by Jo Nesbo
And behind him, on the sofa in the dim light of the Crunch family’s living room, sat the Crunch Brothers, staring at him with cold, accusatory looks. And then behind them, with her arms crossed, stood she whose name people only just barely dare to whisper.
“Kill me here, kill me there,” Nilly said. “If you really wanted me dead, why’d you save me from Big Ben? Two more seconds and I would have lost my grip and you would’ve been spared all this killing and I would have been spared these ropes and you would’ve been spared tying them and—”
“Quiet!” Rublov screamed so the blackout curtains fluttered. “My guards saved you for two simple reasons, you freckled pygmy! First of all, because you had a gold bar in your backpack. And second of all, because before you die you’re going to tell me who else was in on this robbery.”
“Who else?” Nilly said with as scornful a laugh as he could muster. “I don’t trust any other robbers, Mr. Rublov. I work alone.”
Rublov crossed his arms and ran a gloved finger thoughtfully over his lips. “Are you really even a robber, Mr. Sherl? If that’s even your real name. Are you sure you don’t work for Scotland Yard? Or Her Royal Highness’s Even More Secret Service?”
“The police?” Nilly said, laughing so hard he felt the fillings in his molars clacking together. “I hardly think a career in police work would be a good fit for a master thief. . . .”
“Quiet! You’re going to die anyway. The only choice you have is whether it will be a pain-free death or”—Rublov smiled wanly—“death by blood knuckles.”
Nilly gulped. Dread and horror, he’d be shredded like Parmesan if he didn’t talk! If only he were wearing his wood-chopping shoe. But they’d removed it when they captured him. Now it was sitting on the coffee table along with his aiming mitten, the darts, and the bottle containing the rest of Doctor Proctor’s Frost Fluid.
Rublov came all the way up to Nilly’s chair and lowered his voice. “Or were you perhaps stealing the gold for someone who wants to buy Ibranaldovez right out from under my nose? If so, you lose, you little barn gnome, because the purchase will be final as of five o’clock tonight. The gold was all dispatched from the vault an hour ago. So you might as well give up and tell me everything.”
“So Lisa was right. That’s what you needed all that money for,” Nilly said. “To buy the world’s best soccer player before Saturday’s final World Cup game.”
“I don’t know who this Lisa person is, but let me put it this way,” Rublov said, sneering so his sharp, wet teeth gleamed. “The Rotten Ham team had hardly a microchance of beating us before we had the world’s best player on our team. Now they have even less of one.” Rublov laughed a wheezy, high-pitched laugh.
“But why are you willing to pay so much just to win a—a soccer game?”
“Surely someone like you must understand that, Sherl,” Rublov said, raising one of his overly pruned eyebrows.
“Someone like me?” Nilly asked.
“Yes. You were teased in school for being small too, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Nilly said, contemplating that for a moment.
“Well then, I’m sure you can imagine how I felt when my dad sent me from Moscow to England to a ridiculously expensive boarding school for upper-class boys? My father thought it would teach me to act like a proper rich person, so I’d be ready to inherit all his money someday. But all I learned there was to hate those confounded snobs who made fun of me because I wasn’t just like them!”
“Yes, well, I suppose we’re both in a bad situation, Maximus,” Nilly said with a sigh. “But maybe especially me, since I’m about to die. So what do you say you just untie me and—”
“Shh,” Maximus said, staring stiffly straight ahead, and then continued, his voice trembling with emotion. “They wouldn’t let me play on the soccer team at school because I was on the short side.”
“Surely it was because you weren’t particularly good—” Nilly began.
“Silence! But now they can sit in their trite upper-class homes with their disgruntled wives and children and watch who’s going to win the World Cup! Who’s the best now, huh?” Rublov moved his silver-plated cane up to touch the bottom of Nilly’s chin. “Who, Sherl? Say it!”
“Uh . . . Ibranaldovez?” Nilly said.
“You idiot! The owner of the team is the best! That’s me, Sherl! Maximus Rublov!”
