The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

by Jo Nesbo, Robert Ferguson

Genres: Mystery Anthologies & Collections; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Cockroaches and “the greatest contemporary writer of the thriller” (The New York Times)—a dark and chilling short story collection that takes us on a journey of twisted minds and vengeful hearts.

Jo Nesbø is known the world over as a consummate mystery/thriller writer. Famed for his deft characterization, hair-raising suspense and shocking twists, Nesbø’s dexterity with the dark corners of the human heart is on full display in these inventive and enthralling stories.

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.

Don't miss Jo Nesbo's new thriller, Killing Moon, coming soon!

Release date: October 5, 2021

Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

Print pages: 528

Sample

LONDON

i’m not afraid of flying. The chances of dying in a plane crash for the average frequent flyer are one in eleven million. To put it another way: your chances of dying of a heart attack in your seat are eight times higher.

I waited until the plane took off and levelled out before leaning to one side and in a low and hopefully reassuring voice passed this statistic on to the sobbing, shaking woman in the window seat.

‘But of course, statistics don’t mean much when you’re afraid,’ I added. ‘I say this because I know exactly how you feel.’

You – who until now had been staring fixedly out of the window – turned slowly and looked at me – as though you had only now discovered someone was sitting in the seat next to yours. The thing about business class is that the extra centimetres between the seats mean that with a slight effort of concentration it’s possible to persuade yourself that you are alone. And there is a common understanding between business-class passengers that one should not break this illusion by exchanging anything beyond brief courtesies and any practical matters that have to be dealt with (‘Is it OK if I pull down the blind?’). And since the extra space in the footwells makes it possible to pass each other if needing to use the toilet, the overhead lockers and so on without requiring a coordinated operation, it is, in practice, quite possible to ignore one another completely, even on a flight that lasts half a day.

From the expression on your face I gathered that you were mildly surprised at my having broken the first rule of travelling business class. Something about the effortless elegance of your outfit – trousers and a pullover in colours which I wasn’t completely convinced were matching but which do so nevertheless, I guess because of the person who is wearing them – told me that it was quite a while since you had travelled economy class, if indeed you had ever done so. And yet you had been crying, so wasn’t it actually you who had broken through that implied wall? On the other hand, you had done your crying turned away from me, clearly showing that this wasn’t something you wanted to share with your fellow passengers.

Well, not to have offered a few words of comfort would have been bordering on the cold, so I could only hope that you would understand the dilemma facing me.

Your face was pale and tear-stained, but still remarkable, with a kind of elvish beauty. Or was it actually the pallor and the tear stains that made you so beautiful? I have always had a weakness for the vulnerable and sensitive. I offered you the serviette the stewardess had placed under our tumblers of water before take-off.

‘Thank you,’ you said, taking the serviette. You managed a smile and pressed the serviette against the mascara running down under one eye. ‘But I don’t believe it.’ Then you turned back to the window, pressed your forehead against the Plexiglas as though to hide yourself, and again the sobs shook your body. You don’t believe what? That I know how you’re feeling? Whatever, I had done my bit and from here on, of course, made up my mind to leave you in peace. I intended to watch half a film and then try to sleep, even though I reckoned I would get an hour at most, I rarely manage to sleep, no matter how long the flight, and especially when I know I need to sleep. I would be spending only six hours in London, and then it was back to New York.

The Fasten your seat belt light went off and a stewardess came up, refreshed the empty glasses that stood on the broad, solid armrest between us. Before take-off the captain had informed us that tonight’s flight from New York to London would take five hours and ten minutes. Some of those around us had already lowered their seatbacks and wrapped blankets around themselves, others sat with faces lit by the video screens in front of them and waited for their meal. Both I and the woman next to me had said no thanks when the stewardess came round with the menu before take-off. I had been pleased to find a film in the Classics section – Strangers on a Train – and was about to put my headphones on when I heard your voice:

‘It’s my husband.’

Still holding the headphones in my hands I turned to her.

The mascara had stopped running and now outlined your eyes like stage make-up. ‘He’s cheating on me with my best friend.’

I don’t know whether you realised yourself that it was strange to be still referring to this person as your best friend, but I couldn’t see that it was any of my business to point it out to you.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said instead. ‘I didn’t intend to pry…’

‘Don’t apologise, it’s nice when someone cares. Far too few do. We’re so terrified of anything upsetting and sad.’

‘You’re right there,’ I said, unsure whether to put the headphones aside or not.

‘I expect they’re in bed with each other right now,’ you said. ‘Robert’s always horny. And Melissa too. They’re fucking each other between my silk sheets right at this very moment.’

My brain at once conjured up a picture of a married couple in their thirties. He earned the money, a lot of money, and you got to choose the bedlinen. Our brains are expert at formulating stereotypes. Now and then they’re wrong. Now and then they’re right.

