Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘And?’

‘She told him that on two occasions she’s seen blood on the back of Carl’s trousers, and when she asked Carl what had happened, he offered her what she called a “fairly unlikely explanation”.’

‘And that was?’ Mum had lowered her voice too by now.

‘Olsen wouldn’t give any details, he just wanted to pass on the message that the sheriff’s office wanted to talk to Carl. Apparently they have to inform the parents when they interrogate someone under sixteen.’

I felt like a bucket of ice-cold water had been emptied over my head.

‘Olsen said we could be present if Carl wanted, and that Carl isn’t legally obliged to talk to them. Just so we know.’

‘What did you say?’ my mum whispered.

‘That of course my son wouldn’t refuse to talk to the police, but that I would like to talk to him first myself, and so it would be useful to know what kind of unlikely explanation Carl had given his teacher.’

‘And what did the sheriff say to that?’

‘He thought about it. Said he knows Carl of course because he’s in the same class as his own lad, what’s his name?’

‘Kurt.’

‘Kurt, yes. So he knows that Carl is an honest and upright lad, and he says that personally he believes Carl’s explanation. He says the teacher is straight out of teacher training college and nowadays they’re indoctrinated to be on the lookout for things like this, so that means they see it everywhere.’

‘But of course they do, for chrissakes. What did he say Carl told the teacher?’

‘Carl said he’d sat on the pile of planks behind the barn and sat right down on a nail that was sticking out.’

I waited for Mum’s next question: Twice? It never came. Did she know? Had she guessed? I swallowed.

‘Oh my God, Raymond,’ was all she said.

‘That pile of planks should have been shifted a long time ago,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking I’ll get it done tomorrow. Then we’ll have a word with Carl. We can’t have him hurting himself like that and not telling us. Rusty nails – that can mean blood poisoning and God knows what else.’

‘We’d better talk to him. And tell Roy to keep an eye out for his little brother.’

‘That won’t be necessary, it’s all Roy ever does. Actually I think it might even be a bit unhealthy, the way he looks out for him all the time.’

‘Unhealthy?’

‘They’re like a married couple.’

Pause. Now here it comes, I thought.

‘Carl has to learn to stand on his own two feet,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve been thinking, it’s about time the boys each had a room of their own.’

‘But we don’t have the space.’

‘Come on, Margit. You know we can’t afford the bathroom you want between the bedrooms, but moving a couple of walls around for an extra bedroom won’t cost all that much. I can have it done in two or three weeks.’

‘You think so?’

‘I’ll start this weekend.’

Obviously the decision had been taken long before he aired this idea of a separation to Mum. What Carl and I might think was irrelevant. I bunched my fist and bit back my curses. I hated him, hated him. I trusted Carl to keep his mouth shut, but that wouldn’t be enough. The sheriff. The school. Mum. Dad. It was out of control, too many people who knew something, saw something and suddenly understood everything. Soon the tidal wave of shame would wash over us, dragging us all down with it. The shame, the shame, the shame. It was unendurable. None of us would be able to endure it.

THE FRITZ NIGHT.

Carl and I never called it that, but that was the name I gave it in my own head.

It was a blisteringly hot autumn day. I was twenty years old. Two years had passed since the Cadillac with Mum and Dad inside had gone down into Huken.

‘Feeling a little better now?’ asked Sigmund Olsen and swung the rod above his head. The line flew out, the reel made a clattering sound, descending in pitch, like some kind of bird I’d never heard before.

I didn’t answer, just followed the spinner with my eye as it glinted momentarily in the sunlight before disappearing beneath the surface of the water, so far from the boat we were sitting in I couldn’t hear if it made a splash. I wanted to ask why you had to cast the spinner so far away when you could just as well move the boat over to where you wanted it to go. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it looks more like a living fish if it’s swimming more or less horizontal when you reel it in. I don’t know the first thing about fishing and don’t plan to find out either, so I kept my mouth shut.

‘Because even though it doesn’t always seem that way, it’s actually true what people say, that time heals all wounds,’ the sheriff said as he brushed his mop of hair off his sunglasses. ‘A few of them anyway,’ he added.

I had no answer to that.

‘How’s Bernard?’ he asked.

‘Doing fine,’ I said, there being no way I could know then he only had months left to live.

‘I hear you and your brother are mostly living up at Opgard and not so much at Bernard’s, like the childcare people said?’

I had no answer to that either.

‘Well, anyway, you’re old enough now for that not to matter any more, so I’m not going to make a fuss about it. Carl’s still at school, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘And he’s doing all right?’

‘Yes.’ What else could I say? It wasn’t a porky. Carl said he still thought about Mum a lot, and he could spend entire days and evenings alone in the winter garden where he sat to do his homework and read over and over again the two American novels Dad had brought back to Norway with him, An American Tragedy and The Great Gatsby. I never saw him reading any other proper novels, but he loved those two, especially An American Tragedy , and some evenings he would sit and read to me from it and translate the difficult words.

Once he claimed to have heard Mum and Dad screaming from Huken, but I told him it was only ravens. I felt uneasy when he said he had nightmares about the two of us ending up in prison. But gradually things calmed down. He was still pale and thin, but he ate well, and he was shooting up, pretty soon he was a head taller than me.

So, incredibly enough, things had fallen into place. Calmed down. I could hardly believe it. The end of the world had come and gone, and we had survived. A fair few of us anyway. Were the ones who perished what Dad used to call collateral damage ? Unintentional fatalities, but necessary when there’s a war to be won? I don’t know. I don’t even know if the war was won. There was certainly a ceasefire, and if a ceasefire lasts long enough it’s easy to confuse it with peace. That’s what things felt like the day before the Fritz night.

‘I used to bring Kurt along,’ said Olsen. ‘But I don’t think he’s all that interested in fishing.’

‘Never,’ I said, as though I found the thought incredible.

‘Tell the truth, I don’t think he’s that interested in anything I do. What about you, Roy? You gonna be a car mechanic?’

I didn’t know why he’d taken me out on Lake Budal in that dinghy of his. Maybe he thought it would get me to relax. Say something I hadn’t said when I was being interrogated. Or maybe it was simply that as sheriff he felt a certain responsibility and wanted to have a talk, find out how things were going.

‘Yes, why not?’ I said.

‘Yes, because you’ve always liked tinkering about with things,’ he said. ‘Right now all Kurt’s interested in is girls. Always some new one he’s off out to meet. What about you and Carl? Any girls on the radar for you two?’