by Jo Nesbo
‘I’m saying it’s possible the owner is letting it hang there a while longer.’
‘But you said that if they leave the net there for too long the catch gets eaten by the other fish down there.’
‘Exactly,’ I said, and wondered when it was I had started saying ‘exactly’. ‘So that net was probably pulled up this morning. Or maybe the owner is just slow to report it. Stay cool now.’
The SUV carrying the film people swung out onto the main highway as Shannon approached us, her face radiant, a hand held to her chest as though to keep her heart in place.
‘You in love?’ asked Carl.
‘Not at all,’ said Shannon, and Carl roared with laughter as though he’d already put our conversation behind him.
* * *
—
An hour later another familiar vehicle pulled in at the forecourt by the diesel pump and I thought how this day was just getting more and more interesting. I came out from the station as Kurt Olsen climbed out of his Land Rover, and when I saw the angry look on his face I thought at last, here comes an interesting story.
I dipped the sponge in the bucket and pulled up his windscreen wipers.
‘Not necessary,’ he protested, but I’d already splashed soapy water all over the windscreen.
‘You can never have too much visibility,’ I said. ‘Especially now with autumn on the way.’
‘I think I see well enough without your help, Roy.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I said, spreading the dirty water across the glass. ‘Carl called in. He’s going to have to cancel the official opening at some point today.’
‘Today?’ said Kurt Olsen and looked up.
‘Yeah. Damn shame. The school brass band is going to be really disappointed, they’ve been practising. And we bought fifty Norwegian flags – there isn’t a single one left. Absolutely no chance of a last-minute reprieve for the condemned man?’
Kurt Olsen looked down. Spat on the ground.
‘Tell your brother he can go ahead with the opening.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes,’ Olsen said in a low voice.
‘Have there been developments in the case?’ Apart from my choice of words I was trying not to sound ironic. I splashed on more soapy water.
Olsen straightened up. Coughed. ‘I got a phone call from Åge Fredriksen this morning. He lives out near our cabin and sets his fishing net right outside our boathouse. He’s done it for years.’
‘You don’t say?’ I said, dropping the sponge into the bucket and picking up the squeegee, pretending not to notice Kurt’s penetrating stare.
‘And this morning he caught a queer fish all right. My father’s mobile phone.’
‘Jesus,’ I said. The rubber emitted a low squeal as I drew the squeegee over the glass.
‘Fredriksen thinks the phone’s been lying there in the same place for sixteen years, covered by sludge so the divers who went down looking for Dad that time found nothing. Every time he’s set out his net, it’s brushed over the phone. And when he pulled up the net this morning the bottom rungs of the net just happened to glide in under the clip on the holder so the phone came up with the net.’
‘Quite something,’ I said, tearing a strip off the paper roll and wiping the blade of the squeegee.
‘Quite something is an understatement,’ he said. ‘Sixteen years putting out that net, and the phone gets caught up in it now.’
‘Isn’t that the essence of what they call chaos theory? That sooner or later everything happens, including the most unlikely things?’
‘I’ll accept that. What I’m not buying is the timing. It’s a bit too good to be true.’
He might as well have said: too good for you and Carl.
‘And it doesn’t fit in with the timeline from back then,’ he said. He looked at me and waited.
I knew what he wanted. For me to argue. Say that witnesses can’t always be relied on. Or that the movements of a man in such deep despair that he takes his own life maybe aren’t always the most logical. Or even that base stations themselves can be mistaken. But I resisted the temptation. I held my chin between my index finger and thumb. And nodded slowly. Very slowly. And said: ‘Sure sounds like it. Diesel?’
He looked as if he wanted to hit me.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least now you can see the road.’
He slammed the door hard behind him and revved the engine. But then eased off on the pedal, made a calm U-turn and rolled slowly out onto the highway. I knew he was watching me in the mirror and I had to struggle to stop myself giving him a wave.
26
IT WAS A CURIOUS SIGHT.
