Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Always,’ he said, smiling. ‘But if there’s one talent I was born with, it’s how to deal with a bad conscience.’

‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘What do you do?’

He grinned until his eyes vanished in his fleshy face and pointed to one of his shoulders. ‘When the devil on my right discusses things with the angel on my left, I let the devil put his arguments first. And then I put a stop to the discussion.’ Willumsen laughed again. The laughter was followed by a rasping sound, the sound of a car being thrown into reverse while it’s moving forward. The sound of a man who is going to die at some unknown point in the future.

‘I’ve come here because of Rita,’ he said.

I weighed the situation up. Willumsen was bigger and heavier than me, but unless he pulled out a weapon he presented no physical threat. And what else could he threaten me with? I wasn’t dependent on him economically or in any other way, and nor could he threaten either Carl or Uncle Bernard, as far as I knew.

But of course there was one person he could threaten. Rita.

‘She says she’s very pleased with you.’

I didn’t respond. A car drove slowly by on the road outside, but we were alone in the workshop.

‘She says the Sonett has never run better. So I’ve brought along a car I want you to check over and fix whatever absolutely has to be fixed. But no more than that.’

I glanced over his devil-shoulder and saw the blue Toyota Corolla parked outside. Tried not to look as relieved as I was feeling.

‘The problem is, it has to be done by tomorrow,’ said Willumsen. ‘I’ve got a customer coming from a long way off who’s more or less bought it over the phone. It’d be a pity for both of us if he ended up disappointed. Get my drift?’

‘I get it,’ I said. ‘Sounds like overtime.’

‘Ha, Bernard’s probably glad to take any job that comes his way at hourly rates.’

‘That’s something you’ll have to discuss with him.’

Willumsen nodded. ‘Given Bernard’s state of health it’s probably just a question of time before it’s you and me discussing hourly rates, Roy, so I want you to know even at this early stage who this workshop’s most important customer is.’ He handed the car keys to me, said it didn’t look like rain today after all, and left.

I drove the car inside, opened the bonnet and groaned. I would be working into the night. And I couldn’t even make a start on it now, as in another half-hour Sigmund Olsen would be picking me up. Suddenly I had a couple of things to think about. That was fine, this was still the happy time. But as things turned out, the last day of the happy time.

‘WILLUMSEN WAS PISSED OFF HIS car wasn’t ready,’ said Uncle Bernard when I arrived late at the workshop the morning after the Fritz night.

‘There was more to do than I thought,’ I said.

Uncle Bernard put his large, square head on one side. It sat atop a small and equally square body. When we wanted to tease him Carl and I called him our Lego man. We really loved him. ‘Like what for example?’ he asked.

‘Shagging,’ I said as I opened the bonnet of the Corolla.

‘Eh?’

‘There was a bit of a double booking. I’d arranged to do some shagging yesterday too.’

Uncle Bernard gave a short, involuntary laugh. Struggled to resume his serious face. ‘Work comes before shagging, Roy. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

‘What’s the tractor doing outside?’

‘No room for it in here, got three cars coming in later today. Cabin people.’

‘OK. And why is the scoop up in the air?’

‘Takes less room.’

‘You think there’s a shortage of space out there in the car park?’

‘OK then, it’s a celebration of the job I was working on last night. The one that wasn’t the Corolla, that is.’

Uncle Bernard looked out at the tractor with its proudly raised elevating arms. Shook his head and left. But I could hear him laughing again inside his office.

I carried on working on the Corolla. It wasn’t until late in the evening that rumours that Sheriff Sigmund Olsen was missing began to circulate , as people say.

When they found the boat with Sigmund Olsen’s boots no one doubted that he had drowned himself, there wasn’t even anything to discuss. Quite the opposite, people tried to outdo one another in saying how clearly they had seen the writing on the wall.

‘Of course, Sigmund always had that dark edge behind the smile and the jokes, but people didn’t notice it, they’re blind to things like that.’

‘Just the day before he said to me that it looked as though it was clouding over, but of course I thought he was talking about the weather.’

‘Of course they have confidentiality at the surgery, but I heard they were prescribing those happy pills for Sigmund. Oh yes, a few years ago, when his cheeks were so firm and round, remember that? But just lately he was so hollow-cheeked. Stopped taking his pills.’

‘You could see it on him. He had something on his mind. Something was bothering him and he couldn’t work it out. And when we don’t find the answer, when we can’t find a meaning, can’t find Jesus, well, that’s the kind of thing that can happen.’

A woman sheriff came over from the neighbouring county and probably heard all this, but she still wanted to speak to those who had met Sigmund on the day he disappeared. Carl and I had discussed what Carl should say. I suggested it would be best to stay as close to the truth as possible and only leave out what was absolutely necessary. Say when Sigmund Olsen had visited him at the farm, roughly what time he left, that Carl hadn’t noticed anything special about him. Carl had protested that he probably ought to say that Olsen had seemed down, but I’d explained that in the first place she would be talking to others who would say Olsen seemed his usual self that day. And in the second place, given that she suspected that someone else might be involved, what was it someone was trying to make her think?

‘If you’re too keen to convince them that Olsen has killed himself, it’ll seem suspicious.’

Carl had nodded. ‘Of course. Thanks, Roy.’

Two weeks later, and for the first time after the Fritz night, I was lying in bed in the cabin again.

I hadn’t actually done anything different, but Rita Willumsen seemed to appreciate more than usual what had become our regular sessions of lovemaking.

Now she lay with her head resting in her hand, smoking a menthol cigarette as she studied me.

‘You’ve changed,’ she said.

‘Really?’ I said, a wedge of Berry’s under my upper lip.

‘You’re more grown up.’

‘Is that so surprising? It’s been a while since you took my virtue, you know.’

She gave a slight start, I didn’t usually speak to her like that.

‘I mean since the last time we met,’ she said. ‘You’re someone else.’

‘Better or worse than the previous me?’ I asked, fishing out the wad of tobacco with my index finger and laying it in the ashtray beside the bed. I turned towards her. Lay a hand on her thigh. She looked at it in a demonstrative way. One of the unwritten rules was that she was the one who decided when we made love and when we rested, not me.

‘You know, Roy,’ she said, and took a drag on her cigarette, ‘I’d actually made up my mind to tell you today that it’s time we rounded off this affair of ours.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘A friend of mine said that that hairdresser girl, Grete Smitt, has been spreading rumours about me having secret meetings with a young man.’

I nodded, but didn’t tell her that I’d been thinking it might be time to stop too. I was simply getting tired of how repetitive it was getting. Drive over to the cabin, fuck, eat the home-made food she brought along, fuck, go home. But when I said the sentence aloud to myself, of course I didn’t really know what it was I was getting tired of. And it wasn’t as if I had some other fru Willumsen waiting for me.