See You Tomorrow

32. MORNING AT THE HOME OF THE CRIMINALS (Jan Inge)

Up with the lark. Up with the light.

Yet another mystical day in the wealthiest city in the world.

Look at everything glowing.

Feel that heat.

I, a morning person.

Jan Inge can often feel an almost violent sense of joy when the early morning sun rises behind the hedge. When it’s just about to break through the morning mist, streaming towards him like a ball of celestial madness. Then he feels a shiver on the back of his neck and a pressure behind his eyes, and he hears an airy voice call. It’s the sun. It’s that brilliant white fog lamp calling, it’s voice an almost orbicular timbre, spinning like a merry-go-round of sound, and then he has no choice, he has to walk barefoot across the morning dew, across the cold lawn, whispering to the light:

Yes? Master? Yes? I’m here. What would you have of me?

It’s like being married to the earth.

But when you’ve hit 120 it’s not so easy to wish the morning welcome any more. There’s a lot to lug around. The fat has resulted in a depression of sorts, as well as having given rise to a not inconsiderable laziness at being this big. The wheelchair is handy but things have gone too far. He needs to get down to a 100. Maybe 90.

But he doesn’t have to put the wheelchair away of course. It’s not the wheelchair’s fault he’s fat. David Toska wasn’t exaxtly sylphlike either when he was operating in Stavanger. To draw a comparison. And not a bad comparison at that. Toska, our Charles Peace, our Dave Courtney, our Clyde Barrow, our Stanley Mark Rifkin. After all, what do these masterminds have in common? They thought big, they aimed big, and like Toska, they were caught.

He needs to start taking some exercise. Tong’s a demon for the training. Cecilie says he doesn’t do anything in Åna but train. Rudi is naturally thin. Like Cecilie, she’s naturally scrawny. They never need to exercise. While he, the leader, is predisposed to getting fat, really fat. The problem is that Jan Inge has no desire to start working out, besides, what kind of training would he suddenly start at age forty-three, when he hasn’t actively exercised since he dropped out of PE in third year.

Yoga?

He saw a programme about yoga on TV the other day.

Something about the idea of the individual self and the universal soul becoming one.

He saw people sitting on mats with their eyes closed listening to tranquil music from faraway places. A yoga master stated that even though you’re merely sedentary it has the same effect on the body as a half-hour jog.

Yoga Yani.

Not a bad idea, he thinks, feeling he might have arrived at something. And that’s what he likes most of all. Think, think, think, result, result, result.

Complaining, that’s easy.

Who gives us positive individuals attention?

It’s important to look at things in a positive light, like Dad said so long ago, when Cecilie was crying her eyes out at the airport. ‘Come on, kids,’ he said. ‘Houston’s not a million miles away. A hundred years ago it took weeks to get to America. Think about all the people who left, think about all the emigrants!’

Indeed.

Yoga Yani has thought about the emigrants many times.

For the simple reason of his father having uttered that sentence out at Sola Airport, Jan Inge is pretty knowledgeable when it comes to the emigrants. And it’s true what his father said, the world has changed.

But for the better?

Jan Inge isn’t sure.

Wouldn’t it be better if it still took weeks to travel to the other side of the globe? Then folks might think things over before they headed off to foreign climes, where the food they eat and the language they speak is completely different, and left lots of heartbroken people in their wake.

1982. It was the year Time magazine named the computer Man of the Year. The war was cold but Jan Inge’s thirteen-year-old heart was warm: in February the house in Hillevåg had got a video player. With a mother in the graveyard and a father in the oil business a horror escapist was born. Jan Inge spoke in hushed tones to the guys in the video shop, got hold of uncensored versions from the golden age of the last ten years and watched videos until his head grew large, dark and replete. He became acquainted with the thinking of Dario Argento, Wes Craven, Tobee Hooper, George Romero and John Carpenter, he watched Amityville Horror, When a Stranger Calls, The Brood, Suspiria, The Shining, Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and Last House on the Left.

While Cecilie was at school he sat on the sofa at home, pulled the blanket over his knees, brought the bag of crisps closer, his watery blueberry eyes shining in the light of the TV screen, and they loved one another, horror and Jan Inge, and he often had the feeling that he wasn’t watching the movies as much as the movies were watching him. And loving him. He watched zombies come at him, watched deviant murderers raise their axes, degenerate rednecks slaughter everything they came across, watched frightened girls light up the screen and scream down the house, multicoloured lights and the jaws of the abyss open up.

Two years prior to Jan Inge and the video player finding one another they’d lowered Mum into the earth. And thank goodness for that. She was an animal. Brought kids into the world and ended up a dunghill stinking of liquor. She would have fit right into a horror movie. Mom from Hell. Hellmom. Life brightened up when she disappeared, and it was at its brightest when the video recorder and Jan Inge were alone in the house. He has a lot of good memories from that time. Cough a little in the morning, struggle with the asthma, get Dad to ring school and tell them Jan Inge has to stay home. But then came autumn 1982 and one day Dad came into his room, stood in front of his Jaws wallpaper and announced that new times were here, and these new times were lubricated with oil. The company was sending him to Houston.

‘But I’ll be back every fortnight,’ he said, giving Jan Inge’s hair a tousle, ‘everything’s going to work out just fine, so it is.’

And then came the day at Sola airport.

Cecilie was ten.

Yeah. Ten.

Jan Inge can remember her asking him to put her hair in pigtails that morning. He told her he didn’t know how. But she showed him and out in the hall Dad ran back and forth with suitcases and bags, ties in his hands, his passport in his breast pocket and his toothbrush in his mouth. A few hours later they were standing in the departures hall, Cecilie with her untidy pigtails, both of them with their hair wet from the morning rain and their father trying his best to explain to them that this is all going to work out just fine, so it is. He opened up the doors to that big, warm smile of his, threw his arms out wide to show them how easy things can be in the world, and he said: ‘Jan Inge is a big boy. He can make your school lunches for you, Cecilie. And then Dad will be home in a few weeks.’ Their father clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and winked at them. ‘The two of you will manage this,’ he said. And that was when Cecilie began to quiver and shake all over and then started screaming and shouting so loudly that Dad got embarrassed, and Jan Inge couldn’t help himself either, so he began to howl as well, like a little kid.

That was when Dad added the thing about Houston not being a million miles away and to maintain a positive outlook and think of all the emigrants in the olden days.

A few weeks later he rang up and said it would take a little longer before he was able to get back home, and he reiterated that Jan Inge had to be a big boy now and think positive, that no big boy ever suffered from having to look after a house and a sister. On the contrary, he said, if he’d found himself on his own when he was thirteen, what a dream that would have been.

Up with the lark. Up with the light.

Another scintillating day in the wealthiest city in the world.

Jan Inge wheels blithely over the worn lino. The sun is showing up the dirt on the kitchen windows, where some kids have scrawled ‘cock’ on the pane with their fingers. Jan Inge sits in his pyjamas, smiling; that’s kids for you. He turns the wheelchair and veers towards the fridge, opens the door, his mind falling into new exciting thoughts while he reaches for the sliced meats, cheese, jam and juice.

What a night.

After watching Three on a Meathook and taking what he likes to think of as ‘internal notes’, he trundled out on to the veranda. The evening chill surged to meet him and he let his thoughts move slowly as he allowed his eyes drift from the light of one star to the next in the deep sky. The problems he sometimes feels are almost tangible seem to have blown away. The whole 120 matter, the fear of Rudi and Cecilie contriving to move, the issue of them needing an extra car, or two, the job Rudi was checking out in Gosen Woods, Tong getting out on Friday…

He fell asleep. A solitary individual in the world. Resting in front of the cold, starry sky. A criminal life. The David Toska of petty crime. But a life all the same. His chin hanging down. His head slumped to the side on one shoulder. Some saliva at the corner of his mouth. Laid bare in front of nature. Deep meditation. Cosmic intelligence. An airplane passing high up in the dark, night sky. Red lights blinking. A neighbour putting the rubbish out on the road below.

These kinds of things. Just like a poem, all of them.

I, a child. Yoga Yani and the universe.

Jan Inge was awoken by voices floating in the air in front of him:

‘Is he asleep?’

‘Oh, has he wheeled himself out here?’

‘Oh Jesus, I’m dying for a smoke.’

‘So why don’t you start again?’

‘Why don’t you just quit?’

‘Did he manage to get out here all by himself?’

‘I could see you liked that Pål dude.’

‘What do you mean, I liked him?’

‘Christ, I really want a smoke right now.’

‘Are you sure he’s asleep?’

‘I’m only saying, you liked that Pål dude.’

‘Just look at him, would you?’

‘Are you going to that face … treatment … thing tomorrow?’

‘Mhm.’

‘Nice.’

‘Mhm.’

‘You’ll be one sexy bitch after it.’

‘Heh heh.’

‘Would you screw that Påli dude?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Some brother you’ve got.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Look at that.’

‘Wha?’

‘He’s got a bald spot here, Jan Inge.’

‘Runs in the family. All the men get one.’

‘Yeah, yeah, there’s enough age discrimination in society without us needing to pick on that too.’

It was in this atmosphere, with Jan Inge slowly began to orient himself, while he remained with his eyes closed dwelling upon the humanity and compassion he was surrounded by; in this atmosphere that yesterday ended.

Whilst he experienced a kind of totality of love.

Cecilie and Rudi wheeled him across the living-room floor. They said shhhh, you don’t need to get up, shhhh, we’ll talk about that Pål thing tomorrow, shhhh, all you need to do now is just hit the hay, master, and as they jostled and bumped him into the bedroom, Rudi made mention of a skirting board that would have to go. They helped him, in the frozen and deeply moved state in which he found himself, into his bed, where he could carry on sleeping, and with his eyes closed, as if he were an old man in a congenial nursing home, Jan Inge heard Rudi’s last words of the night:

‘Good night, maestro.’

And Cecilie’s last words that night: ‘Sometimes I think it’s a shit life being your sister, Jani, but right at this moment you’re fucking intense.’

So naturally enough Jan Inge is experiencing a considerable amount of emotion this morning. All people who feel loved do, he thinks as he takes out the cheese and places it on the old earthenware plate from Stavangerflint, which makes him think malicious thoughts of his mother in the graveyard and painful thoughts of his father in Houston.

Soon he’ll wheel into the hall and wake them. Call out in the direction of their room: ‘Good morning! Wednesday! Breakfast meeting!’

It’s a good ritual.

Wednesday = Morning meeting.

If there’s one thing Jan Inge has blind faith in, it’s rituals.

For example: Cecilie always washes the bath. Rudi takes care of all things electrical. He himself always prepares breakfast. When it comes to breakfast, the thing to keep in mind is that it’s all about setting a certain standard for the day, and it’s about quality time, which is something of a basic necessity if this company is to succeed. Meals have a surprisingly large role to play. People need to get up and eat breakfast and they need to have dinner. They listen to Motörhead when they sit down to dinner, way up loud, so everyone can feel a sense of peace and calm within, but when they eat breakfast it’s quiet. It’s a time for evaluation, strategies and pep talks, and if it’s a Wednesday then there’s a morning meeting. That means an opportunity for anyone to bring up whatever they might have on their mind, and an opportunity for Jan Inge to be a visionary, if he so wishes.

Which he often does.

Lately Jan Inge has spared no effort at mealtimes. He’s bought more expensive cheese, meats and spreads, taken great pains when setting the table, purchased better coffee than usual and has even procured candles. All in order for them to see that being part of this household, of this company, is no bad thing. So any talk of moving, they’ll put that right out of their minds.

Jan Inge brings the wheelchair to a standstill.

‘That is one very nice spread I’ve prepared,’ he whispers, his crisp voice filling the early morning light of the room.

Three glasses. Three side plates. Knives for everyone. Coffee for him and Cecilie. Chocolate milk for Rudi. A candle glowing in the centre of the table. In a lot of ways you could say it’s nicely set off by the sun outside. A platter with cuts of meat. A platter with cheese. Jam for Rudi. Liver pâté for Cecilie. And the beetroot slices she likes to have on top of her pâté. An egg for him.

He raises his heavy behind off the wheelchair and takes a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He reads:

Film of the week: The Abominable Dr Phibes (R. Fuest 1971).

Pitch in and fix up the garden. This weekend? If so who’s getting hold of a trailer for all the shit?

Are we going to W.A.S.P. in Oslo on 24th October? If so who’s sorting out tickets, transport and somewhere to stay? NB: We’re not sleeping over at Tom B’s in Holmlia! Remember what happened last time!

Update on yesterday’s meeting w/ Pål. What’s happening? Progress?

Friday. Tong. What are we doing? Party? Dinner? Just let him relax? Suggestions?

Misc. Anyone have anything they want to share?

Jan Inge folds the note, and feeling primed and strong within, wheels himself out into the hall. And just as he’s about to call out ‘good morning, Wednesday, breakfast meeting’, he hears creaking from the bed in Rudi and Cecilie’s room. He swallows and trundles a little closer, hears a kind of banging on the floor, then Rudi’s deep voice: ‘Jesus! Chessi, turn round, let me see that ass. Yess! Lift it up, chica, come on! YESS! Live porn from Hillevåg! Hands up, your pussy or your life, yess, right there, yeah, my little whore, oh yeah, here comes Mr Cock, oh you’re so big, hips like shelves, oh, heeeelp, mamma, ooh it’s so big, ooh it’s ready to burst, ooh mamma, you don’t need to come after all, I can come myself! It’s a partay on my ass! Into the darkness, for the twenty-seventh year in a row! And-peo-ple-go-and-get-div-or-ced! Sitting on the internet pulling their plum and going to nightclubs for strange cock. Ahh. I’m yours till the mountains fall into the sea. Okay, okay … now … now … okay … we’re on our way, my soldiers and me … Can you hear the artillery thunder across the battlefield? WE’RE A MILLION STRONG AND WE DON’T NEED NO WORLD WIDE WEB TO SPREAD US! HERE IT COMES, THE WORLD WIDE FUCK! SweetjesusIfuckingloveitwhenIgettoslapthatfuckingass!’

Jan Inge remains quiet and motionless for a few minutes.

Sits there weighing things up against one another.

‘But my horror movies,’ he whispers to himself, ‘I’ll never lose them. And Johnny Cash, he’ll never stop singing. And Cecilie’s pigtails, they’re burned on to my memory. And the sun,’ whispers Jan Inge, becoming aware of a rapid blinking in both his eyes as he hears Cecilie begin to whimper from inside, as he hears Rudi’s voice get even louder, ‘the sun, that will never leave me. And on my grave,’ he whispers, feeling his eyes well up, ‘on my grave it’ll say: This is the last resting place of the Master, here lies the Son of the Sun, 120 kilos of cosmic love, Yoga Yani, Jan Inge King, the Thinker from Hillevåg.’

33. SOCKS ON TOP OF THE STOVE (Pål)

No: a new day. The switches in his brain come on, crackling and flickering, like fluorescent tubes lighting up one after the other down a long corridor. His thoughts revive him. They’re painful, they’re fraught. They arrive along with feelings of self-contempt and nausea. His ears pick up a sound from the street, a neighbour’s car driving past, maybe it’s the guy in number fourteen who works as a builder. A noise from the bathroom increases in strength, one of the girls turning on the shower. Morning is here, the ground emitting a citrus smell as the temperature rises. But Pål feels no joy. He’s unable to participate. When was the last time he woke up happy, feeling rested and rejuvenated? He can’t remember. It feels like he’s waking up inside an egg, it’s felt like that for an eternity and it’s as though he’s never going to get out. He doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be this man and wishes he never woke up again. Don’t flick on these switches in my head. Don’t come to me with this darkness. No: not a new day.

‘Dad?’

If he only had one more chance.

‘Daaad!’

Pål props himself up on his elbows, throws back the duvet, swings his body round and sits on the edge of the bed. His holds his head in his hands, then drops them on his knees, lets his blood settle.

Footsteps. Then stomping on the stairs. Tiril.

The door’s going to be opened in a moment. He gulps, tousles his hair and plasters a smile on his face. His eyes. There’s still sand in them.

If he only had one chance to erase everything he’s done.

There. The door’s opening.

‘Hi, Tiril,’ he says, smiling. ‘Good morning, love. Come here and give me a hug.’

He stretches his arms out towards her, noticing straight away how weak they feel. She remains standing in the doorway. She’s wearing so much make-up, so black around the eyes. Her clothes, the red-and-black skirt, the cut-up tights, the braces, all the button badges, skulls, band names and slogans, the lank hair.

Zitha comes scurrying in. Pål takes a hold of her under the snout, looks in her eyes and she licks his face before lying down obediently, expectantly at his feet.

‘There’s no bread,’ Tiril says, folding her arms and planting her feet apart. ‘And there’s no milk or fruit. And you’re never up out of bed.’

He shrugs awkwardly, reaches for his trousers on the chair and takes his wallet from the pocket.

‘Here, look—’

She sighs. ‘That’s just great, Dad.’

‘What do you mean—?’

‘Whatever. Give me the money. That’ll fix everything. Why not just leave the fridge empty?’

She stands with her hand out in front of him, refusing to meet his gaze.

‘But Tiril, honey, I just forgot … it’ll be fine, listen, I’ll get to the shops after—’

She remains unmoved, her hand out. She reminds him so much of his wife sometimes. Barging into the room, no hug, no good morning, nothing, just instructions and demands. Pål hands her the hundred kroner note, wants her to know that he has money, that he’s taking care of what needs taking care of.

‘Will that cover lunch too?’

She crosses her arms again.

‘Imagine we ate a normal breakfast now and again,’ she says.

‘But … but we do?’ He rubs his eyes, pulls on his trousers. Holds out another hundred. ‘Don’t we? I mean, at the weekends—’

New footsteps on the stairs. Sounding easier, lighter. Malene. Zitha raises her head, wags her tail. Malene walks in the door, glances at both of them and then at the hundred kroner note he’s waving.

She goes over and stands beside her sister. Both of them look at him as he pulls on his T-shirt, puts on his socks.

‘What?’ Pål tries to laugh but can’t manage. ‘What is it?’

Malene’s chest rises and falls. She doesn’t make a big deal of it as she takes the money from his hand. She tilts her head slightly to one side. The fact that the two of them are sisters. Hard to comprehend sometimes. He remembers taking them to the playground when they were small. Tiril triggered into life as soon as she caught sight of the place, the colourful apparatus, the sandbox, sprinting towards them with almost frightening excitement, jumping on to the swings, never getting enough, faster, Dad, faster. Malene would walk in calmly. Go over to a swing. Sit down upon it. Examine it. Begin to sway, carefully, that’s high enough, Dad, that’s enough.

Tiril’s eyes are red, she turns on her heels and leaves the room. While she’s tramping down the stairs she shouts: ‘Zitha’s been fed! I won’t be home for dinner! Be back late! Got rehearsals!’

‘But—’ Pål tries to raise his voice a notch. But he lacks the strength.

Malene remains standing in front of him. He knows he treats her as though she was an adult and not his daughter, but he can’t help himself. ‘What was that?’ he asks. ‘What is it now? Have I done something wrong? I forgot to go shopping, but there’s a lot happening in work at the moment, Malene, you’ve no idea — do you think I deserve that kind of treatment? Hm? Do you? I’ve done my best for the two of you, you know I have, and it hasn’t been easy either—’

What am I doing now?

‘…as I’m sure you know, it hasn’t always been so easy … Being practically a single parent, for the both of you, that’s not easy either, Malene, trying to keep things together, I do my best, you know that, right? You know that, don’t you? Honey? That I’d never do either of you any harm? That I’m doing the best I can? And she comes in and then storms back out accusing me of all sorts…’

What am I thinking of?

‘…you understand, don’t you, Malene?’

He forces himself to cry. Jesus, I’ve sunk so low, he thinks, while he squeezes out a few crocodile tears. What kind of father am I, what am I doing. Why can’t I get out of bed, check the day’s school times, wake my girls up and make them both a packed lunch, what am I doing?

The tears come, he almost believes they’re real.

Malene puts her arms around him, hugs him, in that grown-up way of hers.

‘Dad,’ she says. Runs her hand up and down his back. ‘Shhh. I understand.’

He lets her hold him tight. It feels good.

Then he sniffles, breaks free of her embrace.

‘Oh dear,’ he says, ‘your Dad is such an fool, eh?’

Pål bends over to Zitha.

‘Dad’s such a fool, eh, Zitha? Yeeah, good girl, yeeah.’

Malene nods and smiles. ‘Go downstairs now,’ she says, ‘get yourself some coffee, put on your Adidas and get off to work. How are your eyes?’

They make their way to the kitchen. The coffee is made, he pours a cup and drinks it quickly. Takes a look in the fridge. Must fill it up today. Get to work. Things are going to be okay. Pål turns around, his head doesn’t feel as heavy, his troubles are absent, he watches Malene put on her coat and shoulder her schoolbag.

‘Tiril,’ she says.

‘Hm?’

‘It’s just that concert tomorrow. The thing is Mum isn’t going to be there, she … I think the reason she’s so worked up is just that she really wants you to be there.’

Pål throws his arms wide in exasperation. ‘Jesus, I mean I’ve told her I’m coming. Does she think I’ve forgotten? I might seem like a bit of a scatterbrain sometimes but that’s because there’s so much happening at work. Of course I’m going to go along and watch her sing. I’m going to be sitting in the first row clapping every chance I get. Isn’t that what I’ve always done?’

He takes a big, warm slurp of coffee and shakes his head.

‘I’m not too sure Tiril feels you’ve told her that,’ Malene says, ‘the way you did just now, I mean.’

Pål takes a Ryvita from the corner cupboard and starts eating it. Not that he likes Ryvita, but he needs something in his stomach.

‘No, I guess I haven’t. I’ll make sure I do.’

‘You are going to work, right?’

‘Yeah, the usual time, yeah of course I’m going — work? Why are you asking that?’

Take it easy now, he thinks, easy, Pål.

‘You got in late last night.’

Easy now. He pictures Rudi and Cecilie, feels shame well up inside for what happened in 1986. Jesus, that girl was younger than Malene is now.

‘Late?’ He clears his throat. ‘Was I?’

She’s talking to me like I’m the kid here.

‘Yeah.’

‘Right, yeah, maybe I was. Took a longer walk than usual, I guess.’

Easy now.

‘By the way,’ says Malene, fixing her hair in the mirror, readying herself to go, ‘I was down in the basement this morning emptying the washing machine—’

‘Oh good, yes, must have slipped my mind—’

‘Anyway, there was a light on in the study and a pair of your socks were lying on top of the stove, they were really hot, Dad, I mean roasting hot.’

‘Oh, gosh—’

‘Were you up all night? The computer was on.’

‘Well…’ he hesitates, turns his head, looks out at the garden. ‘I was just … well, I couldn’t sleep. Just sat surfing…’

‘You shouldn’t dry your socks on the stove, Dad. You don’t want to start a fire.’

He remains standing with his back to her.

‘No, of course,’ he says, looking out over the garden. Only now catching sight of the good weather, only now getting the chance to ponder how nice it is outside again today.

‘You took the socks away, then,’ he asks, his voice mild.

‘Yep,’ he hears from behind him, ‘I threw them in the wash.’

Pål nods. He can make out something in her voice but he decides not to turn round, decides to push it away.

He points towards the garden.

‘I know I’m going on about it,’ he says, ‘but every time I see that tree I keep thinking the two of you should really hang up a new milk carton for the birds.’

34. CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET? (Sandra)

Sandra’s body is sore. She’s tired, the schoolbag on her shoulders feels heavy. When she woke up she had bags under her eyes. But she clenches her teeth, brings her fingers to the silver crucifix in the hollow of her neck and walks on. Up King Haralds Gate, on to Madlamarkveien, past the church, across Jernalderveien and on towards the school. She’d rather bunk off. But she’s never done that, and she’d never dare, because that’s not how she is.

Dear Jesus, she whispers, my stomach is so cold, I’m so frightened. Her mother and father told her off when she got home last night, she just about managed to fix her hair and check her clothes in the hall mirror before they were standing there in front of her. Her mother, eyes jittery, her father with his arms crossed. Have we not been clear about this, Sandra? Did we not agree on this? You’re tired, you can’t concentrate, you’re getting in late, was that what we agreed on? Hm? You know how much we love you, dear, we’re telling you this for your own good.

If she wanted to keep this job, which, strictly speaking, she was too young to have, then she had to prove herself deserving of the trust they placed in her. That meant responsibility. If she came home late at all, if there was the slightest sign of it affecting her schoolwork or how much sleep she got, then it had to come to a stop. She could go up to bed, they could all have a think about it, but she had to be aware that under their roof nobody was allowed to behave that way.

She straightens up as she makes her way along Sophus Bugges Gate towards the school. She still has the chance. She hardly dares to think about it. Just run away. Send Daniel a text — I’m not at school. Come and meet me. Now! — and run away. Rush off to the woods. Rush off to the ends of the earth, totter on the edge in the arms of the one she loves. She still has the chance. Just run between the villas, behind the terraced houses, past the old school, until she reaches the block of flats he lives in and call out to him, Daniel, I’m here, come on.

But she doesn’t dare. Sandra feels as though she has a lump of ice in her stomach. Is this how love’s supposed to be? Are you meant to feel cold and fearful? — Do you love me? Did I do it right? Will it be as nice tonight? Tomorrow? Am I doing what you like?

Dear Jesus, she whispers, I don’t have the strength for this, I’m shit scared, I’m so fucking shit scared, sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to talk like that.

Sandra fixes her fringe, takes a deep breath, her eyes flashing, she smiles into the empty air. It went well, after all, she whispers. He said it was good. He said he wanted to see me again. I’m not the one with problems, it’s those sisters, Malene and Tiril, they’re the ones with problems. What did he say again … that was only the beginning … his voice, that bright mouth of his … what else did he say?

We have the rest of our lives.

Dear Lord, she whispers as she reaches the lean-to at the front of the low, grey school building, is love really this hard?

It’s nearing half past eight and pupils swarm about her, all on their way to the first class of the day. Those first-years, God, so annoying, the fact she was actually like that herself, it’s hard to fathom. Jostling around, like they’re still in primary school, their arms and legs all over the place, no wonder you can never find a spot to eat your lunch in the yard, first-years have no control over any part of their bodies, or of their stuff, all hanging halfway out of their bags, and they’re so tiny, they look like goblins and the only cute one is Ulrik Pogo, he’s sweet enough to eat, just makes you want to hug him like a teddy bear. Still, poor sister, Kia, hard to talk to someone who’s paralysed. What are you supposed to say? How’s things today?

‘Hi, Sandra.’

Malene’s voice. She turns around, quickly. She feels her throat tighten, forces a smile. ‘Hi … hello…’

She’s never really hung out with Malene. But the fact she’s standing in front of her the morning after she saw her father in the woods makes her feel she ought to say something. She feels sorry for her but what’s she going to say? It’s not like she wants to snitch on anyone.

Daniel, why aren’t you here. What will I do?

‘How’s it going?’ asks Malene, an expression coming over her face which she trys to hide.

‘Oh, y’know,’ says Sandra. ‘Okay. Lots to do.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Malene says.

The girls remain standing under the edge of the lean-to while the other pupils stream past on their way in. The most natural thing would be for one of them to start making their way towards the doors and mingling with the rest. But they stay put. Malene is looking at her as if she knows something.

‘Did you manage the maths?’ asks Malene. It’s like she’s trying to wrestle with her own facial expression, making her look like E.T.

‘Yeah,’ Sandra says, ‘but I thought it was hard.’

Is she able to see it, the fact that I know something about her?

‘Yeah, it sucked.’

‘How’s the foot, by the way? You going to get back to the gymnastics soon, or…?’

‘Dunno. It’s taking its time to heal.’

Malene stands there. She makes no sign of wanting to go. Everything about her says she’s going to stay put. What is it she wants?

Daniel, what will I do?

‘Your sister, Tiril — she’s singing tomorrow, right? At that International … Inter…’

‘Cultural Workshop,’ nods Malene. ‘International Cultural Workshop. Some kind of student exchange thing. She’s a good singer—’

‘Seriously good—’

‘But she needs to sort her head out. Drop all that emo stuff.’

‘Well, y’know, she’s only in second year.’

‘Mhm. Yolo.’

Sandra smiles. Malene has nice features. Those high cheekbones give her a beautiful face, she looks kind and she’s very different from her sister. Sandra feels her knees growing weak, her forehead becoming warm, oh no, is she going to start sweating? Is she going to start crying? She realises how long it’s been since she’s been face to face with a girl she feels can understand her, and she has a sudden sense of having a friend. It’s stupid, they’ve only stood together talking a couple of minutes, only bumped into one another on the way into school, but there’s something about Malene’s voice that makes Sandra feel safe, so she opens her mouth and hears herself say:

‘Can you keep a secret?’

The school bell sounds, ringing out over the yard.

‘Can you?’

Malene nods.

Dear Jesus, Sandra thinks, grabbing hold of her arm, I hope I’m doing the right thing. She lowers her voice, takes a step closer:

‘I’m seeing Daniel William Moi. I’ve met him almost every night the last few weeks.’

Malene looks at her.

‘I tell lies the whole time,’ Sandra whispers. ‘To everyone.’

Malene nods her head slowly.

‘I met him again yesterday,’ Sandra says softly. ‘I had sex with him. In Gosen Woods.’

35. A TIME-HONOURED CLASSIC IN THE BUSINESS (Rudi)

The little lady on top of the lanky man.

He’s worked it out: if you’ve been together with your woman for twenty-seven years, and you’ve screwed her on average twice a week, then how many times have you screwed her? And: if it’s lasted a quarter of an hour each time — on average — how much of your life have you spent at it?

Hm?

2,808 times.

42,120 minutes.

Or 702 hours

Or 29.25 days

You get to know the terrain.

The arithmetic is only approximate, of course. Calculations for the first few years are bound to be a bit ropey, given that, strictly speaking, Chessi gradually went from being an underage whore under Jan Inge’s control to his girlfriend, and also that she was quite young. Girls don’t like screwing so much when they’re thirteen, so you have to subtract a little to make up for the first couple of years.

Still, not one day too many.

The little lady on top of the lanky man. That bony body of hers on top of that skinny body of his. All those freckles, across her back and arms. Her shelf-like hips, that Rudi calls ‘God’. Those little tits. He likes them. Little girly tits. Rudi has a wild look in his eyes, makes fearsome movements with his mouth: his tongue sweeping across his front teeth, biting down on his lip and sucking in air, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. His compulsion to talk all the time, talk and talk and talk — and there’s no situation he feels more like talking in than when he’s having sex with Chessi: ‘Jeeeeesus! This pussy is never going out of style. Chessi, come on, sit yourself down on Rudi, spin that wheel, come on! Twothousandeighthundredandeight! Eh?! What do you say to that, you sexy slut! Eh? I’m already looking forward to nine! Oh Jeeeeesus, you just don’t know how much I love you. Give it to me. Is that ass getting bigger the older you get? Yeah! Come on, MILF!’

Ah.

Feels good to get it out.

Rudi rolls off Cecilie and over on to his back. He stretches right out and releases a satisfied groan. He entwines his fingers in hers. Rudi is soft and spent, and he doesn’t say anything right away, doesn’t feel like it, just holds Cecilie’s hand. After a while his breathing becomes more regular, and then he feels like talking a little.

‘That was bloody good,’ he says, in a low voice.

‘You say that every time,’ Cecilie says soberly.

‘Well, that’s because it’s bloody good every time.’

