Death In Oslo

VI

The man woke up with his ear full of vomit.

The stench seared his nose and he tried to get up. His arms wouldn’t do as he wanted. He lay back down, resigned. He was too far gone now. He had started to puke. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had to get rid of all the shit he poured into himself. Several decades of practice had made his stomach immune to most things. The only thing he didn’t drink was meths. Two years ago, after a real glut of contraband, he’d ended up in hospital with a couple of brethren spirits. All of them with methanol poisoning. One of them had died. The other one went blind. Whereas he got up after five days and walked straight home, more alert than he had been for a long time. The doctor had said he was lucky.

Practice, he had said to himself. It’s having enough practice that counts.

But he avoided meths.

The flat was a tip. He knew that. He should do something about it. The neighbours had started to complain. About the smell, primarily. He had to do something, or they’d throw him out.

He tried to get up again.

Shit. The whole world was spinning.

He had an intense pain in his groin and sick in his hair. If he rolled his lower body off the sofa, he might be able to get up from there. If it weren’t for the bloody cancer, he’d be doing all right. He wouldn’t have thrown up. He would have had the energy to get up.

Slowly, to save what little muscle he had left in his scrawny body, he wedged his leg against the coffee table. He then managed to get up into a kind of sitting position, with his knees on the matted carpet and his body in a resting position against the sofa, as if in prayer.

The TV was on, with the volume too loud.

He remembered now. He had turned it on when he came home at the crack of dawn. As in a distant dream, he remembered that someone had knocked on the door. Heavily and loudly, the way his bloody neighbours always did, to pester him both night and day. Fortunately nothing more had happened. No doubt the pigs had other things to do on a day like today, instead of coming to pick up a poor old soak.

‘Hurrah for the seventeenth of May,’ he wheezed with great effort, and finally managed to creep up on to the sofa.

‘It is still uncertain when President Bentley disappeared from the hotel…’

The sound penetrated the man’s tired brain. He tried to find the remote control in the chaos on the table. A packet of crisps that had spilled out over old newspapers was now drenched in beer from an upturned can. Someone had eaten nearly all the pizza that a mate in the backyard had given him the day before, and that he had been saving for today. He had no idea who.

‘As far as Dagsrevyen is aware, the American president is…’

In many ways it had been a damn good night.

Real alcohol, not the usual rubbish and shit. He had had half a bottle of Upper Ten whisky to himself. And more, if he was honest. He had helped himself to some of the stuff the others had with them when he thought no one was looking, which had only resulted in one brawl. But that was what it was like when you were with your mates. He’d managed to stash a couple of minis in his inside pocket when it was all over. Hairymary wouldn’t mind. What a girl, eh! She had landed on her feet when she was picked up by that policewoman and her filthy-rich dyke friend. Turned into a proper little lady’s housekeeper in the West End. But Hairymary hadn’t forgotten where she came from. She might never leave that fort of a flat that she had holed herself up in, but she did send money to Backyard Berit twice a year, on the 17th of May and Christmas Eve. Then the old gang had a party with food and the real thing.

He shouldn’t be feeling so bad after such a good night.

It wasn’t the alcohol, it was the bloody cancer in his balls.

The light on the fjord had been beautiful when he’d wandered through the town in the early morning – it must have been around four. The Russ was still being rowdy and carrying on, of course, but whenever there was a quiet moment he had taken time to sit down. On a bench or on that fence by the rubbish bin where he had found a full, unopened bottle of beer.

The light was so beautiful in spring. The trees somehow seemed friendlier, and even the hooting of car horns was less aggressive when he stumbled out on to the road a bit too suddenly and the drivers had to brake.

Oslo was his town.

‘The police ask anyone who might have seen anything to… ’

Where the hell was the remote control?

There. At last. It was hidden away under the pizza box. He turned down the volume and sank back into the sofa.

‘Shit,’ he said in a flat voice.

They were showing a picture of some clothes. A pair of blue trousers. A bright red jacket. Some shoes that just looked like any old shoes.

‘According to police information, this is the outfit that President Bentley was wearing when she disappeared. It is important that…’

It was at ten past four.

He had just looked at the clock on the tower outside the old Østbanen station when she went by. Her and two men. Her jacket was red, but she was far too old to be one of the Russ.

Fucking hell, his balls were burning.

Had someone disappeared?

It had been a good night. He wasn’t too bad, so he had managed to stagger home through the town, full and happy. The streets were decorated with colourful garlands and he had noticed how clean everywhere was.

The smell of sick was bothering him now. He had to do something. He had to tidy up a bit in here. Clean, so that he wouldn’t get kicked out.

He closed his eyes.

This bloody cancer. Well, everyone dies of something or other, he comforted himself. That’s life. He was only sixty-one, but that was old enough, really, when he thought about it.

Slowly he slipped sideways and into a deep sleep, with his ear in his own vomit once again.