Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

He let his question drift while I peered into the darkness beneath the surface of the water, trying to spot the spinner.

‘I don’t think you’ve ever had a girlfriend, have you?’

I shrugged. There’s a difference between asking a twenty-year-old if he has a girlfriend and if he’s ever had a girlfriend. And Sigmund Olsen knew that. Have to wonder how old he was when he styled that moptop of his. Guess it must have worked for him anyway.

‘Haven’t seen anything that takes my fancy,’ I said. ‘No point having a girlfriend just to say you have.’

‘Of course not,’ said Olsen. ‘And some people don’t even want girls at all. To each his own.’

‘Yes,’ I said. If only he knew how true that was. But no one did. Only Carl.

‘So long as no one else gets hurt,’ said Olsen.

‘Sure.’ I wondered what we were actually talking about and how long this fishing trip was going to last. I had a car at the repair shop that was supposed to be ready by tomorrow and we were a bit too far from land for my taste. Lake Budal was big and it was deep. For a joke Dad called it the great unknown because it was the nearest thing we had to a sea. At school we’d learned that wind and inflow and outflow of three rivers created horizontal currents in Lake Budal, but the really scary thing was that the differences in temperature in the water – especially in the spring – brewed up strong vertical currents. I don’t know if they were enough to suck you down into the depths if you were so keen you went for a swim in March, but we sat wide-eyed in class and imagined they were. Maybe that’s the reason I’d never really felt comfortable either in the lake or on it. When Carl and I tested out that diving equipment we did it in one of the smaller mountain lakes where there were no currents and where we could swim ashore if the boat went over.

‘Do you remember when we had a chat just after your parents died, and me saying that a lot of people hide the fact that they’re suffering from depression?’ Olsen reeled in the dripping line.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You do? Good memory. Well, I’ve had a taste of what it’s like to be depressed myself.’

‘Have you?’ I said, a note of surprise in my voice since I supposed that was what he was expecting to hear.

‘Even been on medication for it.’ He looked at me and smiled. ‘It’s gotta be OK to admit that when even prime ministers do it. Anyway, it was a long time ago now.’

‘Blimey.’

‘But I’ve never thought of taking my own life,’ he said. ‘Know what it would take for me to do that? For me to just end it all and leave a wife and two kids behind?’

I swallowed. Something told me the ceasefire was in danger.

‘Shame,’ he said. ‘What d’you think, Roy?’

‘Dunno.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No.’ I gave a dry-nosed snuffle. ‘What are you actually fishing for here?’ I held his gaze for a couple of seconds before nodding at the water. ‘Cod and flounder, coalfish and salmon?’

He did something with the reel, locked it I think, and wedged the rod between the bottom of the boat and one of those things you sit on. Took off his sunglasses. Hoisted up his dungarees by the belt. There was a mobile phone in a leather holder dangling from it. Every once in a while he’d check it. He fixed his eyes on me.

‘Your parents were conservative people,’ he said. ‘Strict Christians.’

‘Not so sure about that,’ I said.

‘They were members of the Methodist Church.’

‘That was mostly just something my dad brought with him from the USA.’

‘Your parents were not exactly tolerant of homosexuality’

‘Mum didn’t really have any problem with it, but my dad was dead against it. Unless they were Americans and standing for election as Republicans.’ I wasn’t kidding, just repeating word for word what Dad had said himself, without mentioning that later he added Japanese soldiers to his shortlist, since they were – as he put it – worthy opponents. He said that as though he’d fought in the war himself. What Dad admired was the ritual of hara-kiri. He obviously believed it was something all Japanese soldiers did whenever the situation called for it. ‘See what a small population can achieve once they’ve realised there’s no option to fail,’ Dad said to me once as I sat and watched him polishing his hunting knife. ‘Once they’ve understood that whoever fails has to sever himself from the body of society, like a cancer.’ I could have told Olsen that. But why should I?

Olsen coughed. ‘What’s your own attitude towards homosexuality?’

‘My attitude? What’s to have an attitude about? What attitude should you have towards people with brown hair?’

Olsen took hold of the rod again and went on turning the reel. It struck me then that you move your hand in the same way when you want to encourage people to go on talking, to expand on things, as people say. But I kept my mouth shut.

‘Let me be direct, Roy. Are you gay?’

I don’t know why he switched from talking about ‘homosexuality’ to talking about being ‘gay’. Maybe he thought it was less liable to cause offence. I saw the lure glint down in the water, a muted and slightly protracted flash, as though light travels more slowly through water. ‘Are you coming on to me, Olsen?’

He probably hadn’t seen that coming. He stopped reeling and jerked the rod up, staring at me in horror. ‘Eh? Fucking hell, no. I…’

Just then the spinner broke the surface of the water, floating over the gunwale like a flying fish. It did a circuit of our heads before heading back towards the rod, landing softly on the back of Olsen’s head. The mop was clearly even thicker than it looked, because he didn’t even seem to have noticed it.

‘If I am gay,’ I said, ‘I haven’t come out the closet yet, otherwise you and everybody else in the village would have known within fifteen minutes. So that must mean I prefer the closet. The other possibility is that I’m not gay.’

At first Olsen looked surprised. Then he seemed to be chewing over the logic of it.

‘I am the sheriff, Roy. I knew your father, and I can never get that suicide to add up. At least, not that he would take your mother with him.’

‘That’s because it wasn’t a suicide,’ I said in a low voice, at the same time screaming the words inside my head. ‘I keep saying, he didn’t make the corner.’

‘Maybe.’ Olsen rubbed his chin.

He had something or other, the fucking cuckoo.

‘I spoke to Anna Olaussen a couple of days ago,’ he said. ‘You know, she used to be the nursing sister at the surgery. She’s in a care home now, got Alzheimer’s. She’s my wife’s cousin, so we called in to see her. While my wife was out getting some water for the flowers Anna said to me that there was one thing she had always regretted. That she had never broken her vow of confidentiality and told me about it when your brother Carl had been to the surgery and she had seen that he had anal ecchymosis. It means he had lacerations. Your brother didn’t want to tell her how it happened, but there aren’t that many options. On the other hand, Anna thought he seemed so calm about it when he said no, he hadn’t had sexual relations with a man, that she thought maybe it didn’t involve rape. That it may have been consensual. Because Carl was so…’ Olsen stared out over the water. The spinner dangling from the back of his head. ‘…well, such a pretty boy.’

He turned to me again.

‘Anna didn’t tell me, but she did alert your mother and father, she said. And two days after she did so, your father drove the car over the edge and into Huken.’

I averted my eyes from his penetrating gaze. Saw a seagull skimming low over the calm water, looking for prey.