Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

The way Kosmos did business was as follows: the customer wanting speed came in and sat down at the next table, which was always empty because Kosmos had draped his coat over one chair and left a copy of Hjemmet on the table. He would be sitting at his own table doing a crossword in one of the papers. Aftenposten or VG ’s mini crossword or Helge Seip’s big one in Dagbladet . And Hjemmet , of course. Apparently he’d twice been crowned national crossword champion in Hjemmet . You slipped an envelope containing money inside the magazine and went to the toilet, and when you came back the envelope contained speed instead of cash.

It was early in the morning and, as usual, there were only three or four other customers when I arrived. I sat down two tables away from the old man, ordered a coffee and turned to the crossword. I scratched my head with my pencil. Leaned over.

‘Excuse me?’

I had to repeat it twice before Kosmos looked up from his own crossword. He was wearing glasses with orange lenses.

‘Sorry, but I need a four-letter word for “outstanding”. First letter “d”.’

‘Debt,’ he said, and looked down again.

‘Of course. Thanks.’ I filled in the letters.

I waited a while, took a sip of the weak coffee. Cleared my throat: ‘Excuse me, I shan’t keep pestering you, but could you help me with “trawlerman”, nine letters? The first two letters are “f” and “i”.’

‘Fisherman,’ he said without looking up. But I saw him start as he heard himself say the word.

‘One last word,’ I said. ‘Six letters, “tool”, starts with an “h”. Two “m”s in the middle.’

He pushed the newspaper away and looked at me. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down on his unshaven neck.

I smiled apologetically. ‘I’m afraid the deadline for the crossword expires this afternoon. I’ve got to go off and sort something out, but I’ll be back in exactly two hours’ time. I’ll leave the paper here so you can fill in the answers, if you can sort it out.’

I went down to the harbour, smoked a bit and did some thinking. I didn’t know what was going on, why he hadn’t managed to pay off the debt. And I didn’t want to know either, I didn’t want his desperate face fixed on my retina. Not another one. The pale little face on the pillow bearing the washed-out logo of Ullevål Hospital was enough.

When I got back Kosmos looked absorbed in his crossword, but when I opened my newspaper there was an envelope there.

The Fisherman later told me he’d paid in full, and said I was good at my job. But what help was that? I’d talked to the doctors. The prognosis wasn’t good. She wouldn’t see out the year if she didn’t get treatment. So I went to the Fisherman and explained the situation. Said I needed a loan.

‘Sorry, Jon, no can do. You’re an employee, aren’t you?’

I nodded. What the hell was I going to do?

‘But maybe we’ve got a solution to your problem after all. I need someone fixing.’

Oh, shit.

It had to happen sooner or later, but I’d been hoping for later. After I’d saved up what I needed and handed in my notice.

‘I heard your favourite expression is that the first time is always the worst,’ he said. ‘So you’re lucky. That it isn’t the first time, I mean.’

I tried to smile. He couldn’t know, after all. That I hadn’t killed Toralf. That the pistol registered in my name was a small-calibre thing from a sports club that Toralf needed for a job, but hadn’t been able to buy for himself because he had a record as an East German dissenter. So I — who’d never been arrested, not for my little hash business or anything else — had bought it for him in return for a small fee. I hadn’t seen it since. And I’d given up on the money I’d tried to get back because she needed it for treatment. Toralf, the depressed, drugged-up bastard, had done exactly what it looked like he’d done: he’d shot himself.

I had no principles. No money. But neither did I have blood on my hands.

Not yet.

A bonus of thirty thousand.

That was a start. A good start.

I jerked awake. The midge bites were weeping and sticking to the wool blanket. But that wasn’t what had woken me. A plaintive howl had broken the silence out on the plateau.

A wolf? I thought they howled at the moon, in winter, not at the fucking sun that just hung there in the burned-out, colourless sky. It was probably a dog: the Sámi used them to herd reindeer, didn’t they?

I rolled over in the narrow bunk, forgetting my bad shoulder, swore, and rolled back. The howl sounded as though it was a long way away, but who knows? In the summer sound is supposed to move more slowly, doesn’t carry as far as it does in winter. Maybe the beast was just round the corner.

I closed my eyes, but knew I wasn’t going to get back to sleep.

So I got up, grabbed the binoculars and went over to one of the windows and scanned the horizon.

Nothing.

Just tick-tock, tick-tock.

Knut brought some shiny, sticky, stinking midge oil which could well have been napalm. Plus two unmarked bottles with cork stoppers containing a bright stinking liquid which was definitely napalm. The morning had brought no respite from the relentless sun, as well as a wind that whistled in the stovepipe. The shadows of tiny clouds slid across the desolate, monotonous, rolling landscape like flocks of reindeer, momentarily colouring the pale green stretches of vegetation a darker shade, swallowing the reflections from the small pools in the distance and the shimmer of the minute crystals where the rocks lay bare. Like a sudden deep bass note in an otherwise bright song. Either way, it was still in a minor key.

‘Mum says you’re very welcome to join our congregation in the prayer house,’ the boy said. He was sitting opposite me at the table.

‘Really?’ I said, running my hand over one of the bottles. I’d put the cork back in without tasting it. Foreplay. You had to drag it out, that made it even better. Or worse.

‘She thinks you can be saved.’

‘But you don’t?’

‘I don’t think you want to be saved.’

I stood up and went over to the window. The reindeer buck was back. When I saw it earlier that morning I realised that I felt relieved. Wolves. They’d been wiped out in Norway, hadn’t they?

‘My grandfather drew churches,’ I said. ‘He used to be an architect. But he didn’t believe in God. He said that when we died, we died. I’m more inclined to believe that.’

‘He didn’t believe in Jesus either?’

‘If he didn’t believe in God, he was hardly going to believe in his son, Knut.’

‘I get it.’

‘You get it. So?’

‘So he’ll burn in hell.’

‘Hmmmm. In that case he’s been burning for a while, because he died when I was nineteen. Don’t you think that’s a bit unfair? Basse was a good man, he gave a helping hand to people who needed it, which is more than you can say about a lot of Christians I’ve known. If I could be half as good a man as my grandfather...’

I blinked. My eyes were stinging and I could see little white dots floating in front of them. Was all this sunlight burning holes in my retinas, was I going snow-blind now, in the middle of the summer?

‘Grandpa says doing good deeds doesn’t help, Ulf. Your grandfather’s burning now, and soon it’ll be your turn.’

‘Hmm. But you’re saying that if I go to the meeting and say yes to Jesus and this Læstadius, I’ll get to paradise even if I do sod all to help anyone else?’

The boy scratched his red hair. ‘Yeees. Well, if you say yes to the Lyngen branch.’

‘There’s more than one branch?’