Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘I saw the bruises when I was at home at Christmas,’ I said in a low voice. ‘She came out of the bathroom.’

I saw Carl’s brain was trying to cook up an explanation. Why the hell did I have to blurt that out just when I needed him to trust me?

‘Carl, I…’

‘It’s OK,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘You’re right. It happened a few times after she came back from Toronto.’ He breathed in so heavily I saw his ribcage rise. ‘I was so stressed out by all that hotel chaos, and she kept going on at me about what happened with Mari. And when I’d had a few bevvies, sometimes I… sometimes I snapped. But it hasn’t happened since I stopped drinking. Thanks, Roy.’

‘Thanks?’

‘For confronting me with that. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it for a long time. I was starting to get afraid I had the same thing as Dad. That you start doing stuff you don’t really want to, and then you find you can’t stop, right? But I did it. I changed.’

‘You’re back in the flock,’ I said.

‘Eh?’

‘Are you sure you’ve changed?’

‘Yes, you can bet on it.’

‘Or you can do it for me. In fact, why not do it for both of us while you’re at it?’

He just looked at me as though it was some stupid word game he didn’t understand. And I was coming out with a lot of stuff now I didn’t even understand myself.

‘Anyway,’ he said, and drew a hand across his face, ‘I just had to talk to someone about this kid. And that someone always turns out to be you. Sorry about that.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ I said, and turned the knife in myself. ‘I’m your brother, after all.’

‘Yes, you’re the one who’s always there when I need someone. God, I’m so glad I have you at least.’

Carl laid his hand on top of mine. His was bigger, softer, warmer than mine, which was ice-cold.

‘Always,’ I said hoarsely.

He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll have to sort out this business with Shannon later,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘And this about me not being the father, that stays between us, OK?’

‘Of course,’ I said. Weirdly, I almost laughed.

‘Start of the new building. We’ll show ’em, Roy.’ He clamped his jaws together and his eyes tight into a fighting face, shook a bunched fist at me. ‘The Opgard boys are gonna win.’

I smiled and raised my glass, showed I intended to stay and finish my drink.

Watched Carl as he hurried towards the door. Saw through the window as he got into the Subaru. Shannon had arranged for her to use the Cadillac today. But Carl would be driving the Cadillac to the launch up at the hotel site. Or more accurately, driving in that direction .

A single brake light flared as the Subaru stopped for a trailer before swinging out onto the main road.

I ordered another beer. Drank it slowly as I thought.

I thought of Shannon. Of what it is that drives us human beings. And I thought about myself. About why I had practically asked to be exposed. Told Carl that I knew he beat Shannon. Hinted that I knew he had forged my signature. Asking to be exposed so that I didn’t have to go through with it. Didn’t have to go on filling Huken with cars and corpses.

AFTER FOUR BEERS AT FRITT Fall I left the place.

The time was only one thirty, time enough to get stone-cold sober again, but I knew those beers were a sign of weakness. A flight response. A single false step would be enough to screw up the whole plan, so why drink now ? It was probably a sign that there was a part of me that perhaps didn’t want to succeed. The reptile me. No, the reptile brain didn’t have anything to do with this, see, I wasn’t thinking straight, I was already getting my concepts mixed up. Anyway, the me- me was absolutely certain of what he wanted, and that was to get what was rightfully his, whatever was left of it. And get rid of those who stood in the way and threatened the people it was my duty to defend. Because I was no longer the big brother. I was her man. And father to the child. That was my family now.

All the same, there was something that didn’t add up.

I left the Volvo at the workshop, and from the centre I walked south-east on the pedestrian and cycle track that ran alongside the main road. When I reached the workshop I stood and looked across the road, to the wall of the house with the poster advertising Grete’s Hair and Sun Salon.

Checked my watch again.

I just about had time; but I should have let it rest, this wasn’t the time to deal with it. Maybe no time was the time to deal with it.

So God knows why I suddenly found myself there on the other side of the road, peering into the garage, at the red Audi A1 standing there.

‘Hi!’ Grete called from the hairdressing chair. She had her head inside the pride of the place, the 1950s salon hairdryer. ‘I didn’t hear the phone or the doorbell.’

‘I didn’t ring,’ I said, and established that we were alone. The fact that she was giving herself a perm indicated that she didn’t have any imminent appointments. All the same, I locked the door behind me.

‘I can do you in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Just need to get my own hair into shape here first. Got to look presentable yourself when you’re a hairdresser, right?’

She sounded nervous. Maybe because I had arrived with no warning. Maybe because she noticed something about me. That I hadn’t just come in for a trim. Or maybe because, deep down, she had been expecting me for a long time now.

‘Nice car,’ I said.

‘What? I can’t hear so well in here.’

‘Nice car! I saw it outside Stanley’s on New Year’s Eve, but I didn’t know it was yours.’

‘Oh yeah. It’s been a good year for the hairdressing business. Like it’s been a good year for all the businesses here.’

‘Same make and same colour that passed me just before midnight when I was on my way to the square. Not many red Audis in the village, so I imagine it was you, right? But then Stanley tells me you were going home to your parents to bring in the New Year with them, and that’s in the opposite direction. Besides, the car turned off towards Nergard and the road up to the hotel. Not much there, apart from Nergard. Opgard. And the hotel. And that got me to thinking…’

I leaned forward and looked at the scissors lying on the worktop in front of the mirror. They all looked pretty similar to me, but I guessed it must be her famous Niigata 1000 scissors that lay in the open box, almost as if they were being exhibited.

‘You said to me on New Year’s Eve that Shannon hates Carl, but she needs him for her hotel. Did you think that if the hotel burned down and the project was abandoned then Shannon wouldn’t need Carl any more, and then you could have him?’

Grete Smitt studied me calmly, all trace of nervousness gone. Her forearms lay motionless on the armrests of the large, heavy chair, her head swathed in a crown of plastic and filaments. She looked like a fucking queen on the throne.

‘Of course that thought occurred to me,’ she said, her voice lower now. ‘And you have too, Roy. That’s why I suspected you of starting the fire. You disappeared some time before midnight.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ I said.

‘Well, then there’s only one other person it could be,’ said Grete.

My mouth felt dry. It made no fucking difference who torched the fucking hotel. There was a vague buzzing sound; I couldn’t tell if it was coming from inside the hair-drying helmet or my own head.

She stopped talking when she saw I had taken the scissors out of the box. And she must have seen something in my eyes, because she raised her arms up in front of her.

‘Roy, you’re not going to…’