Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Supposing I did go along with this SL thing…’

‘Yes!’ he yelled. Typical Carl, celebrating as though I was already in.

I shook my head irritably. ‘It’ll still be two years before your hotel is up and running. Plus another two years minimum before it starts earning money. If it doesn’t all go to shit, that is. Whatever, if in the course of the next decade I can buy the service station and need a quick loan, the bank will say “no, you’re in debt up to your chimney pot with this here SL project”.’

Carl couldn’t even be bothered to pick me up on my embarrassingly obvious bullshit. SL or no SL, no bank would give a loan for the purchase of a service station that would be slap bang in the middle of nowhere the way things were shaping up.

‘You’re going to be part of this hotel project, Roy. And what’s more, you’ll have the money for your station even before we start building the hotel.’

I looked at him. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘The SL has to buy the land the hotel is going to be built on. And who owns that?’

‘You and me,’ I said. ‘So what? You don’t get rich selling a few acres of bare mountainside.’

‘That depends who sets the price,’ said Carl.

I’m not usually reckoned to be slow when it comes to logic and practical thinking, but even so it took a few seconds before it dawned on me.

‘You mean…’

‘I mean that I’m responsible for the description of the project, yes. And that means that it’s me who defines the items in the budget that I’m going to present at the investors’ meeting. Of course I won’t lie about the value of the land, but let’s say we set it at twenty million—’

‘Twenty million!’ I slapped the heather with my hand in exasperation. ‘For this ?’

‘—then that is relatively speaking such a small sum in comparison with the four hundred million total that it’ll be a small matter to split the price of the property and spread it out over the other items. Item 1, the road and surrounding area; item 2, the parking space; item 3, the actual building site…’

‘And what if someone asks the price per acre?’

‘Then of course we tell them. We’re not thieves.’

‘If we’re not thieves then what…?’ We? How had he suddenly managed to get me into this? Well, OK, this was no time to be splitting hairs. ‘What are we then?’

‘We’re business people who are playing the game.’

‘Playing? These are villagers, people without a clue, Carl.’

‘Country bumpkins you mean? Yes, well, we should know, we’re from round here.’ He spat. ‘Like when Dad bought the Cadillac. That sure bothered people, you bet it did.’

He gave a crooked smile.

‘This project is going to push up land prices here for everybody, Roy. Once the hotel is financed we roll out stage two. The ski lifts, cabins and lodges. That’s where the real money is. So why should we sell at a giveaway price now, when we know prices are guaranteed to go through the ceiling? Especially when we are the ones who made it happen. We’re not tricking anyone, Roy, there’s just no need for us to shout it from the rooftops that the Opgard brothers are scooping in the first millions. So…’ He looked at me. ‘You want the money for the station, or don’t you?’

I chewed it over.

‘Think about it while I take a leak,’ said Carl.

He turned and walked up to the top of the knoll, probably thinking he’d be sheltered on the other side.

So Carl had given me the time it takes to empty a bladder to decide whether I wanted to sell the property that had been in our family’s possession for four generations. For a price that under other circumstances would be considered highway robbery. I didn’t need to think. I don’t give a fuck about generations, at least not as far as this family is concerned, and we’re talking about a wilderness that has no sentimental value whatever nor any other type of value either, unless someone suddenly discovers a rare metal. And if Carl was right and the millions we were about to scoop up were just the icing on a cake that every participant in the village would have a share in in due course, that was fine by me. Twenty million. Ten for me. You could get a bloody nice service station for ten million. Top class, good location, not an øre in debt. Fully automated car wash. Separate restaurant.

‘Roy?’

I turned. Hadn’t heard Shannon approaching because of the wind. She looked up at me.

‘I think it’s sick,’ she said.

For a moment I thought she was referring to herself, she looked so windblown and cold standing there, her big brown eyes looking up from under the old knitted hat I used to wear as a kid. Then I realised she was cupping her hands round something. She opened them.

It was a little bird. Black hood on a white head, light brown throat. Colours so pale it had to be a male. It looked lifeless.

‘A dotterel,’ I said.

‘It was just lying there,’ she said, and pointed to a hollow in the heather where I saw an egg. ‘I nearly stepped on it.’

I squatted down and felt the egg.

‘Yes, the dotterel will stay sitting on the eggs and let itself be trodden on rather than sacrifice the eggs.’

‘I thought birds here hatched in the spring – they do in Canada.’

‘Yes, but this egg never hatched because it’s dead. He obviously didn’t realise, poor thing.’

‘ He? ’

‘The male dotterel does the brooding and looks after the chicks.’ I stood up and stroked the bird in Shannon’s hands on the breast. Felt its quick pulse beneath my fingertip. ‘He’s playing dead. To distract us from the egg.’

Shannon looked round. ‘Where are they? And where is the female?’

‘The female is probably somewhere having it off with another male.’

‘Having it away?’

‘You know, mating. Having sex.’

She gave me a sceptical look. ‘Do birds have sex outside the mating season?’

‘I’m kidding, but we can always hope so,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s called polyandry.’

She stroked the bird’s back. ‘A male that sacrifices everything for the children, who keeps the family together even when the mother’s unfaithful. That really is something rare.’

‘That’s not actually what polyandry means,’ I said. ‘It’s—’

‘—a form of a marriage in which the woman takes several husbands,’ she said.

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘Yes. You get it in a number of places in the world. Especially in India and Tibet.’

‘Jesus. Why…’ I was about to ask do you know that? , but then changed it to ‘do they do that?’

‘Usually it’s brothers who marry the woman, and the reason is so as not to break up the family home.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

She put her head on one side. ‘Maybe you know more about birds than people?’

I didn’t answer. Then she laughed and threw the bird up high into the air. It spread its wings and flew straight ahead, away from us. I followed its flight until suddenly I detected a movement at the edge of my vision. My first thought was that it was a snake. I turned and saw the dark form winding its way towards us down the rocky slope. Lifted my gaze and saw Carl was standing there up at the top, looking out like some statue of Christ over Rio and still pissing. I stepped aside, coughed, and Shannon saw the stream of urine and did the same. It continued to wind its way on downwards towards the village.

‘What do you think of us selling the land up here for twenty million kroner?’ I asked.

‘Sounds like a lot. Where do you think the nest might be?’

‘That’s two and a half million American dollars. We’re going to build a house with two hundred beds in it.’