Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

According to George, Odin was a good tracker. Christine had taken him into Franz and Julian’s room so he would know which scent to follow, and when we reached the beach he ran straight over to the car and stood there barking until George managed to get the door open. Inside the car we found Franz Schmid’s clothes: shoes, trousers, underwear, the rainbow-patterned St Pauli cap and a jacket with his phone and wallet.

‘So he was right,’ said George. ‘He did manage to get away.’

‘Yes,’ I said as my gaze glided over the foaming breakers. George had got hold of two divers from the local club. One of them was signalling with his hand to the other and trying to say something, but the sound of the waves drowned him out.

‘You think this is where he dumped Julian’s body?’ asked George.

‘Maybe. If he killed him.’

‘You’re thinking about what he said about imprisoning his brother for life instead?’

‘Maybe he did. Or maybe not. Maybe he exposed Julian to a situation in which he knew that Julian would not just die but suffer first.’

‘For example?’

‘I don’t know. The rage of jealousy is like love. It’s a madness that can make people do things they would normally never dream of doing.’

My gaze switched to the rocks, sloping and polished smooth by the waves. Franz could have waded over there, come ashore again someplace that left no footprints and got away. On flight nine nineteen? What did that mean? To get up to the airport he would have had to either return to the road or climb straight up.

Without a rope.

Free solo.

I couldn’t help it; I closed my eyes and saw Trevor fall.

Opened them again quickly so as not to see him hit the ground.

Concentrated.

Franz Schmid had perhaps stood here too, seen and thought the same as me. That the airport is closed. That every exit route is blocked. Apart from this one. The last one. But it’s difficult to just swim out to sea and drown yourself. It takes time, it takes willpower not to submit to the survival instinct and turn.

‘We found this in the shallows.’

George and I turned. It was one of the divers. He was holding up a gun.

George took it, turned it over a couple of times. ‘Looks old,’ he said, prodding at the underside where the magazine was.

‘Luger, Second World War,’ I said and took the gun from him. There was no rust on it, and the way the water pearled on it showed that it was still well oiled, so it couldn’t have been lying long in the sea. I pressed the release catch on the side of the trigger guard, removed the magazine and handed it to George. ‘Eight if it’s full.’

George squeezed out the bullets. ‘Seven,’ he said.

I nodded. Felt an infinite sadness come over me. The wind was forecast to ease by tomorrow evening, and the sun to go on shining, but inside me it had clouded over. I could usually tell whether it was just passing, or a new period of darkness was on its way. But right at that moment I didn’t know.

‘Flight nine nineteen,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘That’s the calibre of those bullets you’re holding in your hand.’

When I rang my chief in the Homicide Department with my report, he told me that the press in Athens were on the case, a number of journalists and photographers were in Kos and just waiting for the weather to fair up enough for a boat to take them over.

I headed back to my hotel in Massouri and ordered a bottle of ouzo for my room. I drink any brand apart from the now unfortunately commercialised and watered-down Ouzo 12, but I was pleased when I saw they actually had my favourite Pitsiladi.

As I drank I reflected over how strange it had all been. A murder case with two dead, but no bodies. No invasive press, no harassed chief and no stressed investigating groups. No vague lab technicians and pathologists, no hysterical next of kin. Only a storm and silence. I hoped that storm could last forever.

After I’d drunk almost half the bottle I went down to the bar so as not to drink the rest. I saw Victoria Hässel sitting at a table with some people from the other climbing group I had seen the previous day. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer.

‘Excuse me?’

British accent. I half turned. A man, smiling, check shirt, white hair but in good shape for his age, around sixty. I’d seen several like him here, English climbers of the old school. They grew up climbing trad, meaning routes without bolts permanently fixed to the mountain, where they had to provide for their own safety in cracks and holes. On gritstone in the Lake District, where the routes were graded not only by how hard they were to climb but also how great the danger to life was. Where it rained, or was too cold, or was so hot that the eggs of a particularly bloodthirsty type of mosquito hatched and ate you alive. Englishmen loved it.

‘Do you remember me?’ said the man. ‘We were in the same rope team near Sheffield. Must have been in ’85 or ’86.’

I shook my head.

‘Come on,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I can’t recall your name but I remember you were climbing with Trevor Biggs, he’s a local lad. And that French girl who just flew up those slopes the rest of us had such a struggle with.’ His face suddenly became serious as if something had occurred to him. ‘Bloody back luck about Trevor, by the way.’

‘I think you’re getting me mixed up with someone else, sir.’

For a moment the Englishman stood there, open-mouthed and with an expression of mild surprise on his face. I could see his brain feverishly scanning his book of memories in search of his mistake. Then, as though he had found it, he nodded slowly. ‘My apologies.’

I turned back to the bar and in the mirror saw that he sat down with his climbing companions and their climbing wives. Said something and nodded in my direction. They resumed their conversation and they passed around the local guidebook with the climbing routes marked. It looked like a good life.

My gaze moved on to one of the other tables and met Victoria Hässel’s.

She sat there dressed in the climber’s evening outfit: clean climbing clothes. Her hair, which had earlier in the day been hidden under her cap, was blonde, long and flowing. She sat turned towards me, looked as though she had temporarily absented herself from the conversation. She held my gaze. I don’t know if she was waiting for something. A signal. Information about the Schmid case. Or just a nod of recognition.

I saw that she was on the point of standing up, but I was ahead of her and had already placed my euros on the bar. I slipped off the bar stool and left. Back in my room I locked the door.

In the middle of the night I was awoken by a loud bang, like a gunshot. I sat up in bed, my heart beating furiously. It was the window sash; a gust of wind must finally have torn it loose. I lay awake and thought of Monique. Monique and Trevor. I didn’t finally get back to sleep until daylight.

‘The forecast is for the wind to drop,’ said George and poured a coffee for me. ‘You’ll probably be able to make it over to Kos tomorrow.’

I nodded and looked out of the station window. Harbour life seemed strangely unaffected by the fact that the island was to all intents and purposes cut off for the third day running. But that’s how it is, life goes on, even — or perhaps especially — when you think it unliveable.

Christine and one of the constables entered and joined us.

‘You were right, George,’ she said. ‘Schmid bought the Luger from Marinetti. He recognised Franz from the photo and says he was in the shop in the afternoon the day before Julian was reported missing. He got the impression Franz was a collector. He bought the Luger and a pair of Italian handcuffs left over from the war. Marinetti swears, of course, that he thought the Luger had been spiked.’