Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I screamed into the phone.

Greco looked down. Not at Judith, but at the sleeve of his jacket as he tried to wipe away the blood. Then he walked over towards the phone, and I didn’t stop screaming until his Guy Fawkes face filled the whole screen. He looked at me without saying anything, with a sort of mild solemnity, like a mourner. Was that what he was? Or was he acting the sympathy in a parody of the undertaker’s professional solemnity?

‘Tick-tock,’ said Greco. ‘Tick-tock.’ Then he broke the connection.

I tapped in the police emergency number and pressed Call. But of course I was too late, I no longer had a signal.

I collapsed onto the floor.

After a while I felt a hand on my head.

It was stroking me.

I looked up at Oscar.

He pointed to the wall, to the words he had written there.

It wil soon be beter.

Then he put his arms around me. It was so unexpected I didn’t have time to push him away. So I simply closed my eyes and held the boy. The tears came again, but I managed not to sob.

After a few moments I held him a little away from me.

‘I had a boy like you, Oscar. He died. That’s why I’m so sad. I don’t want you to die as well.’

Oscar nodded, as though to convey that he agreed with me, or understood me. I looked at him. At the dirty but fine blazer.

And then, as we carefully made our knotted rope of clothes and guts, I told him about Benjamin. The things he had liked (old things like big picture books, gramophone records with funny covers, Grandad’s toys, especially marbles; swimming; Daddy’s jokes), the things he didn’t like (fried fish, going to bed, having his hair cut; trousers that made him itch). Oscar nodded and shook his head as I went through the list. Mostly he nodded. I told him one of Benjamin’s favourite jokes and that made him laugh. Partly because it’s stupid not to laugh when there are only two of you, but mostly, I think, because he thought the joke was pretty funny. I told him how much I missed my boy and my Maria. How angry it made me. The boy just listened, responding now and then with facial expressions, and it occurred to me that now he had taken over my job as the mutely listening psychologist.

I asked him to write something about himself on the wall while I tightened all the knots and got our rope ready. He wrote in keywords.

Brescia. Grandad blazer factory. Nice house, swimming pool. Men with guns. Daddy Mummy dead. Run. Alone. Doghouse. Dog food. Football. Black car, man in white clothes.

I asked questions. Joined up the dots. He nodded. Large, shiny child’s eyes. I gave him a hug. That warm little chin nestling in the pit of my neck.

Looked at the dog’s head lying on the floor behind him. Dog’s eyes. Child’s eyes. Pig’s eyes. Tick-tock, tick-tock. I closed my eyes.

Opened them again.

‘Oscar,’ I said. ‘Get out the pen. We’re going to try something a bit weird.’

He took out the Montegrappa pen. The kind of beautiful thing they don’t make any more.

Once Olsen’s queen was off the board and the decision had been taken it was as though Murakami gave his opponent a short breathing space. He could afford it — Olsen was the one running out of time — and it looked as though Murakami, instead of bringing matters to a quick conclusion with a coup de grâce, preferred instead to take the opportunity to show off to his audience, the cat’s last sadistic moments of play with the mouse. The even-tempered and silent Olsen had completely abandoned his bloodied defence of the king and instead moved his black knight to the other end of the board, as though in denial of the grim reality of his situation, a general playing a round of golf as the bombs rain down around him.

‘Don’t be afraid, Oscar. You won’t fall.’

I spoke calmly. Established eye contact. My heart was beating hard, probably as hard as his was. The gut was fastened around his chest in a bowline knot. He’d taken off his outer clothes and we had attached them to the end of the line, and now the half-naked child’s body, still wearing his shoes, was dangling above the cobblestoned street below, his hands holding tight around the balcony railings.

‘Now I’m going to count to three,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. ‘And you let go on three? OK.’

Oscar stared at me, panic in his eyes. He nodded.

‘One, two... three.’

He let go. Brave boy. I stood with one foot braced against the wall by the window and felt his body-weight stretching the intestine downwards. It held. We’d tested it inside the apartment and I knew there was no reason it wouldn’t hold now, just because it was eighteen metres above ground. I’d wrapped the gut around my wrist twice in order to brake, but still I could feel it begin to slip. That was all right — the idea was to lower him down, only it mustn’t happen too fast. I would have to brake when I reached the join with the coat, and if that was too abrupt then the whole gut might snap.

Oscar slipped down and away from me. All the time we kept our eyes on each other.

At the junction with the coat I had to brake and saw how the gut stretched like an elastic band. I was certain it wouldn’t have held my eighty kilos, but the boy can’t have weighed more than twenty-five. I held my breath. The gut swayed and stretched. But it held. I continued paying out the rope, quickly, before it could change its mind. On reaching the last item of clothing, the boy’s blazer, I leaned out as far as I could to make the drop to the street as short as possible for Oscar, holding on to the sleeve with one hand and with the other around a railing.

‘One,’ I said loudly. ‘Two, three.’

I let go.

Oscar landed feet first, I heard his shoes hit the cobblestones. He fell over. Lay there a moment or two, as we had agreed on beforehand, to check that he was uninjured. And then he stood up and waved up at me.

I hauled up the rope and untied his clothes. Dropped them down to him, and he quickly put them on. I saw him checking the blazer pockets to see if everything was there; the pen, the money I had given him, and the key to my apartment. I knew it was a vain hope, but at least that was what it was: a hope.

It didn’t last long.

Two men in black drivers’ suits emerged from the gateway, one of them the big man with no neck. They started chasing Oscar and caught up with him before he reached the security tape. They carried him, jerking and struggling, over to an SUV that stood illegally parked in the pedestrian street.

I didn’t shout. Just watched in silence as the car disappeared.

I had done what I could. At least the boy wouldn’t die breathing in Greco’s hellish gas. He might even let Oscar go. Why not? Once the king has been checkmated, the other pieces can stay there untouched. And drivers — most of them at least — don’t kill just for the sake of it.

I went back inside the apartment, untied my own clothes from the gut and started to dress. The dog’s head looked up at me, one eye gouged, the other one whole.

Did I believe that? That Greco would take pity on Oscar?

No.

I looked at my watch. Twelve minutes to go before the gas came billowing out into the apartment. I sat on the floor and waited for the phone call.

Outside, it was growing dark.

Greco rang two minutes before time was up.

The phone was probably mounted on a tripod and the screen showed what appeared to be his room. Bricks, wood. Large white surfaces. Outside, on a large terrace, a Christmas tree with its lights lit in the evening dark. At the veranda door two armed guards, muscles bulging beneath tight-fitting black drivers’ suits. Greco sat on a white leather sofa, and beside him, legs dangling, was Oscar. His blazer was buttoned up wrong, the Montegrappa pen visible, clipped to the breast pocket. He looked frightened and exhausted from crying. On the coffee table in front of them was a chessboard that looked, from the position, as though it was nearing the endgame. Next to it lay the karambit and the remote control for the release of the mustard gas.