‘That must be terrible,’ I said, trying not to sound too dramatic.

‘I just want to die,’ you said. ‘So you’re mistaken about the plane. I hope it does crash.’

‘But I’ve got so much still left to do,’ I said, putting a worried look on my face.

For a moment you just stared at me. Maybe it was a bad joke, or at the very least bad timing, and under the circumstances maybe too flippant. After all, you had just said you wanted to die, and had even given me a credible reason for saying it. The joke could be taken either as inappropriate and insensitive or as a liberating distraction from the undeniable bleakness of the moment. Comic relief, as people call it. At least when it works. Whatever, I regretted the remark, and was actually holding my breath. And then you smiled. Just a tiny wavelet on a slushy puddle, gone in the same instant; but I breathed out again.

‘Relax,’ you said quietly. ‘I’m the only one who’s going to die.’

I looked quizzically at you, but you avoided my eyes, instead looked past me and into the cabin.

‘There’s a baby over there on the second row,’ you said. ‘A baby in business class that might be crying all night; what d’you think of that?’

‘What is there to think?’

‘You could say that the parents should understand that people who have paid extra to sit here do so because they need the sleep. Maybe they’re going straight to work, or they have a meeting first thing in the morning.’

‘Well, maybe. But as long as the airline doesn’t ban babies in business class then you can’t really expect parents not to take advantage.’

‘Then the airline should be punished for tricking us.’ You dabbed carefully under the other eye, having exchanged the serviette I had handed you for a Kleenex of your own. ‘The business-class adverts show pictures of the passengers blissfully sleeping.’

‘In the long run the company’ll get its just deserts. We don’t like paying for something we don’t get.’

‘But why do they do it?’

‘The parents or the airline?’

‘I understand the parents do it because they’ve got more money than they have shame. But surely the airline has to be losing money if their business-class offer is being degraded?’

‘But it’ll also damage their reputation if they get publicly shamed for not being child-friendly.’

‘The child doesn’t give a damn if it’s crying in business or economy class.’

‘You’re right, I meant for not being parent-of-small-child-friendly.’ I smiled. ‘The airlines are probably worried it’ll look like a kind of apartheid. Of course, the problem could be solved if anyone crying in the business section was made to sit in the economy section and had to give up their seat to a smiling, easy-going person with a cheap ticket.’

Your laughter was soft and attractive, and this time it got as far as your eyes. It’s easy to think – and I did think – that it’s incomprehensible how anyone could be unfaithful to a woman as beautiful as you, but that’s how it is: it isn’t about external beauty. Nor inner beauty either.

‘What line of work are you in?’ you asked.

‘I’m a psychologist and researcher.’

‘And what are you researching?’

‘People.’

‘Of course. And what are your findings?’

‘That Freud was right.’

‘About what?’

‘That people, with just a few exceptions, are pretty much worthless.’

You laughed. ‘Amen to that, Mr…’

‘Call me Shaun.’

‘Maria. But you don’t really believe that, Shaun, do you?’

‘That with a few exceptions people are worthless? Why shouldn’t I believe that?’

‘You’ve shown that you’re compassionate, and to a genuine misanthropist compassion means nothing.’

‘I see. So why should I lie about it?’

‘For the same reason, because you’re a compassionate person. You play up to me discreetly by claiming to be afraid of flying, same as me. When I tell you I’m being betrayed you comfort me by telling me how the world is full of bad people.’

‘Wow. And I thought I was supposed to be the psychologist here.’

‘See, even your choice of career betrays you. You might as well just admit it, you’re the best proof against your own proposition. You’re a worthwhile person.’

‘I wish that were the case, Maria, but I’m afraid my apparent compassion is merely the result of a bourgeois English upbringing, and that I’m not worth much to anyone other than myself.’

You turned your body a couple of almost imperceptible degrees closer to me. ‘Then it’s your upbringing that gives you worth, Shaun. So what? It’s what you do, not what you think and feel, that gives you value.’

‘I think you’re exaggerating. My upbringing means only that I don’t like to break the rules for what is considered acceptable behaviour, I don’t make any genuine sacrifices. I adapt, and I avoid unpleasantness.’

‘Well, at least as a psychologist you have value.’

‘I’m a disappointment there too, I’m afraid. I’m not intelligent or industrious enough ever to discover a cure for schizophrenia. If the plane went down now all the world would lose would be a rather boring article on confirmation bias in a scientific periodical read by a handful of psychologists, that’s all.’

‘Are you being coy?’

‘Yes, I’m coy too. That’s another of my vices.’

By now you were laughing brightly. ‘Not even your wife and children would miss you if you disappeared?’

‘No,’ I answered abruptly. Since I had the aisle seat I couldn’t just end the conversation by turning to the window and pretending to have spotted something interesting in the dead of the night down there in the Atlantic. To pull the magazine out of the seat pocket in front of me would seem too obvious.

