by Jo Nesbo
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying anything. Because I don’t know anything. Maybe we’re as much a riddle to ourselves as we are to others.’
Shannon touched her wine glass with her fingertips. ‘Isn’t it sad if we can only love what others love?’
‘Uncle Bernard said a lot of things seem sad if you look at them too long and too closely,’ I said. ‘That we ought to be blind in one eye.’
‘Maybe so.’
‘Shall we try being blind?’ I said. ‘For one night, at least.’
‘Yes,’ she said, struggling to smile.
I raised my glass. She raised hers.
‘I love you,’ I whispered.
Her smile widened, her eyes glistened like Lake Budal on a calm summer’s day, and for a moment I managed to forget all the rest, and hoped only that we could have this night, and then let the nuclear bomb drop. Yes, I wanted a nuclear bomb to drop. Because I had – I think I remember I already had – made up my mind. And I would have preferred a nuclear bomb.
As I put my glass down I saw that Shannon hadn’t drunk from hers. She stood up, leaned over the table and blew out the candles.
‘Time is tight,’ she said. ‘Too tight not to be lying naked beside you.’
* * *
—
The time was eight minutes to four when Shannon again collapsed on top of me. Her sweat mingled with mine, we smelled and tasted the same. I raised my head to look at the clock on the bedside table.
‘We’ve got three hours,’ said Shannon.
I dropped back onto the pillow and fumbled for the snuffbox next to the clock.
‘I love you,’ she said. She had said it every time she woke up, before we made love again. And before she went back to sleep again.
‘I love you, dotterel,’ I said, in the same tone as hers, as though the deep meaning of these words was now so familiar to us we didn’t need to add emotion, or meaning or conviction to them, just to say them was enough, chant them like a mantra, a creed we knew off by heart.
‘I cried today,’ I said, wedging a pellet of snuff beneath my lip.
‘You probably don’t do that often,’ said Shannon.
‘No.’
‘What were you crying for?’
‘You know what for. For everything.’
‘Yes, but exactly what? And why today?’
I thought about it. ‘I was crying for what I lost today.’
‘The family property,’ she said.
I gave a brief laugh. ‘No, not the farm.’
‘Me,’ she said.
‘I’ve never had you,’ I said. ‘I was crying for Carl. I lost my little brother today.’
‘Of course,’ Shannon whispered. ‘Sorry. Sorry for being so stupid.’
Then she laid a hand on my chest. And I could feel that this was different from the ostensibly innocent touching that we both knew was a prelude to a new bout of lovemaking. And I had a premonition when she placed her hand there. It was almost as though she were trying to take hold of my heart. Or no, not take hold of, but feel. She was trying to feel the beating of my heart, and how it would react now when she said what she was about to say.
‘I said earlier today that the hotel was just one of the things I’d come here to tell you about.’
She took a breath, and I held mine.
‘I am pregnant,’ she said.
I still held my breath.
‘By you. Notodden.’
Even though these six words held the answers to all the questions I might conceivably have had about what had happened, an avalanche of thoughts raced through my brain, and each one of them had a question mark attached.
‘The endometriosis...’ I started.
‘That makes it difficult to get pregnant, not impossible,’ she said. ‘I took a pregnancy test and at first I didn’t believe it, but now I’ve been to the doctor and had it confirmed.’
I started breathing again. Stared at the ceiling.
Shannon snuggled into me. ‘I thought of getting rid of it, but I can’t, I don’t want to. Maybe this is the one time in my life when all the planets were aligned in just such a way as to enable this body to get pregnant. But I love you, and the child is as much yours as it is mine. What do you want?’
I lay there in silence, breathing into the dark and wondering whether my heart had given her hand the answers it wanted.
‘I want you to have what you want,’ I said.
‘Are you afraid?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you happy?’
Was I happy? ‘Yes.’
I could tell from her breathing that she was on the verge of crying again.
‘But of course, you’re very confused, and wonder what we should do now,’ she said. Her voice was trembling, and she spoke quickly, as though to finish before her crying started. ‘And I don’t know how to answer you, Roy. I have to stay in Os until the hotel is up. You think maybe that this child is more important than a building, but...’
‘Hush,’ I said, and stroked her soft lips with my finger. ‘I know. And you’re wrong. I’m not confused. I know exactly what I have to do.’
In the darkness I saw the whites of her eyes almost turned on and off as she blinked.
DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE, I thought. EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON YOU. DO IT NOW.
As I say, I’m not completely sure whether my mind was made up back there in the staff toilet, or later, in bed with Shannon after she had told me she was carrying my child. And maybe it doesn’t matter too much, maybe the question is academic, as people say.
Anyway, I leaned close to Shannon’s ear and in a whisper told her what had to be done.
She nodded.
I lay awake the rest of that night.
The restart was in fourteen days’ time, the invitation advertising Rod at Årtun afterwards was pinned above the kitchen worktop.
I was already beginning to count down the hours.
I suffered.
