Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

I looked around. ‘OK. How do you want to do this?’

‘You and I just make small talk while we’re drinking our coffee. Which by the way is disgusting, but I’m not going to pull a face because he’s looking at us.’

‘Erik?’

‘Yes. And those two over by the TV as well. Once you’ve finished your coffee, take over the laptop and act as if you’re very preoccupied by something there, use the keyboard a bit. Don’t look up and leave the rest to me.’

‘OK,’ I said and took a swig of coffee. She was right, it was chemically revolting, plain hot water would have tasted better. ‘I googled endometriosis. It says if the old way doesn’t work, you can try artificial insemination. Have you two thought about that?’

She opened one eye wide, looked furious.

‘You’re the one who said small talk,’ I said.

‘That isn’t small talk,’ she said in a low hiss. ‘That’s big talk.’

‘I could talk about service stations if you prefer,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Or the comical and humiliating problems that arise when the middle finger on your right hand is stiff.’

She smiled. Her mood changed like the weather over the 2,000-metre mark, but to be enfolded in that smile was like slipping into a warm bath.

‘I do want children,’ she said. ‘It’s what I want most of all. Not with my brain, of course, but my heart.’

She looked over my shoulder in the direction of Erik. Smiled as though her look had been returned. What if Erik didn’t know what Kurt was looking for? I wasn’t so sure any more that this was a good idea.

‘What about you?’ she asked.

‘Me?’

‘Kids.’

‘Oh Jesus, yes. Indeed. I just…’

‘Yes?’

‘I don’t know if I’d be much good as a dad.’

‘You know you would be, Roy.’

‘Well, it would have to be with a mother who could be everything I’m not at least. And who understood how much time running a service station takes.’

‘The day you become a dad maybe you’ll stop thinking the world is made up of nothing but service stations.’

‘Or skyscrapers in anodised aluminium.’

She smiled. ‘It’s time.’

Our eyes met for a moment, then I pulled the computer over, opened a Word document and started to write. I just let the words come, concentrating only on spelling them correctly. After I’d been doing that for a while I heard her get up and walk across the floor. I didn’t have to look to know that she gave her hips an extra sway. That fucking soca swing . I had my back to the counter, heard the legs of a bar stool scrape and knew she’d sat down and was chatting to Erik Nerell and that his gaze was riveted on her just the way it had been at the homecoming party. As I sat there deep in my spelling exercises someone slumped down in the chair on the other side of the table. For a moment I thought it was Shannon, back already with her mission unaccomplished, and felt a strangely paradoxical relief. But it wasn’t Shannon.

‘Hi,’ said Grete.

The first thing I noticed was that her perm was now blonde.

‘Hi,’ I said, trying to convey in that monosyllabic way that I was extremely bloody busy.

‘Well, well, pretty and flirty,’ said Grete.

My gaze automatically followed hers.

Shannon and Erik were leaning towards each other across the short end of the bar, so that we saw them in profile. Shannon laughed at something, smiled, and I saw Erik enjoying that same warm bath I had just been sitting in. And maybe it was only because Grete had primed me with that ‘pretty’, but now I actually saw it. That Shannon Alleyne Opgard was not just pretty, she was beautiful. There was something in the way she simultaneously absorbed and reflected the light. And I could not take my fucking eyes off her. Not until I heard Grete’s voice again.

‘Uh-oh.’

I turned to her. She was no longer looking at Shannon but at me.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, a sour little smile on those wormlike lips of hers. ‘Where’s Carl today?’

‘At the hotel site I should think.’

Grete shook her head, and I tried not to think how she could know.

‘Then I’ve no idea. Talking with the partners maybe.’

‘That’s probably more like it,’ she said, looking as though she was wondering whether or not to say more.

‘Didn’t know you were a Fritt Fall regular,’ I said to change the subject.

She held up a handful of coupons she must have picked up from the table below the TV on her way in. ‘For Dad,’ she said. ‘Even though he says he’s thinking of backing the hotel instead of the horses. The principle’s the same, according to him. Minimum outlay with the possibility of a big profit. Has he got that right?’

‘No outlay,’ I said. ‘Possibility of some profit, yes. But also of a hefty bill. First he should check that he can afford a worst-case scenario.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning if it all goes to hell.’

‘Oh, that.’ She slipped the coupons into her bag. ‘I think Carl does a better job of selling it than you, Roy.’ She looked up at me and smiled. ‘But then he always has done. Say hello from me. And watch out for that Barbie doll of his. Looks like she’s trying to outdo him over there.’

I turned and looked at Shannon and Erik. Both had their phones out and were entering text. When I turned back again Grete was on her way out.

I looked at the screen. Started to read what I had written. Dammit. Had I completely lost my mind? I heard the scraping of the bar stool again and hurriedly dragged the document over to the rubbish.

‘Done?’ asked Shannon.

‘Yup,’ I said, closing the laptop and standing up.

‘Well?’ I said as we sat in the Volvo.

‘I’m guessing it’s going to happen tonight,’ she said.

After driving Shannon back to the farm I headed back down to the station and relieved Markus who had asked if he could finish early.

‘Any news?’ I asked Julie.

‘Nah,’ she said and blew a gum bubble. ‘Alex is pissed off. Calling me a prick teaser. And Natalie’s going to move.’

‘Move where?’

‘To Notodden. I can understand that, nothing happens here.’

‘Absolutely nothing,’ I said and took a key from a drawer under the till. ‘I’m just going over to the workshop, OK?’

I left the garage door locked and used the office door instead. Could smell from the stale air that it was a while since I’d been in. We took cars in here to change the tyres if it was too cold out, but the grease pit had hardly been used once the workshop closed. After Carl left and I was alone on the farm I’d rigged up a little hole-in-the-wall at the rear of the place with a bed, a TV and a hotplate. I lived there during the coldest months of the winter, when the road up and the farm were deep in snow and there seemed no point in heating the house for the few hours I was alone and not at the station. I closed the doors to the car wash and showered. Never been cleaner. Went back to the repair shop and checked the mattress. Dry. The hotplate working. Even the TV worked after a little initial hesitation.

I walked into the workshop.

Stood there where we had chopped the arms, legs and head of old Olsen. I had chopped. Carl couldn’t stand to even watch, and that was fine, why should he? The tractor had remained outside with its scoop in the air for three days before I drove it into the car wash and emptied its contents and watched as they ran away smoothly through the sluice grid. Then I had hosed the scoop clean, and that was that. How did it feel to be standing back in the same place? Were there ghosts here? It was sixteen years ago. And I hadn’t felt much that night, there just hadn’t been room for it. And any ghosts there might be were down in Huken, not here.