The Kingdom

by Jo Nesbo

‘Not that it matters all that fucking much but why the hell did you never say it was her who designed the hotel?’

  Carl sighed. ‘The drawings are signed with the name of her firm. I figured that was enough. When the project leader allows his young, foreign wife to design the place then people are automatically going to suspect the project lacks professionality. Of course, everything’ll be fine once they see her track record, but my thinking was, we could do without all that fuss until the investors and the council were on board. Shannon agreed.’

  ‘OK, but why did neither of you tell me?’

  Carl opened his arms wide. ‘So you wouldn’t have to go round and tell lies as well. What I mean is, it’s not lies, the name of her company is there, but...well, you understand.’

  ‘Not so many loose ends? Fewer loose cannons?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Roy.’ He fixed me with his sorrowing, beautiful eyes. ‘I’m juggling a million balls in the air here. I’m just trying to keep the distractions to a minimum.’

  I sucked my teeth. It’s something I must have started doing recently. Dad did it and it used to annoy me. ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Speaking of balls in the air and distractions, I met Mari at the surgery the other day. She blushed when she saw me.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘As if she was ashamed of something.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. But after all that stuff involving you and Grete and you going to the States, she tried to get her revenge on you.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘She came on to me.’

  ‘To you?’ Carl laughed uproariously. ‘And you complain about me not keeping the family informed?’

  ‘That’s what she wanted, for you to find out. And get hurt.’

  Carl shook his head. Putting on a local accent he said: ‘Never underestimate a woman scorned. Did you go for it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘When I saw that deep blush of shame it struck me that she’d never got her revenge, and that Mari Aas is not the type to forget, that that business is still inside her like some kind of encapsulated cyst. So I think you better watch out for her.’

  ‘You think she’s planning something?’

  ‘Or she’s already done it, something so extreme that she feels ashamed when she sees a member of our family.’

  Carl rubbed his chin. ‘Like something for example that could affect our project?’

  ‘She might have arranged something that’s going to screw things up for you. I’m just saying.’

  ‘And you base this on the fact that you saw her blush as you happened to be passing by?’

  ‘I realise it sounds idiotic,’ I said. ‘But Mari isn’t the type to blush, we know that. She’s a self-assured lady and there’s almost nothing that embarrasses her. But she’s also a moralist. Remember that necklace you bought for her with money you nicked from Uncle Bernard?’

  Carl nodded.

  ‘That’s what she looked like. As though she’d been party to something she knew was wrong, and it was too late to regret it.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Carl. ‘I’ll watch out for her.’

  I went to bed early. Through the floor I could hear Carl and Shannon in the living room. Not the words, just the quarrelling. And then they fell silent. Footsteps on the stairs, the bedroom door closing. And then fucking.

  I pressed the pillow over my ears and sang J. J. Cale’s ‘Don’t Go to Strangers’ inside my head.

  19

  THE SNOW HAD MELTED.

  I stood at the kitchen window and looked out.

  ‘Where’s Carl?’ I asked.

  ‘Talking to the contractors,’ said Shannon, who was sitting on the worktop behind me reading the Os Daily. ‘They’re probably on site.’

  ‘Shouldn’t the architect be there too?’

  She shrugged. ‘He wanted to handle it alone, he said.’

  ‘What does the paper say?’

  ‘That the council has opened the floodgates. That Os will turn into a holiday camp for rich city folk, and we’ll be the servants. That we would be better off building refugee camps for people who really need us.’

  ‘Jesus, is that Dan Krane saying that?’

  ‘It’s something sent in by a reader, but they’ve given it plenty of prominence and there’s a reference to it on the front page.’

  ‘What’s Krane’s editorial about?’

  ‘A story about a Pastor Armand. Revivalist meetings and miracle cures. That one week after he left Os with his collecting box full the people he cured were back in their wheelchairs again.’

