The meanest Flood

interview as a veil to hide her own insecurities. And she knew he did. Ruben had managed to tell her so without saying a word.
    He smiled as he approached the next B&B. It was more democratic that way. If he hadn’t found some weakness in her he wouldn’t have continued the counselling. Because she’d have had all the power and he’d have been a geek. There would have been no point in seeing her. She would have patronized him and he would have resented her for it. And then he’d have been stuck with the depression.
    Ruben hadn’t read any textbooks. In the joint he’d read novels. Cowboys. Cops and robbers. And he hadn’t been on any courses. Unless you counted the small business start-up course. But he knew the difference between grief and depression. Grief was something he had to cope with by himself. It was grief that made him cover his head with the duvet and scream at the top of his voice for an hour at a time. It was grief that made him want to explode.
    But depression was something else. He couldn’t manage that on his own. They were related, these two, grief and depression, but they weren’t the same thing. Grief was somewhere he had to dwell for a time before he came back to the idea of getting on with his life. Depression wasn’t like that. It was a prison cell.
    Which makes her into some kind of key, he thought. Sarah Murphy, the counsellor, working away to open him up.
     

28
     
    Danny’s internal slave-driver had been hard at it since the unfortunate incident in Calmeyers gate. He didn’t know if he’d killed the young man or not. He’d seen the ambulance take him away and he’d watched Sam Turner make his escape from the police. There hadn’t been time to hang around. He’d stopped the kid, that was certain. He’d felt the blade of the axe cut into the flesh and, for a moment, he’d seen the shock in the young man’s eyes as the blood drained from his face.
    Danny hadn’t slept through the night and as he put his bag on the conveyor belt at Gardermoen he reflected that it didn’t really matter if the young man was still alive. It didn’t matter if he had seen Danny’s face and could identify him. Who would believe him? The police in two countries would now be looking for Sam Turner. The illusion was coming to its conclusion. The authorities would be under pressure to find the detective and bring him to justice.
    The plane taxied along the runway and waited in the queue for takeoff. The pilot apologized for the delay, assured all the passengers that they would be airborne within a few minutes. The magician eased his safety belt, rolled his left hip where it had pinched him. He turned and smiled reassuringly at the Asian woman in the window seat next to him.
    He had accomplished what he had come to do. The Oslo section of the illusion had been completed successfully, or nearly so.
    Until the incident with the boy it had been a doddle. The doors to the flat had opened easily enough, causing Danny no trouble at all. Once inside he had put on two pairs of latex gloves and removed his clothes as usual. It was a pity he couldn’t use the bayonet, but he’d never have been able to take it on the plane. Aesthetically it troubled him that he’d had to purchase the hatchet, though when he thought about it it was a more practical weapon.
    Intellectually Danny agreed with Nietzsche: ‘You only need to start thinking of culture as something useful and all too soon you’ll be confusing what is useful with culture.’ Still, needs must In the same situation, Danny consoled himself, the Übermensch would have considered a hatchet beyond good and evil.
    He had expected both of the women to return together. He would wait for them to remove their outdoor clothes and act quickly. He had already unplugged the phones, drawn the curtains to the street.
    But Holly Andersen arrived alone. Through a chink in the kitchen door he watched her close the outer door behind her and remove her Lapp hat and quilted jacket. She was humming something from a show, an old tune. As she moved to hang up her clothes Danny came for her. She didn’t reach the peg. Her jacket and hat fell to the floor as he brought the hatchet down on her head. She didn’t say anything. No sound came from her lips. She stood on one leg for a moment, her long skirt somehow entangled in her arm, and then she went over heavily.
    Danny watched for a minute as her body went through the shaking and shuddering. There was no real life