The Kingdom

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.’

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.’

‘The church bells,’ said Carl. ‘We can say we never heard the crash because of the church bells.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No church bells. There were no church bells the day he was up here.’

They looked quizzically at me.

‘Why not?’ asked Carl.

‘The plan isn’t a hundred per cent complete yet,’ I said. ‘But this didn’t happen today, the Dane lived a little longer.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t worry about the Dane,’ I said. ‘I reckon an enforcer keeps it to himself where and when he’s on the job, so we’re probably the only ones who know he was here today. So if he is found dead then it’s our story that gives the time of death. Our problem now is Willumsen.’

‘Yes, because he’s bound to know his enforcer was here,’ said Carl. ‘And he could tell the police.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

There was a short silence.

‘Exactly,’ said Shannon. ‘Because then he would have to tell the police he was the one who hired the enforcer.’

‘Of course,’ said Carl. ‘Right, Roy?’

I didn’t answer. Took a long, noisy slurp of my coffee. Put the mug down.

‘Forget the Dane,’ I said. ‘Willumsen is the problem because of course he won’t stop trying to get back what you owe him just because the Dane is gone.’

Shannon made a face. ‘And he’s willing to kill. Do you think his enforcer really meant that, Roy?’

‘I only heard it through the stovepipe hole,’ I said. ‘Ask Carl who was sitting right in front of him.’

‘I… I think so,’ said Carl. ‘But I was so shit-scared I would’ve believed anything. Roy’s the one of the three of us who understands how a… how the brain works.’

He so nearly said it. A killer’s brain.

Again it was me they looked to.

‘Yes, he would have killed you,’ I said, and looked at Shannon.

Her pupils expanded and she nodded her head slowly, Os-style.

‘And then it would’ve been your turn, Carl,’ I said.

Carl looked down at his hands. ‘I think I need a drink,’ he said.

‘No!’ I said. Took a breath and calmed myself. ‘I need you sober. And I need a towing rope and a driver who’s done this before. Shannon, can you go down and spread more sand on the corner?’

‘Yes.’ She reached out a hand towards me and I stiffened because for a moment I thought she was going to stroke my cheek; but she just rested it on my shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

Carl, sitting there, suddenly seemed to wake up. ‘Yes, of course, thank you! Thank you!’ He leaned across the table and grabbed my hand. ‘You saved Shannon and me, and here I am moaning and complaining as though this was your problem.’

‘It is my problem,’ I said. And wasn’t far off saying something very high-flown, like we were a family, and we were in a war together; but decided that could wait. After all, no more than half an hour ago I’d been in bed fucking my sister-in-law.

‘Dan’s really banging on the big bass drum in his editorial today,’ said Carl from the kitchen as I stood in the hallway getting dressed and wondering what kind of boots would be best if there was ice on the rock face. ‘He thinks Voss Gilbert and the council are populist and spineless. That the tradition was established during the time when Jo Aas was chairman, only it was a bit less obvious back then.’

‘He wants to get beaten up,’ I said, choosing Dad’s old Norwegian welt boots.

‘Does anybody want to get beaten up?’ said Carl, but by that time I was already halfway out the door.

I crossed to the barn where Shannon was shovelling sand into one of the zinc buckets.

‘Do you and Rita Willumsen still go ice-bathing three days a week?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And there’s just you two?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can anyone see you?’

‘It’s seven o’clock in the morning, and dark, so… no.’

‘When is the next time?’

‘Tomorrow.’

I scratched my chin.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

I watched the sand trickling though the bullet hole in the bucket. ‘I’m thinking about how you can kill her.’

Later that evening, after I’d gone through the plan with Carl and Shannon for the sixth time, and Carl had nodded and we had both looked at Shannon, she set her conditions.

‘If I’m to be part of this, and if we succeed, then the hotel has to be rebuilt using my original drawings,’ she said. ‘Down to the smallest detail.’

‘Fine,’ said Carl after a few moments’ thought. ‘I’ll do the best I can.’

‘You won’t have to,’ said Shannon. ‘Because I’ll be in charge of the building, not you.’

‘Now listen—’

‘This isn’t a gambit, it’s an ultimatum,’ she said.

Carl could probably see as well as I could that she meant it. He turned to me. I shrugged, as if to say I couldn’t help him here.

He sighed. ‘Fine, Opgard men don’t bargain. If this works out well the job is yours, but I hope I can contribute.’

‘Oh, I’m sure we’ll keep you busy,’ said Shannon.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then let’s run through the plan one more time.’

55

IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK IN the morning and still dark out.

I crept through the darkened bedroom, listening to the steady breathing from the double bed. Stopped when the floor creaked. Stood still and listened. No interruption to the rhythm. The only light came from the moon through a gap in the curtains. I carried on, put my knees against the mattress and slid carefully towards the one sleeping. This side of the bed was still warm from the other who had been lying here. And I couldn’t help myself, I pressed my face against the sheet and inhaled the scent of woman, and at once – as though from a film projector – the images of me and her were there. Naked and sweating from lovemaking, but hungry for more, always.

‘Good morning, darling,’ I whispered.

And rested the barrel of the gun on the sleeper’s temple.

The breathing stopped. There were a couple of loud, angry snores. And then he opened his eyes.

‘You sleep quietly for such a fat man,’ I said.

Willum Willumsen blinked a couple of times in the semi-darkness as though to make sure he wasn’t still dreaming.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, his voice hoarse.

‘It’s the hammer,’ I said. ‘The end. Death.’

‘What are you doing, Roy? How did you get in?’

