Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø Page B

realised that to maintain the fear factor—no matter whether he got a handout or not—he had to demonstrate what would happen the day she
didn’t
pay up. My mother would blame black eyes and thick lips on stairs, doors and slippery bathroom floors. And, as the drinking took hold, it did actually happen that she fell or banged into walls entirely of her own accord.
    My father said I was studying to become an idiot. I suspect he may have had the same trouble reading and writing as I did, the difference being that he had given up. While he had dropped out of school at the earliest opportunity and hardly even read a newspaper after that, I actually had liked school, weirdly enough. Apart from math.I didn’t say much, and most people probably thought I was stupid. But the Norwegian teacher who marked my work said I had something, something behind all the spelling mistakes, something the others didn’t have. And that was more than enough for me. But my father used to ask what I thought I was going to do with all that reading. If I thought I was better than he and the rest of the family. They’d managed fine, doing honest work. They never tried to put on airs by learning fancy words and getting lost in stories. When I was sixteen I asked why he didn’t try doing a bit of honest work himself. He beat me black and blue. Said he was raising a kid, and that was enough work for one day.
    When I was nineteen he came round one evening. He had been let out of Botsen prison the same day, after a year inside for killing a man. There hadn’t been any witnesses, so the court had agreed with the defence that the injuries to the man’s brain
could
have been caused when he tried to fight back and slipped on the ice.
    He made some remark about my having grown. Slapped me jovially on the back. My mumhad said I was working in a warehouse, was that right? Had I finally come to my senses?
    I didn’t answer, didn’t say I was working part-time as well as going to college to save money so I could get a small flat when I started at university after my military service the following year.
    He said it was good I had a job, because now I’d have to cough up.
    I asked why.
    Why? He was my father, victim of a miscarriage of justice who needed all the help his family could give him to get back on his feet.
    I refused.
    He stared at me in disbelief. And I could see he was wondering whether to hit me. That he was sizing me up. His little boy
had
grown up.
    Then he let out a short laugh. And said if I didn’t hand over my pathetic savings, he’d kill my mother. And make it look like an accident. What did I think about that?
    I didn’t answer.
    He said I had sixty seconds.
    I said the money was in the bank, and he’d have to wait till they opened the next morning.
    He tilted his head, as if that would help him work out whether I was lying.
    I said I wasn’t going to run, that he could have my bed, and I’d sleep in Mum’s room.
    “So you’ve taken over my place there as well, have you?” he sneered. “Don’t you know that’s illegal? Or doesn’t it say that in your books?”
    That evening Mum and Dad shared the last of her drink. They went into her room. I lay on the sofa and stuffed my ears with toilet paper. But it didn’t block out her bellowing. Then a door slammed, and I heard him go into my room.
    I waited until two o’clock before I got up, went into the bathroom and got the toilet brush. Then I went down to the cellar and unlocked our store cupboard. I’d been given a pair of skis when I was thirteen. By my mum. God knows what she had to go without to pay for those skis. But they were too small now, I’d grown out of them. I pulled the snow-guard off one of the poles and went back up. I crept into my room. My father was lying on his back, snoring. I stood with a foot on each side of the narrow bed-frame, put the point of the ski pole against his stomach. I didn’twant to risk his chest, because the spike might hit his sternum