Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I brake. Not for a hole but for torchlight. A gang has taken up position at the next crossroads. A car burns soundlessly behind them.

Shit. They’ve spread spike strips across the whole avenue.

I check my mirror. And sure enough, in the glow from the brake lights I see they’re behind me too. They emerge from buildings on both sides, dragging a spike strip behind them to cut off a retreat that way. It takes me two seconds to establish that there are twelve of them, six in front and six behind, that only four of them are visibly armed, that they move like kids and they’re not wearing badges or outfits that might tell me which gang they belong to. The bad news for me is that they must have raided a police station for those spike strips, which means they’ve got guts. Which is another way of saying they’re desperate. The good news is that they’re ranged in a haphazard and not very practical formation, which tells me that either they don’t have much experience, they’re stupid, or they think numerical superiority is enough.

I’m still fifty metres away from them when I bring the bike to a complete stop and take off my helmet. Hold it up so they can see.

‘Chaos!’ I shout, hoping they can see the insignia on the helmet.

‘Shit, it’s a girl!’ I hear someone say.

‘All the better,’ another laughs.

‘Move those strips and let me by and there won’t be any trouble!’ I shout. As I expected, I get laughter in answer. I switch on the headlight. I can see them better now, ethnicities mixed, clothing mixed too. They look like the leftovers of what no other gang would have. Then I take hold of the Remington rifle fastened to the side of the bike and aim at the biggest one, still blinded by the headlight and as it happens standing directly in front of the spike strip. I think back to the last time I used it, how I made a perfect triangle out of the eyes and the bullet-hole. But of course, then I had the target hanging on a hook right in front of me. I pull the trigger, and the echo bounces around the walls of the houses. The guy falls the right way, backwards onto the spike strip, and I accelerate, aim for the open spread of his legs and manage to slip the rifle back into its holster and get both hands on the handlebars again before the front wheel hits him and I’m riding over him.

No shots from behind me.

These days no one wastes ammunition on lost causes.

I don’t know whether it’s a conscious decision to ride past Adam’s house, but anyway I don’t exactly have enough petrol to take any other route. But maybe I need to return to the scene of the crime, to remind myself why I’m doing what I am about to do. Anyway, suddenly I’m there.

Silence. Darkness. I don’t stop, just slow down.

The hole in the gate is still there. The hole I made.

I squeezed the handles of the wire cutters and the teeth snapped through the wires in the gate.

I could feel the eyes of all twelve of them behind me, the smell of testosterone, the scuffing of nervous boots unable to keep still on the asphalt.

‘Quicker!’ whispered Brad excitedly.

I could’ve asked him what the hurry was, told him there was no way the police might turn up.

I could’ve asked if he wanted to take over, told him I worked at the speed that suited me best.

Or I could’ve asked if we shouldn’t just drop the whole business and told it like it was: that it was a bad idea.

As Brad’s second-in-command it was actually my duty to tell him and to try to get him to give it up. I’ve thought about that a lot since then. Whether I could have done anything different. Probably not. Because it was Brad’s idea, and that mattered more than being a bad idea. In the first place he would not have wanted to lose face in front of the gang by admitting I was right. But I could have done what I usually did, which was to present my arguments as though they were just an interpretation of his own, so that when he realised I was right — and as things turned out he knew I was — he could take the credit for it. That was OK. A stupid leader can manage well enough as long as he is able to distinguish the good advisors from the bad ones. And Brad had that ability. Though he possessed only average intelligence himself, he seemed able instinctively to recognise intelligence in others. He didn’t need to be able to understand your reasoning; intelligence was like something that just grew out of your forehead. And it was that, and not my career as a kickboxer, that had led him to appoint a girl as second-in-command of Chaos.

The reason I didn’t even try to oppose him or manipulate him was that I knew this robbery was about more than food, weapons, petrol and a generator that may or may not have been in the garage. That Brad knew these people. That they had something he had to have, and nothing would make him change his mind. So I kept my mouth shut. Because I admit it; I don’t risk my position in Chaos, which is the only thing keeping me alive, for a bunch of rich whites I don’t even bloody well know.

‘There!’ I said, bending aside the strand of wire and slipping through, feeling the wired ends rasp against my skin and leather jacket.

The others followed. Brad stood there looking up at the darkened house bathed in moonlight. It was two o’clock in the morning. If people ever slept these days, then this was the time when they did it.

We took out our weapons. Sure, there were more heavily armed gangs than ours, especially the breakaway gangs of former policemen or soldiers, or former cartel people who had crossed the border. But by comparison with the usual youth gangs we were a heavyweight militia; each one of us with an AK-47, Glock 17 pistol and combat knife. We’d run out of bazooka grenades but Brad and I had two hand grenades each.

Brad’s eyes glowed like those of a man in love. He could almost have been handsome. Maybe he was handsome when he slept. But there was something disturbing about his facial expression and his vibe when he was awake, a fear, as though expecting to be hit, as though he hated you even before you’d done it. And this cold, hard hatred and fear alternated so quickly with what was warm and kind and sensitive that it left you wondering what it must be like to be him from the inside. You really couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. And want to help him. And on that particular evening, with the moonlight falling on his long, dirty-blond hair, Brad looked like Kurt Somebody-or-other, a rock star whose records my adoptive dad used to play when he got drunk and started yelling that everybody should do like Kurt, write a couple of great songs and then shoot themselves. But he couldn’t create anything at all, my dad, so he just copied the shooting-himself part.

‘Ready, Yvonne?’ said Brad and looked at me.

The plan was for me to take Dumbo and ring the bell at the main entrance while the rest got in round the back. For what it was worth, I hadn’t really understood why we had to wake up a family that was probably sleeping instead of using the element of surprise, but Brad had said that the sight of a Columbian girl and an undersized and retarded lad would make them lower their guard, that that was the kind of people they were. Helpful types, he had called them, his voice filled with contempt.

I nodded, and Brad pulled the balaclava down over my face.

I rang the bell. Must have waited a minute before I saw the little light by the camera above the door go on.

‘Yes?’ said a drowsy man’s voice through the speaker.