‘Basement door,’ I said.

‘That’s locked,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ was all I said.

He sat upright in the bed. ‘Roy, Roy, Roy. I don’t want to harm you. Get the hell out and I swear I’ll forget this.’

I hit him on the bridge of the nose with the barrel of the pistol. The skin broke and he began to bleed.

‘Don’t move your hands from the duvet,’ I said. ‘Let the blood run.’

Willumsen swallowed. ‘Is that thing there a pistol?’

‘Correct.’

‘I get it. So this is a kind of repeat of what happened last time?’

‘Yes. The difference being that we parted company alive back then.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I wouldn’t be too sure about that. You threatened to kill my family.’

‘That’s a consequence of defaulting on a debt that big, Roy.’

‘Yes, and this is the consequence of setting in motion the consequence of defaulting on a debt that big.’

‘You think I should allow my creditors to ruin me without doing anything? D’you really think so?’ There was more indignation than fear in his voice, and I really had to admire Willum Willumsen for the speed with which he was able to grasp the reality of the situation, as people say.

‘I don’t have any particular thoughts on that, Willumsen. You do what you have to do, I do what I have to do.’

‘If you think this is the way to save Carl then you’re mistaken. Poul will get the job done no matter what, the contract can’t be cancelled because I have no way of getting in touch with him now.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ I said, and heard how like some half-remembered quote from the history of pop music it sounded when I said: ‘Poul is dead.’

Willumsen’s octopus eyes opened wide. Now he saw the pistol. And clearly recognised it.

‘I had to go back down into Huken again,’ I said. ‘The Jaguar is lying on top of the Cadillac, both of them roof-down. Both squashed flat, looks like a fucking veteran-car sandwich. And what’s left of the Dane is oozing out of the seat belt, like a fucking pork sausage.’

Willumsen swallowed.

I waved the gun. ‘I found it trapped between the gearstick and the roof, had to kick it loose.’

‘What do you want, Roy?’

‘I want you not to kill anyone in my family, including in-laws.’

‘Deal.’

‘And I want us to cancel Carl’s debt to you. Plus, you agree to make us a new loan of the same amount.’

‘I can’t do that, Roy.’

‘I’ve seen Carl’s copy of the loan contract that the two of you signed. We tear up yours and his here and now and sign the agreement for a new loan.’

‘It won’t work, Roy, the contract is at my lawyer’s office. And as I’m sure Carl told you, it was signed there in the presence of witnesses, so it won’t disappear just like that.’

‘When I say “tear up” I’m speaking figuratively. Here’s a loan contract that replaces the previous one.’

I lit the bedside lamp with my free hand, pulled out two sheets of A4 paper from my inside pocket and laid them on the duvet in front of Willumsen. ‘It says here that the loan is to be written down from thirty million to a much lower sum. In fact, two kroner. It also says that the background to the writing down of the loan is that you personally advised Carl to cut out the insurance costs for the hotel, and that you therefore consider yourself equally to blame for the situation in which Carl finds himself. In short, his misfortune is your misfortune. In addition you’re making him a new loan of thirty million.’

Willumsen shook his head vigorously. ‘You don’t understand. I don’t have that much money. I borrowed to be able to make the loan to Carl. It’ll break me if I don’t get it back.’ He sounded almost tearful as he went on. ‘Everyone thinks I’m raking it in now that the villagers are spending so much money. But they all go to Kongsberg and Notodden and buy new cars, Roy. They don’t want to be seen in a used car bought from me.’

The double chins on the collar of the striped pyjama jacket quivered lightly.

‘But all the same, you’re going to sign,’ I said, handing him the pen I’d brought with me.

I saw his gaze drift down the page. Then he looked enquiringly up at me.

‘We’ll take care of witnesses and dates after you’ve signed,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Willumsen.

‘No… to?’

‘I’m not signing. I’m not afraid to die.’

‘Maybe not. But you are afraid of going bankrupt?’

Willumsen nodded mutely. He gave a brief laugh. ‘Remember the last time we were in this situation, Roy? And I said the cancer had come back? I lied. But now it is back. I have a limited amount of time left. That’s why I can’t write off such a large debt, and why I certainly can’t lend any more. I want to leave a healthy business to my wife and my other heirs. That’s all that matters now.’

I nodded slowly, and for a long time, so that he would realise that I had thought this all the way through. ‘That’s a shame,’ I said. ‘A real shame.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Willumsen, handing the papers back to me, along with the addenda Carl had written during the night.

‘Yes indeed,’ I said, without taking the papers. Instead I took out my phone. ‘Because in that case we’re going to have to do something much worse.’

‘Considering the treatment I’ve been through I’m afraid torture isn’t going to have much effect on me, Roy.’

I didn’t reply, tapped in ‘Shannon’ and opened FaceTime.

‘Kill me?’ Willumsen asked, his voice pointing out the obvious idiocy in killing a person you’re trying to squeeze money out of.

‘Not you,’ I said, and looked at the display on the phone.

Shannon appeared on the screen. It was dark where she was, but light from the camera was reflected by the snow on frozen Lake Budal. She spoke, not to me but to someone behind the camera.

‘OK if I take a video, Rita?’

‘Of course,’ I heard Rita say.

Shannon turned the phone and Rita appeared in the sharp light from the camera. She was wearing a fur coat and hat with a white bathing cap sticking out beneath it. Her breath clouded in front of her face as she jumped up and down on the spot in front of a square hole in the ice, just wide enough for someone to get into. There was an ice-saw next to the hole, and the section of ice they had cut away.