She doesn’t reply. It took him a while to get his head around that. While he might have an absolute motherfucker of a need to talk while he’s riding her, and just as much of a need afterwards to hear her say how great it was, it’s still a need he feels. Not her. For years it was a touchy subject, the fact that she never said anything, not a single word. Not for ages afterwards, and then she wanted to talk about other things entirely. They’d be there, getting it on, and it was so good to ride her, sometimes he’d worked himself up all day, but would she say anything when they finally got under the duvet? Like maybe wrap her lips around his dick and mumble something while his knob pumped against the inside of her cheek, like how rock hard he was or how damn good it felt and that she’d been dreamingaboutrudiscocksinceshewokeup or that she was sofuckinghornyshecouldntthinkstraight or that he was the sexiestmanontwolegs, sexier than Steven Tyler and Lemmy put together? Just imagine, how amazing it’d be, listening to her slobbering and muttering down there, his prick getting in the way of the words, ab at ock mm am it up my sy, whatdidyousayyousay? Please say it again? Ab at ock mm am up my sy. Can’t hear you, Pfläumchen, can you say it one more time? GRAB THAT COCK AND RAM IT UP MY PUSSY.

But no. Not one word. Hurtful really.

It took him ages to figure out how to live with it. There was a time he wondered whether he should rough Cecilie up or take her to see a psychologist, because it all felt so unfair. Him being so attentive, giving her cash, lavishing her with love, saying so many nice things to her and getting so little in return. A cutprice feeling. A cap-in-hand feeling. But he weathered the storm, didn’t send her to a psychologist or beat the shit out of her; hear that, Gran? I never laid a finger on her. Rudi learnt to live with it. Acknowledged that she was a person with her own qualities, her own surly, introverted way of being, while he was a person with qualities of his own, his own talkative and extroverted way of being. Now everything’s just fine, obviously, twenty-seven years speaks for itself, but it still hurts a little.

And still, even now Rudi can’t help but feel it niggle a little. So he says:

‘Yeah, yeah, I know you love me, even if you’re as quiet as a baseball bat.’

Cecilie sits up, leans over to the bedside table and grabs hold of the cigarette pack and the hair elastic she took out while he screwed her, because he likes to see her hair cascade across the pillow.

He studies her. Damn bony and damn sexy. Rudi puts on his most boyish smile, hoping she’ll look his way. But she doesn’t. With her eyes closed and the cigarette in her mouth, she raises her eyebrows and sets her hair in a ponytail. She puts on her knickers, her bra, her top and her socks before standing up. Cecilie opens her eyes, gazes at the wall and fixes her jaw into place with a sort of fish-mouth movement. She’s been doing that since she was thirteen. It’s like catching sight of an old friend for him. Nice to have things like that. Safe things. But she’s not looking at me, he thinks.

‘Good morning! Wednesday! Morning meeting!’

Rudi rolls his eyes and sees Cecilie do the same. She calls out to her brother, whom they both know is right behind the door:

‘All right, all right! Take it easy, Jani. We’re coming.’

‘Okay, okay!’ they hear from outside in the hall. ‘Just thought I’d let you know. Morning meeting.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Cecilie says, ‘you always just think that, little darling!’

Rudi doesn’t think that little darling stuff is really necessary, even though the fact that he’s so on first thing in the morning does annoy both of them. Standing outside their door shouting about those endless breakfasts of his. Still, she doesn’t need to say it, it just seems downright patronising, and he doesn’t like her picking on him. Little darling? Why does she have to say that? She is his sister and everything. Particularly when Jani isn’t the slightest bit little. If there’s anyone in this house who strives and deserves respect, it’s Jani.

Cecilie turns to him as she’s pulling up her jeans. Ash balancing on the tip of her cigarette. ‘What’s with that two thousand stuff?’

‘Eh?’

‘With all that, y’know …’ she shrugs, the ash falls on to the duvet, ‘two thousand stuff you were on about?’

Rudi laughs and gets to his feet, pulls on his T-shirt, socks and jeans. Then he gives Cecilie a kiss on the cheek, slaps her on the ass and says: ‘The number of times I’ve banged you, honey, that’s what that is. Two thousand eight hundred and eight.’

‘Jesus,’ she says, extinguishing the cigarette in the glass of water beside the bed. She opens the door. ‘Have I had that huge dick of yours up me that many times?’

‘Yes indeed, baby. Two thousand more to go.’

Cecilie isn’t smiling. She’s stopped with one foot on either side of the doorsill.

‘But… Rudi says, again trying to make his voice as soft as possible. ‘There’s … nothing … wrong, is there?’

‘More than two thousand times …’ Cecilie looks pensive. ‘It’s just that it’s so long, that dick.’

He runs his had up and down her back.

‘I know,’ he says, guiltily. ‘It started in sixth class. I woke up every morning and though, shit, that’s going grow to some size. And it did.’

‘It goes so far up me.’

‘Yeah, it does all right,’ he says, tilting his head to the side. ‘But I really like it, y’know, feeling you right up against me.’

Cecilie sighs, ‘But imagine you damage something up there, what then?’

He screws up his eyes. ‘Damage something? What do you mean, damage something?’

‘No, I…’

There’s a scratching at the door. Jan Inge’s fat finger:

‘Don’t mean to go on about it but … breakfast meeting!’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Cecilie says, actually giving Rudi a little smile, an almost apologetic smile, and it makes him feel good. ‘It’s fine,’ she says. ‘It’s lovely and big, that dick of yours. Come on. Big brother is getting impatient.’

The sun shines through the kitchen window, shining upon a well-laid breakfast table, glinting on knife blades and making the jam glisten. Rudi runs a large hand through his hair, yawning, almost fatigued by the sight of all the food. Neither Rudi nor Cecilie eat a lot in the morning, but lately Jan Inge has been preparing breakfasts as though he were running a twelve-star hotel. There’s more and more every day, food no one’s ever fucking heard of, cured mutton and French herb sausages, dill-marinated shoulder butt, weird cheeses and whatnot, and today he’s gone that little bit further.

Cecilie sits down at her usual place by the window. She pours herself a large cup of coffee and brings it to her face, allowing the heat to steam her skin.

Jan Inge comes wheeling in from the living room.

‘Sleep well? Everyone?’

Rudi nods. Cecilie clasps her hands tighter around the coffee cup and shuts her eyes.

‘Great,’ says Jan Inge, ‘I did too. After the two of you pushed me back inside last night. Thank you for that, by the way.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ says Rudi. ‘But what’s with you and the wheelchair? Isn’t that the one I nabbed for Chessi when she broke her foot?’

Jan Inge nods. ‘That’s right. It’s just been sitting here since.’

‘Yeah, it was just parked inside the door of the Intensive Care Unit. They were practically fucking giving it away. What’s the story, then? With you and the wheels?’

Jan Inge gets a look in his eyes. ‘Weell,’ he says, sucking in one cheek a little, ‘to be honest, I just find it a real effort hauling this 120 kilos around…’

‘But you’re not fat!’

‘Rudi. Stop it. I’m fat.’

‘He’s fat,’ Cecilie confirms.

‘It’s all in the eye of the beholder.’ Rudi shrugs. ‘I think you look good with a bit of weight on you. But okay, I rest my case. Safe to say you’re a bit fat.’

‘Exactly. And now the wheelchair is being put to proper use. It simply solves quite a few problems for me. And you know how much I like solving problems.’

‘Oh yeah, we know that.’

‘That’s what you like more than anything.’

‘Then there’s nothing else to say about it,’ Jan Inge concludes. ‘A problem and a solution. That’s the reason we’ve all got as far as we have. It’s because we’re problem solvers, and we don’t mess things up for ourselves and that’s why we’re able to look at a nicely laid breakfast table and not a desk in a cell in Åna with some dry foods and instant coffee. That’s the reason we’ve managed to work so many years in this town, under the radar so to speak, and been able to make a living from it. Not on a grand scale maybe, but on a safe scale. We know our stuff when it comes to break-ins. When it comes to cars. To alarms, keycards and locks. We can handle cash machines. Carry out extortion. And we’re able to move goods. Well, Buonanotte’s able to move goods and we know Buonanotte. We have contacts that the junkies don’t even know exist. We know our stuff and do you know what that means? Knowledge. Expertise. A problem and a solution.’

‘Genius,’ says Rudi, ‘that’s what I’ve got to say to that.’

‘The cheese is getting moist, let’s eat,’ says Jan Inge, his voice even more high-pitched than usual. ‘I rustled up some meagre fare for the morning meeting.’

Meagre fare? Rudi frowns. It’s not just at work that you need to keep your eyes and ears open. But within the safety of your own four walls. Is there something going on here? Has someone got cancer? Is it somebody’s birthday?

He looks over at Cecilie.

Is there something going on with her too?

That thing she said about his dick? Was there something in her voice? She isn’t usually so considerate, she usually just moans about it being way too big and making her ovaries hurt like hell.

He turns his gaze back to Jan Inge.

All this food.

Whatthefuckisgoingonhere?

Cecilie closes her eyes and drinks her coffee. Her brother spreads some pâté over a slice of bread for her, then places some beetroot on top. Just as he’s done since she was little. Rudi’s well aware of that. He’s well aware of how much Jan Inge has done for her. He wants to look after her. And now he’s put a little extra effort into making a good breakfast. That’s probably all it is. And Chessi is a little emotional. Is it next week she’s getting her period? Or was it the screwing? Rudi leans back in his chair. Smiles to himself. It was the screwing, it was particularly good, that’s it, that’s what it is.

‘Right,’ Jan Inge says, after a few minutes of coffee, chocolate milk and silence round the breakfast table. ‘I think we’ll get started with the morning meeting while we’re all fresh in the noggin.’ Jan Inge produces the folded note from his pocket. ‘This week’s list. We’ll take it from the top.’

He leans on the windowsill and puts on his reading glasses, the ones Rudi pinched in an opticians on Kirkegata and gave him as a Christmas present, after he’d been complaining about his sight for so long.

‘Something enjoyable to begin with,’ Jan Inge says, producing a DVD that he’s actually sitting on, Rudi notices. ‘Our Saturday movie for the week. A classic starring Price and Joseph Cotton, The Abominable Dr Phibes. I’ll give a short introduction after pizza on Saturday, as usual—’

‘As usual—’ Cecilie sighs.

‘…exactly,’ Jan Inge says, ignoring his sister, ‘and then we can cosy up for a night of gore.’

‘Great, good man.’ Rudi clicks his fingers and points at his friend. ‘Always a new movie. Can count on you.’

‘Item number two,’ Jan Inge says, adjusting the spectacles on the bridge of his nose. ‘Item number two concerns all the clutter and mess. Our weak point. The garden. It can’t continue. We’re attracting attention. We’re wallowing in crap. We need to start taking care of this house. It’s our headquarters. As well as,’ he says gravely, looking at Cecilie, ‘our childhood home. This is where Dad wanted us to live. So. A clean-up. That’s the question.’

‘I think it’s a good question,’ says Rudi.

‘Sure is,’ says Cecilie.

‘Okay, then we’ll say this weekend. Sunday? Sunday it is. Who’s doing what?’

‘I can tidy a little,’ says Cecilie.

‘Good, positive attitude. Anyone else? We need a trailer. Who’ll sort that out?’

Rudi shrugs. ‘We are going to have a lot to do now, what with that Pål guy—’

‘That’s item four—’

‘Okay, right—’

‘But if you’ve both got your hands full with item four, then I’ll take care of the trailer. We’ve people within our network with a trailer. No problem.’

‘Tødden must have a trailer,’ Cecilie says.

‘We’re not talking to Tødden,’ Jan Inge replies sharply, ‘not after what happened in Sauda. Sick hippie. But. Anyway. Great! Clean-up. Sunday. I’ll arrange the trailer. I’ll have a chat with Hansi. Everybody happy.’

‘Hansi? Like all of a sudden it’s better to go to Hansi than to Tødden?’ Cecilie says, rolling her eyes.

‘Maybe not,’ Jan Inge concedes. ‘But Hansi owes us, so we’ll go to him.’

‘Will Tong be going along?’ Cecilie asks, casually.

‘That actually pertains to item five—’

‘Jesus! Jani! Fuck your items!’

‘Listen, if we didn’t itemise—’

‘Itemise my ass.’

‘Itemise my ass!’ laughs Rudi. ‘Sodomise my ass. I’ll sodomise your ass, baby—’

‘Moving on,’ interrupts Jani. ‘Item three. Are we going to see W.A.S.P.?’

Jubilation round the table, even Cecilie’s face breaks into a smile. ‘W.A.S.P.?! Are they playing?’

‘Yes indeed, in Oslo on the twenty-fourth of October,’ her brother says, in a satisfied tone.

Rudi shoots his hand in the air and bangs his fist on the wall behind: ‘We’re totally going to W.A.S.P.! I fuck like a beast!’

‘God, I love W.A.S.P.,’ sighs Cecilie. A yellow glow spreads across her forehead and she sings: ‘Hold on to my heart, to my heart.’

‘Yeah,’ Rudi says. ‘He’s one, big, lawless lyricist is Blackie. L.O.V.E., all I need is my love machine tonight … I can’t fuck, I can’t feel, I’m one bizarre motherfucker, what the fuck’s inside of me, those lines especially, so fucking intense. The thing about what the fuck’s inside of me.’

‘I’m guessing that’s settled then,’ Jan Inge says. ‘A trip to Oslo for the three of us. W.A.S.P. That’s going to be amazing. But we’re not staying at Tom B’s in Holmlia, just so we’re clear on that.’

‘That goes without saying,’ says Rudi. ‘I mean, we’re not Nazis.’

‘And that—’ Jan Inge says, nodding to Rudi, ‘that brings us to item four. The update on yesterday. What happened, where do we stand, what’s going on.’

Rudi takes a gulp of chocolate milk. He realises it’s his turn to talk. He clears his throat and straightens up in the chair. ‘Yes, well,’ he says. ‘There’re a couple of things—’

‘Nice guy,’ Cecilie suddenly cuts in. ‘Pål.’

‘Nice?’ Rudi turns to look at her.

‘Yeah, well he was, wasn’t he? So?’

‘Nice schmice,’ Rudi pouts. ‘Do you want to fuck him as well? Anyway, we’re not here to talk about how ni—’

‘He needs money,’ interrupts Cecilie.

Rudi clears his throat again, ‘Right, they—’

‘A million,’ Cecilie says.

Rudi gapes at her. ‘Jesus, you’re very talkative all of a sudden!’

‘Am I not allowed to speak now either!’

What has gotten into her? They’ve had a good night’s sleep. They’ve had a good screw. She’s got that skincare shit to look forward to. Yet here she is, all thorny and difficult. Besides which, she’s sitting there talking about riding that fucking Pål guy.

Rudi swallows and looks at Jan Inge.

‘Long story short, brother, what we’re looking at here is a man with a problem. He’s run up a large amount of gambling debts, we’re talking a million, like Cecilie just mentioned. The problem is further complicated by women, two daughters, and he’s come to us for a solution. Is there any way we can help him get hold of a million kroner. That’s the situation.’

Jan Inge begins to nod. His head rocking back and forth.

This is good. Always a good sign when Jani moves his head back and forth.

Jan Inge takes hold of the egg slicer, places his egg in it and brings the thin wires down through it. He leans forward and picks up the mayonnaise. Hellmann’s. Unscrews the lid. Puts his knife inside, then spreads the mayonnaise across a slice of bread. Lifts up the egg and distributes the slices on the bread. Takes a tomato. Cuts it up with the knife. Places the slices over the egg.

This is good. Always a good sign when Jan Inge goes quiet and concentrates.

He brings the bread to his mouth. Takes a bite. Chews. Continues nodding and rocking his head. Then he looks at them, takes another bite and says:

‘This is just right.’

Rudi raises his eyebrows, sends an expectant glance towards Cecilie, who makes an odd grimace.

‘This is just right,’ Jan Inge repeats, nods, chews and goes for his third mouthful of egg, mayonnaise and tomato. ‘You know what?’ he says, getting up from the wheelchair and moving towards the window, the slice of bread in his hand, ‘you know what, I had a feeling about something like this when I woke up today. The sun was shining down on me and I thought: there’s something good on the way.’

‘What’s going on in that brilliant mind of yours?’ Rudi asks, cautiously.

‘Firstly,’ Jan Inge says, taking a large bite of his bread, continuing to speak with his mouth full, ‘firstly we can make use of a time-honoured classic in our business.’

‘We can?’

Rudi turns once again towards Cecilie, whose face has taken on an odd yellowish tinge.

Jan looks at them, and with pride in his voice, says: ‘We’re talking classic insurance fraud. Does this guy have a house? Good. Does he have money? Good. No problem. We borrow Hansi’s Transporter at the same time as we get a loan of the trailer on Sunday, we drive up at night, reverse into the garage — does he have a garage? Good. We back into the garage, smash up his house, wreck his car, take everything we can find, break one of his arms, a leg, the usual. Rudi gives him a black eye and maybe a gash under the ear, we tie him to a chair — and voilà, this guy can cash in all his insurance, household contents, personal injury. That should go a good way towards the million, and then we can drive the stuff out to Buonanotte’s barn, take ourselves a coffee with a little something in it and have a chat.’

Jan Inge swallows the last piece of bread. Rudi shakes his head, impressed. It’s just nuts, he thinks, this man has always got a solution.

‘What about Tong?’ Cecilie asks, her hand over her mouth, looking out of sorts. ‘He … will he be going along?’

‘Yes,’ Jan Inge says, with a note of satisfaction, ‘and that ties in with item five on the agenda. Tong gets out on Friday. It’s perfect. Because what would Tong like better than walking out the gates at Åna and getting straight to work?’

Rudi downs the rest of the chocolate milk in one and gets to his feet. He walks over to where Jan Inge is standing. Puts his arm around him.

‘If you were from Oslo you’d be famous all over the country. And everyone would call you The Brain of Crime. Jo Nesbø would base a character in his books on you. A time-honoured classic! That is seriously sweet!’

Cecilie suddenly gets up and holding her hand over her mouth, she dashes in the direction of the bathroom while mumbling: ‘Sorry, sorry, I have to…’

Rudi and Jan Inge look at one another.

‘Hey, are you sick?’

They both shrug.

‘And now,’ Rudi says, straightening up, ‘now Rudi is going to remove the rest of the skirting boards in this house, in your honour, so you can go just where you want in the wheelchair.’

Then he trots from the kitchen, stooping like an eager horse, into the hall and down to the basement to fetch the crowbar, while he feels his chest bubbling with delight and then that song kicks in again: Du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du.

‘Thank you!’ he hears from behind him.

‘Kein problem!’ he shouts back. ‘Shit, it is a mess down here, we need that clean-up now! Hey, Chessi? Are you puking? Bit too much coffee and too long a pole, eh? Felt those ovaries getting poked right up to your throat! Heh heh! Nice guy … Pål, Pål … I’ll give you nice all right. You just stick close to Rudi, that’s what you do, and I’ll make sure it’s nice. Christ, we really need to tidy up this house. Nah, listen, I liked that Pål guy, two daughters and a woman problem, a time-honoured classic comes sailing in. L.O.V.E., all I need is my love machine! Skirting boards, come to daddy. Are you puking? Heh heh! Just ring Doctor D. Ick! Did I say I’m meeting him again tonight? Did I tell you that? Jani? Did I tell you? Jani? Wasn’t that crowbar down here someplace? Crow … no problem! Found it! The metal cock crows! It was under the balaclavas!

36. HIT HARD (Daniel William)

Daniel hears the front door open and close, Inger’s steps growing fainter as she descends the stairwell.

He’s been through two foster homes. He goes ballistic when people pester and nag, and he knows what he is. He knows he’s a bastard to have in the house when he first gets riled

He hooks his bag off his shoulders. Sets down his moped helmet. Takes off his shoes. Throws off his jacket. He hears the sound of the shower from the bathroom and not for the first time is about to call out — ‘Veronika! Don’t use up all the towels!’ — but he stops himself; she can’t hear him.

He just can’t stand people getting on his back. The last foster father was a right pain, breathing down his neck all day long, forever hassling him about homework and timekeeping, and always going on about him not being allowed to behave this way or that. Shut your fucking hole, or do you want a taste of the poker?

Hm?

Would you like to feel the bleeding iron, foster father?

I know how much money you make on me. I know what you’re at when no one sees you, when your wife’s asleep, when you think all the lights in this city built on oil are out, when I’m lethal and painful; I’m the poison that’s poured in your ear.

He was a real asshole. Was carrying on with a woman living three streets away. Daniel William heard him clear his throat, saw him put down his paper, and caught him saying he was heading out to take a look at a sofa he’d found on the net. He watched him go out the door, out into the stinking darkness, and walk three streets down to where the slapper spread her legs and he put it up her.

I saw you, you horndog. I saw you.

He had said it and all. During the last meeting. Child Welfare, him and the foster family sitting in that pathetic living room where they were supposed to sort everything out or some shit. He had got to his feet, the god of true darkness, and said: ‘I know where you’ve been putting your dick, you randy bastard.’

Then Daniel William Moi left. Because if there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s leave. If they nag at him, get on his case, then he knows exactly what he’ll do: Give them a taste of the poker. Put the sword to the forehead. Leave.

And no chance in hell of him ever going back.

Daniel enters his room, closes the window that’s been open all night. He sits down behind the drum kit. Takes hold of the sticks.

He’s tackled living with Inger and Veronika so far. Not that they ought to feel too secure, he knows there’s no point being naïve: Inger’s nice, she’s kind and friendly, but she makes money on him. Same as the rest. No fucking matter how nice she is. Veronika knows that too. That her mother earns good money having him in the house. But it’s gone well so far. Not much nagging. Not much fussing. He’s actually gone as far as staying home with them some evenings. Even at the weekends. At least up until he met the Christian girl anyway. That’s the thing about Inger and Veronika, they need him. Daniel can notice it, how they need a man in the house, because they’re not that strong. That’s what Inger says, it’s good having a real man around. She laughs when she says it, those dimples showing, and she signs it at the same time, making Veronika break out in that laugh of hers, but neither of them are picking on him, neither of them bugging him: they mean it.

Daniel starts hitting the drums. As hard as he can. ‘Battery.’ That was really mad in the woods yesterday. Stupid about that with Sandra, but he straightened things out. And the guy with the dog. What the fuck was that. I’ll go back to my people. You go back to your people. I’ll see what I can come up with. And I’ll see you tomorrow. Dad of that girl in Sandra’s class. Your people, the tall guy said. Your people. Who was he talking about? My people, he said. And who are they exactly?

Daniel’s room is soundproofed. It was the only condition he set out when Inger turned up as a possible foster mother. He was so pissed off that he wasn’t bothered who was put in front of him; he’d gone through two foster families, he was ready to tear through a third, but she looked all right, that deaf daughter of hers looked all right, kind of pretty in an off-the-wall way. ‘But there is one thing,’ he had said, sitting there with arms folded in the social worker’s office, ‘I want a drum kit in my room.’

‘There’s not much of a chance of that,’ they said, ‘we live in a block of flats, it wouldn’t be allowed.’

‘Well then, that’s that,’ he said, ‘I can’t’. So Child Services coughed up the money to get the room soundproofed. Fucking idiots. They’re understaffed, there’s stories in the paper every second day about how stretched they are, yet they still have the money to soundproof a room.

Cannot kill the family, battery is found in me, battery.

On the one hand it’s like he knows Sandra and she knows him. On the other hand it’s as though she has no idea who he is. None. But she was good at screwing. Felt just like it ought to, like diving into eternity. Manage to hold out in time. Was just some sort of shock to the system was all. No problem. Just wait, soon be banging away at you for hours on end.

He’ll have been marked absent by now. Daniel can’t face going to school today. The upshot will be them ringing Inger, then ringing Child Services and after that there’ll be a parent-teacher meeting. They’ll sit down in the guidance counsellor’s office. The student-teacher liaison, the maths teacher, and no doubt that Sivertsen guy, going on about how if Daniel doesn’t buck up then he won’t pass his maths exam, and then he’ll fail his finals, and then … he’s been listening to it since he was in first class. Your attendance rate, Daniel, that’s what they’ll start on about.

Yeah, he’ll say. What about it?

He’ll soon be eighteen. They won’t be able to touch him then.

The handle on the bedroom door turns slowly and the door opens. Daniel hits the drums as hard as he can, the Metallica lyrics whirling round his head, and then he looks up.

Veronika comes into the room. She has two towels around her. A big baby-blue one, fastened above her big tits and reaching down to below her hips and a smaller, pink one, done up on her head like a turban.

She’s often in his room, there’s nothing peculiar about it. At the start it was a bit weird. For the first few weeks he didn’t know how to behave round the girl with the hollow-sounding voice and the strange hand gestures, but then he realised she was just like everyone else, only deaf, and the reason she was a little shaky was that idiots had treated her like an idiot. All she actually needed was someone who saw her for who she was. Is that so hard to grasp? After a while he began to enjoy the silent attention she gave him, so he allowed her to come in. He let her sit on the floor in her Buddha posture and listen — yeah, listen — to him as he played the drums, as well as allow her to sit in his room and do homework.

‘Big bruv,’ she called him a few weeks back.

Daniel had nodded. He could be her big brother.

‘You know what?’ he said, speaking slowly so she could read his lips.

‘No?’

‘I’m going to buy you a car. And a house. You won’t need to worry about anything. I’m going to be rich, Veronika, I’m going to be filthy fucking rich. Your big bruv will look after you.’

Her whole torso, her tits — which are pretty huge — had wobbled under her sweater, her eyes narrowed to lines and her weird laughter had filled the room.

She’s good-looking, Veronika. Tidy. Big eyes. Awesome body. Long legs. But she’s got something intense about her, as though she were water on the boil.

He puts down the drumsticks, looks over at her.

‘Are you going to go to school?’ he asks slowly. Daniel knows he should really use his hands, use sign language, but he couldn’t be bothered.

‘Are you?’ Veronika smiles. Two small dimples play in her cheeks. She shrugs.

He smiles back. Shrugs.

He likes that about her. Her sense of humour. She’s quick.

‘So, what’s up then?’ Daniel says, and clears his throat. He has to look away. He’s seen her half-naked plenty of times. But right now it feels a little weird. Her just standing there. Like that. Now. In the morning. Water beading on her shoulders. Her breasts look enormous beneath the towel and he’s having trouble averting his eyes.

‘So, what’s up then?’ he hears her say.

Shit.

Now she’s sitting on the floor. In her Buddha position.

Fuck.

He can see everything.

‘No, nothing much,’ he says, attempting to smile.

‘No, nothing.’ She smiles.

Daniel swallows.

He tries to take his eyes away but he can’t manage. They’re drawn towards her sitting there cross-legged, towards the towel pulled tight across her open thighs, towards her crotch. What is she doing? She must know he can see it?

‘Play,’ she says, making the sign for drums.

He shrugs. Is she just going to sit there like that? Is she doing it on purpose?

‘Okay,’ he says, making to begin. ‘Wait, hang on.’ He motions to her. ‘Come here. You try. Come on.’

She laughs. ‘No, no.’

‘Yeah, come on, come on.’

Veronika laughs again. She shows no indication of knowing what he can see. She merely laughs, waves her hand in refusal and again says: ‘No, no.’

He stands up, takes a step to the side and points at the stool. ‘Come on, sit down. I’ll show you.’

She rolls her eyes but gets to her feet and makes her way over to him. She sits down.

He sees the nape of her neck below the coiled towel. The red hairs beneath. Her shoulders. Her skin. Her cleavage. Her hips, her ass, heavy on the stool. Veronika turns her head, reads his lips. Mouthing slightly what he says with her own.

Daniel speaks slowly: ‘Pick up the drumsticks. That’s right. Grip them like this, as though you were holding a fishing rod. That’s right. Good. Okay, I’m going to show you four-four time, straight beat. Completely straight beat.’

‘Bit?’

‘Take your right hand, yeah, like that, bring it over to the left, yeah, there, and now you hit the high-hat four times…’

He stands right against her back. Holds her arms, her hands. Helps her with each beat.

‘Like that, yeah.’

She laughs. Tries to keep on hitting.

Daniel feels his pulse begin to rise.

‘And steady. One two three four, one two three four … then you take your left hand, here I’ll help you, the drumstick in your left hand, and on the third beat you bring it down on the snare, like this…’

He takes her other arm. Stands pressed against her. Holds both her arms, both her hands.

‘Okay, good, like that, nice and steady, one two three four, one two three four…’

Daniel’s breathing is heavy. It’s the caveman panting inside, can’t stop this, it’s the stone man panting within.

Veronika lets go of the sticks. She removes the towel from her head. Her long copper-red hair falls down, looking darker now it’s wet, lying like thick knives down along her back. She turns, her eyes gleaming for a second before she closes them, gets to her feet, stands on her tiptoes and gives him her mouth.

No, he thinks, kissing her. Sandra, he thinks, feeling Veronika’s tongue, fresh and strong. He gives her his tongue, feels the electricity in his mouth. She brings her hands to her chest, fuck, she’s undoing the towel, it falls to the ground, her breasts brush against his sweater. Veronika’s hands go behind his back. She takes hold of his T-shirt, lifts it up and presses her breasts against his skin. Fuck, Sandra, fuck, Veronika — Daniel pushes her away.

He clenches his fists and visualises himself beating her bloody.

Daniel runs into the hall. He grabs his moped helmet, slips hurriedly into his shoes, leaves his bag lying where it is. He snatches his jacket, hears Veronika’s muffled crying behind him, opens the door and leaves.

Quit that snivelling, he thinks as he rushes down the stairs, his footfalls slamming against the walls of the stairwell. Stop that blubbering, stop it, do you want a taste of the bleeding iron, bitch?

37. GO NEAR THE DEVIL (Malene)

The school bell sounds like a fire alarm. The pupils begin making their way inside, while Sandra stands there, her face almost unrecognisable. There’s sweat on her brow, her big frightened eyes stare at Malene, pleading for help, as though she were suddenly her lifeline in a rough sea. Sandra’s hand is trembling, the bell is ringing furiously in their ears, and she won’t let go of her sleeve, but what is Malene going to say?

She can’t bear to lie, she’s unbelievably bad at it, and acting surprised is the hardest thing she knows. Daniel Moi? No way. Have you had sex with him? Wow? In Gosen Woods?

Sandra would see through her right away.

Malene has never slept with anyone. She likes boys, it’s not that, and she’s aware she’s nice-looking, she knows they like her, it’s not that either. She’s just not ready. She hasn’t met the right guy yet. The One. Tiril always says she’s going to screw the first guy that comes along, makes no odds, really. But Malene can’t think that way. She knows people call her names. Ice queen. Gymnastics queen. But she pretends not to hear. She doesn’t take it to heart. At least not much. A little, maybe.

What’s she going to say to Sandra? It’s no surprise, what she’s hearing, Tiril already told her, but all the same it’s bonkers that the biggest swot, the most Christian girl in school, lawyer daughter Sandra Vikadal, is together with Metal Daniel. Moped Daniel. Crazy Daniel. Foster home Daniel. And what’s just as mental is that Sandra is standing in front of her — why her? — telling her that she’s had sex with him.

Outside. In the woods.

That is mental.

Daniel is hot, no question about it, but he’s hot in that dangerous way. All the girls know who he is, those eyes, but would anyone dare to do what Sandra’s done? Go near him? It’s so mad it makes Malene’s heart pound, a heavy hammering inside: I met him again yesterday. I had sex with him. In Gosen Woods. And not only is Sandra saying it, she’s picked Malene to say it to. She’s told her everything — why? They’ve been in the same class for years but they’ve never really spoken. Not before today. It gives Malene a pain in her chest. She’s entwined in Sandra’s world now and she doesn’t want to leave it.

Daniel Moi has done some crazy stuff, they say. Killed someone, they say.

‘Jesus,’ says Malene, thinking she needs to look natural, ‘is it true? With Daniel Moi? Wow!’