‘Sorry,’ you said quietly.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘What did you mean when you said you were going to die?’

Our eyes met and for the first time we saw each other. And though this might be with the benefit of hindsight, I think we both caught a glimpse of something that told us, even then, that this was a meeting that just might change everything. Indeed, that had already changed everything. Perhaps you were thinking that too but then were distracted as you leaned over the armrest towards me and noticed how I stiffened.

The scent of your perfume had made me think of her. That it was her smell, that she had come back. So you leaned back in your seat and looked at me.

‘I’m going to kill myself,’ you whispered.

Then you leaned back in your seat and studied me.

I don’t know what my face expressed, but I knew you weren’t lying.

‘How do you propose to do it?’ was all I could think to say.

‘Shall I tell you?’ you asked with an impenetrable, almost amused smile.

I thought about it. Did I want to know?

‘Anyway it’s not really true,’ you said. ‘In the first place, I’m not going to kill myself, I’ve already done it. And in the second place, it’s not me who’s killing myself, it’s them.’

‘Them?’

‘Yes. I signed the agreement about…’ You looked at your watch, a Cartier. I guessed it was a present from this Robert. Before or after he was unfaithful? After. This Melissa wasn’t the first, he’d been unfaithful from the beginning. ‘…four hours ago.’

‘Them?’ I repeated.

‘The suicide agency.’

‘You mean…like in Switzerland? As in, assisted suicide?’

‘Yes, only with more assistance. The difference is that they kill you in such a way that it doesn’t look like suicide.’

‘Really?’

‘You look as if you don’t believe me.’

‘I…oh yes, yes I do. I’m just very surprised.’

‘I can understand that. And this has to be just between us, because there’s a confidentiality clause in the contract, so I’m not actually supposed to talk to anyone about it. It’s just…’ You smiled, at the same time as the tears welled up in your eyes again. ‘…so intolerably lonely. And you are a stranger. And a psychologist. You’re pledged to confidentiality, right?’

I coughed. ‘In regard to patients, yes.’

‘Well then, I’m your patient. I can see you have a vacant appointment right now. What is your fee, doctor?’

‘I’m afraid we can’t do it like that, Maria.’

‘Of course not, that would be against the rules of the profession. But surely you can just listen as a private individual?’

‘You must understand that it presents ethical problems for me as a psychologist if someone with suicidal tendencies confides in me without my doing anything about it.’

‘You don’t understand. It’s too late to do anything about it, I am already dead.’

‘You’re dead?’

‘The contract is non-reversible, I will be killed within three weeks. They explain to you in advance, that once you’ve signed your name to the contract, there is no panic button, that if they allowed that it might create all kinds of legal complications afterwards. You’re sitting next to a corpse, Shaun.’ She laughed, but now her laughter was hard and bitter. ‘Surely you can have a drink with me and listen for a while?’ You raised a long, slender arm to the service button and its sonar ping rang through the darkness of the cabin.

‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘But I am not going to give you any advice.’

‘Fine. And you promise not to talk about it later, even after I’m dead?’

‘I promise,’ I said. ‘Although I can’t see what difference it would make to you.’

‘Oh it would. If I break the confidentiality clause in the contract they can sue my estate for a fortune, and that would leave almost nothing for the organisation I’m leaving the money to.’

‘How can I help?’ asked the stewardess who had soundlessly materialised beside us. You leaned across me and ordered gin and tonics for both of us. The neck of your pullover fell forward slightly, and I saw the naked, pale skin and realised that you did not have her smell. Your smell was faintly sweet, aromatic, like petrol. Yes, petrol. And a kind of tree the name of which I could not recall. It was an almost masculine smell.

After the stewardess had turned off the service light and disappeared, you kicked off your shoes and stretched out a pair of narrow, nylon-clad ankles that made me think of the ballet.

‘The suicide agency has very impressive offices in Manhattan,’ you said. ‘It’s a law firm, they claim that everything is legal and above board, and I don’t doubt it. For example, they won’t take the life of anyone who is mentally disturbed. You have to submit to a thorough psychiatric examination before signing the contract. And you also have to cancel any insurance policies you might have so that they can’t be sued by insurance companies. There are a lot of other conditional clauses too, but the most important is the confidentiality clause. In the USA the rights of two adult parties voluntarily to enter into an agreement go further than in most other countries; but if their practice became known, and there was publicity, they are, of course, afraid that the response would lead politicians to put a stop to them anyway. They don’t advertise their services, their clients are exclusively wealthy people who learn of their existence word-of-mouth.’

‘Well then, yes, I can see why they would want to keep a low profile.’