* * *
—
The huge black beast was moving. Cruising slowly, almost reluctantly, the gravel crunching beneath its tyres. On the fins sticking out at the back two long, narrow red lights lit up. A Cadillac DeVille. The sun had set, but behind the bend a rim of orange framed Ottertind. And a 200-metre-deep crevice in the mountain, as though split by a blow from an axe.
‘You and me, Roy, we’re all we’ve got.’ That was what Carl used to say. ‘All those others we think we love, the ones we think love us, they’re mirages in a desert. But you and me, we’re one. We’re brothers. Two brothers in a desert. If one checks out, the other one checks out too.’
Yes. And death does not part us. It brings us together.
The beast was rolling faster now. On its way towards that hell for which we are all bound, all those of us with the heart for murder.
64
RESUMPTION OF WORK ON THE project wasn’t due to kick off until seven o’clock in the evening.
Nevertheless I left Kristiansand at the crack of dawn, and morning sunlight glinted on the county signpost as I drove into Os.
Apart from the dirty grey remnants lining the road after the snowploughs had done their work, the snow was gone. The ice on Lake Budal looked rotten, like sorbet. Here and there I could see surface water.
I’d called Carl a couple of days earlier and told him I was coming, but that I would be busy all day until the opening because the station at Os had been asked to show the books for the preceding five years. Spot checks, routine stuff, I had lied, I was just going to help them go through the figures from my time as boss. I didn’t know how long it would take, a few hours or a couple of days, but if necessary I would sleep down at the workshop. Carl replied that was fine, that anyway he and Shannon would be busy getting things ready for the opening ceremony and the
party at Årtun afterwards.
‘But there is something I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said. ‘I can meet you down there at the station if that’s easier.’
‘I’ll let you know if there’s a window and we can have a beer at Fritt Fall,’ I said.
‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘I’ve dropped alcohol completely. My New Year’s resolution was to be boring, and according to Shannon it’s looking good so far.’
He sounded in good spirits. Laughing and joking. A man with the worst behind him.
Unlike me.
I parked the car in front of the workshop and looked up towards Opgard. In the slanting morning sunlight it looked as though the mountain was painted in gold. The open slopes were bare, but snow still lay in the shadows.
On my way into the station I noticed rubbish in the pump areas. And sure enough, Egil was behind the till inside. He was dealing with a customer, and it took me a few seconds to recognise that stooping back. Moe. The roofer. I remained standing in the doorway. Egil hadn’t noticed me, and now he reached up to the shelf behind him. The shelf where the EllaOne morning-after pills were. I held my breath.
‘Was that all?’ asked Egil, placing a packet in front of Moe.
‘Yes thanks.’ Moe paid, turned and came walking towards me.
I stared at the packet in his hand.
Paracetamol.
‘Roy Opgard,’ he said. Stopped in front of me with a broad smile. ‘God bless you.’
I didn’t know what to say. I kept an eye on his hands as he put the packet of headache pills into his coat pocket, but I can read the body language of people whose intention is to harm you, and Moe’s wasn’t talking that language now. My first reaction as he took my hand was to pull away; maybe his relaxed manner and the unhealthy and yet mild light shining in his eyes persuaded me not to. In an almost careful way he squeezed my hand between his own.
‘Thanks to you, Roy Opgard, I am back in the flock.’
‘Oh?’ was all I could say.
‘I was a prisoner of the devil, but you freed me. Me and my family. You thrashed the devil out of me, Roy Opgard.’
I turned and followed him with my eyes. Uncle Bernard said that now and then, when you couldn’t find the solution to a mechanical problem, the best thing to do was take a hammer and hit as hard as you could and the problem would be solved. Now and then. Maybe that was what had happened.
Moe got into his Nissan Datsun pickup and drove off.
‘Boss,’ said Egil behind me, ‘are you back?’
‘As you can see,’ I said, and turned towards him. ‘How are the sausages selling?’
It took him a moment to suspect that maybe I was only joking, and he laughed hesitantly.
* * *
—
At the workshop I opened the bag I had brought from Kristiansand. It contained certain car parts obtained during more than a week of searching through breakers’ yards and vehicle cemeteries. Most of these lay in a sparsely populated area west of the city where for a hundred years they had been worshipping everything American – and cars in particular – as intensely as they worshipped Jesus in their meeting houses.
‘Those parts there are no good,’ the last car breaker had said as he looked down at the rotten brake hoses and the frayed throttle cable I had unscrewed from two of his wrecks, a Chevy El Camino and a Cadillac Eldorado. Behind him hung a gaudy picture of a long-haired guy with a shepherd’s crook and a lot of sheep milling round him.
‘I guess that means I get them cheap,’ I said.
He closed one eye, gave me a price that made me realise you get Willumsens in other places too besides Os. I consoled myself with the thought that most of the money probably went to charity, handed over the hundreds and confirmed that I didn’t need any receipt.
