Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘How about we resolve this situation here first?’

He loosened his grip on the rope, let it slip a few centimetres closer to the brake.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the resolution will lie in the story you tell.’

I swallowed. Looked down. A fall of sixty metres doesn’t take long. But you can get through quite a lot of thinking in the time it does take. Unfortunately you also have time to reach a speed of 123.5 kilometres an hour. Would I hit the water, just about survive the fall and drown? Or would I hit the rock and die an instantaneous and pain-free death? I had seen that one close up. The stillness and the absence of drama had been the most striking thing, even in the seconds after he hit the ground, before everybody began to scream and run around. It had turned cold, and yet I could feel the sweat running like molten wax. I had not planned to expose the fake Julian in this way, with my whole life quite literally in his hands. On the other hand it was logical. Indeed, in a way it made everything easier. The ultimatum would be clearer.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Are you ready?’

‘I’m ready.’

‘Once upon a time...’ I took a deep breath. ‘Once upon a time there was a man named Franz who was so jealous that he killed his twin brother Julian, so that he could have the lovely Helena all to himself. He took his brother down to a beach, shot him in the head and threw the body into the sea. But when Franz realised that Helena loved Julian, and only Julian, and that she didn’t want Franz, Franz arranged things in such a way that it looked as though it was him and not Julian who had ended up in the sea with a bullet through the head. Afterwards he chained himself up in a cellar, and when he was found he pretended to be Julian, and to have been there ever since Julian had been reported missing. Everyone believed him, everyone believed he was Julian, and so Franz did get his Helena, and they all lived happily ever after. Satisfied?’

He shook his head but still held on to the rope. ‘You’re not a born storyteller, Nikos.’

‘True.’

‘You have, for example, no proof.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘With proof you wouldn’t have come here alone, and I would have been arrested a long time ago. And I happen to know that you’ve left the police force. These days you spend your time sitting in the National Library reading books, am I right?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I use the Gennadius Library.’

‘So then what’s this visit all about? Is this the old man come to pursue the case that won’t give him any peace because he no longer feels certain he discovered the truth?’

‘It’s true I’m not at peace,’ I said. ‘Though it’s not about this case. But it is not true that I’m here in search of proof, because I already have proof.’

‘You’re lying.’ The knuckles of the hand holding the rope whitened.

‘No,’ I said. ‘When the DNA from the body in the sea matched what we got from Franz during the interrogation, everybody thought that wrapped things up. But of course there was one more possibility. Because identical twins come from the same egg and share a genetic heritage, they also have the same DNA profile. So in theory the body we found could just as well have been Julian as Franz.’

‘So what? Just as well is not the same as proof that it wasn’t Franz.’

‘Correct. I didn’t get my proof until I received the fingerprints that you, Franz, left on the glass you drank from during our conversation at the police station in Pothia. I compared them with the prints I had at home in Athens.’

‘Athens?’

‘To be precise, on a box on a shelf above my bed. On the stone you gave me at the hospital. Yes, paradox is Greek, and the paradox here is that even though twins have identical DNA profiles, their fingerprints are not identical.’

‘That’s not true. We compared fingerprints, and they are the same.’

‘Almost the same.’

‘We have the same DNA, so how is that possible?’

‘Because fingerprints are not decided one hundred per cent by genetics. They’re also affected by your surroundings in the womb. The position one foetus lies in in relation to the other. The difference in the length of the umbilical cord which, in turn, creates a difference in the bloodstream and the access to nourishment which, again, determines how quickly the fingers grow. By the time your fingerprints are fully formed, which is at some point between week thirteen and week nineteen of the pregnancy, small differences have arisen which are detectable on close examination. I gave them a close examination. And guess what? The fingerprints on the stone I got from you at the hospital when you were claiming to be Julian, and on the glass that you, Franz, drank from at the police station, were identical. In a nutshell, the two people were...’

‘...one and the same.’

‘Yes, Franz.’

Maybe it was just the onset of darkness, maybe just our always biased gaze that adjusts its bias on the basis of every new item of information received, but it seemed to me I could see Franz emerge in the person beneath me, see him throw away his mask and step out of the role he had been playing all these years.

‘And you are the only one who knows this?’ he said quietly.

‘That’s correct.’

From out at sea came the single, pained cry of a gull.

It really was true, the work I had done in reconstructing the crime and the identity switch had been done in isolation, and with no other tools but these fingerprints, my halting logic, and my vivid powers of imagination.

He killed Julian the night they drove to the hospital, probably while they were still quarrelling and in a moment of jealous rage. I presumed it was true that in an effort to get Franz to give up Helena, Julian claimed to have been in touch with her that same day, revealed that he was the twin brother and had tricked her, and that Helena nevertheless said that it was him, Julian, that she wanted. Julian lied to Franz; Helena didn’t know she had been with both twins until I told her. And yet Julian knew he was right, that she would prefer him, because when it came to capturing a woman’s heart he would always win out over his gloomy brother. I guessed that Franz, maddened by jealousy, pulled out the Luger and shot his brother there and then. And that in that same blind rage, with no thought for the consequences, sent that text message to Helena saying he had killed Julian, the one he thought she had promised herself to. But then Franz regained his composure. And it became clear to him that, if he played his cards right, Helena might still be his. He found a spot where he could drive all the way down to the sea, undressed the body and threw it into the sea. After that Franz drove back to Massouri, returned Julian’s clothes, phone and other personal items to the room, and reported him missing the following morning, saying he had gone out before daybreak for a swim. Even though it was credible that Julian had drowned, Franz knew that if we found out about their quarrel the previous evening, it might make us take a closer look at him, so he deleted the message he had sent to Helena. He also deleted the log that showed he had made eight attempts to call Victoria, who had seen him return home alone that night. Probably he wanted to talk to Victoria to explain it away, and to persuade her not to complicate matters by telling the police. But after talking to me at the police station in Pothia he realised that we could trace the log and the text messages through the phone company. He also learned that I had spoken with Helena, and while on his way to the rock face at Odysseus he had seen me talking to Victoria. Franz realised that the net was closing in on him.

And was desperate.

The only card he still held was that Julian’s body had not yet been found. And that he and Julian had the same DNA, so that if Julian’s body was found, it might be possible to fool us into believing it was Franz.