‘And their clients obviously require discretion; there’s something shameful about suicide, after all. Like abortion. Abortion clinics don’t operate illegally, but they don’t exactly advertise their business over the main entrance.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And of course, discretion and shame are what lie behind the whole business concept. Their clients are willing to pay large sums of money to be eliminated in a way that is physically and psychologically as pleasant and unexpected as possible. But the most important thing of all is that it happens in such a way that neither family, friends nor the world at large have any reason at all to suspect suicide.’

‘And how do they manage that?’

‘We’re never told, of course. Only that there are countless ways, and that it will happen within three weeks of the contract being signed. We’re not given any examples either, because that way we would, consciously or not, avoid certain situations, and that would generate an unnecessary degree of fear. All we are told is that it will be completely painless, and that we really won’t see it coming.’

‘I can understand why it’s important for some people to hide the fact that they’ve taken their own lives, but why is it for you? On the contrary, wouldn’t it be a way of taking your revenge?

‘On Robert and Melissa you mean?’

‘If you died in a way that was obviously suicide it wouldn’t just be about shame. Robert and Melissa would blame themselves, and also more or less consciously blame each other. This is something we see time and time again. Have you ever, for example, studied the divorce rate among parents of children who have taken their own lives? Or the figures for suicide among the parents?’

You just looked at me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said and felt myself turning a little red. ‘I’m imputing a desire for revenge to you simply because I’m sure that’s what I would have felt myself in your position.’

‘You think you showed yourself up there, Shaun.’

‘Yes.’

You gave a brief, hard laugh. ‘That’s all right, because of course I want revenge. But you don’t know Robert and Melissa. If I were to kill myself and leave a note in which I said it was because Robert was unfaithful, he would of course deny it. He would point out that I had been treated for depression, which is true, and that towards the end I had also clearly developed paranoia. He and Melissa have been very discreet, so perhaps no one knows about them. I would guess that for about six months after the funeral, for the sake of appearances, she would date one of the other finance guys in Robert’s circle. They all drool over her, and she’s always got away with being the cockteaser she is. And after that she and Robert would announce they were a couple and explain that what brought them together was a shared grief over my death.’

‘OK, you’re probably even more of a misanthropist than me.’

‘I don’t doubt it. And the really nauseating thing is that deep down, Robert would feel a certain pride.’

‘Pride?’

‘Over the fact that a woman didn’t want to live if she couldn’t have him all to herself. That’s how he would look at it. And that’s how Melissa would look at it too. My suicide would raise his stock even higher and end up making them happier.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Sure I do. Aren’t you familiar with René Girard’s theory about mimetic desires?’

‘No.’

‘Girard’s theory is that beyond satisfying our basic needs we don’t know what it is we want. So we mimic our surroundings, we value what other people value. If enough people around you say Mick Jagger is sexy, you’ll end up wanting him yourself, even if in the first place you think he looks awful. If Robert’s stock goes up because of my suicide, Melissa will want him even more, and they’ll be even happier together.’

‘I understand. And if it looks as though you died in an accident or died some other form of natural death?’

‘Then it has the opposite effect. I become the one whom chance or fate took. And Robert will think differently about my death and about me as a person. Slowly but distinctly I’ll develop a saintly aura. And when the day comes when Melissa starts to annoy Robert – and she will – he’ll just remember all the good things about me and miss what we had together. I wrote him a letter two days ago telling him I’m leaving him because I need to be free.’

‘Does that mean he doesn’t know that you know he’s been messing about with Melissa?’

‘I’ve read all their text messages on his phone and never said a word to anyone before now, before you.’

‘And the purpose of the letter?’

‘In the beginning he’ll feel it’s a relief not to have to be the one who leaves. It’ll save him money in the divorce settlement and leave him looking like the good guy, even if he does hook up with Melissa shortly afterwards. But after a while the seed planted in that letter will grow. That I left him to be free, yes. But also because I must have thought I could meet someone better than him. That there might even have been someone even before I left. Someone who wanted me. And as soon as Robert thinks that…’

‘…that means you’re the one with the mimetic desires. And that’s why you went to the suicide agency.’

You shrugged. ‘So then what is the divorce rate among the parents of children who take their own lives?’

‘What?’

‘And which parent is it that takes their own life? The mother, am I right?’

‘Well, you tell me,’ I said, fixing my gaze on the back of the seat in front of me. But I could feel your eyes on me as you waited for a more detailed answer.

I was rescued by the arrival of two glasses that appeared as if by magic from the darkness and landed on the armrest between us.

I coughed. ‘Isn’t it intolerable to have to wait so long? Wake up every morning and think, perhaps today I’ll be murdered?’

You hesitated; you didn’t want to let me off that easily. But in the end you let it go and answered: ‘Not if the thought that perhaps today I won’t be murdered feels worse. Even if, naturally, we are sometimes overcome by panic about dying, and a survival instinct we never asked for, the fear of dying is no greater than the fear of living. But that’s something that you as a psychologist are familiar with.’ You put a slightly exaggerated stress on psychologist.