‘Kill your wife,’ I said, and held the screen up to Willumsen. ‘I got the idea from Poul.’

I didn’t doubt that Willumsen had cancer. And I saw the pain in his eyes when it dawned on him that he could lose something he thought he could never lose, that he loved perhaps even more than himself, and that his only comfort was that she would survive him, and live on for him. I felt for Willumsen right then, I really did.

‘Drowning,’ I said. ‘An accident, of course. Your wife jumps in. Plop. And when she returns to the surface she finds the hole is no longer there. She’ll feel that the ice above her is loose and realise it’s the section they cut away and try to push it up. But all Shannon has to do is keep her foot on it, like a lid, because your wife has nothing to brace her feet against, just water. Cold water.’

Willumsen gave a low sob. Did it bring me pleasure? I hope not, because that would mean I’m a psychopath, and of course that’s not something you want to be.

‘We’ll start with Rita,’ I said. ‘Then, if you don’t sign, we go on to your other heirs. Shannon – who does not exclude the possibility that your wife was complicit in her death sentence – is highly motivated for the task.’

On the screen Rita Willumsen had undressed. She was obviously freezing cold, and no wonder. Her pale skin was burled and bluish in the sharp light. I noticed she was wearing the same bathing suit as when we rowed out on the lake that summer. She didn’t look older, but younger. As though time wasn’t even circular but moving backwards.

I heard the scratching of pen on paper.

‘There,’ said Willumsen, tossing the papers and the pen onto the duvet in front of me. ‘Now stop her!’

I saw Rita Willumsen move to the edge of the hole. Same pose as in the boat, as though she were about to dive.

‘Not until you’ve signed both copies,’ I said without taking my eyes from the screen. Heard Willumsen grab the papers again and write.

I checked the signatures. They looked right.

Willumsen yelled, and I looked at the screen. I hadn’t heard anything like a splash. Rita was good. The loose section of ice filled the screen and we saw a small pale hand take hold of it and lift it.

‘You can stop, Shannon. He’s signed.’

For an instant it looked as though Shannon was going to drop the lid over the hole anyway. But then she put it down beside her, and a moment later Rita appeared in the dark water, like a seal, hair smooth and glistening around the laughing face, her breath puffing white smoke signals into the camera.

I ended the connection.

‘Well then,’ I said.

‘Well then,’ said Willumsen.

It was cold in the room, and I had gradually slipped down under the duvet. Not with my whole body, but enough of it that it wouldn’t be completely wrong to say the two of us were sharing a bed.

‘You’re leaving now, presumably.’

‘If only it were that easy,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s pretty obvious what you’re going to do as soon as I leave here. You’ll call another enforcer or contract killer and try to wipe out the Opgard family before we deliver this document to your lawyer. Then once you realise you won’t have time you’ll report us to the police for blackmail and refute the validity of what you just signed. You will also, naturally, deny all knowledge of any enforcer.’

‘Is that what you believe?’

‘Yes it is, Willumsen. Unless you can persuade me to the contrary.’

‘And if I can’t?’

I shrugged. ‘You could certainly try.’

Willumsen looked at me. ‘Is that why you’re wearing the gloves and the bathing cap?’

I didn’t answer.

‘So you don’t leave behind any hairs or fingerprints?’ he went on.

‘Don’t worry about that, Willumsen. Instead try to find a way for us to get this done.’

‘Hm. Let’s see.’ Willumsen clasped his hands together at the top of his chest, where a forest of black hair peered out from his pyjamas. In the ensuing silence I could hear the traffic up on the highway. I had loved those early mornings at the service station, being there when a village awakens to a new day, when people emerge to take their appointed places in the machinery of our little society. To have the big view, to sense the invisible hand behind everything that went on, that made sure everything worked out more or less as it should.

Willumsen coughed. ‘I won’t be getting in touch with any other enforcer or the police because both of us have too much to lose if I do.’

‘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.

‘Because—’ Martinsen began, and at that moment I knew.

‘Actually, no,’ I interrupted, and gave her what I hoped looked like an embarrassed smile. ‘On the morning of Willumsen’s death, I actually woke to the sound of a Jaguar. The car, that is. Not the creature.’

Martinsen stopped speaking and looked at me expressionlessly. ‘Continue,’ she said.

‘It has a very distinctive sound in the low gears. It snarls, like one of the big cats, like a… well, a Jaguar, I guess.’

Martinsen looked impatient, but I took my time. I knew that in this minefield, the slightest false step would be punished without mercy.

‘But by the time I was properly awake, the sound had gone. I pulled the curtain open and half expected to see the Jaguar. It was still dark out, but there was no car there, I could see that. So I thought I’d dreamt it.’

Again Martinsen and Kurt exchanged glances. The Sulesund guy clearly didn’t take part in this aspect of the investigation. He was what they call a crime-scene technician, so what he was doing here I still didn’t know. But I had a feeling that I would soon find out. Well, at least I’d given them a story that held water even if they found the Jaguar down in Huken. Then it would look as though Poul Hansen had driven up here the morning after the murder, maybe to make another attempt to extort money from us, his summer tyres had lost their grip on Geitesvingen and he’d slid over the edge and down into Huken unnoticed by anybody. I took a breath. Wondered whether to get up for more coffee, felt I needed it, but stayed seated.

