Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

‘Maybe there’s warmer weather from the south.’

‘Maybe. I had such bad dreams.’

‘What about?’

‘That he’s on his way. That he’s coming to kill us.’

‘The man from Oslo? Or Ove?’

‘I don’t know. It slipped away from me.’

We lay there listening for more thunder. None came.

‘Ulf?’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever been to Stockholm?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it nice?’

‘It’s very nice in summer.’

She raised herself up on one arm and looked down at me. ‘Jon,’ she said. ‘Leo.’

I nodded. ‘Did the man from Oslo say that too?’

She shook her head. ‘I saw the tag on your necklace while you were sleeping. “Jon Hansen, born 24 July”. I’m Libra. You’re fire and I’m air.’

‘I’m going to burn and you’re going to heaven.’

She smiled. ‘Is that the first thing you think of?’

‘No.’

‘What’s the first thing, then?’

Her face was so close, her eyes so dark and intense.

I didn’t know I was going to kiss her until I did. I’m not even sure if I was the one who did, or if it was her. But afterwards I wrapped my arms round her, pulled her to me and held her tight, feeling her body, like a pair of bellows as the air hissed out between her teeth.

‘No!’ she groaned. ‘You mustn’t!’

‘Lea...’

‘No! We... I can’t. Let me go!’

I let go of her.

She struggled out of bed. Stood there breathless in the middle of the floor, staring at me fiercely.

‘I thought...’ I said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean...’

‘Shhh,’ she said quietly. ‘That didn’t happen. And it won’t happen again. Never. Do you understand?’

‘No.’

She let out her breath in a long, trembling groan.

‘I’m married, Ulf.’

‘Married? You’re a widow.’

‘You don’t get it. I’m not just married to him. I’m married to... to everything. Everything up here. You and I belong to two different worlds. You make a living from drugs, I’m a sexton, a believer. I don’t know what you live for, but that’s what I live for, that and my son. Nothing else matters, and I’m not going to let a... a stupid, irresponsible dream ruin it. I can’t afford to, Ulf. Do you understand?’

‘But I’ve already said I’ve got money. Look behind the plank next to the cupboard there, there’s—’

‘No, no, no!’ She clapped her hands to her ears. ‘I don’t want to hear, and I don’t want any money! I want what I’ve got, nothing else. We can’t see each other again, I don’t want to see you again, it’s ended up... ended up all silly and mad and... and now I’m going. Don’t come and see me. And I won’t come and see you. Goodbye, Ulf. Have a good life.’

A moment later she was out of the cabin and I had already started to doubt if any of it had actually happened. Yes, she had kissed me, the pain in my cheek wasn’t lying. But then the rest of it must be true as well, the part of it when she said she never wanted to see me again. I stood up and went outside, and saw her running towards the village in the moonlight.

Of course she was running away. Who wouldn’t? I would have done. A long time ago. But then I was the type who ran away. She couldn’t afford to run away, whereas as a rule I ran because I couldn’t afford to stay. What had I been thinking? That two people like us could be together? No, that isn’t what I’d been thinking. Dreaming of, maybe, the way our minds conjure up images and fantasies. Time to wake up now.

There was another rumble of thunder, a bit closer this time. I looked off to the west. Off in the distance banks of lead-grey clouds towered up.

That he’s on his way. That he’s coming to kill us.

I went back inside the cabin and leaned my forehead against the wall. I believed in dreams about as much as I believed in gods. I was more inclined to believe in a junkie’s love of drugs than in people’s love for one another. But I did believe in death. That was a promise I knew would be kept. I believed in a nine-millimetre bullet at a thousand kilometres an hour. And that life was the time between the moment when it left the barrel of the pistol and when it tore through your brain.

I pulled the rope out from beneath the bed and tied it round the door handle. Knotted the other end to the heavy bed-frame that was nailed to the wall so the door couldn’t open outwards. I pulled it tighter. There. Then I lay down and stared at the planks of the bunk above me.

It was in Stockholm. A long, long time ago, before everything. I was eighteen years old, and had caught the train from Oslo. I walked around the streets of Södermalm alone. Waded through the grass on Djurgården, dangled my legs off a jetty while I looked across at the Royal Palace and knew that I would never swap what they had for the freedom I had. Then I got dressed up as best I could with the little I had, and went to the Royal Dramatic Theatre, because I was in love with a Norwegian girl who was playing Solveig in Peer Gynt .

She was three years older than me, but I had talked to her at a party. That must have been why I was there. Mostly because of that. She was good in the play, she could speak Swedish like a native, or at least that’s how it sounded to me. And she was attractive and unobtainable. All the same, during the course of the performance my infatuation withered away. Maybe because she couldn’t compete with the day I’d had, with Stockholm. Maybe it was just that I was eighteen and had already fallen for the red-haired girl in the row in front of me.

The next day I bought some hash at Sergels torg. I walked down to Kungsträdgården, where I saw the red-haired girl again. I asked if she had enjoyed the play, but she just shrugged her shoulders and showed me how to roll a joint in Swedish. She was twenty, came from Östersund, and had a little flat at Odenplan. Next door was a reasonable restaurant called Tranan, where we ate fried herring and mashed potato and drank medium-strength lager.

It turned out that she wasn’t the girl I’d seen in the row in front of me after all, she’d never been to the Royal Dramatic Theatre. I stayed with her for three days. She went to work while I just wandered about breathing in the summer and the city. On the way home I sat looking out of the window, thinking about what I’d said about going back. And thought, for the first time, the most depressing thought of all: that there was no going back. That now becomes then, now becomes then in an endless fucking sequence, and there’s no reverse gear on this vehicle we call life.

I woke up again.

There was something scraping at the door. I twisted over in bed and saw the door handle move up and down.

She’d changed her mind. She’d come back.

‘Lea?’ My heart was pounding wildly with joy, and I threw off the covers and swung my feet onto the floor.

No answer.

It wasn’t Lea.

It was a man. A strong, angry man. Because the force he was using on the door handle was making the joints of the bed-frame creak.

I grabbed the rifle that was leaning against the wall and aimed it at the door.

‘Who’s there? What do you want?’

Still no answer. But what were they going to say? That they’d come to fix me, so could I please unlock the door? The rope quivered like a piano wire, and the door was now open a crack. Big enough to stick the barrel of a revolver through...

‘Answer, or I’ll shoot!’

It sounded like the planks of the bed were screaming in pain as the big nails were pulled out of the frame, millimetre by millimetre. And then I heard a click outside, like a revolver being loaded.

I fired. Fired. Fired. And fired. Three bullets in the magazine and one in the chamber.