The Kingdom

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Normal?’

  ‘For the time of year.’

  ‘The temperature? Yes.’

  ‘But yesterday...’

  ‘...was normal too,’ I said, crossing to the window and peering up at the sky. ‘I mean, it’s normal for it to change so quickly. Up here in the mountains.’

  She nodded. Seemed to have got used to that one word ‘mountain’ as being the explanation for most things. I noticed the coffee pot halfway over the hotplate.

  ‘Fresh and good,’ she said.

  I poured myself a cup, looked at her, but she shook her head.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Erik Nerell,’ she said. ‘He’s got a girlfriend who’s pregnant, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and drank. Good. That is, objectively speaking I knew it wasn’t good, but it was exactly how I liked it. Unless we shared the same taste in coffee, she must have been watching as I made mine. ‘I don’t think there’s any pressing need to get anything out of him right now.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said.

  ‘Looks like snow on the way.’

  ‘Snow?’ She looked at me in disbelief. ‘In September?’

  ‘If we’re lucky.’

  She nodded slowly. An intelligent girl who didn’t need to ask why. Whatever the hell Kurt Olsen was thinking of doing down in Huken, snow would make the job of getting down there safely and possibly finding something much more difficult.

  ‘But it could disappear again,’ she said. ‘Things change so quickly here...’ She gave me a sleepy smile. ‘Up here in the mountains.’

  I chuckled. ‘I thought it could get cold in Toronto too?’

  ‘In the house where we lived you didn’t notice the cold until you went outside.’

  ‘It gets better,’ I said. ‘Days like this are the worst, when the wind blows from the north and the first frost is on the bare ground. It gets milder when the winter comes and there’s more snow. It takes a few days after we start having a fire before the heat penetrates the walls.’

  ‘So until then,’ she said – and now I could see she was shivering – ‘we just freeze?’

  I smiled and put my mug of coffee on the worktop. ‘I’ll help you get warm,’ I said, and walked towards her. Her eyes met mine, she gave a start and crossed her arms even more firmly across her narrow chest, a blush spreading like tongues of fire across her white cheeks. I bent down in front of her, opened the door of the wood stove and saw that, sure enough, the fire was going out because the logs were too big and there were too many of them. I pulled the largest out with my hand, put it on the base plate in front of the stove where it lay smouldering, used the bellows and by the time I closed the door again the fire was burning brightly.

  Carl came in as I stood up. He was half dressed, hair sticking up all over the place. He was holding his phone in his hand and grinning broadly.

  ‘The order of business for the council meeting’s been announced. We’re number one on the agenda.’

  * * *

  —

  At the station I told Markus to put the lightweight snow shovels on display, along with the ice scrapers and the bottles of antifreeze I’d ordered in a couple of weeks ago.

  I read the Os Daily, which had dedicated most of its front page to the council elections due next year, but at least there was a reference to something inside about the investors’ meeting at Årtun. And there we had a whole page, with a few lines of text and two big pictures. One showed the packed meeting hall, the other Carl posing with a grin and one arm around the shoulder of the former chairman Jo Aas, who looked slightly nonplussed, like a man taken by surprise. Dan Krane’s editorial mentioned the new spa hotel, but it was hard to tell whether he was for or against. Or rather, it wasn’t hard to see that deep down he wanted to trash the entire business, as when he quoted an unnamed source who referred to it as the ‘spa-nic hotel’, something people were clinging to in hopes of saving the village. I guessed that source was Krane himself, but he was obviously in a dilemma. If he was too positive it would seem as though he was using the local paper to back his own father-in-law. Too negative and people might accuse him of wanting to get one over on his wife’s former boyfriend. Being a journalist on a local paper is a tough balancing act, I guess.

  At nine o’clock a light drizzle started falling. I could see it was falling as snow up on Geitesvingen.

  At eleven o’clock it started falling as snow in the village too.

  At twelve o’clock the head of sales walked in through the door.

  ‘Ready for all eventualities as usual,’ he grinned, once I had finished serving a customer who headed out with one of my shovels in his hand.

  ‘We live in Norway,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve got an offer for you,’ he said, and I supposed it was yet another sales campaign he was about to force onto us. Nothing at all wrong with the campaigns, eight out of ten of them work well, so the people at head office know their business. But sometimes those countrywide special offers of a parasol and volleyball or some exotic type of Spanish sausage with a Pepsi Max are a little bit too generalised. Local knowledge of local needs and likes matters too.

  ‘You’re going to get a call from one of the bosses,’ said the head of sales.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘One of the bigger stations down in Sørlandet is struggling a bit. Good location with modern facilities, but the station boss hasn’t managed to get things moving down there. He doesn’t follow up on the campaigns, doesn’t report when and how he should, his staff aren’t motivated, and...well, you know. They need someone who can turn it round. It’s not part of my job, I’m just giving you a heads-up since I’m the one who suggested they have a word with you.’ He spread his arms as if to say it was nothing, from which I realised he was expecting an expansive display of gratitude.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  He smiled, waiting. Maybe he thought I owed it to him to tell him what my answer would be.