‘The reason we’re asking is that we spent some time tracing a mobile phone number for Hansen,’ said Martinsen. ‘Presumably on account of his occupation, he didn’t have a phone registered in his own name. But we checked the base stations round here and they had registered signals from only one phone with this Danish number over the last few days. When we looked at which base stations had received signals from this Danish number, they coincided with witness observations of the Jaguar. What’s odd is that if we look at the period around the time of the murder, that is, from roughly the point at which he visited you, the phone has remained within the same, very limited base-station area. This one.’ Martinsen described a circle in the air with her index finger. ‘And there is no one else but you Opgards living up here. How do you explain that?’

57

THE KRIPOS WOMAN – SHE PROBABLY HAD a more formal title – had finally come to the point. The mobile phone. Of course the Dane had a mobile phone. I had quite simply neglected to think about it when we made the plan, and now Martinsen had traced his phone to a small area in the vicinity of our farm. Just like the time with Sigmund Olsen’s phone. How the hell could I have made the same mistake twice? Now they had established the enforcer’s phone had been somewhere near Opgard before, during and following the murder of Willum Willumsen.

‘Well,’ said Martinsen and repeated herself: ‘How do you explain that?’

It was like one of those video games where a load of objects come flying towards you at different speeds and in different patterns, and you know it’s just a question of time before you crash into at least one of them and then it’s game over. It takes quite a bit to get me worried, but now my back was sweating. I shrugged my shoulders and tried desperately to look relaxed: ‘How do you explain it?’

Martinsen seemed to take my question as rhetorical, as people say, ignored it and for the first time leaned forward in her chair. ‘Did Poul Hansen never leave here after he came? Did he spend the night here? Because no one else we’ve spoken to has put him up, no boarding house or anyone else, and the heater in that old Jaguar isn’t much good, so it would have been too cold to sleep in his car that night.’

‘Then he probably booked in at the hotel,’ I said.

‘The hotel?’

‘A joke. I mean, he drove up to the ruins and let himself into one of the workers’ cabins, because of course they’re unoccupied at the moment. If he’s so good at jemmying locks he’d manage that easy enough.’

‘But the mobile phone shows—’

‘The hotel site is just over the hill here,’ I said. ‘In the same base-station area as us, isn’t that right, Kurt? Because you once came up here looking for a mobile phone.’

Kurt Olsen sucked his moustache with something that looked like hatred in his eyes. Turned to the two KRIPOS investigators and gave a quick nod.

‘What that means then,’ said Martinsen without taking her eyes off me, ‘is that he left his phone behind in this workers’ cabin when he left to kill Willumsen. And that it’s still up there. Can you call up some reserves, Olsen? Looks as though we might need a search warrant for these cabins, and this sounds like a lot of searching.’

‘Good luck,’ I said, and stood up.

‘Oh, we’re not quite finished yet,’ said Kurt.

‘All right then,’ I said, and sat down again.

Kurt wriggled in his chair, as though to show he was sort of making himself even more comfortable. ‘When we asked Rita if Poul Hansen might conceivably have had a key to the basement door she said no. But then I saw her face twitch, and I’ve been a policeman long enough to be able to read faces just a little bit, so I pressed her on it, and she admitted that at one time you had been given such a key, Roy.’

‘OK,’ was all I said. I was tired.

Kurt was forwards on his elbows again. ‘So the question is, did you give that key to Poul Hansen? Or if you let yourself in at Willumsen’s the morning he died.’

I had to stifle a yawn. Not because I was tired, but because the brain needed more oxygen I suppose. ‘What in the world makes you think something like that?’

‘We’re just asking.’

‘Why would I kill Willumsen?’

Kurt sucked on his moustache and looked at Martinsen, who gave him the OK to continue.

‘Grete Smitt once told me that you and Rita Willumsen had a thing going up at the Willumsen cabin. And when I confronted Rita Willumsen with this after she’d told me about the basement key she admitted it.’

‘So what?’

‘So what? Sex and jealousy. Those are the two most common motives for murder in every developed nation in the world.’

That was straight out of True Crime too unless I was very much mistaken. I could no longer stifle that yawn. ‘No,’ I said, my trap wide open. ‘Of course I didn’t kill Willumsen.’

‘No,’ said Kurt. ‘Because, of course, you’ve just told us you were snoring away in bed up here at the time at which Willumsen was killed, meaning between six thirty and seven thirty in the morning?’

Kurt fiddled with his mobile phone holder again. It was like having a prompt. And now I got it; they’d checked the movements on my mobile phone too.

‘No, I got up,’ I said. ‘Then I drove down to one of the jetties on Lake Budal.’

‘Yes, we have a witness who thinks they saw a Volvo like yours come driving from up that way just before eight o’clock. What were you doing there?’

‘I went to spy on the bathing nymphs.’

‘Sorry?’

‘After I woke up and thought I’d heard the Jaguar I remembered that Shannon and Rita were going ice-bathing, but I didn’t know exactly where. So I guessed it would be somewhere on a straight line between Willumsen’s house and the lake. Parked at one of the boathouses and looked for them, but it was too dark and I couldn’t locate them.’

I saw Kurt’s face sort of implode, like when the air goes out of a beach ball.

‘Is there anything else?’ I asked.

‘Just to be on the safe side we’re going to check your hand for GSR,’ said Martinsen, still pretty much expressionless, although her body language had changed. She’d turned off that air of tense, hypersensitive awareness, something you maybe need to have done martial arts or street-fighting to notice. Perhaps she didn’t even realise it herself, but somewhere inside she had concluded that I was not the enemy, and now she eased off almost imperceptibly.

Enter the crime-scene technician who opened his bag. He took out a laptop and something that looked like a hairdryer. ‘XRF analyser,’ he said and opened the laptop. ‘I just need to scan your skin and we’ll get the result immediately. First I just need to connect it to the analysis software.’

