Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

I parked in front of the house next to a brown Subaru Outback. There must be a name for that particular shade of brown, but I’m not much good at colours. The snow lay several metres deep, the sun was on its way down, and behind the rise in the west the silhouette of a crane was visible.

As I rounded the house Carl was already standing in the doorway. His face looked sort-of wide, like that time he had mumps.

‘New motor?’ I called as soon as I saw him.

‘Old,’ he said. ‘We need a four-wheel drive for the winter, but Shannon wouldn’t let me buy a new one. It’s a 2007 model, got it for fifty big ones down at Willumsen’s. One of the chippies who’s got the same type says it was a steal.’

‘Blimey, you mean you bargained with him?’ I said.

‘Opgards don’t bargain.’ He grinned. ‘But ladies from Barbados do.’

Carl gave me a long and warm embrace out there on the steps. His body felt bigger than before. And he smelled of alcohol. Already started celebrating Christmas, he said. Needed to wind down after a tough week. It would be good to think about something else for a few days. During the holly days, as Carl used to think it was when he was a kid.

We entered the kitchen while Carl talked. About the hotel, where they had finally managed to get things moving. Carl had pressed the contractors to get the walls up and a roof so that they could get started on the indoor work and not have to wait for the spring.

There was no one else in the kitchen.

‘Tradesmen give you a better price if they can work indoors during the winter months,’ said Carl. At least I think that’s what he said, I was listening out for other sounds. But all I heard was Carl’s voice and the pounding of my own heart. Not exactly normal pulse now.

‘Shannon’s up at the building site,’ he said, and now I listened attentively. ‘She’s so bloody concerned that it’s got to be exactly like on the drawings.’

‘That’s good then.’

‘It is and it isn’t. Architects don’t think of the cost, they only want to make sure they’re reflected in the glory of their masterpiece.’ Carl gave a sort of tolerant laugh, but I could hear the anger bubbling below it. ‘Hungry?’

I shook my head. ‘Maybe I’ll take the Cadillac down to the workshop, get that out of the way.’

‘Can’t. Shannon’s got it.’

‘Up at the hotel site?’

‘Yup. The road isn’t that good yet, but it does go all the way up to the building site now.’ He said it with a strange mixture of pride and pain. As though that road had cost him plenty. And if that was the case I wasn’t surprised, it was steep and there was a lot of mountain to be blasted.

‘With road conditions like this, why doesn’t she take the Subaru?’

Carl shrugged. ‘She doesn’t like manual gears. Prefers the big Americans, that’s what she grew up with.’

I carried my bag up to the boys’ room, went back down.

‘A beer?’ said Carl, standing there with one in his hand.

‘Nope. I’m going to drive down and say hello at the station and pick up a decent shirt at the workshop.’

‘Then I’ll call Shannon and she can take the Cadillac straight down to the workshop and get a lift back up with you. Sound OK?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ I said. Carl looked at me. At least I think he looked at me, I was busy examining a loose seam on one of my gloves.

Julie was on with Egil. She glowed and squealed with delight when she saw me. Customers were queuing up at the till but she ran round the counter and threw herself around my neck as though it was a family reunion. And that’s exactly what it was. It wasn’t there any more, that steamy undercurrent of something else, of longing and desire. And for a brief moment it was almost a disappointment, a recognition of the fact that I had lost her, or at least stopped being that teenage crush of hers. And though I never wanted to have it or respond to it, I knew that in lonesome times I would think about what might have been, what it was I had said no to.

‘Much happening?’ I asked when she finally released me and I had time to glance around. Looked like Markus had copied the Christmas decorations and choice of stock we’d done so well with in previous years. Smart kid.

‘Yes,’ Julie cried excitedly. ‘Me and Alex are engaged.’

She held her hand up to me. And damned if there wasn’t a ring on her finger.

‘You lucky monkey.’ I smiled, heading behind the counter to turn over a hamburger that was about to be incinerated. ‘How are you, Egil?’

‘Fine,’ he said as he worked the till for a Christmas sheaf of oats for the birds and a battery shaver. ‘Merry Christmas, Roy!’

‘Same to you,’ I said, and for a moment I observed the world from my old vantage point. From behind the counter of what should have been my own station.

Then I stepped out again into the cold and the winter darkness, said hello to people hurrying by puffing grey clouds before them. Saw a guy in a skinny-fit suit standing smoking by one of the petrol pumps and went over to him.

‘You can’t smoke here,’ I said.

‘Yes I can,’ he said in a low, rasping voice that made me think he might have damaged vocal cords. Three short words weren’t enough for me to identify the accent, but it sounded guttural, like a Sørlandet accent.

‘No,’ I said.

Could be he smiled, because his eyes turned to narrow slits in his pitted face. ‘Watch me,’ he said in English.

And I did. I watched him. He wasn’t tall, shorter than me, around fifty, but with pimples in his red, swollen-looking face. At a distance he’d looked chubby in his accountant’s suit, but I saw now that it was other things that made it look a little too tight. Shoulders. Chest. Back. Biceps. A muscle mass you probably needed roids to maintain at his age. He raised his cigarette and took a long drag. The tip glowed. And suddenly my middle finger was itching.

‘You’re in the pump area of a fucking service station,’ I said, pointing at the large SMOKING PROHIBITED sign.

I didn’t see him move, but suddenly he was right up close to me, so close I wouldn’t be able to put any power into a punch.

‘And what do you propose to do about it?’ he said, his voice even lower.

Not Sørlandet. Denmark. His speed worried me more than his muscles. That, and the aggression, the will, no, the lust to do harm that shone from his small eyes. It was like staring into the mouth of a fucking pit bull. It was like the time I tried cocaine. I did it once, and that sure didn’t leave me wanting more either. I was scared. Yes, I was. And it struck me that this was how they must have felt, those boys and men at Årtun, in the second before they got hammered. They had known, as I knew now, that the man in front of them was stronger, faster and had a willingness to cross certain lines that I knew I didn’t possess. It was staring into that willingness, and that madness, that made me back off.

‘I don’t propose to do anything at all,’ I said, my voice as quiet as his. ‘You have a merry Christmas in hell.’

He grinned and stepped back himself. Never took his eyes off me. I’m guessing he saw something of the same in me as I had seen in him, and showed his respect by not turning his back on me before he had to, in order to slip into the low, white, torpedo-shaped sports car. A Jaguar E-Type, a late-seventies model. Danish plates. Wide summer tyres.

‘Roy!’ The voice came from behind me. ‘Roy!’

I turned. It was Stanley. He was on his way out of the door, loaded down with bags from which I could see Christmas wrapping paper sticking out. He staggered over to me. ‘Good to see you back!’ He offered me his cheek since his hands weren’t free and I gave him a quick hug.