Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

The figure down below had stopped and was looking up at us. I stood up, as though to make it clear this wasn’t an ambush. He remained where he was and appeared to be studying us. I guessed that he had seen that the person waving was his climbing companion Victoria and was wondering who the other person was. Maybe he recognised the suit. He was probably expecting me to pop up again after I had read the text message that said straight out he had killed Julian. He had had enough time to find an explanation. I was anticipating something along the lines of that he had intended to arouse Helena’s curiosity before telling her that it was a slight exaggeration, that in fact all he’d done was hit his brother on the head with a billiard ball. But now, seeing me with Victoria, it perhaps dawned on him that that wouldn’t be enough.

The figure was in motion again, heading downwards.

‘He probably thinks it’s too windy,’ said Victoria.

‘Yes,’ I said.

I saw him get into the hire car, saw the dust swirl up from the gravel track as the car disappeared. I sat down again and looked out over the sea. The white looked like frost roses on the windows in Oxford. Even up here you could taste the salt in the gusts of wind. Let him run, he wasn’t going anywhere.

I was still at the station when Franz Schmid rang just before midnight.

‘Where are you?’ I asked, crossed to the partition and signalled to George that I had him on the line. ‘You haven’t answered my calls.’

‘Signal’s weak,’ said Franz.

‘So I hear,’ I said.

I had called the public prosecutor in Athens who had issued an arrest warrant for Franz Schmid, but we hadn’t found Franz in his rented room, or on the beach, or in any of the restaurants, and no one knew where he was. George had only two patrol cars and four policemen at his disposal, and until the weather improved we wouldn’t be getting any reinforcements from the police on Kos, so I suggested we use base stations to locate Franz’s mobile phone. But as George explained, there were so few base stations on Kalymnos they wouldn’t do much to narrow down the search area.

‘I paid a visit to Helena’s restaurant,’ said Franz. ‘But her father was there and said I couldn’t see her. Does that have anything to do with you?’

‘Yes. I’ve told Helena and the family to keep away from you until this is over.’

‘I told her father that my intentions were honourable, that I want to marry Helena.’

‘We know that. He called us after you’d been there.’

‘Did he tell you he gave me a letter from Helena?’

‘He mentioned that too, yes.’

‘You want to hear what she says?’ Franz started to read without waiting for a reply: ‘ “Dear Franz. Maybe for everyone there is one person in this life who is meant just for us, and who we only meet just the one time. You and I were never meant for each other, Franz, but I pray to God that you haven’t killed Julian. Now that I know that he’s the one for me I ask you on bended knees: if it is within your power, save Julian. Helena.” You seem to have persuaded her that I am behind his disappearance, Balli. That I might have killed him. Do you realise that what you are doing is ruining my life? I love Helena more than I have ever loved anything, more than my own self. I just can’t imagine a life without her.’

I listened. Though the wind was crackling in his phone I could hear waves. Could be anywhere on the island, of course.

‘The best thing now would be for you to hand yourself in to us in Pothia, Franz. If you are innocent it would be in your own best interests.’

‘And if I’m guilty?’

‘Then it will still be in your own best interests to hand yourself in. No matter what, you can’t get away, you’re on an island.’

In the silence that followed I listened to the waves. They sounded different to the waves below my hotel room — but different in what way?

‘Julian isn’t innocent either,’ said Franz.

I exchanged a look with George. We had both heard it. Is, not was. But a clue like that isn’t reliable. I have heard several killers refer to their victims as though they were still alive, and perhaps they still are for them. Or more accurately: I know that a dead man can be the constant companion of his killer.

‘Julian lied. He claimed he’d been in touch with Helena earlier that evening using his own phone, told her everything, and that the two of them were now in love. He wanted me to give her up without a fight. I know, of course, that Julian is a liar and a womaniser, that he’ll stab you in the back to get what he wants, but this time he made me so angry. So angry, you have no idea how it feels...’

I didn’t respond.

‘Julian robbed me of the best thing I ever had,’ said Franz. ‘Because I haven’t had that, Mr Balli. He was always the one who got them. Don’t ask me why, we were born identical, but all the same he had something I didn’t. Something he picked up along the way, a crossroads where he was given light and I got darkness, and then we went our separate ways. And he had to have even her...’

The waves were breaking in the same brutal way as they did against the rocks outside my hotel. The sound was more long-drawn-out, that was the difference. The waves rolled. Franz Schmid was on a beach.

‘So I condemned him,’ he said. ‘But I’m a Californian, so I didn’t condemn him to death, but to life imprisonment. Isn’t that a suitable punishment for ruining a life? Isn’t that the punishment you would have handed out yourself, Balli? Yes? No? Or aren’t you an opponent of the death penalty?’

I didn’t reply. Noticed George was looking at me.

‘I’m letting Julian rot in his own little love-prison,’ said Franz. ‘And I’ve thrown the key away. Although life sentence... The kind of life he has now, that won’t last long.’

‘Where is he?’

‘What you said about me not being able to get away...’

‘Where is he, Franz?’

‘...that isn’t quite accurate. I’m about to fly out of here on flight nine nineteen, so farewell, Nikos Balli.’

‘Franz, tell us where — Franz? Franz!’

‘Did he hang up?’ asked George, who was on his feet.

I shook my head. Listened. Nothing but wind and waves now.

‘The airport is still closed?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Have you heard of flight nine nineteen?’

George Kostopoulos shook his head.

‘He’s alone on a beach,’ I said.

‘Kalymnos is full of beaches. And at night when it’s stormy you won’t find a single person on any of them.’

‘A long, shallow beach. It sounds as though the waves are breaking far out and rolling in for some distance.’

‘I’ll call Christine and ask her, she’s a surfer.’

The car that had been rented in Franz Schmid’s name was found next morning.

It was parked in a turning circle by a sandy beach midway between Pothia and Massouri. A trail of footprints, still visible despite the wind, led from the driver’s side directly into the sea. George and I stood in the gusting wind and watched the divers struggling against the breakers. At the southern end of the beach the waves washed up against sloping, slippery rocks which, further inland, reared up in a vertical wall, a yellow-brown limestone wall that reached all the way to the top where the airport was. Further along the beach, Christine with her golden retriever was trying to pick up a trail. The dog had been born with only one working eye, she had told me during a coffee break at the station, that’s why she named him Odin. And when I asked her why she had chosen Odin instead of something one-eyed from our own mythology, such as Polyphemus, she looked at me and said: ‘Odin is shorter.’