He was speaking slowly and deliberately, the way Erman had done to him not half an hour ago, but he was worried and he sounded it.
‘You’ve seen the plane before?’
Erman’s face had gone completely white.
‘Y-yes, it flew past just before you picked me up in your hicksville limo, just take it easy, okay!’
Erman didn’t seem to hear him. He stood completely still for a few seconds.
‘Go!’ he finally managed to say through gritted teeth.
‘What?’ HP didn’t understand anything.
‘Go, get lost, fuck off, are you thick or what?’
He spun his arms and took a step towards HP.
HP backed away instinctively and held up his hands.
‘Okay, okay, calm down, I’m going, I’m going!’
Christ, the bloke had really lost it this time.
‘It’s only a fucking advertising plane, Erman.’
So much for that brilliant plan.
Nilla still hated her, she’d understood that much. Which wasn’t really so surprising, seeing as it had been her adored big brother who had gone through the balcony railing.
Nilla and Dag had always been close, and she’d never accepted the investigation’s conclusion that his death had been at least in part an accident. The company the housing association contracted to renovate the façade had cut corners when they were fixing the balconies back on, and several bolts had evidently been missing.
‘An unfortunate circumstantial coincidence,’ it had said in the verdict.
For Henke that meant ten months for causing another person’s death instead of manslaughter. If the balcony railing had been correctly fitted with all its bolts in place, Dag would probably have been okay.
But it was difficult to know for sure. The shove had been pretty hard, maybe hard enough for him to have tumbled over the railing? That couldn’t be ruled out, at any rate, or so the court had reasoned.
For her own part, she doubted that conclusion. Dag was big and heavy, almost ninety kilos of muscle, and he had good balance. If the railing hadn’t given way, he wouldn’t have fallen, and their lives would have looked very different. Henke would never have ended up in prison and she would never have been released from hers. His imprisonment and her freedom – each one was dependent on the other.
The problem was just that it shouldn’t have been like that. That’s what she had wanted to tell Nilla. What had really happened that night. And why …
‘Only a plane? Only a plane!’ Small drops of saliva hung in the yellowing beard around Erman’s mouth.
‘You don’t get any of it, do you, you stupid fuck?! They’ve got ears everywhere, absolutely every-fucking-where! Didn’t you understand what I said about the Ants? Who did you talk to on your way here, the bus driver, some nice old lady on the train? Did you happen to mention it on the phone to some friend, or were you stupid enough to write the directions on your computer?’
His voice had hit falsetto again. Fists clenched, he came on a couple of steps.
‘None of that, I promise …’ HP assured him.
HP was slowly backing towards the wheel-tracks that led in the direction of civilization. This was getting really creepy now. He had to get away from this psycho, straight away. God knew what would happen otherwise. In the forest no-one can hear you scream.
Erman jabbed his right index finger at HP. ‘Google!’ he managed to spit. ‘You google-mapped the address, admit it!’
‘No, I didn’t!’ HP replied instinctively, but realized at the same moment that that’s exactly what he’d done.
Erman must have noticed the change in the look on his face, or else he guessed that HP was lying.
Either way, he leapt a couple of strides towards HP.
‘You stupid fuck!’ Erman roared. ‘I gave you one simple instruction. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t use anything electronic. And you go and google-map me! You might as well have been working for the Game Master directly, Christ, I ought to kill you on the spot!’
‘Sorry!’ HP muttered, now too terrified to even try to lie.
For a moment he thought he was going to end up buried like the fucking Bocksten Man. Dug up in two hundred years time to get his perfectly preserved backside put on display in a glass case in Farthundra’s local history museum. The thought almost made him crap his pants.
Erman suddenly came to a halt, like he’d been turned off.
For a couple of seconds he stood there, apparently thinking. Then without a word he turned on his heel and disappeared inside the house.
HP didn’t hang around to find out if he was going to come back out with a shotgun. Instead he turned and fled as fast as he could along the path back towards the road. Above him he could still hear the drone of the aeroplane. It sounded like it was circling.
After a couple of hundred metres he reached the edge of the forest. There was about a kilometre of gravel track through the open fields before he reached the relative safety of the road. He looked anxiously over his shoulder. Shit, obviously he should have nicked the flatbed moped, or at least pulled the spark-plug out or something. Now he’d just be an open target out there.
Oh well, no point worrying about that now.
He couldn’t hear anything like a moped engine, but that was mainly because of the damn plane that was still circling overhead. He noticed that the advertising banner was gone. So what was the idiot doing up there, then?
He left the shade of the forest and set off towards the road. Every ten metres or so he glanced behind him. Still nothing. He was starting to get his fear under control. What a psycho the bloke had turned out to be. Thanks a lot, Manga, that was a brilliant tip-off!
Another glance. No sign of Erman. Great!
It wasn’t until he got about halfway across the field that he noticed a change in the sound of the plane engine. Before, it had been mainly a monotonous buzzing sound, one note higher or lower depending on where in its circuit it happened to be. But suddenly the sound was getting louder, both in volume and pitch, and when he looked over his shoulder yet again to make sure Erman wasn’t coming after him, he discovered that the plane was diving straight at him like he was fucking Cary Grant! He could hardly believe his eyes.
It wasn’t until the plane was more or less filling his field of vision that he had the sense to get really scared. Even then, the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind on the wings was drowning out all his thoughts. He saw the whirring propeller coming straight towards him and, worse, just beneath it the metal beam connecting the undercarriage, but he was paralysed and still couldn’t take in what was going on.
Shit! was the only contribution his brain could come up with, then he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground.
He felt the rush of wind as the undercarriage missed his head by the smallest of margins before he became aware that his mouth was full of gravel.
The engine noise started to decrease and HP raised his scratched face just enough to see the plane bank in a slow left-hand turn, climbing. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that the pilot was climbing to gain enough height to make a second attempt.
Fuck! he thought in panic, struggling to his knees and spitting gravel, then forcing his paralysed legs into action. He abandoned the track and headed off straight across the field in the direction of the bus stop. Dust and soil swirled up around his feet and the stubble tore viciously at his trouser-legs.
Scratch-bang-scratch-bang-scratch-bang.