The Kingdom

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Where do I sign?’

  ‘Oh, this’ll be plenty good enough,’ said Willumsen, holding out his hand to me over the desk. It looked like a bunch of bulging sausages. I suppressed a shudder and took it.

  * * *

  —

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’ asked Unni. We were walking in the big gardens of the Brattrein Hotel. Clouds raced across the sky and Lake Heddal, the colours changing with the light. I’ve heard it said that most couples talk less as the years go by. In our case it was the other way round. Neither of us was the talkative type, and the first few times I was the one who had to do most of the talking. We’d been meeting about once a month for five years now, and although Unni was more forthcoming now than when we had first met, it was unusual for her to broach a theme like this with no preamble.

  ‘Once,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Never,’ she said. ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘About being in love?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not something to hanker for,’ I said, turning up the collar of my jacket to the gusting wind.

  I glanced at her, saw that almost invisible hint of a smile. Wondered where she was headed with this.

  ‘I read that you can only fall properly in love twice in your life,’ she said. ‘That the first time is action, and the second reaction. Those are the two earthquakes. The rest are just emotional aftershocks.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘So that means there’s still a chance for you, then.’

  ‘But I don’t want any earthquake,’ she said. ‘I’ve got children.’

  ‘I understand. But earthquakes happen, whether you want them or not.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And when you say it’s nothing to hanker for, that’s because the love didn’t go both ways, am I right?’

  ‘That was probably it.’

  ‘So the safest thing is to get out of anywhere that’s prone to earthquakes,’ she said.

  I nodded slowly. It began to dawn on me what she was talking about.

  ‘I think I’m beginning to fall in love with you, Roy.’ She stopped walking. ‘And I don’t think the house back home could withstand such a quake.’

  ‘So...’ I said.

  She sighed. ‘So I’m going to have to get away...’

  ‘...from anywhere earthquake-prone,’ I concluded for her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On a permanent basis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We stood there in silence.

  ‘Aren’t you going to...?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’ve decided for me. And I’m probably like my father.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘No good at haggling.’

  We spent our last hours together in the room. I had booked the suite and from the bed we had a view over the lake. The sky had cleared by sunset, and Unni said it made her think of that Deep Purple song, the one about the hotel by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The hotel burns down in that song, I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Unni.

  We checked out before midnight, gave each other a farewell kiss in the car park and left Notodden, each driving in our own direction. We never saw each other again.

  * * *

  —

  Carl called me on Christmas Eve that same year. I could hear party voices and Mariah Carey singing ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ in the background. As for me I was sitting alone in my room at the workshop with an aquavit and a plate of Fjordland’s ready-made lamb ribs with vossa sausage and mashed swede.

  ‘Is it lonely?’ he asked.

  I hesitated. ‘A bit.’

  ‘A bit?’

  ‘Quite. And you?’

  ‘There’s a Christmas dinner here at the office. Punch. We’ve closed the switchboard and—’

  ‘Carl! Carl, come and dance!’ The female voice, half whining, half snuffling that interrupted us, came straight out of the speaker. It sounded as if she was sitting in his lap.

  ‘Listen, Roy, I’ve got to go now. But I’ve sent you a little Christmas present.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Check your bank account.’

  He hung up.

  I did as he said. Logged in and saw there was a transfer from an American bank. In the comment field it said: Thanks for the loan, dear brother. And Happy Christmas! Six hundred thousand kroner. Far more than I had sent for college fees, even allowing for the interest, and the compound interest.

  I was so happy I broke out into a grin. Not because of the money, I was managing. But because of Carl, that he was managing. Of course I could have asked questions about how he’d managed to earn such a large amount of money in just a few short months on starting salary at a property company. But I knew what I was going to do with the money. Proper insulation and a bathroom up at the farm. No fucking way was I going to spend another Christmas Eve down here at the workshop.

  * * *

  —

  Here in the village – same as in the city – the only time heathens like me ever visit the church is at Christmas. Not on Christmas Eve the way they do in the city, but on Christmas Day.

  On the way out after the service Stanley Spind came over and invited me over for Boxing Day breakfast – he’d asked several others too. It was a little surprising, and at such short notice that I realised something must have just told him that that Roy Opgard, he’s alone at his workshop this Christmas, poor sod. A good man, Stanley, but I told him I was working all Christmas and had given the other staff time off, which was the truth. He put his hand on my shoulder and said that I was a good man. So he’s no people expert, Stanley Spind. Because now I excused myself, hurried along and overtook Willumsen and Rita who were headed for the car park. Willumsen had swelled back up to his natural size again. Rita was looking good too, rosy-cheeked and probably warm inside that fur coat. And me, the lecher who had just been told he was a good man, took Willumsen’s bunch of sausages – which was fortunately gloved – and wished them a very merry Christmas.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ said Rita.

  I remembered of course that she had told me that in refined circles one says ‘Merry Christmas’ up until Christmas Eve, but that from Christmas Day onwards until New Year’s Eve it’s ‘Happy Christmas’. But if Willumsen realised a country bumpkin like me was familiar with such niceties it might make him suspicious, so I nodded as though I hadn’t registered the correction. Good man my arse.

