by Jo Nesbo
I nodded.
‘And you say you saw the brake lights go on?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t just the rear lights? You know they’re both red?’
‘The brake lights are brighter.’
He looked up at me quickly.
‘You’ll soon be eighteen, right?’
I nodded again. Maybe it was in his papers, maybe he remembered I’d been a class ahead of his son Kurt at junior school.
‘Secondary school?’
‘I work at my uncle’s car repair shop.’
The sheriff bent over the desk again. ‘Good, then you’ll understand why we think it’s odd we didn’t find any skid marks. And even if the blood test shows your Dad had had a drink, it was hardly enough for him to forget about the bend, or put his foot down on the wrong pedal, or fall asleep at the wheel.’
I said nothing. He’d dispensed with three possible explanations in one blow. And I didn’t have a fourth to offer.
‘Carl told us you were going to visit your uncle Bernard Opgard at the hospital. That’s who you work for?’
‘Yes.’
‘But we’ve talked to Bernard, and he says he never heard about any planned visit. Did your parents usually make unannounced visits?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘And not announced ones either.’
The sheriff nodded slowly. Again he studied his papers. Seemed like that’s what he was most comfortable doing. ‘Was your father depressed, do you think?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You sure? Other people we’ve talked to thought he seemed very down.’
‘You want me to say he was depressed?’
Olsen raised his eyes again. ‘Now what do you mean by that, Roy?’
‘That maybe that would make the case simpler. If you can say he killed himself and my mum.’
‘Why do you think that makes it simpler?’
‘No one liked him.’
‘That’s not true, Roy.’
I shrugged. ‘OK then, I’m sure he was depressed. He spent a lot of time alone. Sat most of the time inside the house and didn’t talk much there either. Drank beer. That’s what depressed people do.’
‘People who suffer from depression can be very clever at hiding it.’ Sheriff Olsen’s gaze worked to hold mine, and once he’d managed it, he had a job keeping it steady. ‘Did your father ever say anything about...about not liking being alive?’
Not liking being alive. Once he’d said the words, it was as though Sigmund Olsen had got over the worst of it. His gaze rested calmly on me.
‘Who the hell likes being alive?’ I asked.
For a moment Olsen looked shocked. He put his head on one side and his long hippy hair dangled down on his shoulder. Maybe it was a mop. I knew that hidden behind the desk he had an enormous belt buckle with a white buffalo skull on it and a pair of snakeskin boots. We dress ourselves in death.
‘Why live if you don’t like it, Roy?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Is it?’
‘Because being dead may be even worse.’
* * *
—
My eighteenth birthday was just around the corner, but according to the stupid rules Carl and I still needed a guardian. The county governor appointed my uncle Bernard as our guardian. Two women from the social services in Notodden came and checked Uncle Bernard’s set-up and evidently found everything adequate. Bernard showed them the bedroom we had been given and promised to have regular discussions with the school about how Carl was doing.
Once the social services women had gone I asked Uncle Bernard if it was OK if Carl and I spent a couple of nights up at Opgard, there was so much damn noise from the main road outside the bedroom window down here in the village.
Bernard said it was OK and gave us a big pot of lapskaus to take with us.
And after that we never moved back down again, although officially our address was with Uncle Bernard. That didn’t mean he didn’t look out for us, and the money he got from the state as guardian he gave straight to us.
A couple of years later, quite a while after what I began to think of as the Fritz night, Uncle Bernard was admitted to hospital again. It turned out the cancer had spread. I sat sobbing beside his bed as he told me.
‘You know there’s not long to go when the vultures move into your house without asking,’ he said.
Meaning his daughter and her husband.
Uncle Bernard always said she’d never done him any harm, he just didn’t like her much, but I knew who he was thinking of when he explained to me what a wrecker was. People who lit fake flares for ships in the night, and plundered them once they’d run aground.
She visited him at the hospital twice. Once to find out how long he had left, and the second time to pick up the key to the house.
Uncle Bernard lay a hand on my shoulder and told one of those old soppy Volkswagen jokes, probably trying to make me laugh.
‘You’re going to die!’ I shouted out. I was pretty angry.
‘You too,’ he said. ‘And this is the right order for dying in. Right?’
‘But how can you lie here and tell jokes?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘when you’re up to your neck in shit, the thing to remember is to keep your head up.’
And then I just couldn’t help laughing anyway.
‘I’ve got a last request,’ he said.
‘A smoke?’
‘That too. The other is that you take the theory exam as a working apprentice this autumn.’
‘Already? Don’t I need five years’ practical?’
‘You’ve got five years’ practical. With all the overtime you’ve put in.’
‘But that doesn’t count—’
‘It counts for me. I would never let an unqualified mechanic take the theory exam, you know that. But you’re the best mechanic I’ve got. So for that reason there’s documentation in that envelope on the table there that says you’ve worked for me for five years. Never mind the dates on it. Is that clear?’
‘Clear as muck,’ I said.
