by Jo Nesbo
‘To stop Dan’s article, and frighten you off any plans you might have for defaulting on your debt.’
‘Yes.’
I looked at Carl. No doubt about it, he was telling the truth now.
‘And now the whole fucking lot has burned down, what are you going to do?’
‘Sleep on it,’ said Carl. ‘Nice if you’d sleep up here too.’
I looked at him. It wasn’t just a courtesy. When a crisis comes some people try to sort things out on their own. Others, such as Carl, need people around them.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I can take a couple of days off and stay here. Could be you’ll need help.’
‘Will you?’ he said, giving me a grateful look.
Just then Shannon came in with the coffee cups. ‘Good news, Shannon, Roy’s staying.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Shannon with what sounded like genuine enthusiasm, smiling at me like I was her dear brother-in-law. I wasn’t sure if I liked her acting talent, but right now I appreciated it.
‘It’s good to know you’ve got family you can rely on,’ said Carl, pushing his chair back, the legs making coughing sounds against the rough floorboards. ‘I’ll give the coffee a miss, I haven’t slept for the last day and a half, so I’m off to bed now.’
Carl left, and Shannon sat in his chair. We drank coffee in silence until we heard the toilet flush up there and the bedroom door shut.
‘Well?’ I said quietly. ‘How does it feel?’
‘How does what feel?’ Her voice was flat, her face expressionless.
‘Your hotel burned down.’
She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t my hotel. As you know, that disappeared somewhere along the line.’
‘OK, but Os Spa and Mountain Hotel SL will be declared bankrupt when it emerges the hotel wasn’t insured. No hotel means no plots for sale for cabins, and in that case the market value of the land goes back to somewhere around zero. It’s over for everyone now. Us, Willumsen, the village.’
She didn’t reply.
‘I’ve been doing a bit of research on Barcelona,’ I said. ‘I’m no city person, I like the mountains. And there are a lot of mountains just outside Barcelona. Houses are cheaper too.’
She still said nothing, just stared down into her coffee cup.
‘There’s a mountain called Sant Llorenç that looks really great,’ I said. ‘Forty minutes from Barcelona.’
‘Roy...’
‘And it must be possible to buy a service station there. I’ve got some money put aside, enough to—’
‘Roy!’ She raised her eyes from the coffee cup and looked at me. ‘This is my chance,’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand that?’
‘Your chance?’
‘Now that that abortion has burned down. This is my chance to get my building up. The way it should be.’
‘But—’
I shut up when her fingernails dug into my underarm. She leaned forward. ‘My baby, Roy. Don’t you understand? It’s risen from the dead.’
‘Shannon, there’s no money.’
‘Roads, water, sewage, the site, everything’s in place.’
‘You don’t get it. Maybe in five or ten years someone will build something there, but no one is going to build your hotel, Shannon.’
‘You’re the one who doesn’t get it.’ There was a strange, feverish glow in her eyes that I had not seen before. ‘Willumsen, he’s got too much to lose. I know men like that. They have to win; they don’t accept defeat. Willumsen will do anything not to lose the money he’s owed and the profit on the cabin plots.’
I thought of Willumsen and Rita. Shannon had a point.
‘You think Willumsen will take one more chance,’ I said. ‘Double or quits, like?’
‘He has to. And I have to stay here until I’ve got my hotel up. Oh, you must think I’m mad,’ she exclaimed in desperation, and laid her forehead against my arm. ‘But that building is the building I was born to build, you must see. But once it’s up, then you and I can go to Barcelona. I promise.’ She pressed her lips to my hand. Then she stood up.
I was about to stand up too and put my arms around her, but she forced me back down into the chair.
‘We’ve got to keep cool heads and cool hearts now,’ she whispered. ‘Think. We have to think, Roy. So that later we can be unthinking. Goodnight.’
She kissed me on the forehead and left me.
* * *
—
I lay in the bunk bed and thought about what Shannon had said.
It was true that Willumsen hated to lose. But he was also a man who knew when he had to take a hit in order to limit his losses. Did she believe what she said because she wanted it so badly? Because she loved that hotel, and love makes you blind? And was that why I let her convince me to believe it too? I didn’t know which of the two opposing forces, greed and fear, would win when Willumsen found out that the hotel wasn’t insured; but Shannon was probably right to say that he was the only one who could save the project.
I leaned out of the bed and looked at the thermometer outside the window. Minus twenty-five. Not a living soul out there today. But then I heard the warning cry of the raven. So there was something. Something was on its way. Living or dead.
I listened. Not a sound in the house. And suddenly I was a child again, telling myself there are no such things as monsters. Lying to myself that monsters don’t exist.
Because next day it came.
PART SIX
53
WHEN I WOKE I COULD tell straight away that the sprengkulda had come. It wasn’t so much the feel of the temperature on the skin as certain other sensory impressions. In the extreme cold sounds carried better. I was more sensitive to light, and the air I breathed, now that the molecules were more compressed, somehow made me feel more alive.
