Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘Not all sides?’

‘See there, you put it better than the newspaper editor,’ said Dan Krane with a thin smile.

I didn’t like him. But then again, I don’t like many people. When he first came to the village he’d reminded me of one of those English setters that cabin people have with them in their SUVs; thin and restless, but friendly enough. But it was a cool friendliness, deployed as the means towards a more distant goal, and after a while I began to realise that’s what Dan Krane really was, a marathon runner. A strategist who never loses patience in the field, who never pulls away but just patiently keeps on grinding because he knows that what he possesses is the kind of endurance that will, in the end, get him to the top. And this certainty showed itself in his body language, it could be heard in the way he formulated himself, it even shone from his eyes. That even if today he was no more than the humble editor of a local newspaper, he was going places. Was meant for greater things, as people say. He’d joined the same party as Aas, but even though the Os Daily was an open supporter of the Labour Party, the paper’s own internal regulations stipulated that the editor was prohibited from any political position that might cast doubt on his or her political integrity. Krane was moreover a father with a young family and a lot on his plate, so he wouldn’t be standing at the coming election, although perhaps at the one after that. Or the one after the one after that. Because it was just a matter of time before Dan Krane got those skinny hands of his around the chairman’s gavel.

‘Your brother was a risk-taker and made good money from that shopping mall investment while he was still a student.’ Krane fished notepad and pen up from the pocket of his Jack Wolfskin jacket. ‘Were you a part of that too?’

‘No idea what you’re talking about,’ I said.

‘No? I gather you provided the last two hundred thousand for the share purchase?’

I hoped he didn’t see the jolt that passed through me.

‘Who told you that?’

Again that thin smile, as though smiling caused him physical pain. ‘Even in local newspapers we need to protect our sources, I’m afraid.’

Was it the bank manager? Or Willumsen? Or someone else in the bank? Someone who’d followed the money, as people say.

‘No comment,’ I said.

Krane laughed softly and made a note. ‘You really want it to say that, Roy?’

‘Say what?’

‘No comment. That’s what big-time politicians and celebs in the cities answer. When they’re in trouble. It can create a rather strange impression.’

‘I’m thinking it’s more likely you’re the one who creates the impression.’

Still smiling, Krane shook his head. Narrow, hard, smooth-haired. ‘I only write what people say, Roy.’

‘Then do it. Write this conversation, word for word. Including your self-serving advice about the no-comment comment.’

‘Interviews have to be edited, you know. So we focus on what’s important.’

‘And you’re the one who decides what’s most important. So you’re the one who creates the impression.’

Krane sighed. ‘I gather from your dismissive attitude that you don’t want it generally known that you and Carl were a part of this high-risk project.’

‘Ask Carl,’ I said, closed the front of the coffee machine and pressed the On switch. ‘Coffee?’

‘Yes thanks. So then you’ve no comment either to the fact that Carl has just moved his business to Canada following an investigation by the American Stock Exchange Supervisory Authority into what they believe to be market manipulation.’

‘What I do have a comment on,’ I said as I handed him the paper coffee cup, ‘is that you’re writing a story about your wife’s ex-boyfriend. Do you want my comment?’

Krane sighed again, pushed the notebook back into his jacket pocket and sipped the coffee. ‘If a local paper in a village like this couldn’t write about someone they have some connection or other with then we wouldn’t be able to write a single story.’

‘I understand that, but you will include the information below the article, right? That this was written by the man who was served after Carl Opgard.’

I saw the marathon runner’s eyes flash now. That his long-term strategy was under pressure, that he was close to saying or doing something that wouldn’t serve his ultimate goal.

And after his brother, Roy, turned down the offer of service.

I didn’t say it. Of course I didn’t say it. Just played with the thought of how it might cause Dan Krane to lose his rhythm.

‘Thanks for your time,’ said Krane, pulling up the zip on his rain jacket.

‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘Twenty kroner.’

He looked up at me from his coffee cup. I tried to mimic his wafer-thin smile.

The newspaper ran a story about Carl Abel Opgard, our very own local lad made good on the other side of the pond. The byline was by one of Krane’s financial journalists.

Back home after the conversation with Krane I went for a run up behind the farm, inspected a couple of nests I had found, went out to the barn and punched that old sandbag for half an hour. Then I went upstairs to the new bathroom and showered. Stood there with soap in my hair and thought about the money that had been enough to cover not just the bathroom and the insulation but new windows. I raised my face to the warm jets and let them wash the day away. A new one awaited. I’d found my rhythm. I had a goal and I had a strategy. I wasn’t aiming to be council chairman, all I wanted was my own bloody service station. But all the same, I was turning into a marathon runner.

Then Carl called, and said he was moving home.

INCREDIBLE SPEED. THE BEAST CHARGING towards the abyss. The black hunk of metal, chrome, leather, plastic, glass, rubber, smells, tastes, memories you thought would stay with you forever, the ones you loved you thought you could never lose, all of it rolling away from you. I was the one who started it moving, the one who started the train of events in this story. But at a certain point – and it’s bloody difficult to say exactly when and where – the story itself begins to make the decisions, the weight of gravity is in the driving seat, the beast accelerates, becomes autonomous and now it’s of no consequence for the result if I’ve changed my mind. Incredible speed.

Do I wish everything that happened had never happened? Fucking right I do.

And yet there’s something fascinating about seeing the avalanches from Ottertind in March, seeing the snow smash the ice on Lake Budal, seeing a forest fire in July and knowing that the old GMC fire engine won’t be able to make it up the hills. It is thrilling to see the first proper storm of the autumn again test the roofs of the barns down there in the village, and think that this year it’ll succeed in tearing off at least one of them, and you’ll see it bowling along on its sides like a giant fucking sawblade across the fields before it breaks apart. And then that’s exactly what happens. And the next thought you have is, what if someone, some person, had been standing out there when the sawblade came. Of course you don’t wish it, but you can’t quite dismiss the thought; that it would have been quite a sight to see. No, you don’t wish for it. So if I’d known the train of events I was setting in motion, I would probably have done things differently. But I didn’t, so I can’t really claim I would have done things differently if I’d had another chance but no new information.

And even if it was your will directing the blast of wind that took the barn roof off, what happens after that is out of your hands. The barn roof, now a wheel of razor-sharp corrugated iron, is heading for that solitary person out there in the field, and all you can do is watch with a mixture of horror, curiosity and regret that this was part of something you were hoping for. But the next thought is maybe something you weren’t ready for: that you find yourself wishing you yourself were that person out there in the field.