‘True enough,’ I said. ‘But studies have been made into nomadic tribes in Paraguay where the tribal council decides that someone has grown so old and weak that they’ve become a burden to the tribe and have to be killed. The person in question doesn’t know either when or how it’s going to happen, but they accept that that’s the way things are. After all, the tribe has managed in an environment with little food and long, arduous wandering because they sacrificed the weak so they can take care of the healthy and ensure that the tribe survives. Maybe in their younger days those now under sentence of death themselves had to swing the club over the head of some frail old great-aunt one dark evening outside the cabin. And yet the research shows that for the members of the tribe the uncertainty creates a high level of stress and that in itself is a probable cause of the short life expectancy among these tribes.’

‘Of course there’s stress,’ you said, yawning as you stretched your stockinged foot so that it touched my knee. ‘I would have preferred it to take less than three weeks, but I presume it takes time to find the best and most secure method. For example, if it’s to look like an accident and at the same time be painless, that probably requires a lot of careful planning.’

‘Do you get your money back if this plane goes down?’ I asked and took a sip of the gin and tonic.

‘No. They said that because their expenses are so high for each client, and the clients are, after all, suicidal, they have to insure themselves against the client getting in before them, intentionally or not.’

‘Hm. So, at most you have twenty-one days left to live.’

‘Soon just twenty and a half.’

‘Right. And what do you intend to do with them?’

‘Do what I’ve never done before. Talk and drink with strangers.’

You emptied your glass in one long swallow. And my heart began to pound as though it knew already what was going to happen. You put the glass down and laid a hand on my arm. ‘And I want to make love with you.’

I had no idea how to respond.

‘I’m going to the toilet now,’ you said. ‘If you follow in two minutes, I’ll still be there.’

I felt something happen. An inner rejoicing that wasn’t merely desire, but something affecting my whole body, a feeling of being reborn I had not had in a long, long time, and, if the truth be known, I had never expected to feel again. You had positioned the palms of your hands on the armrests as though about to rise from the seat, but you remained seated.

‘I guess I’m not that tough,’ you sighed. ‘I need to know whether you’re actually coming.’

I took another sip to give me a moment. She looked at my glass as she waited.

‘What if I have someone?’ I said, and could hear that my voice sounded hoarse.

‘But you don’t.’

‘What if I don’t find you attractive? Or I’m gay?’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘Yes. Women who take the sexual initiative frighten me.’

You studied my face as though searching for something. ‘OK,’ you said. ‘I’ll buy that. I’m sorry, it really isn’t my style, but I don’t have time to pussyfoot around. So what are we going to do?’

I could feel myself calming down. My heart was still beating too fast, but the panic and the instinct for flight were gone. I turned the glass in my hand. ‘Do you have a connecting flight from London?’

You nodded. ‘Reykjavik. It leaves an hour after we land. What were you thinking of?’

‘A hotel in London.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Langdon.’

‘The Langdon’s good. If you stay there more than twenty-four hours the staff know your name. Unless they suspect it’s an illicit affair, in which case their memories are Teflon-coated. But anyway, we won’t be staying there more than twenty-four hours.’

‘You mean…’

‘I can rebook the Reykjavik flight for tomorrow.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Does that please you?’

I thought about it. I wasn’t pleased. ‘But what if…’ I began, but then stopped.

‘Are you worried they might do it while you’re with me?’ you asked, and chinked your glass brightly against mine. ‘That you find yourself with a corpse on your hands?’

‘No.’ I smiled. ‘I mean, what if we fall in love? And you’ve signed a contract saying you want to die. An unbreakable contract.’

‘It’s too late,’ you said, and laid your hand over mine on the armrest.

‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’

‘No, I mean the other thing is too late. We’ve already fallen in love.’

‘Have we?’

‘A bit. Enough.’ You squeezed my hand, stood up and said you would be back in a moment. ‘Enough for me to be glad I have maybe three weeks.’

While you were away in the toilet the stewardess came by and took our glasses and I asked if we could have two extra pillows.

When you came back you had put fresh make-up on.

‘It’s not for you,’ you said, clearly reading my thoughts. ‘You liked the way it was a bit smeared, didn’t you?’

‘I like it both ways,’ I said. ‘So then who is the make-up for?’

‘Who do you think?’

‘For them?’ I asked and nodded in the direction of the cabin.

You shook your head. ‘I recently commissioned a survey in which the majority of women asked replied that they wore make-up to feel good. But what do they mean by good? Is it just the absence of feeling uncomfortable? Uncomfortable at being seen as they really are? Is make-up really just our own self-imposed version of a burka?’

‘Isn’t make-up used as much to accentuate as to hide?’ I asked.

