Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Yes?’ said Carl in a loud, firm voice. Probably no one else besides me noticed it was a bit too loud and firm.

‘…it would be interesting to know how much you intend to ask for it.’

‘Ask for it?’ Carl scanned the gathering with his eyes. His head didn’t move. The place was silent again. It sounded undeniably – and it was probably not just me that thought it – as though Carl was playing for time. Simon at least had heard it, because when he spoke next there was almost a note of triumph in his voice.

‘Perhaps the Master of Business will understand better if I say what price ,’ he said.

Scattered laughter. An expectant silence. People had raised their heads, like animals at the watering hole that see the lion approaching, although still a safe distance away.

Carl smiled. He bent over the documents in front of him and his shoulders shook as though he were laughing at a comradely kick in the shins from an old pal. Sorted his papers into a neat pile and seemed to be taking a break as he worked out how best to formulate his answer. I felt it, and from a quick look round realised that so did everyone else. That this was it. The moment of decision. I saw a straight back straighten further still two rows in front of me. Shannon. Looking up at the podium I saw Carl’s gaze fastened on me. I read something into it. An apology. He had lost. Screwed up. Screwed things up for the family. Both of us knew it. He wouldn’t be getting his hotel. And I wouldn’t be getting my service station.

‘We don’t want anything for it,’ said Carl. ‘Roy and I are donating the land.’

At first I thought I had heard wrong, and I could see Simon thought the same. But then I heard the murmuring that spread through the hall, and realised that people had heard the same as me. Someone started to clap.

‘No, no,’ said Carl, holding up his hands. ‘We’ve still got a long way to go. What we need now is for enough people to sign a preliminary document of intention to join, so that when we apply to the council for permission they can see this is a serious project. Thank you!’

The applause swelled. It grew and it grew. Soon everyone was clapping. Apart from Simon. And maybe Willumsen. And me.

‘I had to!’ said Carl. ‘It was the make-or-break moment. Couldn’t you tell?’

He followed me half running back out to the car. I opened the car door and got behind the wheel. It was Carl who had suggested we drive to the meeting in my grey-and-white Volvo 240 rather than his flashing dollar sign of a car. I turned the ignition, put my foot down and slipped the clutch even before he’d closed the passenger door.

‘For fuck’s sake, Roy!’

‘For fuck’s sake what?’ I yelled and adjusted the mirror. Saw Årtun disappearing behind us. Saw Shannon’s silent, frightened face in the rear seat. ‘You promised! You said you’d tell them what the land cost if they asked, you prick.’

‘Oh, give me a break, Roy! You felt the mood as well. Don’t lie, I could see it on you. You know that if I had said well, yes , now that you ask, Simon, Roy and I are actually asking forty million for that lump of rock , that would have been end of story. And there’s no way you would have got the money for your station.’

‘You lied!’

‘I lied, yes. So you’ve still got the chance to get your own service station.’

‘What fucking chance?’ I put my foot down, felt the grunt of the tyres as they bit down into the gravel as I spun the wheel and we skidded out onto the main road. The tyres squealed before the rubber sucked down onto the asphalt and from the back seat came a little squeal too. ‘The one in ten years’ time when the hotel has started to give some returns?’ I spat as I floored the pedal. ‘The point is you lied, Carl! You lied and you gave them 320 acres of my… my land – for nothing!’

‘Not ten years, jughead. You’ll get your chance in a year at the most.’

In our vocabulary jughead was not far off a term of endearment, and I realised he was asking for a truce.

‘Yes, one year and then what?’

‘And then the plots of land for the cabins come up for sale.’

‘Plots of land for the cabins?’ I punched the steering wheel. ‘Jesus Christ, forget the cabins, Carl! Haven’t you heard? The council has voted to stop any more cabin developments.’

‘They have?’

‘There’s no money for the council in cabins, only expenses.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Cabin owners pay taxes where they live, and when they’re only here for an average of six weekends a year they don’t leave enough money to cover what those fucking cabins cost the community. Water, sewage, collecting the rubbish, clearing the snow. Cabin owners fill up with petrol, they buy hamburgers from me, and that’s good for the station and a few of the other businesses, but for the council it’s a drop in the ocean.’

‘I really didn’t know that.’

I glanced over at him. He grinned back at me, the prick. Of course he knew.

‘What we do with the council,’ said Carl, ‘is we sell them warm beds. As opposed to cold beds.’

‘Come again?’

‘Cabins are cold beds, empty nine weekends in ten. Hotels are warm beds. Filled every night all year round with people who spend money without costing the council anything. Warm beds are the wet dream of every local council, Roy. Never mind what the regulations say – they chuck planning permissions at you. That’s the way it is in Canada and that’s the way it is here. It isn’t the hotel that’s going to make the big bucks for you and me. It’s when we get permission to sell cabin plots. And we will, because we’ll offer the council a thirty–seventy deal.’

‘Thirty–seventy?’

‘We offer them thirty per cent warm beds in exchange for building permission for seventy per cent cold beds.’

I eased off on the speed. ‘And you think they’ll go for it?’

‘Normally they’ll only accept a deal the other way round. With seventy per cent warm. But think of the council meeting next week where they’ll also be discussing the consequences of the rerouting of the main road and I present this project and we offer them a hotel that the entire village has voted for this evening. And they glance over at the spectators’ benches and there sits Abraham Lincoln and he’s nodding his head, this is good stuff.’

Lincoln was the nickname Dad had given Jo Aas. And yes, I could see it. They would give Carl exactly what he was asking for.

I glanced in the mirror. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think? I think you drive like a pig in heat.’

Our eyes met and we began to laugh. Soon all three of us were laughing, me so hard that Carl had to put a hand on the wheel to steer for me. I took the wheel back again, changed down and turned along the gravel lane and the hairpin bends that led up to our farm.

‘Look,’ said Shannon.

And we looked.

A car with a blue flashing light in the middle of the road. We slowed down and the headlights picked out Kurt Olsen. He was lounging against the bonnet of his Land Rover with arms folded. I didn’t stop until my bumper almost touched his knees, but he didn’t move a muscle. He walked up to the side of the car and I wound down the window.

‘Breathalyser test,’ he said and shone a torch beam straight into my face. ‘Get out of the car.’

‘Out?’ I asked, shading my face with one hand. ‘Can’t I just blow into the bag sitting here?’

‘Out,’ he said. Hard, calm and cold.

I looked at Carl. He nodded twice. The first time to tell me to do what Olsen said, the second that, yes, he would hold the fort from here on in.

I climbed out.

‘You see that?’ said Olsen and shone his torch on a more or less straight furrow in the gravel. I realised he had made it with the heel of his cowboy boot. ‘I want you to walk along that.’