Ю Несбё - Blood on Snow

But Hoffmann said — and I had to agree with him — that he couldn’t let people get away without paying their debts, because that sort of thing soon spreads to other, more important customers. So, well aware that Pine and Hoffmann were after the girl because she’d been stupid enough to take on her boyfriend’s debts, I went out looking until I found the Frenchman in a squat up in Fagerborg. He was both wrecked by drugs and broke, so I realised I wasn’t going to get a single krone out of him, no matter how much I shook him. I said that if he so much as approached Maria again I’d smash his nose into his brain. To be honest, I’m not sure there was much left of either of them. So I went back to Hoffmann, said the boyfriend had managed to get hold of some money, handed him thirteen thousand and said I presumed that meant hunting season on the girl was over.

I don’t know if Maria had been a user while they were together, if she was the sort who looked for ways to be submissive, but she seemed pretty straight now, at least. She worked in a small supermarket, and I looked in every now and then to make sure things were okay, and that her junkie boyfriend hadn’t popped up to ruin things for her again. Obviously I made sure she couldn’t see me, just stood outside in the darkness looking into the well-lit shop, watching her sitting at the till, putting things in bags, and pointing at one of the others if anyone spoke to her. Every so often I suppose we all need to feel that we’re living up to our parents. I don’t know what Dad had that I could live up to — this is probably more about Mum. She was better at looking after other people than herself, and I suppose I saw that as a kind of ideal back then. God knows. Either way, I didn’t really have much use for the money I was earning from Hoffmann. So what if I dealt a decent card to a girl who’d been given such a lousy hand?

Anyway. To sum up, let’s put it like this: I’m no good at driving slowly, I’m way too soft, I fall in love far too easily, I lose my head when I get angry, and I’m bad at math. I’ve read a bit, but I don’t really know much, and certainly nothing anyone would find useful. And stalactites grow faster than I can write.

So what on earth can a man like Daniel Hoffmann use someone like me for?

The answer is — as you might have worked out already — as a fixer.

I don’t have to drive, and I mostly kill the sort of men who deserve it, and the numbers aren’t exactly hard to keep track of. Not right now, anyway.

There are two calculations.

To start with, there’s the one that’s ticking away the whole time: When exactly do you reach the point where you know so much about your boss that he starts to get worried? And when do you know he’s beginning to wonder if he ought to fix the fixer? Like one of those black widows. Not that I know much about arachnology or whatever it’s called, but I think the widows let the males, who are much smaller, fuck them. Then, when he’s finished and the female has no more use for him, she eats him. In Animal Kingdom 4: Insects and Spiders in the Deichman Library there’s a picture of a black widow with the male’s chewed-off pedipalp, which is like the spider’s cock, still hanging from her genitals. And you can see the blood-red, hourglass-shaped mark on the female’s abdomen. Because the hourglass is running, you pathetic, randy little male spider, and you need to keep to your allotted visiting time. Or, to be more accurate, you need to know when visiting time is over. And then you get the fuck out of there, come what may, with a couple of bullets in the side or whatever — you just have to get away, to the only thing that can save you.

That’s how I saw it. Do what you have to, but don’t get too close.

And that’s why I was seriously fucking worried about the new job Hoffmann had given me.

He wanted me to fix his wife.

“I want you to make it look like a break-in, Olav.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it needs to look like something else, Olav, not what it really is. The police always get upset when civilians are killed. They put a little too much effort into their investigation. And when a woman who has a lover is found dead, everything points to her husband. Obviously, in ninety per cent of cases this is perfectly justified.”

“Seventy-four, sir.”

“Sorry?”

“Just something I read, sir.”

Okay, we don’t usually call people “sir” in Norway, no matter how superior they are. With the exception of the royal family, of course, who are addressed as Your Royal Highness. Daniel Hoffmann would probably have preferred that. The title of “sir” was something Hoffmann had imported from England, together with his leather furniture, red mahogany bookcases and leather-bound books full of the old, yellowing, unread pages of what were presumably English classics. But how should I know, I only recognised the usual names: Dickens, Brontë, Austen. Either way, the dead authors made the air in his office so dry that I always ended up coughing a fine spray of lung cells long after my visits. I don’t know what it was about England that fascinated Hoffmann, but I knew he’d spent a short time there as a student, and came home with his case stuffed full of tweed suits, ambition and an affected Oxford English with a Norwegian twang. No degree or certificates, just a belief that money is everything. And that if you’re going to succeed in business, you have to concentrate on markets where the competition is weakest. Which in Oslo at that time meant prostitution. I think his analysis really was that simple. Daniel Hoffmann had worked out that in a market run by charlatans, idiots and amateurs, even a distinctly average man could end up king of the castle. It was just a matter of having the necessary moral flexibility required to recruit and send girls out into prostitution on a daily basis. And, after giving the matter due consideration, Daniel Hoffmann concluded that he did. When he expanded his business into the heroin market a few years later, Hoffmann was already a man who regarded himself as a success. And since the heroin market in Oslo up to then had been run by jokers, idiots and amateurs, as well as junkies, and since it turned out that Hoffmann also possessed sufficient moral flexibility to despatch people into a narcotic hell, this became another success. The only problem that Hoffmann now faced was the Fisherman. The Fisherman was a fairly recent competitor in the heroin market, and, as it turned out, he was no idiot. God knows, there were enough addicts in Oslo for both of them, but they were each trying their best to wipe the other off the face of the earth. Why? Well, I assume that neither of them was born with my innate talent for subordination. And things get a bit messy when people like that, who have to be in charge, who have to sit on the throne, find out that their women are being unfaithful. I think the Daniel Hoffmanns of this world would have better and simpler lives if they could learn to look the other way, and maybe accept that their wives had an affair or two.

“I was thinking of taking a holiday over Christmas,” I said. “Asking someone to come with me, and go away for a while.”

“A travelling companion? I didn’t think you knew anyone that intimately, Olav? That’s one of the things I like about you, you know. That you haven’t got anyone to tell secrets to.” He smiled and tapped the ash from his cigar. I didn’t get upset — he meant well. The word “Cohiba” was printed on the cigar band. I read somewhere that at the turn of the century cigars were the most common Christmas present in the Western Hemisphere. Would that be a good idea? I didn’t even know if she smoked. I hadn’t seen her smoking at work, anyway.