Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

The plain-clothes policeman — who had introduced himself as a detective when they picked me up earlier — coughed and the stocky figure turned.

‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ said Imma Aluariz.

I felt like saying it was they who had come quickly but just nodded.

‘First I would like you to identify the body, Mister Daas.’ She stepped to one side.

I don’t know whether it’s the brain protecting itself or the brain in flight when it starts to follow quite irrelevant trains of thought in situations like that. Because what I thought at the sight of the white duvet cover and sheet against the pillowcase that was soaked in something red that had to be blood was that it was a very apt combination for San Fermín. The same way the steak knife sticking out on one side of Peter’s neck was an apt image of the bull with the handle of the matador’s sword sticking out between his shoulder blades.

‘It is my friend,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘It is Peter Coates.’

I could feel Aluariz’s eyes on me, but knew I had no need to act shocked because I was shocked. And yet I wasn’t.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

Aluariz’s gaze moved from me to the policeman in plain clothes. He nodded and said something in Basque.

‘What did he say?’ I asked.

‘That both girls say you have been with them since this morning,’ said Aluariz. She seemed to be weighing something up before she continued. ‘It looks as though your friend has committed suicide. According to the pathologist it must have been some time between ten and twelve o’clock. The landlady found him.’

‘I see,’ was all I said. ‘How do you know it was suicide?’

‘We fingerprinted the handle of the knife and the only print we found was identical with his own.’

Identical, I thought. And yet not his own. The knife was from Jake’s.

‘What’s interesting is that he looks very like the corpse in San Sebastián. Could almost be his twin, don’t you think? And if that’s the case, why didn’t you say anything?’

I shook my head. ‘I never heard anything about Peter having a twin brother, and actually I don’t think they are very similar. I mean, the body in San Sebastián was younger, you can see that for yourself. And the hair was longer and fairer. And it didn’t have that tattoo.’ I pointed to the faded M on the chest.

‘They could still be twins even if they don’t have the same tattoo.’

I shrugged. ‘I can understand why you think the two of them look alike. It’s not easy for me to tell one Basque person from another.’

She gave me a sharp look.

I shrugged.

She took out a notebook. ‘Can you think of any reason why your friend would want to take his own life?’

I shook my head.

‘Could it be a guilty conscience because he killed someone in San Sebastián?’ she asked.

‘Is that what you suspect?’

‘The rug the body was found in is from the rooms you shared. We found your DNA there.’

‘In that case I should be a suspect too.’

‘Killers — unless they’re mad — don’t get in touch with the police and provide them with conclusive evidence but no confession. And you are not mad, Mister Daas.’

Oh yes, I thought. I’m mad all right. And if I told you my version of what’s happened you would think so too. And in parallel universes maybe that was exactly what I was doing now, and in many of them — in an infinity of them — I would be locked up in a mental hospital.

‘I need to hear exactly what you know of Peter Coates’s movements from the time you arrived in San Sebastián,’ she said.

‘If you want a statement from me I must tell you, I’m very tired,’ I said. ‘And not completely sober either. Can we do this tomorrow?’

Aluariz exchanged looks with her plain-clothes colleague. His head bobbed about a bit, as though he were weighing it up. Then he nodded.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘We’ve no reason to detain you, you’re not a suspect in either of these cases. And since our prime suspect is now dead, there’s no rush. Ten o’clock at the police station here in San Sebastián, does that sound all right?’

‘Fine.’

The sun was shining and the reflection from the water blinded me as I took off the sunglasses and wiped away my tears.

From where I was sitting on the hill on the deserted point of land I could see the whole of the Zurriola beach. I thought of my best friend. And of the one who was swimming in the sea below me. The woman we both had to have at any cost. Maybe he would have left her. In some universes at least he would have done. Same goes for me. But that didn’t matter, not now and not in this universe, not in this story. So once I had dried my tears I went back to this story, to my story. I picked up the binoculars and located the pink bathing cap out there in the water. I couldn’t hear her screams but training the binoculars on the beach three hundred metres further in I could see the mother — as before — running around and alerting the sunbathers to her daughter’s cries for help. I turned the binoculars to the lifeguard’s raised seat. Just as before, Miriam and her mother had waited to give their performance until the lifeguard on duty had taken a trip to the booths at the back of the beach to use the toilet.

A surfer ran down to the water, lay flat on his board and began paddling out towards Miriam. But this time she’d swum further out and he wouldn’t make it before she disappeared. And now she ducked down below the surface and was lost to sight. I counted the seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Her lung capacity was really impressive — I’d been astonished when we ran through the whole operation the day before. The surfer reached the point at which he’d seen her disappear, slipped off his board and dived down. I moved the binoculars fifty — sixty — metres closer, to the shore directly below me, where the sea washed calmly over the parallel rows of stone that ran down from the deserted and uninviting water’s edge and out into the sea. She’d removed her bathing cap, and I could only just make out the head with the dark hair breaking the surface for a couple of seconds as she drew breath before vanishing beneath the waves again.

I lay back in the grass. Soon she would be here. Disguised as someone else. And yet the same person. And we would try to sneak out of the country and enter another reality. A fresh start, with fresh opportunities. I realised I was still counting, but that now I was counting down. Counting down what was left of my old life. A high, piercing sound reached my ears, too high for a grasshopper or a cricket. A solitary male cicada looking for a female, with a sound that could carry for miles. That’s a long way for such a small creature, I thought.

Soon, I could imagine I was already hearing her footsteps. I closed my eyes. And when I opened them again, I saw her. And for a fleeting instant the thought struck me: that I had been here, just like this, before.

Somewhere there‘s a harsh cry from a bird. Or maybe it’s some other kind of creature, Ken doesn’t know. He holds the test tube up against the white sun, pushes the tip of the needle down through the plastic cap and draws the clear, yellowish liquid up into the barrel. A drop of sweat finds a way down between his close-set eyebrows and he curses under his breath as the salt stings his eye.

The constant and already deafening droning of the insects seems just to get louder. He looks at his father, sitting with his back against a grey tree trunk, the skin almost blending with the bark. Light flickers across his face and his khaki shirt, as though he were sitting beneath a disco ball in one of Ken’s favourite London clubs. But he is actually sitting by the bank of a river in the east of Botswana and staring up into the lattice of trembling leaves that filter the sunlight through what Ken Abbott does not know is an acacia xanthophloea, a fever tree. Ken Abbott doesn’t know very much at all about the burning hot, green and nightmarish world around him. All he knows is that he has very little time to save the life of the person who means more to him than anyone else on earth.