“Let’s say that’s the case,” Nilly said, giving a tug to see if the rope he was tied up with had loosened at all. It hadn’t. He sighed again. “But have you actually given any thought to what’s going to happen when the police find the gold bars and discover that you used them to buy Ibranaldovez? It actually says right on the bars where they come from, and that will prove that you stole them.”
“Of course I’ve thought of that, you turnip! No one will ever see where the gold came from, because I melted it down!”
“Mel-melted it down?” Nilly said with a gulp.
“Of course! All those Brazilian gold bars have been turned into gold coins like this one.” Rublov proudly pulled a coin out of his trouser pocket and held it up in front of Nilly. It bore Maximus Rublov’s chinless profile and the text 1 RUBLOV.
“I’m going to pay for Ibranaldovez with these coins. The whole world will be using this currency in a few years, Nilly. All I have to do is buy enough countries first. Norway is obviously at the top of my shopping list.”
“You’re planning to buy Norway?”
“Oh yes. Buying a country is easier than you think. And Norway won’t cost very much once the World Bank finds out you guys don’t have any gold reserve anymore. And do you know what I’m planning to buy Norway with? The very same gold bar I stole from you Norwegians!” Rublov laughed his loud, squealing laugh again. “Isn’t that amusingly ingenious?”
“So you melted our gold bar into coins too?”
“No,” Rublov said. “That’s the unusual thing. The coin maker said there was too much carbosidium nitrate phosphate in the Norwegian gold.”
“And what is carbo . . . ?” Nilly asked.
“No idea. But apparently it means the coins would come out too soft, kind of like chocolate coins. So we sent the gold to another goldsmith, who’s remelting your gold bar right now—”
“Oh NO!”
“Oh yes! And this isn’t just any old goldsmith. It’s the woman who’s making the World Cup trophy that the winning team will be awarded after the final game on Saturday. Don’t you see? This is ultra-ingenious! If the police ransack my house looking for gold bars, they’ll just find a gold trophy, which they will know that I won fair and square by thoroughly trouncing Rotten Ham. Mwa-ah-ah!”
“Maximus Rublov, I hereby declare you mentally unstable,” Nilly said, shaking his head.
“I am not mentally unstable!” Rublov hissed.
“Oh, you’re not?” Nilly said. “Well, if you’ve got such a great plan, then you don’t need me to tell you anything at all.”
Rublov scratched his extremely neatly trimmed goatee. “You know what, Sherl? By golly, you’re not so dumb after all. Because that’s entirely right: I will be just fine without any information from you at all.”
“Great!” Nilly said. “Then maybe I could just go? I’m supposed to meet someone at the movies and—”
“Go?” Rublov grinned widely. “What do you say, you wretched unwashed masses?” He turned to look at the Crunch family. “Should we let the puny one go?”
“Mwa-ah-ah!” they all responded in chorus.
“I thought as much,” Rublov said, grabbing his hat and coat. “I have to go, but I’m leaving you in the hands of”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“Mama Crunch.”
Then the door banged shut behind him, and the dragon mother stepped forward. She breathed her rotten food breath on Nilly and pinched his cheek between her thumb and index finger and said, “So, you thought you could trick Mama by lavishing praise on her pudding, huh? You miserable little meat scrap of an extremely pathetic person!
I’m going to the store now to buy spaghetti. That’s the boys’ absolute favorite. Spaghetti with what, do you suppose?”
“P-p-parmesan cheese?” Nilly guessed, his teeth chattering in his mouth.
“Correct, Mr. Sherl. So get ready to play . . .” She swung her hand out in a sweeping gesture toward the sofa so her upper arm fat swayed and wobbled, and all three of her sons replied in unison, “BLOOD KNUCKLES!”
The Blood Knuckle Battle. Sorry: The BIG Blood Knuckle Battle
“IT’S NO USE,” Doctor Proctor groaned, looking at the clock. “We’ve been searching London for four hours, and our wee Nilly is nowhere to be found.”
“But he has to be somewhere,” Lisa said with determination.
It was starting to get dark, and Lisa and Doctor Proctor had gone back to the square where they’d started. It was easy to recognize, because there was a column in the middle of the square that was so tall it was impossible to see who the statue on top was of, but Doctor Proctor said it was some guy named Nilsen or Nelson or something, not the host of Norway’s Biggest Liar but some moderately famous sailor.