‘You accentuate something and you hide something else. All editing – at the same time as it clarifies – involves a cover-up. A woman applying make-up wants to attract attention to her lovely eyes so that no one notices her nose is much too big.’

‘But is that a burka? Don’t we all want to be seen?’

‘Not all. And no one wants to be seen as they really are. Incidentally, did you know that in the course of a lifetime a woman spends as much time putting on make-up as the entire duration of conscription for men in countries like Israel and South Korea?’

‘No, but that sounds like a comparison involving a random collection of information.’

‘Exactly. But not involving a random collection.’

‘Oh no?’

‘The comparison is one chosen by me and naturally, it is, in itself, a valid observation. Fake news doesn’t necessarily mean fake facts, it can involve manipulative editing. What does the comparison tell you about my view of sexual politics? Am I saying that men have to serve their country and risk their lives while women prefer to beautify themselves? Maybe. But a little verbal editing is all it would take for that same comparison to show that women are as afraid of being seen as they really are as nations are of being conquered by enemy forces.’

‘Are you a journalist?’ I asked.

‘I edit a magazine that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.’

‘It’s a woman’s magazine?’

‘Yes, and in the worst possible sense of those words. Do you have any baggage?’

I hesitated.

‘I mean, when we land in London, can we take a taxi straight away?’

‘Just hand baggage,’ I said. ‘You still haven’t told me why you put on make-up?’

She lifted a hand and stroked my cheek with her index finger, just under my eye, as though I too had been crying.

‘Here’s another comparison involving random facts,’ she said. ‘More people die every year from suicide than from war, terrorism, crimes of passion, in fact all murders, combined. Beyond any doubt, you are the most likely murderer of yourself. That’s the reason I put on make-up. I looked in the mirror and could not bear the sight of the naked face of my own killer. Not now that I’m in love.’

We looked at each other. And as I raised my hand to take hers she took mine. Our fingers intertwined.

‘Isn’t there something we can do?’ I whispered, suddenly breathless, as though I were already running. ‘Can’t we buy you out of this contract?’

She put her head on one side, as though to observe me from another angle. ‘If it were possible, then it’s not certain we would have fallen in love,’ she said. ‘The fact that we are unobtainable for each other is an important part of the attraction, don’t you think? Did she die too?’

‘What?’

‘The other one. The one you wouldn’t talk about when I asked if you had a wife and children. The kind of loss that leaves you afraid to fall in love again with someone you’re going to lose. The thing that made you hesitate when I asked if you have any baggage. Do you want to talk about it?’

I looked at you. Did I?

‘Are you sure you want to…?’

‘Yes, I want to hear,’ you said.

‘How long do you have?’

‘Ha ha.’

We ordered another round of drinks and I told my story.

When I was finished it was already growing light outside the window, because we were flying towards the sun, towards a new day.

And you wept again.

‘That’s so sad,’ you said, and laid your head against my shoulder.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Does it still hurt?’

‘Not all the time. I tell myself that since she didn’t want to live, then the choice she made was probably better.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘You believe it too, don’t you?’

‘Maybe,’ you said. ‘But I really don’t know. I’m like Hamlet, a doubter. Maybe the kingdom of death is even worse than the vale of tears.’

‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything. Just begin, and where I want to know more, I’ll ask.’

‘OK.’

You told your story. And the picture of the girl gradually revealed was even clearer than that of the person who sat leaned into me, her hand beneath my arm. At one point a pocket of turbulence shook the aircraft. It was like riding across a series of small, sharp waves and gave your voice a comic vibrato that made us both laugh.

‘We can make a run for it,’ I said when you had finished.

You looked at me. ‘How?’

‘You book into a single room at the Langdon. This evening you leave a note at Reception for the hotel manager. In it you tell him you’re going to drown yourself in the Thames. You walk down there this evening, to a place where no one can see you. You take off your shoes and leave them on the embankment. I come and pick you up in a hire car. We drive to France and take a plane from Paris to Cape Town.’

‘Passport,’ was all you said.

‘I can arrange that.’

‘You can?’ You continued to stare at me. ‘Just what kind of psychologist are you, exactly?’

‘I’m not a psychologist.’

‘You’re not?’

‘No.’

‘What are you?’

‘What do you think?’

‘You’re the man who’s going to kill me,’ you said. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You had the seat beside me booked even before I came to New York to sign the contract.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you really have fallen in love with me?’

‘Yes.’

You nodded slowly, holding on tightly to my arm as though you were afraid of falling.

‘How was it supposed to happen?’

‘In the passport queue. A needle. The active ingredient disappears completely or is camouflaged in the blood within an hour. The autopsy will indicate that you died of an ordinary heart attack. Heart attack has been the most common cause of death in your family, and the tests we did indicate that you are at risk of the same thing.’

