Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Why doesn’t someone run up and get the boy?’ I asked the man who had shouted.

‘The gate’s locked.’

Others came running. The crowd doubled, trebled in size and I realised I must have arrived just after the fire had been discovered. The boy opened his mouth, but no sound came out. I should have realised at once, and maybe I did. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything; I could feel the tears welling up inside.

I ran to the gate and hammered on it. A small aperture opened and I was looking into a bearded face.

‘Fire on the sixth!’ I said.

‘We’re waiting for the fire brigade,’ the man answered, his voice suggesting a line already learned and rehearsed.

‘That’s going to be too late — someone has to rescue that boy.’

‘The place is on fire.’

‘Let me in,’ I said quietly, though everything in me wanted to scream.

The gate opened slightly. The man was tall and broad, with a head that looked as if it had been beaten down between his shoulders with a sledgehammer. He was wearing an ordinary driver’s uniform, a nondescript black suit. So when I pushed my way in and past him, it was because he allowed me to do so.

I sprinted up the stairs, the toxic air scorching my lungs as I ran, counting each floor. When I stopped on the sixth there were two doors. I grabbed the handle of the one on the left. It was locked, and I heard the furious barking of a dog within. Then I realised the balcony was on the right side of the front of the building and tried the handle of the second door.

To my surprise it opened and smoke came billowing out. Behind the black wall I glimpsed flames. I pulled a piece of my woollen coat up over my face and went in. I couldn’t see much, but it seemed to be a small apartment. I headed in the direction the balcony had to be and banged into a sofa. I shouted, but there was no reply. Coughed and headed on. Flames licked from an open fridge door and on the floor in front of it lay the twisted and charred remains of something. A bedside lamp?

As I say, I don’t believe in coincidences, and this was an orchestrated replay, arranged for my benefit alone. Yet I still had to do what I knew I was expected to do — I could see no alternative.

A sudden gust of wind briefly wafted the smoke away from the balcony door and I saw the boy. He was wearing a dirty blazer with a badge on it, a stained, threadbare T-shirt and trousers to match. He stared at me with wide-open eyes. His hair was fair, just like Benjamin’s, but not as thick.

I took two quick steps forward and wrapped my arms around the boy, lifted him up and felt the small, warm fingers grab the skin at the back of my neck. I raced towards the front door, coughing smoke. Found it after feeling my way along the wall, tried to locate the handle. Couldn’t find it. I kicked at the door, put my shoulder to it, but it wouldn’t budge. Where the hell was the door handle?

I got my answer when I heard the hissing from the fridge, like the sound of air escaping from a punctured hosepipe. Gas streamed out, igniting the flames and illuminating the whole apartment.

The door had no handle. No keyhole, nothing. Directed by: Gio Greco.

Without letting go of the boy I ran back to the open balcony door. I leaned over the wrought-iron railings on the shallow balcony.

‘Breathe,’ I said to the boy, who was still staring at me with his wide-open brown eyes. He did as I instructed, but I knew that no matter how far out I held him, we would both soon die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

I looked down at the crowd in the street below, the faces staring up open-mouthed. Some were shouting, but I heard nothing, their words were drowned by the raging of the flames behind us. Just as I didn’t hear the sirens of the approaching fire engines. Because there were none.

The man who had opened the gate for me, he wasn’t just wearing the same suit as the others at the Café Morte; his face also had the same cold, closed expression, as dead as his victims.

I looked to my right. There was an ordinary balcony there, but it was too far away, there was no chance of reaching it. No balconies to the left, but there was a small ledge leading to the nearest window in the neighbouring apartment.

There was no time to lose. I held the boy a little bit away from me and looked into his brown eyes.

‘We’re going there, so you’re going to have to sit on my back and hold on tight. Understand?’

The boy didn’t answer, just nodded.

I swung him over onto my back and he held around my neck and wrapped his legs around my stomach. I stepped over the railing, holding fast to the rail as I placed one foot on the ledge. It was so narrow there was room for only a small part of one shoe, but fortunately they were my thick winter shoes, stiff enough to provide some support. I let go of the railing with one hand and pressed it against the wall.

People down below were screaming up at us, but I was hardly aware of them, or of the height. Not that I’m not afraid of heights, because I am. If we fell we would die, no question. But since the brain knew that the alternative to balancing on the ledge was burning alive it did not hesitate. And because balancing requires more concentration than the summoning of desperate powers, the brain temporarily closed down the fear side since that served no useful function in the current situation. In my experience, both as a psychologist and as a professional killer, we human beings are surprisingly rational in that respect.

With infinite care I let go of the railing. I was standing with my chest and cheek pressed in against the rough plaster and felt myself in balance. It was as though the boy realised he had to remain quite still on my back.

There was no longer any shouting from the street below; the only sound was that of the flames that were now outside on the balcony. In a sort of slow shuffle I started to move carefully to my right along the small but hopefully solid ledge. Solid it wasn’t. To my alarm I saw it disintegrating in gel-like pieces beneath my feet. It was as though the pressure from the shoes created a chemical reaction in the ledge, and I could see now that it was a slightly different colour to the rest of the facade. Since I was unable to stand in the same place for more than a few seconds before the ledge began disintegrating I kept moving. We were already so far from the French balcony that retreat had become impossible.

When I was close enough to the window in the neighbouring apartment I carefully loosened my Burberry scarf with my left hand while holding on with my right to the protruding windowsill. I had been given the scarf by Judith as a fortieth birthday present, along with a card on which she had written that she liked me a lot, a joke referring to the strongest word I ever used to express devotion to her. If I could manage to wrap the scarf around my hand I could break the windowpane, but one end of it was trapped between the boy’s arm and my neck.

The boy gave a start and moved as I jerked the scarf free, and I lost my balance. With my right hand gripping round the windowsill and only my right foot on the ledge I swung out helplessly from the facade like a barn door on hinges, almost fell, and then at the last moment managed to grab hold of the window ledge with my other hand.

I looked down and saw the Burberry scarf gently drifting down towards the ground. The height. The hollow feeling in my stomach. Got to keep it out. I raised my bare right fist and punched the windowpane with all my might, trying to tell myself that by hitting so hard I was reducing the risk of cuts. The glass shattered in a shower of shards and I felt the pain race up my arm. It wasn’t from the cut but because my fist had hit something hard. I grabbed hold of whatever this hard thing was, leaned to one side and saw that my punch had landed on a metal grid. It was hinged on both sides and locked in the centre with a large padlock. Who puts wrought-iron bars on a sixth-floor window?