  I laughed and studied the sky above Ottertind, the mountain at the southern end of Lake Budal. It was full of contradictory signs and revealed little about the kind of weather we could expect. ‘So Krane doesn’t dare to criticise Carl directly,’ I said. ‘But he gives plenty of space to those who do.’

  ‘Well, anyway it doesn’t sound as if we have much to fear from that quarter,’ said Shannon.

  ‘Maybe not from there.’ I turned to her. ‘If you still think you can find out what Kurt Olsen’s looking for, I think now might be a good time.’

  * * *

  —

  Fritt Fall was the type of bar that defines itself by the size of its market. Which in this case meant satisfying everyone’s demands. A long counter with stools for the thirsty beer drinkers, small round tables for the diners, a little dance floor with disco lights for people looking for action, a billiard table with holes in the cloth for the restless, and betting slips, coupons and a TV screen showing races for the hopeful. Who the black rooster that sometimes strutted between the tables was for I don’t know, but it didn’t bother anyone, no one bothered it, and it would neither take orders for beer nor respond when called by its name, Giovanni. But Giovanni would certainly be missed when he died and would – according to Erik Nerell – be dished up to the regulars as a slightly tough but agreeable coq au vin.

  Shannon and I entered the bar at three o’clock. I saw no sign of Giovanni, just two men staring at the TV screen where horses with flowing manes were swarming round a gravel track. We sat at one of the window tables and as agreed I took out Shannon’s laptop, placed it on the table between us, stood up and walked to the bar from where Erik Nerell had been watching us since we came in, while pretending to read the Os Daily.

  ‘Two coffees,’ I said.

  ‘OK.’ He put a cup under the tap of a black Thermos and pressed the top.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I said.

  He gave me a funny look. I nodded at his newspaper.

  ‘Oh, here,’ he said. ‘No. Well, actually...’ He changed the cups over. ‘No.’

  Shannon had turned the laptop on by the time I returned with the coffees. I sat down beside her. The screensaver was a rather sombre-looking, rectangular and to my eyes quite ordinary-looking skyscraper which, she had explained to me, was a masterpiece, the IBM building in Chicago. She said it was designed by someone called Mies.

  I looked around. ‘OK. How do you want to do this?’

  ‘You and I just make small talk while we’re drinking our coffee. Which by the way is disgusting, but I’m not going to pull a face because he’s looking at us.’

  ‘Erik?’

  ‘Yes. And those two over by the TV as well. Once you’ve finished your coffee, take over the laptop and act as if you’re very preoccupied by something there, use the keyboard a bit. Don’t look up and leave the rest to me.’

  ‘OK,’ I said and took a swig of coffee. She was right, it was chemically revolting, plain hot water would have tasted better. ‘I googled endometriosis. It says if the old way doesn’t work, you can try artificial insemination. Have you two thought about that?’

  She opened one eye wide, looked furious.


  ‘You’re the one who said small talk,’ I said.

  ‘That isn’t small talk,’ she said in a low hiss. ‘That’s big talk.’

  ‘I could talk about service stations if you prefer,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Or the comical and humiliating problems that arise when the middle finger on your right hand is stiff.’

  She smiled. Her mood changed like the weather over the 2,000-metre mark, but to be enfolded in that smile was like slipping into a warm bath.

  ‘I do want children,’ she said. ‘It’s what I want most of all. Not with my brain, of course, but my heart.’

  She looked over my shoulder in the direction of Erik. Smiled as though her look had been returned. What if Erik didn’t know what Kurt was looking for? I wasn’t so sure any more that this was a good idea.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Kids.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, yes. Indeed. I just...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’d be much good as a dad.’

  ‘You know you would be, Roy.’

  ‘Well, it would have to be with a mother who could be everything I’m not at least. And who understood how much time running a service station takes.’

  ‘The day you become a dad maybe you’ll stop thinking the world is made up of nothing but service stations.’

  ‘Or skyscrapers in anodised aluminium.’