You nodded. ‘If we run, will they come after you as well?’

‘Yes. There’s a lot of money involved, for all parties, including those of us who carry out the assignments. It means that they require us to sign a contract too, with a three-week deadline.’

‘A suicide contract?’

‘It allows them to kill us at any time, with no legal risk attached. It’s understood that if we are disloyal then they will activate the clause.’

‘But will they find us in Cape Town?’

‘They’ll pick up our trail, they’re expert at that, and that will lead them to Cape Town. But we won’t be there.’

‘Where will we be?’

‘Is it all right if I wait before telling you that? I promise you it’s a nice place. Sunshine, rain, not too cold, not too hot. And most people there understand English.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Same reason as you.’

‘But you’re not suicidal, you probably earn a fortune doing what you do, and now you’re prepared to risk your own life.’

I tried to smile. ‘What life?’

You looked around, leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. ‘What if you don’t enjoy our lovemaking?’

‘Then I’ll dump you in the Thames,’ I said.

You laughed and kissed me again. A little longer this time, lips a little wider apart.

‘You will enjoy it,’ you whispered in my ear.

‘Yes, I’m afraid I will,’ I said.

You slept there, with your head against my shoulder. I put your seat back and spread a blanket over you. Then I put my own seat back, turned off the overhead light and tried to sleep.

---

—

When we landed in London I had put your seatback in an upright position and fastened your seat belt. You looked like a little child, asleep on Christmas Eve, with that little smile on your lips. The stewardess came round and collected the same glasses of water that had been standing on the shared armrest between us since before we took off from JFK, when you stared weeping through the window and we were strangers.

---

—

I was standing in front of the customs officer in bay 6 when I saw people in high-visibility jackets with red crosses running towards the gates and pushing a stretcher. I looked at my watch. The powder I emptied into your glass before we took off from JFK worked slowly but it was reliable. You had been dead for almost two hours now, and the autopsy would indicate a heart attack and not much else. I felt like crying, as I did almost every time. At the same time I was happy. It was meaningful work. I would never forget you, you were special.

‘Please look at the camera,’ the customs officer said to me.

I had to blink away a few tears first.

‘Welcome to London,’ said the customs officer.

 

THE JEALOUSY MAN

i glanced out at the propeller on the wing of the forty-seater ATR-72 plane. Beneath us, bathed in sea and sunshine, lay a sandy-coloured island. No visible vegetation, only yellowish-white chalk. Kalymnos.

The captain warned us we might be in for a rough landing. I closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat. Ever since I was a child I have known I was going to die in a fall. Or to be more precise, that I was going to fall from the sky into the sea and drown there. I can even recall the day on which this certainty came to me.

My father was one of the assistant directors in the family firm of which his older brother, Uncle Hector, was head. We children loved Uncle Hector because he always brought presents when he came to see us, and let us ride in his car, the only Rolls-Royce cabriolet in all Athens. My father usually returned from work after I had gone to bed, but this particular evening he was early. He looked worn out, and after tea he had a long, long telephone conversation with my grandfather in his study. I could hear that he was very angry. When I went to bed he sat on the edge of it and I asked him to tell me a story. He thought about it for a bit, then he told the tale of Icarus and his father. They lived in Athens, but they were on the island of Crete when his father, a wealthy and celebrated craftsman, made a pair of wings from feathers and wax with which he was able to fly through the sky. People were mightily impressed by this, and the father and his whole family were everywhere regarded with great respect. When the father gave the wings to Icarus, he urged his son to do exactly as he had done, and follow exactly the same route, and everything would be all right. But Icarus wanted to fly to new places, and to fly even higher than his father. And once he was airborne, intoxicated at finding himself so high above the ground as well as by the onlookers, he forgot that it wasn’t because of his supernatural ability to fly but because of the wings his father had given him. In his overweening self-confidence he flew higher than his father and came too close to the sun, and the sun melted the wax that held the wings in place. And with that Icarus fell into the sea. Where he drowned.

As I was growing up it always seemed to me that my father’s lightly adapted version of the Icarus myth was intended as an early warning to his oldest son. Hector was childless, and it was presumed that I would succeed him when the time came. Not until I was grown up did I learn that at around that time the firm had almost gone bankrupt as a result of Hector’s reckless gambling on the price of gold, that my grandfather had fired him, but for the sake of appearances allowed him to keep his title and office. In practice it was my father who ran the firm thereafter. I never found out whether the bedtime story he told me that evening referred to me or to Uncle Hector, but it must have made a deep impression on me because ever since I have had nightmares that involve falling and drowning. Actually, on some nights the dream seems like something warm and pleasant, a sleep in which everything painful ceases to exist. Who says you can’t dream of dying?

The plane shook and I heard gasps from the other passengers as we sank through so-called air pockets. For a moment or two I felt something like weightlessness. And that my hour had come. But it hadn’t, of course.

