Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

One more thing. The power of imaginative projection is not the same as empathy. ‘That I understand doesn’t mean I care,’ as Homer says. Homer Simpson, that is. But in my case it is, unfortunately, one and the same thing. I suffer, suffer, with the jealous one. And that’s why I hate my job.

The wind pulled at the window sash, trying to open it. Wanting to show me something.

I fell asleep and dreamed of falling from a great height. And woke an hour later when the falling man hit the ground, so to speak.

I had mail on my phone. It contained a printout of Franz Schmid’s deleted SMSs and call logs. The night before his brother went missing he had, according to the log, called a certain Victoria Hässel eight times without reply. I checked the number and was able to confirm that it was the same Victoria I had briefly spoken to on Julian’s phone. But the feeling of someone hitting the ground from a great height, the distinct shiver, the sound of flesh against stone that you never, never forget, that didn’t come until I read the text message Franz had sent to a Greek number registered to Helena Ambrosia.

I have killed Julian.

Emporio was a tiny hamlet at the north end of Kalymnos where the main road simply came to a halt. The girl who came to my restaurant table reminded me of Monique. For a while, a few years, I saw Monique everywhere, in the features and eyes of every woman, in the smooth back of every girl, heard her in every word spoken to me by a stranger of the opposite sex. But with time the ghost had paled beneath the constant daylight of time. And after a few years I was able to get up and walk the streets of Athens and know it would leave me in peace. Until darkness fell again.

This girl was pretty too, although not of course as pretty. But in fact yes, she was. Slim, long-legged, with naturally graceful movements. Brown, soft eyes. But her complexion was spoiled by impurities, and she had no chin. What was it Monique lacked? I could no longer remember. Decency, maybe.

‘How can I be of service, sir?’

The slightly exaggerated courtesy of the phrase — which I had grown so used to hearing expressed with just a hint of ironic condescension from waiters in England — sounded touchingly honest in the mouth of this pure young Greek girl. She and I were the only ones in the charming little family restaurant.

‘Are you Helena Ambrosia?’

She blushed when she heard me speaking Greek and nodded in reply. I introduced myself and explained that I was there in connection with the missing Julian Schmid and saw the consternation that spread across her face as I told her what I knew of her association with Franz Schmid. At regular intervals she glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure no one came out from the kitchen and overheard us.

‘Yes yes, but what does this have to do with the one who’s missing?’ she whispered quickly, angry and flushed with shame.

‘You’ve been with them both.’

‘What? No!’ She got carried away and raised her voice, then lowered it once more to an angry whisper. ‘Who says so?’

‘Franz. When you met his twin brother Julian in the stone city Julian pretended he was Franz.’

‘Twin?’

‘Identical,’ I said.

The confusion was plain to see in her face. ‘But...’ I could see her running through the sequence of events in her head, see her confusion change to disbelief and change again to outrage.

‘I’ve... I’ve been with two brothers?’ she stammered.

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘How could I? If there really are two of them then they’re exactly alike.’ She pressed her hands to her temples as though to prevent her head exploding.

‘So Julian was lying when he told his brother he phoned you in the evening on the day after you met him in the stone city and explained everything to you, and said that you forgave him?’

‘I haven’t spoken to either one of them since then!’

‘What about that message you got from Franz. “I have killed Julian.” ’

She blinked and blinked. ‘I didn’t understand that message. Franz had told me he had a brother, but not that they were twins or that his name was Julian. When I read the text I thought maybe Julian was the name of a route he’d climbed, or a name he’d given to a cockroach in his room, something like that, that I was bound to get the explanation later. But we had just closed for the evening and I was very busy clearing up, so all I did was send a smiley in reply.’

‘I’ve read the texts you sent to Franz’s phone. All of them are fairly short answers to long messages. The text you sent the morning after you met Julian is the only one where you take the initiative, the only one where I notice, on your side, a certain... affection?’

She bit her lower lip. Nodded. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

‘So even though Julian lied about having told you he wasn’t Franz, it wasn’t until you met Julian that you fell in love?’

‘I...’ All the energy seemed to drain from her body and she slumped into a chair opposite me. ‘When I met... the one called Franz, I was very excited. And flattered, I guess. We met up at Palechora, where there are hardly ever any people, and certainly no one from this island who would know my family. It was very innocent, but the last time I let him kiss me goodnight. Even though I wasn’t in love, not really. So when he... that is, it must have been Julian, texted me and asked to see me, I said no. I had made up my mind to stop while the going was good. But he insisted in a way that... like he’d never done before. He was funny. Being self-deprecating So I agreed to a final, short meeting. And when we met at Palechora it was as though everything had changed. Him, me, the way we talked together, the way he held me. He was so much more relaxed and playful. And it was infectious. We laughed a lot more. And I thought it was because we had got to know each other better, that we were more relaxed.’

‘Did you and Julian have sex?’

‘We...’ She tensed and her face flushed. ‘Do I have to answer?’

‘You don’t have to answer anything at all, Helena, but the more I know, the easier it will be for me to solve the case.’

‘And find Julian?’

‘Yes.’

She closed her eyes. Looked as though she was concentrating hard. ‘Yes, yes, we did. And it was... very good. When I returned home that evening, I knew that I had been mistaken, that I really was in love and that I had to see him again. And now he’s...’

Helena buried her face in her hands. A sob came from behind the fingers. Fingers that were long and thin, like Monique’s, who used to hold them up and say they looked like spider’s legs.

I asked Helena a few more questions she answered honestly and straightforwardly.

She had seen neither Franz nor anyone pretending to be him after that last date at the fortress; she confirmed that she sent a text message to Franz’s number the morning after she’d been with Julian saying she hoped they could meet again soon but got no reply. Not until the evening when she received that short, enigmatic message ‘I have killed Julian’, to which she sent a smiley in reply. It was obvious she had not attempted to make any further contact, since she was the one who had sent the last message.

I nodded, mildly surprised to learn that the rules of the game remained unchanged since the days of my own youth and was able to confirm that the way she answered told me she had nothing to hide. Or more accurately, she was hiding nothing. She had the lover’s freedom from shame, in the belief that love is elevated above all else. Love really is the sweetest psychosis, but in her case it had now turned into the worst form of torture. It had been held out to her, and as quickly taken away.