by Jo Nesbo
The van stopped, doors were opened and closed, and I could hear voices outside.
“Thanks for letting us use the crypt.” The driver’s voice.
“Not a problem.”
“I was told I could have some help carrying them.”
“Yes, don’t suppose you’ll get much help from the dead ’uns.”
Gruff laughter. I reckoned we’d been met by one of the gravediggers. The back door of the van opened. I was closest to it, and felt myself being picked up. I lay as still as I could. Air holes had been drilled in the base and sides, and I could see beams of light in the darkness of the coffin as they carried me into the passageway.
“So this is the family that died on the Trondheim road?”
“Yes.”
“Read about it in the paper. Tragic. They’re being buried up north, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
I could feel that we were going down, and I slid backwards, hitting my head against the end of the coffin. Shit, I thought they always carried coffins feetfirst.
“You haven’t got time to drive them up before Christmas?”
“They’re being buried in Narvik, that’s a two-day drive.” Little shuffling steps. We were in the narrow stone staircase now. I remembered it well.
“Why not send them up by plane?”
“Those concerned thought that was too expensive,” the young man said. He was doing well. I’d told him that if there were too many questions he should say he’d only just started work at the funeral directors’.
“And they wanted them in a church in the meantime?”
“Yes. Christmas and all that.”
The coffin levelled out again.
“Well, that’s understandable. And there’s plenty of room here, as you can see. Just that coffin there, being buried tomorrow. Yes, it’s open, the family are due soon for a viewing. We can put this one on these trestles.”
“We can put it straight on the floor.”
“You want the coffin on the concrete floor?”
“Yes.”
They’d stopped moving. It felt as if they were deliberating.
“Whatever you want.”
I was put down. I heard a scraping sound by my head, then steps fading away.
I was alone. I peered through one of the holes. Not quite alone. Alone with the corpse. A unit. My corpse. I had been alone here last time as well. My mum had looked so small lying there in the coffin. Dried up. Maybe her soul had taken more room inside her than most people’s do. Her family were there. I’d never seen them before. When my mum hooked up with my father, her parents had cut her off. The idea that someone in their family would marry a criminal wasn’t something my grandparents, uncles and aunts could tolerate. That she had moved to the eastern side of the city with him was the only consolation: out of sight, out of mind. But I was in sight. In full sight of my grandparents, uncles and aunts, who up to then had only been people Mum had talked about when she was drunk or high. The first words I heard any of my relatives apart from my parents say to me were “so sorry.” About twenty people saying how sorry they were, in a church on the west side of the city, just a stone’s throw from where she grew up. Then I had withdrawn to my side of the river once more, and had never seen any of them again.
I checked that the screws were still in place.
The second coffin arrived.
The footsteps died away again. I looked at the time. Half past seven.
The third coffin arrived.
The driver and the gravedigger went away, their voices disappearing up the steps as they talked about Christmas food.
So far everything had gone according to plan.
The priest obviously hadn’t objected when I called on behalf of the family in Narvik to ask if the church would mind having the three coffins in the crypt over Christmas while they were en route. We were in position, and, with a bit of luck, in half an hour Hoffmann would be here. We could always hope he’d leave his bodyguards outside. Either way, it was no exaggeration to say that the element of surprise would be entirely on our side.
The luminous dial of my watch swam and smouldered in the darkness.
Ten to.
On the hour.
Five past.
A thought struck me. Those sheets of paper. The letter. It was still under the cutlery tray. Why hadn’t I got rid of it? Had I just forgotten? And why was I asking myself that, rather than what if Corina found it? Did I want her to find it? Anyone who knew the answers to questions like that would be a rich man.
I heard vehicles outside. Doors closing.
Footsteps on the staircase.
They were here.
“He looks peaceful,” a woman’s voice said quietly.
“They’ve made him look really nice,” an older woman’s voice sniffed.
A man’s voice: “I left the car key in the ignition, I think I’ll just go—”
“You’re not going anywhere, Erik.” The younger woman. “God, you’re such a sissy.”
“But my dear, the car—”
“It’s parked in a churchyard, Erik! What do you think’s going to happen to it here?”
I peered out of one of the holes by my side.
I had hoped that Daniel Hoffmann would come alone. There were four of them, and they were all standing on the same side of the coffin, facing me. A balding man, similar in age to Daniel. Not much like him. Brother-in-law, maybe. That fitted with the woman beside him: she was in her thirties, and there was a girl of ten or twelve. Younger sister and niece. There was a certain family resemblance. And the older, grey-haired woman was the spitting image of Daniel. Big sister? Young mother?
But no Daniel Hoffmann.
I tried to convince myself that he’d be coming in his own car, that it would have been odd for the whole family to turn up in the same vehicle.
This was confirmed when the brother-in-law with the receding hairline glanced at his watch.
“It was always the plan that Benjamin would take over from his father,” the older woman sniffed. “What’s Daniel going to do now?”
“Mother,” the younger woman said in a warning tone.
“Oh, don’t pretend Erik doesn’t know.”
Erik raised and lowered the shoulders of his jacket, and rocked on his heels. “Yes, I know what Daniel’s business entails.”
