The Kingdom

by Jo Nesbo

  But I heard nothing.

  And there was no longer any room for doubt. She regretted it, of course. It had been a fairy tale, a fantasy I had planted in her when I told her I loved her and then went away, a fantasy that she, in peace and quiet, and in the absence of any other stimulation, had turned into something fantastic while she went about her daily round in the village and bored herself. So fantastic that the real me had been unable to live up to it. But now she’d got it out of her system and could return to her normal life.

  The question now was when would I be able to get it out of my system? I told myself that our night together had been the aim, something to cross off on my to-do list, and that now I had to move on. But all the same, the first thing I did every morning was to check the phone for a message from Shannon.

  Nothing.

  So I started sleeping with other women.

  I don’t know why it was, but it was as though they had suddenly discovered me, as though there was a secret society of women in which the news that I’d bedded my wife’s brother began to circulate, and that had to mean I was hot stuff. A bad reputation is a good reputation, as people say. Or else it was just writ large on my forehead that I didn’t care a damn. Maybe that was it. Maybe I had become the silent, sad-eyed man in the bar whom they’d heard could get anyone except the one he wanted, and for that reason didn’t give a fuck. The man they all wanted to prove wrong, that there is hope, there is salvation, there is another, and it’s them.

  And yes, I played up to it. I played the part I had been allotted, told them the story, just left out the names and that it involved my brother, went home with them if they lived alone or to Søm if not. Woke up beside a stranger and turned to check my phone for messages.

  But things improved, they did. On some days, hours would go by without my thinking of her. I knew that malaria is a parasitic illness that never completely leaves your blood, but it can be neutralised. If I stayed away and didn’t see her then I reckoned that the really hard part should be over within two years, three at the outside.

  * * *

  —

  In December Pia Syse phoned and informed me that the station was now ranked sixth best in all Sørlandet. Naturally, I knew that it was the sales manager Gus Myre’s job to make calls with that type of news, not the personnel manager’s. That she probably had something else on her mind.

  ‘We want you to continue to run the station after the contract runs out next year,’ she said. ‘The conditions will of course reflect the fact that we are very pleased. And that we believe you can move the station even further up the list.’

  It suited my plans well. I looked out the window of my office. Flat landscape, big industrial buildings, motorway with circular entrance and exit roads that made me think of the racing-car track on the floor of the back room at Willumsen’s Used Car and Breaker’s Yard, where kids could play if their father was out front buying a car. I’m guessing quite a few used-car sales came about because of kids kicking up about wanting to go down there.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ I said and hung up.

  I sat there looking at the mist over the woods by the zoo. Jesus, the leaves on the trees were still green. I hadn’t seen a snowflake since coming here fourteen months earlier. They say you never really get a winter down here in the south, just more of that pissrain that isn’t really rain but just something wet in the air that can’t decide whether to go up or down or just stay where it is. Same as the mercury in the thermometer that reads six degrees for day after day. I stared into that bank of fog that lay like a thick duvet across the landscape and rendered it even flatter and more shapeless. A winter in Sørlandet was a shower of rain frozen in time. It just was there. So when the phone rang again and I heard Carl’s voice, for about two seconds I longed – yes, I longed! – for those ice-cold, freezing blasts, and that driving snow that whips against your face like grains of sand.

  ‘How’s things?’ he asked.

  ‘Can’t complain,’ I said. Sometimes Carl rang just because he wondered how I was doing. But today I could hear that was not the reason.

  ‘Can’t complain?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s just something they say down here in Sørlandet.’ I hated the way they said ‘can’t complain’. It was like the winters, neither one thing nor the other. When people down here meet someone they know on the street they say ‘now then’, which I think is a cross between a question and a greeting, sort of like ‘how are you’, but sounding more like they’ve caught you red-handed at something.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Carl.

  I heard that it wasn’t fine. Waited for the ‘but’.

  ‘Apart from going slightly over budget,’ he said.

  ‘How slightly?’

  ‘Not much. What it actually is, there’s a little disharmony in the cash flow. The invoices from the builders are due for payment earlier than expected. We don’t need more cash putting into the project, we just need it a little earlier. I told the bank that we’re a bit ahead of schedule now.’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘We, Roy. We. You’re a co-owner, or have you forgotten? And no, we aren’t ahead. It’s one hell of a conjuring trick when so many airheads have to be coordinated. The building business is a strange ragbag of subcontractors who are all school dropouts and ended up in jobs no one else wants. But because there’s such a demand for the few of them there actually are, they can come and go as they please.’

  ‘The last shall be first.’

  ‘Do they say that down south as well?’

  ‘All the time. They like everything that’s slow. Compared to down here things in Os are all fast-forward.’

  Carl laughed his warm laugh, and I felt happy and warm myself. Warmed by the sound of the murderer’s laugh.

  ‘The bank manager pointed out that one of the conditions of the loan is that certain milestones have to be reached before we can have access to further credit. He said they’d been up to have a look around the site and that what I said about progress up there wasn’t accurate. So there was what you might call a crisis of confidence. Sure, I managed to patch things up, but now the bank is saying I have to inform the participants before they’ll make further payments. It says in the participants’ agreement that, since they have unlimited responsibility, they need an official resolution from the committee to the effect that the project needs more capital.’

