The meanest Flood

day.
    ‘That’s right,’ Sam said. ‘Two people, women, two of the women who lived with me before I met you, have been killed.’
    Inge Berit said, ‘We thought you were making a joke.’
    ‘Nicole?’ Holly said. ‘Nicole’s dead?’
    Sam nodded. ‘In Leeds, last week. Someone broke into her house in the middle of the night. Stabbed her and her husband.’
    Holly drew in her breath. ‘My God. And who else? The other one, what was she called?’
    ‘Katherine.’
    ‘Yes, Katherine. I can’t believe this.’
    ‘It’s true,’ Sam said. ‘Katherine was in Nottingham. It was the same scenario, the same guy. The only thing that connects them is me.’
    They fell silent. Inge Berit put her arm around Holly’s shoulder and pulled her close. Holly reached up and held her friend’s hand. ‘Do you know who he is? Anything about him?’
    Sam shook his head. ‘We’re getting closer. There’s some indistinct video footage back in England, and Geordie thinks he may have spotted the guy here yesterday.’
    ‘In Oslo?’
    ‘Calmeyers gate.’
    ‘Jesus, Sam, you’re frightening me.’
    ‘You should be frightened,’ he said. ‘Both of you. I’d like you to be frightened enough to go away.’
    ‘Where to?’
    ‘Wherever,’ he said. ‘Get out of town, out of the country. Go to Paris or Rome, anywhere but Oslo for as long as it takes to get this guy off the street.’
    The two women looked at each other.
    ‘We could go to the Politi,’ Inge Berit said. ‘They’d give us protection.’
    ‘That’s an option for you,’ Sam said. ‘But the first thing they’d do is arrest me and send me back to England. The English police think I killed the others.’
    ‘And how do we know you didn’t?’ Inge Berit said. Holly put a hand on her friend’s thigh and squeezed gently. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Sam’s capable of a lot of things, but he wouldn’t do that.’
    ‘Cheers,’ he said.
    Inge Berit looked at her friend, then turned her attention back to Sam. ‘Could you be wrong about this?’ she said.
    ‘I don’t think so. There’s a chance, but do you want to take it?’
    Holly’s friend shook her head. ‘No, we’ll leave tomorrow. I don’t know where, but we’ll go somewhere.’ Holly said, ‘What does he look like, just in case.’
    ‘Sometimes wears a trilby,’ Sam said. ‘Might have braid on his trousers, like a waiter.’
    ‘He’s one metre seventy-eight and sixty-eight kilos,’ Geordie said. ‘He’s clever, obviously. But he thinks he’s cleverer still, so he’ll probably give himself away.’
    ‘What makes you think that?’ Holly said.
    ‘I was watching the street yesterday,’ Geordie told her. ‘This’s my speciality, surveillance. I get the surveillance jobs because I’ve got the patience. And because I’ve done a lot of it, I know how it works.’ Geordie looked at Sam and the two women, to make sure he had their attention.
    ‘When you’re watching somebody,’ he said, ‘the most important thing is they don’t see you. Soon as they see you the game’s over. So you’ve got to make yourself as small and quiet and invisible as possible. And you do that by not being in the same street as the guy you’re watching. Best possible way is to have a flat in the street you can use and if that’s not possible you need to be in another street, wherever, but so far away that you can’t be seen as part of the terrain. Then you use glasses, binoculars, which I always have with me. To the other guy you’re just a speck on the landscape, but because you’re using binoculars you can bring him up as close as you like.
    ‘All right, so that’s the principle. You still with me? Good. The next thing is, if you don’t want to be seen you don’t do anything that’s gonna draw attention to you. Like in movies they have guys on surveillance wearing shades. They’re wearing shades in hotel foyers or outside in the middle of winter. Nobody does that in real life. You’re on surveillance you wanna fade into the background. And that’s how I spotted him the first time, because the guy came down the street with a limp. I don’t know what he’s supposed to be, maybe a druggie, something like that, and he’s dragging his left leg after him, really pronounced limp. I mean, how many times do you see that, a guy with a limp? Sometimes you see somebody on crutches, but not that often, and you might see some old guy with a stick. But somebody limping really sticks out. So I