Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

The cabin day after tomorrow 12.00 .

It was so recognisably short and businesslike that I felt something like a shiver pass through my body and the saliva begin to run like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Conditioned reaction , that’s what they call it.

I had a brief and turbulent discussion with myself about whether to go. Commonsense Roy lost, in spades. And I had forgotten why it felt so like a liberation once we stopped meeting, but recalled all the rest in richly sensual detail.

At five to twelve I had reached that clearing in the woods from where you can see the cabin. I’d walked the whole way with the erection I got every time I saw the Saab Sonett parked along the gravel track. The snow had been late in coming that year, but there was a black frost, the sun only seen in glimpses, and the air sharp and good to breathe. Smoke rose from the chimney, and the curtains at the living-room window were closed. She didn’t usually do that, and the thought that she had planned a surprise, that she was perhaps lying there all ready and waiting for me in front of the open fire in some way that required subdued lighting sent shockwaves through my body. I crossed the patch of open terrain and went up to the door. It was ajar. Before it had usually been closed when I arrived, sometimes even locked, so that I had to reach up and take down the extra key from the top of the door jamb. I suspected she liked the feeling that I was an intruder, literally a thief in the night. I knew that was why she had given me the key to the basement that time, a key I still had and that I now and then fantasised about using. I pushed the door open all the way and walked into the semi-darkness.

And sensed immediately that something was wrong.

It smelled wrong.

Unless Rita Willumsen had started smoking cigars.

And even before my eyes had adapted to the darkness, I knew who that figure was sitting in the armchair in the middle of the living-room floor, facing me.

‘Glad you could come,’ said Willumsen in a voice so friendly it made my back go cold.

He was wearing a fur coat and hat and looked like a bear. And in his hands he was holding a shotgun that was pointed at me.

‘Shut the door behind you,’ he said.

I did as he told me.

‘Come three steps closer, slowly. And kneel.’

I took three steps closer.

‘Kneel,’ he repeated.

I hesitated.

He sighed. ‘Now listen. Every year I pay a lot of money to travel to some foreign country and shoot an animal I’ve never shot before.’ He raised his hand and make a ticking gesture in the air. ‘I’ve got one of most species, but not a Roy Opgard. So kneel !’

I knelt. I noticed for the first time that plastic covering of the kind you use when you’re decorating had been rolled out between the front door and the armchair.

‘Where did you park your car?’ he asked.

I told him. He nodded in satisfaction.

‘The snuffbox,’ he said.

I didn’t respond. My head was full of questions, not answers.

‘You’re wondering how I found out, Opgard. The answer is the snuffbox. The doctor told me the best thing I could do for my health after the cancer was to start eating more healthily and exercise more. So I started going for walks. Including up here, where I hadn’t been for years. And I found a couple of these in the fridge.’

He tossed a silver Berry tin onto the plastic in front of me.

‘You can’t buy those in Norway. Or certainly not in this village. I asked Rita and she said they were probably left behind by the Polish workers who were here refurbishing the cabin the year before. And I believed her. Up until the point at which I saw you pull out the same box when you came to my office asking for a loan. I put two and two together. Moist snuff. The repair job on the Saab Sonett. The cabin. And a Rita who overnight turned into the sweetest and most agreeable of all Ritas, which she never is unless there’s something behind it. So I checked her phone. And there, under the name of Agnete, I found an old message she hadn’t deleted. The cabin, the day, the hour, that was all. I checked with directory enquiries and sure enough, Agnete’s number was registered to you, Roy Opgard. And so – day before yesterday – I borrowed Rita’s phone again and sent the same message to you all over again, just changed the hour.’

The kneeling had meant that I had to look upwards at him, but now my neck was getting tired and I bowed my head. ‘If you found this all out months ago,’ I said, ‘why wait until now to do something?’

‘That should be obvious to someone who’s as good at mental arithmetic as you are, Roy.’

I shook my head.

‘You’d borrowed money from me. If I’d blown your head off then, who would clear your debt?’

My heart wasn’t beating faster, it was beating slower. This was unbefuckinglievable. Patient as the hunter he was, he had waited until his prey was in the right place, waited for me to clear my debt. Waited until I had paid the compound interest, until the cow had been milked dry. And now he was going to clear his debt. That was what he’d meant with that question he’d asked me outside the church; about how good it must feel to clear a debt. He was intending to shoot me. That was what this was about. Not scare me or threaten me but fucking well kill me. He knew I’d told no one where I was off to, that I’d made sure no one saw me walking up here, and that I’d parked the car so far away that no one would think of looking for me round here. He was just going to put a bullet through my forehead and then bury me somewhere nearby. The plan was so simple and straightforward I had to smile.

‘Wipe that grin off your face,’ said Willumsen.

‘I haven’t met your wife for years,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you see the date on that message?’

‘It should have been deleted, but there it was, and it tells me you two were at it for a long time,’ he said. ‘But not any more. Pray your last prayer.’ Willumsen raised the rifle to his cheek.

‘Aw, I already prayed that,’ I said. My heart was still slowing down. Resting pulse. Psychopath’s pulse, as people say.

‘So you have, have you?’ Willumsen breathed, the skin of his cheek flopping up onto the rifle butt.

I nodded and bowed my head again. ‘So just go ahead, you’ll be doing me a favour, Willumsen.’

A dry laugh. ‘Are you trying to convince me you want to die, Opgard?’

‘No. But I shall die.’

‘That’s true of us all.’

‘Yes, but not within two months.’

I heard him fidgeting with the trigger. ‘Says who?’

‘Says Stanley Spind. Maybe you saw, I spoke to him at church. He’s just received the most recent pictures of my brain tumour. I’ve had it for over a year, but now it’s growing fast. If you aim just here…’ I put my index finger to my forehead on the right-hand side, just above where the hair starts, ‘then maybe I’ll get rid of it at the same time.’

I could almost hear the used-car salesman’s calculator ticking and whirring.

‘You’re desperate, of course, so you’re lying,’ he said.

‘If you’re so sure of that then go ahead and shoot,’ I said. Because I knew what his brain was telling him. That if it was true, then the Roy Opgard problem would soon disappear by itself, and without any risk at all to him. But if I was lying, it would mean he had squandered a perfect chance that he would probably never get again. That’s to say, the chance would be there, but I would be ready, it would be more difficult. Risk contra profit. Cost against income. Debit and credit.

‘You can call Stanley,’ I said. ‘I’ll just have to tell him first he’s released from his vow of confidentiality.’