Read Online Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbø - Free Book Online

stared at the horizon. Mostly in the direction of KÃ¥sund. But they might take the long way round, through the woods, and attack me from the rear.
    I only let myself have little shots, but even so I finished the first bottle during the course of the first day. I managed to wait partway into the next day before opening the second one.
    My eyes were stinging worse now. When I eventually lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, I told myself that I would hear the reindeer’s knee tendons if anyone approached.
    Instead I heard church bells.
    At first I couldn’t work out what it was. It was carried on the wind, a thin remnant of a sound. But then – when the gentle breeze was blowing steadily from the village – I heard it more clearly. Bells ringing. I looked at the time. Eleven. Did that mean it was Sunday? I decided it was, and that I would keep track of what day it was from now on. Because they would come on a weekday. On a working day.
    I kept drifting off to sleep. I couldn’t help it. It was like being alone on a boat on the open sea – you fall asleep and just hope you don’t hit anything or capsize. Maybe that’s why I dreamed I was rowing a boat full of fish. Fish that would save Anna. I was in a hurry, but the wind was blowing off the land, and I rowed and rowed, pulled at the oars until I wore the skin off my hands and the blood meant I couldn’t grip them properly, so I ripped my shirt up and wound strips of fabric round the oars. I fought against the wind and current, but I was getting no closer to land. So what good was it that the boat was full to the gunwales with lovely fat fish?
    The third night. I woke up wondering if the howling I had heard was a dream or reality. Either way, the dog, or whatever it was, was closer. I went out for a pee and looked at the sun as it shuffled over the clump of trees. More of the disc was behind the thin treetops than yesterday.
    I had a drink and managed to fall asleep for another couple of hours.
    I got up, made coffee, buttered a slice of bread and went and sat outside. I don’t know if it was the oil or the alcohol in my blood, but the midges had finally got fed up of me. I tried to entice the buck to come closer with a crust of bread. I looked at it through the binoculars. It raised its head and was looking back at me. Presumably it could smell me as well as I could see it. I waved. Its ears twitched, but apart from that its expression remained unchanged. Like the landscape. Its jaws kept churning like a cement mixer. A ruminant. Like Mattis.
    I searched along the horizon with the binoculars. I smeared damp ash on the lens of the rifle. I looked at the time. Maybe they would wait until it was darker so that they could creep up on me unseen. I had to sleep. I had to get hold of some Valium.
    He came to the door at half past six one morning.
    The doorbell almost didn’t wake me up. Valium and earplugs. And pyjamas. All year round. The useless old single-glazed windows in the flat let everything in: autumn storms, winter cold, birdsong and the sound of that bastard bin lorry which backed up into the entrance to the courtyard three days a week – right under my bedroom window on the first floor, in other words.
    God knows, I had enough in that damn money belt to get proper double glazing, or move one floor higher up, but all the money in the world couldn’t bring back what I’d lost. And since the funeral I hadn’t managed to do anything. Apart from changing the lock. I’d installed a fuck-off great German lock. There had never been a break-in here before, but God knows why not.
    He looked like a boy dressed up in one of his dad’s suits. A scrawny neck stuck up above his shirt, topped by a big head with a wispy fringe.
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜The Fisherman’s sent me.’
    â€˜Okay.’ I felt myself go cold, despite the pyjamas. ‘And who are you?’
    â€˜I’m new, my name’s Johnny