Sandra’s eyes are watery. ‘You mustn’t say it to anyone, you have to promise—’

‘No, Jesus—’

‘I’ve been seeing him for two weeks.’

‘But,’ Malene takes a quick look around at the dwindling number of pupils around them, ‘we need to go in—’

Sandra retains her grip on Malene’s sleeve. ‘Do you think I’m gone in the head?’

‘No,’ says Malene, ‘but … I mean, he’s seventeen, he’s — well, it’s not so much his age as — y’know … people say things about him, stuff…’

‘Yes. But I love him.’

Love him

Malene feels the thumping of a pulse in her ear. ‘We need to go in,’ she says, avoiding her eyes, ‘but … you know what people say?’

Sandra relaxes her grip on her jacket, her eyes narrow.

‘I mean,’ Malene goes on, ‘as long as you know what you’re doing. Then it’s probably all right. If you … love him.’

Sandra wipes her forehead. ‘I do,’ she says. ‘So, what is it they say about him?’

‘Weell … you know … you do know, right?’

Sandra nods.

‘Don’t say any more. I love him.’

Malene has seen this prim, proper girl every day since first class. She’s always had a naïve look about her, but also balance and poise. Now everything’s off-kilter. Malene shudders. She becomes suddenly aware of wanting to feel like that too and it scares her. Because she’s never thought about it before, about wanting to go out there, out there on that sea where everyone can drown.

‘Look,’ — Malene pushes yearning to one side — ‘we need to be getting in, but are you sure that he’s not just using you, I mean … what about him, does he love you?’

Sandra suddenly gives a start, a look of panic filling her eyes, she looks like she’s about to keel over.

Malene turns to look. There’s a moped coming down the street towards the school. A tall boy with a black helmet, black jeans and a leather jacket riding it.

Sandra gasps for breath, and drags her fingers like a claw from her forehead to her chin. ‘Sorry, Malene, I … talk to you later, okay? I won’t forget this. You won’t say anything, will you? I’ve got to—’

Sandra rushes off towards the boy, who’s pulling up by the bicycle racks. Malene stands looking at her. She recognises that knock-kneed run from PE class, the one people snigger at, one hand under her tits, the other swinging through the air.

Daniel pulls off his helmet and runs a hand through his hair. Sandra throws her arms around him.

Can’t stand here. I’ll get a demerit.

She loves him.

Malene opens the doors and dashes down the corridor, a sudden burning feeling having come over her, a sudden uncertainty; I want that too. She stops for a moment — religious studies? Art and crafts? Pull yourself together, Malene, it’s Norwegian … she’s out of breath as she enters the classroom. Malene nods to the teacher, is conscious of being spared a demerit by a whisker and hurries to her desk.

‘Thank you, Malene,’ Mai says. ‘Nice of you to join us.’

Mai Jensen Bore is fairly young, and she’s a canny, kind teacher. She was off for almost six months last year, for what some claim was an operation on her uterus, while others maintain she had ME, or CFS, which Mira said was the proper name, because that was what her mother had; she lay on the sofa for nearly two years and didn’t have the energy to do anything. But you’d never know it to look at Mai. She teaches Norwegian and social science and she’s one of the most popular teachers, the girls look up to her and the boys make gestures to one another when she walks by in the corridor.

Mai switches on the digital blackboard, clicks on Wikipedia and says something about continuing on today with some texts by contemporary writers. ‘You’ll all recall we read a short story by Frode Grytten—’

‘Pussy Thief!’ shouts one of the boys.

‘That’s right, Jokki, Pussy Thief,’ says Mai without blushing, ‘and you’ll also remember we talked about Tove Nilsen. Well, today we’re going to take a look at something by Johan Harstad, the Stavanger writer who’ll also be paying us a visit in two weeks’ time, so that’s something to look forward to…’

Malene smiles at Mai, tries to follow what she’s saying, Johan Harstad, writer, point of view. But she can’t manage to concentrate. Her head is full to bursting. Sandra and Daniel Moi, Dad and his eyes, the mess in his room, his crying, Tiril, whom she slapped last night…

Malene looks around. There’s a growing disquiet in the classroom, a buzz and murmur spreading throughout. People turn to one another and whisper. Mira has stood up and gone to the window. More and more people get to their feet to follow her. Mai has stopped talking about Johan Harstad and even she’s walked over to take a look. Malene cranes her neck.

‘Jesus,’ one of the boys exclaims. ‘Check it out!’

‘Wicked,’ says another. ‘Yeah, baby!’

‘Whoop whoop!’ a third calls out.

Malene stands up to look out. Sandra is standing by the moped making out with Daniel Moi.

‘All right, everybody,’ Miss Jensen Bore says, ‘let’s try to settle down, okay?’

Malene holds her breath. The white sun shines on Daniel’s moped. His hands are around Sandra’s waist. His head is bowed down towards her and he looks like he’s going to eat her alive.

Take him, Malene urges.

38. I’D DO FUCKING ANYTHING FOR YOU (Cecilie)

The house is situated at the end of a cul-de-sac, close to the rail-track, and anybody would have difficulty guessing what colour it is any more. It hasn’t seen a lick of paint since Thor B. Haraldsen leaned the ladder against the wall in the early seventies and ran a brush across the planks. It could do with new windows, six of them have condensation between the double glazing, the ground around needs to be drained, it’s got so damp in the laundry room that the boxes of old clothes down there will soon decompose.

Mum drank herself to death in this house, lying there at the end like a dung heap with a death rattle, hardly a tooth left in her head. Dad moved to Houston a few years later, telling his kids to be positive in life and since then things have hobbled along in their own lopsided way. Jan Inge’s reputation spread over half the city, people called him Videoboy. Some dodgy characters began hanging around the house and he started to rent her out when they came to visit. He let them eat crisps and watch video nasties which they paid for by putting cartons of stolen Marlboros on the table, and in this way it developed into a little community in a run-down part of Stavanger, a little company where people have come and gone and which today is comprised of her, Jan Inge, Rudi and Tong.

It wasn’t that horrible, she thinks.

Having all those boys on top of her.

But it wasn’t good either.

It was just something she was forced to do.

The house lies a few hundred metres from the old Riksvei 44, the main road into Stavanger city centre, which goes from Sandnes, through Forus, Gausel and Hinna. The stretch of it passing near to where Cecilie lives is called Hillevågsveien. For a long time it was a dismal area of the city. While the oil ran down through the region and lubricated Stavanger, added lustre, it was as though Hillevåg was forgotten. Nobody pumped money into Hillevåg. The whole suburb, along with its small factories, car showrooms and wholesalers, was left to lie and rust. And these grey streets have been Cecilie’s streets. This is where she’s bought her cigarettes and cinnamon buns, the treats she brings with her down to the quay behind the grain silos, while she looks out at the oilrigs lying in the sea at Jåttåvågen.

But it’s strange being a Hillevåg girl now. Property prices have shot up, there’s a new road, a new shopping mall, an odd place called Hillevåg Business Park, a newly opened fitness centre, a skincare clinic and God knows what else. ‘It’s Stavanger that’s come to Hillevåg,’ Jan Inge says. ‘I’m fucking sceptical’ says Rudi. ‘View over the fjord,’ was how it was advertised the time Thor B. Haraldsen bought the house in 1971. What would the wording be if Cecilie’s childhood home was put up for sale today? ‘Attractive detached residence with huge potential, close to Hillevåg Shopping Centre, allowing partial views of the fjord and within a short distance of the city centre.’

Cecilie finds it sort of scary but also sort of nice. A central reservation with pretty trees. Clean streets. People look happier, she thinks. But it’s still safest going down to the sea. That doesn’t change. The waves come in, one after the other, and the mountains on the horizon don’t move an inch, because they belong to what is eternal, while she belongs to what will fade.

Cecilie has never had a job, never had any friends, and at times she’s felt like she can’t tell the days apart. She likes power ballads, because they make her eyes mist over and she likes fags and cinnamon buns because they help her muscles relax and she is carrying a child in her stomach. But she doesn’t know whose it is. Rudi could be the father, because she’s slept with him thousands of times, and Tong could be the father, even though she’s only slept with him four times, in the visiting room at Åna.

She’s tried feeling guilty but the bad conscience won’t come about. When Tong asked if she could wank him off or give him a blowjob, she’d only thought about it for a second or two. The thimbleweed lay in wreaths beneath the trees out at Åna. ‘Like a favour of sorts?’ she’d asked. ‘Call it whatever you want,’ said Tong. ‘Rudi mustn’t get to hear about it,’ she said. ‘Jesus,’ said Tong. And then Cecilie had felt a kind of burning in her chest and a tingling in her mouth, and she said: ‘Okay, I’ll suck you off so.’ She went down on her knees, shoved the round table to the side, opened Tongs flies as he sat on the sofa with eyes wide-open, pulled his pants down around his ankles and gave his dick a quick glance before taking it in her mouth.

She didn’t mind. He needed it, she could tell. After all, Cecilie knows something about these things, a professional insight of sorts, or whatever she ought to call it. She knows men’s bodies are bursting from within. It was nice, in an odd sort of way, sucking off someone she knew so well, someone who’d always looked straight at her but had never made a single pass at her. She thought about it while she tensed the muscles at the tip of her tongue and licked the underside of his knob, that she’d probably known Tong for close to twenty years and that he’d always behaved like some kind of soldier, pretty much like Steven Tyler sings about in ‘Amazing’, an ‘angel of mercy to see me through all my sins’. Not that she’d thought about it before, but as she’d knelt there blowing him, allowing her tongue to relax and widen, giving him wet, doglike licks, it struck Cecilie that Tong had always looked after her. He’d always watched out for her, in an entirely different way from either Rudi or Jani.

Could it be that Tong had always liked her and she hadn’t noticed? Was that possible?

Cecilie stroked him gently with her fingers while she tongued him, tightening her grip now and then, listening to him gulp and breathe, noticing herself becoming aroused, becoming warm at the thought of one of the guards passing by out in the corridor, pulling the curtain in the window on the door aside and seeing her like this, on the floor, with an inmates’s prick in her mouth.

After that Wednesday in March she began visiting him regularly. Seeing as she was the only one in the house in Hillevåg without a criminal record it was left to her to head out to Åna, get the latest from Tong, check how he was, make sure he was staying clean and fill him in on how things were with the rest of them at home. ‘Get him to look on the bright side of things,’ as Jan Inge said. ‘Give him faith,’ as Rudi said. And after that Wednesday it seemed strange not to wank him or suck him off. After all, they didn’t have that much to talk about. Tong has never been a chatterbox, on the contrary, he ‘s always been the silent type.

Cecilie would get behind the wheel of the Volvo, drive past Sandnes, past Bryne and out to windswept Jæren. She would turn off the main road after crossing the River Hå, drive through Nærbo, over the flat expanse of Opstadsletta towards Åna, watching the old prison building rise up on the barren height, thinking how from a distance it resembled a German concentration camp she’d seen on TV. She had a strange sensation as she drove up the grand tree-lined avenue flanked by dry stone stone walls, before she drew to a halt, pressed the button and said: ‘Cecilie Haraldsen, here to visit Tong.’

She liked driving to Jæren in sunshine, in wind or rain, listening to Aerosmith on the stereo, smiling to the guards at the entrance, who began to recognise her after a while, and she liked the feeling of being a known face. It felt like they knew why she was there and that she was swathed in a kind of respect. Jealousy even. She liked nodding to the guards, feeling their eyes upon her as she walked down the hall to the visiting rooms. She liked to open the door and see Tong sitting there, see that body of his, strong from all the work-outs, with his jet black hair shining. She liked closing the door behind her, going down on her knees, sucking him and pulling him off. She got to know his breathing and his body, she saw the veins on his sprawled forearms thicken. Over time she saw a light and colour in his eyes she’d never seen before, and one day, just as he was about to come in her mouth, he said: ‘Jesus. I’d do fuckin’ anything for you.’

Rudi talked and talked and talked without stopping, never more so than when they were having sex; she was so fed up of all that blather. Tong hardly ever spoke. But when he first opened his mouth, the words that came out, they were perfect.

He just seems so bloody smart, she thought.

So why is he with us?

Maybe it’s because of me?

Cecilie hid the thought away in her heart and she looked forward to going to Åna once a week, but she never allowed Tong to touch her. She never let him undress her. That’s where she drew the line. If she took her clothes off, allowed him to see her and put his hands on her — that would be wrong. It’d be unfair to Rudi. Because no matter how browned off she was with Rudi, he is the one she loves, that’s the way she’s always seen it. Up until last summer. Then she’d sat astride Tong. She’d just done it. It wasn’t like she had her hands on the wheel listening to Aerosmith while the countryside of Jæren flew past and the thought of having sex with him had popped into her head, she had just come into the visitors’ room that particular day and done it.

I couldn’t help it, she told herself. I wanted him. It was the first time in my life I ever actually fucking wanted a cock.

Since then they’ve had sex four times on the brown leather sofa. And Cecilie has to admit that now there’s a lot going on in this life that, until recently, was just drifting imperceptibly along. The father of the child could be Rudi, or it could be Tong. She has a grown-up problem on her hands. Because Rudi trusts Tong one thousand per cent. And Rudi loves her. And Tong says he’ll do anything for her. And Tong is strong, he can smash anything with his bare hands, he’s stronger than Rudi, but the fact of the matter is that Rudi is crazier than anyone she knows and that makes him the strongest of all. If Tong wants to do anything for her, then he ought to be aware there’s also another who will, and his name’s Rudi, he’s out there and he’s got ADHD.

On top of all that there’s Jan Inge, and he’s not strong but he’s the one who runs everything, without him none of them are anything, and Jan Inge loves them all. If he knew about this he wouldn’t go get the shotgun and blast somebody with it, he’d burn down the whole house. Set fire to everything and let everybody die, including himself.

And all these people, they work together. And none of them know she’s pregnant. So what’s she going to do? Sit and wait, see what kind of kid comes out, if it has Korea eyes or ADHD eyes?

‘What do I feel?’ she whispers in a low voice while she listens to Rudi making a racket down in the basement, while she puts on her shoes and opens the front door on the bright, clear September day.

‘In love?’ she says in a low voice as she comes out on to the street. She takes out a bag of Fisherman’s Friend, needs something to get rid of the taste of vomit. Surely she won’t be throwing up every morning from now on? It was probably the sight and smell of Jani stuffing his face with those eggs. He’s way too fat now. He needs to go on a bloody diet, that brother of mine.

Am I in love?

In love with Tong?

At the same time as I love Rudi?

Cecilie glances down at her stomach, gives it a rub and whispers: ‘Don’t you worry about it. Mummy will sort it out. Somehow or other. But right now we need fags, a cinnamon bun and skincare.’

Cecilie walks up to Mix on Hillevågsveien every day and buys twenty Marlboro Lights. She’s tried to bring it under twenty a day but seeing as how she likes smoking so much she’s just not able. She’s set a limit at twenty, which she maintains by smoking precisely one pack each day. She’s pleased with having made the switch from ordinary Marlboro to Marlboro Light, that’s a step in the right direction.

After she’s bought the fags, she usually goes into Romsøes’ Bakery next to the Mattress Master and buys a cinnamon bun. Then she crosses the street, passes Kvaleberg School, cuts over the playground by the old German bunker, wanders over the waste ground, out on to Flintegata, down to the bend in the road by the corn silos and along the street towards the sea where she sits down and looks out over the fjord, towards the heights of Li and Storhaug and at the water in Hillevågsvannet. She smokes two cigarettes, one before and one after eating.

And thinks.

Just thinks.

For years this has been what Cecilie’s liked best about her life. Getting out for a walk, buying cigarettes and cinnamon buns, sitting down by the fjord and thinking. To avoid being at home, to escape listening to Rudi´s prattle. And she still likes it. But now a lot has changed.

She began to notice them pretty much around the same time she started sleeping with Tong. Women in high heels and fancy clothes. They had handbags with gold fastenings. They started appearing in Hillevågsveien. They came in and out of a building across the road from Mix. They looked stylish and pretty. They looked like they came from leafy Eiganes or somewhere.

Mariero Beauty, it said in the window, even though strictly speaking it wasn’t in Mariero but Hillevåg. Spa, it said. Universal Contour Wrap, it said. Classic Skincare, it said. And the women in the high heels and the gold clasps on their handbags, they went in and out of there. Looking radiant, she thought.

One night, after they’d watched Evil Dead, she looked at Rudi with her softest expression and said in her most mellow voice, ‘Rudi boy, baby, I was wondering if I could maybe go down to that skincare place?’ Rudi’s eyes widened: ‘What?’ At first he was in a huff and then he grew angry. What the fuck did she want to doll herself up for? Cecilie thought about how right his family were, about how it wasn’t strange they didn’t want anything to do with him. That greedy brother of his with the psycho wife out in Sandnes. She should have just done it. Should have just gone down to the basement, fetched the axe and planted it in his back while he was asleep. But Cecilie isn’t stupid, so later that night, after she had sucked him off and taken it so far down her throat that she nearly puked, she made it clear to Rudi that it was him she wanted to look good for, then Rudi nodded his approval over and over. After a while he began to smile. Then he began singing the opening lines of ‘Dream On’: ‘Every time that I look in the mirror, all these lines on my face getting clearer.’ Eventually he said: ‘I get what you’re saying. You’re knocking on forty. You feel clapped out. Okay, baby, you’ll get five hundred kroner, once a month. All sweet. On the house.’

Now she’s walking along. Pregnant. On her way to the skincare clinic. To beautify herself. For who? Meandyou, Chessi, says Rudi. I’ll do anything for you, says Tong, and he’ll be out on Friday, and tonight she’s going to visit him in Åna for the last time.

Cecilie halts. She brings her hand to her stomach. She’ll need the car tonight. Rudi’s heading out on a job, meeting that sweet Pål guy, the one with the nice dog. That’ll piss him off no end, he hates public transport. But she needs to have the car. It’s too much stress trying to get to Åna without a car.

She whips out her mobile, writes a quick text: ‘Visiting Tong tonight. Need the car. XX. At the skincare place now.’

Cecilie puts the phone back in her jacket pocket, sets it to mute. She arrives at Hillevågsveien. She walks over the pedestrian crossing, into Mix, smiles to Geggi and says, ‘Twenty Marlboro Light, please,’ and he says, ‘The day you quit smoking is the day this place goes out of business,’ and she says, ‘No danger of that, Geggi, I need my fags.’

Cecilie walks down the street to Romsøes, buys a cinnamon bun from the woman who works there, the one who talks about all kinds of things in a way that makes them sound amazing. Then she walks out into the light, heading for Mariero Beauty, with a feeling that there’s going to be a lot of change in a very short space of time.

So much to think about.

A nursery in the basement.

A dog, maybe.

But what if the baby has Korea eyes?

Then there won’t be any nursery.

And there won’t be any dog.

Then the whole house will go up in flames.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ she whispers to her stomach as she opens the door to Mariero Beauty. ‘I’m your mummy and I’m going to look after you forever.’

39. I’VE GONE AND DONE SOMETHING REALLY STUPID (Sandra)

All she wants to do is throw herself into his arms, take me away from here, I can’t stand it any more, and that’s almost what she does when she sees Daniel driving into the schoolyard. She feels a sensation in her body, like a lead weight plunging down through it, but she tells herself she’s a good girl, that she needs to practise restraint, but she can’t manage: I’ve no control over myself.

Sandra makes Malene promise not to say a word, sweet Malene who feels like a friend all of a sudden, poor Malene who doesn’t know what’s going on with her dad, and she runs towards Daniel.

He dismounts and pulls his helmet off. Daniel looks flustered. His limbs seem uneasy, he rubs his fingertips against each another and he has a worried look in his eyes.

You know what people say about him.

Sandra wants to say something nice to lighten the atmosphere, to make them both smile, but she’s tongue-tied. Is it time for her to hear the truth — what they whisper about him? Something to do with his parents. Something mental. So mental it’s fucked up his head. Daniel Moi has killed someone.

She’s never seen him like this before, as though he’s present but he’s not. Everything about him seems strange. She has the sudden feeling that everything she’s doing is dangerous, that her decision to ignore what he’s gone through is dangerous, and that there’s truth to the rumours about him.

Sandra doesn’t like being suspicious, but she can’t ignore the thoughts gorging on her mind. She can’t think of anything to say. Daniel stares right into her eyes. What is it he wants?

She closes her eyes.

Are you going to strike me, Daniel?

She opens them: he hasn’t hit her. She can see the muscles in his jaw bunching tightly as he grinds his teeth.

What is it?

Everyone can see me, she thinks. The school building is just behind me, the classroom is right behind me. Get a grip. She can’t stand here, not with Daniel William Moi. But if she isn’t brave enough to do that, then it means she also lacks the courage to stand up and fight for love, and then she won’t be his girl: Be electric in what I love.

All of a sudden, he takes hold of her head with both hands. His grip is firm. She’s scared but then she feels his mouth on hers. He kisses her. But his mouth isn’t soft, it’s rigid. His kiss isn’t gentle, it’s rough, she can feel he isn’t breathing down in his stomach but up in his head.

I’m making out with Daniel Moi, thinks Sandra. I’m snogging Daniel Moi outside the classroom window. Everyone can see me. I’m doing it. I want to do it.

He lets go of her. Sandra steps back.

‘What is it? Has something happened?’

‘No,’ he says, without looking at her, ‘I just had to see you.’

Sandra feels a jolt of happiness. Say it once more, she thinks.

‘Listen … look, I’ve got to get a move on, classes have already started—’

‘Heh heh. Maybe it’s about time the good little Christian girl got a demerit.’

He laughs. Is it nice? Is a pleasant laugh? Was he being nasty now? Ironic? She brushes her suspicions aside, laughs herself.

‘Heh heh, yeah, maybe it is. But listen — did you see the girl who just went in?’

He nods. ‘The one you were talking to?’

‘That was Malene,’ Sandra says, then blinks. ‘I mean, that was one of the daughters of the guy in the woods last night. I didn’t know what to say to her, I just ran into her—’

Daniel smirks. He points behind her. ‘Is that your class?’

She doesn’t turn around. ‘Are they looking at us?’

‘You can say that all right. Heh heh.’

That laugh. She’s never heard it before.

‘Forget about it,’ Daniel says. ‘You just need to keep your mouth shut, act like nothing’s happened. Don’t mention it to her. We need to find out more, know what I mean? See you tonight, okay?’

She nods. She’ll do as he says, that’s what she wants to do. She wants to trust the person she loves.

‘Sure. But … I’ve told her.’

‘Told her what?’

‘About…’ She draws a breath. ‘About you and me. That we’re … that we…’

‘Heh heh. So what? Makes no difference to me.’

Makes no difference to me? Why is he talking as though it didn’t mean a thing? Sandra doesn’t like that laughter, doesn’t like those words, but she thinks about how she has to be careful, how she has to respect him for who he is, because that’s what love is: to strive to do your best for the other person.

He laughs and kisses her again.

She pulls away. She doesn’t mean to but she does.

‘But,’ Sandra stammers, ‘but … why did you come here? Why now?’

‘What are you asking me that for? I told you, I had to see you.’

She gives him a quick kiss, to rid his voice of the hurtful tone.’

‘No reason,’ she whispers, trying to bring her lips to his, but he avoids her kiss. ‘No reason,’ she whispers again, ‘I didn’t mean anything by it, I just didn’t quite understand…’

‘What? What the fuck was it you didn’t understand? Me coming here? Me having to see you? What’s so hard to understand about that?’

This can’t happen

‘Nothing,’ she says, seeking out his lips once again, that bright mouth, wanting to kiss away all the bad, ‘I understood, I won’t bug you. You probably have lots on your mind. You’ve probably been through loads of stuff that you don’t want other people to bug you about, I realise that … People say so many weird things after all, but I’ve never asked you about anything … I just don’t always understand what’s going on with you, but I won’t ask any more questions, I won’t—’

He tears himself away. His features are cold. He puts on his helmet. Climbs on to the moped.

‘So shut up, then,’ he says, starting the Suzuki.

Daniel rides out on to the street.

A window opens behind her and a voice calls out: ‘Way to go, Sandra!’, followed by another voice, just afterwards: ‘Joachim! That’s uncalled for. Now, close the window, leave her be.’

Dear Lord, Sandra thinks, I’ve gone and done something really stupid. She feels the oxygen leave her body, as though she were a balloon someone had stuck a hole in. Dear Lord, she whispers, have I ruined the most beautiful thing there is? If I have, I want to die. If that’s what I’ve done then I don’t want to live on this earth. I’m sorry for my horrible thoughts, I’m sorry for being suspicious of the one I love, but love doesn’t tolerate anything at all.

40. BEVERLY HINNA (Jan Inge)

‘Right, I’m heading out for a little while,’ he calls out in the direction of the kitchen.

Jan Inge stands in front of the hall mirror checking his hair. It’s always been thin and now there’s a bald patch to boot. The Haraldsen curse, Dad always called it. My granddad, his dad, the whole bunch, scraggly bird-nests atop the lot of them.

But we make up for it in other ways, Jan Inge!

That’s what Dad always said.

Is that right, what ways were you thinking of, Dad?

He runs a pair of plump fingers through his fringe, trying to work the small tuft into some kind of style, to give it some pizzazz.

‘Hitting the gym, hombre?’ Rudi’s voice is cheery. ‘Probably take a mosey on out myself later, after I’ve removed the skirting boards. Little bit of air under the flippers of the old seal.’

Rudi appears in the kitchen doorway, his hair sticking out in all directions, his eyes lively. He leans his long body against the doorframe, an almost-eaten slice of bread in one hand, the crowbar in the other. ‘Chessi’s at the skincare place. That’s the way things are going — soon she’ll want me to pay for facelifts and botox. But, you know. You’re not a man if can’t meet a woman’s needs.’ Rudy gives Jan Inge a gentle tap on the shoulder with his fist. ‘You and your workouts. Every week. The gym bag is taken out, come rain or shine. Respect, brother. Lift those weights! Work those pedals!’

Jan Inge hooks the bag over his shoulder, the one they found at Metro Bowling in Åsen in 2007. They’d been tipped off that there was plenty of cash in the place. A paltry 3,700 kroner. Max. Might as well face it. There’s less and less real money around. Bloody cashless society. The human factor matters less and less, no matter where you look. The bag had been left behind by a customer. They took it with them. It had been full of kids’ clothes.

Jan Inge nods. ‘We’ll drive over to Hansi afterwards, then.’

Rudi nods in response. ‘Have you talked to Buonanotte, by the way?’

Kein Problem, mein Sohn,’ Jan inges says, opening the front door. ‘All good in the hood.’

He hears Rudi’s laughter behind him. ‘Gute Reise, Bruder! The gym awaits, see you in a couple of hours!’

Jan Inge walks out to meet the day. Heads uphill towards the main road, toward Hillevågsveien.

As soon as he rounds the corner and is out of sight of the house, his breathing quickens. Jan Inge walks as fast as he dares without running the risk of sweating — he doesn’t want to arrive with patches under his arms, with sticky hair, as well as being out of breath. He reaches the bus stop in time, waits a few minutes under the shelter. Beside him, an old man in a cap stands staring vacantly into the Stavanger air, on the bench behind them a girl sits with her knees together and her fingers on an iPhone.

Jan Inge sees his face reflected in the door of the bus as it swings open. It looks how it looks, he has the time to think, before ascending the steep steps and paying a bus driver with a hearty Stavanger grin and a large moustache. Never been anything he could do about his face. He’s always had those tiny, little dark eyes. Always had those short, chubby fingers. Always felt there was no getting away from himself.

As the bus sails out on to Hillevågsveien, he settles into one of the seats down the back. Low centre of gravity. Chin resting on his chest. Shoulders hunched over. He takes a quick glance out the window. No one sees him.

A little over a quarter of an hour later, Jan Inge alights from the bus on Randabergveien. At the stop near the filling station, close to that woman Åse’s antique shop, right next to Toril’s Clothes. Nice, that Åse one. Always a smile and a story to tell. He’s been in there a few times. Bought a couple of things. Jan Inge heads into the petrol station. Bending down to the red plastic bucket by the newspaper stand, he picks out a bouquet of flowers.

‘That’ll be sixty-nine, please,’ says the young man behind the counter, a Turk or an Indian or something like that. Jan Inge has never seen him before. There’s usually a woman with a blotchy face behind the till.

‘Sixty-nine it is,’ Jan Inge says, placing a hundred down on the counter.

Five minutes later he’s making his way up the hill behind Tastaveden School. Jan Inge feels hot, but not from sweat or physical discomfort, the warmth is due to other things. Because when all is said and done, this is the high point of his week. Even the street names make him feel happy, as though he were from here, as though he were in the wonderful vale of his happy childhood; Sjoveien, Granlibakken, Soltunveien, Fredtunveien, Høgeveien. So snug, so cosy.

And cosy is underrated.

Within certain circles, at least.

Within metal circles, criminal circles and horror circles, for example.

Maybe not within choir circles, tupperware circles or tweed-cap and waxed-jacket circles.

But in our group. We do underrate it.

Jan Inge has views on the matter. He’s a firm advocate of the fact that cosiness is important, and he’s reminded of that every week as he walks the streets in this area, which he ranks as his favourite in Stavanger. Tasta. Now this is Stavanger, Jan Inge thinks, feeling the warmth in his body, his thoughts flowing fast and philosophical and a firm pounding in his stride. All these ordinary houses. All these ordinary cars.

Jan Inge stops a few metres from the house. In order to swallow.

Will he come closer to his goal today?

Less than a minute later, his podgy index finger releases the doorbell and he hears it chime loudly in the hallway. He smiles to himself as he looks at the wavy glass in the panels running alongside the door. He smiles too at the rosemaling on the nameplate hanging under a painted garland: B. HINNA. He smiles again as he looks at the beautiful, flowery mat beneath his feet, and again when he sees the ceramic pot next to the mat with the colourful plants inside. And a shiver passes through him when he hears the familiar footsteps from inside, making such a wonderful shuffling sound, as though they belonged to a domestic angel, and don’t they, after all?

Jan Inge straightens up. He clears his throat. Sucks in his cheeks and runs his tongue over his teeth and gums. Adopts what he thinks of as a handsome, positive and slightly teasing smile — the kind Dad wears so well — and the door opens.

‘Jan Inge! So nice of you to come,’ she says in broken Norwegian. ‘Always nice. Look at you, fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked and darn fine. Come in. Oh now, did you bring me flowers? Oh, the gentleman caller, you didn’t need to do that, bringing flowers along to old Beverly—’

‘You’re not old,’ he says, as she steers him into the hall, which is bursting with the fragrance of perfume and flowers.

She clicks her tongue and bats her eyelids at him, takes his coat and slips it over a coat hanger. ‘Fifty-four next year, and this girl don’t lie about her age, you know that.’

‘I know,’ he says, looking at her admiringly.

It’s unbelievable.

Every time Jan Inge sees Beverly Hinna, he’s struck by an indescribable feeling of awe. He thinks he’s standing at the gates of Heaven, the way he imagines it must be. He can hardly breathe. It’s like he becomes a different Jan Inge as he walks down the hall on the middle-aged woman’s heavily decorated carpet past her baroque-filled walls.

Her big hair, lending her a glorious Elizabeth Taylor style. Her full lips, always looking like they’re anticipating something to eat, or have just eaten. The heavy golden earrings hanging down alongside her neck. Her eyes, with their listless intensity, accentuated by that purple eye shadow. And her outfit? Never easy to predict what Beverly will be wearing when they meet on Wednesdays. He can sit on the bus with his eyes shut and salivate at the mere thought of what kind of exciting ensemble she’ll have on. The woman is a surprise package. On certain days she might open the door in a pair of tight jeans and an elegant blouse, usually with gold sequins and big shoulder pads that are almost lifting her off the ground, other times she’ll stand there in a gorgeous dress and red high-heels, while sometimes there’s the off-chance she’ll turn up in what she’s wearing today. A pink dressing gown with embroidered motifs: pelicans.

