Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

‘How much is the Fisherman paying you?’

‘Enough.’ I squeezed the trigger. One of his eyeballs quivered. He yawned. I’ve heard that dogs yawn when they’re nervous. But the trigger didn’t work. Wrong, my finger didn’t work. Fucking hell. In the hallway behind him I saw a shelf with a pair of mittens and a blue woollen hat on it.

‘Put the hat on,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘The woolly hat. Pull it down over your face. Now. Otherwise...’

He did as I said. Became a soft, blue doll’s head with no features. He still looked pathetic as he stood there with his little pot belly under his Esso T-shirt and his arms hanging limply by his sides. But I thought I could do this. As long as I didn’t have to see their faces. I took aim at the hat.

‘We can share.’ I saw his mouth move behind the wool.

I fired. I was sure I’d fired. But I couldn’t have done, because I could still hear his voice:

‘If you let me go, you can have half the money and amphetamines. That’s ninety thousand in cash alone. And the Fisherman will never find out, because I’ll disappear for good. Go abroad, get myself a new identity. I swear.’

The brain is a strange and wonderful thing. While one part of my brain knew that this was an idiotic, lethal idea, another part was thinking hard about it. Ninety thousand. Plus the bonus of thirty thousand. And I wouldn’t have to shoot the guy.

‘If you ever show up again, I’m finished,’ I said.

‘We’d both be finished,’ he said. ‘You can have the money belt into the bargain.’

Fuck.

‘The Fisherman’s expecting a body.’

‘Say you had to get rid of it.’

‘Why would I have to do that?’

Silence under the hat. For two seconds. ‘Because it held incriminating evidence against you. You were expecting to shoot me straight through the head, but the bullet didn’t come out again. That fits with the little pea-shooter you’ve got there. The bullet got stuck inside my head, and the bullet could link you to the murder because you used that pea-shooter in another shooting. So you had to stick my body in your car and dump it in Bunnefjorden.’

‘I haven’t got a car.’

‘You took my car, then. We can leave it at Bunnefjorden. You’ve got a licence?’

I nodded. Then realised he couldn’t see. And realised what a bad idea this was. I raised the pistol again. Too late, he’d pulled off the hat and was grinning at me. Animated eyes. A gold tooth glinted.

In hindsight it’s easy to ask why I didn’t just shoot Gustavo in the cellar after he’d given me the money and drugs that were buried in the coal bin. I could have just switched out the light and fired off a shot to the back of his head. Then the Fisherman would have had his body, I wouldn’t just have half but all of the money, and I wouldn’t have been left wondering when Gustavo was going to show up again. It should have been a simple calculation for a wonderful brain. And it was. The problem was that it was worth more to me not to have to put a bullet in his head. And I knew he was going to need half the money to get away and stay hidden. When it comes down to it, I’m just a pathetic, weak fool who deserves all the crap fate has thrown at me.

But Anna didn’t deserve it.

Anna deserved better.

She deserved a chance to live.

A clicking sound.

I opened my eyes. The buck was running off.

Someone was coming.

I saw him through the binoculars.

He had a rolling gait, and he was so short and bow-legged that the heather brushed his crotch.

I lowered the rifle.

When he reached the cabin he pulled off his joker’s hat and wiped away the sweat. Grinned.

‘An ice-cold viidna would be good right now.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t—’

‘Sámi aquavit. Distilled by the best. You’ve got two bottles.’

I shrugged my shoulders and we went inside. I opened one of the bottles. Poured clear, room-temperature liquid into the two cups.

‘Cheers,’ Mattis said, raising one of them.

I said nothing, and merely gulped the poison down.

He quickly followed my example. Wiped his mouth. ‘Ah, that was good.’ He held his cup out.

I filled it. ‘Did you follow Knut?’

‘I knew the viidna wasn’t for his father, so I had to make sure the lad wasn’t thinking of drinking it himself. You have to show a bit of responsibility.’ He grinned, and a brown liquid dribbled down from behind his top lip and over his yellow front teeth. ‘So this is where you’re staying.’

I nodded.

‘How’s the hunting going?’

I shrugged. ‘Not many grouse about when it’s been such a bad year for mice and lemmings.’

‘You’ve got a rifle. And there are plenty of wild reindeer in Finnmark.’

I took a gulp from the cup. It really did taste terrible, even if the first drink had numbed my tastebuds.

‘I’ve been thinking, Ulf. About what a man like you is doing in a little cabin in Kåsund. You’re not hunting. You haven’t come for peace and quiet, or you would have said so. So what is it?’

‘What do you think the weather’s going to do?’ I refilled his cup. ‘More wind? Less sun?’

‘Forgive me asking, but you’re on the run from someone. The police? Or do you owe someone money?’

I yawned. ‘How did you know the drink wasn’t for Knut’s father?’

A frown appeared on his broad, low forehead. ‘Hugo?’

‘I could smell his workroom. He’s not teetotal.’

‘You’ve been in his room? Did Lea let you inside the house?’

Lea. Her name was Lea.

‘You, an unbeliever? Now that—’ He suddenly broke off, his face cracked into a smile, and he leaned forward with a laugh as he slapped me on my bad shoulder. ‘That’s it! Women! You’re one of those, a horny fucker. You’ve got a married man after you, haven’t you?’

I rubbed my shoulder. ‘How did you know?’

Mattis pointed at his narrow, slanted eyes. ‘We Sámi are children of the earth, you know. You Norwegians follow the path of reason, whereas we’re just foolish shamans who don’t understand, but we sense things, we see .’

‘Lea just lent me this rifle,’ I said. ‘Until her husband comes back from fishing.’

Mattis looked at me. His jaw was going up and down in a grinding semicircle. He took a tiny sip from the cup. ‘In that case you can keep hold of it for a good while.’

‘Oh?’

‘You were wondering how I knew the drink wasn’t for Hugo. That’s because he’s not coming home from fishing.’ Another little sip. ‘Word came through this morning that they’d found his life jacket.’ He looked up at me. ‘Lea didn’t mention it? No, I don’t suppose she would have. The parish has been praying for Hugo for the past fortnight. They — the Læstadians — think that means he’ll be saved, no matter how bad the weather has been out at sea. Anything else would be sacrilegious.’

I nodded. So that’s what Knut had meant when he told me his mother was lying when she said he didn’t have to worry about his father.

‘But now they’re let off,’ Mattis said. ‘Now they can say that God has sent them a sign.’

‘So the coastguards found his life jacket this morning?’

‘The coastguards?’ Mattis laughed. ‘No, they stopped looking more than a week ago. Another fisherman found the life jacket in the water west of Hvassøya.’ He looked and saw the questioning expression on my face. ‘The fishermen write their names on the inside of their life jackets. Life jackets float better than fishermen. That way the next of kin get to know for certain.’

‘Tragic,’ I said.

He stared out into space with a distracted look. ‘Oh, there are plenty worse tragedies than being Hugo Eliassen’s widow.’