‘OK. In the meantime shall I pop upstairs and fetch Carl and Shannon, so you can talk to them too?’

‘So you can scrub your hands first?’ asked Kurt Olsen.

‘Thanks, but we don’t need to talk to them,’ said Martinsen. ‘We’ve got what we need for the time being.’

‘I’m ready now,’ said Sulesund.

I rolled up my shirtsleeves, held my hands up in front of him and he scanned me as though I was an item from my service station shop.

Sulesund connected the hairdryer to the laptop with a USB cable and typed. I saw that Kurt was tensely scrutinising the technician’s face. I felt Martinsen’s gaze on my own as I let it glide out the window and thought it was a good thing I’d burned the gloves and the rest of the clothes I’d been wearing that morning. And that I should remember to wash the bloodstained shirt I’d been wearing on New Year’s Eve so that I could wear it at the funeral tomorrow.

‘He’s clean,’ said Sulesund.

I seemed to hear Kurt Olsen’s silent curse.

‘Well,’ said Martinsen as she stood up. ‘Thanks for your cooperation, Opgard. I hope you didn’t find this too unpleasant. But we need to be a little tougher in cases of murder, you know.’

‘You’re just doing your job,’ I said, and rolled down my shirtsleeve. ‘And that’s all there is to it. And…’ I pushed in a wedge of moist snuff, looked at Kurt Olsen and added, quite truthfully: ‘…I really do hope you find Poul Hansen.’

58

IN A STRANGE WAY WILLUM Willumsen’s funeral felt like the funeral of the Os Spa and Mountain Hotel.

It began with Jo Aas’s valedictory speech.

‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,’ he said. And went on to say how, one brick at a time, the departed had built up a company that prospered because it played a natural role in local society. It was and remained a response to a real need felt by those of us living here, said Aas.

‘We all knew Willum Willumsen as a hard but fair businessman. He made money where there was money to be made, and never made a deal he didn’t think would end up being to his advantage. But he kept to the deals he made, even when the wind changed and profit turned to loss. Always. And that is the kind of blind integrity that defines a man, that is the ultimate proof he has backbone.’

At this point Jo Aas’s gaze was fastened on Carl, who was sitting next to me on the second bench of a packed Os church.

‘Unfortunately, it seems to me that not all of today’s businessmen here in the village live up to Willum’s standards.’

I didn’t look at Carl, but it was as though I could feel the heat from the blush of shame burning in his face.

I’m guessing that Jo Aas chose that particular occasion for the character assassination of my little brother because he knew it was the best platform for what he wanted to say. And he wanted to say it because the same thing still drove him: he wanted to set the agenda. A couple of days earlier, Dan Krane had written a leader on current and former council leaders in which he had described Jo Aas as a politician whose outstanding talent was to have an ear to the ground and understand what he heard, and then adapt his responses in such a way as to make them seem in some magical way like a compromise of the views of all involved parties. It meant his suggestions were always accepted, which in turn created the impression of someone who was a powerful leader. Whereas in reality he had either simply adapted to his audience, or else merely gone with the flow. ‘Is it the dog wagging its tail, or the tail wagging the dog?’ wrote Dan Krane.

Of course, a lively discussion had ensued. Because how dare that cocky newcomer attack his own father-in-law, their beloved old council chairman? There were numerous responses both in print and online, to which Dan Krane replied that he had not been criticising Jo Aas. Because wasn’t it the democratic ideal that the people should be represented, and could there be a more genuinely democratic representative than a politician who gauged the mood of the people, and adapted his responses accordingly? And, in a way, Krane’s point was now being illustrated, because what we heard from the pulpit wasn’t Jo Aas but an echo from the whole village, communicated via the man who always interpreted and then communicated what they, the majority, thought. Because even for those directly concerned, that’s to say us, up at Opgard, it had been impossible not to know that people were beginning to talk. Maybe news had leaked that Carl had lost control of the hotel project after he had fired the main contractors. That Carl was struggling with the financing, that he had taken out personal loans in secret, and that the accounts did not reveal the true story. That the fire might have been a deathblow. For the time being it might be the case that there was nothing concrete to go on, but it was the sum of small things known by certain persons here and there which together made up a picture no one was happy with. But then Carl had been so optimistic in the autumn, loudly proclaiming that things were back on track, and that was of course what the villagers wanted to hear, now that they had already invested in the project.

And now Willum Willumsen had been killed by an enforcer, if the journalists who had invaded the village were to be believed, and what did that mean? Some thought he must have owed someone a great deal of money. According to rumour, Willumsen had been into the hotel more heavily than all the rest of them, that he’d handed out big loans. So was this killing the first crack in the foundations, a warning that the whole thing was about to go to hell? Had Carl Opgard, that slick, preacher-tongued charmer, come back home and led them all a merry dance with his castle in the air?

As we left the church, I saw Mari Aas – the usual warm, dark glow of her face now pale against the black coat – arm in arm with her father.

Dan Krane was nowhere to be seen.

The coffin, carried out by relatives wearing suits too big for them, was loaded into the hearse and driven off as we stood there, sort of devout-looking, and watched it.

‘They’re not cremating him now,’ said a voice quietly. It was Grete Smitt who suddenly appeared at my side. ‘The police want to hang on to the body as long as possible in case something crops up they need to check. They’ve just lent the body for the funeral. Now it’s going straight back to the freezer.’