---

—

The Greek flag was blowing straight out from the flagpole by the little terminal building as we left the plane. As I passed the cockpit I heard the pilot say to the stewardess that the airport had just closed and that it was unlikely they would be able to return to Athens.

I followed the queue of passengers into the terminal building. A man wearing a blue police uniform stood with arms folded in front of the luggage belt and studied us. As I headed towards him he gave me a quizzical look and I nodded my confirmation.

‘George Kostopoulos,’ he said, holding out a large hand, the back of it covered with long black hairs. His grip was firm, but not exaggeratedly so, as is sometimes the case when provincial colleagues feel they’re in competition with the capital.

‘Thank you for coming at such short notice, Inspector Balli.’

‘Call me Nikos,’ I said.

‘Sorry I didn’t recognise you, but there aren’t many pictures of you, and I thought you were…er, older.’

I had inherited – probably from my mother’s side – the kind of looks that don’t age particularly with the years. My hair was grey and the curls gone, and I had maintained a fighting weight of seventy-five kilos, though nowadays less of it was muscle.

‘You don’t think fifty-nine is old enough?’

‘Well, goodness me yes, of course.’ He spoke in a voice that I was guessing was a little deeper than his natural register and smiled wryly beneath a moustache of the type men in Athens had shaved off some twenty years earlier. But the eyes were mild, and I knew I wouldn’t be getting any trouble from George Kostopoulus.

‘It’s just that I’ve been hearing about you ever since I was at the Police Academy, and that seems like a pretty long time ago to me. Any more baggage I can help you with?’

He glanced at the bag I was carrying. And yet I had the feeling he was asking about something more than what I was actually bringing with me in a physical sense. Not that I would have been able to answer him. I carry more with me on my travels than most men, but my baggage is the type that is carried alone.

‘Only hand baggage,’ I said.

‘We’ve got Franz Schmid, the brother of the missing man, at the station in Pothia,’ said George as we left the terminal building and crossed to a small, dust-coated Fiat with a stained windscreen. I guessed he had parked beneath some stone pines to keep out of the direct sunlight and instead got a dose of that sticky sap that in the end you have to scrap off with a knife. That’s the way it is. You raise your guard to protect your face and you leave your heart exposed. And vice versa.

‘I read the report on the plane,’ I said, putting my bag on the back seat. ‘Has he said anything else?’

‘No, he’s sticking to his story. His brother Julian left their room at six in the morning and never returned.’

‘It said Julian went for a swim?’

‘That’s what Franz says.’

‘But you don’t believe him?’

‘No.’

‘Surely drownings can’t be all that unusual on a holiday island like Kalymnos?’

‘No. And I would have believed Franz if it hadn’t been for the fact that he and Julian had a fight the previous evening, in the presence of witnesses.’

‘Yes, I noticed that.’

We turned down a narrow, pitted track with bare olive trees and small white stone houses on both sides of what must have been the main road.

‘They just closed the airport,’ I said. ‘I suppose that’s because of the wind.’

‘It happens all the time,’ said George. ‘That’s the trouble with having the airport on the highest point of an island.’

I could see what he meant. As soon as we got between the mountains the flags hung limply down from the flagpoles.

‘Fortunately my evening flight leaves from Kos,’ I said. The secretary in the Homicide Department had checked the travel itinerary before my boss had given me permission to make the trip. Even though we give priority to the very few cases involving foreign tourists, a condition of the permission was that I was to spend only one working day on it. Usually I was given free rein, but even the legendary Detective Inspector Balli was subject to budget cuts. And as my boss put it: this was a case with no body, no media interest and not even reasonable grounds to suspect a murder.

There were no return flights from Kalymnos in the evening, but there was one from the international airport on the island of Kos, a forty-minute ferry ride from Kalymnos, so he had grunted his assent, reminding me as he did so of the cutback on travel expenses and that I should avoid the overpriced tourist restaurants unless I wanted to pay out of my own pocket.

‘I’m afraid the boats to Kos won’t be going either in this weather,’ said George.

‘This weather? The sun is shining and there’s hardly a breath of wind, except up there.’

‘I know it seems unlikely from here, but there’s a stretch of open sea before you reach Kos and there have been a number of accidents in sunny weather just like this. We’ll book a hotel room for you. Maybe the wind will have eased off by tomorrow.’

For him to say the wind would ‘maybe’ ease off instead of the more typically overoptimistic ‘bound to have eased off’ suggested to me that the weather forecast didn’t favour either me or my boss. I thought disconsolately of the inadequate contents of my bag, and a little less disconsolately of my boss. Perhaps I might be able to get a little well-earned rest out here. I’m the type who has to be forced to take a holiday, even when I know I need one. Maybe being both childless and wifeless is what makes me so bad at holidays.