Free Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø

dinner there. I went in and grabbed a basket. She was serving a customer with her back to me. I walked along the aisles and picked out fish fingers, potatoes and carrots. Four beers. They had an offer on King Haakon chocolates, ready-wrapped in Christmas paper. I put a box in the basket.
    I walked towards Maria’s checkout. There was no one else in the shop. I saw she had seen me. She was blushing. Damn. I suppose it wasn’t so strange, the business about dinner that time was probably still a bit raw, she probably didn’t invite many men back to hers like that.
    I went up to her and said a quick hello. Then looked down at my basket as I concentrated on putting the food—the fish fingers, potatoes, carrots and beer—on the conveyor belt. I held the box of chocolates in my hand for a moment. Hesitating. The ring on Corina’s finger. The one he, the son, had given her. Just like that. And here I was, thinking of turning up with a box of fucking chocolates as a Christmas present, wrapped up like it was Cleopatra’s crown jewels.
    “Was. That. It.”
    I looked at Maria in surprise. She had spoken. Who the hell knew she could do that? It sounded strange, obviously. But it was words. Words, as good as any others. She brushed her hair from her face. Freckles. Gentle eyes. A bit tired.
    “Yes,” I said, overemphasising the word. Stretching my mouth.
    She smiled slightly.
    “That…is…it,” I said slowly, and rather too loudly.
    She gestured questioningly towards the box of chocolates.
    “For…you.” I held it out. “Happy…Christmas.”
    She put a hand over her mouth. And behind the hand her face ran through a whole range of expressions. More than six. Surprise, confusion, joy, embarrassment, followed by raised brows (
why?
), lowered eyelids and a grateful smile. That’s what happens when you can’t talk—you end up with a very expressive face, and learn to perform a sort of pantomime that looks a bit exaggerated to anyone who’s not used to it.
    I handed her the box. Saw her freckled hand approach mine. What did she want? Was she thinking of taking my hand? I pulled it back. Gave her a quick nod and headed for the door. I could feel her eyes on my back. Damn. All I’d done was give her a box of chocolates, so what exactly did the woman want?
    —
    The flat was dark when I let myself in. On the bed I could make out Corina’s shape.
    So quiet and motionless that I almost found itodd. I walked slowly over to the bed and stood above her. She looked so peaceful. And so pale. A clock began to tick inside my head, ticking as if it were working something out. I leaned closer to her, until my face was right above her mouth. Something was missing. And the clock was ticking louder and louder.
    “Corina,” I whispered.
    No reaction.
    “Corina,” I repeated, a bit louder, and heard something I had never heard before in my own voice, a faint note of helplessness.
    She opened her eyes.
    “Come here, teddy bear,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around me and pulling me down onto the bed.
    “Harder,” she whispered. “I won’t break, you know.”
    No, I thought, you won’t break. We,
this,
won’t break. Because this is what I’ve been waiting for; this is what I’ve been practising for. Nothing but death can ruin this.
    “Oh, Olav,” she whispered. “Oh, Olav.”
    Her face was glowing, she was laughing, buther eyes were shiny with tears. Her breasts shone white beneath me, so white. And even if at that moment she was as close as you can ever be to another person, it was as if I was looking at her the way I had first seen her, from a distance, behind a window on the other side of the street. And I thought that you can’t see a person more nakedly than that, when they don’t know they’re being watched, studied. She had never seen me like that. Maybe she never would. Then it struck me. I still had those sheets of paper, the letter, the one I had never quite finished. And if Corina found it, she might