Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘No,’ said Ryan, turning the pistol in his hand and holding it out to Odd. ‘I want you to do it yourself.’

Odd, still seated, took the gun and looked down at it. Long lines of numbers — he was reminded of telephone numbers — were engraved along the black steel barrel. And now that he was safe he felt an even stranger sensation. A mild disappointment that the threat had gone as quickly as it had come.

‘Like that, you mean?’ asked Odd and placed the muzzle of the gun against his temple.

‘Exactly like that,’ said Ryan. His voice was still quavering, his eyes glazed in a way that made Odd wonder if he might perhaps be under the influence of some chemical substance.

‘You know you won’t get her back even if I’m gone?’ said Odd.

‘Yes.’

‘So why get rid of me? It’s not logical.’

‘I insist that you take your own life. All right?’

‘What if I refuse?’

‘Then you’ll have to kill me,’ said Ryan. His voice was no longer just hoarse, it was choked with tears.

Odd nodded slowly as he went through it: ‘So one of us has to go. Does that mean you can’t bear to live in a world in which I exist?’

‘Shoot one of us now and get this over with.’

‘Or do you want me to kill you so that when Esther finds out she’ll leave me and dream of you, the one person she can’t have back?’

‘Shut up and do it!’

‘And if I still refuse?’

‘Then I’ll kill you.’ Ryan reached inside his coat and pulled out a second black gun. The paint on it seemed strangely dull. He squeezed the grip so tightly Odd could hear the plastic crack. Ryan pointed the barrel at Odd, who raised the gun he was holding himself and pulled the trigger.

It happened quickly. Very quickly. So quickly that afterwards Odd Rimmen’s defence attorney would have (Conditional) been able to convince a jury that it was only the brain’s quicker amygdala, with its fight, flight or freeze response, that had had time to react. That the frontal lobe, the one that says to you hey, wait a sec, think this through, had never had time to engage.

Odd Rimmen got up from his chair, walked over to Ryan, looked down at him. At Esther’s former boyfriend. At this formerly living human being. At the bullet-hole on the right-hand side of the forehead. And at the toy pistol lying at his side.

Odd bent down and lifted it up. It weighed almost nothing and the butt was cracked.

He’d be able to explain to a jury. But would they believe him? That the dead man had given him his own, real gun and then threatened him with a harmless, broken toy? Maybe. Maybe not. Of course the pain of love can drive a man mad, but a trusted member of the British diplomatic service would hardly have a history of abnormal behavioural or psychiatric problems. No, a defence based on the claim that Ryan had deliberately solicited his own death as a sublime revenge would seem too far-fetched for the average male or female juror to take.

But then something else struck Odd: that reporting it would be a news sensation. And give birth to a thousand myths. Author kills rival in love drama. But this thought at least had time to be processed in the frontal lobe. And there, of course, dismissed.

He crossed to the door and looked out. An unfamiliar Peugeot was parked just outside the gate. The nearest neighbour was so far away that it was unlikely the shot from within the living room had carried. He returned to the corpse, searched the coat pockets and found car keys, a mobile phone, wallet, passport and a pair of sunglasses.

Odd spent the next few hours burying Ryan’s body in the garden. Ryan’s grave was directly under the largest apple tree, where Odd usually placed the table when he was working, or when he and Esther were eating. He didn’t choose the site because he was morbid but because the ground was already well trodden and no one would find a bare patch of grass there unusual. And on the few occasions he had seen dogs on their property it had been on the periphery of the garden, they never ventured that close to the house.

Light rain had started to fall, and by the time he was finished his clothes were wet and dirty. He showered, put his clothes in the washing machine, scrubbed the floor in the living room and waited for night to fall.

When it was dark enough he put on Ryan’s coat and sunglasses, his own gloves and a dark cap he found in one of Esther’s drawers. He stuffed a lightweight rain jacket into the coat pocket and went out.

In a strangely elated mood he drove Ryan’s Peugeot the six kilometres to the clifftop at Vellet. There were often people here during the daytime, especially at weekends, but seldom after dark, and Odd had never seen anyone there when it was raining. He left the car in the car park and walked the hundred metres up to the lookout point. Stood on the very edge of the cliff and looked down at the waves below as they smashed into foaming white surf. He took Ryan’s mobile phone from his pocket and dropped it over the edge. Watched it disappear soundlessly into the darkness. Then he pulled the rain jacket out of one coat pocket and made sure the car keys, passport and wallet were still in the other before folding the coat and placing it on the ground, clearly visible and with a stone on top to stop it blowing away.

Then he put on the rain jacket and headed towards home. Thoughts came and went in his head as he walked. Deep down had he always known that the gun Ryan was holding when he shot him was a toy? If so, why had he pulled the trigger anyway? Had his brain had time to consider the alternatives? What would have happened had he not shot him? What would Ryan’s next move have been? To attack him physically? So that Odd would still have had to shoot him, but it would have left him without the excuse of feeling that his life was threatened?

It was ten o’clock by the time Odd got back to the house and he made himself some coffee. Then he sat down at his computer and wrote. And wrote. He did not return to this world until gone midnight, when he heard the door open.

‘Hi,’ she said, and just stood there, sort of waiting.

‘Hi,’ he said, walked over to the woman he loved and kissed her.

‘Well, hello,’ she said softly as she put her hand against his crotch. ‘You have been missing me.’

The police made no attempt to hide the fact that they regarded Ryan Bloomberg’s disappearance as a suicide. Not just because all the finds and circumstantial evidence pointed in that direction but also because Ryan’s close friends and family spoke of his despair following the break-up with Esther, and of how he had voiced suicidal thoughts. The presumption of suicide was further strengthened by the fact that he had recently purchased a Heckler & Koch pistol, and had chosen to kill himself close to where Esther was living with her new love Odd Rimmen.

On the Sunday in question Esther had been in London and not returned home until late, but Odd Rimmen had been at the house and was able to tell police that he had seen a Peugeot parked by the gate outside the house, and that he thought he saw a man sitting inside it, and presumed that he was waiting for someone. This fitted with the police trace on Ryan Bloomberg’s mobile, they said. Signals from local base stations enabled them to see how Ryan/Ryan’s phone had started moving westward from Paris at first light in the morning, that it had been in the vicinity of Rimmer’s house for some hours before the last signal was received close to the clifftop at Vellet.

So police activity in connection with the disappearance was confined to a short and intense search, and no one was surprised — given the strong ocean currents in the area — that no body was found.

After some hesitation Esther decided not to go to the commemorative ceremony in London, fearing it might upset those of Ryan’s friends and relatives who blamed her for his death. She told the Bloomberg family of her decision, adding that she would pay her respects later.