‘Well,’ says Beverly, laughing, and speaking in equal parts Norwegian and English, ‘you’ll just have to excuse me, but I have not gotten round to fixin’ myself this mornin’, you’ll have to take me as I am.’

He lets out his reedy laugh but can’t think of anything to say. Beverly reaches out her right hand, the one with big rings on all the fingers and leads him into the richly furnished living room. The deep red sofa with the large flowery pattern and a full skirt, the genteel rugs on the floor — what kind could they be? Persian, Oriental … who knows what a woman will come up with. The beautiful table lamp with the fringe, all the wonderful pictures on the walls; a cosy painting of a typical garden on the south coast, a picture of a girl plucking flowers in a meadow, the framed poster with the image of Jesus and the inscription ‘Lo and Behold! Our Saviour Cometh! Presbyterian Church of Poplarville’. On the corner table, lots of interior design magazines, a novel with a photo of a broken vase on the cover, and little bowls here and there with sweets, Belgian chocolates, small caramels, marzipan and he can only guess what else. Everything is so, it’s…

It’s so…

LOVELY.

LOVELY AND SEXY.

AND FEMININE.

AND COSY.

It makes him want to screw.

To say it straight out.

Not out loud.

But within.

He says it within.

That the combination of all these things — a buxom, plump woman nearly fifty-five years old, with heavy make-up and long painted nails, on both her fingers and her toes, with a lovely twang to her accent, in these ample surroundings, filled with patterned sofas, snacks, interior magazines, pictures of gardens and Jesus and flowers; that the combination of all these things give him an enormous urge to screw. Jan Inge isn’t the type to go around all week thinking about sex, as he has the impression a lot of guys do. He’s been aware of that since he was small, that it’s like that for a lot of boys. Just look at Rudi. He says as much himself: ‘Hell, yeah, I pretty much feel like just one big cock. And I like it.’ But for Jan Inge? All this sex in society today. He thinks there’s something undignified about it. That we, in many ways, live in a society of screwing. He’s sceptical. He wonders if it can be a good thing. In the long run. What about the people who fall outside this society? What about his own milieu, where there’s no shortage of creativity but there is a distinct lack of cosiness. Isn’t there way too much sex in that, too?

Jan Inge feels left out.

He can go a long time without thinking about sex, days can pass where all he thinks about is horror and interpersonal relations. But. When he gets in close proximity to Beverly Hinna he can’t control himself. And the more she offers, the plumper she is, the more of her form being pressed out, the more lace tablecloths lying out, the more ornaments decorating the fireplace, the more Jesus posters covering the walls, the more interior magazines she has lying around, and the more listless her eyes are, the more he wants to get inside.

Her.

If she opens the door someday wearing a Norwegian national costume, he’ll break down in tears.

‘Make yourself comfortable now,’ says Beverly, who had come to Norway arm-in-arm with Alfred Hinna, an oilman from Tasta. He had found her behind the counter of a Shell station in Poplarville when he was working for that very same oil company back in the early eightes.

Beverly sashays to the kitchen, her hair dancing in the air. ‘You ready to boogie, boy?’ Jan Inge sees that powerful behind of hers under the terrycloth gown and feels almost fatigued with admiration. He hears the tap run and a few seconds later she returns with the flowers he’s purchased standing up in a pretty crystal vase. ‘Wasn’t it you who gave me this vase, Jan Inge? Last year?’

He nods, happy she remembers. ‘That’s right,’ he says, as politely as he can, ‘that’s right. I bought it from Åse on Randabergveien — it’s from Hadeland, early nineteenth-century.’

‘Beautiful,’ Beverly says, leaning in captivating fashion over the table, allowing one breast to come into full view in the plunging neckline of her morning gown. ‘Howdy, girl,’ she says, laughing as she tucks it back into place. ‘So,’ — she fixes those sultry eyes on Jan Inge — ‘how are things with you this week? Business okay?’

‘Oh, business is booming, the money’s rolling in, lots of new ventures I can tell you—’

‘Lovely, and pleasure?’ Beverly moves closer to Jan Inge. She takes his hand in hers, continues making small talk while slowly entwining her fingers in his — ‘Hm? Jan Inge? How is my boy?’ — and pretty soon she’s massaging his middle finger as though it were a pastry she was kneading. ‘Hm? Tell Beverly how my Ramblin’ Man is.’ She’s right up against him now and he can’t manage to reply, he can’t manage to think. What is it she’s asking? Jan Inge isn’t able to hear her voice, he can only see that beautiful skin, feel that increasing warmth, her hand, her fingers kneading his finger, the breasts he glimpsed a moment ago, the breasts he’s seen every week for over a year now, which prove just as exciting every Wednesday, as though he’d never seen them before, and he can’t control himself.

‘Beverly,’ he says, his voice cracking, ‘I worship you. You’re the whole of America, you’re fifty states and then some.’

‘Oh,’ she waves off the comment in mock embarrassment, before gently buffing her perm with the heel of her hand, ‘now you’re exaggerating. It’s just my ass you like, Old Hinna liked it too. Yeah, wouldn’t like to bet against it being what tipped the scales when he saw me bend down behind the counter back there in Poplarville.’

Jan Inge doesn’t like her talking about Old Hinna, but he manages to push him from his thoughts and he continues: ‘Don’t talk like that, Beverly, don’t put it like that, you mustn’t trample on my love — it’s huge, it’s overwhelming. I’m asking you, marry me. Make me the happiest man in the world.’

‘Now, now, now, you know we’ve talked about this—’

‘I mean it, Beverly, I have a well-run business, I can increase the staff, I could be a good husband to you, I can provide considerable sums of money, I—’

She pouts and slaps her tongue against the roof of her mouth, as though there were poultry in the room. She tilts her head slightly forward and Jan Inge sees her eyelashes quiver. Beverly undoes her dressing gown. It feels like womanhood itself issuing forth and filling up the whole room as he watches her breasts spill out from behind the terrycloth; he gasps and forgets what it was he was going to say.

‘Shh,’ she says, ‘you need to be released from whatever it is which is stirrin’ up such a thunderstorm in you. Come now and let Beverly from Louisiana take you for a little stroll into the master bedroom.’

Jan has begun to cry, like he does every Wednesady. He sniffles and nods to Beverly, and she takes a gentle hold of his left hand, guides it to one of her naked breasts. He puts his other hand in his pocket, pulls out fifteen-hundred kroner which he places on the coffee table, while his left hand still rests on her breast. Beverly closes her eyes, brings her hand down to his crotch, and Jan Inge takes a big gulp as she takes her hand away, as he watches her walk across the floor towards the bedroom.

41. AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A RECORD SHOP?! (Rudi)

Rudi parks the Volvo outside Food Story in Hospitalsgata. Free parking for a quarter of an hour.

He removed five skirting boards. It’ll be nice for Jani to be able to wheel freely through the house. You have to respect him for exercising as much as he does, hauling himself off, week after week. Although it’s sad never to see any results. Just as flabby and overweight.

Rudi crosses Klubbgata towards Dropsen the confectioners, passes Ostehuset Café, which he thinks is for wankers. He was in there once, asked them for a simple raisin bun but could he get it? No problem ordering an ecological cock with a wreath of gash marinated asparagus on a bed of spinach with sprinkled herbs, but a classic raisin bun, that was beyond them.

He peels off into Laugmannsgata up the hill in the direction of Sølvberget. It’s a little unpleasant being in such close vicinity to the Nokas building, scene of the biggest heist in Norwegian history. Nobody in the company talks about that. Kind of a touchy subject, especially when they felt they were close to being picked by Toska and his gang. When such a high-profile team comes to town, takes on such a big job and manages to bag over fifty mill, then not being picked can be a sore point. Even though they’re opposed to hold-ups. And to violence. Still, you have to draw the line somewhere as far as principles are concerned. They could at least have kept watch or contributed in some kind of consultancy role. They are sitting on a lot of know-how and a good deal of knowledge about the region after all. What did Toska want with Swedes and people from Sandnes? Maybe a few of them would still be at large if they’d been along? Who knows, maybe that policeman never would have been killed if they’d been in on it. All in all, it’s hard to be passed over. Everybody needs to be noticed.

Rudy passes a beggar in a knitted sweater, an apron and headscarf sitting outside 7-Eleven. Her face looks blackened from soot, her hair is jet black, she’s holding a paper cup between her hands and she looks at him with two sad eyes as she holds it out and shakes it. Rudi feels her looking at him but he restrains himself; remember what Jan Inge says: No matter how much you babble away within these four walls, we can live with it, but when you’re out in public you need to button your lip. But his mouth won’t obey and Rudi halts abruptly in front of the beggar.

‘You there,’ he says resignedly. ‘Come on. Eh?’

She looks at Rudi, puzzled, and says something in a language he doesn’t recognise.

‘Seriously,’ says Rudi, arms out in an expression of exasperation. ‘Where are you from? Lithuania? Romania? Andorra? Eh? Listen, I’m in a hurry, but this disappoints me. You sitting here. In a foreign country. In tatters and rags and looking the way you do. In broad daylight. You’re sitting there, messing up our city and waving a paper cup from 7-Eleven around collecting halfpennies. Jesus. How low can you sink? Look at yourself, honey. Once you were a sweet little girl with pigtails. Once you sat in your Chechen granny’s lap while she sang you nursery rhymes. What is it that makes you think you can get up in the morning, go out and receive — RECEIVE — money from people, while the rest of us have to work to earn a wage? Self-respect, have you heard of that? Would I go off to your country, find a nice spot to sit with a paper cup and beg for money? Jesus! And don’t go telling me that you’ve an uncle from Azerbaijan who beats the shit out of you and your thirteen kids if you don’t sit here degrading yourself. You have a choice, Miss Poland! You can stand up, right this moment, and walk from this with your head held high. You can walk into … Christ … you see that shop there? Ting? Yeah, Ting it’s called. You can go in there and you can say: Hi, I’m a washed-up woman from Estonia. My husband was blinded in the civil war, I have cervical cancer and my kids have tapeworms but I want to do something with my life. Give me a job, I’ll do anything at all. But no, you just want to sit here polluting the cityscape. Fuck me. You make me feel so depressed.’

‘Excuse me?’

Rudi shakes his head and clicks his tongue with a disapproving tsk. He rummages in his pockets. Produces a five kroner coin and drops it in her cup. The woman casts her eyes downward and bows her head.

‘And the next time I’m walking through my city, I don’t want to see you. By then you’ll have returned to the loser land you’re from and participated in it’s reconstruction, or else you’ll have got your act together, found a job and gone on a course to learn Norwegian. Yeah, who knows Aunty Bulgaria, before you know it you could be standing for a political party in elections in our country and speaking up on behalf of the immigrants’ cause, and then I’ll hear you say: Don’t abuse people’s hospitality! Pull yourselves together! Put away the paper cup!’

She bows again and Rudi hurries off towards Arneageren Square. He stops when he reachs the open area in front of Kulturhuset.

Fuck, really in your face, this city.

Too much bloody ruckus, pain in the hole with people pestering, trying to get you to do one thing or another, people putting on plays, writing books, arguing in the papers and kicking up a fuss about one thing or another, not to mention them earning so much money. In that respect it’s not so strange Toska and his gang decided to head here.

The quiet, peaceful times are gone, thinks Rudi. Back when you could sit in Granny’s garden, look around at nature and think deep thoughts.

Rudi realises he’s lost in thought and he hurries on towards Platekompaniet record shop. He comes to a halt as he walks in the door. It’s a long time since he’s been here, hasn’t bought a lot of albums in the last few years and the ones he has he’s picked up at Statoil. He looks around in surprise. He walks along the shelves. Games, DVDs, Blu-ray. Fuck’s sake, where the hell are the CDs? Jesus, isn’t this supposed to be a record shop? He goes further down the aisles, films, films, games, games, reaches the counter and at the very end on the right-hand side he spots a few shelves of CDs.

A shop assistant walks past, a smallish guy with a crew cut.

‘Oi,’ says Rudi. ‘Not too many bloody albums in here. What’s going on?’

The assistant smiles. ‘No, well, we don’t sell many CDs any more—’

‘You don’t sell many?’ Rudi says, raising his voice slightly. ‘Well, that’s not so strange, seeing as you don’t have any.’

The guy in the blue Platekompaniet T-shirt shrugs: ‘So what is it you’re looking for?’

‘Ah, you know,’ Rudi says, lowering his voice and taking a glance around to see if there’s anybody he knows around. ‘Metallica, Motörhead, Slayer…’

‘We do have a selection of metal, lot of Maiden on special offer, for instance—’

‘Don’t you think I’ve got Maiden? The entire collection!’ says Rudi, with a dismissive wave. ‘No, you see, it’s a present, for a niece of mine, and y’know, kids today, they only like pop—’

‘Well, actually a lot of them are into metal too, they—’

‘Maybe they are,’ Rudi says, in an irritated tone, ‘but my niece isn’t. She wants…’

Rudi clears his throat.

‘Yeah?’

‘Well,’ he says. ‘Coldplay’.

‘Coldplay, yeah,’ says the guy, ‘great band. Which album were you thinking of?’

Rudi squirms. He bends towards the guy.

‘Y’know … that one … eh…’ He clears his throat again. Then, in a low voice, he hums: ‘Du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du…’

The record shop guy smiles and Rudi feels an urge to plant a fist in his face.

‘Viva La Vida,’ the guy says. ‘The Beatles couldn’t have done better. We’ve got it over here.’

‘Hm,’ Rudi says, nodding while the guy goes to get the CD. ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ Then, raising his voice says: ‘But listen, record dude, you really need to do something about this shop!’

The guy walks back around the counter with the CD in his hand. ‘Is it a present?’

‘Yeah,’ Rudi hastens to reply, ‘you don’t think I bloody well want that shit for myself, do you? You don’t actually think Rudi—’ He stops himself, no names. ‘You don’t actually think a metal man like me is going to sit in the Volvo—’ Again he checks himself, no details. ‘You don’t actually think a regular guy who works in an office…’ — that’s nice, yeah, an office — ‘…has a good job in an office listens to that kind of poppy shit on his PC while he’s shuffling papers around?’

The record shop guy laughs. Again. Rudi clenches his fists. What the fuck is he chuckling about?

‘No,’ Rudi says, restraining himself, producing his wallet and extracting a two hundred kroner note, ‘I’ll tell you this — back when I was a kid, this was a cool town to live in. When I moved in with my granny after my folks split up, there must have been at least five record shops in Stavanger, and they were record shops, capisce?’

The guy laughs. Again. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I worked in a few of them so I know what you’re talking about.’ And then he gets a kind of serious look on his face. He leans across, begins tapping the gift-wrapped CD lightly on the counter. ‘No,’ he says, ‘things are really going downhill. I had to remove a whole rack of CDs just a couple of weeks back. It’s just the way things are. People don’t buy music any more. Now they download everything, you know. They steal.’

‘Jesus,’ Rudi says, feeling a degree of sympathy for the guy with the crew cut. ‘Hard times.’

The guy nods. ‘They are indeed.’

‘Just constant grief,’ says Rudi, looking around. There’re hardly any other people in the shop. ‘But what can you do? We’ve all got work to do, don’t we? We all try and land the good jobs, and sometimes the big fish come to town, but you don’t always—’ Rudi stops himself. ‘No, it’s not as though an office job in local government is that great either, if you know what I mean.’

The guy behind the counter nods. ‘I remember the old days. Fåsen Records. Fona. Platon Discs. Free Record Shop. Toots Music.’

‘The good old days,’ Rudi says with a sigh.

‘Yeah,’ says the guy. ‘Thousands of records.’

Rudi places the two hundred kroner note on the counter. ‘I feel for you, hombre. You’re upagainstsomerealshithere and I think you know what I’m referring to. The internet. The black death of the modern age. If you ever need any help, all you have to do is pick up the phone and—’

Rudi stops himself again.

‘Respect to you and your loved ones,’ he says. ‘And fuck Coldplay, metal up your ass!’

‘I like Coldplay,’ says the guy behind the counter.

‘Heh heh,’ Rudi chortles, ‘that is your massive problem! No, but seriously, my niece is going to be made up when she gets this pop shit from Uncle Rudi.’

The guy behind the counter laughs. ‘Yeah, if she has a CD player, that is.’

Rudi leans towards him. ‘Listen, mate, I’m going to level with you. Rudi — this is Rudi here in front of you. Come here, let me shake your hand. Rudi’s going to level with you. I don’t have a niece. That’s just some shit I made up. I’m an honest-to-God metal man. A pen-pusher. Have to work hard to earn a crust. Shuffle papers for the council. At the moment we’ve got our hands full with that new crossroads in Tjensvoll. Tonnes of people complaining about how it takes twice as long for the lights to change since the new intersection was finished. And who is it has to deal with these complaints? Who is it has to answer the calls when people ring up to give out yards about us regular local council employees? And who do you think suffers? It’s the little people. The old and the sick. It’s the old people who ring us up, desperation in their voices because their hearing aid isn’t working, because they can’t find their bedpan or because they don’t have a grandchild to go and look after them. That’s my working day. I’m a straight-up metal man. Got a best friend who weighs 120 kilos. Got a woman I’m never planning to let go. You know. It’s like Judas Priest say, you remember, “Fever”? “Fever. You set my soul on fire. You fill my nights with desire.” And people say there’s no soul in metal? People sit around listening to Coldplay? Christ, I’m telling you, here we are, living in the wealthiest city in the world, the city David Toska and his handpicked crew chose to …. and … well, you can just get so bloody depressed thinking about it. Where’s the humanity? Yeah. No. You could go on about it all day, eh? Pleasure meeting other people who are sound. There’re not many of us left, brother! I thought you were a tosser, but you’re not — you’re the last man standing. And now I’ll give you a little quiz here — what two metal tracks am I thinking of?’

‘What?’

‘Last man standing. Two metal songs called ‘Last Man Standing’.

‘What?’

‘Hammerfall. Bon Jovi. You’ve a lot to learn. And I’ve a lot to do.’

Rudi takes out his mobile. He feels buoyed. He may have shot off at the mouth a bit, but first and foremost he’s aware of having done a good deed, offered a little inspiration to a working man in his daily toil, in a business on the way down.

Text message. From Cecilie.

‘No, for fuck’s sake!’

The guy behind the counter clears his throat. Rudi looks up.

‘Christ, if it’s not one fucking thing then it’s another.’ He draws a deep breath then exhales slowly. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up, like the man said. No, you take away a man’s car, you take away his freedom. So it’s a good thing to have a friend with a van. Okey-doke! Rudi signing out.’

At which point he sets off, more agitated than when he arrived, out the doors of Platekompaniet, in the direction of Hospitalsgata. By Havana department store he catches sight of the beggar who had been sitting outside 7-Eleven and, reaching her in a few quick steps, bends down into her terrified face, tears the paper cup out of her hand, plucks out the five kroner he gave her a few minutes earlier and scatters the rest of the small change she’s received on to the cobblestones. ‘Seriously,’ hisses Rudi, ‘didn’t you understand a word I said? I just ran into a real working man and here you are!’ Rudi spits on the ground. ‘I despise you,’ he whispers, ‘you and everything you represent.’

Rudi leaves the beggar and strides past Ostehuset Café. When he reaches the car he sees a parking ticket for five hundred kroner under the window wiper. He rips it into pieces and gets in. He feeds the CD into the player, taps forward to ‘Viva La Vida’, leans back and closes his eyes.

I used to rule the world?

Rudi stops the CD. Presses the back button. He listens one more time.

I used to rule the world.

And then?

Seas would rise when I…

What is it he’s singing? Rudi rewinds.

Seas would rise when I … gave the word.

Now in the morning I sleep alone.

Rudi opens his eyes wide. He tightens his grip on the wheel. Cecilie. All this skincare. The thing she said about his cock. The puking. Something’s up. Something’s fucking wrong.

‘God,’ he whispers, a thickening feeling in his throat, ‘is my girl sick? Is there something wrong with her?’

42. I’VE GOT YOU NOW (Veronika)

The first time she saw him, Veronika thought he looked like a wolf.

They’d talked about it a lot. It was important to Mum that she was happy enough to take it on too. It’s not something I want to push on you. No, of course not, said Veronika. It might be a nice experience, don’t you think? Yeah, sure, said Veronika. Like having a big brother? Yeah, said Veronika. He knows that you’re deaf. Okay. He says it doesn’t bother him. Right. It’s nice to be able to help someone out, isn’t it? Of course, Mum. But, thought Veronika, there’s no doubt you could use the money. You work for the health services, Mum. We live in a block of flats. She googled it. Idealism is nice and all but you don’t say no to 13,000 a month.

Child Welfare’s response was positive. It wasn’t a big drawback, then, that Inger was a single mother? No, on the contrary, it might be advantageous, they believed. Foster children have often had such bad experiences with parental relations that it can actually be a good thing for them to have fewer adults to deal with. With regard to the boy in question, they were sure it wouldn’t be anything other than good for him. It was no easy matter finding a suitable home for a sixteen-year-old, and it was only made more difficult by the fact that the boy could admittedly be a hard nut. He was intelligent. He was talented. But he had been through some things. He had what they referred to as baggage. They made no secret of the fact that this would be the third — assuming they said yes, of course — the third foster home Daniel William Moi had had in under two years.

Mum listened to the Child Welfare Officer. She attended meetings, she took walks with her best friend and talked about what was on her mind. After a while she was able to meet the boy concerned. Mum came home, sat down in the kitchen with Veronika and painted a picture of a boy who was strong, had lots of wonderful qualities, a boy who could at times be unpredictable but who was vulnerable, sensitive and intelligent. A boy who’d been through a lot and was in need of a place to stay until he turned eighteen. A stable environment. Preferably with someone who has experience of looking after others. Mum didn’t say what she or Child Welfare meant by that, but Veronika picks up on those kinds of formulations. She knew they were comparing her to Daniel. As though the facts that she was deaf and he was a foster home kid had something to do with one another.

‘He’s a fine boy,’ said Mum, on the day last of autumn when they were on their way to meet him. And then she shot her that teasing smile of hers, the one which always draws people in, before she said: ‘And he’s very handsome, very.’

Veronika shook the case worker’s hand and looked at the guy in the chair across from her. He was really tall, probably one ninety. He was wearing black clothes and sitting with his arms folded. This isn’t going to work, she thought. He didn’t even acknowledge me. He’s not saying a word to anyone. Veronika saw Mum and the case worker smile at one another. She read their lips and understood how in agreement they were, but the one who really mattered, Daniel William Moi, just sat there looking like a wolf.

He’d obviously made his mind up beforehand not to say a word and not to look at anyone. But Veronika didn’t think he ought to get off so easy. ‘That’s a funny name you’ve got,’ she fired in when there was a short pause in the conversation between Mum and the man.

She knew how taken aback people could be when they heard her voice for the first time, so hollow and strange. But in that meeting it was as though that stupid voice gave her an advantage. ‘William,’ she continued, snickering. ‘Did you add it on yourself? To sound like a prince?’

Mum shot her an angry look.

‘It’s a cunty name,’ Daniel said, finally piping up.

‘I’m practically deaf,’ said Veronika, ‘I can hardly hear a thing. But I’m good at lip-reading, so if you want me to understand what you’re saying you need to look at me, and if you’re bothered to, you could learn sign language.’

Veronika felt her lips tingle as she spoke. He was terribly, terribly beautiful. His eyes narrowed, took on a yellowish tinge; he opened his mouth and enunciating each letter slowly said:

‘I-t-s-a-c-u-n-t-y-n-a-m-e.’

Mum shifted uneasily in her chair. The case worker smiled, in an accustomed manner, and said: ‘Veronika is no shrinking violet, I see. That probably suits you, Daniel.’

‘I need a smoke,’ said Daniel, his eyes still on Veronika; she felt he was going to devour her. ‘Are we done here, or what? C-a-n-I-m-o-v-e-i-n?’

Veronika kept her gaze fixed on him and said slowly: ‘W-h-a-ti-s-w-r-o-n-g-w-i-t-h-y-o-u-r-v-o-i-c-e-d-o-y-o-u-h-a-v-e-s-o-m-e-so-r-t-o-f-s-p-e-e-c-h-i-m-p-e-d-i-m-e-n-t?’

A few days later Daniel William Moi was standing at their door. He arrived with four large bags, a drum kit and a moped. Inger had signed the contracts, she’d also been informed by the social worker that she needed to exercise caution where his past was concerned — he didn’t like people bringing it up. Advice she also impressed upon Veronika. Inger welcomed him, tried to make him feel at home as best she could and Daniel appeared to like her manner; in any case the situations that Child Services had warned them about never actually arose. Veronika’s and Daniel’s interactions continued being confrontational in style, their exchanges cheeky and in your face. She ventured closer and closer every day and before long she took his chin between her finger and thumb, turned his head to face her and said: ‘I need to see your mouth when you’re speaking to me.’

She noticed him looking at her. At her copper-red hair. At her dimples. At her long legs and at her tits.

After a few days, Veronika said to herself: I’m in love. I want him.

Soon she’ll have waited a year. She’s sat on the floor of his room with her legs crossed when he plays the drums. They’ve lain on the sofa together watching TV, their bodies just barely touching. I’ll look after you, he says, my little sister. There’s been more and more of that kind of talk and Veronika doesn’t like it. A car? Do you want a car? Daniel will sort it out.

Little sister.

That’s not what she wants to be.

It’s the wolf she wants. She wants him to place his paws on her stomach. She wants him to sink his teeth into her neck. She wants him to lick her with that red tongue of his.

It was last week when she realised something was up. Daniel had begun to stand in front of the mirror fixing his hair, was coming and going at funny times, and went straight to his room when he did come home, avoiding eye contact with Mum when she asked where he was off to. She should have realised sooner, but she didn’t cop on until he asked her if she knew a girl called Sandra.

‘Sandra? Who’s that?’

‘Nah. Nobody.’

‘Nobody?’

‘Just a girl a few streets over. Lives someplace near the church.’

‘And what about her?’

‘Nothing, just wondering if you knew her is all.’

In the space of those few seconds her fantasy world came crashing down and Veronika felt her skin begin to burn. She was so jealous she could have gone for him, torn strips off him, pushed him through the living room, out on to the balcony, tipped him over the railings and watched him fall to the ground and smash his skull on the tarmac twelve floors down.

What do you take me for? Do you think you can get as much as I’ve given you without it costing you? Do you think you can head off to some cuntbucket of a Christian girl — I know who she is — without your fur catching fire, when I’ve been waiting a year for you?

Veronika pretended she’d something in her eye and ran off to the bathroom. She locked the door, turned on the tap, switched on the hairdryer and sank her nails as deep into her cheeks as she could.

She cried it all out.

Then she sat down to think.

What is it I’ve done wrong? Veronika has made good use of her self-control the last week. If there’s one thing being handicapped has instilled in her, it’s patience. An existence as a deaf person has provided her with ample opportunities to be exposed to inertia; sluggishness from public services, from school. She’s had to wait. For all the goodwill, which is overwhelming on paper, but which always comes slowly.

She has self-control. But she’s made an error. What boy is really attracted to a girl he’s mates with?

She’s made herself too trivial. She’s lain beside him on the sofa, eaten breakfast with him without thinking about how she looks, she’s done all the things adults do when they’ve been together ten years and are tired of one another. She hasn’t been attentive. She hasn’t sold tickets.

Veronika took great care with herself when she went to the bathroom this morning. She told her mum she didn’t have classes before second period and wanted to wash her hair. Then waited for her to get ready for work and go out the door. She took a long shower. She scrubbed thoroughly. She shaved her legs. Her crotch. She breathed in calmly and then breathed out just as calmly. She got out of the shower, went over to the mirror. She looked at herself. The strength in her eyes. Her hair. Her ass. Her legs. Her tits.

You won’t be able to resist this, she thought, and smiled as she wrapped one towel around her hair and another around her body. She tucked it in above her breasts. She left the room and walked down the hall, in the direction of Daniel’s room. She felt a faint pounding in her stomach: He’s sitting at the drum kit.

She had turned the door handle and gone in. She had lifted her coccyx. She had hiked the towel up her thighs. She had felt his breath on the back of her neck. She had felt his body against hers. She had pulled off his T-shirt, pressed her tits against his skin: I’ve got you now.

Now Veronika is lying in the bath. She’s crying through closed eyes. Her right hand resting on the side of the tub, between her fingers a razor blade.

She’s not pretty. She’s not beautiful. She’s not sexy. She’s not smart. She’s deaf and she’s dumb and she’s ugly and no wolf wants to put his paws on her.

43. A RAGING TORRENT IN THE HEAD (Daniel William)

Daniel puts his visor down, closing out the white light. He turns the ignition.

If that’s how things are going to be, then all you can do is ride. If one girl is going to attack you and the other can’t keep her mouth shut, then he can’t deal with it. Every man has the right to turn around and leave. Who the hell is going to look after you if you don’t look after yourself? Girls are dangerous. You couldn’t trust them and they can get you to do anything at all. Heroin? Acts of terror? Heroin and terrorism are nothing compared to girls. Girls control the entire world and they’re all too fucking well aware of it. They’re always the ones in the driving seat.

Your job: look after yourself.

Your job: go.

Your job: get out of here.

You’ve only got one shitty life. It might well be that it’s supposed to smell of sulphur, might well be that every day is supposed to be like sailing on a lake of burning silver. But it’s yours.

Daniel zips his jacket right up under his chin, puts his foot on the gas and leans slightly forward. He sees Sandra in his wing mirror. Her arms are hanging limply by her sides, she’s crying and he can see that she’s unable to move. He can almost feel her despair and that’s the way he wants it. He wants her to be in pain.

Is there a hole opening up in the ground beneath you?

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

Am I torturing you, bitch?

Daniel rides.

He can explain it. And he can’t explain it. How things turn inside out within him.

He wants to be that way and he doesn’t want to be that way. He wants to be the hardest metal and doesn’t want to be the hardest metal. Once he feels things begin to twist inside, he can no longer do anything about it. Then he needs to leave, he needs to ride. It’s as though a fuse has been lit in his head and as it starts to sparkle and crackle, there’s no other option but to shut out all the light: go, ride, get away.

I have my limits and you crossed the line.

Daniel feels the air press against him. He rides down to Hafrsfjord, past Liapynten and whizzing along the seashore at Møllebukta, sees the sculpture of the three swords, dark against the clear horizon, and thinks how they look like they’re going to take off and rocket into the sky. He rides past Madlaleiren barracks, sees the soldiers lining up, sees people walking and cycling and cars cruising on the tarmac. He shuts his thoughts out. The mobile phone in his inside pocket vibrates but he doesn’t take it. He rides further on, out to the junction at Madlakrossen, takes a left, passes the golf course, on up towards the church at Revheim, out towards Sunde. Daniel leans into the onrushing air, letting nothing inside. Before Hafrsfjord Bridge he swings off towards Kvernevik, takes the turn off to the sea, in the direction of the finger of land at Smiodden and thinks about how out there in the blue of the ocean peace is to be found. When he reaches the ribbon of road that is Kvernevikveien his phone begins to vibrate again and he hunches over the handlebars a little more. Where’s he going? Nowhere. Just far away. He heads over to Randaberg and rides through the small village centre. He’s aware of people, both old and young but he doesn’t see them. He simply rides, all the way out to Tungenes, passing farms, fields, cows and sheep.

Daniel doesn’t stop before he’s rounded the headland and is on his way back towards the city. He turns off at Stokka and brings the moped to a halt beside Stokkavannet Lake. He removes his helmet. Walks along the lakeshore. After a few minutes he sits down on a bench. He throws a few stones out into the water before taking out his phone.

