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.
We took out our weapons. Sure, there were more heavily armed gangs than ours, especially the breakaway gangs of former policemen or soldiers, or former cartel people who had crossed the border. But by comparison with the usual youth gangs we were a heavyweight militia; each one of us with an AK-47, Glock 17 pistol and combat knife. We’d run out of bazooka grenades but Brad and I had two hand grenades each.
Brad’s eyes glowed like those of a man in love. He could almost have been handsome. Maybe he was handsome when he slept. But there was something disturbing about his facial expression and his vibe when he was awake, a fear, as though expecting to be hit, as though he hated you even before you’d done it. And this cold, hard hatred and fear alternated so quickly with what was warm and kind and sensitive that it left you wondering what it must be like to be him from the inside. You really couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. And want to help him. And on that particular evening, with the moonlight falling on his long, dirty-blond hair, Brad looked like Kurt Somebody-or-other, a rock star whose records my adoptive dad used to play when he got drunk and started yelling that everybody should do like Kurt, write a couple of great songs and then shoot themselves. But he couldn’t create anything at all, my dad, so he just copied the shooting-himself part.
‘Ready, Yvonne?’ said Brad and looked at me.
The plan was for me to take Dumbo and ring the bell at the main entrance while the rest got in round the back. For what it was worth, I hadn’t really understood why we had to wake up a family that was probably sleeping instead of using the element of surprise, but Brad had said that the sight of a Columbian girl and an undersized and retarded lad would make them lower their guard, that that was the kind of people they were. Helpful types, he had called them, his voice filled with contempt.
I nodded, and Brad pulled the balaclava down over my face.
I rang the bell. Must have waited a minute before I saw the little light by the camera above the door go on.
‘Yes?’ said a drowsy man’s voice through the speaker.
‘My name’s Grace, I was in the same class as Amy,’ I said in a tearful voice. I’d got the names from Brad and the acting talent from a Columbian man and woman I never even knew. ‘This is my kid brother.’
‘What are you doing outside at night and how did you get in?’
‘We’ve been taking some food to my grandma, but now there’s a gang in the street down here and then I remembered Amy’s house. We climbed over the barbed wire. Look at Sergio.’
I pointed to the tears we had made in Dumbo’s shirt — although it should have been obvious he hadn’t a drop of Latin blood in his veins.
There was a pause. He was probably thinking. It wasn’t that unusual to transport food and other stuff between households under cover of darkness.
‘Just a moment,’ he said.
I listened. Footsteps on the stairs inside, sounded like an adult male.
The door opened. Slightly at first, then all the way.
‘Come in, I’m Will. Amy’s father.’
The man had blue eyes with laugh lines around them, a goatee beard and curly red hair that made him look younger than I guessed he was. Brad was probably right. The types that help people. He was barefoot but had pulled on a pair of worn jeans and a T-shirt with a name on it, probably the university where he was a student. I slipped inside so that I was behind him as he held the door open for Dumbo. Took out my gun and swung the barrel hard against the side of his head. Not to harm him or knock him out — because as tall as I am a kick from my heel to his head would have done the job — but to show him that the girl and the little guy were willing to use violence.
He shouted something and held his hand to the bleeding wound on his forehead. I pointed the gun at him.
‘Don’t harm my family,’ he said. ‘Take whatever you want, but don’t—’
‘If you do exactly as we say no one in the house will get hurt,’ I said. And thought I was telling the truth.
IV
Blood ran from the wound in my forehead and down onto my T-shirt as they took me out to the garage and tied me to a chair, which they then tied to the lathe. The girl who said she was a classmate of Amy’s — and for all I knew she might have been — examined the diesel generator. It’s on wheels, but it weighs 150 kilos, so she was probably trying to figure out how she could take it with them.
My own thoughts were of what Heidi would do now. She’d been woken by the doorbell too and must have realised what had happened. Had she managed to get Amy and Sam to safety in the basement? To what we called the panic room, but which was actually a windowless cellar with stone walls, a solid door that could be locked from the inside, and enough food and water for a week. If the tall girl with the dark hair was as rational as she seemed then they would take just what they needed and could carry and get out of here. The boy with her hadn’t said a word, just obeyed the slightest sign from her, and he seemed too harmless to be the type to enjoy hurting people.
It was when I heard Heidi’s scream from another part of the house that I realised there were more of them.
‘You said—’ I began.
‘Shut up,’ said the girl, and hit me again with the pistol.
The boy looked up at her but she said nothing, just looked at me. It was a look that seemed apologetic.
And then a guy in a white ice-hockey helmet was standing in the garage doorway. The Justitia logo was painted on the front of the helmet.
‘He wants you to come in,’ he said. There was a repressed laughter in his voice.
Who was he? The leader, presumably.
The kid and the girl disappeared and the guy stood in front of me. He was holding a Russian automatic weapon, the type suddenly everyone seems to have, said to be very reliable. A Kalashnikov. In some countries it’s part of the national flag, they see it as a symbol in the fight for freedom. But it just makes me shiver. That curved magazine, there’s something perverse about it.
‘I’ll pay you five thousand if you let me and my family go,’ I said.
‘Which I’ll spend where?’ asked the guy, laughing. ‘7-Eleven maybe?’
‘I can give you—’
‘You don’t need to give me anything, Gramps. I take what I want.’
He took down my old motorcycle helmet from a shelf. Took off the hockey helmet and tried it on. Raised and lowered the visor a couple of times. Seemed satisfied, took off the rucksack he was wearing on his back and pushed the helmet down into it.
I heard screams from inside the house again and couldn’t breathe. I was the idiot who had opened the door and let Leviathan in. I didn’t want to breathe, I wanted to die. But I couldn’t die, not now — they needed me. I had to free myself. I tugged on the plastic strips the girl had used to tie me to the chair, felt the skin break and the warm sticky blood running down into my palms.
Heidi screamed again, so loud that I could make out a word. Just the one word. ‘No.’ Like a desperate and hopeless protest against something she knew was going to happen.
The guy looked at me, put his hand around the barrel of the Kalashnikov and moved it up and down as though masturbating. He grinned at me.