The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

by Jo Nesbo

  They had done this ever since childhood, shared every tiny detail, so that all experiences became shared experiences. For example, Julian – who was, according to Franz, the more extrovert of the two – had shown Franz a video he had made in secret a few days earlier of himself having sex with a girl in her apartment in Pothia.

  ‘As a joke Julian suggested I visit her, pretend to be him, and see if she noticed any difference between us as lovers. An exciting idea, of course, but…’

  ‘But you said no.’

  ‘Well, I’d already met Helena, I was already so much in love that I couldn’t think or talk about anything else. So maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Julian was attracted to Helena too. And then fell in love.’

  ‘Without ever even having met her?’

  Franz nodded slowly. ‘At least, I didn’t think he’d ever met her. I had told Helena I had a brother, but not that we were identical twins, exact physical copies of each other. We don’t usually do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Franz shrugged. ‘Some people think it’s weird that you come in two identical copies. So we usually wait a bit before mentioning it or introducing each other.’

  ‘I understand. Please continue.’

  ‘Three days ago my phone suddenly went missing. I looked everywhere for it, it was the only place I had Helena’s number and she and I exchanged text messages all the time, she was bound to be thinking I was through with her. I made up my mind to drive to Emporio but the following morning heard it vibrating in the pocket of Julian’s jacket while he was out swimming. It was a text message from Helena thanking him for a nice evening and hoping they could meet again soon. And so of course I realised what had happened.’

  He noticed my – probably badly acted – expression of puzzlement.

  ‘Julian had taken my phone,’ he said, sounding almost impatient when I apparently still failed to get it. ‘He found her number among my contacts, called her on my phone so she assumed it was me when she saw the caller ID. They arranged to meet and even after they met it didn’t occur to her that the person wasn’t me but Julian.’

  ‘Aha,’ I said.

  ‘I confronted him when he returned from his swim, and he admitted everything. I was furious, so I went off climbing with some others. We didn’t meet again until the evening, at that bar, and then Julian claimed that he’d called Helena, explained everything, that she’d forgiven him for tricking her and that they were in love with each other. I was furious, of course and…and yes, so we started arguing again.’

  I nodded. There were a number of different ways of interpreting Franz’s honest account. It might be that the pressures of jealousy were so intense that the humiliating truth simply had to be told, even if it cast him in a suspicious light now that his brother had gone missing. If that was the case – and if he had killed his brother – the combined pressure of his guilt and his lack of self-control would produce the same result: he would confess.

  Then you had the more intricate interpretation: that he guessed I would interpret his openness in precisely this fashion, that I would suppose he found the inner pressures irresistible, so that if, after these confessions, he did not crack up and admit the murder, I would be the more willing to believe in his innocence.

  Finally, the most likely interpretation. That he was innocent and therefore had no need to consider the consequences of telling all.

  A guitar riff. I recognised it immediately. ‘Black Dog’. Led Zeppelin.

  Without rising from his seat Franz Schmid turned and took a phone from a pocket of the jacket hanging on the wall behind him. Studied the display as the riff went into a variation after the third repetition, the one where Bonham’s drums and Jimmy Page’s guitar just don’t go, and yet go together so perfectly. Trevor, a friend who had the room next to mine at Oxford, wrote a mathematical paper about the intricate rhythmic figures in ‘Black Dog’, about the paradox that was John Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s drummer, better known for his ability as a drinker and wrecker of hotel rooms than for his intelligence, in which he compared him to the semi-literate and apparently simple-minded chess genius in Stefan Zweig’s ‘Chess’. Was Franz Schmid that kind of drummer, that kind of chess player? Franz Schmid touched the display, the riff stopped, and he held the phone to his ear.

  ‘Yes?’ he said. Listened. ‘One moment.’ He held the phone out to me. I took it.

  ‘Inspector Balli,’ I said.

