The Kingdom

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘You’ve lost everything already,’ I said. ‘You’ve only got everything to gain. Come on, you’re a used-car salesman. Persuade me.’

  ‘Hm.’

  There was silence in the room again.

  ‘Time’s running out for you, Willumsen.’

  ‘Leap of faith,’ he said in English.

  ‘Now you’re trying to sell the same dodgy car two times in a row,’ I said. ‘Come on. You managed to foist that Cadillac off on my father, you got Carl and me to pay what we later found out was twice what second-hand diving gear costs in Kongsberg.’

  ‘I need more time to think of something,’ said Willumsen. ‘Come back in the afternoon.’

  ‘Alas, we need to do this before I leave, and before it’s light enough for people to see me leaving here.’ I raised the pistol and touched it to his temple. ‘I really do wish there was another way, Willumsen. I’m not a killer, and in a way I like you. Yes, I really do. But it’ll have to be you who shows me that other way, because I don’t see it. You’ve got ten seconds.’

  ‘This is so unreasonable,’ said Willumsen.

  ‘Nine,’ I said. ‘Is it unreasonable of me to give you the chance to argue for your own life, even though Shannon never got the chance to argue for hers? Is it unreasonable for me to deprive you of your few remaining months instead of the rest of your wife’s natural life? Eight.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but—’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘I give up.’

  ‘Six. Want me to wait till I’ve finished counting down, or...?’

  ‘Everyone wants to live as long as possible.’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘I feel like a cigar.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Let me have a cigar. Come on.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘They’re in the desk drawer over there, let me—’

  The crack was so loud it felt as though someone had stuck a sharp object through my eardrums.

  Of course, I’ve seen in films how shots to the head like that always result in blood cascading all over the wall. But, to tell the truth, I was surprised to see that that’s actually what really does happen.

  Willumsen slumped backwards in the bed with what looked like an injured expression on his face, perhaps because I had cheated him of two seconds of life. Moments later I felt the mattress underneath me getting wet, and then I smelled the shit. They don’t make much out of that in films, the way all the dead person’s orifices open up like sluice gates.

  I pressed the pistol into Willumsen’s hand and got up from the bed. When I worked at the service station in Os I used to read not just Popular Science but also True Crime, so as well as the bathing cap and gloves I’d taped my trouser legs to my socks and the sleeves of my jacket to the gloves so no bodily hairs would fall out and leave DNA traces for the police, if this ever got investigated as a murder.

  I hurried down the stairs to the basement, grabbed a shovel I found down there, left the basement door unlocked and walked backwards through the garden, turning over the footprints in the snow behind me. I took the lane that slopes down towards Lake Budal, there weren’t many houses there. Tossed the shovel into a waste container at the entrance to a newly built house, and only now noticing how cold my ears were and remembering the woollen hat I had in my pocket, pulled it on over the bathing cap and followed the lane to one of the small jetties. I had parked the Volvo behind the boathouses. I peered out over the ice. Standing out there were two of the three women in my life. And I’d killed the husband of one of them. Weird. The engine was still warm and the car started without difficulty. I drove to Opgard. It was seven thirty in the morning, and still pitch-dark.

  * * *

  —

  That same afternoon the news was on national radio.

  ‘A man was found dead in his home in Os county in Telemark. The police are treating the death as suspicious.’

  The news of Willumsen’s death hit the village like a sledgehammer. I think that’s an appropriate image. I imagine the shock was greater than when the hotel burned down. It hit people hard now that mean, friendly, snobbish, folksy used-car salesman who had always been there was gone forever. It was bound to be something people talked about in every shop and cafe, on every street corner and within the four walls of every home. Even the ones I met who knew Willumsen’s cancer had come back were ashen-faced with grief.

