Ю Несбё - The Kingdom

‘There’s a mountain called Sant Llorenç that looks really great,’ I said. ‘Forty minutes from Barcelona.’

‘Roy…’

‘And it must be possible to buy a service station there. I’ve got some money put aside, enough to—’

‘Roy!’ She raised her eyes from the coffee cup and looked at me. ‘This is my chance,’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand that?’

‘Your chance?’

‘Now that that abortion has burned down. This is my chance to get my building up. The way it should be.’

‘But—’

I shut up when her fingernails dug into my underarm. She leaned forward. ‘My baby, Roy. Don’t you understand? It’s risen from the dead.’

‘Shannon, there’s no money.’

‘Roads, water, sewage, the site, everything’s in place.’

‘You don’t get it. Maybe in five or ten years someone will build something there, but no one is going to build your hotel, Shannon.’

‘ You ’re the one who doesn’t get it.’ There was a strange, feverish glow in her eyes that I had not seen before. ‘Willumsen, he’s got too much to lose. I know men like that. They have to win; they don’t accept defeat. Willumsen will do anything not to lose the money he’s owed and the profit on the cabin plots.’

I thought of Willumsen and Rita. Shannon had a point.

‘You think Willumsen will take one more chance,’ I said. ‘Double or quits, like?’

‘He has to. And I have to stay here until I’ve got my hotel up. Oh, you must think I’m mad,’ she exclaimed in desperation, and laid her forehead against my arm. ‘But that building is the building I was born to build, you must see. But once it’s up, then you and I can go to Barcelona. I promise.’ She pressed her lips to my hand. Then she stood up.

I was about to stand up too and put my arms around her, but she forced me back down into the chair.

‘We’ve got to keep cool heads and cool hearts now,’ she whispered. ‘Think. We have to think, Roy. So that later we can be unthinking. Goodnight.’

She kissed me on the forehead and left me.

I lay in the bunk bed and thought about what Shannon had said.

It was true that Willumsen hated to lose. But he was also a man who knew when he had to take a hit in order to limit his losses. Did she believe what she said because she wanted it so badly? Because she loved that hotel, and love makes you blind? And was that why I let her convince me to believe it too? I didn’t know which of the two opposing forces, greed and fear, would win when Willumsen found out that the hotel wasn’t insured; but Shannon was probably right to say that he was the only one who could save the project.

I leaned out of the bed and looked at the thermometer outside the window. Minus twenty-five. Not a living soul out there today. But then I heard the warning cry of the raven. So there was something. Something was on its way. Living or dead.

I listened. Not a sound in the house. And suddenly I was a child again, telling myself there are no such things as monsters. Lying to myself that monsters don’t exist.

Because next day it came.

WHEN I WOKE I COULD tell straight away that the sprengkulda had come. It wasn’t so much the feel of the temperature on the skin as certain other sensory impressions. In the extreme cold sounds carried better. I was more sensitive to light, and the air I breathed, now that the molecules were more compressed, somehow made me feel more alive.

I could tell, for example, from the crunching in the snow outside the house that it was Carl who was up early and going about some business. I opened the curtains and saw the Cadillac driving slowly and carefully across the ice on Geitesvingen, although we had gritted the road and it was cold, ‘sandpaper’ ice. I went into Shannon’s bedroom.

She was sleepy-warm and smelling more intently than usual of the deliciously spicy smell that was Shannon.

I kissed her awake and said that even if Carl had just gone to buy a paper, we had at least half an hour alone.

‘Roy, I said we have to keep cool hearts and think!’ she hissed. ‘Get out!’

I got up. She pulled me back.

It was like emerging shivering from Lake Budal and lying down on a sun-warmed rock. Hard and soft at the same time, and a sense of well-being so powerful it made the body sing.

I heard her breathe in my ear, whispered obscenities in a jumble of Baja, English and Norwegian. She came, loudly and with her whole body arched in a bow. And when I came I buried my face in the pillow so as not to shout directly into her ear and picked up the smell of Carl. Unmistakably Carl. But there was something else too. A sound. It came from the door behind us. I tensed.

‘What is it?’ Shannon asked breathlessly.

I turned towards the door. It was ajar, but it was me who hadn’t closed it, wasn’t it? Of course. I held my breath, heard Shannon do the same.

Silence.

Could I possibly not have heard the Cadillac coming? Too fucking right I could, we hadn’t exactly been keeping our noise down. I looked at my wristwatch, which I had kept on. It was only twenty-two minutes since he’d left.

‘No danger,’ I said, and turned over on my back. She snuggled into me.

‘Barbados,’ she whispered into my ear.

‘Eh?’

‘We said Barcelona. But what about Barbados?’

‘Do they have petrol-driven cars there?’

‘Sure they do.’

‘Deal.’

She kissed me. Her tongue was smooth and strong. Searching and showing. Giving and taking. Jesus was I hooked. I was about to enter her again when I heard the hum of the engine. The Cadillac. Her eyes and her hands were on me as I slid out of the bed, pulled on my underpants and walked across the cold floorboards to the boys’ room. Lay in the bunk bed and listened.

The car stopped outside and the outer door opened.

Carl stamped the snow from his shoes in the hallway, and through the hole I heard him entering the kitchen.

‘I saw your car outside,’ I heard Carl say. ‘Did you just let yourself in?’

I felt my body turn to ice as I lay there.

‘The door was open,’ said a second voice. Low and rasping. As though he’d damaged his vocal cords.

I raised up on my elbows and pulled the curtains aside. The Jaguar was parked over by the barn, where the snow had been cleared.

‘What can I do for you?’ Carl said. Controlled, but tense.

‘You can pay my client.’

‘So he sent for you because the hotel burned down? Thirty hours. Not a bad response time.’

‘He wants his money now.’

‘I’ll pay him as soon as I get the insurance money.’

‘You won’t be getting any insurance money. The hotel wasn’t insured.’

‘Says who?’

‘My client has his sources. The conditions for the loan have not been upheld. That means it falls due with immediate effect. You’re aware of that, herr Opgard? Good. You’ve got two days. That’s to say forty-eight hours from… now.’

‘Now listen—’

‘Last time I was here you got a warning. This isn’t a three-acter, herr Opgard; so this is the hammer.’

‘The hammer?’

‘The end. Death.’

Silence down there. I saw them in my mind’s eye. The Dane with his angry red pimples, seated at the table. Relaxed body language, which only made him all the more threatening. Carl sweating, even though he’d just come in from minus thirty.

‘Why the panic?’ asked Carl. ‘Willumsen’s got security.’

‘Which he says ain’t worth much without a hotel.’

‘But what would be the point of killing me?’ Carl’s voice was no longer so controlled. Now it sounded more like the whining of a vacuum cleaner. ‘If I’m dead then Willumsen’s definitely not going to get his money.’