A harsh wind was blowing from the north-west and it was raining cats and rabbits, as people say round here. And yet some hundred shivering souls in rain gear were up there on the mountain watching a besuited Carl as he posed with Voss Gilbert wearing his chain of office and his best politician’s smile, both holding spades. The local paper and other press photographers were clicking away and in the background you could just about hear the Årtun school brass band playing ‘Mellom Bakkar og Berg’ between the gusts of wind. With a touch of humour Gilbert was introduced as ‘the new chairman’, although he hardly resented it, all the chairmen since Jo Aas had been referred to in that way. I had nothing special against Voss Gilbert, but he had that bald patch at the front of his head and a second name for his first name, so there was definitely something suspicious about him. But not definite enough to stop him being Os county council chairman. Obviously, though, any future expansion in the size of the county would lead to tougher competition for the hammer of office, and with that hairstyle Gilbert would definitely be struggling.
Carl signalled to Gilbert that he should make the first mark with his spade, since the one he was holding had been decorated for the occasion with ribbons and flowers. So Gilbert did so, smiling to the photographers, evidently unaware that his wet lug of hair now lay plastered across his bald spot in a sort of inadvertent comb-over. Gilbert shouted out some witticism which no one heard but which those around him dutifully laughed at. Everyone clapped and Gilbert hurried over to an assistant holding his inside-out umbrella, and we all marched down the mountainside to the buses that stood parked by the road ready to take us to Fritt Fall where the occasion would be celebrated.
The black-feathered Giovanni strutted nervously between the guests and the legs of the tables as I fetched my drink from the bar where Erik stood scowling at me. I thought of joining Carl who was talking to Willumsen, Jo Aas and Dan Krane, but instead walked over to where Shannon was standing at the betting table with Stanley, Gilbert and Simon Nergard. I gathered they were talking about Bowie and Ziggy Stardust, probably because ‘Starman’ was blasting from the loudspeakers.
‘Course the guy was a pervert, he dressed up like a woman,’ said Simon, already slightly drunk and aggressive.
‘If by pervert you mean homosexual, well, you also get heterosexual men who’d rather look like women,’ said Stanley.
‘Fucking sick if you ask me,’ said Simon, looking at the new chairman. ‘It’s not natural.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Stanley. ‘Animals cross-dress too. You, Roy, with your interest in birds, you probably know that in certain species of bird the male imitates the female. They camouflage themselves as females by using the same feathering.’
The others looked at me and I felt myself turning red.
‘And not just on special occasions,’ Stanley continued. ‘They carry this female phenotype throughout their lives, don’t they?’
‘Not any of the mountain birds I’m familiar with,’ I said.
‘See?’ said Simon, and Stanley gave me a quick look as much as to say I’d let him down. ‘Nature’s practical, so what the hell would be the point of dressing up like a woman?’
‘It’s quite simple,’ said
Shannon. ‘The disguised males avoid the attention of the alpha males who want to fight off possible competitors in the sexual market. While the alpha males are fighting it out, the cross-dressers are mating on the quiet, so to speak.’
Chairman Gilbert laughed good-naturedly. ‘Not a bad strategy.’
Stanley laid a hand on Shannon’s arm. ‘Here, at last, we have someone who understands the complexities of the game of love.’
‘Well, it isn’t exactly rocket science,’ said Shannon, smiling. ‘We’re all looking for the most comfortable survival strategy. And if we find ourselves in a situation, personal or social, in which it no longer works, then we try another one that’s necessary, although possibly a little less comfortable.’
‘What do you mean, the most comfortable strategy?’ asked Voss Gilbert.
‘The one that follows the rules of society, so that we don’t risk sanctions. Also known as morality, Mr Chairman. If that doesn’t work, then we break the rules.’
Gilbert raised one of his heavy brows. ‘Many people behave in a moral way even though it isn’t necessarily the most comfortable.’