  ‘Then that’s what you’ll have to do.’

  ‘Yeah yeah, so I guess I will. It’s just that that may set up bad vibes, and in principle the committee can summon a general meeting and put a stop to the whole thing. Especially now that Dan has started digging and poking around.’

  ‘Dan Krane?’

  ‘He’s been trying to dig up something to take me down all autumn. Calling round the contractors and asking about progress and budgets. He’s looking for something that he can turn into a full-blown crisis, but he can’t print a thing as long as he’s got nothing definite to go on.’

  ‘And not as long as a quarter of your readers and your father-in-law are involved in the hotel.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Carl. ‘You don’t shit in your own nest.’

  ‘Well, not unless you’re a gentoo penguin,’ I said. ‘Then you shit in your own nest so as to make it your nest.’

  ‘Really?’ said Carl doubtfully.

  ‘The shit attracts the sunlight, which melts the ice so you get a depression and – hey presto – there’s your nest. It’s the same method journalists use to attract a readership. The media lives off the attracting powers of shit.’

  ‘An interesting image,’ said Carl.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said.

  ‘But for Krane this is personal, you do realise that?’

  ‘And how do you propose to put a stop to it?’

  ‘I’ve talked to the contractors
and got them to promise to keep their mouths shut. Fortunately they know what’s best for them. But yesterday I heard from a pal in Canada that Krane has started digging around into that business in Toronto.’

  ‘What will he find there?’

  ‘Not a lot. It’s my word against theirs, and the whole thing is too complex for a Mickey Mouse journo like Krane to be able to understand.’

  ‘Unless he’s got the bit between his teeth,’ I said.

  ‘Shit, Roy, I’m ringing you to cheer me up here.’

  ‘It’ll all work out. And if it doesn’t you can get Willumsen to set one of his enforcers on Krane.’

  We laughed. It sounded as if he was relaxing a bit.

  ‘How are things at home?’ The query was so general it could hardly make my vocal cords quaver suspiciously.

  ‘Well, you know, the place is still standing. And Shannon seems to have calmed down. Not when it comes to all her objections to the hotel, but at least she’s stopped going on about us having kids. Probably realises the timing’s off when we’re in the middle of all this.’

  I made a few appropriate noises that told him this was information of interest, but nothing more than that.

  ‘But what I’m really calling you about is that the Cadillac needs a bit of work doing on it.’

  ‘Define a bit of work.’

  ‘You’re the expert, I haven’t a clue, you know that. Shannon was driving it and she heard some funny noises. She grew up in a Buick from Cuba and says she has a feel for veteran American cars. She suggested you take a look down at the workshop when you’re home for Christmas.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Because you are coming home for Christmas?’ he said.

  ‘A lot of people at the station want time off—’

  ‘No! A lot of people at the station want overtime. And they live there, and you’re coming home for Christmas! And you promised, remember? You’ve got family. Not a big family, but the family you have got are looking forward so damn much to seeing you again.’

  ‘Carl, I...’

  ‘Pinnekjøtt,’ said Carl. ‘She’s taught herself to make pinnekjøtt. And mashed swede. I’m not kidding. She loves Norwegian Christmas food.’

  I closed my eyes, but there she was, so I opened them again. Damn. Not damn. Damn. And why hadn’t I worked out a proper excuse? After all, I knew the question about Christmas would come up.

  ‘I’ll see what I can work out, Carl.’

  Right. That gave me time to think of something. Something he’d accept. Hopefully.

  ‘You’ll work it out,’ Carl exulted. ‘We’ll arrange a proper family Christmas here, you won’t have to worry about a thing! Just cruise on into the yard, smell that smell of pinnekjøtt, and be served an aquavit on the steps by your little brother. It won’t be the same without you, you must. You hear me? You must!’

  48

  THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE. The Volvo was purring along nicely and the piled-up snow lay like massive lines of cocaine along the sides of the highway. ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ came on the radio, which was appropriate enough as far as it goes, but I slipped J. J. Cale’s ‘Cocaine’ into the CD player anyway.

  Speedometer needle under the speed limit. Pulse normal.

  I sang along. Not that I sniff that stuff. Apart from the one time Carl sent it in one of his rare letters from Canada. I was already on a high anyway when I took it, which was maybe why I didn’t really notice any difference. Or maybe it was because I was alone. Alone and on a high, like now. There was the county sign by the roadside. High, and pulse normal. That must be what people mean when they say happy.

  I hadn’t managed to come up with an excuse not to come home for Christmas. And I could hardly not ever see my family again, now could I? So I ought to be able to manage three days of Christmas celebrations. Three days in the same house as Shannon. And after that straight back to solitary.

  * * *

  —

  I parked in front of the house next to a brown Subaru Outback. There must be a name for that particular shade of brown, but I’m not much good at colours. The snow lay several metres deep, the sun was on its way down, and behind the rise in the west the silhouette of a crane was visible.

