Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

In the afternoon, when I arrived at the hospital in Pothia, Helena was by the bedside and holding the hand of a Julian who was already looking better. Helena seemed to assume it was my razor-sharp intelligence that was responsible for his being saved. I didn’t mention that it was probably my lack of imagination that meant he almost died.

I asked for a few words alone with Julian, and Helena grabbed my hand and kissed it before she left us.

Julian’s account of the sequence of events was pretty much what I had been expecting.

On the way to hospital after the fight in the bar the quarrel with Franz flared up again. ‘I lied,’ said Julian. ‘I said I had talked to Helena and told her everything, and she forgave me and told me she loved me. That he should just give up and forget about her as soon as he could. Yes, it was a lie, but I thought I would call Helena afterwards, and the result would in any case turn out to be the same. But Franz screamed that it was a lie, pulled in at the side of the road, opened the glove compartment and took out the pistol he had bought in Pothia.’

‘Had you seen him like that before?’

‘I have seen him furious, and we have fought, but I have never seen him like that, never so... crazy.’ Julian’s eyes were bright. ‘But I don’t blame him. I had fallen in love with that girl because he had told me about her, shown me pictures, praised her and built her up to the skies. And I stole her. There’s no other way to put it. I betrayed them both, him and her. I would have done the same to him. No, I would have shot, I would have killed. Instead he forced me to drive to Chora and from there up to Palechora with a gun in my back. He had obviously had a look round when he was up here and found that cellar. And he chained me up there with the handcuffs he’d bought in Pothia.’

‘And then he left you to die?’

‘He said I could stay there until I rotted, then he left. Of course, I was terrified, but at that particular point in time I was more afraid for Helena than myself. Because he always came back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When we used to fight as kids he was always just that little bit stronger than me. Sometimes he would lock me up. In a room, or a cupboard. Once it was a chest. Said I would die there. But he always came back. He was so sorry, though of course he never showed it. And I was certain the same thing would happen this time too. Right up until about two or three days ago. I suddenly woke up and...’ He looked at me. ‘Well, I’m not the type that believes in spiritism, but from what me and Franz have experienced I’d be curious to find out what we know about telepathic communion between twins in a hundred years’ time. Whatever, I simply knew something had happened to Franz. And when the hours and days went by and he didn’t come back, I began to think I really was going to die there. You saved me, Mr Balli. I’ll be forever in your debt.’

Julian extended a hand from under the duvet and took mine. I felt the stone I had given him pressed into my palm. ‘In case you too should ever feel pain,’ he said.

In the hospital corridor on the way out Helena stopped me and asked if she might invite me to dinner at their restaurant. I thanked her but explained that I was taking the last evening flight out of Kos.

It left me with a couple of hours left to kill before the ferry so I accompanied Christine to Julian’s room in Massouri to fetch his clothes.

I stood in the street by the police car and watched the lovely sunset behind Telendos while Christine was inside the house. An elderly woman in a flowery dress carrying bags of shopping limped by and stopped.

‘I hear you found one of the twins,’ she said. ‘The nice one.’

‘Nice?’

‘I do the cleaning and make the beds every morning at nine.’ She nodded towards the house. ‘Most of them have gone off climbing by then, but sometimes I woke the two of them. One was always grumpy, the other one just smiled and laughed and said I could come back and do it tomorrow. Julian, that was the nice one’s name. I never found out what the other one was called.’

‘Franz.’

‘Franz.’ She savoured the name.

‘It’s German,’ I said.

‘Well, apart from that Julian I don’t like Germans. They screwed us during the war and they’re screwing us again now. Treat us like we’re bad tenants in their Europe who haven’t paid the rent in a while.’

‘Not a bad image,’ I said, thinking as much of my own native country as of Germany.

‘They act like they’ve changed,’ she scoffed. ‘A woman leader and all that stuff. But they’re Nazis and they always will be.’ She shook her head. ‘One morning I saw handcuffs on the bedside table. No idea what that Franz used them for, something fascist I expect. Is he dead?’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Probably. Almost definitely.’

‘Almost?’ She looked at me, still a trace of that contempt for all Germans in her face. ‘Isn’t it the police’s job to know?’

‘Yes it is,’ I said. ‘And we know nothing.’

She waddled away, and I heard laughter from the other side of the road.

I turned and there, sitting on a veranda beneath a cypress tree, sat Victoria with her feet on the railings and a cigarette in the corner of her mouth.

‘You get screwed?’ she said with a laugh, puffing out smoke into the still dusk.

‘You understand Greek?’

‘No, but I understand body language.’ With a slow, languorous gesture she tapped ash from her cigarette. ‘Don’t you?’

I thought of the night. I sobered up in the course of those hours. It was good. We were good to each other. A bit mean, but mostly good. ‘Yes I do, I do.’

‘See you later in the bar?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m flying to Athens tonight.’

‘Like a visit?’

From the look on her face I realised the question had just popped out. And she understood — or misunderstood — my hesitation in replying.

‘Forget it.’ She laughed again, and drew hard on her cigarette. ‘You’re married with kids and a dog in Athens. You don’t want trouble and you won’t get any.’

I realised she hadn’t asked anything about my life now, and that I had spoken about the only thing that mattered to me: the past.

‘I’m not all that afraid of trouble,’ I said. ‘But I’m old. Whereas you’ve got your whole life in front of you.’

‘Yep, I’m a better deal for you than you would have been for me.’

‘I would have ended up ahead,’ I said and smiled.

‘Adio again, Nikos.’

‘Adio again, Monique.’

Not until I got into the car did I realise my slip of the tongue.

It was gone midnight by the time I let myself into my flat.

‘I’m home,’ I called out into the dark, dropped my bag onto the floor, went to the kitchen section of the big, open-plan room with its glass walls and its views of Kolonaki, one of the more fashionable districts of central Athens.

Took out the little box I had in my pocket, opened it and looked at the grey stone lying inside, like a jewel in a goldsmith’s box.

I got a glass, opened the fridge, and the light fell across the parquet floor and reached across to the bookshelves and the heavy teak writing desk with the big Apple screen.

Inherited money.

I filled the glass with the freshly pressed juice my housekeeper makes, crossed to the computer and touched the keyboard. A big picture of three young people in front of a rock face in the Lake District appeared.

I clicked on the icons and checked the websites of the largest newspapers. All of them had extensive covering of developments in the Kalymnos murder case. My name didn’t appear in any of them. Good.

I kissed my index finger and placed it on the cheek of the girl between the two boys on the screen and said aloud that now I was off to bed.