Death By Water by Torkil Damhaug

him.
    – Bit late for a swim, isn’t it?
    No one can stop what he has started on now. Postpone it maybe, but not stop it. He has given a promise. Doesn’t know who to, if it’s not to the one who stands in the dark pounding with the sledgehammer. There is nothing in the world that can make him go back on his word.
    He half turns. Jacket is wearing the same dark clothes. His hair looks dirty and uncombed. A cigarette in one hand. Jo’s trainer in the other, with the note.
    – It’s going to be a long night, Joe, says Jacket, and doesn’t seem the least bit bothered. – You’ve got plenty of time.
    He takes a drag on the cigarette and offers it to him.
    – Come and sit down here with me for a while. I’m not leaving until you tell me how things are working out between you and Ylva Richter.

D EAR L ISS,
    If you receive this letter, I am no longer. I sit watching how the dust slowly sinks down through the grey light falling from the window, and outside the wind whips up the autumn leaves and lays them down on the snow again. Even now that thought seems so strange. Not to be any more. It’s not a last-minute decision; it’s been latent for years, and now I’ve woken it up again. What you do will decide whether I send you this letter I’m writing, or burn it in the fireplace and carry on down my road a while longer. I won’t contact you, won’t lift a finger to influence you. The closest I can get to a feeling of relief right now is the thought that what is to come lies in your hands, not mine. And related to this relief is another thought: if you receive this letter, then you’ll also know what happened that time.
    I first saw him on the plane. He passed by on the way to the toilet. I looked up from my book, the only luggage I had with me on that trip. His glance caught mine, but I don’t think he noticed me. I still remember the lines of verse I sat reading, over and over again, by the window:
     
    Who is the third who walks always beside you?
    When I count, there are only you and I together.
    But when I look ahead up the white road
    There is always another one walking beside you
    Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
    I do not know whether a man or a woman
    – But who is that on the other side of you?
     
    I could have written a lot about Jo and Jacket. I could have described in detail the first meeting in Makrigialos that autumn. How I saved him from drowning himself. How he saved me. Not because I need to confess, Liss, but because it matters to me, sitting here, that you understand what you condemn me for …

PART I
     

1
     
Friday 28 November 2008
     
    M AKE-UP OFF. R UBBING , revealing strips of pale red facial skin in the sharp light. The photographer had insisted she cover up with this thick white mask. Something he wanted to bring out. Something stiffened, in contrast to the almost naked body.
    She unfastened the clip, let the hair tumble down her back. It looked darker than usual, but still reddish. She sat a moment, considering what she saw in the mirror. The arc of the forehead, the eyebrows she had allowed to grow out wide, the eyes that seemed to be too far apart. It had always looked odd, but a lot of the photographers obviously liked it. Wim, whom she was working with today, maintained with a grin that it made her look elfin. She began drawing a brush through her hair, slowly, following the waves; it got caught in a tug, a quick jerk which she felt at the base of her skull, a reminder that she mustn’t linger too long in this distant state. It was past eleven o’clock. Part of her was aware of the need to slip down into a dark hole, sleep there for a day or two, or more. But her pulse was too quick and too hard.
    Her mobile phone vibrated on the mirrored shelf. She checked the number – no one she knew – put it down again, carried on brushing. Had never liked this thick, difficult hair, apparently inherited from her grandmother. Waves of fire , Zako might say, when he was feeling