“Then you know how ill he is as well.”
“Elise has mentioned it, yes. But we don’t have much to do with Daniel. Or this…er…”
“Corina,” Elise said.
“Maybe it’s time for you to see a bit more of him, then,” the older woman said.
“Mother!”
“I’m just saying, we don’t know how long we’re going to have Daniel.”
“We’ve got no intention of having anything to do with Daniel’s business, Mother. Just look at what happened to Benjamin.”
“Shh!”
Steps on the stairs.
Two figures came into the room.
One of them hugged the older woman. Nodded curtly to the younger one and the brother-in-law.
Daniel Hoffmann. And with him a Pine who was keeping his mouth shut for once.
They took up a position between us and the coffin, with their backs to us. Perfect. If I think a unit that I need to fix might be armed, I’ll go to almost any lengths to get myself in a position where I can shoot them in the back.
I clenched my fist round the handle of the pistol.
Waiting.
Waiting for the guy in the bearskin hat.
He didn’t come.
He must have been in position outside the church.
That would make things easier to start with, but he could be a potential problem that we’d have to deal with later.
My cue to the Dane and Klein was simple: when I yelled.
And there wasn’t a single logical reason in the world why that shouldn’t happen right then. But it still felt as if there was a right moment, one particular second squeezed
in between all the other seconds. Like with the ski pole and my father. Like in a book, when an author decides precisely when something will happen, something you know is going to happen, because the author has already said it’s going to happen, but it hasn’t happened yet. Because there’s a proper place in a story, so you have to wait a bit, so that things can happen in the right order. I closed my eyes and felt the clock count down, a spring tensing, a drop still clinging to the point of an icicle.
And then the moment arrived.
I yelled and pushed the lid off.
CHAPTER 17
It was light. Light and cosy. Mum explained that I had a high temperature, and that the doctor who had been there said I had to stay in bed for a few days and drink a lot of water, but that there was nothing to worry about. That’s when I could tell she was concerned. But I wasn’t scared. I was fine. Even when I closed my eyes it was light, it was shining through my eyelids, a warm red glow. I had been put in Mum’s big bed, and it felt as if all the seasons were passing through the room. Mild spring turning into scalding hot summer, with sweat running like summer rain from my forehead onto sheets that stuck to my thighs, then at last the relief of autumn, with clear air, clear senses. Until it was suddenly winter again, with chattering teeth and a long drift through sleep, dream and reality.
She had been to the library and taken out a book for me. Les Misérables. Victor Hugo. “Concise edition,” it said on the cover, under a drawing of Cosette as a young girl, the original illustration by Émile Bayard.
I read, and dreamed. Dreamed and read. Added and cut scenes. In the end I wasn’t sure how much the author had come up with, and how much was my own invention.
I believed the story. I just didn’t think Victor Hugo was telling it truthfully.
I didn’t believe Jean Valjean had stolen bread, that that was why he had to make amends. I suspected that Victor Hugo didn’t want to risk readers not cheering the hero on if he told the truth. Which was that Jean Valjean had killed someone. That he was a murderer. Jean Valjean was a good man, so the person he had killed must have deserved it. Yes, that was it. Jean Valjean had killed someone who had done something bad, and had to pay for it. The business about stealing bread just annoyed me. So I rewrote the story. I made it better.
So: Jean Valjean was a deadly killer who was wanted throughout France. And he was in love with Fantine, the poor prostitute. So in love that he was willing to do anything for her. Everything he did for her, he did out of love, madness, devotion, not to save his own immortal soul or out of love for his fellow man. He submitted to beauty. Yes, that’s what he did. Submitted to and obeyed the beauty of this ruined, sick, dying prostitute with no teeth or hair. He saw beauty where no one could imagine it. And for that reason it was his alone. And he was its.
It took ten days for the fever to start to ease. For me it had felt like one day, and when I came back Mum sat on the edge of the bed, stroked my forehead, sobbed gently and told me how close it had been.
I told her I had been to a place that I wanted to go back to.
“No, you mustn’t say that, Olav, darling!”
I could see what she was thinking. Because she had a place that she always wanted to go back to, where she would travel in a bottle.
“But I don’t want to die, Mummy. I just want to make up stories.”
CHAPTER 18
I was up on my knees, both hands on the pistol.
I saw Pine and Hoffmann spin round, almost in slow motion.
I shot Pine in the back, speeding up his pirouette. Two shots. White feathers leaped from his brown jacket, dancing in the air like snow. He had pulled his pistol free of his jacket and fired, but didn’t manage to raise his arm. The bullets hit the floor and walls and ricocheted noisily around the stone room. From the corner of my eye I saw that Klein had got the lid off the coffin next to me, but hadn’t yet climbed out. Perhaps he wasn’t keen on the hail of bullets. The Dane had emerged from his coffin and had taken aim at Hoffmann, but because they’d put his coffin at the end of the crypt I was in his line of fire right behind Hoffmann. I jerked back at the same time as I swung my pistol towards Hoffmann. But he was surprisingly quick. He threw himself over the coffin, right at the young girl, and took her down with him as he landed by the long wall of the crypt, behind the rest of his family who were standing there like pillars of salt, mouths agape.