  She smiled. ‘It’s time.’

  Our eyes met for a moment, then I pulled the computer over, opened a Word document and started to write. I just let the words come, concentrating only on spelling them correctly. After I’d been doing that for a while I heard her get up and walk across the floor. I didn’t have to look to know that she gave her hips an extra sway. That fucking soca swing. I had my back to the counter, heard the legs of a bar stool scrape and knew she’d sat down and was chatting to Erik Nerell and that his gaze was riveted on her just the way it had been at the homecoming party. As I sat there deep in my spelling exercises someone slumped down in the chair on the other side of the table. For a moment I thought it was Shannon, back already with her mission unaccomplished, and felt a strangely paradoxical relief. But it wasn’t Shannon.

  ‘Hi,’ said Grete.

  The first thing I noticed was that her perm was now blonde.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, trying to convey in that monosyllabic way that I was extremely bloody busy.

  ‘Well, well, pretty and flirty,’ said Grete.

  My gaze automatically followed hers.

  Shannon and Erik were leaning towards each other across the short end of the bar, so that we saw them in profile. Shannon laughed at something, smiled, and I saw Erik enjoying that same warm bath I had just been sitting in. And maybe it was only because Grete had primed me with that ‘pretty’, but now I actually saw it. That Shannon Alleyne Opgard was not just pretty, she was beautiful. There was something in the way she simultaneously absorbed and reflected the light. And I could not take my fucking eyes off her. Not until I heard Grete’s voice again.

  ‘Uh-oh.’

  I turned to her. She was no longer looking at Shannon but at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, a sour little smile on those wormlike lips of hers. ‘Where’s Carl today?’

  ‘At the hotel site I should think.’

  Grete shook her head, and I tried not to think how she could know.

  ‘Then I’ve no idea. Talking with the partners maybe.’

  ‘That’s probably more like it,’ she said, looking as though she was wondering whether or not to say more.

  ‘Didn’t know you were a Fritt Fall regular,’ I said to change the subject.

  She held up a handful of coupons she must have picked up from the table below the TV on her way in. ‘For Dad,’ she said. ‘Even though he says he’s thinking of backing the hotel instead of the horses. The principle’s the same, according to him. Minimum outlay with the possibility of a big profit. Has he got that right?’

  ‘No outlay,’ I said. ‘Possibility of some profit, yes. But also of a hefty bill. First he should check that he can afford a worst-case scenario.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning if it all goes to hell.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She slipped the coupons into her bag. ‘I think Carl does a better job of selling it than you, Roy.’ She looked up at me and smiled. ‘But then he always has done. Say hello from me. And watch out for that Barbie doll of his. Looks like she’s trying to outdo him over there.’

  I turned and looked at Shannon and Erik. Both had their phones out and were entering text. When I turned back again Grete was on her way out.

  I looked at the screen. Started to read what I had written. Dammit. Had I completely lost my mind? I heard the scraping of the bar stool again and hurriedly dragged the document over to the rubbish.

  ‘Done?’ asked Shannon.

  ‘Yup,’ I said, closing the laptop and standing up.

  ‘Well?’ I said as we sat in the Volvo.

  ‘I’m guessing it’s going to happen tonight,’ she said.

  * * *

  —

  After driving Shannon back to the farm I headed back down to the station and relieved Markus who had asked if he could finish early.

  ‘Any news?’ I asked Julie.

  ‘Nah,’ she said and blew a gum bubble. ‘Alex is pissed off. Calling me a prick teaser. And Natalie’s going to move.’

  ‘Move where?’

  ‘To Notodden. I can understand that, nothing happens here.’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ I said and took a key from a drawer under the till. ‘I’m just going over to the workshop, OK?’