  ‘This is Arnold Schmid, uncle to Frank and Julian,’ said a guttural voice in that much-parodied German-accented English. ‘I am a lawyer. I would like to know on what grounds you are holding Franz.’

  ‘We are not holding him, Mr Schmid. He has expressed a willingness to assist us in the search for his brother, and we are taking advantage of that offer as long as it remains open.’

  ‘Put Franz back on the line.’

  Franz listened for a while. Then he touched the screen and placed the phone on the table between us with his hand on top of it. I looked at it as he told me he was tired, he wanted to get back to the house now, but that we were to call him if anything turned up.

  Like a question? I wondered. Or a body?

  ‘The phone,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if we take a look at it?’

  ‘I gave it to the policeman I was talking to. With the PIN code.’

  ‘I don’t mean your brother’s, I mean yours.’

  ‘Mine?’ The sinewy hand tightened like a claw around the black object on the table. ‘Er, will this take long?’

  ‘Not the actual phone,’ I said. ‘Of course, I realise you must have it with you under the present circumstances. So what I’m asking for is formal permission to access the call log and text messages that have been registered on your phone over the last ten days. All we need is your signature on a standard release form to acquire the information from the telephone company.’ I smiled as though it was a regrettable necessity. ‘It will help me to cross your name off the list of possible leads we need to follow.’

  Franz Schmid looked at me. And in the light coming from the windows above I could see his pupils distend. Distension of the pupils, allowing more light to enter, can have a number of causes, such as fear, or lust. On this occasion it seemed to me to indicate only heightened concentration. As when a chess opponent makes an unexpected move.

  It was as though I could feel the thoughts racing through his head.

  He’d been prepared for us to want to check his phone, so he’d deleted the calls and text messages he didn’t want us to see. But maybe nothing got deleted at the telephone provider, he thought, or – shit! – how did it work? He could of course refuse. He could ring his uncle now and get confirmation that there was no difference under Greek, American or German law, he was not obliged to give the police anything at all so long as they had no legal right to demand it. But how would it look if he made things difficult? In that case I was hardly going to cross his name off the list, he was probably thinking. I saw what looked like the onset of panic in his eyes.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Where do I sign?’

  His pupils were already contracting. His brain had scanned the messages. Nothing crucial there, probably. He hadn’t shown me his cards, but for one revelatory moment he had at least lost his poker face.

  We left the room together and were on our way through the open-plan offices looking out for George when a dog, a friendly-looking golden retriever, slipped out from between two partitions and jumped up barking happily at Franz Schmid.

  ‘Well, hey there!’ he cried spontaneously, squatting to scratch the dog behind the ear in the practised way of people with a genuine love of animals, something which the animal instinctively seems to realise; it was probably the reason it had chosen Franz and not me. The big dog’s tail whirled like a rotor as it tried to lick Franz’s face.

  ‘Animals are better than people, don’t you think?’ he said as
he looked up at me. His face was radiant; suddenly he looked like a different person to the man who had been sitting opposite me.

  ‘Odin!’ cried a sharp voice from between the walls of the partition, the same voice as had told George that a journalist had called. She emerged and grabbed the dog by the collar.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in Greek. ‘He knows he’s not allowed to do that.’

  She looked to be about thirty. She was small and compact, athletic-looking in a uniform with the white ribbon of the tourist police. She raised her head. She was red around the eyes, and when she saw us her cheeks turned the same colour. Odin’s claws scraped against the floor covering as she dragged the whimpering dog back behind the partitions. I heard a sniffle.

  ‘I need help to print out a warrant to check the contents of a phone,’ I said, addressing the partition. ‘It’s on the home page of –’

  Her voice interrupted me. ‘Just go to the printer at the end of the corridor, Inspector Balli.’

  * * *

  —

  ‘Well?’ said George Kostopoulos as I poked my head in between the partition walls around his desk.

  ‘The suspect is on a moped on his way back to Massouri,’ I said, handing him the sheet of paper with Franz Schmid’s signature. ‘And I’m afraid he suspects that we’re on to him and could do a runner.’