It was a joke we shared. A mechanic who worked for Uncle Bernard didn’t understand the expression but used it all the time, and Bernard never corrected him. That was the last time I heard Uncle Bernard laugh.
* * *
—
By the time I had passed the theory exam, and the practical exam a few months later, Uncle Bernard was already in a coma. And after his daughter told the doctors to turn off the life-support machine that was keeping him alive, in effect it was me, a lad of twenty-one, who ran the car repair shop. All the same it came as a shock...no, that’s too strong, it came as a surprise when his will was read out and it turned out Uncle Bernard had left the business to me.
His daughter protested, naturally, claiming that during the hours when I’d been sitting with her poor father I’d been manipulating him. I said I couldn’t be bothered arguing, that Uncle Bernard hadn’t given me the repair shop to make me rich but so that it would stay in the family. So if she wanted, I’d buy the place from her at her asking price, that way at least his wishes would be respected. So she named her price. I told her that we Opgard people never haggled, but that the price was more than I could afford, and that it was way out of proportion to the income from the repair shop.
She put the business on the open market, got no buyers though she lowered the price again and again, and in the end came back to me. I paid what I’d offered in the beginning, she signed the contract and marched furiously out of the workshop as though she was the one who had been cheated.
I ran the business as best I could. Which isn’t saying much, since I didn’t have the experience or the market trend with me. But didn’t do too badly either, since the other repair shops in the area began closing down an
d the work came to me. Enough of it for me to keep Markus on part-time. But when I sat down in the evenings and went through the accounts with Carl – who was doing a business course and knew the difference between debit and credit – it was obvious that the two petrol pumps out front of the greasing station were bringing in more than the repair shop.
‘The Public Roads Administration people were here checking,’ I said. ‘If I’m to keep my licence we need to upgrade the equipment.’
‘How much?’ asked Carl.
‘Two hundred thousand. Maybe more.’
‘You’re not going to get that here.’
‘I know that. So what do we do?’
I said ‘we’ because the workshop was keeping us both. And asked Carl, even though I knew the answer, because I preferred it to be him who said it out loud.
‘Sell the repair shop and keep the pumps,’ said Carl.
I rubbed the back of my neck where Grete Smitt had used the shaver and felt the prickling of the stubble on my fingertips. A crew cut, she called it. Not the fashion, but a classic, meaning that when I looked at photos ten years from now I wouldn’t squirm with embarrassment. Afterwards people said that I looked more like my father than ever, the very image of him, and I hated it, because I knew they were right.
‘I know you prefer fixing cars to filling them,’ said Carl after a long silence, during which I neither nodded nor spat.
‘That’s OK. There’s less and less fixing to do anyway,’ I said. ‘They don’t make cars like they used to anyway, and most of the jobs we get an idiot could do. You don’t need a feeling for the job nowadays.’ I was twenty-one and sounded like a sixty-year-old.
The following day Willum Willumsen came up and looked over the repair shop. Willumsen was a naturally fat man. In the first place, the proportions required it, so much for the stomach, so much for the thighs and chin, for the whole thing to balance out and make the complete man. In the second, he walked, talked and gesticulated like a fat man, though I’m not sure exactly how to explain that. But OK, let me try: Willumsen waddled around with his feet splayed out, like a duck. He spoke in a loud and uninhibited voice, and illustrated what he was saying with expansive gestures and grimaces. In sum: Willumsen took up a lot of room. And in the third place: he smoked cigars. Unless your name is Clint Eastwood, you can’t be fat and hope to be taken seriously as a cigar smoker. Even Winston Churchill and Orson Welles would have had a hard time doing that. Willumsen sold used cars and stripped those he couldn’t fool anyone into buying. Now and then I bought parts from him. He sold other second-hand stuff as well, and rumour had it that if you were trying to get rid of stolen goods then Willumsen might be the man to approach. Same thing if you needed a quick loan but didn’t enjoy the confidence of your bank. But God help you if you didn’t make the payments on time. Then he had a Danish enforcer come up from Jutland with a pair of pliers and other tools of the trade that would soon persuade you to pay what you owed even if it meant robbing your own mother. As it happens no one had ever actually seen this enforcer, but the rumour had really taken off in our imaginations as young kids when we one day saw a white Jaguar E-Type with Danish plates parked outside Willumsen’s Used Car and Breaker’s Yard. The Danish enforcer’s white car. That was all we needed.
Willumsen went through all the gear, the tools, anything that could be screwed down or taken apart before making his offer.
‘That’s not much,’ I said. ‘You know enough about the business to know that this is all top-quality gear.’
‘You said it yourself, Roy. The equipment needs to be upgraded to keep the accreditation.’
‘But you won’t be running an authorised repair shop, Willumsen. All you’ll be doing is just enough repairs so those wrecks you sell will keep running for a week after you’ve sold them.’
Willumsen gave a hearty laugh. ‘I’m not pricing the stuff on what it’s worth to you, Roy Opgard, I’m pricing it on what it’s not worth to you.’
I was learning something new every day.
‘On one condition,’ I said. ‘You take Markus as part of the deal.’
