Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘What did Ragnar say?’

‘Ragnar said I was to tell the police who would be coming soon that I hit that girl on the head with a golf club. And I was to say the same thing to the judge.’

I stared at him. ‘And if you didn’t?’

Dumbo’s large eyes filled with tears and his voice trembled. ‘He said they would feed me to the rats on Rat Island.’

‘Then of course you had to say yes. But when the judge heard that...’

‘I didn’t say yes,’ Dumbo said, his voice still choked. ‘I said no. Because that would mean I would have to be in jail for the rest of my life, and I didn’t want that.’

‘I understand. But you told the police you did it — that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That was very clever, because they can’t feed you to the rats before you tell the judge they threatened you.’

‘No!’ shouted Dumbo and beat his forehead against the glass screen. He sometimes did that when he got frustrated because he couldn’t explain what he meant. I saw a warden making his way towards us.

‘Easy, Dumbo.’

‘They didn’t threaten me. They threatened you! They said they’d kill Yvonne if I didn’t do as they said.’

I took it in, piece by piece. Those bastards. All they need to know is what’s irreplaceable for someone. Once they know that they’ve got them. Or got her.

Behind me the warden coughed. I put my hand to the glass screen.

‘I’ll get you out of here, Dumbo. I promise. I’ll get you out. You hear?’

Dumbo pressed his hand up against mine on the glass wall and the tears came rolling down his cheeks.

‘One minute. The helicopter will be landing in one minute!’

Of course it feels absurd to be standing here on top of a skyscraper twirling a glass of champagne while down below us civilisation as we know it is falling apart. On the other hand it wouldn’t feel much less absurd without the champagne.

The lieutenant approaches, whispers something in Colin’s ear, then runs back to the helicopter deck where the last of the rich and privileged wait to be lifted up and whisked away to a fresh start on board the New Frontier.

‘He says the mob has got inside,’ says Colin. ‘But my people have cut the cable to the lifts so they’ll have to fight their way up the stairs. Do you know, by the way, why staircases in old castles and cathedrals always run clockwise going upwards?’ As usual Colin Lowe doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘It gave the defenders the advantage over their attackers because they could use their swords in their right hands.’

‘Interesting,’ I say. ‘Incidentally, is there a way down that doesn’t run the risk of getting your head chopped off? For those not travelling on the helicopter, I mean.’

‘Sure. Relax, everything’ll be fine. Look, there it is.’

A moving point of light comes swaying towards us. I look down into my glass, at the bubbles released from the bottom of it and rising up to the surface. Inexorable as a physical law.

‘Tell me, Colin, were you infected with fear? Like the rats?’

Colin looks at me in some surprise. He hasn’t yet raised his glass for the toast I know he’s planning to make. To friendship, to family, to the good life. The three regulars.

‘What are you thinking of?’ he asks.

‘When you bought Dumbo’s confession. Did you panic?’

Colin shakes his head. ‘I don’t know to what extent a father is capable of rational thought when it comes to his own son or daughter, but when this Ragnar contacted me and said he had an offer I couldn’t refuse, he turned out to be right.’

‘Your conscience didn’t bother you?’

‘As you know, Will, mine is not as active as yours. So no, it didn’t make too much noise. According to Ragnar, Dumbo was so severely mentally handicapped he was unfit to plead and by law couldn’t be punished anyway.’

‘It isn’t that simple, Colin. And I think you know it.’

‘You’re right. It’s probably that I wanted it to be that simple. Anyway, it seemed to me he deserves whatever punishment they can give him. Ragnar told me he raped Heidi.’

I grip the stem of the glass so tightly that for a moment I’m certain I’ll snap it. Against the orange sky of evening I see the helicopter approaching between the skyscrapers. It makes me think of a grasshopper. Like that lovely, pea-green specimen I took home with me from my grandmother’s farm one summer holiday. On the drive home I had it in a jam jar with a hole punched in the lid. But when we arrived it was dead, and for years afterwards my father would reminisce about it at family gatherings, about how inconsolable I had been, that I’d pushed a pin into my fingertip as a way of punishing myself. I could never understand why the grown-ups laughed.

‘I’m thinking about what happened afterwards,’ I say.

‘You know very well I had nothing to do with that,’ sighs Colin.

‘But you could have prevented it.’

‘The list of our sins of omission is infinitely long, Will. Of course you can accuse me of lacking the imagination to realise the extent of Ragnar’s cynicism. But had he asked me I would never have allowed it to happen.’

By now I can just about hear the helicopter, the rotor blades whipping the air, the drone of the engine.

It was raining next day when I went to the courthouse. I wasn’t allowed to see Dumbo but heard that his defence lawyer was someone named Marvin Green, from the firm of Amber & Doherty. It took me the rest of the day to find the firm’s offices; apparently they’d moved from the address I got at the courthouse and were now located in a graffiti-covered office block. I wasn’t allowed in, just told through the door phone that Green wasn’t there. When I asked where I could find him, said it was urgent because I had information concerning one of his cases, the person at the other end just laughed. She said I would either find Green at the pub on the corner or he’d gone home for the day. I went to the pub, heard from the barman that Green had just left, went back to the office block and after a lot of fuss and bother got Green’s address. It was pouring with rain and riding up the hill was like riding up a stream.

The address wasn’t far from the villa we’d been driven out of. But this was a small house, almost a bungalow, the type of place the artists who first moved up here long ago built for themselves. But it had steel gates and walls with embedded glass and barbed wire.

I rang the bell.

‘Who is it?’ said a hoarse, slurred voice though the speaker on the wall.

I looked up into the camera on the gatepost, gave my name and said I had information that could help Mr Green in his defence of Gabriel Norton, aka my friend Dumbo.

I heard the chinking of glass. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘You mean come in?’

‘Go on, as in “talk”. I don’t let strangers in.’

So I said what I had to say standing out there in the rain. That Dumbo hadn’t killed Amy but was the victim of a plot aimed at whitewashing the rich man’s son Brad Lowe. It was a long speech and since I was neither interrupted nor given any other sign that anyone was listening I began to wonder whether Green had just hung up. But at least no one came out to chase me off so I carried on talking. Told him how Dumbo and I — back before we knew each other — almost by chance had saved each other’s lives in a fire, and how we’d stuck together since then. We’d joined a gang, and that’s how we managed to survive. I said there were probably a lot of things Dumbo was guilty of, but not the killing of Amy. I’d been in the house and could give him an alibi for the time the murder was committed.