Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I should have taken the coffee table. Because I like this coffee table. I like the small dents on its surface, souvenirs of our wild parties, the paint splashes from the time I decided to paint everything in the living room green, and the one leg that was ever so slightly crooked from the first and only time we ever made love on it.

The investigating officer sits in an armchair facing me, and the notebook lies untouched on the table in front of him.

‘I read that she was found on this sofa,’ I say as I raise my coffee cup.

An unnecessary detail, of course. It was on all the front pages. The police couldn’t rule out suspicious circumstances, and her family name was enough to arouse media interest. According to the coroner’s report the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. At one time Simone took a course in goldsmithing with the idea of taking over her father’s chain of shops, but as so often before she soon got bored with it. The bottles of cyanide she had smuggled out of the workshop were still down in the cellar. For the thrill of it, she maintained. But since there was nothing to suggest the poison came from her own bottles and no indication of how she had ingested it, the police were unwilling to conclude without further investigation that it was suicide.

‘I know what you’re thinking, officer.’

I can feel the springs beneath the sofa cover against my thighs. An old rococo sofa, her style. Had he had her on this sofa, her new guy, the architect? He moved in just a few weeks after I moved out. For all I know he was screwing her on the sofa while I was still living in the house. The officer doesn’t ask me to explain what I mean when I say I know what they’re thinking, so I go ahead on my own initiative:

‘You’re thinking she wasn’t the type to take her own life. And you’re absolutely right. Don’t ask me how, officer, but I know she was murdered.’

He doesn’t appear to be all that interested in my observations.

‘And I also know that murder is bound to look bad for me as the scorned husband. It gives me a motive. I could have come to see her, I knew where she kept the poison, I could have slipped it into her coffee and then left. I imagine that’s why you’ve been to my place, to see if there’s a match between any of my clothes and the fibres you found here in Simone’s house.’

The officer doesn’t respond. I sigh.

‘But since neither the fibres nor the footprints or fingerprints are mine you have no definite proof against me. So some bright spark has suggested bringing me here to the villa to see how I deal with being back at the scene of the crime. A little bit of psychological warfare. Am I right?’

Still no response.

‘The reason you haven’t found anything is simple. I haven’t been here, officer. At least not this past year. And the housekeeper does a thorough job with her vacuum cleaner.’

I put down my coffee cup and take a Twist from the dish of chocolates. Coconut. Not my favourite, but perfectly acceptable.

‘It’s almost sad, officer. The way all traces of a person can be removed so quickly and so easily. As though one had never existed.’

The chocolate spins round four times when I pull on the ends of the wrapper. I remove the silver foil, fold it four times, run a fingernail over the folds and put it on the coffee table. Then I close my eyes and pop the chocolate into my mouth. Holy Communion. The absolution of sins.

Simone loved chocolates. Especially Twist. Every Saturday when I did the shopping at Kiwi I used to buy a big bag of them. It was one of our few routines. It was a sort of anchor in a life based on opportunism, whims, the occasional evening meal together and, as a rule, waking up in the same bed. We blamed our jobs, and I believed that everything would be different once we had a child. That would bring us together. A child. I remember how shaken she was the first time I brought it up.

I open my eyes again.

‘We were the perfect Twist couple, Simone and I,’ I say, and halfway expect the officer to raise one eyebrow and give me a puzzled look. ‘I’m not thinking of the dance but the chocolate,’ I explain. The officer evidently doesn’t have a sense of humour. ‘I like liquorice and nougat and I hate banana creams. As it happens she loved the banana creams. You know, the ones with the yellow-and-green wrapping. Oh yes, of course, you’ve already... If ever we had guests I had to take them all out before I put the dish out, so she could have them herself the next day.’

I think about adding a light laugh, but instead — and quite unexpectedly — the little anecdote gives rise to an emotional avalanche. I feel something swelling in my throat. I’ve no intention of saying anything at all but then I hear my own tormented whisper:

‘We loved each other, officer. We more than loved each other. We were the air each other breathed, we kept each other alive, do you understand? No, of course, why should you?’

By this time I’m almost angry. Here I sit, exposing my most private and painful thoughts to him, fighting back the tears, and the officer just sits there completely expressionless. He might at the very least offer a nod of commiseration or pretend to be taking a note.

‘Until she met me Simone’s life was meaningless and directionless, she was on the skids. On the surface everything seemed fine — the looks, the money, the so-called friends — but there was no substance, no direction, you understand? I call it the terror of things. Because things can be lost, and the more things you have the more afraid you are of losing them. She was drowning in her own affluence, she couldn’t breathe. I came along and gave her space. Gave her air.’

I stop. In front of me the officer’s face has started swimming.

‘Air. The opposite of cyanide, officer. Cyanide paralyses the cells in the respiratory organs, you can’t breathe and in a matter of seconds you choke to death. But I’m sure you know that?’

That’s better. Talk about something else. I swallow, pull myself together and continue.

‘This architect, Henrik Bakke, I don’t know how she met him. She always said she met him after I moved out, and at first I believed her. But friends have told me how naive I was, pointing out that the guy moved in almost immediately. Before my side of the bed was even cold, as one of my friends put it. And yet, officer — and I know this may sound strange — it’s actually a sort of comfort to know that it was her feelings for someone else that ruined everything for us. That what Simone and I had wasn’t the kind of thing that just burns itself out of its own accord. That it took love to conquer love.’

I cast a quick glance at the officer but look away when his eyes meet mine. I’m usually careful when it comes to talking about feelings, especially my own. But there’s something inside me now that has its own momentum and I can’t stop. Maybe don’t even want to stop.

‘I think I’m a normally jealous guy. Maybe Simone wasn’t a classic beauty, but she had an animal quality that made her beautiful in a dangerous way. She had a way of looking at you that could make you feel like the goldfish alone at home with the cat. But the men swarmed around her. Like crocodile birds around the mouth of the crocodile. She did something to their heads, she... well, you’ve seen her yourself. My black angel of death, I used to call her. I used to joke that she’d be the death of me, that one of her fanatical admirers would decide to do away with me. But deep down that didn’t frighten me as much as the thought that one day she’d fall for one of those insistent suitors of hers. Like I say, I’m a normally jealous man.’

The officer has slumped deeper into the armchair. Not surprising really; so far I’ve said nothing of interest to the investigation. But he shows no sign of wanting to stop me either.