  ‘That’s pretty sudden,’ I said. ‘I’ll hear what they have to say and give it some thought.’

  ‘You’ll give it some thought?’ The head of sales laughed. ‘This is something you should be giving a lot of thought to. An offer like this doesn’t just mean more money, Roy, it’s a chance to show what you can do on the big stage.’

  If he was trying to get me take the job so he would look like some kind of small-town kingmaker he’d made a bad choice of metaphor, as people say. But of course, he wasn’t to know that the mere thought of appearing on any stage, big or small, was enough to make my palms sweat.

  ‘There will be thinking,’ I said. ‘How about a cheeseburger campaign? What d’you think?’

  * * *

  —

  At one o’clock Julie came in.

  There was no one in the station and she came straight up and kissed me on the cheek. Deliberately, kept her lips soft, left them there a little too long. I don’t know what perfume she had on, only that there was too much of it.

  ‘Yes, and?’ I said as she let me go and looked up at me.

  ‘Just had to try out my new lipstick,’ she said, wiping my cheek. ‘I’m meeting Alex after work.’

  ‘Granada-Alex? You’re checking how much lipstick is left after a kiss?

  ‘No, how much feeling you lose in the lips with lipstick. Like you men and condoms, more or less, right?’

  I didn’t answer. This was a conversation I didn’t want to be having.

  ‘Alex is actually quite sweet,’ said Julie. She put her head on one side and studied me. ‘Maybe we’ll do more than just kiss.’

  ‘Lucky Alex,’ I said as I pulled on my jacket. ‘You going to be all right alone?’

  ‘Alone?’ I saw the disappointment in her face. ‘Aren’t we going to—’

  ‘Sure, and I’ll be back in an hour at most. OK?’

  The disappoin
tment vanished. Then a wrinkle appeared in her forehead. ‘The shops are closed. Is it a woman?’

  I smiled. ‘Call if there’s anything.’

  * * *

  —

  I drove through the village and then turned in along Lake Budal. The snow was gone the moment it hit the road and the fields down here, but I could see it lying higher up on the hills. I looked at my watch. The chances of finding an unemployed roofer at home and on his own at one o’clock on a normal working day should be pretty high. I yawned. Had slept badly. Lain awake listening out for sounds from their bedroom. There were none, which made it almost worse, since it made me listen out even more intently, made me feel tense.

  Driving up to the roofer’s I noticed there was at least a hundred metres of cultivated land between his white house and the nearest neighbour.

  Anton Moe had probably heard and seen the car coming. He opened the door seconds after I rang the bell, his wispy hair blowing about in the wind. He looked at me quizzically.

  ‘Can I come in?’ I asked.

  Moe hesitated, maybe thinking up some excuse to say no, then stepped aside to let me in.

  ‘Keep your shoes on,’ he said.

  We sat down opposite each other at the kitchen table. On the wall above were a couple of framed embroideries with verses from the Bible and a cross. He could see that I had noticed the full pot of coffee standing on the worktop.

  ‘Some coffee?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘If you’re looking for people to invest in your brother’s hotel I can save you the bother. Not much cash flowing here at the moment.’ Moe smiled sheepishly.

  ‘It’s about your daughter.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  I looked at a little hammer lying on the windowsill. ‘She’s sixteen years old and she attends Årtun secondary school, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  There was an inscription on the hammer. Roofer of the Year 2017.

  ‘I want her to move away and start at Notodden secondary,’ I said.

  Moe looked at me in amazement. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘The courses they offer there are more oriented to the future.’

  He looked at me. ‘What exactly do you mean, Opgard?’

  ‘I mean that that’s what you should say to Natalie when you tell her why you’re sending her there, that the courses are more oriented towards the future.’

  ‘Notodden? It’s two hours’ drive away.’

  His face showed nothing, but I guess it was dawning on him. ‘It’s good of you to concern yourself with Natalie’s welfare, Opgard, but I think Årtun is fine. She’s in her second year there already. Notodden is a big place, and bad things can happen in big places, you know.’

  I coughed. ‘What I mean is, Notodden is best for all concerned.’

  ‘All?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Your daughter can go to bed each night without worrying about whether her father will be coming in to fuck her. You can go to bed without degrading your daughter, your family and yourself night after night, so that at some point in the future you might perhaps all be able to forget about it and pretend it never happened.’

  Anton Moe stared at me, his face blazing, his eyes looking as though they were about to explode. ‘What are you talking about, Opgard? Are you drunk?’

  ‘I’m talking about shame,’ I said. ‘The sum total of shame in your family. Because everyone knows and no one’s done anything, everyone thinks part of the blame is on them, that it’s all lost already so there’s nothing to lose by allowing it to continue. Because when all is lost, one thing at least remains. The family. Each other.’

  ‘You’re sick, man!’ He had raised his voice, and yet it sounded thinner and diminished. He stood up. ‘I think you better leave now, Opgard.’