Pine was lying on the floor under the table Benjamin Hoffmann’s coffin was on, his pistol hand sticking stiffly away from his body, like a dipstick he’d lost control of. It swung round, firing out bullets at random. Blood and spinal fluid on the concrete floor. A Glock pistol. Plenty of bullets. Just a matter of time before one of them hit someone. I put another bullet in Pine. And kicked at Klein’s coffin as I raised the pistol towards Hoffmann again. I got him in the sights. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and the young girl in his lap, holding her tight with one arm around her skinny ribcage. With the other hand he was aiming a pistol directly at her temple. She was sitting completely still, just looking at me with big brown eyes, not blinking.
“Erik…” It was the sister. She was looking at her brother, but talking to her husband.
And the man with the half bald head finally reacted. He took an unsteady step towards his brother-in-law.
“Don’t come any closer, Erik,” Hoffmann said. “These men aren’t after you.”
But Erik didn’t stop, he carried on stumbling forward, like a zombie.
“Fuck!” the Dane yelled, shaking and hitting his pistol. Obviously not working. A bullet had probably jammed. Bloody amateur.
“Erik!” Hoffmann repeated, aiming the pistol at his brother-in-law.
The father held out his arms towards his daughter. Moistened his lips. “Bettine…”
Hoffmann fired. The brother-in-law staggered back. Hit in the stomach.
“Come out, or I’ll shoot the girl!” Hoffmann shouted.
I heard a deep sigh beside me. It was Klein, who had got to his feet and was aiming his sawn-off shotgun in front of him, towards Hoffmann. But the table and Hoffmann junior’s coffin were in the way, so he had to take a step closer to the coffin to get a clear line of fire.
“Get back, or I’ll shoot her!” Hoffmann was screaming in falsetto now.
The shotgun was pointing down, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, while Klein leaned back, away from the shotgun, as if he were afraid it was going to go off in his face.
“Klein,” I said. “Don’t do it!”
I saw him begin to close his eyes, the way you do when you know something’s going to go off, but you don’t know exactly when.
“Sir!” I shouted, trying to get eye contact with Hoffmann. “Sir! Let the girl go, please!”
Hoffmann stared at me as though to ask if I took him for a fool.
Damn. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. I reached out and took a step towards Klein.
The blast from the shotgun rang in my ears. A cloud of smoke rose towards the ceiling. Short barrel, large spread.
The girl’s white blouse was now covered in polka dots, one side of her neck was torn open, and Hoffmann’s face looked like it was burning. But they were both alive. As Hoffmann’s pistol skidded away across the floor, Klein leaned over the coffin on the table and stretched his arm out so that the barrel was against the girl’s shoulder and the end reached Hoffmann’s nose, as he tried desperately to hide behind her.
He fired again. The shot blew Hoffmann’s face back into his head.
Klein turned to me with the excited face of a madman. “A unit! Was that enough of a unit for you, you bastard?”
I was ready to shoot Klein in the head if he raised the shotgun towards me, even if I knew it contained nothing but two empty cartridges now. I glanced at Hoffmann. His head was sunken in the middle, like a windfall apple that had rotted from within. He was fixed. So what? He would have died in the end. We all die in the end. But at least I had outlived him.
I go
t hold of the girl, grabbed the cashmere scarf from Hoffmann’s neck and wound it round her neck, which was pumping out blood. She just stared at me with pupils that seemed to fill her whole eyes. She hadn’t said a word. I sent the Dane over to the stairs to check that no one was coming while I got the grandmother to press her hand against the wound in her granddaughter’s neck to stop the worst of the bleeding. From the corner of my eye I saw Klein reload that ugly gun of his with two new cartridges. I kept a firm grip on my pistol.
The sister was on her knees beside her husband, who was moaning in a low, monotonous voice, his hands folded over his stomach. I’d heard that getting gastric acid in a wound is agony, but I guessed he’d live. But the girl…Shit. What harm had she done anyone?
“What do we do now?” the Dane asked.
“We sit quietly and wait,” I said.
Klein snorted. “What for? The pigs?”
“We wait until we hear a car start up and drive away,” I said. I remembered the calm look of concentration beneath the bearskin cap. I could always hope he wasn’t really that devoted to duty.
“The gravedigger has—”
“Shut up!”
Klein stared at me. The tip of the shotgun tilted upwards slightly. Until he noticed where my pistol was pointing, and lowered it again. And he shut up.
But someone else didn’t. The voice came from under the table.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking bastard fucking hell…”
For a moment I thought that the guy was dead but his mouth was refusing to stop, like the body of a snake chopped in half. I’d read that they could carry on wriggling for up to a day afterwards.
“Shit crap fucking bollocking bastard fucking cunt crap.”
I squatted down beside him.
Where Pine had got his nickname was a subject of debate. Some people said it came from the Norwegian word for “pain,” because he knew exactly where to cut his women if they didn’t do their job, places that would cause more pain than disfigurement, and where the scars wouldn’t damage the goods too much. Others said it was from the English word “pine,” because he had such long legs. But right now it looked as if he would be taking his secret with him to the grave.