The Jealousy Man and Other Stories
- Автор: Несбё Ю
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Alfred A. Knopf
- ISBN: 978-0-593-32100-3
- Переводчик: Robert Ferguson
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Jealousy Man and Other Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin; a bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society; a garbage man fresh off a bender tries to piece together what happened the night before; a hired assassin matches wits against his greatest adversary in a dangerous game for survival; and an instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or something more sinister.
With Nesbø’s characteristic gift for outstanding atmosphere and gut-wrenching revelations, The Jealousy Man confirms that he is at the peak of his abilities.
‘Snake hunt,’ said his father at breakfast.
‘Fantastic,’ replied Ken.
Ken had tried to show an interest, he really had. For twenty-six days he’d sat up straight in his seat as his father lectured him. About everything you should and shouldn’t do when dealing with snakes, about which snakes produced which venom, the mortality rates associated with each one and the various symptoms. This last thing was important if one didn’t know the type of snake the patient had been bitten by and had to be able to choose the right kind of serum among the forty that were kept on the farm. But if Ken were being honest — something he tried as far as possible to avoid — the poisons, the serums and the symptoms all got jumbled up into one big litany of terrible ways in which to die. Though at least he’d understood that the test tubes of serum had codes and blue caps, and the ones containing the poisons codes and red caps. Or was that the other way round?
When Ken’s concentration failed, when his thoughts drifted off and his pen ceased to take notes, then his father would just glower at him.
After breakfast they drove for thirty minutes along something that was vaguely reminiscent of a road, passing variously from thick green scrubland to mudholes half a metre deep and through a desiccated and yellowish lunar landscape. At a certain point, that seemed to Ken to be quite arbitrarily chosen, his father stopped, jumped out and retrieved three cloth sacks and a long pole with a metal loop at the end.
‘Put these on.’ His father tossed a pair of swimming goggles to him.
Ken gave him a baffled look.
‘Spitting cobra. Nerve poison. Can hit you in the eye from eight metres away.’
Then they started searching. Not along the ground but up in the trees.
‘Pay attention to the birds,’ said his father. ‘If you hear them screeching or see them hopping from branch to branch you can be pretty sure there’s a boomslang or a green mamba close by.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Shh! Hear those clicking sounds? Those are polecats, hunting. Come on!’
His father ran in the direction of the sounds with Ken reluctantly trailing along behind him. Suddenly he stopped and signalled for Ken to come closer and be careful. And there — on a large flat rock — sure enough, a long black brute of a thing lay basking in the sun. Ken guessed it must be at least two metres and, maybe, thirteen centimetres long. He wished he could have placed a bet on it. His father made his way stealthily around the rock until he was directly behind it, lifted the pole up high and looped the wire carefully down over the snake’s small, distinctive head. Then he tightened it. The snake gave a jerk and opened its jaws wide as though yawning in some incredibly dangerous way. Ken stared in fascination down into the pink gullet and was at once reminded of Hilda Bronkenhorst.
‘Can you see how the poison fangs are located at the front of the mouth?’ his father shouted enthusiastically.
‘Yes?’
‘So then what do we have here?’
‘Please, Father, let’s just get this over with first. It’s making me nervous.’
He dropped the snake into the sack that Ken was holding open.
‘Black mambo,’ said his father, shading his eyes as he peered up into the trees.
Whatever, Ken thought, and shivered as he felt the snake wriggling about inside.
After half an hour in the baking sunlight Ken allowed himself a smoke break. He leaned up against one of those trees his father had tried to teach him the names of, and he thought of the rifle in the car, that this was probably about as good a time as any, when he heard his father’s scream. It wasn’t really much of a scream, more a short bark, but Ken knew at once what had happened. Maybe because he’d dreamed about it, thought about it or just unconsciously hoped it would happen. He stubbed out his cigarette against the tree trunk. If he was lucky this might turn out to save him a whole lot of bother. He shaded his eyes, and there, over by the riverbank, he saw his father’s back, bent over in the waist-high, stiff grass.
‘Dammit, Ken! I’ve been bitten and I didn’t see what kind of snake it was. Help me look for him!’
‘On my way!’
His father hesitated a moment, perhaps taken aback by the tone of his son’s voice.
Ken remembered his father saying that if you couldn’t identify the snake and were left to make a choice between the forty different antidotes there was no use in trying to cover every option by injecting all of them; do that, and the antidotes would kill you quicker and more certainly than the poison. He also remembered something his father said about moving your feet quietly when you were out hunting snakes, that they leave as soon as they pick up the vibrations through the ground. Ken put his feet down as heavily as he could.
‘Got it!’ his father shouted as he dived down into the grass. Another of his lessons: the risk of being bitten a second time is less than not knowing what it was that bit you the first time.
Ken swore inwardly.
Poor bastard, thought Ken as he saw his father swinging the sack over and over again against the nearest tree trunk. And he wasn’t thinking of the snake or of his father. The image of the guy in his doorway in the suit and with the baseball bat had appeared on his retinas again. As usual, Ken Abbott was thinking of Ken Abbott.
His father slumped to the ground by the tree trunk as Ken approached. His skin was red and his breath came in hoarse gasps.
‘Find out which one it was,’ he whispered as he tossed the sack over towards Ken. The cloud of dust whirled up from the ground made Ken cough. He opened the sack and gingerly poked his hand inside.
‘Don’t...’ was all his father had time to say.
Ken felt the rough, dry fish skin against the palm of his hand. Over the past few weeks he’d touched more of them than he cared to think about. This one hadn’t been any different. Not until he realised that the movement he had felt beneath the scales was muscular and that the animal wasn’t dead. Not even close to dead. He screamed, more out of fear than pain, as he felt the fangs penetrate the skin of his arm. He pulled his arm away quickly and saw the two circular puncture marks just below his elbow and screamed again. Then he put his arm to his mouth lightning quick and began feverishly to suck at the holes.
‘Cut it out.’ His father’s voice was weak and despairing. ‘That only works in Westerns, I told you that.’
‘Yes but—’
‘And the other thing I told you was never to stick your hand down into a sack of snakes whether you think they’re dead or not. You turn the sack upside down and empty it, being careful about your legs. Always.’
‘Always’ and ‘never’ in the same didactic utterance. No wonder Ken hadn’t registered it.
‘Empty the sack.’
The snake fell to the ground with a soft thud and coiled itself, paralysed by the sunlight.
‘What do you think, Ken? A Cape cobra?’
Ken didn’t reply, just stared wide-eyed at the snake.
‘Sandslang? Gabon viper?’
The supersensitive tongue slid out of its mouth, absorbing tastes and smells in a way that gave it — at least, according to one of his father’s lectures — a complete picture of its surroundings within a single second.