I picked up the throttle cable and examined it. It wasn’t from a Cadillac DeVille, but it was so similar it would do. And sure enough, it was defective. Frayed so that, when fitted in the right way, it would catch when the driver put his foot down, and even if he took his foot off the pedal his speed would just keep on increasing. If he was a car mechanic he might perhaps realise what was happening, and if in addition to that he was quick and kept a cool head maybe turn off the ignition or put the car in neutral. But Carl wasn’t any of those things. He would, even supposing he had the time, simply try to brake.
I picked up the rotting, punctured brake hoses. I’d removed hoses like that before. Never fitted them. I put them down next to the throttle cable.
Any car mechanic examining the wreck afterwards would tell the police the parts hadn’t been sabotaged but showed signs of ordinary wear and tear, and that it was likely water had got in under the plastic collar on the accelerator cable.
I chucked the tools I would be needing into the bag, closed it and stood there, breathing heavily. It felt as though my chest was wrapping itself around my lungs.
I checked the clock. 10.15. I had good time.
According to Shannon, Carl was meeting the organisers of the party at the building site at two. After that they would be going down to Årtun to decorate the place. That would take at least two hours, probably three. Good. At the most I would need an hour to switch the parts.
And since there was no audit that gave me plenty of time.
Way too much time.
I crossed to the bed and lay down. Put my hand to the mattress where Shannon and I had lain. Looked at that licence plate from Barbados on the wall above the kitchen alcove. I’d done a bit of reading. There were over a hundred thousand vehicles on the island, a surprising number for such a small population. And the standard of living was high, the third highest in North America, they had money to spend. And everyone spoke English. It should definitely be possible to run a service station there. Or a repair shop.
I closed my eyes and turned the clock forward two years. I saw myself and Shannon on a beach with a toddler eighteen months old beneath a parasol. All three of us pale, Shannon and me with sunburnt legs. Redlegs.
I wound backwards and now we were just fourteen months into the future. The suitcases ready in the hall. A child wailing from the bedroom upstairs and Shannon’s comforting voice. Just details left now. Turn off the electricity and the water. Nail the shutters over the windows. Gathering up the last loose threads before leaving.
The loose threads.
I checked the time again.
It wasn’t important any more, but I didn’t like loose threads. Didn’t like rubbish in the pump area.
I should let it go. The other thing was what I had to concentrate on now. Keep your eyes on the prize, as Dad always said in his American English.
Rubbish in the pump area.
At eleven o’clock I stood up and went out.
* * *
—
‘Roy!’ said Stanley, rising to his feet behind the small desk in his surgery. Walked round and gave me a hug. ‘Did you have to wait long?’ he asked, with a nod towards the waiting room.
‘Only twenty minutes,’ I said. ‘Your receptionist slipped me in so I won’t take up much of your time.’
‘Sit down. Everything all right? How’s that finger?’
‘Everything’s fine. I’ve really only come to ask you something.’
‘Oh really?’
‘On New Year’s Eve, after I left for the village square, can you remember if Dan Krane left too? And if he had a car? And if maybe he didn’t show up at the square until a little later?’
Stanley shook his head.
‘What about Kurt Olsen?’
‘Why are you wondering about this, Roy?’
‘I’ll explain afterwards.’
‘OK. No, neither of them left. There was such a bloody wind and we were having such a good time that we carried on sitting there drinking and talking. Until we heard the fire engines.’
<
br /> I nodded slowly. So much for that theory.
‘The only ones who left before midnight were you, Simon and Grete.’
‘But none of us were driving.’
‘No, Grete was driving – she said she’d promised her parents she’d be with them when the clock struck twelve.’
‘I see. And what kind of car does she drive?’
Stanley laughed. ‘You know me, Roy. I can’t tell one make of car from another. I just know that it’s fairly new and it’s red. Yes, actually, it’s an Audi I think.’
I nodded even more slowly.
Saw in my mind’s eye that red Audi A1 turning up towards Nergard on New Year’s Eve. Where the only other thing besides Nergard and Opgard is the hotel site.
‘Speaking of new,’ Stanley exclaimed. ‘I completely forgot to offer my congratulations.’
‘Congratulations?’ Automatically I thought of that third place on the earnings list; but then realised, of course, that news from the world of service stations is really only for the specially interested.
‘You’re going to be an uncle,’ he said.
A couple of seconds, and then Stanley laughed even louder.
‘You really are brothers! Carl reacted in exactly the same way. Went white as a sheet.’
I wasn’t aware that I had turned pale, but now it felt as though my heart had stopped beating too. I pulled myself together.
‘You were the one who examined Shannon?’
‘How many other doctors do you see here?’ said Stanley, spreading his arms out wide.
‘So you told Carl he was going to be a father?’
Stanley wrinkled his brow. ‘No, I’m assuming it was Shannon who did that. But Carl and I met in the shop and I congratulated him then and mentioned a couple of things Shannon should look out for as her pregnancy advances. And he turned pale, just like you are now. Understandable really, when people come up to you like that and remind you you’re going to be a dad, and all that frightening responsibility overwhelms you again. Didn’t know the same thing happened with uncles, but it looks like it does.’ He laughed again.