Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

He noticed my — probably badly acted — expression of puzzlement.

‘Julian had taken my phone,’ he said, sounding almost impatient when I apparently still failed to get it. ‘He found her number among my contacts, called her on my phone so she assumed it was me when she saw the caller ID. They arranged to meet and even after they met it didn’t occur to her that the person wasn’t me but Julian.’

‘Aha,’ I said.

‘I confronted him when he returned from his swim, and he admitted everything. I was furious, so I went off climbing with some others. We didn’t meet again until the evening, at that bar, and then Julian claimed that he’d called Helena, explained everything, that she’d forgiven him for tricking her and that they were in love with each other. I was furious, of course and... and yes, so we started arguing again.’

I nodded. There were a number of different ways of interpreting Franz’s honest account. It might be that the pressures of jealousy were so intense that the humiliating truth simply had to be told, even if it cast him in a suspicious light now that his brother had gone missing. If that was the case — and if he had killed his brother — the combined pressure of his guilt and his lack of self-control would produce the same result: he would confess.

Then you had the more intricate interpretation: that he guessed I would interpret his openness in precisely this fashion, that I would suppose he found the inner pressures irresistible, so that if, after these confessions, he did not crack up and admit the murder, I would be the more willing to believe in his innocence.

Finally, the most likely interpretation. That he was innocent and therefore had no need to consider the consequences of telling all.

A guitar riff. I recognised it immediately. ‘Black Dog’. Led Zeppelin.

Without rising from his seat Franz Schmid turned and took a phone from a pocket of the jacket hanging on the wall behind him. Studied the display as the riff went into a variation after the third repetition, the one where Bonham’s drums and Jimmy Page’s guitar just don’t go, and yet go together so perfectly. Trevor, a friend who had the room next to mine at Oxford, wrote a mathematical paper about the intricate rhythmic figures in ‘Black Dog’, about the paradox that was John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer, better known for his ability as a drinker and wrecker of hotel rooms than for his intelligence, in which he compared him to the semi-literate and apparently simple-minded chess genius in Stefan Zweig’s ‘Chess’. Was Franz Schmid that kind of drummer, that kind of chess player? Franz Schmid touched the display, the riff stopped, and he held the phone to his ear.

‘Yes?’ he said. Listened. ‘One moment.’ He held the phone out to me. I took it.

‘Inspector Balli,’ I said.

‘This is Arnold Schmid, uncle to Frank and Julian,’ said a guttural voice in that much-parodied German-accented English. ‘I am a lawyer. I would like to know on what grounds you are holding Franz.’

‘We are not holding him, Mr Schmid. He has expressed a willingness to assist us in the search for his brother, and we are taking advantage of that offer as long as it remains open.’

‘Put Franz back on the line.’

Franz listened for a while. Then he touched the screen and placed the phone on the table between us with his hand on top of it. I looked at it as he told me he was tired, he wanted to get back to the house now, but that we were to call him if anything turned up.

Like a question? I wondered. Or a body?

‘The phone,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if we take a look at it?’

‘I gave it to the policeman I was talking to. With the PIN code.’

‘I don’t mean your brother’s, I mean yours.’

‘Mine?’ The sinewy hand tightened like a claw around the black object on the table. ‘Er, will this take long?’

‘Not the actual phone,’ I said. ‘Of course, I realise you must have it with you under the present circumstances. So what I’m asking for is formal permission to access the call log and text messages that have been registered on your phone over the last ten days. All we need is your signature on a standard release form to acquire the information from the telephone company.’ I smiled as though it was a regrettable necessity. ‘It will help me to cross your name off the list of possible leads we need to follow.’

Franz Schmid looked at me. And in the light coming from the windows above I could see his pupils distend. Distension of the pupils, allowing more light to enter, can have a number of causes, such as fear, or lust. On this occasion it seemed to me to indicate only heightened concentration. As when a chess opponent makes an unexpected move.

It was as though I could feel the thoughts racing through his head.

He’d been prepared for us to want to check his phone, so he’d deleted the calls and text messages he didn’t want us to see. But maybe nothing got deleted at the telephone provider, he thought, or — shit! — how did it work? He could of course refuse. He could ring his uncle now and get confirmation that there was no difference under Greek, American or German law, he was not obliged to give the police anything at all so long as they had no legal right to demand it. But how would it look if he made things difficult? In that case I was hardly going to cross his name off the list, he was probably thinking. I saw what looked like the onset of panic in his eyes.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Where do I sign?’

His pupils were already contracting. His brain had scanned the messages. Nothing crucial there, probably. He hadn’t shown me his cards, but for one revelatory moment he had at least lost his poker face.

We left the room together and were on our way through the open-plan offices looking out for George when a dog, a friendly-looking golden retriever, slipped out from between two partitions and jumped up barking happily at Franz Schmid.

‘Well, hey there!’ he cried spontaneously, squatting to scratch the dog behind the ear in the practised way of people with a genuine love of animals, something which the animal instinctively seems to realise; it was probably the reason it had chosen Franz and not me. The big dog’s tail whirled like a rotor as it tried to lick Franz’s face.

‘Animals are better than people, don’t you think?’ he said as he looked up at me. His face was radiant; suddenly he looked like a different person to the man who had been sitting opposite me.

‘Odin!’ cried a sharp voice from between the walls of the partition, the same voice as had told George that a journalist had called. She emerged and grabbed the dog by the collar.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in Greek. ‘He knows he’s not allowed to do that.’

She looked to be about thirty. She was small and compact, athletic-looking in a uniform with the white ribbon of the tourist police. She raised her head. She was red around the eyes, and when she saw us her cheeks turned the same colour. Odin’s claws scraped against the floor covering as she dragged the whimpering dog back behind the partitions. I heard a sniffle.

‘I need help to print out a warrant to check the contents of a phone,’ I said, addressing the partition. ‘It’s on the home page of—’

Her voice interrupted me. ‘Just go to the printer at the end of the corridor, Inspector Balli.’

‘Well?’ said George Kostopoulos as I poked my head in between the partition walls around his desk.

‘The suspect is on a moped on his way back to Massouri,’ I said, handing him the sheet of paper with Franz Schmid’s signature. ‘And I’m afraid he suspects that we’re on to him and could do a runner.’

‘No danger of that. We’re on an island, and the forecast is for the wind to increase. Are you saying that you...?’