Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

Carl, Shannon and I ate dinner in silence and listened to the sounds as the temperature fell in the walls. When I was finished I grabbed a serviette, wiped the cod and the fat from my mouth and then opened it.

‘On the Os Daily website Dan Krane says the fire just means a delay.’

‘Yes,’ said Carl. ‘He called and I told him we’ll start the rebuilding next week.’

‘So he doesn’t know the place wasn’t insured against fire?’

Carl put his elbows either side of his plate. ‘The only people who know, Roy, are those of us sitting round this table. And let’s keep it that way.’

‘You’d’ve thought that, with him being a journalist, he would have looked more closely at the insurance situation. After all, what’s at stake is the future of the village.’

‘No need to worry. I’ll sort this out, you hear me?’

‘I hear you.’

Carl ate more cod. Glanced over at me. Stopped, drank more water. ‘If Dan had any suspicion the hotel wasn’t covered for fire, he wouldn’t have written that everything was under control. You do see that, right?’

‘Well, OK, if you say so.’

Carl put down his fork. ‘What is it you’re actually trying to say, Roy?’

And for an instant I saw him. His imperious body language, his quiet but commanding voice, his penetrating gaze. For an instant it was as though Carl had become him, become Dad.

I shrugged. ‘What I’m probably saying is that it might look like someone has told Dan Krane not to write anything negative about the hotel. And that it was well before the fire.’

‘Like who for example?’

‘A Danish enforcer who was here in town. Someone saw his Jaguar parked outside the offices of the Os Daily just before Christmas. And afterwards people said Dan Krane looked pale and ill.’

Carl grinned. ‘Willumsen’s enforcer? The guy we talked about when we were kids?’

‘I didn’t believe in him back then. I do now.’

‘OK. And why would Willumsen want to shut Dan Krane up?’

‘Not shut him up. Just guide his pen. When Dan Krane was talking about the hotel at Stanley’s party yesterday he wasn’t exactly complimentary about it.’

When I said that something blinked through Carl’s eyes. Something I’d never seen there before. It was hard and dark, like the blade of an axe.

‘Dan Krane doesn’t write what he thinks,’ I said. ‘Willumsen censors him. So I’m asking you why?’

Carl grabbed his serviette, wiped around his mouth. ‘Oh, Willumsen might well have a million good reasons for stopping Dan.’

‘He’s worried about the loan he’s made to you?’

‘Could be. But why do you ask me?’

‘Because on Christmas Eve I saw tyre tracks in the snow outside here. Wide tracks, from summer tyres.’

Carl’s face became curiously long. It was almost as though I was looking at him inside a Hall of Mirrors at a funfair.

‘It snowed two days before Christmas,’ I said. ‘Those tyre tracks must have been from the same day or the day before.’

There was no need for me to say any more. No one else in the village still uses summer tyres in December. Carl cast what was supposed to be a casual look in Shannon’s direction. She looked back at him, and there was something hard in her eyes too, something I’d also never seen before.

‘Are we done?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Carl. ‘That’s all we need to say about this.’

‘I meant the food; have we finished eating?’

‘Yes,’ said Carl, and I nodded.

She stood up, gathered the plates and the cutlery and went out to the kitchen. We heard her turn on the tap.

‘It’s not like you think it is,’ said Carl.

‘How do I think it is?’

‘You think it was me who put that enforcer on Dan Krane.’

‘But you didn’t?’

Carl shook his head. ‘That loan from Willumsen is obviously confidential and isn’t part of the accounting where it looks as though we’re drawing on credit we don’t have. But in terms of cash flow, the loan enabled us to carry out the final phase of the building and now things were back on track, we’d cut costs dramatically and still managed to catch up on almost the entire delay from the spring. So it was quite a surprise when that enforcer turned up…’ Carl leaned forward and hissed between clenched teeth. ‘Here, to my own house, Roy! Came here to tell me what’ll happen if I don’t pay what I owe. As though I needed reminding.’ Carl closed his eyes tight, sat back in his chair again and sighed heavily. ‘Anyway, it turned out that the reason for the reminder was that Willumsen was starting to get worried.’

‘Why, if everything was back on track?’

‘Because a while ago Dan called Willumsen to interview him as one of the most prominent participants in the village, and to ask him how he felt about the project, and about me. In the course of the interview Willumsen realised that Dan finally had enough material for a highly critical article, one that would impact on the participants’ belief in the project and in the indulgence of the council. About the accounts, or rather the lack of accounts. And Dan had talked to people in Toronto who’d told him I’d run off from a bankruptcy, and that there were a number of similarities between that case and the Os Spa and Mountain Hotel project. So Willumsen gets worried that I’m going to do a bunk again, and Dan’s going to ruin the whole project with this article about fraud and swindling. So he called up his enforcer to carry out two jobs.’

‘To stop Dan’s article, and frighten you off any plans you might have for defaulting on your debt.’

‘Yes.’

I looked at Carl. No doubt about it, he was telling the truth now.

‘And now the whole fucking lot has burned down, what are you going to do?’

‘Sleep on it,’ said Carl. ‘Nice if you’d sleep up here too.’

I looked at him. It wasn’t just a courtesy. When a crisis comes some people try to sort things out on their own. Others, such as Carl, need people around them.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I can take a couple of days off and stay here. Could be you’ll need help.’

‘Will you?’ he said, giving me a grateful look.

Just then Shannon came in with the coffee cups. ‘Good news, Shannon, Roy’s staying.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Shannon with what sounded like genuine enthusiasm, smiling at me like I was her dear brother-in-law. I wasn’t sure if I liked her acting talent, but right now I appreciated it.

‘It’s good to know you’ve got family you can rely on,’ said Carl, pushing his chair back, the legs making coughing sounds against the rough floorboards. ‘I’ll give the coffee a miss, I haven’t slept for the last day and a half, so I’m off to bed now.’

Carl left, and Shannon sat in his chair. We drank coffee in silence until we heard the toilet flush up there and the bedroom door shut.

‘Well?’ I said quietly. ‘How does it feel?’

‘How does what feel?’ Her voice was flat, her face expressionless.

‘Your hotel burned down.’

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t my hotel. As you know, that disappeared somewhere along the line.’

‘OK, but Os Spa and Mountain Hotel SL will be declared bankrupt when it emerges the hotel wasn’t insured. No hotel means no plots for sale for cabins, and in that case the market value of the land goes back to somewhere around zero. It’s over for everyone now. Us, Willumsen, the village.’

She didn’t reply.

‘I’ve been doing a bit of research on Barcelona,’ I said. ‘I’m no city person, I like the mountains. And there are a lot of mountains just outside Barcelona. Houses are cheaper too.’

She still said nothing, just stared down into her coffee cup.