  As I rounded the house Carl was already standing in the doorway. His face looked sort-of wide, like that time he had mumps.

  ‘New motor?’ I called as soon as I saw him.

  ‘Old,’ he said. ‘We need a four-wheel drive for the winter, but Shannon wouldn’t let me buy a new one. It’s a 2007 model, got it for fifty big ones down at Willumsen’s. One of the chippies who’s got the same type says it was a steal.’

  ‘Blimey, you mean you bargained with him?’ I said.

  ‘Opgards don’t bargain.’ He grinned. ‘But ladies from Barbados do.’

  Carl gave me a long and warm embrace out there on the steps. His body felt bigger than before. And he smelled of alcohol. Already started celebrating Christmas, he said. Needed to wind down after a tough week. It would be good to think about something else for a few days. During the holly days, as Carl used to think it was when he was a kid.

  We entered the kitchen while Carl talked. About the hotel, where they had finally managed to get things moving. Carl had pressed the contractors to get the walls up and a roof so that they could get started on the indoor work and not have to wait for the spring.

  There was no one else in the kitchen.

  ‘Tradesmen give you a better price if they can work indoors during the winter months,’ said Carl. At least I think that’s what he said, I was listening out for other sounds. But all I heard was Carl’s voice and the pounding of my own heart. Not exactly normal pulse now.

  ‘Shannon’s up at the building site,’ he said, and now I listened attentively. ‘She’s so bloody concerned that it’s got to be exactly like on the drawings.’

  ‘That’s good then.’

  ‘It is and it isn’t. Architects don’t think of the cost, they only want to make sure they’re reflected in the glory of their masterpiece.’ Carl gave a sort of tolerant laugh, but I could hear the anger bubbling below it. ‘Hungry?’

  I shook my head. ‘Maybe I’ll take the Cadillac down to the workshop, get that out of the way.’

  ‘Can’t. Shannon’s got it.’

  ‘Up at the hotel site?’

  ‘Yup. The road isn’t that good yet, but it does go all the way up to the building site now.’ He said it with a strange mixture of pride and pain. As though that road had cost him plenty. And if that was the case I wasn’t surprised, it was steep and there was a lot of mountain to be blasted.

  ‘With road conditions like this, why doesn’t she take the Subaru?’

  Carl shrugged. ‘She doesn’t like manual gears. Prefers the big Americans, that’s what she grew up with.’

  I carried my bag up to the boys’ room, went back down.

  ‘A beer?’ said Carl, standing there with one in his hand.

  ‘Nope. I’m going to drive down and say hello at the station and pick up a decent shirt at the workshop.’

  ‘Then I’ll call Shannon and she can take the Cadillac straight down to the workshop and get a lift back up with you. Sound OK?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I said. Carl looked at me. At least I think he looked at me, I was busy examining a loose seam on one of my gloves.

  * * *

  —

  Julie was on with Egil. She glowed and squealed with delight when she saw me. Customers were queuing up at the till but she ran round the counter and threw herself around my neck as though it was a family reunion. And that’s exactly what it was. It wasn’t there any more, that steamy undercurrent of something else, of longing and desire. And for a brief moment it was almost a disappointment, a recognition of the fact that I had lost her, or at least stopped being that teenage crush of hers.
And though I never wanted to have it or respond to it, I knew that in lonesome times I would think about what might have been, what it was I had said no to.

  ‘Much happening?’ I asked when she finally released me and I had time to glance around. Looked like Markus had copied the Christmas decorations and choice of stock we’d done so well with in previous years. Smart kid.

  ‘Yes,’ Julie cried excitedly. ‘Me and Alex are engaged.’

  She held her hand up to me. And damned if there wasn’t a ring on her finger.

  ‘You lucky monkey.’ I smiled, heading behind the counter to turn over a hamburger that was about to be incinerated. ‘How are you, Egil?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said as he worked the till for a Christmas sheaf of oats for the birds and a battery shaver. ‘Merry Christmas, Roy!’

  ‘Same to you,’ I said, and for a moment I observed the world from my old vantage point. From behind the counter of what should have been my own station.

  Then I stepped out again into the cold and the winter darkness, said hello to people hurrying by puffing grey clouds before them. Saw a guy in a skinny-fit suit standing smoking by one of the petrol pumps and went over to him.

  ‘You can’t smoke here,’ I said.

  ‘Yes I can,’ he said in a low, rasping voice that made me think he might have damaged vocal cords. Three short words weren’t enough for me to identify the accent, but it sounded guttural, like a Sørlandet accent.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Could be he smiled, because his eyes turned to narrow slits in his pitted face. ‘Watch me,’ he said in English.

  And I did. I watched him. He wasn’t tall, shorter than me, around fifty, but with pimples in his red, swollen-looking face. At a distance he’d looked chubby in his accountant’s suit, but I saw now that it was other things that made it look a little too tight. Shoulders. Chest. Back. Biceps. A muscle mass you probably needed roids to maintain at his age. He raised his cigarette and took a long drag. The tip glowed. And suddenly my middle finger was itching.