Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I had the bike key in my pocket.

Shit, I even had a place to go: Maria had asked me to move in with her on a permanent basis. And hadn’t I even considered it, independently of this? OK, Chaos had saved me once, but wasn’t it true that we had all saved each other? That it was the pack, the twelve of us together, that protected us? And not loyalty, or some code of honour. Fuck that. Had anyone here ever sacrificed anything for me? No way.

I got the window open and climbed out, hung from the ledge by my arms and then let go. The roses in the bed below were dead and gone long ago, but not the bramble bushes that had replaced them, big and ugly. It was like rolling around in barbed wire.

I took a deep breath, pulled the pin on the shock grenade and nodded to Downing. He nodded back, turned the handle on the door I had pointed out on the plans as the master bedroom, and pushed it slightly open.

I did as he had shown me, bent low and rolled the grenade along the parquet flooring so that it made as little sound as possible. Downing closed the door again and counted to four.

Even through the closed door the sound was deafening and a flash of light blitzed out through the keyhole.

Downing kicked the door open and we went in, positioning ourselves on each side of the doorway as he had shown us.

My pulse was racing as the beam of my torch searched the room for Amy. It flashed across the window, and on the lawn outside I saw a figure running towards a parked motorcycle. I moved the beam on until it caught something that at first I thought was a sculpture. A boy with pale white skin sat bolt upright in bed, staring as though paralysed. That’s the effect the shock grenade has, Downing had explained.

It was Brad.

Downing yelled at him to put his hands up, but Brad was probably still deaf from the bang and he just stared at us in bewilderment. Downing hit him across the face with the butt of his gun, and a slimy blob of blood and spittle flew through the cone of light.

I pushed Brad backwards onto the bed and sat on top of him. He didn’t struggle.

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Will. Where is Amy?’

He blinked up at me.

I repeated the question, at the same time pressing the barrel of the pistol I had chosen against his forehead.

‘We know it was you,’ I said. ‘Your sentry’s dead. You want to be next, Brad?’

‘She...’ he began.

It took him two long seconds, time enough for me to start shaking like a leaf on a tree, before he was able to continue:

‘She isn’t here. We let her go as soon as we left Downtown. Didn’t she turn up?’

I don’t know whether it was because he had inherited his father’s repertoire of facial expressions, but I knew he was lying.

I hit him with my gun. And again. Apparently. Because by the time Downing stopped me and I was in control of myself again Brad’s face was a grotesque bloody mask beneath me.

‘She’s dead,’ I said.

‘You don’t know that.’

I closed my eyes. ‘He wouldn’t have lied if she wasn’t dead.’

I climbed on my motorcycle that was standing beneath the large garage overhang. From where I sat I could see across the lawn and into Brad’s room and the dancing light beam of a torch.

They’d got him.

I was about to start the engine. I would have been out of there in seconds flat, but a thought stopped me. The thought of leaving Dumbo, just abandoning him. I glanced at the room he shared with Herbert, the only Black guy in the gang. The light was on inside. Maybe they hadn’t reached them yet. I climbed back off the bike and sprinted across the lawn and over to their window. Stretched up on tiptoes and peered in. Dumbo was sitting on the bed in his underpants and T-shirt, feet dangling as he stared at the door. Herbert was nowhere in sight. I tapped on the glass and Dumbo jumped, but when he saw my face pressed against the windowpane he smiled.

He opened the window. ‘Herbert went out to see what’s going on,’ he said. ‘Do you know—’

‘Put your shoes on!’ I whispered. ‘We’re getting out of here!’

‘But—’

‘Now!’

Dumbo disappeared.

I saw him fiddling with his shoelaces as I counted the seconds. I should have got him shoes with Velcro.

‘Freeze,’ I heard a voice say right behind me.

I turned round. A bald-headed man holding a rifle with telescopic sights was standing there. I continued to turn.

‘Didn’t you hear—’ he began to say, then dropped the rifle and stopped speaking and breathing after my kick hit him between the legs. I saw him collapse to the ground, then turned back to the window. Dumbo was standing on the ledge.

‘Jump!’ I said.

I took his fall, but he was so heavy we both tumbled over onto the grass. Then we were on our feet and he was running after me towards the bikes.

I’d heard Fatman’s voice outside the window and looked out.

A long-legged girl and a small, bow-legged boy were running across the lawn. It was them. I was certain of it. Everything about them — faces, bodies, their way of moving — was etched fast in my memory from when I sat tied up in the garage. They reached the motorcycles and the girl sat on one of them while the boy climbed up behind her. She fiddled about in her pockets looking for something, keys probably. I saw a red dot dancing on the white T-shirt under her jacket.

Laser.

I opened the window. Fatman was lying on the lawn below, the butt of the rifle to his cheek.

‘Don’t shoot!’ I shouted. ‘We’re not killers.’

‘Shut up,’ he grunted without looking up.

‘That’s an order!’

‘Sorry, but this is my bad guy.’

‘If you shoot, so will I,’ I said. Quietly. That was probably why he stopped and looked up. Saw the pistol pointing at him. Stared as we heard the roar of the motorbike rise, fall and then disappear as it went through the gate and headed down towards the valley.

I lowered the pistol. I don’t know why, but a small part of me had wanted him to shoot them. Because then I could have shot him.

‘The helicopter will be here in four minutes!’ shouts the lieutenant. ‘Everyone who’s boarding, get ready now!’

I only half hear him. Because standing here on the roof of the skyscraper and waiting to say goodbye I’m thinking now about something else: that I had wanted to shoot someone. That I had wanted circumstances to give me an excuse to become a person I don’t believe myself to be. That perhaps I no longer know who I am. I look at the lucky ones, standing there listening out for the helicopter. I look for signs of guilty conscience among them. I don’t see any.

We were all gathered in the living room as Downing and Larsen cleared the rest of the house.

We had one man badly wounded, they had one dead — the sentry — and four wounded.

‘We’ve got to get him to hospital,’ said Chung, meaning the man who had been wounded by the shots through the door.

‘No way. That was the agreement,’ said Fatman, who seemed to be suffering discomfort in his groin.

‘But—’ said Chung.

‘Forget it. We don’t want the police breathing down our necks,’ said Fatman with finality.

‘Drive him to hospital,’ I said.

Fatman turned towards me, his face flushed with anger. ‘Says you, yeah, who let one of the bastards escape.’

‘There was no reason to kill her, she was running away.’

‘We’re here to exact punishment, Adams. You’re just here to find your daughter, and you’re using us to help you do it. Fair enough, but don’t go playing the Good Samaritan at our expense. Try telling Simon here that that girl didn’t deserve a bullet.’