Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

Chung also suggested we dig a tunnel in case we needed to retreat. I thought about it for a long time before saying it would cost too much. I was lying.

Through former colleagues in the Marines Downing had heard about an ammunition depot where we could barter weapons for food and medicine, and this we did. Larsen and I stored the ammunition in an unused washroom with thick stone walls in the basement. When Chung joined us he showed us the hole in the wall where the private sewage pipe he had made ran. If we were under siege and had our water and sewage disposal cut off then we now had a sewage pipe that opened onto a steep, overgrown slope below the property, as well as a water pipe Chung had attached to the mains supply further down the valley. In the unlikely event the besieging force should come across the sewage pipe and identify it as leading to our house there was of course the possibility they could fire a grenade up through it and into the house, but according to Chung it wouldn’t do much damage — the walls of the room were just too thick. Unless, of course, high explosives were being stored in there.

He said it in his usual dry, practical way, with no facial expression to indicate whether he was being ironic or humorous. And that’s why we laughed, Larsen and I, as Chung looked at us with his sorrowful gaze, which made us laugh all the more.

We decided to move the ammunition to the laundry that was being used as Brad’s cell. I had put him there because that was where they had kept Amy’s body. I was probably hoping it would serve as a constant reminder to him of what he had done, and would torment his conscience.

When we were finished I stood in the doorway of Brad’s new cell where he lay on the mattress reading one of the books I had put in there with him. He was already thin and pale after the short time he had been held in custody, despite the fact that we fed him well and walked him in the garden every day.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, pointing to the hole in the wall beside his head.

‘It’s for the sewage,’ I said.

‘You mean like me?’ He put down the book, bunched his fist and put his arm in all the way up to his shoulder.

‘People aren’t sewage,’ I said.

‘If I slim down enough to wriggle out through it, where would I end up?’

‘The slope below the Polanskis’ house,’ I said. I don’t know why I told him that. Or did I actually know, even then? I picked up a plastic tie that had slipped down off one of the boxes of ammunition. Gathered it up and shoved it in my pocket.

Brad smirked. ‘So I won’t hang myself with it?’

I didn’t answer.

He leaned on his elbow. ‘Why can’t you just execute me and get it over with?’

It was strange. Even though he was lying down and I was standing, he was the one locked up and in my power, it was as though he looked down on me, not the other way round.

‘Because we aren’t like you,’ I said. And I met his gaze.

‘You soon will be. If you want to live, I mean.’

‘What I hope,’ I said, ‘is that you’ll become like us. Or better than us.’

‘How is that going to matter if I’m locked up for the rest of my life?’

‘There’s no guarantee that you will never again have to make a choice which has consequences for your fellow human beings, Brad.’

‘Well then, give me the chance. Let me go. I promise you, my dad will pay whatever you ask. Make that whatever I ask!’

I shook my head. ‘This is about something bigger than you, Brad.’

‘Come on! What could be bigger than my dad’s fucking money?’

‘Choosing what’s good instead of what’s evil. That’s bigger.’

Brad laughed and shoved the book so that it came skidding across the stone floor towards me. ‘Like it says in here. Liberal left-wing piss if you ask me.’

I looked down at the book. Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law. Liberal left-wing piss? That meant at least he must have read it to form an opinion on it. Maybe it was true, what I was hoping: that all of us, including me, had underestimated Brad’s intellectual capacity?

‘You’re telling me you don’t want revenge?’ he asked. ‘Then you’re lying!’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But anyway, executing you wouldn’t be a good enough revenge. Because yes, I want you to feel remorse. I want you to feel the same pain as I do at losing someone you love above all others. And yes, I want you to experience the same feelings of guilt as I do at having failed to protect your family well enough. I’m not above that, not as a human being. But we humans have the unique ability to renounce a short-term satisfaction in favour of something that has a higher goal.’

‘Now you’re talking like that book.’

‘Read it,’ I said. ‘Then let’s talk some more.’

I went out, locking the door behind me.

I entered the bedroom where she and Sam were playing with two Transformer figures Sam had got for Christmas from ‘Uncle Colin’, as it said on the gift label. Heidi and I had seen from Sam’s reaction when he unwrapped them that it would break his little heart if we took them away from him and exchanged them for toys that didn’t glorify violence in the same way.

‘I gather you’re having fun,’ Heidi observed.

There was an edge to her voice and I realised she’d heard Larsen and me laughing.

‘Well, I’m trying to anyway,’ I said, hearing the same hard edge in my own voice.

‘Have you talked to him?’ she asked.

‘Him’ was Brad. She would no longer say his name.

‘I checked on him,’ I lied. As if laughing out loud wasn’t bad enough, was I also supposed to tell her I had just had a meaningful conversation with our daughter’s killer? Yes, I had said we had an obligation to get over Amy’s death and try to look forward, for our sake and for Sam’s sake. But in Heidi’s view, sensitive people allowed grief to run its course; grief was the recoil after love, and if I didn’t feel it then I had never loved Amy as deeply as I claimed. Her words had wounded me, of course they had. And she had seen it, and apologised. Everyone grieves in a different way, I had said, and maybe Heidi’s was the better way, maybe she was dealing with something I was postponing. Even though I could see she didn’t believe I meant what I was saying, I knew that she liked the way I was trying to compromise with her.

‘Dad, look!’ said Sam, running over and jumping into my lap. He held the Transformer figure up in front of my face and growled, ‘I am Devastator! I can change!’

He twisted parts of the figure and a fork-like weapon appeared, before suddenly appearing to lose interest in the toy and looking me right in the eye: ‘Can you change, Dad?’

I laughed and ruffled his hair. ‘Of course I can.’

‘Let’s see then.’

I pulled a face, one that usually made him laugh. Now he just looked at me. He seemed strangely disappointed. Then he put his arms around me and buried his face in my neck. I looked up and Heidi gave me a tired smile.

‘I think he thinks it’s OK if dads don’t change,’ she said.

We kept strictly within the bounds of the property and tried not to get on each other’s nerves too much. Even with four families there was more room than we had had in Downtown, but all the same it somehow felt more cramped. After the kidnapping Heidi felt she had to keep Sam close to her at all times. She wouldn’t even let him play with the other kids in the large garden unless she was there with them. I tried to persuade her that we were safer here than anywhere else in the world right at that moment, but it didn’t help.

‘We will be attacked,’ she’d said one day as we sat in the garden watching Sam playing with the two Larsen children. The mines and the booby traps had been deactivated and they were able to run around the garden in complete safety. It was a relief to hear their carefree laughter and know they really were enjoying the atmosphere of safety and security we were so desperately trying to encourage. Heidi had been raped but she still wouldn’t talk about it. When I asked why and said it might be good for her to get it out in the open she replied that she really couldn’t remember much about it. A girl had been there, and fortunately she had taken Sam out of the room, but after that she’d blanked everything out, all she thought about through the whole thing was Sam and Amy. So there wasn’t much to talk about. If the memories were somewhere down there in her unconscious then let them stay there — right now what mattered was that she function. My own understanding was that Heidi’s ability to suppress these memories had something to do with the way great pain can, for a time at least, hide the distress of lesser pains, the same way it can with physical suffering. And the great pain was the loss of Amy. I realised that was why Heidi — that strong, caring, selfless woman who under normal circumstances would automatically have stepped in as a reserve mother for Larsen’s motherless children — now almost avoided them. It was instead Chung’s young wife who took on that role.