Two messages. The first is from Sandra.

Dear Daniel, what have I done wrong?

The other is from Veronika.

You’re a wolf, Daniel. I’ll never forgive you.

He takes a breath. Writes back to Sandra.

You talk too much.

A few seconds pass before she replies:

Yes, I know. Sorry! I’ll do anything you say!

He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath from far down in his stomach. It feels right. That she should apologise outright.

He sends her another text:

OK. Fine.

A few moments later:

Will I see you tonight? Usual time?

He answers:

OK.

Then a few seconds after that:

Thank you, I love you. Yours forever.

He goes back to the text from Veronika. He looks at it as though it were a photo. You’re a wolf, Daniel. I’ll never forgive you.

He places the phone on a rock, squints out over the calm water. He takes out a cigarette and lights it. I’m in love with you, Sandra, he thinks. I’m not in love with you, Veronika, he thinks. But I like you better than Sandra.

He grabs the mobile, types in:

Sorry Veronika. I didn’t mean to hurt u

Then he takes out a well-used notebook and pencil stub he has in his pocket. He writes. A few lines.

Me the wolf, you the rabbit

Go deep, go deep

Me the sword, you the casket

Go deep, go deep

Dearly beloved, truly disgusted

Go deep, go deep

Do not think I can be trusted

Go deep, go deep.

Into the slicing dark

That’s where it ends. He likes the rhythm of it. He likes the dirty humour. It’s from something he read on some blog a while back: a girl was asked what she liked least about sex and she said, ‘When the guy applies pressure to the back of my head as I’m blowing him so it’s not me who decides when I’ll go deep.’ But he can’t think of any more lyrics to add. And he doesn’t know if ‘slicing dark’ actually works. Is it good enough English? He can easily picture it, how the darkness could be a knife. It might be dead good. It might be shite. Sometimes the stuff he writes is like that, wavering between genius and crap and it’s impossible to say where it actually falls.

Daniel closes the notebook and puts it back in his pocket along with the pencil. Zips up his jacket. He’s starting to get into this writing thing. When he manages to put it down on paper he feels the pressure in his head ease. At first they come cascading, the words, the sentences, and a lot of the time he doesn’t have any idea where they’re coming from or where they’re going to, but it makes for a raging torrent in his head, and then, when the words flow on to the paper, bringing other words with them — it’s a kick. He feels a tingling in his fingertips, just like when you push yourself to the limit lifting weights.

Daniel makes his way back to the bike. He puts the helmet on, sits down and starts to ride.

A wolf? He thinks, watching the needle of the speedometer rise.

A few minutes later he dismounts outside the block of flats.

In the lift he feels the upward motion tug at his stomach.

Not long after that he walks in the front door.

He stops, looks around the hall. Everything is the same as it was this morning. The lights are on. Her clothes are there. Her schoolbag is there. He kicks off his shoes, hangs up his jacket and tosses his helmet on to the hall bureau. He walks into the living room.

‘Veronika,’ he calls out, as though she could hear him.

Daniel feels his pulse rate rise. He sticks his head into the kitchen, the sight of the fridge door ajar gives rise to a feeling of faint unease. He shuts it. He makes his way back through the living room and out into the hall. He walks towards her room.

‘Veronika?’ he calls out again, as though she really could hear him, and opens the door. There’s nobody in there. Just a half-made bed, her books, her posters, the computer and her clothes.

He returns to the hall.

He glances at the bathroom door.

He takes a few steps then halts outside. He puts his ear to the door, listens.

Daniel takes hold of the handle, presses down. The door is locked.

44. BUNNY’S LITTLE BROTHER (Tiril)

Bunny’s bloody little brother. He is such an unbelievable douche-bag. What does he want? Every single day it’s one thing or the other. Tiril just wants to lamp the guy. After all, he is only a dwarf — he looks like a little duplo man. Are his parents retarded? Were they on heroin when they conceived him? If it’s not something about her clothes then it’s her make-up, and if it’s not that then he’s poking or prodding her. Jesus, he’s annoying. He can’t pass by her without bumping into her or making some moronic comment — the other day he spat in her hair during music. She was trying to follow what the teacher was saying about the difference between major and minor, really interesting as a matter of fact, and then she felt something wet in her hair and heard Bunny’s little brother’s toady laughter behind her. Christ, how much of a mongo can you possibly be?

Here he comes now, with the wigger walk, the crappy hoodie and the unlaced trainers, and those eyes of his, blinking nonstop, is there something wrong with them? Soon be able set your watch by the pint-sized reject. Lunch break. Pling, and he appears: ‘Hey, Hanna Bad Karma, been talking to your sister, have you? She’s suddenly all best mates with Daniel Moi’s slapper!’

Tiril’s just about to open her mouth, just about to tear into him.

‘Don’t even bother, like,’ says Thea.

Tiril extends her middle finger, narrows her eyes as much as she can and says: ‘What is your problem?’

‘AIDS!’ shouts Bunny’s little brother. ‘Do you want it? Come on, I’ll smear it all over your tits!’

Thea takes a hold of Tiril. ‘Lets go. Just ignore him.’

Jesusfuckingchrist. Tiril just stands there, even though Thea’s expression is imploring her to move. What is with him? There’s definitely something wrong with him. God, she’s glad she’s not in the same class. Tiril feels her heart pound, feels it thump with wicked clarity when he talks about Malene. That’s how it’s always been. She and Malene might argue like mad, fall out all the time, like yesterday when Malene clobbered her, but if someone says a bad word about her sister then Tiril flies off the handle. She’ll clench her fists, go for them and beat the shit of them.

‘Come on,’ says Thea once more. ‘Just drop it.’

‘Just let him stand there shooting his mouth off?’

‘No, but … don’t bother your ass, like.’

Tiril makes her way towards Bunny’s little brother. She walks as quickly as she can. The silver chain, which loops from her hip down the outside of her thigh, jingles in time with her strides. Little bastard. He can say what he likes about her singing, can call her an emo until he pukes, but no way is she going to listen to this. There have been rumours flying all around the school since this morning, loads of people saying one thing and the other about what happened. Some are saying Daniel rode into the schoolyard, got off his moped and hit Sandra, while others are saying he snogged her, some people are saying he grabbed her between the legs, others that he bawled her out, but Malene was there. And Malene told her, loud and clear: ‘We’re the only ones who know anything, Tiril. Understand? Suddenly we — you and me — are the only ones Sandra has. Do you understand? She loves him. He loves her. No snitching, okay? Sandra isn’t like we thought she was.

That sank in. Sandra can’t help who she is. Sandra can’t do anything about where she comes from: Sandra’s one of us now.

‘Hey, Shaun!’

She continues walking towards him. People are looking now. They begin to flock around.

‘Oh oh! Emo alarm!’ says Bunny’s little brother loudly. He’s standing together with Fredrik and Hassan in front of the tree by the gymhall.

‘Hey, Shaun,’ she repeats. ‘Hey! Shaun the Sheep! I’m talking to you!’

Tiril stops right in front of him. Bunny’s little brother stands there sneering but she notices he can’t meet her eyes. She maintains a steady gaze.

‘Something on your mind, Amy Lee?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘there is.’

‘Hey! The emo actually has a mind! Word!’

Bunny’s little brother raises the palm of his hand to Hassan and they high-five.

‘See these?’ Tiril lifts her hands and holds them in front of his face. ‘Can you read?’

‘Funny.’ Shaun’s gaze sweeps across her fingers. ‘Love hate, wow, scary.’

She lowers her voice, brings her face right up to his: ‘You’re a loser, Shaun Payne, and you know it. You’re going to end up smoking crack in a couple of years. You think you’re hot shit because your family comes from the US but you’re not. We don’t buy that crap. You’re from a shithole where people think the death penalty is the solution to their own problems and invading other countries is the solution to other people’s problems; you’re a lowlife and an idiot; you’re the only person I know who’s managed to get busted swiping stuff in Spar twice in two weeks. Jesus, look at yourself, you’re the same height as a wheelie bin and you still get clocked trying to steal chocolate. You can’t open your mouth without coming out with something stupid. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you do anything other than slag people off?’

Bunny’s little brother’s face is red, he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, tries to grin but can’t quite manage. Tiril whispers: ‘Shaun? You’ve bad breath. You hear me? Loser. Have you got a crush on me?’

He swallows; she sees his Adam’s apple rise and fall.

‘Well, have you?’

‘Jesus,’ he says, but there’s a tremor in his voice.

‘These are my hands,’ Tiril says, clenching her fists. ‘The next time you say a fucking word about my sister, or Sandra, or me, I’ll plant them in your face. And when I get my period — and that won’t be too long — I’m going to smear blood all over your ugly mug. And tomorrow I’m going to stand in the gym hall and sing, and I won’t forget one single line. And you are never, you hear me, never going to get so much as the tiniest little piece of me.’

She turns on her heels. Starts to walk. A crowd of people have gathered round. Nobody says a word. She sees Malene standing amongst them, and behind her, Sandra. She gives them a quick nod.

From behind her comes the sound of laughter. It grows louder the further away she gets. She slows down. She closes her eyes.

‘Emo bitch!’

Bunny’s little brother.

‘Emo slut! Do you think you can talk to people like that and get away with it?’

Oh, you stupid little shit.

You couldn’t let it go, could you?

Tiril turns. Thea makes an attempt to restrain her but Tiril runs at him, her fist raised, and when she punches him as hard as she can in the face, she connects cleanly.

45. MARIERO BEAUTY (Cecilie)

She is so beautiful.

She’s behind a desk, dressed in a white lab coat; she could be in her late thirties, maybe early forties. She’s slim, but in a strong way, her skin golden and Egyptian, her mascara moss green, her nails are painted, her lipstick is deep red and she’s wearing her hair up.

Cecilie feels like a hedgehog, she wants to turn around and go back out the door, run down to the fjord and never come back.

The lighting in the room is low. There’s a chandelier with yellow twirly light bulbs hanging from the ceiling and a pale pink candle on the woman’s desk radiating warmth over her smooth, wrinkle-free hands. The scent of essential oils, plants, lavender and herbs pervade and a piano and panpipe version of ‘Für Elise’ is sneaking out of speakers someplace.

Cecilie’s stomach feels cold and her palms are sweaty; she needs to pee but the woman behind the desk looks up, smiles and says, ‘Hello, welcome, you must be Cecilie?’

A peeping sound like that of a bicycle brake escapes her mouth as she emits a ‘yes’, in an attempt to keep her lips from opening too wide and revealing her yellow teeth.

The woman gets to her feet and walks round from behind the desk, her whole being still smiling. The corners of Cecilie’s mouth twitch when she sees her green eyes. Fine green rays spread out across the iris, and in her left eye, below the pupil, she has three or four red flecks resembling tiny pearls.

‘Lovely to see you, Cecilie — is this your first time with us?’

‘Yes…’

The woman motions with her hand towards a coat stand and Cecilie begins removing her jacket even though all she wants to do is leave.

‘Your hair really is a fantastic colour, I envy you that!’ She glances at a sheet of paper lying on the desk. ‘Cecilie Haraldsen. Classic skincare treatment, wasn’t it?’

‘Ehh … yeah,’ Cecilie brings her hand to her hair, awkwardly, ‘I thought I’d…’

‘Für Elise’ is replaced by the strains of ‘Imagine’, also being played on piano and panpipes. The beautiful woman seems to be strewing something across the floor as she gestures towards a hemp basket with pink, sea-blue and white slippers in it.

‘Feel free to take off your shoes and slip into a pair of these,’ she says, letting out a gentle laugh that almost seems to materialise, like a colourful ball rolling over the floor and up the walls. ‘Just heaven.’

‘Okay…’

Cecilie bends down, self-consciously, and takes off her shoes. Two old, worn-out black socks. She curls her toes and tightens her lips.

‘Good, Cecilie, this is what we’ll do. You come along — silly me, I forgot to introduce myself, I’m Hege…’

Cecilie gives her clammy palm a quick brush of her thigh and takes the woman’s hand. Warm and soft, like everything else in here.

‘I just have to say,’ she says, smiling again, ‘that hair colour. Smashing! Now, we have eight cubicles in all and if you’ll just follow me down here then we’ll see what we can do.’

‘Okay…’ Cecilie blushes and raises, without meaning to, her hand to her hair.

‘Are you married, Cecilie? Kids?’

Cecilie looks away, shakes her head.

The woman smiles, almost conspiratorially, and says: ‘Still not too late to have a few little ones, but all the same, we have to admit we are of a certain age, and we need to look after our skin—’

‘We do, yeah…’

‘But a boyfriend — you do have a man, Cecilie?’

‘I do, yeah…’

‘And of course he wants to see you looking nice, hm? It’s just the right time for you to take care of yourself. You deserve it.’

Cecilie follows on the heels of the beautiful woman into what she’d called a cubicle — a small room containing a bed at an angle with a pillow covered in a towel at the head. There’s a small stool with wheels beside it and a shelf along one wall. Beneath the shelf stands a small table with an assortment of skincare products, bottles and jars on it. And once again a pale pink candle, the same music as out in the reception, the same soft smells, and a strange looking contraption on wheels.

The sight of the bed makes Cecilie nervous — is she supposed to undress?

‘Now, Cecilie, here we are. Everything okay? Good. You lie down and make yourself comfortable. You can take off your sweater — leave your bra on — and then just relax. There you go.’

Cecilie pulls the sweater off over her head, turning it inside out, her pulse climbing, shivering as she folds it before lying down on the bed.

No other girl has seen me like this since PE at school, she thinks.

‘Now we’ll just put this little hairnet on,’ the beautiful woman says. ‘Oh, you seem to be a little tense today, try to relax. That’s it. You’re a tad pale at the moment, don´t you think?’

‘Weell, maybe a bit, yeah…’

The woman smiles and leaves the room but returns after a few moments. She’s carrying a bowl of water. She puts it down on the little table and dips a cloth into the water, wringing it afterwards. She places the cloth on Cecilie’s face and begins wiping her skin gently while talking about a purifying cream she’s going to apply, one with several functions — it peels and cleanses as well as acting as a tonic.

‘You know, Cecilie,’ she says, removing the cloth and moistening her own hands with the purifying cream. ‘We need something pure, simple and effective. We only use ecological products here. Adverts will always try to convince you to buy the cheaper ones but they’re just stuff and nonsense. When we get a little older we…’

Cecilie shuts her eyes.

The beautiful woman begins to touch her. Soft fingers smear on a light cream and massage Cecilie’s skin in gentle, circular motions.

Cecilie’s breathing becomes shallow.

Nobody has ever touched her like this.

The beautiful woman talks and talks while she cleanses her skin but Cecilie can’t follow what she’s saying. All she can focus on is how unpleasant it feels to have someone touch her in this way.

When she’s finished with the cleansing, the woman wheels the big contraption closer. It’s a steam machine, and she positions it above Cecilie’s head, pretty much like a large hairdryer.

‘Now, Cecilie. You just lie there, okay? Do you feel a little more loosened up now?’

‘I … wha?’

‘Your muscles, have they loosened up a bit?’

‘Ehh … yeah…’

The woman runs her hand across Cecilie’s shoulder and smiles.

‘Stressful time at the moment, perhaps? At work?’

‘Suppose…’

Her fingers leave her skin.

Don’t touch me.

‘What do you work at, Cecilie?’ the woman asks and turns on the machine, the steam rushing into Cecilie’s face.

Touch me.

‘Work?’ Cecilie clears his throat, blushes, sweats. ‘Well, I … work in a video store.’

A video store? Why did she say that?

‘Ah, well, there you go,’ says the beautiful woman, ‘you’re on your feet all day. That can be tough, standing so much. Tough on your back, tough on your shoulders. It’s only proper you’re taking a little time out for yourself. Good. Have you done any yoga?’

‘Yoga?’

‘Try to get into a yoga frame of mind. Is it hot? Try to imagine you’re becoming soft and heavy all over, that you’re accepting all the peace and relaxation you can get. Don’t worry if you find it a little bit difficult to breathe, that’s quite normal, it’s the steam — just turn your head ever so slightly away. Okay, Cecilie?’

‘Okay’.

I need to pee, Cecilie thinks.

I want a smoke, Cecilie thinks.

A gush of heat hits her face.

Touch me.

In a little while, after the beautiful woman has left the room with the bowl of water and returned with it again, the steam machine is turned off and wheeled away from her face. The woman cleanses Cecilie’s skin once more and once again she touches her and again she tenses up, from her feet all the way up to her neck.

She hears the woman’s voice: ‘Okay, Cecilie, peeling.’

‘Huh?’

‘Peeling,’ says the beautiful woman, opening a small jar and scooping a thicker cream on to her fingertips. ‘You may as well throw out all those expensive creams if you don’t peel the skin.’

Are you going to put your hands on me again?

Cecilie looks at her. Doesn’t she realise who I am?

‘There’s no doubt,’ the woman continues, her hands moving slowly towards Cecilie’s face, ‘we all face stress and strain in our daily lives and that affects our skin, giving rise to impurities and blemishes. Do you use sun factor fifty? I do. Skin cancer is a real danger in the Nordic countries, you know. The skin needs to breathe — cosmetics block our pores and cause a build-up of grime, which is why you need to use mineral make-up.’

Her hands hang in the air in front of Cecilie.

Is she not going to touch me again?

‘Mineral ma—’

‘The skin is better able to absorb it and it contains fewer particles than cream. Doesn’t it feel lovely? Can you sense the dialogue between you and your body?’

‘Huh?’

The woman smiles. She just smiles.

You’re so beautiful, Cecilie thinks, not quite understanding why everything turned out this way, why this woman should have the life she has while Cecile is stuck with her own life.

The woman spreads the coarse cream over Cecilie’s face, it feels like grains of sand and causes a slight burning sensation.

‘Does it feel okay? Some people find it a little bit rough, a tad prickly.’

No, Cecilie thinks, I only feel your fingers.

‘Okay, great, now for a little tonic…’

She’s touching me.

‘And some serum…’

Even softer motions, a light tapping on the skin.

‘Anyway, Cecilie,’ the woman says after a few moments of silence, ‘now we’re ready for a face mask, a moisturising mask with hydralin acid — which our bodies produce less of the older we get — and collagen, to build the skin back up. Okay?’

I can’t breathe, Cecilie thinks, nodding with her eyes closed. With calm movements and supple hands, the woman applies a cream with a faint odour to her face and places cotton wool pads on her eyes.

‘Now you just lie there and relax for fifteen minutes while the mask takes effect. I’m stepping out for a little while. What about this fantastic weather we’re suddenly getting? You know, I just have to say again, that hair colour of yours? Smashing. I’ll be back soon. Think about something nice, Cecilie, think about the nicest thing you have.’

The beautiful woman leaves. Cecilie can feel the movement of her fingers across her skin, like an echo.

The nicest thing I’ve got?

Dad. The SodaStream.

The nicest thing I’ve got?

Rudi. Tong.

The nicest thing I’ve got?

Fags and cinnamon buns.

The nicest thing I’m going to have: my kid.

The music coming through the speakers changes. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ has been playing since ‘Imagine’ ended, now the lapping of waves and the chirping of birds can be heard and the lighting above Cecilie’s head is dimmed.

She falls asleep.

Cecilie dreams, she dreams in strong colours — she dreams of Tong.

She’s woken up by the sound on the CD of the waves and the birds jumping. Cecilie’s body feels hot; she pictures Tong, hears his breath in her head and she feels sweat form under her hairline. The CD has caught on a loop in the middle of a wave breaking on a beach; she hears a machine out in the hallway — a coffee machine? — and then voices. Two woman talking. Slightly disoriented from having slept for a few minutes in the middle of the day, she gathers herself, and then catches bits of what the voices are saying. It’s the skincare woman and another girl: ‘Yeah, everything’s so expensive now…’, ‘…we’re going to re-landscape the whole garden next year…’, ‘…oh, poor thing…’, ‘…a complete wreck, I think she’s a drug addict…’

Cecilie pricks up her ears.

‘…you think?’, ‘…oh, yeah, poor thing…’

The CD stops, the jumping subsides, and the skincare woman re-enters the room. Her smile is just as warm as it has been the entire session.

‘Wonderful, Cecilie, now just wait. We’ll cleanse ever so slightly again, apply a little tonic and serum, a few drops of oil and some eye cream — and believe me, you’re going to look great.’

The skincare woman wrings the cloth over the bowl and brings it to Cecilie’s face.

Cecilie keeps her eyes shut. Her lips taut and pressed hard together.

‘There. Try to relax. Hm? How do you feel?’

Cecilie opens her eyes.

‘Cecilie?’

She can’t manage to say anything.

‘Is everything all right … are you crying?’

Cecilie turns her head away. She looks at the wall. She brings her hand to her eyes, runs a finger beneath the bottom lid of her right and left eyes and realises she’s crying from both. And then she says: ‘You’re not the only one with a child. I’m going to have a child, too. And I’m not a junkie. But my boyfriend will steal your car while you’re asleep. He’ll beat up your husband when he doesn’t pay up what he owes. I’m not pretty, I’m never going to be, and you’re only lying when you say how nice my hair is. I listened to you talking, I can hear that you never tell the truth. You might well walk around thinking you’re gorgeous and you and your friends might well think you know everything about everyone, but you’re all just fucking high-heeled heifers, and I, I need a smoke and I need a cinnamon bun.’

Cecilie gets up, puts her feet on the floor. The beautiful woman stands in front of her, fright in her eyes.

‘Shall we…’ she says, clearing her throat, ‘shall we schedule another appointment?’

‘Your CD is scratched,’ Cecilie says and walks out of the room.

46. RAINING BLOOD (Daniel William)

Locked. Daniel feels his breath being forced up his throat. Veronika. Don’t be messing about now, okay? He presses down on the handle again, shouts, and bangs on the door, even though he knows it’s pointless.

He jiggles the door handle. The only way to get her attention is if she sees it going up and down.

Nothing happens.

Daniel puts his ear to the door. He holds his breath and listens. Nothing. He would have heard if the shower was on, if the tap was running, if somebody was moving around or someone flushed the toilet. Nothing.

The lock clicks.

He gives a start, takes a step back and stands looking at the door. Nothing happens. It doesn’t open. Fuck, he thinks. Am I supposed to go in? Is this a signal that I’m welcome in after all? Eh? And what does she mean by it? Am I supposed to go in all puppy-eyed, with my tail between my legs? Am I supposed to get down on my knees in front of her and apologise?

I can’t be bothered with this, he thinks. I can’t be assed playing along. Daniel curses himself for having landed in this situation, curses himself for not having said yes to an institution instead of a new foster home. This was bound to happen when he was left living with women.

He opens the door.

Oh Jesus.

He’s unable to move.

‘Veronika! What have you done?’

The girl is sitting on the toilet lid. She’s wearing a T-shirt, the metal one, the white Kvelertak one he gave her for her fifteenth birthday. Her hair is dishevelled and her legs are bare.

Veronika turns her face towards him. It looks like a grid, a fine-lined mesh. There are vertical lines from her forehead down to her chin and jaws and horizontal lines going straight across her face. She’s also cut her arms, streaks running down each forearm. Most of the blood has congealed and assumed the same colour as her hair. The long parallel incisions are nasty-looking and rust-coloured.

‘Veronika…’

He tries to hold the tears back but can’t manage, and begins to cry. He sniffles, dries his eyes and takes a step forward. She just sits there looking at him. She shrugs, gives him a lopsided grin. There are bloodstains in the bath. A razor blade lying beside the drain.

Why do I always have to see things like this, he thinks, feeling anger rise. Why can’t I be left alone? Why can’t I leave without things catching up with me again?

Daniel reaches out, puts his arms around Veronika and pulls her close. She’s stiff at first but her body begins to warm up the longer she remains in his embrace. She places her arms on his back.

What will I do, thinks Daniel. What the hell will I do. He tenses the muscles in his jaw, squeezes his eyes shut, wanting more than anything to leave, get to the Suzuki and ride, but he can’t do that now.

After a while he relaxes his embrace and pulls his head back a little to look at her. The lines on her face are straight, she’s carried it out with precision, cut herself up carefully and thoroughly, from top to bottom and side to side, with her eyes open, in front of the mirror.

Daniel opens his mouth.

‘How deep are they?’

No reply.

‘How deep?’

He brings his hand to her face, traces the incisions with two fingertips. The cuts are superficial, not extending far below the surface. ‘You have to promise me never to do that again,’ he says.

She turns her head when he speaks. That’s what she does when she doesn’t want to listen to people. He takes hold of her chin, feeling the cuts against his fingers again, turns her to face him and says: ‘Veronika. Look at me. You have to promise never to do that again.’

She closes her mouth, tightens her lips.

‘Well? Say something.’

She shakes her head.

‘What is it I’ve done to you?’

She’s crying. Fuck, that’s almost worse.

‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know about this. How could I have known?’

Veronika raises her right hand, sniffles, the tears cease. She extends her index finger and pokes him on the chest with it. ‘Your heart,’ she says, ‘it’s raining blood in there.’

She does this sometimes, says zombielike things — they just fall out of that sky she has inside her head.

‘Jesus, you’re one unusual girl, Veronika,’ he says.

She taps her fingers on his chest. ‘Say it once more.’ Veronika moves a little closer to him. ‘Say it once more.’

You’re not the one I want.

‘Say it again. Say that I’m one unusual girl.’

He smooths away a wisp of hair from her cheek, it was stuck in the moisture from her tears.

‘You have to promise me never to do that again. I won’t stand for it. Once more, and I leave.’

‘Don’t speak so fast.’

‘I’ll leave,’ he repeats. ‘And I’ll be gone for good. And when I go for good, I never look back. Do you understand?’

She nods.

‘Say it. Say it once more.’

‘You’re one unusual girl, Veronika,’ he says, conscious of meaning it. She nods.

‘Doesn’t it hurt?’ He strokes her gently across the face.

‘No,’ she says, ‘it doesn’t hurt now.’

‘Christ.’ Daniel exhales heavily.

‘I like this T-shirt,’ she says, pulling at it a little, making the cotton taut against her tits.

‘Mhm,’ he says, nodding. ‘It’s the bollocks.’

‘The bollocks?’

He nods. ‘The dog’s bollocks. A deaf girl going round wearing it.’

‘Yeah,’ she says, and moistens her lips. ‘The dog’s bollocks.’

Daniel runs his hands through his hair. ‘But what are you going to say to Inger? Are you just going to … what are you planning to say?’

Veronika shrugs. She sits down on the edge of the bathtub. ‘I don’t know. She’ll just have to deal with it. I’m not dead. I’m just deaf.’

She giggles, the atonal laughter resounding more than usual. He laughs too, he can’t help it. Stuff she comes out with, sometimes she really hits the mark.

‘God, you’re weird.’ Daniel shakes his head, looks at her sternly. ‘You do know that I have … that there’s another girl that I’m … going out with. Yeah? You do know that?

She nods.

‘Yeah?’ he shrugs. ‘And so? Don’t you respect that?’

‘We’re competitors.’ Veronika looks him straight in the eye. ‘Does she have a Kvelertak T-shirt?’ Veronika shakes her head. ‘No, she’s slavers after Jesus. She wears a cross round her neck. I know you think you love her. I know you think that she’s the one you want. But I know that it’s raining blood in your heart, Daniel. I know who you are. Does she know who you are?’

He swallows.

‘Hm? Does she?’

47. PAIN (Sandra)

Caught up in something.

That’s what it feels like.

Strange sitting here now. The teacher talking, the pupils sitting with their books open in front of them. But none of them are listening. They’re all thinking about her. The teacher too. She can feel it. Nobody in the room is thinking about anything else.

From one second to the next, Sandra has gone from being the most well-behaved, conscientious girl in 10D to becoming the object of everyone’s open-mouthed attention. She’d cracked a few hours ago, lost herself, snogged Daniel and cried when he rode off, while everyone stood at the windows watching. Then the rumour began racing through the school like a fierce wind, the teachers tried to hush it up but it was just as though she’d unleashed a force of nature. When she went into the yard during the break it was like she was a magnet. Malene had walked alongside her as if they were blood sisters; comments had been shouted in their direction, as though both of them had done something crazy and within a few hours it had got completely out of control.

The rumour was that he’d hit her, it was also going around that she’d hit him, that she was pregnant, that she was on something…

She was just caught up in it.

Then at lunchtime, right out of the blue, Tiril had hit that little guy in second year, Shaun, and she had done it for her. Everything has been turned on its head. Tiril? If there’s one person Sandra feels has never liked her, if there’s one person she’s almost been afraid of, it’s Malene’s sister, her co-worker at Spar.

She just let him have it, Shaun the smurf.

So, what, now it’s like, her and the sisters? Her and Malene and Tiril? And where’s Daniel? His replies were so curt. Okay. Okay, fine. Where is he? She realises she’s done something he’s not able to take, but why is he so angry? He said he’d be there tonight although she’s not sure she quite believes it.

Sandra sits with her maths book open in front of her, hardly daring to breathe.

Not to mention Mum and Dad. If they don’t already know everything by the time she gets home, then it won’t take long before they hear about it and that won’t be good. They’ll tell her off, issue more warnings and deliver another lecture, but the worst of it is they won’t allow her to see him. That bright mouth. Daniel William Moi. And if they do that, she’ll just die. She can’t go home. Sandra knows that. She can’t go home today.

There’s a sound of laughter in the classroom.

‘Mira? Something you wanted to say?’

The teacher.

‘No, Miss. Nothing,’ Mira says.

Sandra can hear her sniggering. She can hear it spreading. Other girls laughing. Other boys. Joachim, he’s laughing too.

She glances up furtively, trying to make eye contact with Malene.

Malene nods to her.

Her chest rises and falls. Sandra gets quickly to her feet. She packs her things together as fast as she’s able. The entire class is looking at her. Mira’s cheeky face. Joachim’s smirk.

‘I don’t feel too well—’

A ripple of laughter.

‘I think I need to—’

‘Ooh, I need it! Daniel, I need it!’ Joachim.

‘That’s all right, Sandra,’ she hears the teacher say.

She walks towards the door. She stops at Malene’s desk on the way, her friend smiles at her and takes hold of her hand a moment. Sandra’s seen that smile before. She’s seen it on a grown man’s face. Malene’s father. She feels like a fraud, she isn’t sure if it’s right, what Daniel said, about not telling her anything about her father, but she has to trust the one she loves.

‘See you,’ Malene whispers. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Text me, okay?’

Sandra nods.

‘Say hello to Tiril,’ she whispers.

Malene smiles. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry. Okay?’

‘No,’ Sandra whispers, hearing her voice beginning to crack.

She runs. One hand under her breasts, the other waving in the air, slightly knock-kneed, through the corridors, out the front entrance, into the mild September day.

48. A FRIEND WITH A VAN (Jan Inge)

It looks like a wading bird and a duck out for a walk.

The sun is low in the sky, its light casting long shadows along the streets as Jan Inge and Rudi make their way uphill from the house by the rail tracks. It’s not that far to Hansi’s place; he lives on the far side of Hillevågsveien.

Jan Inge is conscious that he’s developed a somewhat rolling gait of late. He tries to avoid doing it, but he just sort of swings, from side to side, no matter how he tries to adjust it.

There’s been something agitated and unfocused about Rudi ever since he got back from town. He hurried into the house, went straight to his room, rummaged around a bit, then came out and stood in the middle of the living room looking at his mobile. When Jan Inge asked if anything was wrong, he’d replied: ‘No, what the hell would be?’

But there is something wrong.

After they’ve passed Sun City tanning salon and started up the hill towards Hansi’s, Jan Inge asks again: ‘Rudi, what is it, you’re not even talking?’