  ‘No danger of that. We’re on an island, and the forecast is for the wind to increase. Are you saying that you…?’

  ‘Yes. I think he killed his brother. Can you mail me the printouts as soon as you get them from the telephone company?’

  ‘Yes. Shall I ask them to send Julian Schmid’s text messages and call logs too?’

  ‘Unfortunately that requires a court order so long as he’s not officially confirmed dead. But you’ve got his phone?’

  ‘Sure have,’ said George and opened a drawer.

  I took the phone, sat in a chair at his desk and tapped in the PIN code written on the Post-it note on the back. Browsed through the calls logs and text messages.

  I saw nothing of immediate relevance to the case. Just a message about a climbing route that had been ‘Sent’, which in climber’s lingo means that it has been climbed and which automatically made my palms begin to sweat. Mutual congratulations exchanged. Dinners arranged, the name of the restaurant where ‘the gang’ were gathering and the time. But by the look of it, no conflict and no romance.

  I jumped as the phone began to vibrate in my hand at the same time as a male vocalist started singing in the kind of pathos-filled and passionately choked-up falsetto that shows you’re a devotee of mainstream pop from the 2000s. I hesitated. If I answered I would probably have to explain to a friend, a colleague or relative that Julian was missing and presumed drowned on a climbing holiday in Greece. I took a deep breath and pressed ACCEPT.

  ‘Julian?’ whispered a female voice before I had time to say anything.

  ‘This is the police,’ I said in English and then stopped. I wanted to let it hang there. Allow the realisation that something had happened to sink in.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the female voice with resignation. ‘I was hoping it might be Julian, but…any news?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Victoria Hässel. A climbing friend. I didn’t want to bother Franz and…yeah. Thanks.’

  She hung up and I took a note of the number.

  ‘That ringtone,’ I said. ‘What was it?’

  ‘No idea,’ said George.

  ‘Ed Sheeran,’ came the voice of the dog owner from the other side of the partition. ‘ “Happier”.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I called back.

  ‘Anything else we can do?’ asked George.

  I folded my arms and thought it over. ‘No. Or actually yes. He was drinking from a glass in there. Can you get it fingerprinted? And DNA if there’s any saliva on the rim.’

  George cleared his throat. I knew what he was going to say. That this would require the permission of the person involved, or a court order.

  ‘I suspect the glass might have been at a crime scene,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘If in the DNA report you don’t link the DNA to a named individual but simply to the glass, the date and the place, that’ll be OK. It might not be admissible in a court of law, but it could be useful for you and me.’

  George raised one of his chaotic eyebrows.

  ‘That’s the way we do it in Athens,’ I lied. The truth is that sometimes that’s the way I do it in Athens.

  ‘Christine,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ There was the scraping of a chair and the girl in the tourist-police uniform peered over the divider.

  ‘Can you send the glass in the interrogation room for analysis?’

  ‘Really? Do we have permission from –’

  ‘It’s a crime scene,’ he said.

  ‘Crime scene?’

  ‘Yes,’ said George, without taking his gaze from me. ‘Apparently that’s the way we do things here now.’

  * * *

  —

  It was seven in the evening and I was lying on the bed in the hotel room in Massouri. The hotels in Pothia were all full, probably because of the weather. That was OK by me, I was nearer the centre of things here. High above me, on the hills on the other side of the road, yellow-white limestone rock rose up. Mysteriously beautiful and inviting in the moonlight. There had been a fatal accident on the island in the summer, the newspapers had written about it. I remember I hadn’t wanted to read about it but did so anyway.

  On the other side of the hotel the mountainside plunged more or less straight down into the sea.

  The second day of searching was over, the waters in the sound between Kalymnos and Telendos had been calmer further out. But, given the forecast for tomorrow, there wasn’t going to be any third day, I was told. In any event, when someone is believed to have been lost at sea, the search is limited to two days, American or not. The wind rattled the windowpanes and I could hear the sound of the waves breaking against the rocks out there.