  ‘I just want to thank you for the loan.’ I handed Willumsen a single white envelope.

  ‘Oh?’ he said, weighing it in his hand and looking at me.

  ‘I transferred the money to your account last night,’ I said. ‘That there is the printout.’

  ‘Interest until the first working day,’ he said. ‘That’s another three days away, Roy.’

  ‘I’ve taken account of that, yes. Plus a little extra.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘It feels good, doesn’t it? To clear a debt.’

  I did and didn’t understand what he meant. I mean, I understood the words, of course, but not the way he said them.

  But I would before the calendar year was over.

  38

  DURING THAT ENCOUNTER WITH WILLUMSEN and his wife outside church on Christmas Day Rita hadn’t given away a thing with her body language and her facial expressions. She was good. But the meeting clearly set something going inside her. Enough for her to forget what ought to stay forgotten and remember what was worth remembering. Her text message came three days later, on the first working day after the break.

  The cabin day after tomorrow 12.00.

  It was so recognisably short and businesslike that I felt something like a shiver pass through my body and the saliva begin to run like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Conditioned reaction, that’s what they call it.

  I h
ad a brief and turbulent discussion with myself about whether to go. Commonsense Roy lost, in spades. And I had forgotten why it felt so like a liberation once we stopped meeting, but recalled all the rest in richly sensual detail.

  At five to twelve I had reached that clearing in the woods from where you can see the cabin. I’d walked the whole way with the erection I got every time I saw the Saab Sonett parked along the gravel track. The snow had been late in coming that year, but there was a black frost, the sun only seen in glimpses, and the air sharp and good to breathe. Smoke rose from the chimney, and the curtains at the living-room window were closed. She didn’t usually do that, and the thought that she had planned a surprise, that she was perhaps lying there all ready and waiting for me in front of the open fire in some way that required subdued lighting sent shockwaves through my body. I crossed the patch of open terrain and went up to the door. It was ajar. Before it had usually been closed when I arrived, sometimes even locked, so that I had to reach up and take down the extra key from the top of the door jamb. I suspected she liked the feeling that I was an intruder, literally a thief in the night. I knew that was why she had given me the key to the basement that time, a key I still had and that I now and then fantasised about using. I pushed the door open all the way and walked into the semi-darkness.

  And sensed immediately that something was wrong.

  It smelled wrong.

  Unless Rita Willumsen had started smoking cigars.

  And even before my eyes had adapted to the darkness, I knew who that figure was sitting in the armchair in the middle of the living-room floor, facing me.

  ‘Glad you could come,’ said Willumsen in a voice so friendly it made my back go cold.

  He was wearing a fur coat and hat and looked like a bear. And in his hands he was holding a shotgun that was pointed at me.

  ‘Shut the door behind you,’ he said.

  I did as he told me.

  ‘Come three steps closer, slowly. And kneel.’

  I took three steps closer.

  ‘Kneel,’ he repeated.

  I hesitated.

  He sighed. ‘Now listen. Every year I pay a lot of money to travel to some foreign country and shoot an animal I’ve never shot before.’ He raised his hand and make a ticking gesture in the air. ‘I’ve got one of most species, but not a Roy Opgard. So kneel!’

  I knelt. I noticed for the first time that plastic covering of the kind you use when you’re decorating had been rolled out between the front door and the armchair.

  ‘Where did you park your car?’ he asked.

  I told him. He nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘The snuffbox,’ he said.

  I didn’t respond. My head was full of questions, not answers.

  ‘You’re wondering how I found out, Opgard. The answer is the snuffbox. The doctor told me the best thing I could do for my health after the cancer was to start eating more healthily and exercise more. So I started going for walks. Including up here, where I hadn’t been for years. And I found a couple of these in the fridge.’

  He tossed a silver Berry tin onto the plastic in front of me.

  ‘You can’t buy those in Norway. Or certainly not in this village. I asked Rita and she said they were probably left behind by the Polish workers who were here refurbishing the cabin the year before. And I believed her. Up until the point at which I saw you pull out the same box when you came to my office asking for a loan. I put two and two together. Moist snuff. The repair job on the Saab Sonett. The cabin. And a Rita who overnight turned into the sweetest and most agreeable of all Ritas, which she never is unless there’s something behind it. So I checked her phone. And there, under the name of Agnete, I found an old message she hadn’t deleted. The cabin, the day, the hour, that was all. I checked with directory enquiries and sure enough, Agnete’s number was registered to you, Roy Opgard. And so – day before yesterday – I borrowed Rita’s phone again and sent the same message to you all over again, just changed the hour.’

  The kneeling had meant that I had to look upwards at him, but now my neck was getting tired and I bowed my head. ‘If you found this all out months ago,’ I said, ‘why wait until now to do something?’

  ‘That should be obvious to someone who’s as good at mental arithmetic as you are, Roy.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You’d borrowed money from me. If I’d blown your head off then, who would clear your debt?’

