by Jo Nesbo
And yet I stopped.
Stopped, looked at the scissors. Japanese steel. And Dad’s words about hara-kiri flitted through my brain. Because wasn’t I failing here? Wasn’t it me, and not Grete, who had to be removed from the body of society like a malignant tumour?
No. Both. Both of us must be punished. Burned.
I grabbed the old black flex attached to the hairdryer, opened the scissors, and cut. The sharp blades cut straight through the insulation and when the steel made contact with the copper the electric jolt almost caused me to let go. But I was prepared and managed to sustain an even pressure on the scissors without cutting completely through the flex.
‘What are you doing?’ Grete shrieked. ‘Those are Niigata 1000 scissors! And this is a vintage hairdryer from the 1950s—’
With my free hand I grabbed her hand and her mouth shut as the circuit closed and the current began to circulate. She tried to tear herself free, but I didn’t let go. I saw her body shake, the eyes roll over backwards as the sparks crackled and flashed inside the helmet. A continuous scream, at first thin and pleading, then wild and demanding, rose up from her throat. My chest was pounding, I knew there was a limit to how long the heart can withstand two hundred milliamperes, but I never fucking let go. Because Grete Smitt was where we deserved to be now, united in a circle of pain. And now I saw blue flames rising from the helmet. And even though it took all my concentration to hold on, I still noticed the smell of burning hair. I closed my eyes, squeezed with both hands, muttering speechless words, the way I had seen the preacher do when he was healing or saving souls at Årtun. Grete’s screams were deafening, so loud that I could only just hear the smoke alarm that began to howl.
Then I let go and opened my eyes.
Saw Grete tear off the helmet. Saw a mixture of melting rollers and burning hair before she rushed to the hair-washing basin, turned on the hand shower and started the work of extinguishing.
I walked over to the door. In the stairwell outside I heard tumbling footsteps on their way down. Seemed like the neuropath was taking a break. I turned and looked at Grete again. She was safe. Grey smoke drifted from what remained of her perm, which turned out to be not so permanent after all. Right now it looked like a blazing outdoor grill someone had emptied a bucket of water over.
I walked out into the corridor, waited until Grete’s father was far enough down the stairs to see my face properly, saw him say something, my name, perhaps, though drowned out by the howling from the smoke alarm. Then I left the salon.
* * *
—
An hour passed. The time was quarter past three.
I sat in the workshop and stared at the bag.
Kurt Olsen hadn’t arrived, arrested me and put an end to the whole thing.
There was no way out. Time to get started.
I grabbed the bag, walked out to the Volvo and drove up to Opgard.
67
I SLID OUT FROM BENEATH the Cadillac. Shannon stood looking down at me in that cold barn, shivering in her thin, black pullover, arms folded and a worried look on her face. I said nothing, just got to my feet and dusted off my overalls.
‘Well?’ she said impatiently.
‘It’s done,’ I said, and started working the jack to get the car back down to the ground.
Afterwards Shannon helped me to push the car out and over to the winter garden with its front pointing down the road towards Geitesvingen.
I looked at my watch. Quarter past four. A little later than I’d expected. I headed quickly back to the barn to fetch the tools and was putting them into the bag on the workbench when Shannon came up behind me and put her arms around me.
‘We’ve still got the option of pulling out,’ she said, and laid her cheek against my back.
‘Is that what you want?’
‘No.’ She stroked my chest. We hadn’t touched each other, hardly even looked at each other since I arrived. I’d started work on the Cadillac straight away to be certain I had time to swap the working parts for the defective ones before Carl returned from the meeting, but that wasn’t the only reason we hadn’t touched. There was something else. Suddenly we had become strangers. Murderers as shocked by each other as by ourselves. But that would pass. DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. And DO IT NOW. That was all that mattered.
‘Then we’ll stick to our plan,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘The dotterel is back,’ she said. ‘I saw it yesterday.’
‘Already?’ I said, turned and held her, framing that lovely face of hers with my rough hands and stubby fingers. ‘That’s good.’
