Ю Несбё - Blood on Snow

That was the virus I had in my blood. His virus.

I carried the corpse down into the cellar and wrapped it up in the old, rotten canvas tent. My mum had bought that for me as well. She had got it into her head that we, her little family, would go on camping trips. Cook freshly caught trout beside a lake where the sun never set. I hope she got there with her drinking.

More than a week passed before the police came to ask if we’d seen my father after he was released. We said no. They said they’d make a note of it. Thanked us, and left. They didn’t seem particularly bothered. By that time I had already hired a van and taken the mattress and bedclothes to the dump to be incinerated. And that night I had driven deep into the far reaches of Nittedal, to a lake where the sun never sets, but where I wouldn’t be fishing for trout for a good long while.

I sat there on the shore looking out over the sparkling surface, thinking that this is what we leave behind, a few ripples in water, there for a while and then gone. As if they’d never been there. As if we had never been here.

That was the first time I fixed someone.

A few weeks later I got a letter from the university: “It is with great pleasure that we can confirm that you have been accepted to...” with a date and time for registration. I slowly tore it into pieces.

I was woken by a kiss.

Before I realised it was a kiss, there was a moment of pure and utter panic.

Then it all came back, and the panic was replaced by something warm and soft that, in the absence of any better word, I can only call happiness.

She had rested her cheek on my chest and I looked down at her, and the way her hair was flowing over me.

“Olav?”

“Yes?”

“Can’t we just stay here for ever?”

I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do. I pulled her closer to me. Held her. Counting the seconds. Those were seconds we had together, seconds no one could take away from us, seconds we consumed there and then. But — like I said — I can’t count for very long. I put my lips to her hair.

“He’d find us here, Corina.”

“Let’s go far away, then.”

“We have to deal with him first. We can’t spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders.”

She ran one finger down my nose and chin, as if there was a seam there. “You’re right. But then we can go, can’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

“Wherever you want.”

She ran her finger down my neck, over my throat and between my collarbones. “In that case, I want to go to Paris.”

“Paris it is, then. Why there?”

“Because that’s where Cosette and Marius were together.”

I laughed, swung my feet down onto the floor and kissed her on the forehead.

“Don’t get up,” she said.

So I didn’t get up.

At ten o’clock I was reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. Corina was asleep.

The record-breaking cold was continuing. But the milder weather yesterday had made the roads like glass. A car had slid onto the wrong side of the Trondheim road. A family of three on their way up north for Christmas. And the police still had no leads on the murder in Vinderen.

At eleven o’clock I was standing in a department store. It was full of people looking for Christmas presents. I stood by the window, pretending to look at a dinner service while I watched the building on the other side of the road. Hoffmann’s office. There were two men standing outside. Pine, and a guy I hadn’t seen before. The new guy was stamping his feet, and the smoke from his cigarette was drifting right into Pine’s face, who said something the other man didn’t seem very interested in. He wore a huge bearskin hat and overcoat, but he still had his shoulders hunched up to his ears, while Pine looked relaxed in his dog-shit-coloured jacket and clown’s hat. Pimps are used to standing outside. The new guy pulled his hat further down over his ears. But I think this was more because of Pine’s verbal diarrhoea than the cold. Pine had taken the cigarette from behind his ear and was showing it to the other guy. Presumably he was telling the same old story, about how he’d had that cigarette there since the day he stopped smoking. That it was his way of showing the tobacco who was in charge. I reckon he just wanted people to ask him why he had a cigarette tucked behind his ear, so he could then bore the shit out of them.

He was wearing too many clothes for me to be able to see if he had a gun, but Pine’s jacket was lopsided. A seriously fat wallet, or a shooter. Too heavy for it to be that vicious knife he went round with. Presumably the same knife he had used the time he persuaded Maria to work for him. Showing her what the knife could do to her, to her boyfriend, if she didn’t suck and fuck back the money he owed. I had seen the terror in Maria’s wide-open eyes, staring at his mouth, trying desperately to lip-read what Pine wanted as he rattled on. Like he was now. But the new guy was ignoring the pimp and looking up and down the street with a dark glare from beneath his bearskin hat. Calm, focused. Must have been hired in. From abroad, maybe. He looked professional.

I left the shop through the door onto the next street. Went into a phone box on Torggata. Held up a page of the newspaper that I’d torn out. Drew a heart on the steamed-up window of the phone box while I waited for the call to be picked up.

“Ris Church, parish office.”

“Sorry to bother you, but I’ve got a wreath I want to deliver for the Hoffmann funeral the day after tomorrow.”

“The undertakers can look after—”

“The problem is that I live outside the city and am going to be driving through the city late tomorrow evening, after closing time. I thought I might deliver the wreath directly to the church.”

“We don’t have any staff who—”

“But I was assuming that you’d be receiving the coffin tomorrow evening?”

“That would be the normal way of things, yes.”

I waited, but nothing more followed.

“Perhaps you could check for me?”

A barely audible sigh. “One moment.” The sound of paper rustling. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Then I’ll call in to the church tomorrow evening. I’m sure the family will want to see him one last time, so I’ll be able to pass on my condolences to them as well. They’ve probably arranged a time with you to be let down into the crypt. I could call the family directly, but I’m reluctant to bother them...”

I waited, listening to the silence at the other end. I cleared my throat: “...at this tragic time for them, so close to Christmas.”

“I can see that they’ve asked to come between eight and nine o’clock tomorrow evening.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I’m afraid I can’t make it then. It might be just as well if you don’t mention to them that I was thinking of coming in person. I’ll try to find another way of delivering the wreath.”

“As you wish.”

“Thanks for your help.”

I walked to Youngstorget. There was no one standing in Operapassasjen today. If it had been Hoffmann’s man there the day before, then he’d seen what he wanted to see.

The young guy refused to let me behind the counter. Said the Fisherman was in a meeting. I could see shadows moving behind the glass in the swing door. Then one of the shadows stood up and went out the same way I had done, through the back door.

“You can go through,” the young guy said.

“Sorry,” the Fisherman said. “It’s not just fish for Christmas that people are making a fuss about.”

I must have screwed up my nose at the strong smell, because he started to laugh.