Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘No, I don’t make jokes, Roy Calvin Opgard. Start here. Go ahead.’

I did as he said. Just to get it over with.

‘Uh-oh, careful, carefully now,’ said Olsen. ‘And again, slowly. Think of it as a line. Put your foot down on the line every time.’

‘What sort of line?’ I asked as I set off again.

‘The type you suspend across a gulch. For example a ravine with rocks so loose that people who claim to know about such things write, in a report, that they advise against any investigation of the location. One false step along that line, Roy, and down you go.’

I don’t know whether it was having to parade along like a fucking male model or the flickering light from his torch, but it had actually become extremely bloody difficult to keep my balance.

‘You know I don’t drink,’ I said. ‘So what is this?’

‘You don’t drink, no. It means your brother can drink for two. Which makes me think that you’re the one to watch out for. People who are always sober are hiding something, don’t you think? They’re afraid they’ll reveal their secrets if they get drunk. So they stay away from people, and parties.’

‘If you’re turning over stones, Olsen, turn over Moe the roofer. Have you done that yet?’

‘Put a sock in it, Roy. I know you’re trying to distract me.’ His voice was starting to lose its controlled calm.

‘You think trying to stop sexual abuse is a distraction? You think breathalysing teetotallers is a better use of your time?’

‘Oops, you stepped over the edge there,’ said Olsen.

I looked down. ‘Fucking well didn’t.’

‘Look there, see?’ He shone the torch on a footprint outside the line. It was the print of a cowboy boot. ‘You better come with me.’

‘Fucking hell, Olsen, get out the fucking breathalyser!’

‘Someone buggered it up. Pressed the wrong keys and ruined it,’ he said. ‘You failed the balancing test and so that’s what we’re going to have to rely on. As you know, we have a comfortable cell at the sheriff’s office where you can wait until the doctor arrives to take a blood sample.’

I gave him a look of such disbelieving astonishment that he pushed the torch up under his chin and shouted ‘Boo!’, and then gave a ghostly chuckle.

‘Careful with that light,’ I said. ‘Looks like you’ve had enough radiation to be going on with.’

He didn’t seem particularly pissed off. Still laughing, he uncoupled the handcuffs from his belt.

‘Turn around, Roy.’

I HEARD IT THROUGH THE stovepipe hole late one evening. I was sixteen years old, and had almost fallen asleep to the steady sound of conversation down there in the kitchen. Even though she didn’t have much to say, she was the one who did the talking. Dad said mostly yes and no, apart from the few occasions when he stopped her and told her clearly and concisely how things were, how things should be done, or not done as the case might be. This almost always happened without him raising his voice, but afterwards, as a rule, she kept quiet for a while. Before starting to talk calmly about something else, as though the subject of their previous conversation had never been raised. I know it sounds strange, but I never really got to know my mum. Maybe because I didn’t understand her, or because I wasn’t interested enough, or because she was so self-effacing next to Dad that she simply disappeared for me. Of course it’s strange that the person you’ve been most intimate with, who gave life to you, whom you spent every day with for eighteen years, can remain someone whose thoughts and feelings are a complete mystery to you. Was she happy? What were her dreams? Why was she able to talk with Dad, and a bit with Carl, but almost never with me? Did she have as little understanding of me as I did of her? On only one occasion did I catch a glimpse of what lay behind Mum in the kitchen, Mum in the cowshed, Mum who mended clothes and told us to do as our father said, and that was that evening at the Grand when Uncle Bernard turned fifty. After the meal in the rococo room the grown-ups jived to the music of a trio of fat men in white jackets, and while Carl was shown around the hotel I sat at the table and saw that Mum was watching the dancers with a look on her face I’d never seen before, dreamy and half smiling, her gaze slightly veiled. And for the first time in my life it struck me that my mother might be pretty, pretty , as she sat there humming in a red dress that matched the drink in front of her. I had never seen Mum drinking except on Christmas Eve, and then only the one glass of aquavit, and she had an unfamiliar warmth in her voice when she asked Dad if he wanted to dance. He shook his head, but smiled at her, maybe he saw the same thing as me. Then a man a bit younger than Dad came up and asked Mum for a dance. Dad sipped his beer, nodded and smiled at the man, as though he felt proud. I didn’t want to, but my gaze followed Mum out onto the dance floor. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be too embarrassing. I saw her saying a few words to the man, he nodded, and they began. First Mum danced quite close to him, then closer, then further away, she danced quick, then slow. She really could dance, and I had never had the faintest idea. But there was something else too. The way she looked at this stranger. The half-closed eyes and that fixed half-smile, like a cat playing with a mouse it intends to make a meal out of, only just not quite yet. Then I noticed Dad beside me getting restless. And suddenly it struck me that it wasn’t the man who was the stranger, it was her, the woman I called Mum.

Then it was over and she sat down with us again. Later that evening, after Carl had fallen asleep beside me in the hotel room we shared, I heard voices in the corridor. I recognised Mum’s, it was unusually loud and piercing. I got up and opened the door just a fraction, enough to see across to the doorway of their room. Dad said something, Mum raised her hand and hit him. Dad touched his cheek and said something in a calm, low voice. She raised the other hand and struck him again. Then she grabbed the key from him, unlocked the door and disappeared into the room. Dad stayed where he was, hunched over slightly, rubbing his cheek and looking in the direction of the door where I was standing in the dark. He looked sad and lonely, almost, maybe like a kid that’s lost his teddy bear. I don’t know if he realised the door was ajar, all I know is that on that evening I got an insight into something to do with Mum and Dad. Something I didn’t quite understand. Something I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more about. And next day, driving back home to Os, everything was just as it had always been. Mum talked to Dad, a quiet, even flow of everyday talk, with him saying yes, and sometimes no, or else having a coughing fit, at which she kept quiet for a while.

The reason I listened with particular interest that evening all those years ago was that it was my dad who, after a long pause, began to speak. And it sounded like it was something he had been wondering how best to say. Also he kept his voice even lower than usual. Almost whispering. Now of course my parents knew we could hear them up through the stovepipe hole to our bedroom; what they didn’t realise was how well we could hear them. The hole was one thing, but it was the pipe itself that did the trick, amplifying the sound so much that it was like sitting down there between them. Carl and I had agreed there was no point in making them aware of this.

‘Sigmund Olsen mentioned it today,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘He’s had what he referred to as a “warning report” from one of Carl’s teachers.’