Ю Несбё - Blood on Snow

I checked that the screws were still in place.

The second coffin arrived.

The footsteps died away again. I looked at the time. Half past seven.

The third coffin arrived.

The driver and the gravedigger went away, their voices disappearing up the steps as they talked about Christmas food.

So far everything had gone according to plan.

The priest obviously hadn’t objected when I called on behalf of the family in Narvik to ask if the church would mind having the three coffins in the crypt over Christmas while they were en route. We were in position, and, with a bit of luck, in half an hour Hoffmann would be here. We could always hope he’d leave his bodyguards outside. Either way, it was no exaggeration to say that the element of surprise would be entirely on our side.

The luminous dial of my watch swam and smouldered in the darkness.

Ten to.

On the hour.

Five past.

A thought struck me. Those sheets of paper. The letter. It was still under the cutlery tray. Why hadn’t I got rid of it? Had I just forgotten? And why was I asking myself that, rather than what if Corina found it? Did I want her to find it? Anyone who knew the answers to questions like that would be a rich man.

I heard vehicles outside. Doors closing.

Footsteps on the staircase.

They were here.

“He looks peaceful,” a woman’s voice said quietly.

“They’ve made him look really nice,” an older woman’s voice sniffed.

A man’s voice: “I left the car key in the ignition, I think I’ll just go—”

“You’re not going anywhere, Erik.” The younger woman. “God, you’re such a sissy.”

“But my dear, the car—”

“It’s parked in a churchyard, Erik! What do you think’s going to happen to it here?”

I peered out of one of the holes by my side.

I had hoped that Daniel Hoffmann would come alone. There were four of them, and they were all standing on the same side of the coffin, facing me. A balding man, similar in age to Daniel. Not much like him. Brother-in-law, maybe. That fitted with the woman beside him: she was in her thirties, and there was a girl of ten or twelve. Younger sister and niece. There was a certain family resemblance. And the older, grey-haired woman was the spitting image of Daniel. Big sister? Young mother?

But no Daniel Hoffmann.

I tried to convince myself that he’d be coming in his own car, that it would have been odd for the whole family to turn up in the same vehicle.

This was confirmed when the brother-in-law with the receding hairline glanced at his watch.

“It was always the plan that Benjamin would take over from his father,” the older woman sniffed. “What’s Daniel going to do now?”

“Mother,” the younger woman said in a warning tone.

“Oh, don’t pretend Erik doesn’t know.”

Erik raised and lowered the shoulders of his jacket, and rocked on his heels. “Yes, I know what Daniel’s business entails.”

“Then you know how ill he is as well.”

“Elise has mentioned it, yes. But we don’t have much to do with Daniel. Or this... er...”

“Corina,” Elise said.

“Maybe it’s time for you to see a bit more of him, then,” the older woman said.

“Mother!”

“I’m just saying, we don’t know how long we’re going to have Daniel.”

“We’ve got no intention of having anything to do with Daniel’s business, Mother. Just look at what happened to Benjamin.”

“Shh!”

Steps on the stairs.

Two figures came into the room.

One of them hugged the older woman. Nodded curtly to the younger one and the brother-in-law.

Daniel Hoffmann. And with him a Pine who was keeping his mouth shut for once.

They took up a position between us and the coffin, with their backs to us. Perfect. If I think a unit that I need to fix might be armed, I’ll go to almost any lengths to get myself in a position where I can shoot them in the back.

I clenched my fist round the handle of the pistol.

Waiting.

Waiting for the guy in the bearskin hat.

He didn’t come.

He must have been in position outside the church.

That would make things easier to start with, but he could be a potential problem that we’d have to deal with later.

My cue to the Dane and Klein was simple: when I yelled.

And there wasn’t a single logical reason in the world why that shouldn’t happen right then. But it still felt as if there was a right moment, one particular second squeezed in between all the other seconds. Like with the ski pole and my father. Like in a book, when an author decides precisely when something will happen, something you know is going to happen, because the author has already said it’s going to happen, but it hasn’t happened yet. Because there’s a proper place in a story, so you have to wait a bit, so that things can happen in the right order. I closed my eyes and felt the clock count down, a spring tensing, a drop still clinging to the point of an icicle.

And then the moment arrived.

I yelled and pushed the lid off.

It was light. Light and cosy. Mum explained that I had a high temperature, and that the doctor who had been there said I had to stay in bed for a few days and drink a lot of water, but that there was nothing to worry about. That’s when I could tell she was concerned. But I wasn’t scared. I was fine. Even when I closed my eyes it was light, it was shining through my eyelids, a warm red glow. I had been put in Mum’s big bed, and it felt as if all the seasons were passing through the room. Mild spring turning into scalding hot summer, with sweat running like summer rain from my forehead onto sheets that stuck to my thighs, then at last the relief of autumn, with clear air, clear senses. Until it was suddenly winter again, with chattering teeth and a long drift through sleep, dream and reality.

She had been to the library and taken out a book for me. Les Misérables. Victor Hugo. “Concise edition,” it said on the cover, under a drawing of Cosette as a young girl, the original illustration by Émile Bayard.

I read, and dreamed. Dreamed and read. Added and cut scenes. In the end I wasn’t sure how much the author had come up with, and how much was my own invention.

I believed the story. I just didn’t think Victor Hugo was telling it truthfully.

I didn’t believe Jean Valjean had stolen bread, that that was why he had to make amends. I suspected that Victor Hugo didn’t want to risk readers not cheering the hero on if he told the truth. Which was that Jean Valjean had killed someone. That he was a murderer. Jean Valjean was a good man, so the person he had killed must have deserved it. Yes, that was it. Jean Valjean had killed someone who had done something bad, and had to pay for it. The business about stealing bread just annoyed me. So I rewrote the story. I made it better.

So: Jean Valjean was a deadly killer who was wanted throughout France. And he was in love with Fantine, the poor prostitute. So in love that he was willing to do anything for her. Everything he did for her, he did out of love, madness, devotion, not to save his own immortal soul or out of love for his fellow man. He submitted to beauty. Yes, that’s what he did. Submitted to and obeyed the beauty of this ruined, sick, dying prostitute with no teeth or hair. He saw beauty where no one could imagine it. And for that reason it was his alone. And he was its.

It took ten days for the fever to start to ease. For me it had felt like one day, and when I came back Mum sat on the edge of the bed, stroked my forehead, sobbed gently and told me how close it had been.

I told her I had been to a place that I wanted to go back to.

“No, you mustn’t say that, Olav, darling!”