Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

A HIGH, MILKY-BLUE SKY. STILL some lingering summer warmth, the smell of pine trees and new-mown grass, but also a bite in the gusts of wind, a sharpness that was quite absent down in the soft south of the country. The drive from Kristiansand to Notodden had taken three and a half hours. I drove slowly. Changed my mind several times along the way. But in the end concluded that only one thing would be more pathetic than what I was now embarked upon, and that would be to drive halfway to Notodden and then turn back.

I parked in the town centre and began to trawl the streets looking for Shannon. When we were growing up, Notodden had seemed to us big, alien, almost threatening. Now – perhaps because I had spent so much time in Kristiansand – it seemed strangely small and provincial.

I kept an eye out for the Cadillac, though I guessed she would have hired a car from Willumsen. Glanced in at the cafes and restaurants I passed. I headed down towards the water, passed the cinema. Finally I entered a small cafe, ordered a black coffee, sat so that I had a view of the door and looked through the place’s newspapers.

Notodden didn’t have many cafes and bars and the perfect scenario was obviously if it was Shannon who found me and not the other way round. That she came in, I looked up, our eyes met, and in that gaze I could read that I wouldn’t be needing the cover story I’d dreamed up, that I was here to take a look at a service station that was for sale. That I remembered she was going to be in Notodden, but not that it was today. That if she wasn’t busy with her client the whole day, maybe we could meet for a drink after dinner? Or even meet for dinner if she didn’t have other plans?

The door opened and I glanced up. A gang of kids in eager conversation. A few moments later the door opened again, another gang of kids, and I realised school was out for the day. The third time the door opened I saw her face. It had changed, was not at all the way I recalled it. This face looked open. She didn’t see me, and I could study her unobserved from behind my newspaper. She sat and listened to the boy she had come in with. She neither smiled nor laughed, and you could still sense a certain watchfulness, that she was guarding a sensitive vulnerability. But I thought that I could also tell that she and this boy had something, a contact you don’t get unless you let someone in close. Then her eyes glided round the room, and when they met mine they tensed for a moment.

I don’t know if Natalie knew the reason why her father, Moe the roofer, had sent her to secondary school here in Notodden. Nor how he had explained the injuries he had come by at home in their kitchen. In all probability she didn’t know I had anything to do with either situation. But if she did? If she came over here now, sat down and asked why I had done it, what should I answer? That I had intervened because of the shame I felt at not having been able to do the same for my brother? That I had nearly made an invalid of her father because he was a punchbag with my own father’s face on it? That in reality it was all about me and my family, not hers?

Her gaze wandered on. Maybe she hadn’t recognised me. But of course she had. Obviously. But even if she didn’t know that I had threatened to kill her father, she might well want to pretend she didn’t recognise the guy who’d sold her morning-after pills, especially now she had the chance to be another girl from that cowed and withdrawn person she had been back home in Os.

I could see she was having difficulty concentrating on what the boy over there was saying, turning towards the window, turning her face away from me.

I stood up and left. Partly to leave her in peace. Partly because I didn’t want anyone from Os as a witness if Shannon should turn up.

By five o’clock I had been to every cafe and bar and restaurant in Notodden, apart from the restaurant at the Brattrein, which I was guessing still didn’t open until six.

As I walked across the car park towards the main entrance I felt for a moment the same expectant tickle in the stomach as when I was going to meet Unni. But that was probably just Pavlov’s dogs who recognised a situation and began to salivate, because in the next moment it was driven out by anxiety. What the hell was I doing? Suicide from the bridge would have been better. If I jumped in the car now I could probably get there by sundown. But I kept going. Into the hotel reception, which looked exactly the same as when I had left it for the last time… years earlier.

She was sitting in the empty restaurant working on a laptop. Dark blue suit and white blouse. Her short red hair was parted at the side and held in place by grips. Stockinged knees and black high-heeled shoes pressed together below the table.

‘Hi, Shannon.’

She looked up at me. Smiled without a trace of surprise but as though I’d finally turned up to a meeting we’d agreed upon. Took off the glasses that I’d never seen her wearing before. Her wide-open eye expressed the joy of reunion, a joy that might have been of the sisterly variety. Real enough, but with no undercurrent. The half-shut eye told a very different story. It made me think of a woman who has just turned towards you in bed with the reflected light of morning glinting in her iris, a look still drenched in sleep and lovemaking from the night before. I felt a jolt, something heavy, like sorrow. I had to swallow and sank into the chair opposite her.

‘You’re here,’ she said. ‘In Notodden.’

Her tone was enquiring. OK, so we were going to beat about the bush for a while after all.

I nodded. ‘I’m looking at a service station I’m interested in.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘Very much,’ I said, not taking my eyes off her. ‘That’s the problem.’

‘Why is that a problem?’

‘It’s not for sale.’

‘Well, you can always find another.’

I shook my head. ‘I want this one.’

‘And how are you going to manage that?’

‘Persuade the owner that since he’s losing money on it, that sooner or later he’ll lose it anyway.’

‘Maybe he’s planning to change the way he runs it.’

‘I’m sure he is planning to, he’s promising to, probably even believes it himself. But after a while everything will go back to the same old same old again. The staff will desert him, the station will go bust, and he’ll have thrown away even more years on a hopeless project.’

‘So when you take the station from him, you’ll be doing him a favour. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I’ll be doing us all a favour.’

She looked at me. Was that hesitation I read in her face?

‘When is your meeting?’ I asked.

‘It was at twelve,’ she said. ‘We were finished before three.’

‘Did you expect it to last longer?’

‘No.’

‘So then why book a hotel room?’

She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. I felt my breathing stop. Could feel an erection coming on.

‘Have you eaten?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘They don’t open for another hour,’ I said. ‘Feel like a walk?’

She nodded down at her high-heeled shoes.

‘Fine here too,’ I said.

‘Know who I saw here?’ she asked.

‘Me,’ I said.

‘Dennis Quarry. The film star. He was at the service station location-scouting, remember? I think he’s staying here. I read somewhere that they’re making that film now.’

‘I love you,’ I whispered, but at that precise moment she closed the lid of her laptop with unnecessary force so she could pretend she hadn’t heard.

‘Tell me what you’ve been up to lately,’ she said.

‘Thinking about you,’ I said.

‘I wish you hadn’t.’