  I slept badly the next two nights. Not because I had a guilty conscience. I’d really tried to help Willumsen save himself, but how can you, as a chess player, help your opponent once it’s checkmate? It just isn’t your move. No, there was another reason altogether. I had an uneasy feeling of having forgotten something. Something crucial I hadn’t thought of when I planned the murder. I just couldn’t put my finger on what that might be.

  On the third day after Willumsen’s death, two days before the funeral, I found out. Where it was I’d fucked up.

  56

  IT WAS ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN the morning when Kurt Olsen pulled up in front of the house.

  Two other cars behind him. Oslo number plates.

  ‘Damned slippery down on the corner there,’ said Kurt, who stood grinding out a smoking cigarette with his foot when I opened the door to him. ‘You making an ice rink or what?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We grit. It should be the council’s job, but we do it.’

  ‘We’re not going to start talking about that again now,’ said Kurt Olsen. ‘This is Vera Martinsen and Jarle Sulesund from KRIPOS.’ Behind him stood a policewoman in those black trousers and matching short jacket and a man who looked Pakistani or Indian. ‘We’ve got a few questions for you, so let’s go inside.’

  ‘We’re wondering if we might ask you some questions,’ interrupted the woman, Martinsen. ‘If it’s convenient. And if you’ll allow us to come in.’ She looked at Kurt. And then at me. Smiled. Short, fair hair in a plait, broad-featured, wide shoulders. I was thinking handball or cross-country skiing. Not because you can tell by looking which sports people enjoy but because those are the most popular sports among women and you’ve got a better chance of getting things right if you take account of the actual statistics rather than your own overblown gut feeling. These were the kind of irrelevant wisps of thought flitting through my head as I stood there. And looking at Martinsen realised I was going to have to be at my sharpest unless I wanted to be her breakfast, as people say. But OK, we were ready too.

  We entered the kitchen where Carl and Shannon were already sitting.

  ‘We’d like to talk to all of you,’ said Martinsen. ‘But we’d prefer one at a time.’

  ‘You can wait in our old room,’ I said casually, with a look at Carl, realising he understood my thinking. That they would be able to hear the questions and answers, so we could be sure to be as synchronised as we had been when rehearsing the story in the event of interrogation by the police.

  ‘Coffee?’ I asked once Carl and Shannon had left.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Martinsen and Sulesund, talking over Kurt’s ‘yes’.

  I poured a cup for Kurt.

  ‘KRIPOS are assisting me in the investigation into Willumsen’s murder,’ said Kurt, and I caught Martinsen’s slight roll of the eyes to Sulesund.

  ‘Because this is hardly a suicide here, but murder.’ Olsen’s voice fell to a deep bass on the word ‘murder’. He let it sort of linger in the air and do its job, looked at me as though to check for a reaction before continuing. ‘A murder disguised as a suicide. The oldest trick in the book.’

  I felt as though I’d read that very sentence in an article in True Crime.

  ‘But the killer didn’t fool us. Yes, Willumsen was holding the murder weapon, but he had no gunpowder residue on his hand.’

  ‘Gunpowder residue,’ I repeated, as though savouring the words.

  Sulesund coughed
. ‘Actually a bit more than gunpowder residue. It’s called GSR, short for gunshot residue. Tiny particles of barium, lead and a couple of other chemical substances from the ammunition and the weapon that attach themselves to almost everything within a half-metre radius when a shot is fired. It attaches itself to the skin and the clothes and is very difficult to get rid of. Fortunately.’ He gave a quick laugh and adjusted his wire-framed spectacles. ‘It’s invisible, but we’ve brought equipment with us, fortunately.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Kurt interrupted, ‘we found nada on Willumsen. Understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  ‘What’s more, the basement door was open, and Rita was certain it had been locked. So our guess is that it’s been jemmied. The killer also turned over the snow to hide his footprints in the garden when he left. We found the shovel – which Rita identified – in a waste container not far away.’

  ‘Blimey,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kurt. ‘And we have our suspicions as to who the perpetrator must be.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Aren’t you curious to know?’ Kurt looked at me with his idiotic X-ray-type stare.