I continued to watch the hearse, driving so slowly it looked as though it was standing still, as the white smoke billowed from the exhaust. When at last it vanished round the corner I turned to where Grete had been standing. She was gone.

The queue of those wishing to offer their condolences to Rita Willumsen was long, and I wasn’t at all sure my face was something she wanted to see right then, so I walked off and got into the driver’s seat of the Cadillac and waited.

A besuited Anton Moe and wife passed in front of the car. Neither one looked up.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Carl once he and Shannon were seated and I started the car. ‘Know what Rita Willumsen just did?’

‘What?’ I said as we drove out of the car park.

‘As I was offering my condolences she pulled me towards her and I thought she was going to give me a hug, and then she whispered “murderer” in my ear.’

‘Murderer? Are you sure you heard right?’

‘Yes. She smiled. Grin and bear it, all that stuff. But, I mean to say…’

‘Murderer.’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s probably been told by her lawyer that her husband wrote off thirty million in debt and gave you another thirty just before he died,’ said Shannon.

‘Does that make me a murderer?’ Carl shouted indignantly. I knew he was upset, not because he was innocent but because the accusations were unreasonable, given how little Rita Willumsen could know. That was how Carl’s brain worked. He felt Rita Willumsen had judged him on the basis of who he was, not the facts, and that hurt him.

‘It’s no wonder she’s suspicious,’ said Shannon. ‘If she knew about the debt, then she probably thinks it’s strange her husband didn’t tell her he’d written off such a large sum. And if she didn’t know about it, then she probably thinks it stinks, that her lawyer receives the document after the murder, but signed and dated several days before it.’

In reply Carl just grunted. He obviously felt that not even such logical reasoning was any excuse for Rita’s behaviour.

I looked up at the sky ahead. The forecast had been for fine weather, but now dark clouds were driving in from the west. Things change quickly in the mountains, as people say.

59

I OPENED MY EYES. IT was burning. The bunk beds and the walls around me were aflame, the fire raging at me. I jumped down onto the floor and saw long, yellow flames flaring up from the mattress. So how come I felt nothing? I looked down at myself and saw it. Saw that I was on fire too. I heard Carl’s and Shannon’s voices from their bedroom and ran to the door, but it was locked. I raced to the window and ripped aside the burning curtains. The glass was gone, replaced by iron bars. And there, in the snow outside, stood three figures. Pale, unmoving, just staring at me. Anton Moe. Grete Smitt. And Rita Willumsen. The fire truck came crawling from the darkness down by Geitesvingen. No siren, no lights. Dropping down and down through the gears, the engine roaring louder and louder, the truck going slower and slower. And then it stopped completely and began sliding back down into the darkness from which it had emerged. A bow-legged man came rolling out of the barn. Kurt Olsen. He was wearing Dad’s boxing gloves.

I opened my eyes. The room was dark, there was no fire. But the roaring was there. No, not a roar, but an engine revving furiously. It was the ghost of the Jaguar on its way up out of Huken. Then, as I grew more wide awake, I could hear it was the tractor-like sound of a Land Rover.

I pulled on my trousers and went downstairs.

‘Did I wake you?’

Kurt Olsen stood on the steps, cigarette between his lips, his thumbs hooked in his belt.

‘It’s early,’ I said. I hadn’t checked the time but saw no sign of the sunrise when I turned and looked east.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘We finished searching the workmen’s cabins at the hotel site yesterday, and we found neither Poul Hansen, nor his car, nor any sign that they had been there. And now the base station has stopped getting signals from his phone, so either the battery’s flat or he’s turned off his phone. But then something occurred to me last night, and I wanted to check it as quickly as possible.’

I tried to collect my thoughts. ‘Are you alone?’

‘You thinking of Martinsen?’ said Olsen. He gave me a grin. I had no idea what it was supposed to mean. ‘Didn’t see any reason to wake KRIPOS, this won’t take long.’

Clattering from the steps behind me. ‘What’s up, Kurt?’ It was Carl, drunk from sleep but irritatingly good-humoured as he always was in the morning. ‘Dawn attack?’

‘Good morning, Carl. Roy, last time we were here you said you were woken the morning Willumsen died by what you thought was a Jaguar. But that then the sound disappeared, and you thought it must have been a dream.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I remembered how slippery it was on Geitesvingen when we were here. And that it might – and this is just my brain that can’t stop looking for possible solutions to this riddle – it might be the case that it wasn’t a dream, that it was the Jaguar you heard, but that it just didn’t manage that last bend, started to skid backwards, and then…’

Olsen paused deliberately as he tapped the ash off his cigarette.

‘You think…’ I tried to look astonished. ‘You think that…’

‘I’d like to check it anyway. Ninety per cent of all detective work…’

‘…involves following leads that go nowhere,’ I said. ‘True Crime. I read that article too. Fascinating stuff, isn’t it? Have you taken a look down into Huken?’

Kurt Olsen spat to one side of the steps and looked dissatisfied. ‘I tried. But it’s dark and steep, so I need someone to secure me so I can get far enough out to have a look.’

‘Sure thing,’ I said. ‘D’you need a torch?’

‘Got a torch,’ he said, put the cigarette back in the corner of his mouth and held up something black that looked like a smoked sausage.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Carl, and shuffled back upstairs in his slippers to get dressed.

We walked down to Geitesvingen where Olsen’s Land Rover stood with its headlights on and shining out across the edge. The change in the weather had brought a rise in temperature and it was only a few degrees below zero. Kurt Olsen got a rope from the back of the car and tied it around his waist.