“As long as Nilly’s alive,” Lisa whispered, and the professor saw a tear in the corner of her eye.
“I notified Scotland Yard. They’re out looking for him too,” Doctor Proctor said. “You’ll see.”
“And to think I was jealous of Nilly!” Lisa whispered.
“You were?” Doctor Proctor asked. “Why?”
“Because I never get to do the zany stuff. I always have to be the proper, sensible one who has to look after Nilly and be careful. I want to be zany and have fun and have the whole world looking at me!”
“But Lisa, without you we would never have been able to do all the things we’ve accomplished together.”
“Without me,” Lisa sniffed, “Nilly wouldn’t be a prisoner wherever he is, where he’s going to die! Just because I was jealous and didn’t want him to be such a huge success every time!”
“Hmm,” Doctor Proctor said. “And now you’re feeling guilty because you think your wish has come true?”
“Yes!” Lisa said, and began bawling.
“And you think that makes you a bad person? Perhaps you think our wee Nilly was never jealous of you for anything?”
“Me?” Lisa said, wiping her tears away with her jacket sleeve. “What’s there to be jealous of me for?”
“I wonder if our wee Nilly wouldn’t like parents like yours, to be someone everyone thinks is cute and all that. And to be clever and self-confident the way you are.”
“Self-confident? I’m not—”
“Oh, yes you are.” Doctor Proctor took off his swim goggles and wiped the fog out of them. “You just have the type of self-confidence that’s unobtrusive and doesn’t grab the spotlight so much. But it’s all the stronger for that, lassie. And you’ll discover that for yourself eventually.”
“I will?”
“I promise.” Victor Proctor put his goggles back on and patted her head. “And remember that you two love each other more than you’re jealous of each other.”
“Yes,” Lisa said emphatically, “we do!”
Doctor Proctor nodded. “Now let’s get back to our hotel and have something to eat and take a little rest.”
“Then we have to search some more!” Lisa said, now finished drying her tears. “Do you think he’s—”
“Nilly will be fine,” Doctor Proctor said, trying his best to give Lisa a reassuring smile. “That boy always has an ace up his sleeve.”
ALFIE CRUNCH SHUFFLED the cards slowly, smiling menacingly at Nilly the whole time.
“Have you ever wondered why Parmesan cheese smells like smelly feet, small fry?” Alfie asked as he started dealing out the cards to Betty, Charlie, Nilly, and himself.
“No,” Nilly said, gleefully dangling his legs and hands from his chair. Sure, he was going to die, but at least he wasn’t tied up anymore. And who knows—maybe blood knuckles wouldn’t be as rough as everyone made it sound.
“It’s because Parmesan is made out of people who’ve lost at blood knuckles,” Charlie said. “They get so scared they start sweating, especially their toes, which are the last part to be chopped up.”
“It smells like stinky feet because it is stinky feet,” Betty said with a snigger.
“Just as well that people don’t know what they’re putting on their spaghetti,” Alfie said, looking at his cards with satisfaction. “But lately some of the restaurants we sell to have said that our Parmesan smells too much like toe cheese. So we’ve been thinking about starting to let our victims use these.” He pointed to a bunch of fabric eye masks sitting in the bowler hat on the table. BRITISH AIRWAYS was printed in white on each of them. “Actually, they’re for covering your eyes when you try to sleep on airplanes and stuff. We snagged them in business class on our flight home from our bank robbery in Brazil. If the victims don’t have to watch themselves being turned into Parmesan cheese, their feet won’t sweat as much, right?”
“Su-su-supersmart,” Nilly said, looking down at his cards. Three of diamonds, five of clubs, eight of spades, ten of hearts, and a jack of diamonds that stared mournfully back at him. He had nothing. His knuckles hurt already.
“So how much are you putting in, pipsqueak?” Alfie asked.
“Nuh-nuh-nothing,” Nilly said. “I fold.”
“You have to ante up, and the minimum bet is five,” Charlie said.
“Then I guess I’ll put in,” Nilly said reluctantly, scratching at his sideburn, “five.”