  ‘Of course, but you’re bound by professional secrecy, aren’t you?’

  Kurt turned to the two KRIPOS people and gave a short laugh. ‘This is a murder investigation, Roy. We divulge and withhold information in accordance with how it helps our inquiries.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘Dealing with a murder as professionally executed as the one we’re dealing with here, our focus of interest has become a car. More precisely a fairly old, Danish-registered Jaguar that has been observed in the area, and which I suspect belongs to a professional enforcer.’

  The one we’re dealing with here. Our focus of interest. Christ, he made it sound like he was up to his neck in murder cases. And that suspicion involving the enforcer was obviously not his own, it was something the villagers had been talking about for years.

  ‘So we’ve been in touch with the Danish police and sent them the weapon and the projectile. They’ve found a match with a nine-year-old murder in Århus. That case was never solved, but one of the suspects was the owner of a vintage white E-Type Jaguar. His name is Poul Hansen, and it’s an established fact that he operates as an enforcer.’ Kurt turned to the KRIPOS investigators. ‘He owns a Jaguar, but he’s too tight-fisted to get rid of the murder weapon. How Danish is that?’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Would have thought that was more typically Swedish,’ said Martinsen expressionlessly.

  ‘Or Icelandic,’ said Sulesund.

  Kurt turned back to me. ‘Have you seen this Jaguar around lately, Roy?’ he said it casually. Too casually. So casually I realised it was a trick; this was where he was hoping to lure me out onto thin ice, get me to make a mistake. They knew more than they were letting on. But not so much more that they had to try to trick me, ergo they were missing something. Obviously, I wanted most of all to tell them I hadn’t seen the car, hear them say thanks and leave; but that would leave us trapped. Because there was a reason they were here. And that reason was the Jaguar. I would have to watch myself now, and the one I instinctively knew I had to be most wary of was the woman, Martinsen.

  ‘I saw that Jaguar,’ I said. ‘It was here.’

  ‘Here?’ said Martinsen quietly and placed her phone on the table in front of me. ‘Do you mind if we record this, Opgard? Just to make sure we don’t forget anything you tell us.’

  ‘By all means,’ I said. Her courteous way of speaking was infectious.

  ‘So,’ said Kurt, putting his elbows on the table and leaning closer. ‘What was Poul Hansen doing here?’

  ‘He was trying to get money out of Carl.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Kurt, staring at me. But I saw Martinsen’s gaze had started to flit around the room, as though she were looking for something. Something other than what was happening right in front of them, and which anyway they had on tape. Her gaze fastened on the stovepipe.

  ‘He said that this time he wasn’t in Os to extort money for Willumsen but from Willumsen,’ I said. ‘He seemed pretty angry, to put it mildly. Apparently Willumsen owed him money for several jobs. And now Willumsen told him he was flat broke.’

  ‘Willumsen flat broke?’

  ‘When the hotel burned down, Willumsen decided to cancel Carl’s debt from the loan he’d given him. It was a lot of money, but Willumsen felt he was partially to blame for the decisions that were taken that led to Carl’s losses being even greater once the hotel burned down.’

  I had to tread carefully here. Those of us at Opgard were still the only ones in the village who knew that the hotel hadn’t been insured for fire. The only ones living, at any rate. But I was telling the truth all right. The documents regarding the cancellation of the first loan and the provision for a new loan were now with Willumsen’s lawyer, and they would hold up in court.

  ‘In addition,’ I said, ‘Willumsen had cancer and didn’t have long left. So he probably wanted his legacy to be that he generously contributed to the building of the hotel and didn’t let financial complications arising out of the fire stop him.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Kurt. ‘Was it Carl or the company that owns the hotel who owed Willumsen money?’

  ‘That’s complicated,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to take it up with Carl.’

  ‘We aren’t Economic and Environment Crime, so please continue,’ said Martinsen. ‘Poul Hansen demanded that Carl pay him the money Willumsen owed him?’