‘If one of you holds this,’ he said, giving the end to Carl and making his way carefully forward to the edge of the road, where there were a couple of metres of steep, stony slope before the edge and where the rock face disappeared from view below. And while he was standing there, bending forward, his back to us, Carl leaned towards my ear.

‘He’ll find the body,’ he said in a whispered hiss. ‘And he’ll realise something’s wrong.’ Carl’s face glistened with sweat, and I could hear the panic in his voice. ‘We need to…’ Carl nodded towards Olsen’s back.

‘Think straight!’ I hissed as quietly as I could. ‘He will find the body, and there is nothing wrong.’

Just then Kurt Olsen turned towards us. In the dark his cigarette glowed like a brake light.

‘Maybe best to fasten the end to the bumper bar,’ he said. ‘We could all find ourselves slipping here.’

I took the end from Carl, tied it in a bowline around the bumper, nodded to Kurt that it was secure and gave Carl a discreet warning look.

Kurt edged down the slope and leaned over as I held the rope taut. He switched on his torch and directed the beam downwards.

‘See anything?’ I asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ replied Kurt Olsen.

Low-lying steely-blue clouds filtered the flat light as the KRIPOS people lowered Sulesund and two colleagues down into Huken. Sulesund was wearing a quilted suit and had his hairdryer with him. Martinsen stood there with arms folded, observing the whole business.

‘You got here quickly,’ I said.

‘They’re forecasting snow,’ she said. ‘Crime scenes with a metre of snow on top are hard work.’

‘You do know it’s reckoned to be dangerous down there?’

‘Olsen said so, but you don’t often get loose rocks when it’s below freezing,’ she said. ‘The water in the mountain expands when it freezes, forces open the space it needs, but acts like glue. It’s when it melts the stones fall.’

She sounded like she knew what she was talking about.

‘OK, we’re down now,’ said Sulesund’s voice over her walkie-talkie. ‘Over.’

‘We await with excitement. Over.’

We waited.

‘Isn’t the walkie-talkie a bit Stone Age?’ I asked. ‘You could have just used your mobile phones.’

‘How do you know you can get a signal down there?’ she asked and looked at me.

Was she suggesting that I had just revealed I had been down there? Was there some last shred of suspicion still hanging there?

‘Well,’ I said, and wedged another pellet of snuff into place, ‘if the base station was picking up signals from Poul Hansen after he ended up down there, surely that proves it.’

‘First let’s wait and see if him and his phone are there,’ said Martinsen.

In response the walkie-talkie crackled. ‘There’s a body here,’ said Sulesund. ‘Squashed flat, but it’s Poul Hansen. He’s frozen stiff, we can forget about establishing an exact time of death.’

Martinsen spoke into the black box. ‘Can you see his mobile phone there?’

‘No,’ said Sulesund. ‘Or make that a yes, Ålgard just found it in his jacket pocket. Over.’

‘Scan the body, get the mobile phone and come back up. Over.’

‘Over. Over and out.’

‘Is this your farm?’ asked Martinsen as she fastened the walkie-talkie to her belt.

‘My brother and I own it together,’ I said.

‘It’s beautiful here.’ Her gaze wandered over the landscape the same way it had wandered over the kitchen the day before. I’m guessing she didn’t miss much.

‘You know much about how a farm is run?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

‘No.’

We laughed.

I pulled out my tin of snuff. Took out a pellet. Offered her the tin.

‘No thanks,’ she said.

‘Packed it in?’ I asked.

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘You had the look of a user when I opened the tin, yes.’

‘OK, then give me one.’

‘I don’t want to be the person who—’

‘Just one.’

I handed her the tin. ‘Why isn’t Kurt Olsen here?’ I asked.

‘Your sheriff is already at work solving new cases,’ she said with a wry smile. With her index finger and extended middle finger she pressed the pellet in between the red, wet lips. ‘Going through the workmen’s cabins we found a Latvian, one of the builders working on the hotel.’

‘I thought the cabins were closed until work started up again.’

‘Yes they are, but the Latvian wanted to save money, so instead of going home for Christmas he was living illegally in the cabin. The first thing he said when the police knocked on the door was: “It wasn’t me who started the fire.” Turns out he was down in the village to see the New Year’s Eve rockets and when he’d headed there just before midnight a car had passed him coming the other way. And when he got there, the hotel was ablaze. It was him who phoned in and reported the fire. Anonymously, of course. And he didn’t tell the police about the car, he said, because then it would emerge that he’d been living in the workmen’s cabin all through Christmas and he would have lost his job. Anyway, he’d been so blinded by the car’s headlights that he wouldn’t have been able to tell the police what make it was or what colour. All he had noticed was that one of the brake lights wasn’t working. Anyway, Olsen’s talking to him now.’

‘You think this has anything to do with Willumsen’s murder?’

Martinsen shrugged. ‘We don’t exclude the possibility.’

‘And the Latvian?’

‘He’s innocent,’ she said. There was something different about her now, a calmness. The nicotine calm.

I nodded. ‘In general you’re fairly sure about who is guilty and who is innocent, aren’t you?’

‘Fairly,’ she said. She was about to say something else, but at that moment Sulesund’s face appeared above the edge of the precipice. He’d used a jumar to climb up the rope, and now he freed himself from the climbing harness and got into the passenger seat of the KRIPOS vehicle. He connected the hairdryer to the laptop and entered a command.

‘GSR!’ he shouted through the open door. ‘No doubt about it, Poul had fired a weapon not long before he died. And so far it matches the weapon from the crime scene.’

