Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

I opened the wardrobe and started packing folded T-shirts, socks and underwear in a bag. ‘Did she end up OK?’

‘Yes,’ said Shannon. ‘She stopped wearing glasses. And one day I surprised her with my boyfriend. She said how sorry she was and that she hoped one day I’d have the chance to break her heart the way she’d broken mine.’

I smiled as I packed the licence plate from Barbados into the bag. ‘What’s the moral of the story?’

‘Sometimes feelings of guilt are wasted and no good to anyone involved.’

‘You think I feel guilty about something?’

She put her head on one side. ‘Do you?’

‘And what might that be?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Me neither,’ I said, zipping up the bag.

As I was about to open the door she put a hand on my chest. The touch made hot and cold run through me.

‘I don’t think Carl has told me everything, has he?’

‘Everything about what?’

‘About you two.’

‘It’s never possible to tell everything,’ I said. ‘About anyone.’

And then I was out the door.

Carl saw me off in Mum’s haaall with a big, warm silent hug.

And then I was out the door.

I chucked the bag and the IKEA holdall into the back seat of the car, climbed in, beat my forehead against the steering wheel before turning on the ignition and accelerating off down towards Geitesvingen. And for an instant the possibility flashed through my mind. A permanent solution. And a pile of wrecked cars and corpses that just grew and grew.

Three days later I was standing on Os FC’s home ground and almost regretting I had turned the steering wheel at all by Geitesvingen. It was pouring down, five degrees and 3–nil. Not that the score bothered me, I don’t give a damn about football. But I had just realised that the other match, the one against Olsen and the past, the one I’d thought we’d won, wasn’t even halfway played.

CARL PICKED ME UP IN the Cadillac.

‘Thanks for coming along,’ he said as he wandered around the workshop.

‘Who are we playing?’ I asked as I pulled on my wellingtons.

‘Can’t remember,’ said Carl, who had stopped in front of the lathe. ‘But it’s apparently a game we must win if we’re not to get relegated.’

‘To which division?’

‘What makes you think I know any more about football than you do?’ He brushed his hand over the tools hanging on the wall, the ones Willumsen hadn’t taken. ‘Jesus Christ I’ve had some nightmares about this place.’ Maybe he recalled some of them I had used for the dismemberment. ‘That night, I puked up, didn’t I?’

‘A bit,’ I said.

He chuckled. And I remembered something Uncle Bernard said. That in time all memories turn into good memories.

He took a plastic bottle down from the shelf. ‘You still use that cleaning fluid?’

‘Fritz heavy-duty workshop cleaner? Sure. But by law they’re no longer allowed to make it so concentrated. EU rules. I’m ready.’

‘Well then, let’s go.’ Carl smiled and twirled his flat cap. ‘ Heia Os, knus og mos, tygg og spytt en aprikos! Remember that?’

I remembered, but the rest of the home supporters, about 150 shivering souls, seemed to have forgotten the chant from back then. Or else saw no reason to sing it since we were already 2–nil down after ten minutes.

‘Remind me why we’re here,’ I said to Carl. We were standing at the bottom of the round seven-metre-wide and two-and-a-half-metre high stand that was built halfway along the western side of the AstroTurf pitch. As several posters made clear, the wooden stand had been sponsored by Os Sparebank. Everyone knew that it was Willumsen who had paid for the artificial grass that now lay atop the old cinder pitch. Willumsen claimed he’d bought it only slightly used from a top club in the east of the country, but in truth it was an old surface from the early days of artificial grass, from a time when teams rarely left the pitch without burn marks, twisted ankles and at least one torn ligament. And Willumsen had been offered it free on condition that he removed it himself so that it could be replaced by a newer pitch that was less of a health hazard.

The stand provided a degree of overview, but its most important function was to provide shelter from the westerly winds, and act as an unofficial VIP area for the village’s more affluent citizens, who occupied the topmost of the seven rows. That was where the arbiter, the new chairman Voss Gilbert, stood. The manager of Os Sparebank, whose logo adorned the front of Os FC’s blue shirts. Along with Willum Willumsen, who had managed to get Willumsen’s Used Cars and Breaker’s Yard squeezed in above the numbers on the back of the shirts.

‘We’re here to show our support for our local club,’ said Carl.

‘Then maybe we should start making a noise,’ I said. ‘We’re being slaughtered here.’

‘Today is just about showing we care,’ said Carl. ‘So next year when we support the club financially people will know the money comes from two real fans who’ve followed the club through thick and thin.’

I snorted. ‘This is the first match I’ve been to in two years, and the first time you’ve been here in fifteen.’

‘But we’ll be at all three of the remaining home games this season.’

‘Even if they’re already relegated?’

‘ Because they’re already relegated. We didn’t abandon them in the hour of their defeat, people notice things like that. And when they get the money, all the matches we never went to will be forgotten. By the way, from now on it’s not “they” and “them”, it’s “we” and “us”. The club and Opgard are a team.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the hotel needs all the goodwill it can get. We need to be regarded as supporters. This time next year the club’s going to be buying a great new striker from Nigeria, and where it says “Os Sparebank” on the shirts it’s going to say “Os Spa and Mountain Hotel”.’

‘You mean a professional player?’

‘No, are you crazy? But I know someone who knows a Nigerian who works at the Radisson Hotel in Oslo who’s played football. No idea how good he is but we’ll offer him the same job at our hotel only at a better wage. Maybe that’ll tempt him.’

‘Yeah, why not?’ I said. ‘He can’t be any worse than this lot.’ Out on the pitch our left back had just chanced a sliding tackle in the rain. Alas, there was still plenty of friction in those bright green plastic tufts and he’d ended up tripping and landing on his belly five metres away from his man.

‘And I’m going to want you to stand up there,’ said Carl with a nod back towards the top row. I half turned. Voss Gilbert, the new chairman, was standing there, along with the bank manager and Willumsen. Carl had told me that Gilbert had agreed to dig the first shovelful of earth to mark the official start of the building process. Carl had already made deals with the most important contractors, and now it was about making a start before the first frost came, so the building process had been brought forward.

Turning, I caught sight of Kurt Olsen standing by the substitutes bench and talking to the manager of Os FC. I could see the manager looked uncomfortable, but he could hardly openly refuse to take advice from Os’s old record goal scorer. Kurt Olsen spotted me, laid a hand on the manager’s shoulders, gave him a last piece of advice and strode bow-legged up towards Carl and me.

‘Didn’t know the Opgard boys were interested in football,’ he said.

Carl smiled. ‘Hey, I remember the time you scored in the Cup against one of the big teams. Odd, was it?’

‘Yes,’ said Olsen. ‘We lost 9–1.’