‘The reason for that is just that for some people the idea of being thought of as immoral is so unpleasant that this becomes an important part of the decision. But if we were invisible and had nothing to lose we wouldn’t care at all. We’re all of us at heart opportunists with survival and the furtherance of our own genetic heritage as the overriding goal in life. That’s why we’re all willing to sell our souls. It’s just that some of us ask a different price from others.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Stanley.
Gilbert chuckled and shook his head. ‘That there is big-city talk. It goes way over our heads. Or am I right, Simon?’
‘Also known as bollocks,’ said Simon, emptying his glass and looking round for a refill.
‘Now now, Simon,’ said the chairman. ‘But you should remember, fru Opgard, that we come from a part of the country in which people sacrificed their lives for the right moral values during the Second World War.’
‘He means the twelve men in that heavy water sabotage action we keep making films about,’ said Stanley. ‘The rest of the population more or less let the Nazis do what they wanted.’
‘You shut your mouth,’ said Simon, his eyelids drooping halfway over his pupils.
‘Those twelve men hardly sacrificed their lives for moral values,’ said Shannon. ‘They did it for their country. Their village. Their families. If Hitler had been born in Norway where the economic and political situation was the same as in Germany, he would have come to power here just the same. And your saboteurs would have been fighting for Hitler instead.’
‘What the fuck!’ Simon snarled, and I took a step forward in case he had to be stopped.
Shannon, however, couldn’t be stopped. ‘Or do you believe that the Germans who lived in the thirties and forties were a generation of out-and-out immoralists, while Norwegians of the time were lucky enough not to be?’
‘Those are pretty strong claims, fru Opgard.’
‘Strong? I can see that they’re provocative and perhaps offensive to Norwegians with a deep emotional attachment to their history. All I’m trying to say is that morality as a motivating force is overrated in us humans. And that our loyalty to our flock is underestimated. We shape morality so that it suits our purposes when we feel our group is under threat. Family vendettas and genocides throughout history are not the work of monsters but of human beings like us who believed they were acting in a way that was morally correct. Our loyalty is primarily to our own and secondarily to the changing morality that at any given time serves the needs of our group. My great-uncle took part in the Cuban revolution, and even today there are still two diametrically opposed but morally equally dogmatic ways of looking at Fidel Castro. And what determines your view of him is not whether you are politically on the right or the left but the degree to which Castro affected the history of your close family, the extent to which they ended up part of the government in Havana or refugees in Miami. Everything else is secondary.’
I felt someone tugging at my jacket sleeve and turned.
It was Grete.
‘Can I have a word with you?’ she whispered.
‘Hi, Grete. We’re just in the middle of a conversation about—’
‘Mating on the quiet,’ said Grete. ‘I heard that.’
Something in the way she said it made me look more closely at her. And those words, they resonated with a hunch I’d had, something I’d already thought.
‘A word then,’ I said, and as we headed towards the bar I could feel both Stanley’s and Shannon’s eyes on my back.
‘There’s something I want you to pass on to Carl’s wife,’ said Grete once we were out of earshot.
‘Why is that?’ I asked ‘why’ instead of ‘what’ because I already knew the ‘what’. Saw it in her murky eyes.
‘Because she’ll believe you.’
‘Why should she believe it if it’s something I’m just passing on?’
‘Because you’ll tell her as though it comes directly from you.’
‘And why should I do that?’
‘Because you want the same thing as me, Roy,’
‘And that is?’
‘For them to split up.’
I wasn’t shocked. Not even surprised. Just fascinated.
‘Come on, Roy, we both know that Carl and that southern girl don’t belong together. We’re only doing what’s best for them. And it’ll save her the slow torment of finding it out herself, poor girl.’
I tried to moisten my throat. Wanted to turn and go but couldn’t. ‘Find out what?’
‘That Carl’s having it away with Mari again.’