‘No,’ she said, and shook her head with a sad smile. ‘It shouldn’t’ve come. It was lying in the snow outside the barn. It had frozen to death.’ A tear in that half-closed eye.
I pulled her close.
‘Tell me again why we’re doing this,’ she whispered.
‘We’re doing it because there are only two outcomes. Because I have taken what is his. Because we are both killers.’
She nodded. ‘But are we certain this is the only way?’
‘Everything else is too late for me and Carl now, I’ve explained that to you, Shannon.’
‘Yes,’ she snuffled into my shirtfront. ‘When this is over...’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When this is over.’
‘I think it’s a boy.’
I held her for some time. But then I heard the seconds ticking and chewing again, like a countdown, a countdown to the world losing its meaning. But that’s not what was going to happen. It wouldn’t end now, it would begin. New life. Meaning my new life.
I let go of her and put the overalls and Carl’s brake hoses and throttle cable in the bag. Shannon watched me.
‘What if it doesn’t work?’ she said.
‘It’s not supposed to work,’ I said, though of course I knew what she meant, and maybe she heard the irritation in my voice and wondered what lay behind it. Probably understood what lay behind it. Stress. Nerves. Fear. Regret? Did she feel regret? Definitely. But in Kristiansand, when we’d made the plan, we had talked about that too. That doubt would come sneaking and whisper to us, the way it whispers in the ears of bridal couples on their wedding day. Doubt that is like water, that always finds the hole in your ceiling, and was now dripping down on my head like the Chinese water torture. What Grete had said about there being only one person who could have set fire to the hotel. That single brake light on the Subaru that didn’t work. The car noticed by the Latvian near the building site on New Year’s Eve.
‘The plan will work,’ I said. ‘There’s hardly any brake fluid left in the system, and the car weighs two tons. Colossal speed. There’s only one possible result.’
‘But what if he realises before the corner?’
‘I’ve never seen Carl testing brakes before he needs them,’ I said calmly, repeating something I had said many times before. ‘The car is on flat ground. He accelerates, reaches the slope, takes his foot off the pedal, and because it’s so steep he doesn’t notice that the acceleration is also due to the fact that the throttle cable is stuck and making the heavy car go even faster. Two seconds later he is on the bend and realises that his speed is much higher than it usually is here. In panic he stamps down on the brake pedal. But there’s no response. Maybe he manages to pump the pedal down one more time, manages to wrench the steering wheel round, but he’s got no chance.’ I licked my lips, I had made the point, could have stopped there. But I went on twisting the knife. In me, in her. ‘His speed’s too high, the car’s too heavy, the turn too sharp, even if the surface was asphalt and not gravel it wouldn’t help. And then the car is in the air and he’s weightless. Commander on a spaceship with a brain running at warp speed that has time to ask itself how. Who. And why. And maybe has time to answer before he—’
‘Enough!’ screamed Shannon. She put her hands over her ears
and a shudder seemed to pass through her body.
‘What if...what if anyway he discovers there’s something wrong and doesn’t drive the car?’
‘Then he discovers something’s wrong. Naturally he’ll have the car checked and the mechanic will tell him the throttle cable is frayed, the brake hoses rotten, nothing more mysterious than that. And we have to make another plan, do it some other way. That’s all there is to it.’
‘And if the plan works, but the police are suspicious?’
‘They examine the wreck and discover the worn parts. We’ve been through this, Shannon. It’s a good plan, OK?’
With a sob Shannon threw herself at me.
I gently extricated myself from her embrace.
‘I’m going now,’ I said.
‘No!’ she sobbed. ‘Stay!’
‘I’ll be watching from the workshop,’ I said. ‘I can see Geitesvingen from there. Call me if anything goes wrong, OK?’
‘Roy!’ She shouted it as though this was the last time she would see me alive, as though I was drifting away from her on an open sea, like a couple of newly-weds on a sailing boat who had drunk themselves into a lovely champagne high but were now abruptly sober.