  I stayed seated. ‘I can go into your daughter’s bedroom, pull off the sheet and hand it over to the sheriff to check for sperm stains and whether they’re yours. You won’t be able to stop me, but I’m guessing that won’t matter, because your daughter won’t help the police by being a witness against you, she’ll want to help her father. Always, no matter what. So the only way to put a stop to this is...’ I paused, looked up, caught his eyes. ‘Because we all want to put a stop to this, don’t we?’

  He didn’t respond, just stood staring at me, a cold, dead look in his eyes.

  ‘This is another way; I’ll kill you if Natalie doesn’t move to Notodden. She’ll spend her weekends there and you will not visit her. Her mother, yes, but not you. Not one single visit. When Natalie is at home for Christmas you will invite your own parents or your in-laws to celebrate and stay with you.’ I smoothed my hand over a crease in the gingham check cloth on the table. ‘Questions?’

  A fly buzzed and buzzed against the windowpane.

  ‘How would you propose killing me?’

  ‘By smiting you, I was thinking. That’s probably appropriately...’ I smacked my lips. Mind games. ‘...appropriately biblical?’

  ‘Well, you certainly had a reputation for hitting people.’

  ‘Are we agreed, Moe?’

  ‘You see that Bible verse up there, Opgard?’ He pointed to one of the embroideries above us and I spelled my way through its convoluted lettering. The lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

  I heard a soft thump and howled as the pain ran up my arm from my right hand. Moe was holding the Roofer of the Year hammer aloft ready to bring it down again and I just about managed to withdraw my left hand before the hammer struck the table. My right hand was so painful that I felt dizzy as I rose, but I used my speed to throw a left uppercut. I struck his chin, but with the table between us the angle was too great for me to get enough power in the blow. He swung the hammer at my head and I ducked and stepped away. He came rushing towards me, the table legs scraped and chairs went flying. I feinted, he fell for it and my left fist met his nose. He howled, swung the hammer again. He might have been Roofer of the Year back in 2017, but he messed up this time. I moved in close to his body while he was still off balance and used my left to deliver three quick punches to his right kidney. I heard him gasp with pain and when I followed up by lifting my foot and bringing it down hard on his knee I felt something snap and give and I knew that he was finished. He collapsed to the floor, then whipped round on the grey linoleum and fastened his arms around my legs. I tried to stay upright by holding on to the cooker with my right hand, but realised Moe’s hammer must have damaged something there, I couldn’t get a purchase. I fell onto my back and moments later Moe was on top of me, his knees holding my arms and the handle of the hammer pressed across my larynx. In vain I gasped for air, could feel myself blacking out. His head was right next to mine and he hissed into my ear:

  ‘Who do you think you are, coming into my house, threatening me and mine? I’ll tell you who you are, you filthy mountaintop heathen.’

  He gave a low laugh and leaned forward so that the weight of his body pressed the last of the air out of my lungs and I felt the onset of a delicious dizziness, like the moment before you fall asleep in the back seat, entangled in the soft, sleeping body of your little brother, you see stars in the sky through the rear window and your parents are talking and laughing in low voices in front of you. And you let go, let yourself tumble backwards into yourself. I could feel coffee and cigarette breath on my face, and spittle.

  ‘You’re a bow-legged, dyslexic, goat-fucking queer,’ Moe hissed.

  Like that, I thought. That’s the way he talks to her.

  I tensed my stomach muscles, made a bridge of my back, tensed again and then swung. Hit something, usually it would be the nose, but whatever it was, it was enough to relieve the pressure on my larynx for a moment and I was able to drag enough air into my lungs to fill the rest of my musculature with oxygen. I jerked my left hand free of his knee and hit him hard in the ear. He
lost his balance, I tipped him off me and hit out again with my left. And again. And again.

  By the time I was done a little stream of blood was running from Moe’s nose as he crouched there in a foetal position on the linoleum. The blood stopped as it reached the seat of one of the upended chairs.

  I leaned over him, and I don’t know whether he heard me, but anyway I whispered it into his bloodied ear:

  ‘I am not fucking bow-legged.’

  * * *

  *

  ‘The bad news is that the inner joint is probably shattered,’ said Stanley Spind from behind his desk. ‘The good news is that your blood alcohol test from the other day gave a reading of zero.’

  ‘Shattered?’ I said and looked down at my middle finger. It was sticking out at a strange angle and had swollen to twice its normal size. The skin was split, and where it wasn’t it had assumed a darkly livid colour that made me think of the plague. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. But I’ll write you a referral so you can have it X-rayed at the hospital in town.’

  ‘Why should I, if you’re so sure?’

  Stanley shrugged. ‘You’ll probably need an operation.’

  ‘And if I don’t...?’

  ‘Then I can guarantee you’ll never be able to move that finger again.’

  ‘And with the operation?’

  ‘In all probability you’ll never be able to move that finger again.’

  I looked at the finger. Not good. But obviously much worse if I’d still been working as a mechanic.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said and stood up.

  ‘Wait, we’re not finished,’ said Stanley, moving his roller chair over to a bench with a paper sheet covering it. ‘Sit here. That finger is out of position, we need to repone it.’

  ‘What does that mean?’