  ‘Yes. But of course we had no money, only the cancelled debt. And we still hadn’t received the new loan – that won’t be until another two weeks from now.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Kurt flatly.

  ‘So then what did Poul Hansen do?’ asked Martinsen.

  ‘He gave up and drove away.’

  ‘When was this?’ Her questions were delivered rapidly and were intended to speed up the tempo of the answers too, we’re easily conditioned that way. I wet my lips.

  ‘Was it before or after Willumsen’s murder?’ Kurt blurted out, losing patience. And when Martinsen turned to Kurt, I saw for the first time something else beside the calm and the smile in her face. If looks could kill, Kurt would’ve been dead. Because now I knew what they were after. I’d been shown where the dog’s body was buried, as people say. The timeline. They knew something about Poul Hansen’s visit up here.

  In the story we’d worked out, Poul Hansen hadn’t come up to Opgard the day before the murder, as he had in reality, but directly after the murder, to demand from Carl the money he hadn’t managed to shake out of Willumsen. Because only a sequence of events like that could explain that Poul Hansen had both killed Willumsen and ended up along with his Jaguar in Huken. But Kurt’s outburst had been the raven’s call I needed. I made a decision and hoped that Carl and Shannon were listening hard at the stovepipe hole upstairs and hearing how I had changed our story.

  ‘That was the day before Willumsen was killed,’ I said.

  Martinsen and Kurt exchanged looks.

  ‘That more or less fits with the time when Simon Nergard told us he saw an E-Type Jaguar pass his farm on the road that leads up here, and only up here,’ said Martinsen.

  ‘And to the hotel site,’ I said.

  ‘But he came here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it’s odd that Simon Nergard says he never saw the Jaguar come down again.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘But of course, the Jaguar is white, and there’s a lot of snow,’ said Martinsen. ‘Right?’

  ‘Could be,’ I said.

  ‘Help us out, you who know about cars; why did Simon Nergard neither see nor hear it?’

  She was good. And she didn’t give up.

  ‘A sports job like that is easily heard when it’s climbing hills in low gear, isn’t it? But not
when it’s coming back down, not if he lets the car freewheel. Think that’s what Hansen did? Rolled past Nergard in silence?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You have to brake too much on the corners, and the Jaguar is heavy. And people who drive cars like that don’t coast, they aren’t the types to worry about petrol. On the contrary, they like to hear their engines. So if I have to suggest something, it would be that Simon Nergard was having a shit in his toilet.’

  I employed the ensuing silence to scratch my ear.

  Then Martinsen gave me an almost imperceptible nod, like one boxer to another who has seen through a feint. The feint was to get me to be a little too keen to help explain why Simon hadn’t seen the Jaguar, and in doing so reveal how important it was for me that they believe the Jaguar had driven by Nergard and back down into the village. But why? Martinsen checked that her phone was still recording like it should be, and Kurt quickly interjected:

  ‘When you found out Willumsen was dead, why didn’t you say anything about the enforcer?’

  ‘Because everybody said it was suicide,’ I said.

  ‘And you didn’t find it strange that it happened at exactly the same time as you knew his life was being threatened?’

  ‘The enforcer didn’t say anything about threatening anyone’s life. Willumsen had cancer, and the alternative was maybe months of pain. I saw my uncle Bernard die of cancer, so no, I didn’t think it was so strange.’

  Kurt took a breath and was about to continue, but Martinsen indicated with her hand that he’d said enough, and he kept his mouth shut.

  ‘And Poul Hansen hasn’t been here since?’ asked Martinsen.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I saw how her gaze followed mine, over to the stovepipe.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They had more, but what? What? I saw Kurt unconsciously fiddling with the leather mobile phone case attached to his belt. It even looked like the same type his father had used. The mobile phone. There it was again. The thing that had kept me awake, that I had forgotten, the flaw I didn’t see.