Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Definitely. But once they find those worn parts I’m talking about, then they’ll understand that this really was an accident.’

‘You think so?’

‘Certain of it,’ I said.

A thin glow of orange light still lay around Ottertind as Carl and I started the heavy black beast moving. Shannon looked so tiny behind that big wheel. We let go of the car and it trundled slowly, almost reluctantly forward as the gravel crunched beneath its tyres. Uppermost on the fins sticking out at the back the two vertically mounted lights glowed red. It was a Cadillac DeVille. From the days when the Americans made cars like spaceships that could take you to the sky.

I followed the car with my eyes, the throttle cable must have got stuck because it just kept on accelerating and I thought this time it will happen, it’ll take off for the sky.

She’d said she thought it was a boy. I had said nothing, but of course I couldn’t help thinking about names. Not that I think she would have accepted Bernard, but that was the only one I could think of.

Carl put his arm around my shoulder. ‘You’re all I have, Roy,’ he said.

And you’re all I have, I thought. Two brothers in a desert.

‘FOR A LOT OF US, we’re back now where we started out,’ said Carl.

He was on the stage at Årtun, in front of one of the microphone stands which would shortly be taken over by Rod and his band.

‘And I’m not thinking about the first investors’ meeting we had here, but when I, my brother and many of you who are here tonight used to meet at the local dances. And it was usually after a few drinks we would get up enough front to start boasting about all the great things we swore we were going to achieve. Or else we asked the one who had had the loudest mouth how things were coming along with that great plan of his, had he made a start yet? And then there would be mocking grins one way and curses the other and – if he happened to be the touchy type – a butt.’

Laughter from the audience standing in the hall.

‘But when anyone asks us next year how things are going with that hotel us people from Os boast about so much, then we can tell them oh yes, we built that all right. Twice.’

Wild enthusiasm. I shifted from one foot to the other. Nausea gripped around my throat, a headache pounded rhythmically behind my eyes, the pain in my chest was excruciating, almost like I would imagine a heart attack feels. But I tried not to think, tried not to feel. For the moment it looked as though Carl was dealing with it better than me. As I should have known. He was the cold one of us. He was like Mum. A passive accessory. Cold.

He held his arms out wide, like a circus ringmaster, or an actor.

‘Those of you who were present at the launch earlier this evening were able to see the drawings exhibited there, and you know how fantastic this is going to be. And actually our master builder, my wife Shannon Alleyne Opgard, should have been up here on the stage with me. She may be along later, but at the moment she’s at home in bed because sometimes that’s the way it is when a hotel isn’t the only thing you’re pregnant with…’

There was silence for a moment. Then the cheering started all over again, presently turning into foot-stamping applause.

I couldn’t take any more, I hurried for the exit.

‘And now, everyone, please give a warm welcome to…’

I elbowed my way out of the door and just managed to get round the corner of the building before my throat filled and the puke splashed down onto the ground in front of me. It came in contractions, something that had to come out, like a bloody birth. When at last it was over I sank to my knees, empty, done. From inside I heard the cowbell tap out the rhythm to the fast number Rod and his gang always opened with, ‘Honky Tonk Women’. I pressed my forehead against the wall and started to cry. Snot, tears and puke-stinking slime poured out of me.

‘Jesus,’ I heard a voice say behind me. ‘Did someone finally beat up Roy Opgard?’

‘Don’t, Simon!’ said a woman’s voice, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘Is everything all right, Roy?’

I half turned. Grete Smitt had a red headscarf wrapped around her head. And she actually looked quite good in it.

‘Just some bad moonshine,’ I said. ‘But thanks anyway.’

The two of them walked on towards the car park, arms around each other.

I got to my feet and headed off in the direction of the birch wood, feet squelching on soft ground that swayed, heavy with meltwater. I cleared my nostrils one after the other, spat and breathed in. The evening air was still cold, but it tasted different, like a promise that things would change, into something new, and better. I couldn’t comprehend what that might be.

I stood beneath a bare tree. The moon had risen and bathed Lake Budal in an eerie light. In a few days’ time the ice would be gone. The current would take hold of the ice floes. Once things start to crack here, it doesn’t take long for everything to go.

A figure appeared beside me.

‘What does the ptarmigan do when the fox takes its eggs?’ It was Carl.

‘Lays new ones,’ I said.

‘Isn’t it funny? When your parents say stuff like that when you’re a kid you think it’s just drivel. And then one day you suddenly understand what they meant.’

I shrugged.

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘When the spring finally reaches us too.’

‘It is.’

‘When are you coming back?’

‘Back?’

‘To Os.’

‘For the funeral, I suppose.’

‘There won’t be any funeral here, I’m sending her in a coffin to Barbados. I mean, when are you moving back?’

‘Never.’

Carl laughed as though I’d just made a joke. ‘You maybe don’t know it yourself yet, but you’ll be back before the year is out, Roy Opgard.’ And then he left.

I stood there for a long time. Finally I looked up at the moon. It should have been something bigger, like a planet, something that could really have set me and everybody else and our tragic and hurried lives in a proper perspective. I needed that now. Something that could tell me that all of us – Shannon, Carl and me, Mum and Dad, Uncle Bernard, Sigmund Olsen, Willumsen and the Danish enforcer – were here, gone and forgotten in the same instant, hardly more than a flash in the universe’s vast ocean of time and space. That was the only comfort we had, that absolutely nothing had meaning. Not looking out across your own land. Not running your own service station. Not waking up beside the one you love. Not seeing your own child grow up.

That’s what it was: unimportant.

But of course, the moon was too small to provide comfort for that.

‘THANKS,’ SAID MARTINSEN AS SHE took the cup of coffee I handed to her. She leaned against the kitchen worktop and looked out of the window. The KRIPOS car and Olsen’s Land Rover were still down on Geitesvingen.

‘So you didn’t find anything?’ I asked.

‘Obviously not,’ she said.

‘Does it seem so obvious to you?’

Martinsen sighed and glanced round, as though to assure herself we were still alone in the kitchen. ‘To be quite honest, under normal circumstances we would have rejected the request for assistance in a case which was so obviously an accident. When your sheriff contacted us, the faults on the car – which were obviously what caused it – had already been discovered. The extensive damages sustained by the dead person are what you would expect from such a long fall. The local doctor obviously couldn’t say exactly when she died, given that it took a day and a half before he was able to get down to the car; but his estimate suggests she went off the road sometime between six o’clock and midnight.’