Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘What I’m quite specifically interested in is finding out what happened after my father dropped you off at the car repair shop at six o’clock, for you to work on a car.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Quite specifically? I changed the steering box and the bearings on a Toyota Corolla. I think it was a 1989 model.’

Kurt’s eyes stiffened, the truce was obviously under threat. I made a strategic withdrawal.

‘Your father drove up to the farm and talked to Carl. After he left Carl phoned me because the power was down and he couldn’t work out why. The generator is old and we’ve had a few earth faults. He’s not exactly a handyman so I drove up and fixed it. It took a few hours because it was getting dark, so it was late by the time I got back to the workshop.’

‘According to the transcript you got back there at eleven o’clock.’

‘Sounds about right. It was a long time ago.’

‘And a witness thinks he saw my father driving through the village at nine o’clock. But it was already dark and the person concerned can’t be sure.’

‘All right.’

‘The question is: what was my father doing between six thirty, when he left the farm, according to Carl, and nine o’clock?’

‘There’s your riddle.’

He stared at me. ‘Any theories?’

I gave him a look of surprise. ‘Me? No.’

I heard a car pull up outside. Must be the doctor. Kurt glanced at his watch. I was guessing he’d told him to take his time.

‘By the way, how did things work out with that car?’ Kurt asked casually.

‘Car?’

‘The Toyota Corolla.’

‘OK, I supppose.’

‘I’ve checked the interviews and who owned old Toyotas. You’re right, it was an ’89 model. Turns out Willumsen wanted it repaired before selling it on. Just enough so it would start, I’m guessing.’

‘Sounds about right,’ I said.

‘Only it didn’t.’

‘Eh?’ I exclaimed.

‘I talked to Willumsen yesterday. He remembered Bernard promising that you would have the car driveable. He remembers it clearly because the customer came a hundred kilometres to test-drive it and the repairs hadn’t been fixed the way you promised they would be.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I narrowed my eyes, trying to look like a man peering into the mists and darkness of the past. ‘Then I was probably delayed by the time it took me to find and fix that earth fault.’

‘Well, you certainly spent long enough on it.’

‘I did?’

‘I spoke to Grete Smitt day before yesterday. It’s amazing what everyday little trivia people remember when they can relate it to a special event, such as their sheriff being reported missing. She recalls waking up at five in the morning, looking out the window and seeing there was a light on in the workshop, and that your car was parked there.’

‘When you make a promise to a customer, you do everything you can to keep that promise,’ I said. ‘Even if you don’t succeed, it’s still a good rule of life.’

Kurt Olsen glowered at me as though I’d just told a particularly offensive joke.

‘Yeah yeah,’ I said breezily. ‘So what’s happening about sending the guys down into Huken?’

‘We’ll have to see.’

‘Nerell advises against it?’

‘We’ll have to see,’ Olsen said again.

The door opened. It was the doctor, Stanley Spind, the doctor who’d been an intern here and afterwards come back to work full-time, a guy from the Bible Belt. He was in his thirties, a friendly and outgoing man whose clothes and hair were artfully unkempt in an I-just-threw-these-on-and-they-seem-to-match-anyway sort of way and an I-didn’t-comb-my-hair-this-is-just-how-it-is fashion. His body was an odd mixture of firmness and softness, as though he’d bought the muscles somewhere. People said he was gay, and that he had a lover in Kongsberg with a wife and kids.

‘Ready for your blood test?’ he asked, ferociously rolling his ‘r’s’.

‘Looks like it,’ said Kurt Olsen without taking his eyes off me.

I left with Stanley after he’d taken the blood sample.

From the moment the doctor had entered the room Kurt Olsen had stopped talking about the case, confirming what he’d said earlier, that at this stage the investigation was still a purely private matter. Kurt gave me only the slightest nod of his head as we left.

‘I was at Årtun,’ said Stanley as we inhaled the fine, sharp evening air in the square outside the sheriff’s office. It was in the same featureless 1980s building that also housed the local authority offices. ‘Your brother certainly got everybody all fired up. So now maybe we’ll be getting a spa hotel?’

‘It’s got to go through the council first.’

‘If they say yes then I definitely want in.’

I nodded.

‘Can I drive you somewhere?’ asked Stanley.

‘No thanks, I’ll call Carl.’

‘Are you sure? It’s not too far out of my way.’ He might have held my gaze a fraction of a second too long. Or else, what’s just as likely, I’m a little paranoid.

I shook my head.

‘Another time,’ he said and opened his car door. He’d obviously stopped locking his car after moving here, the way city people often do. They have the romantic idea that people in country villages don’t do that. They’re wrong. We lock our houses, boathouses and we definitely lock our cars. I watched the rear lights of his car disappearing as I took out my phone and set off on foot to meet Carl. When the Cadillac pulled up on the hard shoulder in front of me twenty minutes later, however, Shannon was at the wheel. She explained that Carl had broken out the champagne after they got home. And since he’d drunk most if it and she’d only had a taste, she’d persuaded him to let her drive.

‘You two celebrating that I was in jail?’ I asked.

‘He said he knew you would say that, and I was to say that he was celebrating that you were definitely going to be released. He’s good at finding reasons to celebrate.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘I envy him that too.’ I realised that the too was open to misunderstanding and was about to explain. Tell her that when I stressed envy , the too bit meant both that it was true and that I envied him his ability to compartmentalise , as people say. So, not too in the sense that there was something else that I also envied him for. But then I’ve always had a tendency to complicate things.

‘You think,’ said Shannon.

‘Not much,’ I said.

She smiled. The wheel seemed enormous between her small hands.

‘Can you see properly?’ I asked, nodding towards the darkness that the cones of light swept away in front of us.

‘It’s called ptosis ,’ she said. ‘It’s Greek for “to fall”. In my case it’s congenital. You can train your eye so there’s less chance of developing amblyopia, what people call “lazy eye”. I’m not lazy. I see everything.’

‘Good,’ I said.

She changed down approaching the first hairpin bend. ‘For example I can see it’s a problem for you, to you it seems as if I’ve taken Carl away from you.’ She accelerated and a spray of gravel rattled under the wheel arch. For a moment I wondered whether to pretend I hadn’t heard what she’d just said. But I had the definite feeling that if I did, she’d just repeat it.

I turned towards her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, before I could get a word out.

‘Thanks?’

‘Thanks for everything you’re giving up. Thank you for being a wise and good man. I know how much you and Carl mean to each other. Besides being a complete stranger who’s married your brother I’ve pushed my way into your physical domain. I’ve quite literally taken over the place where you used to sleep. You should hate me.’