I could tell, for example, from the crunching in the snow outside the house that it was Carl who was up early and going about some business. I opened the curtains and saw the Cadillac driving slowly and carefully across the ice on Geitesvingen, although we had gritted the road and it was cold, ‘sandpaper’ ice. I went into Shannon’s bedroom.
She was sleepy-warm and smelling more intently than usual of the deliciously spicy smell that was Shannon.
I kissed her awake and said that even if Carl had just gone to buy a paper, we had at least half an hour alone.
‘Roy, I said we have to keep cool hearts and think!’ she hissed. ‘Get out!’
I got up. She pulled me back.
It was like emerging shivering from Lake Budal and lying down on a sun-warmed rock. Hard and soft at the same time, and a sense of well-being so powerful it made the body sing.
I heard her breathe in my ear, whispered obscenities in a jumble of Baja, English and Norwegian. She came, loudly and with her whole body arched in a bow. And when I came I buried my face in the pillow so as not to shout directly into her ear and picked up the smell of Carl. Unmistakably Carl. But there was something else too. A sound. It came from the door behind us. I tensed.
‘What is it?’ Shannon asked breathlessly.
I turned towards the door. It was ajar, but it was me who hadn’t closed it, wasn’t it? Of course. I held my breath, heard Shannon do the same.
Silence.
Could I possibly not have heard the Cadillac coming? Too fucking right I could, we hadn’t exactly been keeping our noise down. I looked at my wristwatch, which I had kept on. It was only twenty-two minutes since he’d left.
‘No danger,’ I said, and turned over on my back. She snuggled into me.
‘Barbados,’ she whispered into my ear.
‘Eh?’
‘We said Barcelona. But what about Barbados?’
‘Do they have petrol-driven cars there?’
‘Sure they do.’
‘Deal.’<
br />
She kissed me. Her tongue was smooth and strong. Searching and showing. Giving and taking. Jesus was I hooked. I was about to enter her again when I heard the hum of the engine. The Cadillac. Her eyes and her hands were on me as I slid out of the bed, pulled on my underpants and walked across the cold floorboards to the boys’ room. Lay in the bunk bed and listened.
The car stopped outside and the outer door opened.
Carl stamped the snow from his shoes in the hallway, and through the hole I heard him entering the kitchen.
‘I saw your car outside,’ I heard Carl say. ‘Did you just let yourself in?’
I felt my body turn to ice as I lay there.
‘The door was open,’ said a second voice. Low and rasping. As though he’d damaged his vocal cords.
I raised up on my elbows and pulled the curtains aside. The Jaguar was parked over by the barn, where the snow had been cleared.
‘What can I do for you?’ Carl said. Controlled, but tense.
‘You can pay my client.’
‘So he sent for you because the hotel burned down? Thirty hours. Not a bad response time.’
‘He wants his money now.’
‘I’ll pay him as soon as I get the insurance money.’
‘You won’t be getting any insurance money. The hotel wasn’t insured.’
‘Says who?’
‘My client has his sources. The conditions for the loan have not been upheld. That means it falls due with immediate effect. You’re aware of that, herr Opgard? Good. You’ve got two days. That’s to say forty-eight hours from...now.’
‘Now listen—’
‘Last time I was here you got a warning. This isn’t a three-acter, herr Opgard; so this is the hammer.’
‘The hammer?’
‘The end. Death.’
Silence down there. I saw them in my mind’s eye. The Dane with his angry red pimples, seated at the table. Relaxed body language, which only made him all the more threatening. Carl sweating, even though he’d just come in from minus thirty.
‘Why the panic?’ asked Carl. ‘Willumsen’s got security.’
‘Which he says ain’t worth much without a hotel.’
‘But what would be the point of killing me?’ Carl’s voice was no longer so controlled. Now it sounded more like the whining of a vacuum cleaner. ‘If I’m dead then Willumsen’s definitely not going to get his money.’
‘You’re not the one who’s going to die, Opgard. At least not in the first instance.’
I already knew what was coming next, but I doubted if Carl did.
‘It’s your wife, Opgard.’
‘Sh...’ Carl swallowed the ‘a’. ‘...nnon?’
‘Nice name.’
‘But that’s...murder.’
‘The reaction reflects the amount owing.’
‘But two days. How do you and Willumsen suppose I’m going to get hold of that kind of money in such a short time?’
‘I can imagine you’ll have to do something pretty drastic, maybe even something desperate. Beyond that I have no opinion, herr Opgard.’
‘And if I don’t manage it...?’
‘Then you’re a widower, and you’ll have a further two days.’
‘But Jesus, I mean...’
I was on my feet already, trying not to make a sound as I pulled on my trousers and pullover. I didn’t hear in detail what would happen after four days, but I didn’t need to either.
I sneaked down the stairs. I might possibly – possibly – have managed to handle the Dane with the element of surprise on my side. But I doubted it. I recalled the speed of his movements outside the service station, and from the acoustics I had realised he was sitting facing the door and would see me the moment I came in.
