Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Well,’ I said, and took a deep breath. It had already been a very long day. ‘I’m not exactly known for being a good man. The real problem is that unfortunately there’s very little about you to hate.’

‘I’ve talked to a couple of the people who work for you.’

‘You have?’ I asked, genuinely surprised.

‘This is a very small place,’ said Shannon. ‘I probably speak to people a bit more than you do. And you’re wrong. You are thought of as a good man.’

I snorted. ‘Then you haven’t talked to anyone whose teeth I’ve knocked out.’

‘Maybe not. But even that was something you did to protect your brother.’

‘I don’t think you should expect too much of me,’ I said. ‘I’ll only let you down.’

‘I think I know already what to expect of you,’ she said. ‘The advantage of having a lazy eye is that people reveal themselves to you, they think you’re not listening properly.’

‘So you think you know all there is to know about Carl, is that what you’re saying?’

She smiled. ‘Love is blind, is that what you’re saying?’

‘In Norwegian we say love makes you blind.’

‘Aha.’ She gave a low laugh. ‘But that’s even more precise than my English love is blind . Which people use in the completely wrong way anyway.’

‘They do?’

‘They use it to mean that we see only the good side of people we love. But actually it refers to the fact that Cupid wears a blindfold when he shoots his arrows. Meaning that the arrows strike at random, and it isn’t us who chooses who to fall in love with.’

‘But is that right? At random?’

‘Are we still talking about Carl and me?’

‘For example.’

‘Well, maybe not at random, but falling in love isn’t always a voluntary thing.

‘I’m really not so sure that we mountain people are as practical in matters of love and death as you seem to think we are.’

The headlights strafed the wall of the house as the car climbed the final incline. A face, ghostly white in the light, its eyes black holes, stared out at us from behind the living-room window.

She stopped, shoved the gearstick into P, turned off the lights and the engine.

Silence descends so quickly up here when you turn off the only source of sound. Like a sudden roar. I remained in my seat. So did Shannon.

‘How much do you know?’ I asked. ‘About us. About this family?’

‘Pretty much everything, I think,’ she said. ‘As a condition of marrying and coming here I told him he would have to tell me absolutely everything. Including the bad stuff. Especially the bad stuff. And anything he didn’t tell me I’ve seen for myself since I came here.’ Shannon pointed to her half-drawn eyelid.

‘And you…’ I swallowed. ‘You feel you can live with the you know what ?’

‘I grew up on a street where brothers fucked sisters. Fathers raped daughters. Sons repeated the sins of the fathers and became parricides. But life goes on.’

I nodded slowly, and not ironically, as I pulled out my tin of snuff. ‘Guess it does. But it seems a lot to put up with.’

‘Yes,’ said Shannon. ‘It is. But everyone has something. And it was a long time ago. People change, I truly believe that.’

I sat there and wondered why it was I had imagined that this was the worst thing that could happen – that some outsider found out – when it just didn’t feel that way. And the answer was obvious. Shannon Alleyne Opgard wasn’t an outsider.

‘Family,’ I said as I wedged tobacco in below my upper lip. ‘That means a lot to you, doesn’t it?’

‘Everything,’ she replied without hesitation.

‘Does love of family make you blind too?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In the kitchen, when you talked about Barbados, I thought you said you believed that people’s loyalty is attached more to family and feelings than principles. More than political views and people’s ideas in general of right and wrong. Did I get that right?’

‘Yes. Family is the only principle. And right and wrong proceed from that. Everything else is secondary.’

‘Is it?’

She peered out through the windscreen at our little house. ‘We had a professor of ethics in Bridgetown. He told us that Justitia, who symbolises the rule of law, holds a pair of scales and a sword in her hands that stand for justice and punishment, and that she wears a blindfold, like Cupid. The usual interpretation is that this means all people are equal in the eyes of the law. That the law doesn’t take sides, doesn’t concern itself with family and love, only the law.’

She turned and looked at me, her snow-white face glowing in the dark interior of the car.

‘But with a blindfold you can see neither the scales nor where your sword strikes. He told us that in Greek mythology, blindfolded eyes meant only the inner eye was used, the eye that found the answer within. Where the wise and blind see only what they love, and what’s on the outside has no meaning.’

I nodded slowly. ‘We – you, me and Carl – are family?’

‘We’re not blood, but we are family.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then as a family member you can join Carl and me when we have our councils of war, instead of just listening to the stovepipe.’

‘The stovepipe?’

‘A turn of phrase.’

Carl had walked round from the front door and was now heading towards us across the gravel.

‘And why council of war?’ asked Shannon.

‘Because this is war,’ I said.

I looked at her. Both eyes flashed like a battle-ready Athena. God, how beautiful she was.

And then I told her about the Fritz night.

I SPOKE INTO THE PHONE hoping Uncle Bernard couldn’t hear me over the sound of the hosepipe.

‘Carl, what d’you mean, you’re certain he’s dead?’

‘He must have fallen a long way. And I can’t hear anything from down there. But I can’t be sure, he’s disappeared.’

‘Disappeared where?’

‘Down Huken, of course. He’s gone, even when I lean over the edge I can’t see him.’

‘Carl, stay right where you are. Don’t say a word to anyone, don’t touch anything, don’t do anything, OK?’

‘How quickly can you—’

‘Fifteen minutes. OK?’

I hung up, left the car wash and looked up towards Geitesvingen. You can’t see the track itself where it’s hewn into the mountain, but if someone’s driving there you can see the top half of the car. If a person is standing on the edge of the drop and wearing brightly coloured clothing you can see them on a clear day, but now the sun was too low.

‘I’ve got to go home and sort something out,’ I called out.

Uncle Bernard twisted the mouthpiece on the hose and cut off the stream.

‘What’s up?’

‘Earthing problem.’

‘Oh yeah? Is it that urgent?’

‘Carl’s got to have power tonight,’ I said. ‘Some school stuff he has to finish. I’ll come back down afterwards.’

‘I see. Well, I’ll be off in half an hour, but you’ve got your own keys.’

I got into the Volvo and drove. Kept to the speed limit, even though the chances of being stopped were low, considering that the village’s only lawman was lying at the bottom of a ravine.

Carl was standing on Geitesvingen when I arrived. I parked in front of the house, turned off the engine, pulled on the handbrake.

‘Heard anything?’ I asked, nodding in the direction of Huken.

Carl shook his head. He was quiet, and there was a wild look in his eyes. I’d never seen him like that before. His hair was sticking up all over the place, as though he’d been rubbing his head with his hands. His pupils were dilated, as though he were in shock. He probably was in shock, the poor bastard.