  I left the garage door locked and used the office door instead. Could smell from the stale air that it was a while since I’d been in. We took cars in here to change the tyres if it was too cold out, but the grease pit had hardly been used once the workshop closed. After Carl left and I was alone on the farm I’d rigged up a little hole-in-the-wall at the rear of the place with a bed, a TV and a hotplate. I lived there during the coldest months of the winter, when the road up and the farm were deep in snow and there seemed no point in heating the house for the few hours I was alone and not at the station. I closed the doors to the car wash and showered. Never been cleaner. Went back to the repair shop and checked the mattress. Dry. The hotplate working. Even the TV worked after a little initial hesitation.

  I walked into the workshop.

  Stood there where we had chopped the arms, legs and head of old Olsen. I had chopped. Carl couldn’t stand to even watch, and that was fine, why should he? The tractor had remained outside with its scoop in the air for three days before I drove it into the car wash and emptied its contents and watched as they ran away smoothly through the sluice grid. Then I had hosed the scoop clean, and that was that. How did it feel to be standing back in the same place? Were there ghosts here? It was sixteen years ago. And I hadn’t felt much that night, there just hadn’t been room for it. And any ghosts there might be were down in Huken, not here.

  ‘Roy,’ said Julie when I returned, drawing the vowels out as though it was an extremely long name, ‘do you have a dream place where you’d really like to go?’ She flipped through a travel magazine and showed me a beach where a scantily clad young pair reclined in blistering sunshine.

  ‘That would have to be Notodden, I guess,’ I said.

  She gawped at me. ‘What’s the furthest away place you’ve ever been?’

  ‘I’ve not been anywhere,’ I said.

  ‘Oh come on.’

  ‘I’ve been south. And north. But I’ve never been abroad.’

  ‘Course you have!’ She put her head on one side, studying me, and then added slightly less cockily. ‘Hasn’t everyone?’

  ‘I’v
e been to a few faraway places,’ I said. ‘But that was here.’ I tapped my bandaged finger carefully on my forehead.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She smiled faintly. ‘You mean like you’ve been mad?’

  ‘I’ve dismembered human beings and shot defenceless dogs.’

  ‘Sure, and you tossed a lifebelt to your wife when she was drunk on champagne and drowning.’ Julie laughed. ‘Why aren’t boys of my own age as funny as you?’

  ‘It takes a long time to be funny,’ I said. ‘Time and hard work.’

  * * *

  *

  When I got back to the farm that evening Shannon was sitting in the winter garden wearing Carl’s old quilted anorak, one of my hats and a woollen blanket over her lap.

  ‘It’s cold, but it’s so nice here just after the sun goes down,’ she said. ‘In Barbados it happens so quickly, suddenly it’s just dark. And in Toronto it’s so flat and there are so many tower blocks that at some point the sun just vanishes. But here you can see everything happening in slow motion.’

  ‘Sakte kino in Norwegian,’ I told her.

  ‘Sakte kino? Slow cinema?’ She laughed. ‘Yeah, I like that. Because so much happens to the light. The light on the lake, the light on the mountain, the light behind the mountain. It’s like a photographer has gone crazy with his lighting. I love Norwegian nature.’ And added, with ironic, exaggerated sincerity, ‘Wild, naked Norwegian nature.’

  I sat down beside her with the cup of coffee I had brought from the kitchen. ‘Carl?’

  ‘He had to sweet-talk someone who’s important for the project. A used-car salesman.’

  ‘Willumsen,’ I said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Anything else happened?’

  ‘Such as what?’

  Through a gap in the clouds the moon showed her pale face. Like an actor taking a peek at the audience from behind the curtain before the show begins. And in the reflected light falling on Shannon’s face I could see now that that’s exactly what she was: an actress who couldn’t wait to get started.

  ‘He held out until eight o’clock,’ she said, pulling her hand out from under the blanket and handing me the phone. ‘I told him I liked him, that I was bored here, and asked if he could send me some pictures. He asked what sort. I said I wanted Norwegian nature. Naked, wild Norwegian nature. Preferably in full bloom.’