Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘They might try,’ I agreed. ‘But then they’ll move on in search of something easier.’

‘Not the gangs,’ she said. ‘Him. Colin. He’ll find us.’

‘Not if we lie low,’ I said, with a worried look at the children. They were digging in the back garden where we had buried the young Black boy Herbert. Brad claimed not to know his surname; not that it really mattered, we weren’t going to use it anyway. There was no cross to mark the grave that might have exposed the lynching.

‘A father or a mother will always find a missing child,’ said Heidi.

I didn’t answer. Because I knew she was right.

I visited the police station the next day and heard some good news. Chief Inspector Gardell had traced a member of the gang, a guy named Kevin Wankel. It wasn’t all that difficult since he was already in jail. Wankel had recently been arrested for killing and robbing a policeman, she told me. In his statement he had volunteered the information that he was a member of Chaos. But since the money Chaos shared out wasn’t enough to pay for his methamphetamine habit he had gone out on his own to rob someone. He’d waited outside a strip club, approached the first man who came out, held a gun to his forehead and demanded his wallet. Witnesses described how the man had calmly said he was a policeman and that Kevin should be on his way, at which Kevin pulled the trigger, grabbed the wallet and ran off. He was arrested in the street an hour later as he tried to buy methamphetamine. His trial was already over and he’d been sentenced to life imprisonment.

She showed me Wankel’s mugshot, but I didn’t immediately recognise the face. He definitely wasn’t one of those who had identified Brad as the killer.

‘I’ve spoken to him,’ said Gardell. ‘He’s more than willing to testify that it was Brad who did it. On condition that we get him some meth.’

‘What?’

‘Of course I said no. Adele Matheson won’t bring a case that depends on evidence that’s been bought with narcotics. But we can try offering him a reduction in his sentence.’

I looked at the photo and shook my head. ‘He wasn’t even there.’

‘What?’

I pushed the mugshot across the table to her and pointed to the date.

‘This was taken two days before the raid on our villa. He was already locked up. All he wants is dope. He’d sell his own mother for a gram.’

‘Damn,’ said Gardell. She looked as disappointed as I felt.

It’s a strange thing when you’re offered hope and then have it taken away from you. I left the police station the same as I’d come — empty-handed — and yet the day now seemed worse.

After Dumbo and I escaped from the villa that night we moved in with Maria.

She wasn’t exactly over the moon about the fact that I’d brought somebody with me, but she accepted it as part of the deal. Because the deal wasn’t just that we shared a roof, a table and a bed, it was also that I protected us and could — when necessary — go out and get us food. Maria didn’t ask how and I never told her.

One trick was to find some quiet little road and get Dumbo to lie down in the middle of it. People didn’t stop to help someone lying in the road any more, but at least they slowed down to drive round them. And as they did so I came riding up on the bike from the opposite direction, creating a little traffic jam. If we timed it right the car would come to a halt next to Dumbo, who would then get up, grab the shotgun he’d been lying on and shout ‘Hands up!’ — a line he loved and enjoyed shouting out whenever and wherever the notion took him. Motorists had no way of knowing whether I was part of the business involving the little guy with the shotgun or not and didn’t automatically put their foot on the accelerator and mow me down, and those few seconds’ hesitation were all the time I needed to produce my own shotgun.

This particular day we’d just played this trick. The guy was sitting in the car with his hands in the air and Dumbo’s shotgun pointing at his forehead as I emptied the car of food and pushed one end of a plastic hose down into the fuel tank.

‘Hands up!’ shouted Dumbo for the third time.

‘They already are,’ said the motorist in a despairing voice.

‘Hands up!’

‘Dumbo!’ I shouted. ‘Calm down now.’

I closed my lips round the other end of the plastic pipe and started sucking to get the petrol moving up and into the jerrycan standing on the road.

I was concentrating so hard I never heard them coming, not until a voice that was way too familiar said loudly: ‘Never knew the rug muncher could suck.’

I swallowed and coughed up petrol, spinning round ready to use the Remington rifle though I knew it was already too late.

There were three of them. One of the O’Leary twins had a gun pointed at Dumbo’s forehead, the other a Kalashnikov pointed at me. The third — the one who had spoken — was wearing a red leather jacket on the back of which was, I knew, an embroidered sea monster.

‘Ragnar,’ I said. ‘Long time.’

‘But not long enough?’ he smiled.

I started to get up.

‘Stay on your knees, Yvonne, it suits you. And tell your dwarf to put down his shooter or we’ll kill everyone.’

I swallowed. ‘Do as he says, Dumbo. You’re going to take what we got here?’

Ragnar swung his chain. ‘Wouldn’t you do the same?’

I shrugged. ‘I guess that depends.’

‘If, for example, someone ran off when the gang where she was second-in-command were under attack?’

‘Wouldn’t you have done the same?’

‘You let us down. That’s the first rule of Chaos, we don’t let each other down. Am I right, boys?’

‘Right,’ the O’Leary twins answered in unison.

‘The battle was lost,’ I said. ‘There was nothing I could do for you.’

‘No? But you rescued this dwarf here.’ Ragnar nodded towards Dumbo. ‘You’ve trained him well, looks like he’s learned how to make himself useful. We could use someone like that.’

‘What happened up there?’ I asked.

Ragnar peered into the bag of food I had set down on the road.

‘They lynched Herbert and took Brad prisoner. Let the rest of us go, the idiots.’

‘So then I guess you’ve already mounted a counter-attack.’

Ragnar gave me a puzzled look.

‘Since they’ve got Brad, and one Chaos never deserts another Chaos in trouble,’ I said. ‘He’s tried to rescue Brad, hasn’t he, boys?’

This time the O’Leary twins said nothing.

Ragnar’s small eyes were getting even smaller. But I couldn’t stop myself: ‘No? Ah, maybe you were happy enough to have me and Brad out of the way, so you could take over as leader?’

Ragnar’s knuckles turned white as his grip on the chain tightened. ‘You always did have a big mouth, Yvonne. No one ever tell you that’s not such a good idea when you’ve got a Kalashnikov pointing at you?’

I swallowed. Thought of that girl, that Amy. Hadn’t anyone told her?

‘I’ve talked to Brad’s old man and told him what happened,’ Ragnar said, glancing over at the twins as though to make sure they’d heard him. ‘He’s going to handle it himself.’

‘You saying you found Brad’s father?’

He shrugged. ‘It was more a case of him finding us. Anyway—’ he took an apple out of the bag and bit into it — ‘it’s out of my hands now.’ He made a face and threw the apple away. It bounced down the road.