Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘Well, at least I know where he is,’ sighed Colin over breakfast.

Three months later Colin told me he’d heard from the police that the apartment had been completely destroyed in one of the many fires in Downtown, that they hadn’t found any bodies inside but that there was no sign of Brad either. Colin had then reported Brad missing and tried to pressurise the police into searching for him, but by that point the police had stopped following up anything other than street violence, arson and murder. We heard from the east coast that in some cities the police had had to barricade themselves inside their police stations as these had become a favourite target of the gangs because of the large numbers of weapons stored there. There were also rumours that in some states the police had stopped turning up for work and were instead operating as highway robbers in order to survive.

After the government had finally declared a state of emergency throughout the whole country and Colin had moved into the abandoned prison on Rat Island with his wife and Beth he told me that he had heard about Brad from other sources. Apparently Colin Lowes’s son was now the leader of a gang of looters who called themselves Chaos.

‘Why the looting?’ said Colin with a shake of the head. ‘If he just came to me he’d have everything he needs.’

‘Maybe this is what he needs,’ I said. ‘To show you he can manage on his own. Not only survive without your help in times like these but be a leader. Like you.’

‘Hm,’ said Colin and looked at me. ‘So you don’t think it’s simply because he likes it?’

‘Likes what?’

‘The chaos. Looting. He likes... destruction.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

And it was true.

As the world crumbled around us, Heidi, Amy and I tried to lead as normal a life as possible in Downtown.

Heidi and I had met when we were both law students and it had all happened so smoothly. It took us just two evenings to realise we were meant for each other, and two years to know that we had been right. So there was nothing to discuss. We got married, and Amy arrived three years later. We wanted more children, but it took another fourteen years before little Sam — now nearly four — appeared.

When the virus came along and the city was put on lockdown Heidi’s firm went bankrupt. She knew it would be tough to find work in a market in which unemployment had risen from five to thirty per cent, and the economic recession had entered what the experts call critical mass, a state in which a descending spiral had become its own accelerant. So following the pandemic, when people were once again able to move about freely without fear of infection, Heidi started offering legal assistance to the poor. She worked from our kitchen and of course was only rarely paid for the work she did. Luckily money wasn’t the biggest problem for our family. Directly before the onset of the pandemic the board of Lowe Inc. had accepted an offer from the country’s largest IT company. For me and the other internal shareholders it meant, in principle, that we need never work again as long as we lived. I had given up my job and spent the next few weeks thinking over what I wanted to do with my life. And in the course of those weeks the virus had struck again and decided what it was going to do not only with my life but with the lives of everyone on the planet.

So I had come to the conclusion that the most meaningful thing I could do was help Heidi to help others.

And from that day on not only our kitchen but also the living room and the library had operated as a kind of centre for shipwrecked souls and weird characters of every description. But by now even the legal system had started coming apart at the seams. Even though the government, the national assembly and the courts continued to operate after a fashion, the real question was how much longer we would have a functioning police force capable of administering the law and enforcing the verdicts of the courts, a jail system that could arrange for the serving of sentences, and even a military whose loyalty could be relied on. The national assembly had given the military leaders extended powers to protect property — at least, public property — and in other circumstances this might have been a first step in allowing a group of senior military figures to take over the running of the country. A junta would, after all — according to the social philosophy in Leviathan — be preferable to anarchy. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead soldiers and officers were recruited to join the private militia established by the wealthy, where they could make five times what they had earned in the regular army.

And those of us who weren’t as wealthy had also started to take steps to secure what was ours. What we thought of as ours. Started preparing for the worst.

But nothing could have prepared me for what actually did happen.

And as I stand here on top of the skyscraper listening out for the helicopter I can still feel the taste of the rope in my mouth, still smell the petrol in the garage and hear the screams of those I love inside the house. And the bitter certainty that I would lose everything. Absolutely everything.

‘Sixteen minutes!’ the lieutenant shouts.

Colin walks to the edge of the roof and looks down into the darkened streets. I can just about hear the sound of a solitary motorcycle. Only a month previously the city was full of motorcycle gangs on the rampage, but now the fuel shortage means most of the robbers are on foot.

‘So you don’t think Justitia is dead, she just has this hole in her forehead?’ Colin asks.

I look up at him. It’s hard to keep up with a mind like his, but since I’ve been used to following the train of his thoughts ever since we first met in junior school I can sometimes manage it. He hears the motorcycle and automatically thinks of his son Brad and his gang, Chaos. They wear helmets with a very striking club logo: Justitia, the goddess of justice, the blindfolded woman holding the scales. Only in this version she has a large, bloody bullet-hole in the middle of her forehead.

‘She’s down for the count,’ I say. ‘But I still think the rule of law will reassert itself.’

‘And I always thought that was naive. That sooner or later the only ones you can trust are your own close family members. Which of us was right, Will?’

‘People will fight back against your entropy, Colin. People want something that’s better, they want a civilised society, they want the rule of law.’

‘What people want is revenge for an injustice committed. That was what the rule of law was all about. And when that doesn’t function any more people arrange for their revenge themselves. Look at history, Will. Blood feuds, vendettas with sons and brothers avenging their fathers and brothers. That’s where we come from and that’s where we’re headed back to. Because that’s how we feel. That’s what we’re like, as human beings. Even you, Will.’

‘I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t agree. I put common sense and humanism above revenge.’

‘The hell you do. You might like to pretend you do, but I know what you’re feeling inside. And you know as well as I do that feelings will always, always win out over common sense.’

I don’t answer. Instead I look down at the street below, tryping to spot the motorcycle. The roar has died away, but I see a cone of light moving and hope that is it. Right now light and hope are what we need. Because he’s right. Colin is always right.

I slow down. Further down the avenue here there are neither people nor any other traffic on the move, but since I’m driving on sidelights only to attract as little attention as possible I need to keep an eye out for holes in the road. It’s crazy, but even though people ran out of petrol long ago they clearly still have plenty of grenades left — the explosions get more frequent by the day.