ever going to read. Your pre-programmed algorithms dictate, and you move in circles like cute little goldfish.’
Milwokh shook his left arm more and more violently and the dice was bouncing so hard against the plastic it sounded like it was about to crack. ‘But then one day, it turns out your boss at, let’s say, the bank has been more interested in his mistress’s new fake boobs than your reports about suspected money laundering, which leads to a scandal and tanking stock prices. There’s a run on the bank and you’re one of the many thousands fired. Unfortunately, you’ve just hit that age when you’re either too qualified or too old. A few years later, your wife has had enough and the only thing you can afford after the divorce is final and the mortgage repaid is a small one-bed flat in some drab three-storey building on the outskirts of town and there you sit, wondering what the hell happened. You were in charge of your life. You knew exactly what you wanted.’
He kept shaking his arm as though he was never going to stop. ‘And then there’s me. I have chance under control. Unlike the rest of you, I’ve managed to tame it and boil it down to six sides. Six possible alternatives, all defined by me.’
Fabian had to agree. In a way, everything he was saying was true. ‘You’re right,’ he said, nodding. ‘So let’s follow your line of thought and take control of what happens next. You and me, together. Let’s do it. Let’s list the options and then the dice will decide.’
Milwokh said nothing, but his eyes gave him away. He was going through the permutations and calculating the outcomes.
‘I can tell you’re tempted,’ Fabian continued. ‘But hey, maybe you’re too scared. Maybe you don’t have the guts.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Maybe you’re afraid of what the dice would tell you. Of the outcome. I’m surprised by that, actually. Isn’t it kind of undignified? Right? After everything that’s happened, after everything you’ve done, you don’t even have the guts to let the dice settle something that straightforward.’
‘You don’t think I know what you’re doing?’ Milwokh shook his arm harder than ever, savagely, as though Fabian’s attacks were getting to him. ‘Don’t you think I get it? But you’re not in charge of this. You don’t make the decisions.’
‘No, and neither do you. The dice does. So isn’t the least we could do is ask it what it thinks?’ Fabian forced out a smile. ‘Wasn’t that what you said a while ago? That you can just ask. And what was it again? One, two or three, that’s all you need.’
Milwokh didn’t react, but suddenly stopped shaking his arm.
A three.
‘Would you look at that, it said yes. The dice is on board,’ Fabian went on. ‘Roll a one and you win.’ He hadn’t given the suggestion even a moment’s thought and it only sank in a few seconds after he said it that he had put a number on his own life, just like that. Like a price tag on his forehead saying how much he was worth. He had no idea why he’d picked one. But it didn’t matter. It was too late to back out.
‘And two to six?’ Milwokh asked. ‘What do they represent?’
‘You give yourself up, let me arrest you and accept your punishment.’
Milwokh let out a sharp laugh and shook his head. ‘I’m not the one who’s tied up. I’m not the one who’s desperate and fighting for my life against the odds. I can just get up and walk away.’
‘Not until the dice gives you permission and orders you to change your position. Until it does, you’re going to stay and see what it has to say about where you and I go from here.’
‘A six, and I give up and let you arrest me.’ Milwokh looked Fabian in the eyes. ‘A one, two, three, four or five and you’re done.’
‘Your suggestion against mine,’ Fabian said. ‘I guess there’s just one way to settle it: we let the dice choose. One, two or three, my suggestion wins.’
Milwokh didn’t have to think long before he started to shake his arm again. The sound of the dice hitting the plastic had been loud all along, but only now was it starting to bother him. As though each tap against the dome was a step closer to the end. Once the sound stopped, he was almost too afraid to look.
A five.
‘Sorry.’ Milwokh shot him a brief smile. ‘But did you really think it was going to side with you?’
Fabian didn’t know what to say. Every muscle in his body was on the verge of giving up, and he sagged as though his body was preparing for what was coming. He had tried everything. Absolutely everything. And yet, this was how it was going to end. With a dice throw he would lose unless it came up six.
It was five times more likely his brains would end up on the wall with the killer still on the loose. A killer who was going to continue his game of dice somewhere else, pursued by other police officers who were going to search in vain for the motive that could help them understand.
He could hear Milwokh start to shake his arm again, but he couldn’t bear to watch the bouncing dice, so he kept his eyes closed. If his hands hadn’t been tied behind his back, he would have covered his ears so he didn’t have to listen to the sharp clacking sound that was boring into him.
Deep down inside, he’d always known he might be killed in the line of duty. He hadn’t spent any sleepless nights wondering exactly how it would happen. But he certainly hadn’t pictured himself tied up and battered, waiting for a dice throw.
In a way, though, it was typical. Everything he’d fought for, everything he’d been through, just for it to end like this. And what had he really been fighting for? In hindsight, on his deathbed, he honestly had no idea. Maybe Milwokh was right. Maybe he was just an algorithm stuck on repeat until one day it was over. Until the battery ran out.
A new murder case, that was all it took for him to drop everything he cared about and start chasing the white piece of cloth like a slobbering racing dog. His family, his friends, if he even had any, and everything that really meant something to him, none of it had ever been able to compete with the prospect of solving another crime.
So maybe it had better end now. If that ghost Matilda claimed to be in contact with turned out to be right, he was glad it was him and not someone else in his family. If you boiled down everything they’d been through, all the pain they’d endured and all the difficulties they’d fought their way through, there was no escaping the fact that he was the problem and the root of all that evil.
If not for him, things would have been different. He’d let everyone down. If Sonja, Theodor and Matilda had had a husband and father who was there for them, not just in thought but physically, everything would have been so much better.
The problem was that he wasn’t ready to go. Not yet. Somehow, he was convinced he had more left to give before he was done. He hadn’t even said goodbye. To Matilda. To Theodor, who was counting on him to be there for him once the trial resumed. To Sonja, who was expecting him to show up at her performance tonight. She’d told him she needed him by her side, and his death would just be another in a long line of betrayals.
If he could just have one more chance, he’d do anything, absolutely anything. Maybe he should change careers. Quit policing and do something else entirely. Though what was the point of thinking about that. What was the point of thinking at all, now that—
He suddenly realized everything had gone quiet. That the beating of the dice against the plastic dome had stopped. He didn’t know how long since, just that there was an outcome. A ruling.
‘Don’t you want to see what it is?’ Milwokh said in an unreadable voice.
‘Just do what you have to do and get it over with,’ he said, and opened his eyes.