Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

And I don’t know. I don’t fucking know what I was going to. I only know that everything burst out of me. Everything that had happened, everything that shouldn’t’ve happened, everything that was going to happen and mustn’t happen, but that there was no longer a way round. It rose up in me like shit in a blocked toilet, had been doing so for a long time now, and now it had reached the rim and was overflowing. The scissors were sharp, all that remained was to stab them into that repulsive mouth of hers, cut open those white cheeks, cut out those ugly words.

And yet I stopped.

Stopped, looked at the scissors. Japanese steel. And Dad’s words about hara-kiri flitted through my brain. Because wasn’t I failing here? Wasn’t it me, and not Grete, who had to be removed from the body of society like a malignant tumour?

No. Both. Both of us must be punished. Burned.

I grabbed the old black flex attached to the hairdryer, opened the scissors, and cut. The sharp blades cut straight through the insulation and when the steel made contact with the copper the electric jolt almost caused me to let go. But I was prepared and managed to sustain an even pressure on the scissors without cutting completely through the flex.

‘What are you doing?’ Grete shrieked. ‘Those are Niigata 1000 scissors! And this is a vintage hairdryer from the 1950s—’

With my free hand I grabbed her hand and her mouth shut as the circuit closed and the current began to circulate. She tried to tear herself free, but I didn’t let go. I saw her body shake, the eyes roll over backwards as the sparks crackled and flashed inside the helmet. A continuous scream, at first thin and pleading, then wild and demanding, rose up from her throat. My chest was pounding, I knew there was a limit to how long the heart can withstand two hundred milliamperes, but I never fucking let go. Because Grete Smitt was where we deserved to be now, united in a circle of pain. And now I saw blue flames rising from the helmet. And even though it took all my concentration to hold on, I still noticed the smell of burning hair. I closed my eyes, squeezed with both hands, muttering speechless words, the way I had seen the preacher do when he was healing or saving souls at Årtun. Grete’s screams were deafening, so loud that I could only just hear the smoke alarm that began to howl.

Then I let go and opened my eyes.

Saw Grete tear off the helmet. Saw a mixture of melting rollers and burning hair before she rushed to the hair-washing basin, turned on the hand shower and started the work of extinguishing.

I walked over to the door. In the stairwell outside I heard tumbling footsteps on their way down. Seemed like the neuropath was taking a break. I turned and looked at Grete again. She was safe. Grey smoke drifted from what remained of her perm, which turned out to be not so permanent after all. Right now it looked like a blazing outdoor grill someone had emptied a bucket of water over.

I walked out into the corridor, waited until Grete’s father was far enough down the stairs to see my face properly, saw him say something, my name, perhaps, though drowned out by the howling from the smoke alarm. Then I left the salon.

An hour passed. The time was quarter past three.

I sat in the workshop and stared at the bag.

Kurt Olsen hadn’t arrived, arrested me and put an end to the whole thing.

There was no way out. Time to get started.

I grabbed the bag, walked out to the Volvo and drove up to Opgard.

I SLID OUT FROM BENEATH the Cadillac. Shannon stood looking down at me in that cold barn, shivering in her thin, black pullover, arms folded and a worried look on her face. I said nothing, just got to my feet and dusted off my overalls.

‘Well?’ she said impatiently.

‘It’s done,’ I said, and started working the jack to get the car back down to the ground.

Afterwards Shannon helped me to push the car out and over to the winter garden with its front pointing down the road towards Geitesvingen.

I looked at my watch. Quarter past four. A little later than I’d expected. I headed quickly back to the barn to fetch the tools and was putting them into the bag on the workbench when Shannon came up behind me and put her arms around me.

‘We’ve still got the option of pulling out,’ she said, and laid her cheek against my back.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘No.’ She stroked my chest. We hadn’t touched each other, hardly even looked at each other since I arrived. I’d started work on the Cadillac straight away to be certain I had time to swap the working parts for the defective ones before Carl returned from the meeting, but that wasn’t the only reason we hadn’t touched. There was something else. Suddenly we had become strangers. Murderers as shocked by each other as by ourselves. But that would pass. DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE. And DO IT NOW. That was all that mattered.

‘Then we’ll stick to our plan,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘The dotterel is back,’ she said. ‘I saw it yesterday.’

‘Already?’ I said, turned and held her, framing that lovely face of hers with my rough hands and stubby fingers. ‘That’s good.’

‘No,’ she said, and shook her head with a sad smile. ‘It shouldn’t’ve come. It was lying in the snow outside the barn. It had frozen to death.’ A tear in that half-closed eye.

I pulled her close.

‘Tell me again why we’re doing this,’ she whispered.

‘We’re doing it because there are only two outcomes. Because I have taken what is his. Because we are both killers.’

She nodded. ‘But are we certain this is the only way?’

‘Everything else is too late for me and Carl now, I’ve explained that to you, Shannon.’

‘Yes,’ she snuffled into my shirtfront. ‘When this is over…’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When this is over.’

‘I think it’s a boy.’

I held her for some time. But then I heard the seconds ticking and chewing again, like a countdown, a countdown to the world losing its meaning. But that’s not what was going to happen. It wouldn’t end now, it would begin. New life. Meaning my new life.

I let go of her and put the overalls and Carl’s brake hoses and throttle cable in the bag. Shannon watched me.

‘What if it doesn’t work?’ she said.

‘It’s not supposed to work,’ I said, though of course I knew what she meant, and maybe she heard the irritation in my voice and wondered what lay behind it. Probably understood what lay behind it. Stress. Nerves. Fear. Regret? Did she feel regret? Definitely. But in Kristiansand, when we’d made the plan, we had talked about that too. That doubt would come sneaking and whisper to us, the way it whispers in the ears of bridal couples on their wedding day. Doubt that is like water, that always finds the hole in your ceiling, and was now dripping down on my head like the Chinese water torture. What Grete had said about there being only one person who could have set fire to the hotel. That single brake light on the Subaru that didn’t work. The car noticed by the Latvian near the building site on New Year’s Eve.

‘The plan will work,’ I said. ‘There’s hardly any brake fluid left in the system, and the car weighs two tons. Colossal speed. There’s only one possible result.’

‘But what if he realises before the corner?’

‘I’ve never seen Carl testing brakes before he needs them,’ I said calmly, repeating something I had said many times before. ‘The car is on flat ground. He accelerates, reaches the slope, takes his foot off the pedal, and because it’s so steep he doesn’t notice that the acceleration is also due to the fact that the throttle cable is stuck and making the heavy car go even faster. Two seconds later he is on the bend and realises that his speed is much higher than it usually is here. In panic he stamps down on the brake pedal. But there’s no response. Maybe he manages to pump the pedal down one more time, manages to wrench the steering wheel round, but he’s got no chance.’ I licked my lips, I had made the point, could have stopped there. But I went on twisting the knife. In me, in her. ‘His speed’s too high, the car’s too heavy, the turn too sharp, even if the surface was asphalt and not gravel it wouldn’t help. And then the car is in the air and he’s weightless. Commander on a spaceship with a brain running at warp speed that has time to ask itself how. Who. And why. And maybe has time to answer before he—’