  My task – to make a diagnosis, to decide whether jealousy of a homicidal nature was involved – was over. The next step – the tactical and technical investigation – wasn’t my strongest suit. My colleagues from Athens would take care of that. Now the weather had postponed the changing of the guards, and it emphasised and even exposed my inadequacies as a homicide detective. I simply lacked the imaginative ability to see how a murderer might have set about killing someone and then hiding his tracks. My chief said it was because what I possessed in the way of emotional intelligence I lacked in practical imagination. That’s why he called me the jealousy investigator, that’s the reason I was sent in as a scout and pulled out as soon as I had given the case the red or green light.

  There’s something called the eighty per cent rule in murder cases. In eighty per cent of cases the guilty party is closely related to the victim, in eighty per cent of cases the guilty party is the husband or boyfriend, and in a further eighty per cent of these the motive is jealousy. It means that as soon as we answer a call in the Homicide Department and hear the word ‘murder’ at the other end of the line, we know there’s a fifty-one per cent chance that the motive is jealousy. This is what makes me, in spite of my limitations, an important man.

  I can pinpoint exactly when it was I learned to read other people’s jealousy. It was when I realised that Monique was in love with someone else. I went through all the agonies of jealousy, from disbelief, via despair, to rage, self-contempt and finally depression. And perhaps because I had never before in my life been exposed to such emotional torture, I discovered that, at the same time as the pain was all-consuming, it was like observing oneself from the outside. I was a patient lying without an anaesthetic on the operating table at the same time as I was a spectator in the gallery, a young medical student getting his first lessons
in what happens when a person has the heart cut out of their breast. It might seem strange that the extreme subjectivity of jealousy can go hand in hand with that kind of cold, observational objectivity. My only explanation is that I, as the jealous one, took steps that made me a stranger in my own eyes, to such an extent that it forced me into the position of the frightened observer of myself. I had lived enough to see the self-destruction in others but had never thought the poison might lie within me too. I was mistaken. And what was surprising was that the curiosity and fascination were almost as strong as the hate, the pain and the self-contempt. Like a leper who watches as his own face dissolves, sees the diseased flesh, his own rotten interior manifest itself in all its grotesque and disgusting and terrifying horror. I emerged from my own leprosy permanently damaged, that much is clear, but it also rendered me immune. I can never again experience jealousy, not in that way. If that also means I can never love anyone, not in that way, I really don’t know. Maybe there were other things my life besides jealousy that led to my never having felt the same about anyone as I felt about Monique. On the other hand: she made me what I have become in my professional life. The Jealousy Man.

  From childhood onwards I have had a striking ability to become deeply engaged in stories. Family and friends described it as everything from remarkable and moving to pathetic and unmanly. To me it was a gift. I wasn’t a part of Huckleberry Finn’s adventures; I was Huckleberry Finn. And Tom Sawyer. And, when I started at school and learned how to be Greek, the Odyssey, of course. Naturally, they don’t have to be the great tales of world literature. A very simple, even badly told story about infidelity, real or imagined, it doesn’t matter which, will do. I am inside the story. From the first sentence I am a part of it. It’s like turning on a switch. And it also means that I am able to spot quickly any false notes. Not because I have a unique talent for reading body language, the timbre of a voice or the automatic rhetorical strategies of self-defence. It’s the story. Even in a crudely and very obviously falsely conceived character I am able to read the main themes, the person’s probable motivation and place in the story, and on the basis of this I know what inexorably leads to what in this character. Because I have been there myself. Because our jealousy evens out the difference between you and me, beyond the barriers of class, sex, religion, education, IQ, culture, upbringing, our behaviour begins to resemble each other’s, the way drug addicts resemble each other in their behaviour. We are all of us living dead who rave through the streets driven on by this single need: to fill the enormous black hole that is inside us.