Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I looked at the stringy lumps of meat in the brown stew in front of me. I presumed it was meat from animals we’re accustomed to eating, but once the thought had been planted the imagination wasn’t easy to stop.

‘It was good to come,’ said Colin, who didn’t seem to have much of an appetite either. ‘All things considered.’

‘You attacked us,’ I said. ‘You killed one of us.’

‘You killed nineteen of ours and you’re holding my son prisoner.’

‘He’s in custody,’ I said. ‘Awaiting a fair trial. The public prosecutor told you Brad was going to be charged, but you still attacked us. Because you know he’ll be found guilty.’

‘You’re putting yourself above the law.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in the law.’

‘No, but you say you do, Will. And a man can only be condemned for betraying his own principles, not someone else’s.’

‘Or for not having any at all.’

Colin forced a smile. I knew why. These were the kinds of exchanges we used to have when we were growing up together, starting in the days when we dominated the school debating society and developing still further once it became my job to oppose his sometimes over-hasty thought processes. As usual he was the one who had the last word:

‘Not having principles is also a principle, Will. As in, for example, adhering to the view that no principle shall be allowed to get in the way of your own survival and the survival of those closest to you.’

I looked down at my hands. Usually they were shaking. It started at about the same time as the pandemic. But now they weren’t. ‘What do you want, Colin?’

‘I want Brad,’ he said. ‘And I want your villa.’

I neither laughed nor forced a smile. I just placed my serviette on the table and stood up.

‘Wait.’ Colin got to his feet too. Held up a hand. ‘You haven’t heard my offer.’

‘You’ve got nothing I want, Colin. Don’t you understand that?’

‘Not you maybe, but what about Heidi and little Sam? What if I have something that can give them a new and better life, a chance to build a better society, one that follows the rule of law? Have you heard of the New Frontier ? It’s an aircraft carrier. It’s sailing soon. There will be three thousand five hundred people on board. I’ve got three tickets on that boat. Bought them a while ago. Cost me a fortune. You can’t buy tickets any more, no matter how much you’re willing to pay. You get my three, and in exchange you give me Brad and the villa.’

I shook my head. ‘Keep your tickets, Colin. Letting Brad get away unpunished would make a mockery of Amy’s memory.’

‘Ah, see how the noble Will Adams descends to our level. Suddenly it’s not about keeping strictly to one’s principles in the name of all mankind. Now it’s revenge for your daughter.’

‘It was a manner of speaking, Colin. Regardless of what I might think, Heidi would never agree to a trade-off like that.’

‘Women are often more pragmatic in such matters than men. They see the benefit to the community, they laugh at our obsession with pride and honour.’

‘So then I’ll give you your answer before she has the chance to contradict me. No.’

On the way back down to the boat the rats didn’t run out of our way quite so quickly.

‘You weren’t afraid I might take you prisoner and offer a swap for Brad?’

I shook my head. ‘Everyone in the house is agreed that we won’t give in to any form of blackmail if I don’t return. Even though I left no instructions about what to do about Brad in that case, I think we both know what would happen to him.’

‘He wouldn’t get the trial you want to give him.’

Naturally he’d thought about it.

‘Is it because of the rats that you want to get away from here?’ I asked.

Colin nodded. ‘Beth is ill. We think it’s typhoid — she might have got it from a rat bite. We’ve tried everything we can think of to kill the damn things without killing ourselves at the same time. Did you know that rats and humans share ninety-seven per cent of the same DNA? One day the rat-human will appear. If it hasn’t already.’

‘She’ll get better once she’s on board the carrier,’ I said. ‘I hear some of the best doctors in the country were offered tickets at discount prices.’

‘Yes,’ said Colin. ‘And yet you really are willing to deprive your family of those tickets because of a principle you know means nothing in the world of the rat?’

I didn’t answer, just took the short step from the jetty and onto the fishing boat, turned and watched Colin grow smaller and smaller as we chugged away from the island.

But still something was bothering me. I knew him too well. He would never have let me get away so easily if he didn’t have a backup plan. Some kind of alternative.

It’s night. I’m riding southwards and thinking back to the day Ragnar and the O’Leary twins took Dumbo. How different everything could have been. Or could it? Anyway, I’m headed for the slaughterhouse, and for the end of this story. Behind me is a spike strip and a guy who tried to stop me; there’s the house where I first met Will Adams, and the Lowe building where it looks like it won’t be long before the mob gets inside. Maybe everything is preordained, maybe people like me just do the bidding of fate. The fuel gauge is on red. OK, let fate decide if I’m to run out of petrol and things don’t end the way they were planned. Because something unexpected always happens. Like the way, for example, that Dumbo reappeared again a week after he disappeared.

I’d lost hope of seeing Dumbo again when my phone rang. Maria woke me, pointing to it almost in fear. It hadn’t rung at all for the past couple of months because most of the networks were down and only one operator was still working.

I picked up and heard Dumbo’s voice: ‘They’re allowing me one call.’

He was in the prison in Downtown. It was the last one still in operation and being used to hold people in custody as well as prisoners serving long sentences. An hour later we sat facing each other on different sides of a thick partition in the large visiting room, each with a telephone in our hand. He was wearing a striped outfit. I’d called it retro, which at least made him laugh, since he realised I’d said something that was meant to be funny.

Then he told me what had happened, and neither of us was laughing any more.

After Ragnar and the others had kidnapped Dumbo they’d taken him to Chaos’s new clubhouse. From Dumbo’s description I knew it had to be in the abandoned slaughterhouse down by the oilfield, on the road out to the airport. One evening Ragnar had brought a man back to the slaughterhouse and told those Dumbo shared the room with to get out.

‘Ragnar pointed to me and said I was perfect,’ said Dumbo. ‘The man could have me if he got the gang somewhere decent to live, a new bike for Ragnar, twelve Kalashnikovs and fifty bazookas and fifty hand grenades. Plus one hundred and fifty grams of meth, two hundred tabs of Rohypnol, two hundred antabiato... no, anta...’

‘Antibiotics,’ I said.

‘Yes, and—’

‘That’ll do,’ I said. Sometimes Dumbo had a surprisingly good memory for details, especially insignificant details. ‘But the man wasn’t going to pay all that for just one night, was he?’

‘No,’ said Dumbo. ‘For the rest of his life.’

‘So he was from that club down by the docks.’

‘No, he was from Rat Island, he said.’

‘And? Did he say what he wanted you to do?’

‘Yes. It was Ragnar said it.’