Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

Dumbo’s eyes were looking in my direction but they were glazed over. Of course I knew that with all the blood on the floor, blood that should have been circulating through his brain, he had to be unconscious already but I did it anyway. I picked up the receiver, put my other hand against the glass wall and said: ‘It’ll be all right. Just look at me, Dumbo. It’ll be all right.’

Then it was as though another layer folded itself over the glassy stare, and I knew he was dead.

I had just arrived in the waiting room attached to the visiting room, taken a seat and was waiting to meet Gabriel ‘Dumbo’ Norton. Earlier in the day I had seen the mugshot and was able to confirm what I suspected, that it was the same boy who I had seen on the steps outside our house. Who had helped to tie me up. Who had...

I knew I mustn’t think about that other thing, not if I was to be able to do what I intended to and establish a relationship with the boy that was based on sympathy and understanding and the sort of humanity and mercy I would need to discover for the most difficult thing of all — forgiveness.

I hadn’t been told who the visitor before me was but I knew at least that it wasn’t his defence lawyer — they didn’t use the visiting room.

Suddenly from the other side of the door I heard screams, shouting and the scraping of chair legs.

The guard in the waiting room put his eye to a peephole and then checked that the door was locked.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘A stabbing,’ he said without turning round.

A minute later he unlocked the door and the five visitors came out. They looked pale and shaken, but it was clearly not one of them who had been attacked.

One was crying. Or rather, there was no sound, but the tears streamed down her face. Maybe they blinded her so that she didn’t recognise me.

I quickly joined the dots and a clear picture emerged.

I followed her.

She didn’t notice me until we were out in the street and she was sitting astride her motorcycle. I stood directly in front of her.

‘Is Dumbo dead?’ I asked.

I saw how she automatically reached for something in a pannier on the bike, a weapon maybe, but it wasn’t there.

‘Was it you who killed him?’ I asked.

I stared at him. Because it really was him, Amy’s father, I saw that now. Was he asking if it was me who killed Dumbo?

‘No,’ I said, and I had no control at all over my voice. ‘But maybe you did.’

‘Then I would have been better off letting that shaven-headed guy with the laser rifle shoot the two of you up at the villa.’

I didn’t know what to say. Or do. Because yes, I had wondered if it was his voice I’d heard when someone stopped the guy with the laser sight on his rifle from shooting. Shouting that they weren’t murderers and — unless I saw wrong — pointing his own gun at the guy.

‘So then who was it?’ he asked.

‘Dunno,’ I said and started the engine.

‘But you know it wasn’t Dumbo who killed my daughter.’

What the hell was I supposed to say? Dumbo was dead, there was no one left to save any more. No one but myself.

‘I don’t know anything,’ I said and revved the engine. He still kept standing there, the straight idiot.

‘You know it was Brad,’ he said. He rested both hands on my handlebars and stared at me, eyes burning like he was on speed.

I didn’t answer.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You aren’t like them.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like those others in the gang. Chaos. You want something more than that, don’t you?’

‘I want my Remington rifle back,’ I said. ‘Apart from that I don’t give a fuck about anything. Get out of the way, mister.’

‘I’m living in the villa. If you want justice like me then come and talk to me. I think maybe we can help each other.’

I slipped the clutch and he jumped out of the way. Accelerated away. The exhaust popping and banging from the bullet-holes from when the O’Leary twins peppered the bike. I rode so fast I could feel the tears streaming horizontally into my helmet and across my temples.

It was Ragnar. I knew it was Ragnar, he was the only one who could get Kevin to do something like that. The only question was how did Ragnar know I was going to get Dumbo to withdraw his confession? I mean, it really wasn’t all that fucking complicated.

The connection became even clearer when I got home and saw the ambulance parked in the street. Part of me was surprised because you so rarely see an ambulance these days; another part of me had been half expecting it.

I dismounted and walked over to the two men who were loading a stretcher into the back.

‘Who...’ I started to say, but they jumped in behind the stretcher, slammed the doors in my face and drove off, sirens blaring.

I turned and saw the trail of blood leading from where the ambulance had stood at the entrance to our block. I swallowed. It was my fault. My fault again.

I was the one who had given the address to Dumbo’s drunken and corrupt defence lawyer.

No, it really wasn’t all that complicated.

The street door opened and a pretty young woman came out.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘It was a guy with the same kind of helmet as you,’ she said.

‘Red leather jacket with a monster coming up out of the sea?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘He used a crowbar and broke into the flat at the end of our corridor.’

‘But?’

‘But when he got inside the man there had a knife and the motorbike guy had a Kalashnikov and shot him before he could use it. I spoke to his wife. She says they say he’ll survive.’

She wiped away a tear and I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.

‘I’m scared,’ she sniffled.

‘I understand, Maria.’

It was so quiet I could still hear the ambulance, the siren rising and falling as though searching for a frequency it couldn’t find.

I thought of the man. He looked like Amy, his daughter. I thought of when he sat tied up in the garage, the look on his face when he heard the screams from the house. Pain at the thought of pain in someone you love.

‘So it wasn’t you, it was Ragnar who arranged to have Dumbo killed?’ I say. I have to raise my voice to be heard above the sound of the approaching helicopter.

‘He didn’t tell me about it until afterwards, and as I say, I would never have allowed it. Not murder.’ Colin sighs and looks up into the sky. ‘But of course, I’m not completely guilt-free.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d been in touch with Marvin Green, Dumbo’s defence lawyer. Good defence lawyers are in short supply now, most of them have left the city so people turn to the likes of washed-out alcoholics like Green who don’t have the money to get out. And yes, he was easy enough to turn and he didn’t ask for too much. He was told not to put a great deal of effort into defending Dumbo and not to put him in the witness box in case the poor bugger got mixed up about his confession. But then Green called me and said he’d had a girl come to see him who said she could give Dumbo an alibi. I got her address.’ Colin took a deep breath. ‘You know, before they turned off the power I never realised how beautiful the night sky is above the city.’

‘Go on,’ I say.

‘So I got in touch with this Ragnar again and told him it was a condition of him getting the weapons and all the other stuff that Dumbo’s confession stood, and that Brad didn’t have to face a charge.’