‘Part of the deal as the troll that comes with the barn? Come on, that Markus is more of a troll than a mechanic.’
‘That’s the deal, Willumsen.’
‘Really don’t know if I can use a little troll like Markus, Roy. National insurance. Social outlays.’
‘Yeah yeah, I know all that. But Markus will make certain the cars you sell aren’t actually a danger to traffic. Which is more than you do.’
Willumsen plucked at the lowest of his chins and looked as if he was working out the cost. He looked at me with one of his big octopus eyes and then offered an even lower price.
I couldn’t stand it any more. Said OK and Willumsen straight away held out his hand, probably to make sure I wouldn’t change my mind. I looked at those five spread, small grey-white fingers, like a latex glove filled with water. Shuddered as I took it.
‘I’ll be over tomorrow to pick it all up,’ said Willumsen.
* * *
—
Willumsen sacked Markus after three months, in the middle of his trial period so he didn’t have to give Markus paid notice. He told Markus it was because he’d been turning up late, been given a warning, and then turned up late again.
‘And is that right?’ I had asked Markus when he came to me looking for a job at what was now my one-man service station, the place where I was spending twelve hours every working day.
‘Yes,’ said Markus. ‘Ten minutes in September. And four minutes in November.’
So with that there were three guys living off two petrol pumps. I’d installed a dispensing machine with soft drinks and snacks in the old repair shop, but for the locals the Co-op was nearer and had more choice.
‘It’s not going to work,’ said Carl, pointing to the balance sheet we had drawn up together.
‘Further up the valley they’re selling cabins on three new sites,’ I said. ‘Just wait for the winter – we’ll have all the new cabin owners driving past here.’
Carl sighed. ‘You’re a hell of an obstinate bugger.’
One day an SUV pulled up in the forecourt. Two guys got out and wandered off round the repair shop building and the car wash as though looking for something.
‘If you’re looking for the toilet, it’s in here,’ I called out.
They walked over to me, each gave me his card, from which I learned that they were from what was definitely the biggest chain of service stations in the country, and asked if we could have that talk. I asked ‘What talk?’, and then realised Carl must have been in touch with them. They said they were impressed by how much I had got out of so little, and explained how much I could get with just a little bit more.
‘Franchise agreement,’ they said. ‘Ten years.’
They had also heard about the massive investment in new cabins further up the valley and the traffic prognosis for our main road.
‘What did you say to them?’ asked Carl excitedly when I got home.
‘I said thanks,’ I answered, and slumped down at the kitchen table. Carl had heated up some meatballs.
‘Thanks?’ said Carl. ‘As in...’ He read my face as I tucked in. ‘As in no thanks? What the fuck, Roy!’
‘They wanted to buy everything,’ I said. ‘The buildings, the land. Lots of money, of course, but I guess I like owning it. Must be the farmer in me.’
‘But for chrissakes, it’s all we can do just to keep our heads above water here.’
‘You should’ve told me they were coming.’
‘You would have said no even before hearing what they had to say.’
‘That’s probably true.’
Carl groaned and put his head in his hands. Stayed like that for a while. Sighed. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t get involved. Sorry. I was only
trying to help.’
‘I know that. Thanks.’
He opened the fingers of one hand and looked at me through one eye. ‘So you got nothing out of the visit at all?’
‘Sure did.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘They had a long drive back, so they had to fill up the tank.’
7
EVEN THOUGH DAD HAD TAUGHT me a bit of boxing, I don’t really know if I was that good a fighter.
There was a dance at Årtun. Same band as usual, all in tight-fitting white suits, playing hits from Sweden. The vocalist, a skinny guy everyone called Rod because his ambition was to sound like Rod Stewart and score as many girls, got things going, howling away in a mixture of Norwegian and Swedish that made him sound like Armand, the travelling preacher who passed through the village now and then preaching about the great wave of awakening that was breaking over the land, and how it was good, because the Day of Judgement was nigh. If he’d been in Årtun that evening the preacher would have realised there was quite a bit of work still to do. People of all ages and both sexes, off their heads on home brew that would have been confiscated if they tried to take it inside, staggering around on the grass in front of the village hall, couples propping each other up as Rod sang about those golden-brown eyes. Until they too had had enough and spilled out onto the grass for another swig or else to copulate among the birch trees, puke or take a crap. Some didn’t even bother to head for the trees. People talked about the time our very own Rod invited a diehard female fan up onstage to join him in singing one of the band’s own compositions, ‘Are You Thinking of Me Tonight’. It was so like Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight’ that it was a miracle he was able to keep a straight face. After two verses he got the guitarist to play an extra-long solo, disappeared into the wings with the girl and the microphone, and when it was time for the third verse it came somewhat breathlessly from offstage. Halfway through the verse Rod came strutting out again, alone this time, winked at a couple of girls in front of the stage and, noticing the horrified looks on their faces, glanced down and saw the smeared blood on his white trousers. He sang the last verse, put the microphone back in the stand, and with a sigh and a smile and a ‘well well well...’ counted in the next number.