Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I don’t know whether it was my words that convinced them. Whether it was the fact that Larsen — the only one of us besides me with a close relative murdered — offered a few short words in support of me. Or whether it was the wind that had made the young Black man in the tree swing back and forth, and the branches to give off a moaning sound that constantly turned our attention in his direction.

Without further discussion we released all of them except Brad.

‘We’re gonna regret this,’ said Fatman as we watched the rear lights of the motorbikes disappear into the deepening darkness of the city night.

Amy was buried after a ceremony in a church in Downtown. It was sparsely furnished and austerely equipped, yet everything seemed strangely untouched, as though God’s house was still holy even to the looters. We didn’t advertise the service or invite anyone, and besides Heidi, Sam and me the only others present were Downing, Larsen and Chung.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to persuade Heidi to move to Colin’s hillside villa along with Chung, Larsen and Downing’s families. I reminded her how easy it had been for Chaos to enter our house, that the same thing not only could but would happen again. And that there was safety in numbers. Heidi said we couldn’t, it was someone else’s house, someone else’s property, even if it was standing empty at the moment. I said that while I had the greatest respect for property rights, at the moment those rights were taking a short break. And we needed somewhere to hold Brad in private custody until the court case against him started.

The following day we moved the few things we needed up the hill and started work on turning the place into a fortress.

The attorney general’s large white office building in Downtown had just the right balance of the architectonic pathos that encourages respect, and the dull pedantry that does not provoke when the taxpayer is the one funding it.

Adele Matheson, the attorney general, had the kind of office that’s used for working in, not for giving off signals about authority and status to visitors and colleagues. A simple writing desk piled high with documents, a slightly out-of-date computer with cables in all directions, shelves of legal literature and a window that offered light but not a distracting view. And absolutely no family photos that might remind her of things more important in life than work and urge her to stop working and get on home.

Matheson sat in a high-backed leather chair behind the piles of documents and peered at me over the top of her glasses. Though she didn’t have the high profile of some of her colleagues the respect she enjoyed from her peers was all the greater. If she was known at all it was for her integrity and her tenacity in hunting down the powerful and those with an aversion to finding themselves exposed in the media. A journalist once wrote that any interview or press conference involving Matheson was confined to a repertoire of four responses: ‘Yes’, ‘No’, the slightly longer ‘We don’t know that’, and the really long ‘We can’t comment on that’.

‘You are a lawyer, Mr Adams,’ she said when she had listened to me. ‘If you believe you have proof that this person killed your daughter, why come here, why not take the case to the police?’

‘Because I no longer trust the police.’

‘We’re living in strange times, no doubt about that. And yet you seem to trust the public prosecutor’s office?’

‘Going through the attorney general means at least one step less in the process before the case gets to court.’

‘You’re worried about corruption. Is that it?’

‘The boy’s father is Colin Lowe.’

‘ The Colin Lowe?’

‘Yes.’

She rested a finger on her upper lip then made a note. ‘Do you know where the boy is now?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that is?’

‘If I told you he was being held in private custody you would have to prosecute me and that would put the case against the boy in jeopardy, don’t you think?’

‘Private detention is of course a serious matter and if the confession came as a result of it then the court can simply throw the case out.’

‘Fruits of a poisoned tree.’

‘Yes, you are of course familiar with the legal principles involved. But if things are as you say, and you have witnesses who can confirm that there was a confession and that it was not coerced, then we have a stronger case.’

I noted that she was now saying ‘we’ instead of ‘you’. Was that because of the name Colin Lowe?

‘You will also need to get hold of at least one of the gang members who identified Brad as the killer,’ she said.

‘That could be difficult. But several of us heard them say that it was Brad.’

‘That is indirect information and as a lawyer you are aware that would not be sufficient in a court of law. If I’m going to bring this to court I need to feel at least as sure of getting a conviction as the jury does if they’re going to reach a verdict of guilty beyond reasonable doubt.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll find one of them who identified Brad.’

‘Good.’ Adele Matheson clapped her hands together. ‘I’ll get going, so let’s stay in touch. This might be a good opportunity to show the world that the rule of law has not broken down completely.’

‘I hope so too,’ I said, looking at the only picture in the room. It was small and hung slightly sideways. It showed Justitia. Blind, impartial. With no bullet-hole in her forehead.

From the attorney general’s office I made my way to the police station in Downtown where I asked to see Chief Inspector Gardell. She accompanied me out to the car park by the shopping mall where I told her I could get Brad Lowe in front of a jury if I could get hold of one of the gang members who had identified him as the killer.

‘You had the bastard but you’re going to give him his day in court?’ she asked, with the same sense of astonishment an atheist might use when asking a Christian if they really believed that business about walking on water.

‘I need to find one of the gang,’ I said. ‘Can you help me?’

She shook her head. I thought it was a no until she said: ‘I can certainly keep my ears and eyes open, but don’t—’ and I knew what was coming next — ‘hold your breath.’

I thanked her, and as I walked away it was with a feeling that she was watching me and still shaking her head.

Chung, the structural engineer, was in charge of making the villa impregnable.

The wall surrounding the property was raised, the two gates reinforced, and everything between the house and the wall that could be used as cover or shelter was removed. The windows were fitted with bulletproof metal plates with gun slits, and the walls, doors and roof reinforced to resist grenades. Mines and booby traps with motion sensors were sown across the outer approaches. A control room was established in the basement from where the property could be kept under surveillance, with facilities to operate remotely controlled machine guns and grenade throwers mounted up on the first floor. We also had two drones with cameras that could be remotely controlled from the basement, or the War Room as Downing insisted on calling it.

In essence: anyone wanting to capture the villa would need artillery and bombs.

And if, in spite of all, someone managed to get inside the place, Downing had night-vision goggles. He said that he and his brother soldiers had made an ally of the nights in Iraq by cutting the power before starting the nightly hunt for terrorists in the hostile neighbourhoods of Basra. Once our families had gone to bed and all the lights were off Larsen, Chung and I practised working with these, but in truth the trials just left me feeling giddy and nauseous. And once, when Chung turned on the light without any warning, it was like staring straight into the sun and I was left half blind for several hours afterwards.