Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø Read Free Book Online

Hoffmann?”
    We both reached for our pistols at the same time, but I was faster. I hit him in the chest and in the arm just above the elbow. He dropped his gun and fell backwards. Lay there in the snow blinking up at me.
    I put the pistol to his chest. “How much did he pay?”
    “Tw…twenty thousand.”
    “Do you think that’s enough for killing someone?”
    He opened and closed his mouth.
    “I’m going to kill you anyway, so there’s no need to come up with a smart answer.”
    “We’ve got four kids and we live in a two-room flat,” he said.
    “Hope he paid in advance,” I said, and fired.
    He groaned, but lay there blinking. I stared at the two holes in the front of his jacket. Then I tore the buttons open.
    He was wearing chain mail. Not a bulletproof vest, but fucking chain mail, the sort the Vikings used to wear. Well, they did in the illustrations of Snorri’s
Sagas of the Kings
that I read so many times as a boy that in the end the library refused to let me take it out any more. Iron. It was hardly surprising the climb up the hill had made him sweat.
    “What the fuck’s this?”
    “My wife made it,” he said. “For the play. About St. Olav.”
    I ran my fingers over the loops of metal, all hooked together. How many thousands of them could there be? Twenty? Forty?
    “She won’t let me go out without it,” he said.
    Chain mail, made for a play about the murder of a holy king.
    I put the pistol against his forehead and fired. The third one. It should have been easier.
    His wallet contained fifty kroner, a photograph of his wife and kids, and an ID card with his name and address.
    Those fixes were two of the three reasons why I wanted to stay out of the Fisherman’s way.
    I went to his shop early the next day.
    Eilertsen & Son Fishmonger’s was located on Youngstorget, just a stone’s throw from the central police station at 19 Møllergata. Word is that when the Fisherman still sold smuggled vodka, the police were among his best customers.
    Huddled against the piercing, icy wind, I crossed the sea of cobbles.
    The shop had only just opened when I stepped inside, but there were already plenty of customers.
    Sometimes the Fisherman himself served in the shop, but not that day. The women behind the counter went on serving their customers, but a young man—I could tell from the look he gave me that he had other duties apart from justcutting, weighing and packing fish—vanished through a swing door.
    Shortly afterwards the boss came in. The Fisherman. Dressed in white from top to toe. With an apron and cap. He even had white wood-soled sandals. Like some fucking lifeguard. He walked round the counter and came up to me. He wiped his fingers on the apron, which bulged over his stomach. Then nodded towards the door that was still swinging back and forth on its hinges. Each time there was a gap I could see a skinny, familiar figure. The one they called Klein. I don’t know if it was the German sense of the word, small. Or the Norwegian, sick. Unless it really was his name. Maybe all three. Every time the door swung open, my eyes met his, dead, pitch black. I also got a glimpse of the sawn-off shotgun hanging down by his foot.
    “Keep your hands out of your pockets,” the Fisherman said quietly with his broad Santa Claus grin. “Then you might make it out of here alive.”
    I nodded.
    “We’re busy selling fish for Christmas, lad, sosay what you came to say, then get the hell out of here.”
    “I can help you get rid of the competition.”
    “You?”
    “Yes. Me.”
    “I didn’t think you were the treacherous type, lad.”
    The fact that he called me lad instead of my name may have been because he didn’t know it, or didn’t want to show me any respect by using it, or else saw no reason to let me know how much—if anything—he knew about me. I guessed the last of the three.
    “Can we talk in the back room?” I asked.
    “Here will do fine, no one will overhear us.”
    “I shot