‘Man, people don’t need to talk all the time, do they?’

No, but when people who do talk all the time suddenly stop, that’s when you get nervous. So Jan Inge tries once more: ‘We’re here for one another, you know that, right?’

Rudi halts. His long form swaying to and fro in front of a wheelie bin. His eyes are restive.

‘I don’t know, Jani. I just got it into my head.’

‘What?’ Jan Inge wheezes, taking out his inhaler and sucking in air.

‘Chessi,’ Rudi says.

Jan Inge raises his eyebrows. ‘Chessi? What about Chessi?’

‘What the hell do I know.’ Rudi leans his hands on the bin behind him for support. ‘Probably just some bullshit. The puking. That skincare shit. And … well, some private stuff.’

‘Private stuff?’ Jan Inge cocks his head to the side. ‘Is it your brother?’

‘You don’t bloody well have to mention him! No,’ Rudi says. ‘Very private stuff. Shit, I need a fag.’

‘What kind of very private stuff?’

‘No,’ says Rudi shrugging, ‘we are amigos, my friend, but there’re things even brothers don’t discuss. Woman things, Jani. Anyway. She’s heading over to see Tong and she needs the Volvo. So we really have to get hold of Hansi’s Transporter.’

Rudi is seldom like this. Calm, almost. Normal, almost. Talking in short sentences. Chiselling them out of himself as though he were of stone. Even though Jan Inge does often want Rudi to calm that electric head of his and stop talking holes in peoples’ heads, it is disturbing when he’s not acting like himself.

‘Well,’ Jan Inge says, ‘I’m sure it’ll sort itself out. But we probably shouldn’t drive the Transporter around Gosen two nights on the trot…’

Rudi’s eyes flash.

‘Oh yeah, great, what are we going to do? Take the fucking bus? Is that what you want to do, busfuck?

He’s cross, clearly angry. He’s never usually like that either.

‘Rudi, listen to me. You’ve got something in your system. I know you. Get it out or get shot of it. We’ve a sweet job on tomorrow, a classic in our line of business. So we can’t drive around in the work van in the same area two nights in a row. You know that. It’s not going to kill us to take the bus.’

‘They can stick their public transport up their hole as far as I’m concerned, Rudi says. ‘I hate buses, I’ve always hated buses.’

Jan Inge tries to make eye contact with him. ‘Hei, mein Freund,’ he says, trying to lighten the atmosphere with a little German, ‘ein Pfennig für deine Gedanken.’

‘I’m not thinking about anything,’ Rudi sighs, ‘It’s … Scheisse. It’s just feelings. Feelings feelings feelings! You just can’t always bloody well describe feelings.’

Well said, Jan Inge thinks, and they continue on their way up the incline. The mystical sun warms their faces. I’ll leave it alone, he thinks; right now it’s all about solid leadership.

‘It’s like I’m always telling you,’ he says, in as mild a tone as he can muster. ‘You’re an emotional person, Rudi, you do your best, day in, day out, and then a whole army of feelings invades your body, and that’s just how life is. Come on, let’s wake up Hansi.’

Hansi is a thin guy, whose slightly mangy appearance tends to put people in mind of a dog. He’s been in and out of prison since he was nineteen, and on opening the door to his two old friends, he scarcely raises his eyebrows, before motioning with a wan hand for them to come in while he shuffles back into the house.

‘Hi, man, feeling a bit rough today?’

Jan Inge and Rudi exchange a look and follow him. They enter the living room, where Hansi plonks himself down in an old sofa centred behind a coffee table covered with liquor bottles.

‘I’m drinking a bit at the moment,’ he mutters. ‘Working a lot. Been over and back to Sweden loads, to Gothenburg. Not right in the head, those Albanians. How are things in Toyland? What’s going on in the lives of Sly and Gobbo? Any break-ins lately?’

Hansi grins, brings a liquor bottle to his lips and takes a large swig. Jan Inge bunches the muscles in his jaw tightly. You look like my mother, he thinks.

‘What do you g—’

‘We need a loan of the van,’ interrupts Jan Inge. ‘And the trailer.’

Hansi looks at them askance. ‘And so the two of you turn up here and think everything is going to be sitting waiting for you?’

Rudi keeps his mouth shut. Jan Inge doesn’t move a muscle.

‘Okay, okay,’ Hansi says, ‘fine. And what if I say I need them myself? If I tell you that you can’t have a loan of them?’

‘Then we’ll say—’

‘Then we’ll know where we stand with you,’ says Jan Inge curtly. ‘You owe us, Hansi.’

He gives Rudi a brief nod.

Hansi looks from one of them to the other. ‘And how long am I to go on owing you?’

‘Listen.’ Jan Inge’s eyes narrow. ‘We’ve been fair to you. We could have smashed your kneecaps. After what you did. We could have let people know the kinds of things you like to get up to. We haven’t done either.’

Hansi gets to his feet, takes another quaff of the bottle and picks up a pair of trousers hanging over the back of a chair. He rummages through the pockets, pulls out a key ring.

‘You’re a loser, Jani, and you know it. You’ve been at it for thirty fucking years or something, and you haven’t … yeah, fuck it, whatever. Here.’

He chucks the keys to Jan Inge. Rudi inhales quickly, takes a few steps, grabs hold of Hansi’s head, glares in his eyes and headbutts him.

‘You never fucking talk that way to Jani, you hear me!’

‘Shit, I’m bleeding!’

‘Fucking right you’re bleeding, motherbleedfucker! You want to bleed some more? Eh? You want to bleed out your ears? You want to bleed out your ass?’

Jan Inge smiles. He loves this. He fucking loves this.

Rudi. Rudi. Rudi.

‘You want to bleed inside your head?’

‘No! No! Rudi! Jesus!’

It’s just like Jan Inge is at a football stadium and thousands upon thousands of people are standing with their arms in the air and their mouths open, shouting: Ru-di! Ru-di! Ru-di!

Rudi’s body tenses, almost to the extent that Jan Inge can see the adrenalin surge through his arms and legs as he kicks Hansi repeatedly in the back, as he crouches down, lifts Hansi up by the hair and plants his fist in his face.

‘Now,’ Rudi says, straightening up. He grasps his knuckles, then shakes off the pain and spits on Hansi: ‘You keep your mouth shut, cockbreath. Loser? Who the hell’s the loser here?’

Hansi lies on the floor writhing in pain.

‘Rudi can’t hear you,’ Rudi grabs hold of the bottle Hansi was drinking from. He stands over him. ‘Open your gob, daisy-picker.’

‘W-wha?’

Peeping at him in terror, blood all over his face, Hansi opens his mouth.

‘Wider!’

‘Wwwider?’

‘Wider!’

Hansi opens wide and Rudi empties the remaining contents of the bottle down his throat. ‘Hey, cockaholic! You drinking a bit at the moment? Drink some more! Hey, buttaholic, I didn’t hear you? Who’s the loser?’

Hansi coughs and spits, blood and booze. ‘Me,’ comes the meek voice from the floor.

‘Toofuckingright,’ Rudi snorts. ‘And the next time you say anything out of order about the Master, I’ll skin your dick, and the next time you put your cock into one of the schoolboys round here, I’ll be fifteen metres away, and fifteen seconds after you’re finished I’ll jam fifteen cactuses up your ass.’

Jan Inge clenches his fist tighter around the key ring.

This here, this is what makes life worth living.

‘Hansi,’ he says, ‘you’re a really good … what is it they say in Sweden … a jättegod … friend. You’ll get the Transporter and the trailer back over the weekend. No problem. Really appreciate it.’

They walk back out the front door, to the front of the house.

‘About fucking time, that there,’ Rudi says, glowing.

‘Felt right, no doubt about it,’ Jan Inge says, lumbering towards Hansi’s grey Transporter.

‘Tong would have enjoyed that,’ says Rudi, opening the driver’s door.

‘Cecilie would have enjoyed that,’ replies Jan Inge.

‘That’s my woman,’ Rudi says, getting inside. ‘What are we having for dinner?’

‘Fishcakes,’ says Jan Inge, landing in the seat, the van listing with his weight.

Rudi sticks the key in and starts the engine. ‘Fishcakes,’ he says, reversing out the drive, ‘remind me of Granny. The good, old days.’

‘I know,’ says Jan Inge. ‘And listen, what you were brooding over earlier, the private stuff and all that, you need to just shelve that.’

‘Hell yeah,’ Rudi says, as the sun, low in the sky, hits the windscreen and dazzles him momentarily, making the whole world gleaming and white, ‘it’s just I’m so fucking sensitive sometimes.’

The van glides down the street.

‘Ah.’ Rudi lets out a deep breath. ‘Jumping Jiminy, that felt good. Jesus, it’s been a long time since I’ve used my fists. Right, I’m going to make a call here!’

Rudi takes out his mobile, turns to Jan Inge and gives him a nod and a wink. He chortles to himself as he leans over to the glove compartment, roots around in it a little, fetches out a pen and paper, tosses it into Jan Inge’s large lap and says, in a low, rasping tone: ‘Now, pay attention, busfuck.’

49. ADD TO CART (Pål)

That the days should be so filled with lies. He doesn’t understand how he has managed to sink so deeply into it. One lie. Okay. It’s no big deal. It feels uncomfortable, like sticking your hand into a compost heap on a warm day, but the discomfort soon passes. Two lies. Fair enough. You shake them off. And then a third lie to cover up the preceding ones. Not quite so pleasant, what that entails. The stories need to correspond, need to fit together. Your face, it needs to fit too; it needs to match who you are. But who are you? What world are you living in? A fourth lie to correlate all the stories. It starts getting heavier, starts to whiten. It starts snowing inside you.

What happens is that you begin to get good at it. You loosen up, your gestures become uninhibited and plausible, and your face, which was nervous the first few times, takes on a similarly assured look. In a surprisingly short space of time none of the original distress is visible. Your face melts together with the lies. You start to see the world the way the lies explain it, and it doesn’t take long before you defend them, tend to them, and cuddle them, ugly children that they are.

He doesn’t think about anything else. He gets up, makes breakfast, and drives off in the car, doing 30 in the morning traffic, and the lies fill his whole head, his whole being. It has become a world of its own. Once they were necessary stories, sentences uttered to wriggle free from a situation. Then they became the narrative of a life. Then they became something to live. Something true. I just stayed up last night surfing the net. I’m just going to take Zitha out for a walk. Is that how it fits together? That the lies are now the truth? That without them he does not exist, because they are what he resorts to every day in order to keep it together? A little earlier he went into his boss, smiled, and said: ‘I need to take off for a couple of hours, one of my daughters is sick.’

It felt good to say it, as if there was a girl lying at home with a temperature, who needed her daddy. He saw the lie materialise in front of him. He saw it take effect, spring to life and become real.

‘Poor thing, by all means, you take off home, Pål.’

He turns off the motorway, drives uphill at Ullandhaugbakken.

To tear down an entire life. It’s so easy.

Three things have ruined everything. The wife. The money. And the lies.

Day one for the whole thing, was when Christine came home and said I need to talk to you, Pål. She spoke calmly, almost in a whisper, and told him that it wasn’t working. Wasn’t working. There’s no passion. No passion? I’ve met somebody. Hell opened up around them, kids dissolving in tears. Jesus, he’d never forget Malene’s face and the feeling of having smashed a child to pieces. But Christine managed to see it through. She had the strength to go ahead with it. She left, for Bergen and another bloody man. As though she wasn’t a mother at all. She managed to leave her kids. That took some doing. Everyone he has talked to agrees. Everyone — especially women — agree that it’s an action bordering on inhuman. Jesus! They exclaim. She just left? And you’re stuck here? Yeah. It was that situation, and everything it ushered in. A single dad, just like that. Who had prepared him for it?

But he coped. Touch wood.

Then came the next phase: money.

Never being able to buy the kids anything extra. Always having to search the papers for special offers on mince, on sausages, frozen pizza and fuck knows what else. That horrible feeling when he and the children were round at Mum’s for Sunday dinner, and all he could think was: free meal. That horrible feeling of gladness when the girls were invited round to school friends’ homes during the week: they’ll get something to eat there.

Before he started winning, and losing, there were no lies to be found in his life. Perhaps there was shame, perhaps an insidious desperation, a sense of relief when the kids got plenty of gifts at Christmas and on birthdays, but there were no lies. Or were there. The lies came with the money — or did they come when he started losing it?

Is he thinking clearly now? Has he always had them in him? The lies?

No, I haven’t, he says to himself as the tower blocks come into view.

I’m not thinking very clearly now.

He drives down Folkeviseveien. Past the bin at the bus shelter where he usually gets rid of everything he can’t face opening. Letters from debt collection agencies. Bills. His hands are sweating, sticking to the leather of the steering wheel. Someday they’ll be at the door. The police, the betting companies and the debt collectors. They’ll soon be there.

He brings the car to a halt, puts on the handbrake, releases the seat belt, grits his teeth, rubs his eye with the back of his hand, and then hurries into the house. Down to the basement. Over to the computer. His pulse is pounding like a fist. He needs to get a move on, get a move on before things catch up with him, he just needs to do it, one last time.

Username: Maiden.

His fingers stiffen, they are cold. He performs a quick wrist stretch and finger flex, blows on them, places them back on the keyboard: do it, one last try, there’s still time to get out of this, there’s still time to avoid meeting Rudi.

Password: Zitha

Blackjack.

‘Dad?’

Pål gives a start, moves the mouse to click on the little x in the top right corner of the screen, but the arrow veers here and there, and his fingers tremble.

Footsteps coming down the stairs.

Shit, shit, shit. This bloody machine, it’s so slow.

‘Dad?’

He hears her in the hall, just outside the door.

There. He manages to close the webpage. And there. He manages to open the one he always keeps minimised, just in case.

‘Dad? You home? I saw the car…’

Malene walks into the room.

‘Yeah, I…’ Pål sighs wearily, offers her a quick glance and taps his feet against the floor. ‘Well…’ He begins to laugh. ‘No, it’s kind of stupid, Malene, I…’ His laughter gets louder, gets dangerously close to seeming unnatural. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about Tiril, about me not giving her enough attention … so I was sitting here trying to see if I could find an Evanescence T-shirt for her.’

He laughs. Loudly. She looks askance at him.

He types quickly: www.evanescence.com. Trying to make it look as practised as possible. Enter site. Merch.

‘There, eh? Nice T-shirts, eh?’

He points at the screen. Malene leans forward, squinting over his shoulder.

‘They look good, don’t they? What about that one?’

‘I think that band is stupid,’ she says. ‘But she’ll love you for it.’

She looks at him obliquely. He gets to his feet, pulls her close, hugging her so she won’t see his face, which right now is not able to keep the lies in place.

‘So, school?’ he says. ‘Everything going okay?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ says Malene. She frees herself from his embrace, avoids his eyes. ‘Nothing special happened. Had an all right day. Just doing my homework now. Tiril won’t be home for dinner, but you haven’t forgotten that. She’s rehearsing for tomorrow.’

Malene jogs up the stairs. ‘You do the shopping, yeah?’

‘Yes!’ He calls out, admiring the tone and high pitch of his own voice. ‘No problem!’

Pål sits back down in front of the computer.

There is no collection agency, no online gaming, no tears, nothing.

Women’s. Dark Angel Babydoll T. Front and Back Print. $20.00. Add to cart.

50. LUDVIG NILSEN AND ALBERT JENSEN (Rudi)

‘Yes, hello, this is Ludvig Nilsen speaking. Now, I wanted to get from Hillevåg to Gosen tonight, heh heh.’

‘By bus?’

‘Yes, by bus. Public transport. Knights of the environment. Nature’s best friend.’

‘Okay, then you must take a number 7.’

‘Must I?’

‘Yes, and you must hop on that either at Tjensvollkrysset — a number 3 will take you there from Hillevåg — or…’

‘Didn’t you just say a number 7?’

‘Yes, but in order to get the 7, the easiest thing for you to do would be to hop on at Tjensvollkrysset, and to get there you’ll need to take the 3 from Hillevåg, or take it into the city centre and then catch a number 1. From Hillevåg. To Stavanger Station.’

‘Stavanger Station?’

‘Yeah, Stavanger Station.’

‘The train station, you mean.’

‘No, or rather, yes, by the train station, yes. You could say that.’

‘Listen, Jani! We either need to take the number 3 to Tjensvollkrysset, or the number 1 into town, write that down! And then … hold on a sec … then take the number 7 from town, at the train station?’

‘Yes, from Stavanger Station.’

‘Jani! From town. Down by the train station. The number 7 to Gosen! Whoops, shit! What? No, no. We’re just out for a drive, hands-free! Heh heh. Okay. Next question, Miss Bus. If we want to be at … what the hell’s the name of … Madlavoll school and—’

‘Then you must get off at Gosen Kindergarten. At the turnaround there.’

‘The turnaround, right! Okay, if we need to be there at ten o’clock then what time do we take the bus from town? And what time should we catch the bus at Tjensvollkrysset? Assuming we choose that alternative.’

‘Ten o’clock…’

‘Yeah, ten o’clock. Now we’re talking.’

‘Yes, then that would be … no, I seem to have read that wrong…’

‘It happens.’

‘The best thing for you to do would be take the number 2 from Hillevåg to—’

‘So it’s the number 2 now?’

‘The 2, yes, the 2 from Hillevåg to—’

‘Hey, Jani, cross out the 3 and 10 there. It’s the number 2 to—’

‘Yes, so it’s the number 2 from Hillevåg, departing 21:01—’

‘And when you say Hillevåg, just so we’re clear, you mean—’

‘The stop on the main road, just after Baneveien, travelling into the city—’

‘Kein Problem, you’re talking to a local here — so that’s the number 2 from Hillevåg at 21:01 — hey, you writing this down, Jani? Yeah I know it’s bumpy, that’s why they call them speed bumps. The number 2 from Hillevåg at 21:01 — right, and then?’

‘And that’ll drop you off in the city, by—’

‘Hey! Girl! We’re not talking by the cathedral here, are we? The Nokas building?’

‘No, you must go to the other side of Breiavannet Lake, you’ll arrive at stop fourteen, which is close to what you refer to as the train station—’

‘I see! We’re back there again!’

‘Then you walk a few metres to stop … nineteen, and you wait there until 21:15—’ ‘Jani, write this down, get off at stop fourteen, walk to stop nineteen, wait until 21:15 — okay, we wait a while?’

‘Yeah, and then you take the 7—’

‘Heh heh! There she comes! The 7! I’d say the 7 has been going to Gosen for more years than anyone can remember, the bus never goes out of fashion — heh heh, I could tell you, girl, a thing or two about what doesn’t go out of style! Fishcakes, to give you a little clue! The good, old number 7, a stalwart — and then Ludvig Nilsen and his friend Albert Jensen will be at Gosen Kindergarten at what time exactly?’

‘21:25. In ten minutes.’

‘Do you get that, Jani? Ha. Ten minutes. Eh? Not bad. Public transport.’

‘Oops, oh no, I’m afraid I’ve given you—’

‘No need to apologise, Fräulein! Don’t stand with your cap in your hand! Don’t bow and scrape like you were a Romanian beggar! It’s fine — we’re all only human. Now let’s take it smooooooothly one more time — was it the 3? The 6? The 1? Do you want it up where your number two comes from? Heh heh!’

‘Eh, it doesn’t go right up to the kindergarten. You must get off in Madlamarkveien, and from there you make your way to the kindergarten. It will take you ten minutes by foot.’

‘By foot? Do you know what Granny called that? The Apostles’ horses. That’s from the Bible. Deuteronmomy. Or Acts of the Apostles! Oh yes, The Good Book. There wasn’t too much bussing back then, so to speak, Fräulein! It was all camels and sandals! But now that I’ve got you on the line, do I detect a slight accent? And the thing you keep saying about what Nilsen and Jensen must do?’

‘Heh heh.’

‘Heh heh, your Norwegian is flawless, I’m guessing you’ve lived here for quite a while … Might we be talking Germany, Mädchen?

‘Hannover.’

‘Hannover, to be exact. And who else is from Hannover?’

‘What do you mean? I’m from Hannover…’

‘Yess, baby, you and Scorpions.’

‘Ha ha!’

‘Heh heh, you got a little laugh out of that, Gerda!’

‘My name isn’t Gerda…’

‘No, that’s just something we say. Oh! Gerda! Ja! Bitte!’

‘Ulrike, my name’s Ulrike.’

‘Okay, okay, no names, honey, no names.’

‘Well, have a gute trip to Gosen Woods then.’

‘The same to you, Ulrike! And now you could say that Nilsen and Jensen are back home; now the light of this bright September day is shining down on us all; now the whole of society is heading home for dinner, and I’ve had a chance to employ my fists, you’ve had an opportunity to employ your expertise and Jensen here, he’s had occasion to put that big brain of his to a little use. And if that doesn’t make for a good day, then we may as well bang it all intoouterspace — trip, Gerda? Did you say trip? This whole life’s a trip! Ich habe eine grosse in die Hose! Rock you like a hurricane!’

51. MALENE UNDRESSES (Malene)

Malene walks into the bathroom. She locks the door and takes a step towards the mirror. She fixes her gaze on its surface and focuses on the reflection of her own eyes. ‘Am I pretty?’ she whispers to the face she sees, and the face mouths back. ‘Am I beautiful?’ She narrows her eyes, squints. She sucks in her cheeks, sees her cheekbones become even more prominent and she pouts tentatively. ‘Am I sexy?’ Malene takes her hand to the back of her head, takes hold of her hair and lifts it. A boy said that to her once: You should always wear your hair like that, looks well cute. Oliver in 10B. Cockwad. Gamer. He goes to LAN parties and stays up all night. He won some endurance contest recently, played for hours on end in a big hall, fell asleep and was woken up by the laptop burning the side of his face like a hotplate. Retard. But even idiots have eyes in their heads and maybe he’s right?

Malene can see what he’s talking about. She does have nice hair, always has had, shiny and strong. It takes on a whole other look when she tousles it, takes it up and avoids letting it just hang straight down. And a nice body, she knows she has that. A gymnast’s body. But unlike a lot of the other girls she’s always found it hard to relate to that sort of thing … nice body, yeah, so? It’s like the cheekbones; should she go round trying to show them off all the time? Or draw attention to them? What if you don’t feel comfortable with that, sticking your tits out, being so much about your body all the time. What do you do then?

Quit biting her nails, she’ll have to do that in any case.

Aunt Ingrid has no problem with it; she walks around in extremely tight tops and pants, she has the deepest cleavage in Rogaland, and she’s loud and brash. The girl is such a hussy, Gran always says, and then she’ll explain what it means: hussy, that’s what we used to call girls like that. They’re so full of themselves and into themselves, all flirty and shameless — and my daughter, she’s like that. Ah, give it a rest, Aunt Ingrid says, I’ve been listening to that since 1980. I’m a woman and I choose how I look and how I dress, Mummy.

Is it Gran who’s right or is it Aunt Ingrid who’s right?

Sandra: I love him.

Tiril: The next time you say a fucking word about my sister, about Sandra…

She planted her fist right in Bunny’s little brother’s face. She’s always been like that. She’s always gone that little bit further than the rest, always been a bit extreme. What is it Mum says: Tiril can be a little over the top sometimes. Then again she could just as well be describing herself, couldn’t she?

There have been times Malene has been jealous of Tiril. She’s witnessed her explode and experienced admiration and astonishment in equal measure, but she’s never once wished that she was like that. She wouldn’t be able to handle it, having such a tumult going on inside. No control. The feeling that anything can happen. But now?

She lets go of her hair. Lifts the toilet lid. Unzips the flies of her jeans, pulls down her knickers, sits down and pees.

There’s something creeping around inside her.

Something making her body tingle.

She’s warm.

What is it?

It’s been a day of surprises; Sandra left her flabbergasted, Tiril has gone further than usual, and as for herself … she’s even been taken aback by her own actions. It’s as though — she tears off a sheet of toilet roll, dries herself — as though … she stands up and presses the handle. As though there’s another Malene trying to force her way out. As if something has come loose. Or something is running wild. A little animal … is it a little animal? It’s as though every thought she’s ever had about being careful, about not wanting any change, no longer counts. As if they’re no longer true.

She’s so hot. Something is tingling inside.

She goes back to the sink, lathers the soap and turns on the tap. She lets the water run over her hands while looking in the mirror again. Am I pretty? Am I sexy?

‘Malene? You there? Listen, I’m off to the shops, okay?’

Dad’s standing in the hall. She can picture him. Eyebrows raised a fraction. Head cocked ever so slightly to the side. His kind eyes.

‘Yeah, okay,’ she replies while looking at how flushed her cheeks are.

‘All right! Great! See you!’

The front door slams.

What is going on with Dad? Something’s up. Is he surfing porn on the net? Is he chatting with women? Maybe that’s why he’s so distant. Jesus, as long as it’s not a woman from the Philippines or something.

Malene wipes her forehead. What is she so warm — is she getting sick? The tingling, what is that?

Her mobile rings. The display lights up. Sandra. She answers it: ‘Hello, Malene speaking.’

She hears sniffling on the other end of the line.

‘Hello,’ she says again, as if she doesn’t know who it is, ‘Malene here.’

‘Hi, it’s me,’ Sandra’s voice is meek.

‘Hi, where are you? How are you feeling?’

Sandra sniffs once more. ‘I…’

There’s a sudden loud noise on the line, then a pause.

‘Hold on, such a racket here … they’re digging up the road … just going to … that’s better. You there?’

Malene lets the cold tap run for a while, then places her free hand under it before bringing it to the back of her neck.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m in town,’ says Sandra.

‘Okay?’ Malene feels the water cool her down, she shuts her eyes.

‘I’m, eh…’

‘But where have you been? Since you left?’

‘Nowhere. All over. I went into town. I—’

Sandra begins to cry.

‘Hey, hey, don’t cry, what is it?’ Malene opens her eyes, looks at the mirror, her cheeks are red.

‘I don’t know … I … Sandra sniffles, ‘I just can’t take this, I don’t know what I’m going to do, he … he—’

‘Who?’

‘Daniel…’

Malene takes her hands to her face. She’s burning up, her cheeks, her forehead, her lips. ‘What about Daniel,’ she asks. ‘Has he done something to you?’

‘No, he just …’ Sandra sniffs again. ‘He’s not here. He’s not even answering his phone. We’re supposed to see each other tonight, but … can you come and meet me?’

‘Where?’

‘In town. I was thinking of buying a headscarf…’

‘Okay. I’ll come. I might be a little while though…’

‘That’s fine. I’ll be sitting outside Kulturhuset. Or I might go to McDonald’s. Just text me.’

‘Okay, Sandra. I’ll be there. Just give me a little time, okay?’

She hangs up. The gymnastics queen, ice queen, silver queen. Malene opens the cabinet above the sink. She takes out the lipstick. Removes the top from the holder. Pouts. Feels a tingling inside.

Malene undresses, runs a bath, steps into the tub and touches herself.

52. BUNNY’S BIG BROTHER (Tiril)

Tiril is standing in Thea’s kitchen, her chin thrust forward and resting on her hands, elbows leaning on the worktop. The light outside assails the window, almost in desperation, as though it’ll fragment into something unknown at any moment. Tiril tries staring at it, but has to give in. She squints, blinking such that her eyelashes quiver in front of her vision, like a jittery fog.

‘Thea, you coming or what?’

They’re always able to hang out at Thea’s after school, never anyone else home until late. Her parents work so much; her dad is part of the management of Schlumberger and her mum works in marketing or advertising — they’ve no problem with Thea having people over. They’re cool, Thea’s folks. The family might be moving to Brussels, actually, something to do with her dad’s job. Thea takes private piano lessons. Her parents like Tiril, even though her dad is always slagging her off, saying there are other colours in the world besides black. No, she says, black isn’t a colour — black is the absence of light. Heh heh. That makes him laugh, he likes those kinds of answers.

‘Thea! Jesus, are you planning to get a move on?’

They have a lot to do. They’re going to go through the plan for tomorrow, discuss all the things they need, what’s left to do, and they’re going to fine tune the choreography before tonight’s dry run.

The radio plays on the windowsill, Thea’s in the bathroom. Tiril traces her nail along the slit in her skirt and glances down at her hands. Can just about make out the faint lettering. She scrubbed off the tattoo — it just felt wrong somehow — after she gave Bunny’s little brother a wallop. Almost as if the act itself had made the letters fall off her fingers.

She’d never hit anyone before. It hurt like hell when her hand made contact with his face, but at the same time it felt great. Right after she landed the punch a taste spread through her mouth, a pleasant taste, like vanilla. Tiril hopes Sandra and Malene realise that she did it for them. Because Malene struck her. Because Sandra needed help. She did it for Dad too, in a way. Shaun? Shaun’s a maggot; it wasn’t about him, that whole family are maggots. If they kick up a stink at school she can say it was about Shaun, that she acted in self-defence, that he’s been pestering and picking at her for about a year, that she had to defend herself.

But it’s not true. She did it for Malene. For Sandra. And for Dad.

Not that Tiril is superstitious. But.

It’s a feeling she has.

Of things being connected.

For instance, if something is up with Dad — and Malene could be right — then her standing up for him might help. Even though the action she carries out may not be directly related to him, that’s what she feels: that when she walloped Bunny’s little brother, it made Dad’s heart stronger.

Malene can sit in his lap. That’s how it’s always been. Tiril can’t. It doesn’t feel right. The few times she’s tried to copy Malene and crawl on to his lap it felt like she was sitting on sharp stones. She can’t do it. But she can do this.

Besides, nobody’s said anything. She hasn’t been told to go to the principal’s office. People stared at her. They whispered and pointed. They were afraid, they didn’t know what to say, they didn’t know what to do. But everyone understood that she had a right to do it.

Tiril runs her nail quickly along the slit in her skirt, as though she were striking a match. She feels like having a smoke now, but there’s no chance. Thea’s parents are complete Nazis when it comes to smoking. If they knew Thea smoked now and again they’d hit the roof, and if they found a cigarette butt outside the house, even some flicked ash, they’d be furious. Once, she was out smoking on Thea’s veranda and Thea was almost in tears; she said they’d smell it when they got home. Smell it? They won’t be home for another three hours. It’ll seep into the house, said Thea.

‘Hello! Thea! Are you coming or what?’

She turns off the radio as Rihanna’s new single comes on, can’t bear that slut or her music.

‘Thea! Come on! Let me have a look at you!’

What was that?

Tiril straightens up and looks out.

She catches sight of some movement in the garden.

She cranes her neck and squints against the strong light above the lawn. The sun shining in beams through the branches of the apple tree. No, nothing. A cat, probably. She gets to her feet, walks over and opens the fridge. It’s filled with food. Always is in Thea’s house. Apple juice and orange juice. Always both. Milk and yoghurt. Cold cuts, several types of cheese and lots of vegetables. A bowl of fruit on the table. As well as one in the living room. Fresh grapes. They’ve plenty of money, Thea’s family. They’ve two cars. One for each parent. They’ve a cabin, up in Ålsheia. Big place. Bigger than their house. Always smells nice in their home — they have a cleaning lady who comes once a week, a Polish girl. They’ve paintings on the walls, the whole hall is filled with framed family photos. Sort of prim, in a way, but nice as well. Thea has an iPad with retina display and she’s ordered an iPhone 5. It’s difficult not to be jealous of her.

Tiril takes out the apple juice, reaches for a glass in the cupboard above and pours herself some.

There it is again.

She stands stock-still. Squints.

A disturbance in her field of vision once more, as though something or other passed by out in the garden.

Tiril takes a sip of juice while her eyes narrow. She scans the lawn, between the trees and lets her gaze sweep along the hedge.

No, there’s nothing.