‘We’ll see each other later,’ I said. ‘Remember to call the emergency services immediately. Remember how it happened, how the car behaved, and describe it to the police exactly as it happened.’
She nodded, pulled herself together, straightened her dress. ‘What...what d’you think they’ll do?’
‘After that,’ I said. ‘I think they’ll put up that crash barrier.’
68
THE TIME WAS 18.02 AND it was just starting to get dark.
I sat by the window in the office with my binoculars trained on Geitesvingen. I had worked out in my head that when the Cadillac went over the edge it would be visible for almost exactly three-tenths of a second, so I’d need to blink quickly.
I had thought I would be less nervous once I was finished with my own bit and the rest was in Shannon’s hands, but it was the other way round. Sitting here idly now I had far too much time to think through everything that could go wrong. And I kept thinking of new things. Each one of them was more unlikely than the one before, but that didn’t greatly help my peace of mind.
The plan was that when it was time to leave for the building site and the cutting of the ribbon Shannon was to complain that she wasn’t feeling well and had to go upstairs and lie down, that Carl would have to go alone. That if he took the Cadillac and drove to the opening ceremony, she could take the Subaru to the party at Årtun if she felt better.
I looked at my watch again. 18.03. Three-tenths of a second. Raised the binoculars again. Swept over the Smitts’ window where the curtains remained in the same position as earlier in the day, found the mountain behind, then Geitesvingen. It might have already happened. It might already be over.
I heard the sound of a car pulling up in front of the workshop and turned the binoculars on it, but they were out of focus. I took the binoculars away from my eyes and saw that it was Kurt Olsen’s Land Rover.
The engine died and he climbed out. He couldn’t see me, because I had turned off the light in the room, and yet he looked directly at me, as though he knew I was sitting there. He just stood there, bow-legged, his thumbs hooked in his belt, like a cowboy calling me out to a duel. Then he walked towards the workshop door, disappeared from sight. A few moments later I heard the bell.
I sighed, stood up and opened the door.
‘Good evening, sheriff. What is it this time?’
‘Hello, Roy. Can I come in?’
‘Right now it’s—’
He pushed me to one side and walked into the workshop. Looked around as though he’d never been there before. Walked over to the shelves on which several things were standing. Fritz heavy-duty cleaner, for example.
‘I’m wondering what’s been going on in here, Roy.’
I froze. Had he finally worked it out? That it was here his father’s body had ended up? Vanished – quite literally – in Fritz’s heavy-duty cleaner?
But then I noticed that he was tapping his index finger on his temple and realised he meant what was going on inside my head.
‘...when you set fire to Grete Smitt.’
‘Is that what Grete says?’ I asked.
‘Not Grete, no. Her father. He saw you leaving the place while Grete was still smouldering, as he put it.’
‘And what does Grete say?’
‘What d’you think, Roy? That something went wrong with the hairdryer. An overload or something. That you helped her. But I don’t believe it, not for one fucking moment, because the flex was almost cut in half. So my question to you now is – and give this a good fucking think before you answer – what the hell did you threaten her with that’s made her lie?’
Kurt Olsen awaited a reply, alternately sucking on his moustache and puffing his cheeks out like a bullfrog.
‘Are you refusing to answer, Roy?’
‘No.’
‘Then what do you call this?’
‘Doing what you said. Having a bloody good think.’
I saw something click behind Kurt Olsen’s eyes and I knew he’d lost it. He took two steps towards me, pulled his right arm back and was about to hit out. I know it because I know what people who are about to hit out look like, like sharks whose eyes roll backwards as they bite. But he stopped, something stopped him. The thought of Roy Opgard at Årtun on a Saturday night. No broken jaws or noses, just nosebleeds and teeth knocked out, so nothing to bother Sigmund Olsen with. Roy Opgard, a man who never lost his head in a fight but in a cold and calculating way humiliated those who did. So instead of striking out, a warning forefinger poked up from Kurt Olsen’s clenched fist.
