Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I looked at you. Did I?

‘Are you sure you want to...?’

‘Yes, I want to hear,’ you said.

‘How long do you have?’

‘Ha ha.’

We ordered another round of drinks and I told my story.

When I was finished it was already growing light outside the window, because we were flying towards the sun, towards a new day.

And you wept again.

‘That’s so sad,’ you said, and laid your head against my shoulder.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Does it still hurt?’

‘Not all the time. I tell myself that since she didn’t want to live, then the choice she made was probably better.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘You believe it too, don’t you?’

‘Maybe,’ you said. ‘But I really don’t know. I’m like Hamlet, a doubter. Maybe the kingdom of death is even worse than the vale of tears.’

‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything. Just begin, and where I want to know more, I’ll ask.’

‘OK.’

You told your story. And the picture of the girl gradually revealed was even clearer than that of the person who sat leaned into me, her hand beneath my arm. At one point a pocket of turbulence shook the aircraft. It was like riding across a series of small, sharp waves and gave your voice a comic vibrato that made us both laugh.

‘We can make a run for it,’ I said when you had finished.

You looked at me. ‘How?’

‘You book into a single room at the Langdon. This evening you leave a note at Reception for the hotel manager. In it you tell him you’re going to drown yourself in the Thames. You walk down there this evening, to a place where no one can see you. You take off your shoes and leave them on the embankment. I come and pick you up in a hire car. We drive to France and take a plane from Paris to Cape Town.’

‘Passport,’ was all you said.

‘I can arrange that.’

‘You can?’ You continued to stare at me. ‘Just what kind of psychologist are you, exactly?’

‘I’m not a psychologist.’

‘You’re not?’

‘No.’

‘What are you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘You’re the man who’s going to kill me,’ you said. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You had the seat beside me booked even before I came to New York to sign the contract.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you really have fallen in love with me?’

‘Yes.’

You nodded slowly, holding on tightly to my arm as though you were afraid of falling.

‘How was it supposed to happen?’

‘In the passport queue. A needle. The active ingredient disappears completely or is camouflaged in the blood within an hour. The autopsy will indicate that you died of an ordinary heart attack. Heart attack has been the most common cause of death in your family, and the tests we did indicate that you are at risk of the same thing.’

You nodded. ‘If we run, will they come after you as well?’

‘Yes. There’s a lot of money involved, for all parties, including those of us who carry out the assignments. It means that they require us to sign a contract too, with a three-week deadline.’

‘A suicide contract?’

‘It allows them to kill us at any time, with no legal risk attached. It’s understood that if we are disloyal then they will activate the clause.’

‘But will they find us in Cape Town?’

‘They’ll pick up our trail, they’re expert at that, and that will lead them to Cape Town. But we won’t be there.’

‘Where will we be?’

‘Is it all right if I wait before telling you that? I promise you it’s a nice place. Sunshine, rain, not too cold, not too hot. And most people there understand English.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Same reason as you.’

‘But you’re not suicidal, you probably earn a fortune doing what you do, and now you’re prepared to risk your own life.’

I tried to smile. ‘What life?’

You looked around, leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. ‘What if you don’t enjoy our lovemaking?’

‘Then I’ll dump you in the Thames,’ I said.

You laughed and kissed me again. A little longer this time, lips a little wider apart.

‘You will enjoy it,’ you whispered in my ear.

‘Yes, I’m afraid I will,’ I said.

You slept there, with your head against my shoulder. I put your seat back and spread a blanket over you. Then I put my own seat back, turned off the overhead light and tried to sleep.

When we landed in London I had put your seatback in an upright position and fastened your seat belt. You looked like a little child, asleep on Christmas Eve, with that little smile on your lips. The stewardess came round and collected the same glasses of water that had been standing on the shared armrest between us since before we took off from JFK, when you stared weeping through the window and we were strangers.

I was standing in front of the customs officer in bay 6 when I saw people in high-visibility jackets with red crosses running towards the gates and pushing a stretcher. I looked at my watch. The powder I emptied into your glass before we took off from JFK worked slowly but it was reliable. You had been dead for almost two hours now, and the autopsy would indicate a heart attack and not much else. I felt like crying, as I did almost every time. At the same time I was happy. It was meaningful work. I would never forget you, you were special.

‘Please look at the camera,’ the customs officer said to me.

I had to blink away a few tears first.

‘Welcome to London,’ said the customs officer.

I glanced out at the propeller on the wing of the forty-seater ATR-72 plane. Beneath us, bathed in sea and sunshine, lay a sandy-coloured island. No visible vegetation, only yellowish-white chalk. Kalymnos.

The captain warned us we might be in for a rough landing. I closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat. Ever since I was a child I have known I was going to die in a fall. Or to be more precise, that I was going to fall from the sky into the sea and drown there. I can even recall the day on which this certainty came to me.

My father was one of the assistant directors in the family firm of which his older brother, Uncle Hector, was head. We children loved Uncle Hector because he always brought presents when he came to see us, and let us ride in his car, the only Rolls-Royce cabriolet in all Athens. My father usually returned from work after I had gone to bed, but this particular evening he was early. He looked worn out, and after tea he had a long, long telephone conversation with my grandfather in his study. I could hear that he was very angry. When I went to bed he sat on the edge of it and I asked him to tell me a story. He thought about it for a bit, then he told the tale of Icarus and his father. They lived in Athens, but they were on the island of Crete when his father, a wealthy and celebrated craftsman, made a pair of wings from feathers and wax with which he was able to fly through the sky. People were mightily impressed by this, and the father and his whole family were everywhere regarded with great respect. When the father gave the wings to Icarus, he urged his son to do exactly as he had done, and follow exactly the same route, and everything would be all right. But Icarus wanted to fly to new places, and to fly even higher than his father. And once he was airborne, intoxicated at finding himself so high above the ground as well as by the onlookers, he forgot that it wasn’t because of his supernatural ability to fly but because of the wings his father had given him. In his overweening self-confidence he flew higher than his father and came too close to the sun, and the sun melted the wax that held the wings in place. And with that Icarus fell into the sea. Where he drowned.