“All right, let’s show our hands,” Alfie said.
Everyone laid their cards on the table. Charlie had a pair of nines. Alfie had a pair of fours. And Betty had nothing, just like Nilly.
“That’s five blows to you, pipsqueak,” Alfie said.
“That’s cheating!” Nilly said.
Alfie lowered his unibrow so it ran straight over his pair of angry eyes like a rain gutter. “You’re not accusing an Englishman of not playing fair, are you, little guy?”
“Betty’s hand is as bad as mine!” Nilly protested.
“So what? We’re playing against you as a team. You have to beat all three of us. Those are the rules, and it’s not like anyone here got any extra cards. We all got five. So don’t say it’s not fair. Present your knuckles, you dwarf broccoli!”
Nilly held out a trembling hand with his fist clenched. “C-c-can I wear that eye mask?”
“Not for just five blows, you weakling!” Alfie said, grabbing the deck of cards and rapping Nilly soundly on the knuckles with it. One, two, three, four, five times.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” Nilly said, pulling back his hand.
It really hurt, and his knuckles were red already.
“Aw, no way. The little guy looks like he’s gonna cry,” Alfie said with a sneer. “Should we call Mama Crunch and ask if she can bring you a little Birmingham pudding to make you feel better?”
“Heh-heh!” Betty laughed.
“Heh-cough!-heh,” Charlie laughed.
Nilly blinked and blinked, but the tears wouldn’t go away. “It’s not fair!” he said, his voice sounding like he was on the verge of tears. “You’re not playing by the official international rules of blood knuckles!”
“What rules?” Alfie asked with a disparaging sniff.
“Well, for example, the rule that says you have to hit with the cards faceup!” Nilly said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve as Alfie dealt the next round. “Of course, that’s a lot more painful. But no, that’s just so typically English. You guys have to do everything differently: drive on the wrong side, use yards instead of meters, spell everything funny, don’t speak any foreign languages. . . .”
“Shut up and play!” Alfie barked. “The minimum wager doubles each time, so now it’s ten.”
“Ten,” Nilly said, and then spread his cards out on the table.
“You have a pair of tens?” Alfie said. “Not bad.”
“Ha!” Betty said, showing his three
kings.
Nilly stuck out his right fist, and Alfie raised the deck of cards. Then reconsidered. Then grunted and rotated the deck so the cards were faceup and then smacked Nilly’s knuckles with them.
“Ow!” Nilly yelled. And then, “Double ow!” And then, so loud the porcelain plate on the wall with the picture of the crown prince and princess shook: “Owwwwww!”
“Sounds like the little guy was right!” Charlie cried, plugging his ears. “It really does hurt a lot more if you follow the international rules!”
“Awesome,” Alfie said, really laying into it on the last blow, drawing a trickle of blood from two of Nilly’s knuckles. “Let’s play by the international rules from now on!”
He shuffled and dealt again while Nilly wiped away more tears and blew on his knuckles.
“Hah!” Betty said when he saw his cards.
“Yes!” Charlie said when he saw his cards.
“Would you look at that?” Alfie crowed when he saw his.
“Jackpots poker,” Nilly said.
“Huh?” the brothers all said in unison, looking at him.
“I bet a thousand blows and I say, jackpots poker!”
“A thousand blows and what poker?”
“Jackpots poker,” Nilly said. “That means that we deal the cards again, but the pot stays and you have to have at least a pair of jacks to continue. Anyone who can’t keep going gets fifty blows to the knuckles.”
“I don’t want fifty blows to the knuckles,” Betty said.
“Me either!” Charlie said with a shudder.
“Good,” Nilly said. “Then you guys are all in. Deal the cards again, Alfie.”
“No way, I like my hand!” Alfie said.
“You were the one who said that from now on we were going to play by the international rules and that Englishmen always play honestly,” Nilly said.
Alfie stared at Nilly for a few seconds, furious, then muttered something under his breath, gathered all the cards, and shuffled them again. Then dealt a new round.
“I bet two thousand blows,” Nilly said after he’d looked at his cards. “And I say jackpots.”
The brothers groaned.