Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Pictures! Do you have any pictures?’

Mari gave a sideways look down at Shannon. Hesitated. Maybe those vulpine eyes thought for a moment about resisting. A scrawny little one-eyed fledgling of a woman; how dangerous could that be? Mari pulled out a phone. Tapped away. Held the picture up to Shannon who gave vent to one of those long-drawn-out aahhhs that are supposed to express how adorable something is, before handing me the tray with glasses so that she could take hold of Mari’s phone, the better to feast her eyes on the twins.

‘What d’you have to do to get two like that, Mari?’

I don’t know if Shannon was just flattering her, but if she was, it was a brilliant bit of play-acting. Good enough anyway for Mari Aas to drop the hostile look on her face.

‘Any more?’ asked Shannon. ‘Can I look?’

‘Er, sure.’

‘Can you serve the guests, Roy?’ Shannon said, without taking her eyes off the screen.

I made a circuit with the tray, pushing my way between guests, but the glasses disappeared without my having to get involved in small talk. When the tray was empty I returned to the kitchen where it was just as crowded.

‘Hi, Roy. I saw you had your little silver tin of tobacco out – can you spare me a wedge?’

It was Erik Nerell. He stood leaning against the fridge with a beer in his hand. Erik pumped iron and his head was so small on his thick, muscular neck you could hardly see the join; it looked like a tree trunk that just grew out the top of his T-shirt. On top of it all was a yellow crew cut, tight as a bundle of uncooked spaghetti, with shoulders sloping down the sides towards two biceps that always looked as if they’d just been inflated. And who knows, maybe they had been. He’d been a paratrooper, and now he ran what was actually the village’s only real bar, Fritt Fall. It had been a cafeteria and he’d taken the place over and turned it into a bar with a disco, karaoke, bingo every Monday and quiz every Wednesday.

I fished the tin of Berry’s snuff out of my pocket and handed it to him. He stuffed a wedge under his upper lip.

‘Just want to see what it tastes like,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anyone else using American snuff. Where d’you get hold of it?’

I shrugged. ‘Here and there. Get people who are going out there to bring some back.’

‘That’s a neat tin,’ he said as he handed it back. ‘Ever been in the States yourself?’

‘Never.’

‘Something else I’ve always wondered about,’ he said. ‘How come you put the snuff inside your lower lip?’

‘The American way,’ I said in English. ‘That’s the way Dad did it. He always used to say only Swedes put it under the upper lip, and everyone knows how the Swedes chickened out during the war.’

Erik Nerell laughed, his upper lip bulging. ‘Nice bit of stuff your brother’s picked up.’

I didn’t answer.

‘It’s almost freaky how good her Norwegian is.’

‘You’ve spoken to her?’

‘Just asking if she danced.’

‘You asked if she danced ? Why?’

Erik shrugged. ‘Because she looks like a ballerina. Tiny dancer , right? And then she’s from Barbados. Calypsos and that… what d’you call it again? Soca!’

There must have been something in the look on my face that made him laugh.

‘Take it easy, Roy, she was cool with it, said she’d teach it to us later on tonight. You ever seen soca? Fucking sexy stuff.’

‘OK,’ I said, and thought that was probably pretty good advice. Take it easy.

Erik took a swig from his bottle of beer and belched discreetly into his hand. I guess that’s what living with a woman does to you. ‘Know if there are a lot of rockfalls in Huken at the moment?’ he said.

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Why d’you ask?’

‘Has nobody told you?’

‘Told me what?’ I felt a chill, like cold air wafting through the rotting window putty.

‘The sheriff wants us to check the wall with a drone and if it looks OK we’re going to rappel down to the wreck. A few years ago I’d’ve done it like a shot, but now, what with Thea sitting at home with a bun in the oven, things look a bit different.’

No, not just a breath of cold air. An injection, a hypo dispensing ice-cold water. The wreck. The Cadillac. It had been lying there for eighteen years. I shook my head. ‘Well, it probably looks OK, but then I do hear stones falling. It happens all the time.’

Erik gave me a sort of calculating look. I don’t know whether it was the danger of the falling stones or my own trustworthiness he was wondering about. Maybe it was both. He must have heard the story of what happened when they were going to recover Mum’s and Dad’s bodies from Huken. Two men from the mountain rescue team climbed down there and when they started hoisting up the stretchers with the bodies, the stretchers banged against the rock face, but no stones came loose. The accident happened as the men were on the way back up themselves. A rock dislodged by the person on the rope struck the man below securing it and crushed his shoulder joint. Me and Carl had been standing on Geitesvingen, behind the ambulance, the rescue crew and the sheriff, and what I remember most clearly are the screams through the cold, still evening air of the climber who was out of sight. They were tossed back and forth between the rock faces down there. Slow and controlled, almost as if they were measuring the pain, like the raven’s calm cry of alarm.

‘Hey, come on, speech!’ exclaimed Erik.

I heard Carl’s voice coming from the living room and saw people pushing their way in. I found somewhere to stand in the doorway. Even though Carl was a head taller than most people he’d still clambered up onto a chair.

‘My dear, dear friends,’ his voice boomed. ‘It’s just so fucking great to see you all again. Fifteen years…’ He let it hang there for us to savour. ‘Most of you have been seeing each other every day, so you haven’t noticed the gradual changes, that we’ve actually got older. So let me just make one thing very clear, that when it comes to you guys…’ He took a breath, looked round with his cheeky, teasing smile. ‘I seem to be wearing a lot better than you.’

Laughter and loud protests.

‘Oh yes, oh yes!’ Carl shouted. ‘And it’s even more remarkable when you realise I’m the only guy here who had any looks to lose.’

More laughter, whistles and jeers. Someone tried to pull him down off the chair.

‘But,’ said Carl, as someone helped him stay steady on the chair, ‘when it comes to the ladies, it’s the other way round. You look a lot better now than you did back then.’

Cheers and applause from the women.

A man’s voice: ‘Watch it now, Carl!’

I turned and looked for Mari. It was automatic, I had never got out of the habit. Shannon was sitting on the worktop in the kitchen to get a better view. Her back arched. Erik Nerell was standing by the fridge studying her. I left the room and headed up the stairs to the boys’ room, closed the door and lay down on the upper bunk. Heard Carl’s voice in through the kitchen and up through the hole around the stovepipe. I couldn’t hear every word, but I got the gist of it. I heard my own name, and then a pause.

A man’s voice: ‘He’ll be in the bog.’ Laughter.

Shannon’s name. Heard her deep, masculine tone. A sparrow with the song of an owl. A few words, then polite and restrained applause.

I took a swig of beer, stared at the roof. Closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, it was quieter. And I realised I had slept through the party, that the last of the guests were leaving. Engines starting, revving up. The chatter of gravel beneath tyres. Red lights on the curtains as they braked heading into Geitesvingen.