‘Thea!’ She turns towards the hall. ‘What is taking you so long, you coming or what?’

Tiril gives a start when she hears a thud, a loud one, as if something fell against the house. As though someone hurled a hammer at the wall. She feels a chill take hold and spread across the back of her neck, right below the hairline, like a cold hand was just placed there. Her chest tightens.

‘Thea!’

She takes a few steps backwards across the floor of the kitchen, reaching the table and remaining there, one hand on the back of a chair, her eyes flitting from window frame to window frame. A door opens behind her, she turns quickly. Thea comes gliding across the floor all in white.

‘What was that?’ she asks, knitting her brows. ‘Did you hear it?’

Tiril swallows, doesn’t manage to comment on the outfit, just nods.

‘What was it?’

Tiril shrugs, Thea draws up beside her.

‘Tiril, what is it? Say something — do I not look good?’

‘Yeah, yeah, you look good,’ she mumbles.

Thea follows her gaze as Tiril turns to look in the direction of the window. They remain standing beside one another. Thea is dressed up in the clothes she’s going to have on when they perform. It looks just like Tiril had imagined, because white isn’t a colour either: white top, white dress, white tights, new white shoes, bright red lipstick, her hair up and black nail polish on her fingernails.

‘What was that banging? What is it you’re trying to see?’

Tiril takes a step closer to the window. ‘Nah,’ she says, ‘nothing. Just some sounds was all. Probably some building work or blasting going on someplace. I took a glass of juice, by the way.’ She looks her friend over. ‘Really good, Thea. The shoes are lovely. Your mum’s?’

Thea nods.

‘It’s exactly how I pictured it,’ Tiril says, nodding. ‘It’s going to be brilliant. A black piano. You in all white. Your lips all red. Heh heh, you’ll be able to put that pout of yours to good use.’

‘Lay off.’

Thea waves a hand in protest.

‘The black fingernails.’ Tiril nods in satisfaction. ‘The hair. It looks amaz—’

It comes out of nowhere. Slamming into the kitchen window like a bullet. In a microsecond everything turns red, the white pane of glass covered in a viscous, red pulp. The girls jump, spin around. Thea lets out a shriek and they both stagger backwards into the kitchen. Then the banging begins again, the thick, red muck runs slowly down the windowpane, the thumping builds, it intensifies, it’s as though there are a load of people pounding on the house, striking it with hammers on all sides.

Tiril takes hold of the sleeve of Thea’s dress and pulls her into the living room. The banging continues, they breathe in short gasps. Tiril places her hand over her mouth, she tugs Thea in against the wall, out of sight of the windows.

They both breathe heavily, and in time.

‘You know who it is, right?’ Tiril whispers.

Thea is shit-scared, her lipstick is smudged above her top lip, she’s shit-scared. ‘No,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Who?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘No!’

Tiril nods, as if confirming it to herself: ‘Bunny’s big brother.’

Thea’s eyes open wide. If she looked scared shitless a second ago she looks absolutely terrified now. ‘Bunny’s big br — Fuck! Are you … are you … s-s-sure?’

The banging stops abruptly.

Tiril nods her head slowly.

‘Yeah, certain.’

‘How can you be certain?’

‘Because I am.’

‘What do they want,’ Thea whispers. ‘Bunny’s big brother and them?’

Tiril crouches down, takes hold of her sleeve again and leads her back into the kitchen. The loud pounding noises haven’t resumed. Most of the red muck has run off the windowpane, with only a few leftovers still sliding downwards in slimy streaks.

‘What do they want?’

‘Come on,’ says Tiril. She turns quickly and makes her way into the hall with Thea scurrying after.

‘What if they’re still—’

‘Come on!’

Tiril slips on her shoes and opens the door. Thea stands behind her hesitantly, but when her friend walks out to the front of the house she follows reluctantly. Tiril can feel the tick of her pulse in her throat, the blood pumping in her fingers and she sucks on her tongue. She rounds the corner of the house to the garden. Takes a few steps on to the lawn.

Thea follows after, stepping gingerly, her white outfit shimmering as she walks across the grass. She looks like an elf.

Tiril’s gaze sweeps the garden; it seems deserted. The lawn bears the imprint of feet. She looks at the window, soiled and smudged from the red pulp.

Thea’s scream fills the garden.

Tiril turns to look. Her friend is pointing towards the big apple tree. Tiril follows her finger. Somebody has driven a huge nail through a cat’s head and into the tree trunk behind. Dark blood still drips from the skinned, feline body.

‘Bunny’s big brother,’ Tiril whispers, looking at the dead animal. She feels a shudder at the back of her neck. She takes her cigarettes and lighter from her shirt pocket almost by reflex.

‘You can’t smoke here,’ Thea sniffles. ‘Mum and Dad will go spare.’

Tiril lights the cigarette.

‘What will we do now?’ says Thea and swallows, her make-up running over her cheeks. ‘What if they come back?’

‘If they come back,’ Tiril says, taking a deep drag of the cigarette and exhaling, ‘if they come back, they come back. We’ll handle that. That family are seriously fucked up, Thea. Because I gave his little brother a wallop, he’s sent his big brother after us; now all we’re missing is Bunny.’

Thea closes her eyes.

‘Relax,’ Tiril says. She looks around. ‘Have you got a garden hose? And a hammer? That’s what we need, a hose and a hammer — and a black bin bag.’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Thea says, reaching out her hand. ‘Here, gimme a drag.’

53. THE TRANQUILITY OF MOTÖRHEAD (Cecilie)

Cecilie sat behind the silos, looking out over the fjord, for an hour and a half. No wind, scarcely a boat and hardly any people. Only a jogger who ran by in skintight gear. Only an old woman in a green coat out walking her dog. Only the calm water glittering in the white sunshine. Cecilie felt empty, she couldn’t manage to collect her thoughts; she couldn’t even manage to make out what she was thinking when she was thinking it. She tried to recall some old memories; maybe Mum had taken her here ages ago, while she was still in good health. Maybe she and Dad had come here once, while she was still a tot? Cecilie couldn’t remember anything and she felt a chill on the back of her neck when she thought of never having been here before, even though she’s sat here so often that she considers herself almost part of the landscape. She ate the cinnamon bun slowly, smoked, ate more of the bun and smoked some more. Then she gave a start, got quickly to her feet, suddenly frightened that some harm may come to the child from her bottom being so cold.

And now she’s here. Now she’s home, indoors, her bum is warm, the living room is warm, the house is quiet and her head is filled with thoughts. Her hands rest on her stomach. What kind of kid is inside her? Who’s growing, who’s going to be born into the world? Is it a healthy kid? Is it a mongo kid? Is it a horrible kid, as horrible as her? Is it a little shit of a kid? Is it a professor kid? Is it a Korea kid? Is it a Rudi kid?

Soon be dinnertime.

This house is poisoned.

She’s lain on this same sofa, year in year out, thinking exactly the same thoughts. Watched horror films. Watched Rudi or Jani walking in and out, carrying boxes of cigarettes, carrying TVs, carrying all kinds of shit. Lain here thinking the same thoughts: get away. And now she’s lying here again, and not just by herself; she’s two people and the problems are piling up around her. So much has happened in such a short space of time and Cecilie doesn’t quite know who she is or what she’s going to do. That’s the thing about love, she thinks. It’s so bloody difficult. She loves Rudi, just the idea of not being with him makes her so sad, but still the thought of him makes her want to throw up. And Tong? Is that love? She pictures him clearly, standing there, sees his rigid stare, hears the chugging of his breath, sees the sinews straining on his forearms: I’d do anything for you.

Would you, Tong?

Anything for Cecilie?

Would you kill Rudi for me, Tong?

She puts her hands in front of her and pushes at the air, as if to shove her problems away. She feels like having ice cream. She felt the same way yesterday, and the day before that as well, and she has to smile because now she realises what it is.

‘Baby,’ she whispers, gets to her feet, scoots into the kitchen, opens the freezer and says, ‘of course you can have ice cream.’

She takes out a three-litre of Neapolitan. Then quickly grabs a spoon from the cutlery drawer. She opens the tub, using all her strength to sink the spoon into the firm ice cream, sees it bend back, the ice cream yielding. She sits down and starts to eat. Can’t manage to stop, can’t manage to stop.

Cecilie closes her eyes.

Ah sweet Jesus, that’s so good.

‘Fuck’s sake, what are you at now?! Ice cream? Right before dinner?!’

Weird — she didn’t hear them coming in. She didn’t hear the car, the stomping, the slamming of doors. Rudi stands in front of her shaking his head. She doesn’t dignify him with a glance, just brings another spoonful to her mouth.

‘Oh yeah,’ Rudi says, smiling, ‘you’re my woman, Chessi, from here to eternity and the whole way back, and I’m damned if I’m going to come between you and your ice cream. Let me look at you.’

He reaches both his hands towards her face but she recoils, can’t stomach the thought of him touching her, just can’t stomach it.

‘Heh heh,’ says Rudi. ‘Jani! Come on in and take a look at this girl who’s all sexied up from the skincare shithole. She’s radiant! Hey, Jani, there’s a sunbeam sitting in our kitch—’

Jan Inge walks in and Rudi lowers his voice.

‘Yeah, a sunbeam, in our kitchen.’

They look at her.

‘We’ll have to have you do this once a month,’ says Rudi, then bends over and gives her a peck on the cheek, and once again she recoils.

‘She doesn’t want her make-up ruined, all fancy now,’ Rudi laughs. ‘Just how it ought to be. That’s why we have women in the world, so they can look good. Yesss — and we’ve had a killer day, I can tell you that. Rudi has been able to knock some sense into Hansi’s head, we’ve got a van and a trailer, so you don’t need to worry about the car, baby. You can drive out to Åne and have a real good time.’

Cecilie is momentarily thrown. ‘A good time?’

‘Aerosmith, the open road, good humour … you know. The lot!’

She puts the tub of ice cream down. No one, absolutely no one, can be so simple and good and as full of energy as Rudi. When he stands in front of her, his face lit up like a little boy’s and he showers her with loving droplets from his heart, then it’s completely impossible to imagine a single day without that bloody idiot.

She smiles at him.

She hadn’t planned to.

But she does.

‘Moron,’ she says.

‘Yup! That’s me,’ Rudi says, laughing. Then he walks into the hall. ‘The moron is heading down into the basement to get a few things ready for tomorrow — how many baseball bats? Three, I guess. Tong is coming along after all, nothing he likes more than smashing things with a bat. Fuck me, this moron can’t wait to see that little Korean again!’

Sometimes she thinks that he’s jabbered away so much in this house that sooner or later the walls and the floors will learn how to speak, and the day they do, they’re going to sound like Rudi. Cecilie gets up. He can’t wait to see Tong again, that’s what he says. What a fucking mess. What’ll I do? Maybe I’ll just tell him, right now? Hey Rudi, I’m screwing Tong! He might be the father of the baby you don’t know about!

She stretches out.

Then we’d see a murder.

It’s not criminals who are behind all the killings in society.

It’s love.

Jan Inge has already started making the food. He’s put on the apron they bought in Houston the last time they visited Dad, seven years ago, the purple-and-white one with ‘Fuck Y’all I’m from Texas’ written across it.

‘I’m going to have a kip for a half-hour,’ she says, and leaves the room. ‘Call me when dinner’s ready.’

‘Don’t I always?’

She sighs and walks down the hall.

‘Yes, you do,’ she says in a low voice. ‘What is it, by the way?’

‘Fishcakes!’ comes the reply from the kitchen.

Cecilie opens the door, falls on to the bed. Fishcakes, she thinks, I couldn’t face a morsel of fishcake.

She knows things will be different in the future, but how exactly, she doesn’t have a clue. She wants ice cream and she wants to sleep. Her body is so heavy. She never had many muscles, but now it feels like she has none at all.

She sinks into the mattress.

She takes out her mobile, pulls up her list of contacts, and presses on a number. It takes a little while before a click sounds and a voice says:

‘Hi, you’ve reached Thor Haraldsen and Southern Oil. I’m not here at the moment. Please leave a message and I’ll be sure to call you back.’

She takes a breath. ‘Hi Dad,’ she says. ‘Just Cecilie here … well, not calling about anything in particular. I just remembered … I was out stretching my legs today and … didn’t you and I used to take walks down behind the silos? I was just wondering if you, like, remembered that? All right. Hope everything’s good. Talk to you again. Bye bye. Feel free to give me a ring. Talk soon. Bye bye.’

She sinks down into the mattress, sinks and sinks.

A half-hour later Cecilie is sitting at the dining table in the living room with Rudi and Jan Inge, the table that’s been there since she was a child. This is the nice time of the day, but not for her. She might have thought so before but not now. Motörhead fills the room, Iron Fist at full blast, and nobody speaks; they just relax, as well as they can, all of them. That’s how it is every day. Rudi and Jan Inge love this part of the day, peace and calm and heavy metal. Not everyone understands just how peaceful Motörhead can feel, Rudi maintains. Jan Inge says that even though he’s a country man in his heart of hearts, that it’s actually this time of the day that all his thoughts take shape.

This used to be really nice, I used to enjoy it too, thinks Cecilie. But I’m not able to feel that way any more.

Maybe I shouldn’t go on living, she thinks, feeling just as tired as before she slept. Maybe not, little baby. Maybe that would be for the best. That neither you, nor I, lived. That we were the ones to die. We, who don’t know who your father is. You, who have an ugly slut of a mother. Me, with a slut’s baby in my tummy. Maybe that would be best? My little baby? So people wouldn’t have to be bothered with us? So they wouldn’t have to beat each other to death? Wouldn’t have to hate each other?

Hm?

Baby?

Just a little?

Just die a little?

You and me?

Baby?

54. YOU NEED TO BREATHE EASY (Sandra)

She walks by the clothes racks with her hand out, her fingers running along the material of garment after garment.

The light in Hennes & Mauritz is cold and glaring; she’s been there a half-hour without really looking at one single article of clothing. Other customers have come in, the clock has ticked, past five o’clock, getting on for six, work and school are finished, outside the sun is sinking on the horizon, the afternoon is slipping into evening.

She’s had to stop several times and draw breath, close her eyes and swallow so as not to burst out crying. If this is love, she doesn’t understand what it wants with her. She thought love would make her feel good. But what it’s doing is dishing out pain, rending and tearing at her and thrusting her into something unknown and dangerous.

We were supposed to be good to one another, Daniel.

Sandra holds an ocean-blue headscarf between her fingers. She can’t remember having picked it out to look at. Blue, her mother always says, blue suits you, Sandra, nice colour on you, brings out your eyes.

She pays. 69.50. She goes out of the shop and down the escalators, out into the fading light on Domkirkeplassen, the square in front of the cathedral. A normal day in Stavanger. Market traders selling fruit and vegetables, a thin man with a hot-dog stand at the entrance to the SR-Bank chatting with passers-by, a beggar wearing a shawl, a 7-Eleven cup in her hands, sitting cross-legged in Laugmannsgaten, and over by ‘Ting’, a junkie in light-coloured jeans and a tracksuit top selling Asfalt.

Sandra notices daily life around her, but doesn’t take it in. She feels small, she feels afraid. She keeps her eyes lowered, tightens her grip on her H&M bag, enters Arneageren Square, without looking at anyone and steering clear of the teenagers sitting outside Kulturhuset; she opens the door to McDonald’s.

Sandra hopes Malene comes soon, because right now she needs a friend. She’s taken out her mobile a thousand times and begun writing a text to Daniel, a thousand times she’s pulled his number up on the screen to ring it.

Dear, precious, Daniel. Nothing matters, nothing apart from you and me.

Daniel, you’re everything to me. I love you.

She hasn’t sent either message. She doesn’t like what she has written. Is this how it is? Does love bring out all the pain inside people? Is that love’s secret, the one the Bible doesn’t dare talk about? Maybe this is what every grown-up knows, but avoids saying to their children. Maybe that’s why all grown-ups have something of an ash-grey look in their eyes. Because they know that love is the same as pain.

Sandra orders a cheeseburger and a coke. She sits down with her back against the wall, sets the tray on the table in front of her. She takes a sip of her drink, but can’t taste anything. She lifts up the cheeseburger, brings it to her mouth, takes a bite, not good. Pain in her stomach.

Suddenly something jolts in her mind.

She sits up straight.

Has it been like this the whole time, has she just been blind to it? Facial expressions and words spoken begin detonating in her head, bursting like soap bubbles; an ugly sneer playing on his mouth, his eyes turning steely all of a sudden, his hands going limp, the reticence that sometimes comes over him. Is he toying with me? She feels something spread across her chest, feels her mind begin to clear. The risk of weeping begins to subside. Is this the truth? That he caught sight of her that night in the shop, and what he saw was a stick of candy, something he wanted to taste, as long as it had some flavour? In her mind Sandra goes though the times she’s tried talking to him about something other than exactly what he wants to talk about. What does he do then? He just shuts off, closes down completely.

Sandra clears her throat, almost loudly.

The sick stuff he’s done. Beaten people up. Killed his parents. Whatever it may be. The way he just rides around on his moped. She knows he bunks school a few days a week.

He’s dangerous is what he is.

It’s strange how her heart settles when she has these thoughts. Gradually she begins to notice the people around her, the single father in the Smiths T-shirt sitting with his son over at the steps; he’s finished his food and he’s waiting for his son to do the same, they’re probably going to the cinema. Outside the window, four teenagers, sixth-formers, talking, laughing and waving their hands about, one boy constantly bumping up against a very pretty girl.

Malene opens the door. Her new friend walks with her back straight, with colour in her cheeks and red lipstick on. She’s very pretty, with a body a lot of girls at school envy; it says as much on her Facebook page — oh, such a nice bod, Malene.

‘Hi Sandra, I came as quick as I could…’ Malene sits down, bringing fresh air with her. ‘How are things with you?’

‘Okay.’ Sandra nods and takes a sip of coke to conceal her thoughts.

Malene looks surprised. ‘But you didn’t sound so—’

‘I bought a headscarf.’

Malene leans back into the seat. ‘Cool … let’s have a gander. Hennes?’

‘Mhm,’ Sandra nods, ‘it’s all right.’ She takes the headscarf out of the bag. Hands it to her friend. Malene examines it.

‘It’s nice … blue suits you.’

‘I think I’ll break up with him.’

Malene’s eyes open wide.

‘With Daniel, yeah, I—’

‘What?’

Don’t start crying now. Sandra takes another sip of coke, a bite of the cheeseburger.

‘Jesus, Sandra, what’s happened—’

Sandra looks at her friend. ‘I can’t handle it,’ she says, taking back the headscarf and beginning to tie it around her head, under her hairline. ‘I don’t know who he is. He … I just can’t handle it—’

‘But, I mean, you love him, he loves you, you—’

Sandra nods. Don’t say it, she thinks, don’t say it.

‘Don’t you? Do you not love him any more?’

Sandra ties the headscarf at the nape of her neck.

‘But if you love him, if he is the love of your life—’

‘Yeah, but what if all that love of your life, the one stuff, is just a…’ She can’t manage to finish the sentence. The tears are coming.

Shit. Sandra tries to hold them back but they won’t be bossed. She shuts her eyes, places her fingers over them, inhales and exhales.

When she opens them again, she catches sight of him. And her. Daniel and Veronika are standing a few metres from the window, between McDonald’s and the fountain in the square. No doubt about it. It’s them. Sandra has a rushing sensation in her head, as though a thousand tiny spears are flying from one side of her brain to the other: his head tilted to one side, his hand going to her hair, his fingers moving a lock from her cheek.

Daniel and Veronika.

‘Sandra, what is it—’

That’s it. That’s what it’s all about.

Malene turns and looks out the window.

‘Oh my God, isn’t that—’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘But—’

Daniel puts his arms around Veronika. He pulls her close and runs his hand up and down her back. She leans into him, resting her head on his chest.

Malene looks at Sandra in confusion.

‘But I don’t understand, is he, have they—’

She turns back towards the window.

Daniel lets go of Veronika. They stand looking at one another. The deaf girl’s face is covered in lines going up and down and across, as though it were divided into pieces. Daniel brings his hand to her face, tracing the lines with his fingers, opens his mouth and says something. Veronika nods and smiles and then they leave. Walking past the fountain, out of sight, into the gathering darkness.

‘You need to breathe easy,’ Malene whispers.

‘I can hardly breathe at all,’ Sandra whispers back.

55. GIRLS’ MEETING (Tiril)

Thea unrolled the hose from the basement, Tiril sprayed the entrails off the window, feeling cool standing there with her feet apart and a cig hanging from the side of her mouth as the jet of water hit the pane. Thea fetched her father’s hammer, but looked away as Tiril pulled the nail from the tree and out through the cat’s head. She had to stand on a lawn chair and use all the strength she had, the bark of the tree made a whining sound as the nail came free, the head and pelt of the cat landing with a smack at the foot of the tree. Tiril was satisfied. They had withstood the attack from Bunny’s big brother. Thea fetched two big black bin liners. As if to demonstrate it was no problem for her, Tiril put out her cigarette in the carcass of the dead cat before lifting it up from the ground — uuchh, Tiril, disgusting — and throwing it into the bag. She tied the bag tightly, double-wrapped it in the other bin liner and then said: ‘I’ll take care of this.’

‘So, like, what are you going to do with it?’

Tiril held the bag up in Thea’s face and shook it about.

‘Uhhyuu! Quit it!’

Tiril threw the bag to Thea. She reacted as though a live rat had landed on her lap and flung it quickly back.

‘Tiril! Quit it!’

‘I said I’d take care of it, didn’t I?’ Tiril laughed and began to make her way out of the garden.

‘Where are you going?’

Tiril halted. ‘Are there any of the neighbours you don’t like?’

‘What?’

Tiril put one hand on her hip and swung the rubbish bag round in the other.

‘Do you think this is all a joke? Do you think my mum and dad aren’t going to twig that something’s gone on here? Do you think the neighbours aren’t going to discover what’s happened if they find a cat in their rubbish?’

Tiril walked back to her friend. She placed her hand on her shoulder. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

A little over an hour later, Thea’s parents arrived home. The girls were practising, Thea by the piano, edgy and ill-at-ease, Tiril seated beside her, singing, better than ever. She felt something had loosened in her chest when she sang the lines she loved: this pain is just too real. When the parents first entered the living room they stood still and listened. After a while they sat down on the sofa by the window and when the girls finished they clapped and said it was one of the most beautiful things they’d ever heard, and as the four of them made their way to the kitchen, Tiril mouthed ‘I told you so’ to Thea, before she turned to Thea’s parents and said: ‘It’s so great we get to practise here, we’ve been at it for hours now.’

‘Yeah, I can definitely hear it,’ said Thea’s father. ‘You’ve got at least two fans that can’t wait to hear the two of you tomorrow in the gym hall. Isn’t that right, dear?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Thea’s mother. ‘By the way, it’s really wet in the garden. What happened?’

Tiril saw a nervous twitch at the side of Thea’s mouth and hurried to say: ‘A few brats came along and threw eggs at the window. We brought the hose out and washed off the mess.’

Thea’s father clicked his fingers. ‘Heh heh,’ he chortled, his eyebrows dancing up and down a little as he turned to his wife. ‘Eh? There you go. Girls nowadays,’ he confirmed with visible satisfaction, ‘they don’t take rubbish from anyone. Are you both hungry?’

‘Yeah — we wouldn’t say no,’ Tiril replied and noticed how everything just fits into place when you feel self-confident.

They walked into the kitchen, where, a few hours earlier, the girls had witnessed the cat’s entrails hitting the windowpane. Thea’s father opened the fridge door. He does resemble Dad, Tiril thought, around the same age, same sort of build, but whereas Dad does everything with a kind of reluctance, Thea’s father does it all with such ease. In a matter of seconds he’d taken out broccoli, carrots, a fillet of chicken, and in no time he had heated up the wok, cut up the vegetables, kissed his wife on the neck and made a risqué joke as she tied the apron round his waist.

Tiril didn’t find it gross, the way they flirted with each other. Although it wasn’t so long since Tiril couldn’t stand that kind of thing, not long at all since the sight of two happy grown-ups made her livid, particularly if they were the parents of someone she knew. But Thea’s parents, she can handle that — perhaps because Thea’s father always makes her laugh.

That was awesome.

Pulling the nail out of the tree, out of the cat’s head.

Thea hadn’t noticed, but Tiril had: Bunny’s big brother, that sick fucker, had hammered the nail through the cat’s eye. Right through his left eye. The sound when she had extracted the nail, like putting your foot into a waterlogged welly.

The feeling she had had, it was good.

When she held the cat’s furry skull, when the limp body hung from the dead head, like a figure from a puppet show. She hadn’t felt sorry for the cat. She’d just looked into its dead eyes and all she was able to see was the sick, but nevertheless fantastic, act. His hands. Bunny’s big brother’s hands. One of them holding the head against the tree. The other gripping the hammer. The nail in his mouth. The wail of the cat as the blows rained down.

Because he wanted to make it clear that nobody touched his brother.

No matter, Tiril thinks, no matter what way you look at it, he’s one sick fucker, but a strong fucker, and in one way he did what was right. Just like she did what was right. So the only question is: who’s stronger? Who can sing more beautifully?

It was getting on for six o’clock and the girls left the table; it was still a while before they were due at rehearsals. They went to Thea’s room where, for probably close to the thousandth time, they sat down to watch Evanescense videos on YouTube. They talked about what an insane day it had been, they felt content and happy with themselves, they laughed about how they’d handled Bunny’s big brother, how they’d handled Thea’s mum and dad, and now, now they’re looking deep into one another’s eyes, speaking in hushed tones, as they talk about how exceptionally well they performed the song in practice today.

‘If we can sound as good tommorrow…’ Thea whispers.

‘We’ll sound as good,’ whispers Tiril.

‘I’m just, like, really nervous. Aren’t you?’

‘Why should I be?’

Tiril clicks on the mouse and leaves the live version of ‘Haunted’ from Rock Am Ring behind. She’s not so into that one, nor does she care much for Amy’s shorts, hair or eye make-up in it. She likes her better when she’s Gothic and exalted, like in the video for ‘Call Me When You’re Sober’ for instance.

‘We’ll sound better, Thea,’ she says. ‘We’ll sound even better.’

Text message. She leans towards the desk, looks at the mobile. From Malene.

R u @ T’s? Can we come over. Pls. Sandra and me.

‘Who is it?’

Tiril shows the message to Thea.

Thea taps her chin with her middle finger, like she always does when she’s unsure. ‘What’s happened?’

Tiril gets to her feet, like she always does when her heart begins to tick. ‘Dunno.’ She texts back: Just come. We’re here.

A few minutes later the doorbell rings and Thea, with Tiril right behind, hurries down the stairs to answer it, calling out to her parents that it’s for her. As they’d suspected, they open the door to the sight of two girls in crisis mode. Malene leads a clearly shattered Sandra over the threshold and they steer her up to the bedroom: ‘Just Sandra and Malene!’ Thea calls out in the direction of the living room.

‘Great!’

That’s the thing with Thea’s father, thinks Tiril, as she hears his voice ring out. Everything’s great as far he’s concerned, and if it’s not great then he insists on it being great.

Once they’re in Thea’s room, Sandra collapses on to the red beanbag on the floor. The other three stand in front of her.

Tiril looks at Malene: ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’re not quite sure, but it’s Daniel, in any case.’

Tiril can see Thea swallow, like most girls do when his name is mentioned. But Tiril doesn’t have any need to swallow. ‘What is it he’s done, then?’ she asks.

‘We were in town,’ Malene does the talking, Sandra slumps unhappily in the beanbag, her make-up running down her face, ‘because it was all a bit too much for Sandra today, so I met her there, at McDonald’s—’

‘McDonald’s,’ Tiril rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, ‘have you started going there as well now—’

‘Can you just drop the environmental shit today?’

‘Okay—’

‘Anyway, we’re sitting there and Sandra’s trying to get a grip on things and suchlike and that’s when we see them—’

‘Who?’

‘Them…’

‘Who?’

‘Daniel and—’

‘Daniel?’

‘Daniel and Veronika.’

‘Veronika?’ Thea takes a step forward. ‘The foster sister?’

Malene nods. ‘But that’s not all, because when she turns round—’

‘Turns round?’

‘Yeah, we were sitting inside and they were outside—’

‘With their arms around one another,’ comes a sobbing voice from the beanbag.

‘They had their arms round one another?!’

‘Yeah, they did, but anyway—’

‘Like — I mean, they were wrapped around each other—’

‘Yeah, but anyway, when she turned around her face was all … all…’

‘She’d cut herself up,’ says the voice from the beanbag. ‘Out of love.’

They all turn to Sandra.

‘How…’ Malene crouches down beside her. ‘How do you know that?’

Sandra makes a fist, thumps it against her chest and with a sobbing voice says: ‘I understand everything now.’

The girls sit down in a ring around the beanbag. They tend to Sandra. They run their hands over her hair, fix her fringe, straighten her necklace so the crucifix rests in the hollow of her throat, stroke her gently on her forearms. They speak to her softly. They let her relate. They listen. They let her tell them how fantastic these past weeks have been, about his bright, electric mouth, about how he’s given her his heart and she’s given hers in return, about how she felt that life has been filled with a colossal love — I haven’t needed sleep, I haven’t needed to eat, all I’ve needed was him! They nod and they listen as she fills them in on the last twenty-four hours, how everything has twisted, how everything has become harsh and ugly and how fear has been hammering at her door.

Tiril gets to her feet. She paces the floor in thought. She feels she’s the one who needs to assume responsibility. They need to be at rehearsals very soon. Sandra needs to pull herself together. Tiril halts in front of the beanbag and makes eye contact with Sandra.

‘You need to go see him. You need to tell him what you think and what you’ve seen. You need to take the fight to him. And to her. Veronika.’

Sandra sniffles, wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

Malene nods.

Thea nods too.

‘You’re going to send him a text,’ Tiril says.

Sandra shuts her eyes, shakes her head quickly from side to side. ‘No, I won’t…’

Tiril raises her voice a notch: ‘You’re going to send him a text, do you hear me?’

‘But, I…’

‘Gimme your phone.’ Tiril puts her hand out.

‘No, Tiril, I…’

‘I said, gimme your phone.’

Sandra reluctantly hands her the mobile.

Tiril begins to type:

Daniel, you are a coward. It’s time you showed me who you are. Who it is you want. I’ll wait for you…

‘Where do the two of you usually meet?’

‘Mm, by the electricity substation—’

…by the substation. This is your last chance. Sandra.

Tiril presses send. She tosses the mobile back into Sandra’s lap and walks towards the window. She stands there with her back to them. She can feel their eyes on her.

‘By the way,’ she says, without turning around, ‘Bunny’s big brother was here. Y’know, Kenny. He nailed a cat to the tree. Put the nail right through the cat’s eye. He was trying to put us in our place. He failed. Look. It’s beginning to get dark.

56. SNIFFED LIGHTER FUEL AND LISTENED TO LATE-NIGHT RADIO (Jan Inge)

Dark clothes, of course. No need to attract attention. Casual attire, obviously. Just a couple of blokes taking the bus. Just two guys doing their bit for the environment.

Rudi and Jan Inge have changed, they’ve followed the timetable Ulrike from Hannover gave them, taken the bus into town and hopped on a number 7 by Breiavannet at 21:15. But Rudi’s not in good humour. The cheerful mood he’d been in after beating up Hansi evaporated after dinnertime. They’d listened to Motörhead and then settled down to watch Driller Killer while they digested their food, but Rudi couldn’t get into it. He twisted and turned in his seat and talked about what a deprivation of liberty it was being packed on to a bloody bus. And Rudi in bad humour is a pain. But what is a leader going to do about it? When the employees are in a bad mood?