‘Can you tell that too?’ I asked Martinsen.

‘We can at least see if it’s the same kind of ammunition and, if we’re lucky, if the GSR traces on Poul Hansen could have come from that type of pistol. But the chain of events is pretty clear now.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Poul Hansen shot Willum Willumsen in his bedroom in the morning, and then drove up here to try to get the money Willumsen owed him from Carl, but then the Jaguar skidded on the ice on Geitesvingen, and—’ Abruptly she stopped. Smiled. ‘Your sheriff probably wouldn’t like it if he knew how closely you were following our investigation, Opgard.’

‘I promise not to tell.’

She laughed. ‘All the same, for the good of our working relationship, I think it’s best if I say you were inside the house for most of the time we were here.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said, zipping up my jacket. ‘It sounds anyway as if the case is cleared.’

She pressed her lips together as though to say we don’t answer questions like that, but at the same time blinked a ‘yes’ with both eyes.

‘How about a coffee?’ I asked.

I spotted a momentary confusion in her eyes.

‘Because it is cold,’ I said. ‘I can bring a pot out for you.’

‘Thanks, but we’ve got our own,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I said, turned, and left. I had the distinct feeling she was watching me. Not that she was necessarily interested, but of course you check out the arses you can. I thought of the hole in that zinc bucket and how close that bullet from the Dane had been to hitting me in the head. Professionally done, considering the car was in motion. And a good thing the drop had been so long there was no longer any front windscreen with a bullet hole in it to cause confusion about when and where Poul Hansen had fired that shot.

‘Well?’ said Carl, who was sitting at the kitchen table with Shannon.

‘I’ll say the same as Kurt Olsen,’ I answered, heading for the stove. ‘Oh yeah.’

60

AT THREE O’CLOCK IT STARTED to snow.

‘Look,’ said Shannon, staring out through the thin glass windows in the winter garden. ‘Everything is disappearing.’

Large, shaggy flakes of snow were drifting down to lie like a feathered quilt across the landscape, and she was right, a couple of hours later everything was gone.

‘I’m driving to Kristiansand this evening,’ I said. ‘It seems the holiday took a few people down there by surprise, and the work’s been piling up.’

‘Keep in touch,’ said Carl.

‘Yes, keep in touch,’ said Shannon.

Her foot touched mine beneath the chair.

It had temporarily stopped snowing as I left Opgard at seven o’clock. I thought I’d better fill up with petrol, turned in at the station and saw Julie disappearing through the new sliding doors. There was only one car parked on the old boy racer hangout, Alex’s souped-up Ford Granada. I pulled up beneath the bright lights of the pumps, stepped out and started to fill up. The Granada was just a few metres away and with the light from a nearby street lamp falling on the golden-brown bonnet and windscreen we could see each other clearly. He was alone in the car, Julie had gone inside to buy something, a pizza maybe. Then they’d go home and watch a film, that was the usual thing to do around here when you started going steady. Removed from circulation, as people say. He pretended he hadn’t seen me. Not until I hooked the pump nozzle inside the fuel cap opening and walked across. Then suddenly he was very busy, sitting up straight behind the wheel, pinched out a freshly lit cigarette so the sparks danced on the snow-free asphalt beneath the roof over the pumps. Started winding up his window. Maybe someone had told him he’d been lucky Roy Opgard hadn’t been in the mood for a fight on New Year’s Eve and mentioned a couple of stories from the old days at Årtun. His hand even crept up and locked the door on his side.

I stood next to his door and tapped on the glass with the knuckle of my index finger.

He wound the window down a couple of centimetres. ‘Yes?’

‘I’ve got a suggestion.’

‘Oh?’ said Alex and looked as if he reckoned what was coming was a suggestion for a rematch. And that would be a suggestion in which he had no interest at all.

‘Julie’s bound to have told you what happened before you came along on New Year’s Eve, and that you should apologise to me. But that isn’t so easy for a guy like you. I know, because I used to be that guy myself, and I’m not asking you to do this for my sake or for yours. But it’s important for Julie. You’re her fellah, and I’m the only boss she’s had who’s treated her decently.’

Alex gaped, and I realised that what I said was making sense to him.

‘For this to look right I’m going to go over and finish fuelling, slowly. And when Julie comes back, you get out of the car and walk over to me, and you and I set things straight so she sees it.’

He stared at me, his mouth half open. I don’t really know how smart Alex is, but when he did finally close his mouth I figured he’d realised that this would actually solve a couple of problems. In the first place, Julie would stop going on about how he wasn’t man enough to dare to apologise to Roy Opgard. In the second place, it would mean he could stop looking over his shoulder and waiting for me to have my revenge.

He nodded.

‘See you,’ I said, and returned to the Volvo. I positioned myself behind the pump so Julie didn’t see me when she re-emerged a minute later. I heard her get into the car, heard the door close. A few seconds later a car door opening. And then Alex was standing in front of me.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and held out his hand.

‘These things happen,’ I said. Over his shoulder I saw Julie staring at us, wide-eyed, from inside the car. ‘But, Alex?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Two things. Number one. Be kind to her. Number two. Don’t throw away lighted cigarettes when you’re parked this close to the pumps.’

He swallowed and nodded again. ‘I’ll pick it up,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll pick it up after you’ve gone. OK?’

‘OK,’ Alex said with his mouth. And then added a ‘thanks’ with his eyes.

Julie waved gaily to me as they drove by.

I got into my car and drove off. Slowly, the milder weather had made the roads more treacherous. Passed the county sign. I didn’t look in the mirror.