Midnight Sun (21 page)

Now I understood. After the prayer meeting in the hall, when he asked if I was thinking of taking Lea away from there with me . . . he hadn't meant it as a threat. It had been a plea.

‘Besides . . .' He patted my knee. ‘You're dead, aren't you, Ulf? I've had my instructions from Lea. You were a lonely, depressed soul who set fire to the hunting cabin before lying down on the bed and shooting yourself in the head with the rifle. The charred corpse will bear a metal dog tag with your name on it, and both I and Ove Eliassen will swear to the police that you were missing one of your front teeth. I shall inform whatever family you may have, explain that you had expressed a wish to be buried here, sort out the paperwork, talk to the vicar and get your remains in the ground quickly and efficiently. Any particular hymns you'd like?'

I turned to look at him. Saw one of his gold teeth flash in the half-light.

‘I'll be the only person here who knows the truth,' the old man said. ‘And even I don't know where you're going. And I don't want to know either. But I hope to see Lea and Knut again some day.' He stood up with creaking knees.

I got to my feet and held my hand out to him. ‘Thank you.'

‘I should be thanking you,' he said. ‘Because you've given me the chance to make good at least some of what I did to my daughter. The peace of God, farewell, and may all His angels go with you on your journey.'

I followed him with my eyes as he left. Felt a gust of cold air as the door opened and closed again.

I waited. Looked at the time. Lea was taking longer than I had anticipated. I hoped she hadn't run into any trouble. Or changed her mind. Or . . .

I heard the stuttering sound of a forty-horsepower engine outside. The Volkswagen. I was about to head towards the door of the church when it flew open and three people came in.

‘Stay where you are!' a voice roared. ‘This won't take long.'

The man rolled quickly up between the pews. Knut was following him, but it was Lea who caught my eye. She was dressed in white. Was that her wedding dress?

Mattis stopped in front of the altar. Put on a pair of comically small glasses and leafed through some papers he pulled from the pocket of his anorak. Knut jumped up onto my back.

‘There's something on my back!' I said, twisting and turning.

‘Yep,
rikishi
Knut-
san
from Finnmark
ken
!' Knut squealed as he clung on tight.

Lea walked up beside me and put her hand under my arm.

‘I thought it was best to get it sorted out straight away,' she whispered. ‘Practical.'

‘Practical,' I repeated.

‘Let's get straight to the important bit,' Mattis said, then cleared his throat and held the papers close to his face. ‘In the sight of God the Creator, and with the authority vested in me as a representative of the Norwegian judiciary, forgive me asking, but do you, Ulf Hansen, take Lea Sara to be your lawfully wedded wife?'

‘Yes,' I said loudly and clearly. Lea squeezed my hand.

‘Will you love and honour her, be faithful to her –' he leafed through the documents – ‘in sickness and in health?'

‘Yes.'

‘Now I ask you, Lea Sara, will you—?'

‘Yes!'

Mattis looked up over his glasses. ‘What?'

‘Yes, I take Ulf Hansen to be my lawfully wedded husband, and I promise to love and honour and be faithful to him until death us do part. Which won't be long unless we get a move on.'

‘Of course, of course,' Mattis said, and looked through his papers. ‘Let's see, let's . . . here it is! Take each other's hands. Ah, I see you've already done that. In that case . . . right! In the sight of God – and me, as representative of the Norwegian authorities – you have promised . . . lots of things. And you have each given your hand to the other. I therefore declare you to be legally married.'

Lea looked up at me. ‘Let go now, Knut.'

Knut let go, slid down off my back and landed on the floor behind me. Then Lea kissed me quickly and turned back to Mattis again. ‘Thanks. Can you sign the papers?'

‘Of course,' Mattis said. He clicked the back of a ballpoint pen against his chest, put his name on one of the papers and handed it to her. ‘That's an official document and ought to be valid wherever you go.'

‘Will it work as a way of getting new ID papers?' I asked.

‘Your date of birth is here, here are our signatures, and your wife can confirm your identity as Ulf Hansen, so yes, it ought to be enough to get at least a temporary passport from a Norwegian embassy.'

‘That's all we need.'

‘Where are you going?'

We looked at him in silence.

‘Of course,' he muttered, and shook his head. ‘Good luck.'

And that was how we came to walk out of church in the middle of the night as a married couple. I was married. And, if Grandfather was right, the first time is always the worst. Now we just had to jump in the Volkswagen and get out of KÃ¥sund before anyone woke up and saw us. But we stopped on the steps and looked up in astonishment.

‘Confetti!' I said. ‘That's all that was missing.'

‘It's snowing!' Knut cried.

Big, fluffy flakes of snow drifted slowly down from the sky and settled on Lea's black hair. She laughed out loud. Then we ran down the steps and over to the car, and got in.

Lea turned the key in the ignition, the engine started, she let out the clutch and we were on our way.

‘Where are we going?' Knut asked from the back seat.

‘Top secret,' I said. ‘All I can say is that it's the capital of a country where we don't need passports to cross the border.'

‘What are we going there for?'

‘We're going to live there. Try to get jobs. And play.'

‘What are we going to play?'

‘A lot of things. Secret hiding, for instance. By the way, I've thought of a joke. How do you fit five elephants into a Volkswagen?'

‘Five . . .' he muttered to himself. Then he leaned forward between the seats. ‘Tell me!'

‘Two in the front and three in the back.'

A moment's silence. Then he fell back into his seat and let out a loud laugh.

‘Well?' I said.

‘You're getting better, Ulf. But that wasn't a joke.'

‘No?'

‘That was a riddle.'

He fell asleep before we left the county of Finnmark.

It was day by the time we passed the Swedish border. The monotonous landscape slowly changed, taking on more colour and variety. The mountains were covered by a scattering of snowy icing sugar. Lea hummed a song she'd only recently learned.

‘There's a hotel just outside Östersund,' I said, leafing through the gazetteer I had found in the glove compartment. ‘It looks nice, we can get a couple of rooms there.'

‘Our wedding night,' she said.

‘What about it?'

‘That'll be tonight, won't it?'

I thought. ‘Yes, I suppose it will. Look, we've got loads of time, we don't need to rush anything.'

‘I don't know what
you
need, dear husband,' she said in a low voice, checking in the mirror that Knut was still asleep. ‘But you know what they say about Læstadians and wedding nights.'

‘No?'

She didn't answer. Just sat there steering our car and following the road with an inscrutable smile on her red lips. Because I think she knew what I needed. I think she knew from the moment she asked the question that night in the cabin, the one I didn't answer: what was the first thing I thought of was when she said I was fire and she air. Because, as Knut would say, everyone knows the answer to that riddle.

Fire needs air to exist.

Damn, she's so beautiful.

So how do we end this story?

I don't know. But I'm going to stop telling it here.

Because right here is good. Maybe things will happen later that aren't quite so good. But I don't know that yet. I just know that right here and now everything is perfect, that right now I am in a place where I have always wanted to be. On my way, but already there.

I'm ready.

Daring to lose, one more time.

With thanks to Øyvind Eggen for allowing the quotation of his work.

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Copyright © Jo Nesbo 2015

English translation copyright Neil Smith © 2015

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First published by Harvill Secker in 2015

First published in Norway by Aschehoug in 2015 as
Mere blod

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