I looked at her. The perm stood out around her pale face like a halo. It’s always surprised me that people fall for shampoo adverts that say it revitalises the hair. Hair has never had any life in it that can be revitalised. Hair’s dead, a cuticle of keratin growing out of a follicle. It’s got as much of life and you in it as the excrement you squeeze out. Hair is history, it’s what you’ve been, eaten and done. And you can’t go back. Grete’s perm was a mummified past, a permafrost, frightening as death itself.
‘They do it at the Aas’s cabin.’
I didn’t answer.
‘I’ve seen it with my own eyes,’ said Grete. ‘They park in the woods so you can’t see the cars from the road and then they meet in the cabin.’
I wanted to ask how much of her time she spent shadowing Carl but didn’t.
‘But it’s no wonder Carl fucks around,’ she said.
She obviously wanted me to ask what she meant by that. But something – the look on her face, the certainty of something, reminded me of when Mum read ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ to us – persuaded me not to. Because as a child I had never understood why Red Riding Hood has to ask the disguised wolf that final question, why it has such big teeth, when she already has a suspicion that it is the wolf. Didn’t she understand that once the wolf realises he’s been unmasked he would grab her and eat her up? What I learned from it was: stop after ‘why do you have such big ears?’ Say you’re going to fetch more wood from the woodshed, and then get the hell out of there. But I just stood there. And like any fucking Little Red Riding Hood I asked: ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘That he fucks around? Because they usually do, the ones who were sexually abused when they were kids.’
I had stopped breathing. Couldn’t move a muscle. And my voice was hoarse when I spoke. ‘What the hell makes you think Carl was abused?’
‘He said so himself. When he was drunk, after he fucked me in the woods at Årtun. Sobbed, said he regretted it, but he couldn’t help it, that he’d read somewhere that people like him became promiscuous.’
I moved my tongue around in my mouth looking for saliva, but it wa
s dry as the inside of a hay barn.
‘Promiscuous,’ was all I could manage to whisper, but she didn’t seem to hear.
‘And he said you blamed yourself for him being abused. That that was why you always looked out for him. That you sort of owed him.’
I got a little more sound from my vocal cords. ‘You’ve been lying for so long you believe it yourself.’
Grete smiled as she shook her head in pretended regret. ‘Carl was so drunk that he’s bound to have forgotten he said it, but he did. I asked him why you blamed yourself when it wasn’t you but his own father who was abusing him. Carl said he thought it was because you were his big brother. That you thought it was your job to look after him. And that was why in the end you rescued him.’
‘So you think you can remember him saying that?’ I tried, but I could see it had no effect on her.
‘That’s what he said,’ she nodded. ‘But when I asked he wouldn’t tell me how you rescued him.’
I was finished. I saw those wormlike lips moving. ‘So I’m asking you now: what did you do, Roy?’
I raised my head and looked into her eyes. Expectant. Gleeful. Mouth half open, all that was left was to pop the fork in. I felt a bubbling in my chest, a smile coming, I just couldn’t stop it.
‘Eh?’ said Grete, and the look on her face turned to surprise as I burst out laughing.
I was...actually, what was I? Happy? Relieved? The way exposed murderers feel liberated because the waiting is over and finally they are no longer alone with their terrible secret. Or was I just crazy? Because surely you must be crazy if you prefer people to believe you’ve been abusing your little brother rather than know that it was your father who did it and that you, the big brother, didn’t do a thing about it. Or maybe it isn’t madness, maybe it’s as simple as that you can tolerate the disgust of a whole village which is rooted in lies and false rumours, but not if there’s the tiniest element of truth in it. And the truth about what happened at Opgard wasn’t just about a father who was an abuser, it was also about a cowardly, crawling big brother who could have intervened but didn’t dare to, who knew but kept his mouth shut, who was ashamed of himself but kept his head down so low he could hardly bear the sight of his own reflection in the mirror. And now the worst that could happen had happened. When Grete Smitt knew something and talked about it then the whole hair salon found out about it followed by the whole village, that’s how straightforward it was. So then why did I laugh? Because the worst that could happen had just happened, and it was already several seconds in the past. Now everything could go to hell in a handcart, and I was free.