I slipped into my shoes and out the door. The cold was like a pressure forcing against the temples. I could have taken a detour, run in an arc towards the barn out of sight of the kitchen, but I figured I only had a few seconds so I banked on being right and that the Dane was sitting with his back to the window. The dry snow squeaked under my running steps. The enforcer’s primary task is to frighten, so I reckoned the Dane would be elaborating on his threat. On the other hand, there were probably limits to how much there was to say.
I raced into the barn, turned on the taps and placed two zinc buckets below them. They were full in less than ten seconds. I grabbed the handles, ran out and down towards Geitesvingen. The water sploshed about and my trousers got wet. On the bend I put one of the buckets down on the ice and emptied the other in an arc in front of me. The water ran over the hard ice, over the sand strewn across it that looked like black peppercorns where it had bored its way into the ice. The water evened out irregularities and small holes and ran off towards the edge of the precipice. I did the same with the other bucket. It was too cold, of course, for the water to melt the ice, so it lay in a thin layer on top of it and started to penetrate down into the layer below. I was still standing there observing the ice when I heard the Jaguar start. And – almost as though they were synchronised – I heard the distant, crisp sound of church bells starting up from down in the village. I looked up towards the house and saw the enforcer’s white car come driving along. Carefully, slowly. Maybe he’d been surprised at how easily he’d managed to climb the icy hills on his summer tyres. But most Danes don’t really know much about ice, they don’t know that the surface becomes like sandpaper if it gets cold enough.
But that when heated, for example, to around minus seven degrees, it turns into an ice-hockey rink.
I didn’t move, stood there with the buckets dangling at my sides. The Dane stared at me from behind the front windscreen, the small slits of his eyes that I remembered from that time by the pumps now covered by a pair of sunglasses. The car approached and passed, and our heads revolved like a planet around its own axis. Maybe he had some vague memory of my face, maybe not. And maybe he’d come up with some plausible explanation for why this guy was standing there with two buckets, maybe not. And perhaps he understood when he suddenly lost his grip on the road, and he instinctively pushed down harder on the brake pedal, perhaps not. And now the car too was a planet as it slowly spun round on the ice to the music of the church bells, like a figure skater. I saw him desperately spinning the steering wheel, saw the front wheels with their broad summer tyres twist back and forth as though trying to escape what held them, but the Jaguar was trapped and out of control. And when the car had spun 180 degrees and was sailing backwards towards the edge of the curve, I saw him again, I was looking straight into his face, a red planet with tiny, active volcanoes. The sunglasses had slipped down his face as with flailing elbows he fought the steering wheel. Then he caught sight of me and stopped his flapping. Because he knew now. Knew what the buckets had been for, knew that if he had understood immediately he might possibly have had a chance to jump out of the car straight away. Knew now that it was too late.
I’m guessing he was acting on instinct when he pulled his gun. The automatic response of an enforcer, a soldier, to attack. And I was probably acting in response to another instinct when I raised one hand, with a bucket, in a farewell gesture. I just about heard the crack inside the car as he fired, then a whipping sound as the bullet passed through the zinc bucket right next to my ear. I just had time to see the bullet hole, like a frost-rose in the windscreen, and then the Jaguar disappeared down into Huken.
I held my breath.
The zinc bucket in my raised hand still swayed from the hit.
The church bells rang faster and faster.
And then at last it came, a muted thud.
I stood there, still not moving. It must be a funeral. The church bells continued for a while longer, but with the silence between each peal ever longer. I looked out across the village, the mountains and Lake Budal as the sun finally broke free of the peak of Ausdaltinden.
Then the church bells stopped completely, and I thought, Jesus Christ, how lovely it is round here.
I guess that’s the kind of thing you think when you’re in love.
54
‘YOU POURED WATER OVER THE ice?’ Carl asked in disbelief.
‘It raises the temperature,’ I said.
‘It turns it into a skating rink,’ said Shannon, bringing the coffee pot over from the stove. She poured coffees for us.
Saw Carl was looking up at her.
‘Toronto Maple Leafs!’ she cried, as though there was an accusation in his look. ‘Did you never notice how they watered the rink during the breaks?’
Carl turned back to me. ‘So there’s another body in Huken.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ I said, blowing across my coffee.
‘What do we do? Report it to Kurt Olsen?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘No? And if they find him?’
‘Then it’s got nothing to do with us. We never saw the car drive off the road and we never heard it either, that’s why we never reported anything.’
Carl looked at me. ‘My brother,’ he said. The white teeth shone in his face. ‘I knew you’d come up with a plan.’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If no one knows or suspects that the enforcer was up here, then we don’t have a problem and we keep our mouths shut. It might be a hundred years before anyone discovers the wreck in Huken. But if anyone finds out he was up here or discovers the Jaguar, then this is our story...’
Carl and Shannon came closer, as though I was going to whisper in our own kitchen.
‘It’s generally best to stick as close to the truth as possible, so we tell it like it was, that the enforcer was here to press us for the money Carl owes Willumsen. We say that none of us watched the enforcer as he drove off, but that it was pretty fucking slippery on Geitesvingen. So when the police get down into Huken and see the summer tyres on the Jaguar, they’ll work the rest out for themselves.’
