Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘The cutting of the ribbon is about to take place and it’s sort of the point to arrive in the Cadillac,’ he said. ‘But there’s something wrong with it. Bound to be some minor thing, but can you get up here and see if you can fix the problem?’

‘I’ll be there directly,’ I said, ended the call and turned to Kurt Olsen.

‘Nice talking to you, but unless you’ve got a warrant for my arrest then I’m off.’

His jaw was still hanging open as I left.

A minute later I was driving along the highway in the Volvo. I had the bag of tools on the seat beside me, the lights from Olsen’s Land Rover in the mirror, and his departing promise to get both me and my brother still ringing in my ears. For a moment I wondered if he intended to pursue me all the way up to the farm, but when I took the turning for Nergard and Opgard he drove straight on.

Anyway, it wasn’t Olsen that worried me most.

Something wrong with the Cadillac? What the hell could that be? Could Carl have got into the car and noticed the brakes and steering wheel weren’t working properly before he started to drive? No, because in that case he must have had his suspicions about it. Or else someone had told him. Was that what had happened? Had Shannon been unable to go through with the plan? Had she cracked up and confessed the whole thing? Or even worse: had she changed sides and told Carl the truth? Or her version of the truth. Yes, that was it. She’d told him the murder plan was mine and mine alone, told him I knew that Carl had forged my signature on the deeds, told him I’d raped her, got her pregnant and threatened to kill her, the child and Carl if she said anything. Because I was no timid, frightened ring ouzel, I was Dad, a mountain lark, a bird of prey with a black bandit’s mask across his eyes. And then Shannon had told him what the two of them needed to do now. Lure me up to the farm and get rid of me the way me and Carl had got rid of Dad. Because of course she knew, she already knew the Opgard brothers were capable of murder, knew that she’d get what she wanted one way or the other.

I gasped for breath and managed to push these sick, unwelcome thoughts aside. I rounded a corner and a black tunnel opened up in front of me where no tunnel should have been. An impenetrable, dark stone wall it would have been hopeless to try to breach. And yet that was where the road led. Was this depression, the thing the old sheriff had talked to me about? Dad’s dark mind finally rising up in me, not falling like the night but rising from the valley depths? Maybe. And the remarkable thing was that with each hairpin bend I rounded, climbing ever higher and higher, my breathing grew easier.

Because it was OK. If it ended here, if I was not to live for one more day, then that was OK. With any luck killing me would bring Carl and Shannon together. Carl was a pragmatist. He could live with raising a child that wasn’t completely his and yet was still a member of his family. Yes, maybe my demise was the only chance of a happy ending in all this.

I rounded Geitesvingen and speeded up slightly, the gravel flying up behind the rear wheels. Below me lay the village, swathed in evening dark, and in what remained of the daylight I saw Carl standing in front of the Cadillac with arms folded, waiting for me.

And another thought struck me. Not another, but the first.

That that’s all it was: something wrong with the car.

Something trivial that had nothing to do with the brake hoses or the throttle cable and could be easily fixed. That somewhere in the kitchen light, behind the curtains, Shannon was waiting for me to sort this out and after that the plan would be back on the rails.

I climbed out of the car, and Carl walked over and put his arms around me. He held me in such a way that I felt his whole body from head to toe, could feel he was trembling the way he used to after Dad had been to our room and I climbed down into his bed to comfort him.

He whispered a few words in my ear, and I understood.

Understood that the plan was not back on the rails.

WE SAT IN THE CADILLAC. Carl behind the wheel, me in the passenger seat.

Staring out past Geitesvingen, at the mountain peaks in the south framed in orange and pale blue.

‘I said on the phone there was something wrong with the car because I knew Olsen was there,’ Carl said tearfully.

‘I understand,’ I said, and tried to move my foot, which had fallen asleep. No, not asleep, but gone lame, as lame as the rest of me. ‘Tell me in more detail what happened.’ My voice felt and sounded as though it was someone else talking.

‘Right,’ said Carl. ‘We were about to leave for the building site, were getting changed. Shannon’s ready, she looks like a million dollars. I’m in the kitchen ironing my shirt. And then suddenly she says she’s not feeling well. I tell her we’ve got paracetamol, but she says she has to go upstairs and lie down, I should go to the opening on my own and she’ll take the Subaru to the party if she feels any better. I’m shocked, tell her to pull herself together, this is important. But she refuses, says her health comes first and so on. And yeah, I’m really pissed off, it’s all just bullshit, Shannon never gets so ill she can’t manage to stay on her feet for a couple of hours, right? And this is, you know, it’s her big moment every bit as much as mine. For a moment I lose control, and I just blurt it out…’

‘You just blurt it out,’ I said, and could feel the paralysis advancing into my tongue.

‘I just blurt out that if she’s feeling so ill it’s probably because of that bastard kid she’s got in the oven.’

‘Bastard kid,’ I repeated. It was so cold in the car. So fucking cold.

‘Yeah, she asked about that too, like she didn’t understand what I was talking about. Then I tell her that I know about her and that American actor. Dennis Quarry. And she repeats the name, and I can’t even stand hearing the way she says it: Denn-is Qu-arry. And then she starts to laugh. To laugh. And I’m standing there with the iron in my hand, and something inside me just snaps.’

‘Snaps.’ Expressionless.

‘I hit her,’ he said.

‘Hit her.’ I’d turned into a fucking echo chamber.

‘The iron hits her on the side of the head, she falls backwards and into the stovepipe so it breaks. There’s a cloud of soot.’

I say nothing.

‘So I’m leaning over her and holding that scalding hot iron right in front of her face and saying if she doesn’t confess then I’ll iron her as flat as my shirt. But she still goes on laughing. And lying there laughing away with the blood running down into her mouth so her teeth are red with blood she looks like a fucking witch and not all that fucking beautiful any more, see what I mean? And she confesses. Not just what I’m asking her about but she sticks the knife right in and confesses everything. She confesses the worst thing of all.’

I tried to swallow, but there was no saliva left.

‘And what was the worst thing of all?’

‘What do you think, Roy?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘The hotel,’ he said. ‘It was Shannon who set fire to the hotel.’

‘Shannon? How…?’

‘As we were leaving Willumsen’s party to go to the square to see the rockets Shannon said she was tired and wanted to go home and she took the car. I was still in the square when we heard the fire truck.’ Carl closed his eyes. ‘Shannon’s sitting there by the stove and she says how she drove up to the building site and started the fire at a place where she knew it would spread, and left behind a dead rocket so it would look like that was the cause of the fire.’

I know what to ask. That I have to ask, even though I know the answer. Must ask in order not to reveal that I already know, that I know Shannon probably just as well as he does. So I do it. ‘Why?’