  My heart wasn’t beating faster, it was beating slower. This was unbefuckinglievable. Patient as the hunter he was, he had waited until his prey was in the right place, waited for me to clear my debt. Waited until I had paid the compound interest, until the cow had been milked dry. And now he was going to clear his debt. That was what he’d meant with that question he’d asked me outside the church; about how good it must feel to clear a debt. He was intending to shoot me. That was what this was about. Not scare me or threaten me but fucking well kill me. He knew I’d told no one where I was off to, that I’d made sure no one saw me walking up here, and that I’d parked the car so far away that no one would think of looking for me round here. He was just going to put a bullet through my forehead and then bury me somewhere nearby. The plan was so simple and straightforward I had to smile.

  ‘Wipe that grin off your face,’ said Willumsen.

  ‘I haven’t met your wife for years,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you see the date on that message?’

  ‘It should have been deleted, but there it was, and it tells me you two were at it for a long time,’ he said. ‘But not any more. Pray your last prayer.’ Willumsen raised the rifle to his cheek.

  ‘Aw, I already prayed that,’ I said. My heart was still slowing down. Resting pulse. Psychopath’s pulse, as people say.

  ‘So you have, have you?’ Willumsen breathed, the skin of his cheek flopping up onto the rifle butt.

  I nodded and bowed my head again. ‘So just go ahead, you’ll be doing me a favour, Willumsen.’

  A dry laugh. ‘Are you trying to convince me you want to die, Opgard?’

  ‘No. But I shall die.’

  ‘That’s true of us all.’

  ‘Yes, but not within two months.’

  I heard him fidgeting with the trigger. ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says Stanley Spind. Maybe you saw, I spoke to him at church. He’s just received the most recent pictures of my brain tumour. I’ve had it for over a year, but now it’s growing fast. If you aim just here...’ I put my index finger to my forehead on the right-hand side, just above where the hair starts, ‘then maybe I’ll get rid of it at the same time.’

  I could almost hear the used-car salesman’s calculator ticking and whirring.

  ‘You’re desperate, of course, so you’re lying,’ he said.

  ‘If you’re so sure of that then go ahead and shoot,’ I said. Because I knew what his brain was telling him. That if it was true, then the Roy Opgard problem would soon disappear by itself, and without any risk at all to him. But if I was lying, it would mean he had squandered a perfect chance that he would probably never get again. That’s to say, the chance would be there, but I would be ready, it would be more difficult. Risk contra profit. Cost against income. Debit and credit.

  ‘You can call Stanley,’ I said. ‘I’ll just have to tell him first he’s released from his vow of confidentiality.’

  In the pause that followed the only thing that could be heard was Willumsen’s breathing. This dilemma demanded an increased supply of oxygen to the brain. I said a prayer, not for my soul, but that the stress might give him a stroke right here and now.

  ‘Two months,’ he said suddenly. ‘If you’re not dead in two months, starting today, then I’ll be back. You won’t know where, or when or how. Or who. But it could be the last words you’ll ever hear will be Danish. This is not a threat, it’s a promise. OK?’

  I stood up
. ‘Two months at the most,’ I said. ‘This tumour is a powerful bastard, Willumsen, it won’t let you down. And one other thing...’

  Willumsen was still aiming the rifle at me, but with a lowering and raising of the eyelid signalled for me to continue.

  ‘Is it OK if I take my tins of snuff from the fridge?’

  Of course I knew I was pushing it, but I was supposed to be a dying man who didn’t much care how it happened.

  ‘I don’t use the stuff, so do what you want.’

  I took my tins of snuff and left. Jogged down through the trees with daylight already fading. Headed west in an arc and then, hidden from view behind the rocks, up towards the lake where I had seen Rita that last time; naked, humiliated, aged by daylight and a young man’s gaze.

  I headed back towards the cabin from the north. There were no windows on that side, only thick timber walls, human fortifications, because attack always came from the north.

  I walked right up to the wall, sneaked round the corner to the door. Wrapped my scarf around my right hand and waited. When Willumsen emerged I kept it simple. A punch directly behind the ear, where the cranium gives the brain less protection, and two in the kidneys which, besides hurting so much you can’t even scream, makes you amenable. He dropped to his knees, and I relieved him of the shotgun which was slung over one shoulder. Hit him on the temple and dragged him back inside.

  He’d tidied away the roll of plastic and pushed the chair back into place by the wall next to the fireplace.

  I let him get his breath back, let him look up and stare into the mouth of his own shotgun before starting to talk.

  ‘As you can see, I lied,’ I said. ‘But only about the tumour. It’s true that I haven’t met Rita for years. And since it only took one text message for me to come bounding up here with my tail wagging you’ll also understand that she was the one who ended it, not me. Don’t get up!’

  Willumsen cursed quietly but did as I told him.

  ‘In other words, this could have been a story about what you never know will never hurt you and how we all live happy ever after,’ I said. ‘But since you don’t believe me and have expressed your intention to bump me off, you leave me with no choice but to bump you off. Believe me, it brings me no pleasure to do so, and I’ve no intention of taking the opportunity to resume the affair with the woman who will shortly be your widow. In other words it might seem extremely unfuckingnecessary to kill you, but unfortunately, from a practical point of view, it’s the only solution.’