The Leopard

72
Boy

The two men stood on a little grassy knoll – except that there was no grass – between Manglerud church and the motorway.

‘We used to call it an earth hookah or an earth bong,’ said the man in the leather biker jacket, tossing the long, thin strands of hair to the side. ‘In the summer we lay here smoking all the stuff we had. Fifty metres from Manglerud police station.’ He smirked. ‘There was me, Ulla, TV, his woman, plus a few others. Those were the days.’

The man’s eyes glazed over as Roger Gjendem made notes.

It had not been easy to find Julle, but in the end Roger had tracked him down to a bikers’ club in Alnabru where it turned out he ate, slept and lived his life as a free man; he moved no further afield than the supermarket to buy snus and bread. Gjendem had seen it before, how prison made people dependent on familiar surroundings, routine, security. Though, strangely enough, Julle had agreed quite willingly to talk about the past. The operative word had been Bellman.

‘Ulla was my woman and it was so bloody good because everyone round Manglerud was in love with Ulla.’ Julle nodded as if agreeing with himself. ‘But no one was so insanely jealous as him.’

‘Mikael Bellman?’

Julle shook his head. ‘The other one. The shadow. Beavis.’

‘What happened?’

Julle opened his palms. Roger had noticed the scabs. A jailbird migrating between dope in prison and dope outside. ‘Mikael Bellman grassed me up over nicking some petrol; I already had a suspended sentence for hash, and so had to do time. I heard rumours that Bellman and Ulla had been seen together. Anyhow, when I got out and went to pick her up, the Beavis guy was waiting for me. Almost killed me. Said Ulla belonged to him. And Mikael. Not to me, at any rate. And if I ever showed my face near…’ Julle ran his forefinger across a lean neck with grey stubble. ‘Pretty insane. And bloody scary. No one in the sodding gang believed me when I told them the Beavis guy had been so close to doing me in. The slavering idiot just trotted after Bellman.’

‘You mentioned something about quantities of heroin,’ Roger said. When he interviewed people in drugs cases he always made sure he used precise terminology that could not be misunderstood, as the slang expressions changed quickly and meant different things in different places. For example, smack might mean cocaine in Hovseter, heroin in Hellerud and anything that got you high in Abildso.

‘Me, Ulla, TV and his woman were on a bike tour in Europe the summer I went to the slammer. We took half a kilo of boy with us from Copenhagen. Bikers like me and TV were checked at every single border crossing, but we sent the girls over separately. Jesus, they looked good, wearing summer dresses, with blue eyes and a quarter of a kilo up their cunts. We sold most to a dealer down in Tveita.’

‘You’re very open,’ Roger said while taking notes, putting brackets round ‘cunts’ for later rewording and adding ‘boy’ to a long list of synonyms for heroin.

‘Time’s lapsed, so they can’t arrest anyone for it now. The point is that the dealer in Tveita was arrested. And was offered a reduced sentence if he grassed on the suppliers. Which, of course, he did, the scumbag.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Hah! The guy told me a few years later when we were doing time together in Ullersmo. He’d given the names and addresses of all fucking four of us, including Ulla. All that was missing was our national identity numbers. We were so bloody lucky that the case was shelved.’

Roger made feverish notes.

‘And guess who had the case at the Stovner cop shop? Guess who questioned the guy? Who in all probability recommended the case should be dropped, thrown out, shelved? Who saved Ulla’s skin?’

‘I’d like you to say, Julle.’

‘Very happy to. It was the cunt thief himself. Mikael Bellman.’

‘One last question,’ Roger said, knowing he had arrived at a critical point. Could the story be proved? Could the source be checked? ‘Have you got the name of the dealer? I mean, he’s not risking anything and his name won’t be mentioned anyway.’

‘Would I grass him up, you mean?’ Julle laughed out loud. ‘You bet your ass I will.’

He spelt the name, and Roger turned a page and wrote it in capital letters while noticing that his jaw was broadening. Into a smile. He controlled himself and put on a straight face. But he knew the taste was going to be there for a long time: the sweet taste of a scoop.

‘Thank you for your help,’ Roger said.

‘Thank you,’ said Julle. ‘Just make sure you crush that Bellman, then we’re even.’

‘Er, by the way, out of curiosity, why do you think the dealer told you he had informed on you?’

‘Because he was frightened.’

‘Frightened? Why?’

‘Because he knew too much. He wanted others to know the story in case the cop carried out his threat.’

‘Bellman threatened the informer?’

‘Not Bellman. His shadow. He said if the guy so much as mentioned Ulla’s name again he would put something in him that would shut him up. For ever.’