Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

‘Please, Anita.’

‘Okay, okay, take it easy. Thin man. Nazi fringe. Handsome. Had a long nail on his index finger.’

Shit. The Fisherman always finds what he’s looking for. You and I may not know how, but he knows. Always.

I swallowed. ‘When did you see him?’

‘Just before you arrived. He went up into the village, said he was going to talk to someone.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He was looking for some southerner called Jon. Is that you?’

I shook my head. ‘My name’s Ulf. What else did he say?’

‘Nothing. He gave me his phone number in case I heard anything, but it was an Oslo number. Why are you going on about it?’

‘I’m just waiting for someone to show up with my shotgun, but it probably isn’t him.’

So Johnny Moe was here. And I had left the pistol in the cabin. I’d gone somewhere I wasn’t safe, and I hadn’t taken the only thing that might make me a bit safer. Because I thought it might be tricky if I met a woman and had to get undressed. And now I had met a woman, and evidently didn’t want to get undressed after all. Is there a level below idiot? The funny thing was that I was more annoyed than frightened. I should have been more scared. He had come to shoot me. I was hiding here because I wanted to survive, wasn’t I? So I’d better get my fucking act together and do a bit of surviving!

‘You live behind the church, you said?’

She brightened up. ‘Yes, it’s not far.’

I looked up at the gravel track. He could come back any time. ‘Can we take a detour through the churchyard, so that no one sees us?’

‘Why don’t you want anyone to see us?’

‘Just thinking about... er, your reputation.’

‘My reputation?’ She snorted. ‘Everyone knows that Anita likes men.’

‘Okay, mine, then.’

She shrugged. ‘Okay, if you’re so bloody precious.’

The house had curtains.

And a pair of man’s shoes in the passage.

‘Whose...?’

‘My father’s,’ Anita said. ‘And you don’t have to whisper, he’s asleep.’

‘Isn’t that when people normally whisper?’

‘Still scared?’

I looked at the shoes. They were smaller than mine. ‘No.’

‘Good. Come on.’

We went into her bedroom. It was cramped, and the bed was only meant for one person. One thin person. She pulled her dress over her head, unbuttoned my trousers, then pulled them and my underpants down with one tug. Then she unhooked her bra and slipped her pants off. Her skin was pale, almost white, with red marks and scratches here and there. But no needle tracks. She was nice. It wasn’t that.

She sat down on the bed and looked up at me. ‘You might as well take your jacket off.’

While I was taking off my jacket, and hanging it and my shirt on the only chair in there, I heard snoring from the next room. Harsh, grating breaths in, spluttering breaths out, like a broken silencer. She opened the bedside cabinet.

‘No condoms left,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to be careful, because I don’t want a kid.’

‘I’m no good at being careful,’ I said quickly. ‘Never have been. Maybe we could just... er, play around a bit?’

‘Play around?’ She uttered the words as though they disgusted her. ‘Dad’s got condoms.’

She left the room naked and I heard the door to the next room open; the snoring stuttered a bit before carrying on as before. A few seconds later she was back with a worn brown wallet which she was searching through.

‘Here,’ she said, tossing a little square of plastic at me.

The plastic was frayed at the edges. I looked for an expiry date, but couldn’t find one.

‘I can’t do it with a condom,’ I said. ‘It just doesn’t work.’

‘Yes, it will,’ she said, grabbing hold of my terrified cock.

‘Sorry. So what do you do here in Kåsund, Anita?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Hmm. Maybe it needs a bit of... er, iodine?’

‘I said shut up.’

I looked down at the little hand which evidently believed it could work miracles. I wondered where Johnny could be. In such a small village it wouldn’t be difficult to find someone able to tell him that the recently arrived southerner was staying in the hunting cabin. He would look there and at the wedding party. Kornelius had promised to keep quiet. As long as I stayed where I was, I was safe.

‘There, see!’ Anita chirruped happily.

I looked down at the miracle, astonished. It had to be some sort of stress reaction — I’ve read that hanged men sometimes get erections. Without letting go or stopping, she picked up the condom packet with her left hand, tore it open with her teeth, sucked out the condom and formed a circle around it with her lips. Then she dived down, and when she lifted her head again I was equipped and ready for battle. She leaned back on the bed and spread her legs.

‘I just want to say that—’

‘Haven’t you finished talking yet, Ulf?’

‘I don’t like being thrown out immediately afterwards. It’s all to do with self-respect, if you—’

‘Just shut up and get going while you still can.’

‘You promise?’

She sighed. ‘Just fuck me.’

I crawled up onto the bed. She helped me into place. I closed my eyes and started to thrust, not too fast, not too slow. She groaned, cursed and swore, but in a way I found encouraging. In the absence of any other metronome, I fell into the same rhythm as the snoring in the next room. I could feel it building. I tried not to think about the state of the condom, or what a combination of Anita and me would look like.

Suddenly she stiffened and stopped making any noise at all.

I stopped thrusting. I thought she’d heard something, some irregularity in her father’s snoring, or someone approaching the house. I held my breath and listened. To my ears the jagged snoring sounded just the same as before.

Then the body beneath me suddenly went completely limp. I looked down at her anxiously. Her eyes were closed and she looked lifeless. Carefully I put my thumb and forefinger to her throat, feeling for a pulse. I couldn’t find it. Fuck, where was the pulse, was she...?

Then a low sound emerged from her mouth. First a dull growl, which got louder. And turned into something very familiar. Grating breaths in, breaths out like a broken silencer.

Yep, she was her father’s daughter.

I squeezed in between the slim female form and the wall, and felt the cold wallpaper behind my back and the bed frame against my hip. But I was safe. For the time being.

I closed my eyes. Two thoughts struck me. That the thought of Valium hadn’t struck me. And you’re going to shoot the reflection .

Then I drifted off into dreamland.

When I saw Anita’s father at the breakfast table, he was a pretty good match for what I’d imagined based on the sound of his snoring. Hairy, rather fat, and gruff. I even imagined that I’d somehow heard his string vest in his snoring.

‘All right?’ he said. Gruffly. And stubbed out his cigarette on the half-eaten slice of bread in front of him. ‘You look like you need coffee.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, relieved, and sat down opposite him at the folding table.

He looked at me. Then he turned back to his newspaper, licked the end of his pencil, and nodded towards the stove and kettle. ‘Get it yourself. You don’t get to fuck my daughter and have coffee served to you.’

I nodded and found a cup in the cupboard. I filled it with pitch-black coffee as I peered out through the window. Still overcast.

Anita’s father stared down at the newspaper. In the silence I could hear her snoring.

My watch said quarter past nine. Was Johnny still in the village, or had he moved on to look somewhere else?