‘I know that Grete knows things. She knows things about you, Roy Opgard. What does she know?’ He took another step closer and I felt the spray of spittle on my face. ‘What does she know about Willum Willumsen?’
The phone rang in my pocket, but Kurt Olsen drowned it out.
‘You think I’m stupid? That I think the guy who killed Willumsen accidentally skidded on the ice right outside your doorway? That Willumsen, without a word to anyone, wrote off millions of kroner in debt? Because he thought he ought to?’
Was that Shannon? I had to see who had rung, I had to.
‘Come off it, Roy. As though Willum Willumsen ever wrote off a single krone anyone owed him.’
I fished out my phone. Looked at the display. Shit.
‘Yes, I know you and your brother were involved. Just like when my father disappeared. Because you’re a murderer, Roy Opgard. Are and always have been!’
I nodded to Kurt, and for a moment the torrent of words halted and he opened his eyes wide as though I’d just confirmed his accusations before realising it was a signal that I was going to take the call. Then he started up again.
‘If you hadn’t heard witnesses coming you would have killed Grete Smitt today. You would have...’
I half turned my back to Kurt Olsen, stuck a finger into one ear and pressed the phone against the other. ‘Yes, Carl.’
‘Roy? I need help!’
It was as though the lights went out and I was hurled back sixteen years in time.
Same place.
Same despair in my little brother’s voice.
Same crime about to be committed, only this time it was him who was going to be the victim.
But he was alive. And he needed help.
‘What is it?’ I managed to say as the sheriff stood bellowing his refrain behind me.
Carl hesitated. ‘Is that Kurt Olsen I can hear?’
‘Yes. What is it?’
‘The cutting of the ribbon is about to take place and it’s sort of the point to arrive in the Cadillac,’ he said. ‘But there’s so
mething wrong with it. Bound to be some minor thing, but can you get up here and see if you can fix the problem?’
‘I’ll be there directly,’ I said, ended the call and turned to Kurt Olsen.
‘Nice talking to you, but unless you’ve got a warrant for my arrest then I’m off.’
His jaw was still hanging open as I left.
* * *
*
A minute later I was driving along the highway in the Volvo. I had the bag of tools on the seat beside me, the lights from Olsen’s Land Rover in the mirror, and his departing promise to get both me and my brother still ringing in my ears. For a moment I wondered if he intended to pursue me all the way up to the farm, but when I took the turning for Nergard and Opgard he drove straight on.
Anyway, it wasn’t Olsen that worried me most.
Something wrong with the Cadillac? What the hell could that be? Could Carl have got into the car and noticed the brakes and steering wheel weren’t working properly before he started to drive? No, because in that case he must have had his suspicions about it. Or else someone had told him. Was that what had happened? Had Shannon been unable to go through with the plan? Had she cracked up and confessed the whole thing? Or even worse: had she changed sides and told Carl the truth? Or her version of the truth. Yes, that was it. She’d told him the murder plan was mine and mine alone, told him I knew that Carl had forged my signature on the deeds, told him I’d raped her, got her pregnant and threatened to kill her, the child and Carl if she said anything. Because I was no timid, frightened ring ouzel, I was Dad, a mountain lark, a bird of prey with a black bandit’s mask across his eyes. And then Shannon had told him what the two of them needed to do now. Lure me up to the farm and get rid of me the way me and Carl had got rid of Dad. Because of course she knew, she already knew the Opgard brothers were capable of murder, knew that she’d get what she wanted one way or the other.
I gasped for breath and managed to push these sick, unwelcome thoughts aside. I rounded a corner and a black tunnel opened up in front of me where no tunnel should have been. An impenetrable, dark stone wall it would have been hopeless to try to breach. And yet that was where the road led. Was this depression, the thing the old sheriff had talked to me about? Dad’s dark mind finally rising up in me, not falling like the night but rising from the valley depths? Maybe. And the remarkable thing was that with each hairpin bend I rounded, climbing ever higher and higher, my breathing grew easier.