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.
‘She...’ he began.
It took him two long seconds, time enough for me to start shaking like a leaf on a tree, before he was able to continue:
‘She isn’t here. We let her go as soon as we left Downtown. Didn’t she turn up?’
I don’t know whether it was because he had inherited his father’s repertoire of facial expressions, but I knew he was lying.
I hit him with my gun. And again. Apparently. Because by the time Downing stopped me and I was in control of myself again Brad’s face was a grotesque bloody mask beneath me.
‘She’s dead,’ I said.
‘You don’t know that.’
I closed my eyes. ‘He wouldn’t have lied if she wasn’t dead.’
I climbed on my motorcycle that was standing beneath the large garage overhang. From where I sat I could see across the lawn and into Brad’s room and the dancing light beam of a torch.
They’d got him.
I was about to start the engine. I would have been out of there in seconds flat, but a thought stopped me. The thought of leaving Dumbo, just abandoning him. I glanced at the room he shared with Herbert, the only Black guy in the gang. The light was on inside. Maybe they hadn’t reached them yet. I climbed back off the bike and sprinted across the lawn and over to their window. Stretched up on tiptoes and peered in. Dumbo was sitting on the bed in his underpants and T-shirt, feet dangling as he stared at the door. Herbert was nowhere in sight. I tapped on the glass and Dumbo jumped, but when he saw my face pressed against the windowpane he smiled.
He opened the window. ‘Herbert went out to see what’s going on,’ he said. ‘Do you know—’
‘Put your shoes on!’ I whispered. ‘We’re getting out of here!’
‘But—’
‘Now!’
Dumbo disappeared.
I saw him fiddling with his shoelaces as I counted the seconds. I should have got him shoes with Velcro.
‘Freeze,’ I heard a voice say right behind me.
I turned round. A bald-headed man holding a rifle with telescopic sights was standing there. I continued to turn.
‘Didn’t you hear—’ he began to say, then dropped the rifle and stopped speaking and breathing after my kick hit him between the legs. I saw him collapse to the ground, then turned back to the window. Dumbo was standing on the ledge.
‘Jump!’ I said.
I took his fall, but he was so heavy we both tumbled over onto the grass. Then we were on our feet and he was running after me towards the bikes.
I’d heard Fatman’s voice outside the window and looked out.
A long-legged girl and a small, bow-legged boy were running across the lawn. It was them. I was certain of it. Everything about them — faces, bodies, their way of moving — was etched fast in my memory from when I sat tied up in the garage. They reached the motorcycles and the girl sat on one of them while the boy climbed up behind her. She fiddled about in her pockets looking for something, keys probably. I saw a red dot dancing on the white T-shirt under her jacket.
Laser.
I opened the window. Fatman was lying on the lawn below, the butt of the rifle to his cheek.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I shouted. ‘We’re not killers.’
‘Shut up,’ he grunted without looking up.
‘That’s an order!’
‘Sorry, but this is my bad guy.’
‘If you shoot, so will I,’ I said. Quietly. That was probably why he stopped and looked up. Saw the pistol pointing at him. Stared as we heard the roar of the motorbike rise, fall and then disappear as it went through the gate and headed down towards the valley.
I lowered the pistol. I don’t know why, but a small part of me had wanted him to shoot them. Because then I could have shot him.
‘The helicopter will be here in four minutes!’ shouts the lieutenant. ‘Everyone who’s boarding, get ready now!’
I only half hear him. Because standing here on the roof of the skyscraper and waiting to say goodbye I’m thinking now about something else: that I had wanted to shoot someone. That I had wanted circumstances to give me an excuse to become a person I don’t believe myself to be. That perhaps I no longer know who I am. I look at the lucky ones, standing there listening out for the helicopter. I look for signs of guilty conscience among them. I don’t see any.
We were all gathered in the living room as Downing and Larsen cleared the rest of the house.
We had one man badly wounded, they had one dead — the sentry — and four wounded.
‘We’ve got to get him to hospital,’ said Chung, meaning the man who had been wounded by the shots through the door.
‘No way. That was the agreement,’ said Fatman, who seemed to be suffering discomfort in his groin.
‘But—’ said Chung.
‘Forget it. We don’t want the police breathing down our necks,’ said Fatman with finality.
‘Drive him to hospital,’ I said.
Fatman turned towards me, his face flushed with anger. ‘Says you, yeah, who let one of the bastards escape.’
‘There was no reason to kill her, she was running away.’
‘We’re here to exact punishment, Adams. You’re just here to find your daughter, and you’re using us to help you do it. Fair enough, but don’t go playing the Good Samaritan at our expense. Try telling Simon here that that girl didn’t deserve a bullet.’
I looked at Simon. A chubby, softly spoken chef with kind eyes and an infectious laugh. Yes, we’d had laughs together too. Simon and his family had been visited by a gang with dead Justitia on their helmets. They’d launched grenades from a bazooka and within seconds the house had turned into a blazing inferno. His wife and son were still in hospital, so badly burned no one could tell him whether or not they would survive.
‘What d’you think, Simon?’ I said. ‘Should I have let him kill her?’
Simon looked at me for a long time. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last.
‘Will you help Chung get Ruben to the hospital?’ I asked.
He nodded.
Downing and Larsen came in.
‘Find anything?’ asked Fatman.
They didn’t answer. They couldn’t look me in the eye, and whatever slender hope I might still have been clinging to vanished.
Amy was in the basement, lying on a filthy mattress in a locked room. Not to stop her running away, but to hide the body. I stared at her. My heart was switched off. My brain simply registered what I saw. Unless something else had killed her first, the cause of death was obvious. Her forehead had been smashed in.
I went down the basement corridor where Larsen and Downing stood waiting.
‘We’ll interrogate them,’ I said, nodding up at the ceiling and the next floor above where the gang members were, sitting on the floor of the room, their hands strip-tied.
‘You don’t think first we should—’ Larsen began to say.
‘No,’ I interrupted. ‘Let’s get started.’
The question of guilt was soon established. We used an old trick, simple but effective. In my professional capacity as a lawyer I had often criticised the police for using it.
We placed the gang members in separate rooms, left them there for a while before two of us went in and pretended we had already spoken to the others. I did the talking, and my opening was the same every time:
‘I’m not saying who, but one of your gang has just identified you as the person who killed my daughter Amy. I’m sure you can guess who that is. I will shoot you, personally and with great pleasure, unless you can persuade me within the next five minutes that it was someone else.’