Jan Inge sometimes feels this is his lot in life. Cecilie is in rotten humour so often that he’s firefighting day in, day out. And she hasn’t been the only one. He’s had many grumpy people in the organisation over the years. At times he’s felt like he’s been running a kennel for sick dogs. It’s a common flaw amongst so many of the criminal element, such a large number of them are angry and obstinate. They lack stability in their lives. Positive surroundings.

And what can you do about that? What, for example, would my kindred spirit David Toska do about it? What sort of steps would a big shot like Toska take in order to reinvigorate and reenergise tired troops? Would a seminar be a good idea, the kind of thing where you rent a place and book some speakers, possibly out at Sola Strand Hotel or in the basement of Atlantic Hotel, have some food on the table, get in a motivational speaker, maybe a Pia Tjelta or a Kristian Valen, or a guy with a guitar? Tjødaen, he played in that band before, what were they called … Hundvåg Racers? And Dabben, that boy can talk, more than one person’s remarked on that, and if only he wasn’t so ill-suited for ordinary working life he could have been a stand-up comedian or a politician. Might be an idea. Rent out part of Sola Strand Hotel. Get Dabben in to tell a few jokes and pep up the team. Have Tjødaen play a few songs. A Cash number for Jani, something by Aerosmith for Cecilie and a Metallica ballad for Rudi.

These are good thoughts. Positive thoughts.

Shouldn’t the criminal element, in general, work a little harder at raising awareness at the need for a good atmosphere in the workplace?

In any case, Rudi has always been useful with regard to that. Sure he can be a hassle, going on and on, but he’s rarely in bad humour.

But now the atmosphere here is really going downhill. Of course he’s got a point about being robbed of his freedom, that public transport is out to suppress the individual, everybody knows that. All the same. There’s something else.

All this couldn’t possibly just be about the bus.

‘I’ll grant them one thing, the people who work with this,’ Rudi says, as they’re tipped sideways in their seats at the roundabout by the theatre, ‘they know their fucking systems. Look, Jani,’ he continues, ‘now we’re coming out on to Madlaveien, and I’m nauseous, being on a bus always makes me nauseous — but let’s not talk about me, let’s talk about the guy driving. You can be sure that that fucker sitting up there holding the steering wheel between his knees, he is drilled in this. System, system, system. Do you think bus drivers get heavy balls, my friend? The amount of time they spend sitting? I do. In a lot of ways, you could say he’s a German, couldn’t you? A brother of Ulrike. Ordnung. Ordnung. Ordnung. Now this busfuck knows that we’re going to stop outside the bicycle shop at such and such a time. Andsoonandsoforth. And he’s one thousand per cent set on it. Jesus, I feel sick! Anyway, I’ll give them that, the people involved in this; they’ve made a plan and they’ve gone for it.’

‘Well—’ Jan Inge reckons he can agree with those sentiments, that it’s something positive, that in many ways it’s similar to what he himself is busy doing in their own firm, making plans and going for them. But Rudi has no time to listen.

‘But,’ Rudi says angrily, ‘what does it do to a person, being squeezed into these seats, breathing this stuffy air and having their insides bounced around like they were in a bloody tumble dryer, and constantly stopping then driving then stopping then driving again. Eh? Jesus, I’m nauseous. Brother of cunt! I ask you that, Jani, on top of it being a fundamental infringement of our rights when two working men like you me have been robbed of the symbol of our freedom. The Volvo. Eh? You can bet that creates tension. I’m pretty certain that if you take a look at the statistics for people with muscular aches and ailments and compare the ones who have their own car with those who take public transport, then you’ll see that amongst those who travel by bus there’ll be a lot more instances of people suffering from fibromyalgia, wear and tear, migraines and even long-term sick leave.’

Jan was thinking of saying that Rudi may possibly be right, but that on the other hand it is conceivable that these bumpy trips, with all the stops along the way, may have a relaxing effect on some people, but he’s gets slightly confused, so he asks: ‘Yeah … but … are you talking about bus drivers now?’

‘Aren’t you listening to me, brother of fuck?’

‘Yeah, I—’

‘It’s the passengers I’m thinking off, in this tunnel of nausea we’re inside. And I’ve been thinking about it a hell of a lot today,’ Rudi says, as they near the stop on Holbergsgaten. ‘A hell of a lot, Jani. And what I’m getting at is that we need to sort out the vehicular situation.’

‘The vehicular sit—’

‘Don’t go interrupting me, Jani, not yet, brother of impatience! What we need is a new vehicle, which both you and I can have the use of. We can hand over the Volvo to Chessi and then we get our own van. No matter how good it felt laying into Hansi, giving him a working-over for old times’ sake, we can’t do that whenever we need a van.’

‘But we—’

‘I don’t want to hear it, Jani, I don’t want to hear any protests. Those are my final words on the matter. I feel really nauseous now. But I’m hanging in there. Can you see that? I’m hanging in.’

Jesus, this is a bit much, Jan Inge thinks. He places his clammy hands in his lap and looks out the window.

‘I can’t talk any more now, brother,’ Rudi says, ‘because I feel so sick at this stage that I actually just really need a little time to myself. I need to look straight ahead. In both senses of the word. Straight ahead at the road. Straight ahead at the future.’

The bus passes Mosvannet lake, then the junction at Tjenvollkrysset, continues up Madlakrossen, driving past the ice rink in Siddishallen, past the gymnastics hall, out to Madlakrossen before turning into Molkeholen and heading towards Madla and Gosen.

Nausea? This can’t just be about being on a bus and feeling sick. Jan Inge feels he’s displaying poor leadership qualities at the moment. What would David Toska have done?

The bus pulls in at a stop not far from Madlamark School. Two teenagers hop off, a woman in her thirties gets on.

‘Rudi?’ Jan Inge turns to his friend. ‘How you feeling?’

‘I’m concentrating. I’m looking straight ahead.’

‘Okay, good.’ Jan Inge speaks in as calm a tone as he’s able. ‘I promise you. Next week, there will be a new car standing outside the house. And a van. We’ll have to find somewhere else to park the van though — it’ll draw too much attention if we make such striking changes simultaneously, and nobody’s going to go near the moving van. But I promise you that, Rudi. And listen, Rudi. No one, no one, is going to leave you.’

Rudi’s long, narrow head sways gently as they drive up towards Gosen Woods and their final stop. He doesn’t open his mouth to speak.

When the bus pulls in they step off, out into the chilly evening.

Rudi breathes in the fresh air and says, ‘I conquered myself there, brother, conquered myself, my own body and my own fear. Look at me. Am I throwing up? Am I alive?’

Jan Inge smiles: ‘A mighty display, Rudi,’ he says. ‘Mighty.’

‘Yep,’ Rudi clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and checks the time. ‘I looked straight ahead. Jan Inge? You can say a lot about bus people in general and that bus in particular. But take a look,’ he says, tapping the face of his wristwatch, ‘ten minutes this bus trip was supposed to take, according to Ulrike, and that’s exactly how long it took. But they felt like long minutes, didn’t they? For you and for me? Long, my friend. I went through a lot. You went through a lot. You don’t get any deeper than that. Mano a mano. Sink or swim. The feeling of making it to the last bus stop, so to speak. And that thing you said, about nobody leaving Rudi — I can tell you, right from the fuckin’ heart, that helped solve a problem that’s had me tied up in knots all day.’

Rudi takes hold of Jan Inge’s head, bends over kisses him on the forehead.

‘You should have been a shrink,’ he says. ‘Nausea? Who knows where that so-called nausea comes from. The internet? Come on, lets head up to Gosen Kindergarten, meet a man with a problem and offer a solution.’

LEADERSHIP ABILITIES.

How many marriages could be saved if families had only one person in charge, man or woman, with leadership ability, instead of a woman who’s a lush and a lardass and a man who’s a roughneck and a coward, neither of whom, let’s be honest, should ever have been allowed to bring kids into the world.

‘Shit, maestro,’ Rudi says, ‘I really need a piss. Is it all right if I just nip into the woods here and whip out the schlong out for a sec, or would that attract a bit too much attention, do you think?’

‘Yeah, just wait to piss until we’re a little out of plain view.’

‘I hear you, boss,’ Rudi says. ‘Fantastic night. Imagine. Uncle Autumn is here, but he looks like Aunt Summer. And before we know it we’ll be up to our knees in Grandfather Snow, and then it all begins all over again.’

Jan Inge looks at him in admiration. ‘Lyrical, brother. If you weren’t working for me, you’d probably be a poet.’

‘A poet?’ Rudi says, slowing his pace, nodding to himself. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Maybe so. I am sensitive, you know. Getting more and more sensitive the older I get.’ He stops, grabs Jan Inge by the lapels and looks at him gravely. ‘Where’s the eleven-year-old who smashed the windows of Hafrsfjord School in 1981 and made off with his first stereo, a Philips with double cassette decks? Where’s the twelve-year-old who took 1,450 kroner from Mathiessen’s banana wholesalers on Løkkeveien in 1982? Where’s the Rudi who beat the shit out of a thirty-year-old at Tjensvoll Shopping Centre in 1983?’

‘You know,’ says Jan Inge, ‘back then you were a diamond in the rough. Now you’re mature and rich with experience.’

The friends continue walking. The night envelops them, the woods seem warm.

‘Yeah, I feel more mature and all,’ Rudi sighs. ‘They were great times. Out at the weekends. Gathering in the light beneath the lampposts. Hanging around and messing about, waiting to see what would come our way. Took my first car when I was twelve, have I told you that?’

‘Yeah.’

Rudi’s cheeks take on a hearty glow. ‘Out in Bryne. At Rieber-Thorsen Auto Dealership. An Opel. Could just about see over the windscreen wiper. Frax and me parked it out near the airport. Sniffed lighter fuel and listened to late-night radio. Fell asleep in the back seat. Great times. Free and easy.

‘To your grandmother’s great disappointment. And your brother—’

Rudi exhales heavily. ‘Jani. Please. It’s still painful for me to think about that there.’

‘Right, I didn’t mean to…’

Rudi nods and waves his hand as if to brush it away. ‘Not like I’m proud of everything either. Fucked if I know what went on in our heads half the time … Did I ever tell you about that one night we knocked over twenty-nine gravestones in Tjensvoll cemetery? Ungodly. If somebody tipped over Granny’s headstone. I’d fucking brain them.’

‘That’s just how boys are,’ Jan Inge says. ‘You shouldn’t take it so seriously.’

‘You’re right. I’ve become so soft. Tip over a gravestone. So what. Put it back up again, Mr Grave Minder! Get over it. Let boys be boys. You’re right. Where will it end? Do you think I’ll be floating beneath the ceiling someday, crying twentyfourseven?’

Jan Inge laughs. ‘Who knows?’ He stops and looks at Rudi. ‘Okay. Quiz. Blood! Blood!’

‘Ha ha. Easy. Not only blood! Fulci, 1981. House by the Cemetery.’

‘Correct. And what does Fulci teach us? That one day it’ll all be too late. Before you even know it. And what lesson should we take from that? That we…’

‘…must always nurture love,’ they say in unison.

‘Justaboutright, brother of wisdom!’

‘Heh heh.’

And in this buoyant mood, filled with memories and musings, they trudge on uphill towards the substation, where they are to meet Pål in just under half an hour.

57. WENDY, DARLING, LIGHT OF MY LIFE (Cecilie)

The Volvo drives slowly through the small centre of Nærbø village. Street light after street light, not many people. Two cars, an old Kadett and a rusty Carina, are parked beside each other outside Statoil, their windows rolled down. Two boys sit behind the wheel of both, chatting to one another. A girl sits in the passenger seat of the Opel, twiddling her boyfriend’s long hair between her fingers while blowing a chewing-gum bubble. A tattoo on her forearm: Salve I love you you nutcase. There’s a man in a boiler suit from the farmers’ co-op in front of one of the houses; he’s smoking and teasing a dog with a stick. Two motorcyclists tear past her car, the harsh engine sounds piercing the darkness. What do people do in such a small place? Work at a plant nursery? At a newsagents? Maybe it’s a good place to bring up a child?

The headlights stream ahead, dissecting the night as Cecilie drives out on to the flat expanse of Opstadsletta. It’s deserted here. A deep darkness extending towards endless open country.

They did a job out here once. It was while they were working together with The Shabby Ones. That was a mistake. Some loan-shark shit that took place in a barn, something to do with a kid and drugs. Rudi nearly killed the guy, kicked him in the head and beat him with big logs of wood.

Cecilie can’t be bothered listening to music right now. She just wants quiet. She told them she’s going to Åna to arrange things with Tong, fill him in on the job tomorrow. But what is it she actually wants to do?

She closes her eyes. Drives blindly for a few seconds.

Say it like it is?

Tong, I have something to tell you.

And what’s he going to say then?

She opens her eyes again.

Jesus. I’d do anything for you.

Did he mean it?

Or is he like all the other boys, who only love you before they come? Because that’s what they want, frigging boys, their eruptions. That’s when they’re weak, that’s when they’re strong, that’s when they’ll wait on you hand and foot, the world over, when they’re tensed, when you have them inside you, when you have them in your mouth, when you have them in your hands. Then they’ll do anything for you, then everything they own is yours. She once screwed a biker with a tic from Hommersåk — the guy that carried out all the motorcycle robberies in the early nineties, held up places all over Rogaland, made off with millions. What was his name, Bjørn Roger Kydland? While she was riding him, he said: I’ll give you two hundred thousand if you promise to fuck me every week for the rest of my life. And the Fokkt Brothers? Cecilie remembers them well, Poster and Sorry, Pål Stephen Vogt and Stein Eskil Vogt. Poster and Sorry were from Eiganes and they always came together — like, they always came together. There was no end to their prattle before they did either, Cecilie, fuck you’re gorgeous. But afterwards? Neither of them would wait on her hand and foot. She’d just lie there, fourteen years old, jizz in her hair from one and jizz in her face from the other. They were sick in the head. They first worked as bouncers at New York. Then they were fitness instructors at S.A.T.S Training. After that they started a hairdressers in Kvadrat Shopping Centre. Then they disappeared. But hey, they still exist. Just google them. Put in Brothers of Porn and you’ll find a webpage. Sorry and Porno have done well in the brother porn business. Brothers in Arms, O Brother Where Art Thou, He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother, Big Brother, The Grimm Brothers, Brother Oh Brother. Did the mother not kill herself when she heard what her boys were actually up to in Hungary; thought they were running an IT company, and later she saw a scene from Brother Beyond with Poster dressed in a tennis outfit, ramming a racket up Sorry’s ass? Yeah, that’s right, she did.

Both Cecilie and the Fokkt Brothers’ mum have learnt by experience. You can’t rely on boys.

Apart from Rudi. Cecilie can depend on him.

He’s an awful idiot, she thinks. But he’ll never leave me.

He’d die before he’d leave me.

Cecilie sees the silhouette of Åna rise up in the darkness. She slows down and indicates, sees the long, impressive driveway come into view. If you didn’t know what this place was and you happened to drive up in a dim light you could easily believe it was the avenue to a castle

Wendy, darling, light of my life, I’m not going to hurt you…

The telephone rings.

…you didn’t let me finish my sentence, I said, I’m not gonna hurt you…

She needs to change that blasted ringtone.

…I’m just gonna bash your brains, I’m gonna bash ’em right the fuck in…

It’s not funny any more, no matter how much she loves both Jack Nicholson and The Shining. Cecilie leans over to the passenger side, turning on to the approach road while fumbling for the phone with her right hand.

Wendy, darling, light of my life … I’m not going to hurt you, you didn’t let me finish my sentence, I said…

She gets hold of the phone, looks at the display.

Dad calling.

Cecilie puts her foot on the brake, stops the car halfway up the driveway to Åna.

…I’m not gonna hurt you…

She kills the engine. It grows darker in the car. Only the glow from the mobile remains, casting a blue light on her hands and making them appear dead.

Dad calling.

Cecilie turns off the phone. She opens the door and gets out of the car. Stands there looking at the prison rising up out of the darkness. She takes out her lighter and a cigarette. She tenses the muscles at the back of her mouth, like she did when she was small, right behind her tongue, in order to empty her head of air. Then she lights the cigarette, sucks in the smoke and feels her body relax. She rubs her hands over her stomach to warm up the child.

‘That was Granddad,’ she whispers. ‘He’d probably be happy to find out that you exist.’

Another drag of the cigarette.

‘But we don’t have time to talk to Granddad right now. We’re going in to say hello to the guy who might be your father. And then we’ll have to see what we do. Would you like to live out here, hm? In a little place like this? With Tong and me? Maybe Mummy could get a job at a newsagents. Mummy is good with people. Or would you like to live in the city, with Rudi and me and Uncle Jani? Or would it be for the best if we died, baby?’

The telephone beeps. Answerphone.

A weak and solitary breeze hits her, the first hint of wind in days.

Cecilie rings up her voice messages. She hears her father’s crisp voice:

‘Hey, girl! It’s Pop! Houston calling, and nope, we ain’t got no problem! Great you called, honey, great to hear everything’s going well. Okay, gotta run, busy, you know, say hello to Jan Inge, always thinking of you guys, great to hear everything’s good. Sure we took walks down by the silos, of course we did, allthetime. I’ll stick a bit of money in the account one day soon. Hugs and kisses! Tits and asses! Nah, justajoke, honey.’

She begins to cry.

58. ALTERED STATE (Pål)

When he was young, he liked the darkness. Autumn, the evenings, the nights. Now he’s not so fond of it any more, but he needs it. Pål feels scrawny. He feels lean in both mind and body. He’s lost a lot of weight in the last few months. You look good, people have told him, it suits you, have you been hitting the gym? No, I’ve hit the wall. He’s bought in food for the kids. Where are they? Out. Was Malene heading into town for something? Was Tiril calling round to a friend? Was it something to do with that performance tomorrow? He isn’t sure. The words they say to him. They come out of their mouths, he nods, he smiles, but then they’re gone.

Pål puts the lead on Zitha.

‘Yeaah, come on, you’re going out with Daddy.’

Yet another few steps further into the darkness.

He walks out on to Folkeviseveien. No unopened envelopes to toss in the rubbish bin at the bus shelter today. A victory. A day without debt collection. What is Zitha so jumpy about? Why is she whimpering like that?

‘Zitha!’ he says, louder, and in an angrier tone than normal. ‘Simmer down, bad dog.’

Pål halts as he turns on to the path behind the tower blocks. Zitha is still agitated and he feels a terrible pang of conscience as the reason for it dawns on him. The dog hasn’t been fucking fed.

‘Yeaah,’ he whispers. ‘Daddy’s a dolt.’ Pål crouches down, pulls Zitha close. ‘Poor you with a daddy like me, eh? Cries crocodile tears in front of his daughter and looks to his dog for forgiveness. Yeaaah, yeaah. Come on.’

He picks up the pace, puts on a spurt with Zitha for about a hundred metres or so. He gets her worked up, as if something’s going to happen, something of relevance to her as well. But it won’t. What will happen will only be of concern to him. It’s getting on for five to ten. Pål hasn’t heard from Rudi today. That means he’s going to go ahead with this. Further into the forest. Listen to how they’re planning to help him. Christ only knows what they intend to suggest. What can people like that offer? Pål has no idea. He has no clue about the workings of the criminal world, no more than what he can imagine from films and TV series. Do they have a set menu with a list of options? Okay, Pål, here’s a suggestion: you smuggle a quantity of heroin to Germany. No? Then we’ve got something else: you join us on a bank job. No? Then you’ll have to sink your fingers further in the shit. There are people who are willing to pay others to use violence. We can arrange something along those lines.

‘Zitha! Can you quit your bloody whimpering?’ Pål grabs her firmly by the scruff of the neck and presses her snout hard against the ground, and he sees the fear come into her eyes — she’s not used to this. ‘You’ll get food. Later.’

Pål releases her and shakes his head. He’s made it as far as Madlavoll School. He’s noticed himself becoming more and more sentimental as the years pass. Maybe that’s just the way of things? At least in a life like mine, he thinks, where the future isn’t exactly burning bright. He walks over to one of the classroom windows. ‘Yeaah, Zitha,’ he says, ‘that’s where Dad sat, all those years ago.’

He takes a furtive look around. He has to cross the football pitch. He needs to get to the turnaround by the substation. It lies in front of him, illuminated by streetlamps.

Pål hurries across the gravel pitch, passing one set of goal posts and striding briskly into the light. He can’t see Rudi anywhere.

‘Here, Zitha, come on, girl,’ he whispers, leaving the light, rounding the substation and entering the shoulder-level thicket. ‘Yeaah, come on now.’

No Rudi. Pål stands there for a few moments. Zitha is still uneasy, but she’s quiet now, his trepidation having rubbed off on her. It’s still possible for him to call the whole thing off. Turn around and leave. But he doesn’t. On the contrary, Pål has the same sensation in his head, the same tingling in his fingers as when he opens the laptop at night, the feeling of wanting this.

Voices. Footsteps.

He remains quite still. Zitha begins moving ever so slightly, but Pål is assertive and she obeys.

‘…you’re still thinking about that, yeah?’

‘…well, now and again, but yeah, mostly as a sort of … retirement idea, almost…’

‘Retirement idea! Nice. Hey, I see you’ve retired, so what are you filling your wrinkly days with? Well, I’m busy writing my horror book, is what I’m doing, analyses of Argento and Fulci for the most part … Blood! Blood! Listen, when I totter into the ranks of the coffin dodgers, I’m going to have enough saved up for me and Chessi to spend six months of the year in Spain—’

‘Okay, let’s keep it down now, Rudi…’

‘Surethingboss, we’ll keep it down…’

‘…and not so much blabbering, okay?’

‘Who, me?’

They’ve stopped in front of the substation. The unfamiliar voice is very high-pitched — it sounds like that of a child in a grown man’s chest. Pål brings his hand up and fixes his shirt collar, as though he were going to a meeting where he has to look smart. The sounds of whispering carry to him now. He can’t make out what they’re saying. Movement.

There they are. Pål has to make an effort not to stare at the corpulent form lurching through the brush, manoeuvring with an effort between leaves and branches.

‘Påli! He-hey! Just like I was saying, only a few moments ago, yessir, Påli will be here, I said, you can count on it—’

It’s him. It’s Videoboy. Big and fat. With the same empty eyes as over twenty years ago. Small and black. He gives Rudi a quick look of admonishment, who in turn nods and draws his lips tight.

Videoboy offers him a brief smile as he puts out his hand. He’s incredibly like his bygone self. Time hasn’t affected him.

‘Jan Inge Haraldsen,’ he says, in a quiet tone, making his voice almost more high-pitched, ‘nice to meet you.’

Videoboy himself. Pål tries not to show how thrown he is, attempts to conceal any form of recognition. He puts his hand out.

‘Pål,’ he says, and clears his throat, ‘Fagerland.’

‘There you go, ‘says Rudi, ‘now you’ve met the man himself, the—’

Jan Inge gives Rudi yet another look of reproach. Pål needs to gather his wits. It’s Videoboy standing in front of him. Even though he’s met him before, that damn week in 1986, it’s just like encountering a celebrity from childhood. One of those you always heard about but never met, almost like it was, well, Kevin Keegan or Phil Collins. Pål has always been nervous around celebs, they make his hands sweat. Videoboy. He’s really fat. His skin is wan, like ash. His hair is thin. And that freaky high-pitched voice.

I can’t let them recognise me, thinks Pål. They mustn’t remember what I did.

‘I’m not entirely comfortable about you bringing your dog along,’ Jan Inge says, glancing down at Zitha, who’s sitting by Pål’s feet.

‘No, I’m sorry about that,’ Pål says, fidgeting nervously with the lead, ‘but it’s the only way I can get out of the house without arousing too much suspicion. I’ve got two daughters, you see, so…’

‘I understand. I’m not heartless. I have a family myself. I trust the dog will stay easy?’

‘You know what, I was just thinking exaaaactly the same thing—’

Rudi speaks loudly and gesticulates. Videoboy glances at him for a third time. ‘Anyway—’

Videoboy slips his hand into his trouser pocket, producing an inhaler which he proceeds to shake. He presses down on it, breathes in.

I’d forgotten that, thinks Pål. The inhaler.

‘Anyway,’ repeats Jan Inge, ‘I understand you’re having financial difficulties.’

Rudi folds his arms, nods in a manly fashion.

‘Yes.’ Pål swallows, but notices this situation isn’t as horrible as he thought it was going to be. Jan Inge seems genuine. ‘Yes,’ he says again, ‘I’ve tried everything but I just can’t find a solution.’

‘Right,’ Jan Inge says, nodding. Causing his jowls to wobble. ‘That’s where we come in.’ He places a hand on Pål’s shoulder. ‘That’s how you need to view us, as a solution. You need to get your life back on track. You require a service. We — in all probability — can provide that.’

‘Eh?’ Rudi nods contentedly, his arms still folded. ‘Schnåli? You hear that? What did I tell you?’

‘I’ll get right down to business—’

‘Right down to business—’ Rudi uncrosses his arms and snaps his fingers.

‘Rudi, would you let me speak here?’

‘Kein Problem.’

Jan Inge inhales. He lets his gaze wander. Peers into the woods, as though he heard something. Then he fixes his eyes on Pål again: ‘We had a meeting today. About you and your situation and what we envisage could help. And we came up with something which I believe will solve your problems. But first, a question: are you well insured, Pål?’

‘Insured, mmm … yeah, I suppose I am? My ex-wife, she…’ Pål shoots Jan Inge a hesitant glance. ‘Insurance … right … well, if you’re thinking—’

‘Yes, that is what I’m thinking,’ says Jan Inge.

‘Heh heh. Blood! Blood! Not only blood!’

‘Oh, shut up.’

Jan Inge fixes Rudi with a harsh stare. He checks himself and nods affirmatively.

‘Right,’ Jan Inge continues, ‘you’re well insured. Both household and contents as well as personal injury?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Excellent. That makes everything much simpler. This is the scenario we envisage: when night falls tomorrow and the suitable hours of calm arrive, roughly between half past seven and eleven, then we’ll drive over to your place. Where do you live?’

‘Well, in Ernst Askildsens Gate, up by the low-rises, not too far from here…’

‘Do you have a garage?’

‘Yeah, sure, I’ve got one…’

‘A spacious garage, would you say?’

‘Weeell, yeah, I suppose it is…’

‘Perfect.’ Jan Inge slaps his bloated palms together and Pål notices how they hardly make a sound. ‘It’s a good time to work,’ he continues, enthused. ‘It’s dark. People are busy with their own thing. No one pays any attention to the presence of an extra car or not. Some people are watching the news. Others are at club or association meetings. Shadows and shapes and incidents. There’re many who believe that the poetic hours occur later, in the middle of the night. I say it’s these hours that are lyrical.’

‘Heh heh. You listening?’

‘Daily life is taking place,’ Jan Inge goes on, without allowing Rudi to perturb him, ‘it’s dark but not too quiet. That’s when we’ll come driving down the street. A plain, grey Transporter. A Trojan horse. And the only thing you need to do is to make sure your kids are out of the house.’

Pål nods with interest. There’s something about the way Jan Inge presents it that makes it feel right. His confidence is reassuring, he’s genuine and proper, reflective and experienced. It’s the same impression he gave in 1986, but he seems more reliable now.

‘We park the Transporter at your place, we’ll number between three and four people, depending how many the firm have at work that evening. We will of course have some equipment along with us, you’ll usher us in and then we’ll get to work on your house. Our goal will be to make the damage look as realistic as possible. Basically, you understand: to make such a good job of it that the entire insurance amount is paid out to you. We’ll take your possessions.’

‘Possessions…?’

‘Possessions.’

‘Possessions!’

Jan Inge puts his head to the side and narrows his eyes. This is a joint effort, Pål. We can’t risk this much without getting something in return. You understand that.’

‘Eh … sure …’ Pål clears his throat. ‘That’s probably — well — how it has to be. So. You’ll take everything, I presume, TVs, computers…’

‘If it’s your laptop you’re thinking of, I’d imagine you should be happy to be rid of it. The internet isn’t for you, Swalli.’

Jan Inge takes a step closer to Pål: ‘There’s also the added detail of us being obliged to leave you in a somewhat altered state.’

‘What do you mean?’ Pål says, knitting his brow. ‘Altered?’

‘Heh heh. Altered.’

Jan Inge’s laughter is as shrill as that of a little girl.

‘Professional jargon, Pål. Altered.’ Pål looks from one of them to the other. Rudi must have a condition of some kind, but still he’s a cordial type, the kind of guy everyone wants to have in their gang of friends. Jan Inge is impossible to place, obviously talented and very intelligent, but all the same … stupid?

‘Hey, Uli?’

Rudi places a fingertip firmly on Pål’s chest. Jabs him four times in the solar plexus.

‘I can feel that this is going to go fucking great,’ he says. ‘We definitely have a connection here. Am I going too far when I say that this could be the beginning of a long friendship between you and our company? What do the stars have to say about it? What do you think Gran — rest in peace, old patchwork quilt — would say, sitting up there in Heaven, knitting socks for the lot of us? Respect to you and respect to your kids and respect to your dog, and death to your woman problems. What’s his name again? Zitha? He’s been sitting there now, obediently, for fucking minute after minute after minute after minute, and I’ve noticed it. While the two of you were talking I was on the dog’s side. And what does a dog get out of a human’s conversations? Wellmyfriend, there’s more between people and dogs than we suspect. That dog has participated. You have a true friend there, Huli.’

Videoboy nods to Rudi and places a fat arm around Pål’s shoulder. He leads him a few metres alongside the substation wall. Walks with him a little. Gives him a few pats on the back. Nods. Both of them with eyes downcast.

He stops abruptly and looks Pål in the eyes. Then the high-pitched voice wafts into the darkness of the woods: ‘Have I seen you before?’

‘No,’ Pål replies hastily, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No? Hm. Are you scared, Pål? You don’t need to be. You should know that you’re surrounded by friends. You should know that you’re working with someone who wishes the best for you, someone who is going to give you the chance to get your life back in order and get you back on your feet. Fear? Let me tell you. I know all about fear. It’s what you could call my area of expertise. You’re at the point where it’s still not too late. You’re not alone in this. We’re going to lift this weight as a team, Pål. A collaborative effort.’

There’s a shine in his blueberry eyes. His voice carries out into the woods, with an unworldly tone.

‘Are you with us, Pål? Will we do this? Go through with, what I like to call, a time-honoured classic?’

59. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO I AM? HM? DO YOU? (Daniel William)

This here — this is a hassle. That last foster father was a run-of-the-mill asshole, but he was right about what he said: if it’s hassle you want, just get yourself a woman. Daniel has two of them now and they’re both psychos. One has cut herself up and the other is hysterical. Daniel, you are a coward. It’s time you showed who you are. Who it is you want. I’ll wait by the substation. Daniel feels the lift suck him down through the block of flats, and looks at the display on his mobile for around the twentieth time. What the hell’s happened to Sandra? The fact that Inger flipped out when she saw Veronika’s mesh-face, screamed and wailed and wanted to ring the hospital and Child Welfare, and send Daniel off to some outreach camp for kids and God knows what else — that he gets. But he managed to calm her down. He has a knack for that sort of thing. Look deep into the eyes, keep a good hold on the shoulders, wait for the breathing to slow: Inger, Inger, we’ll sort it out.

But this here?

You are a coward

Daniel exits the entrance to the flats and walks out into the darkness.

He’s not an idiot either. He’s got good hearing. He can pick up when other people are talking through your mouth. When you open your gob and they’re not your own words spewing out from between your lips. When you can see in people’s eyes that there’s a psychologist in the background dictating the words.

Get rich. Get a woman with her head screwed on once and for all.

That’s all Daniel wants. Two small things. How difficult does it have to be? Every time he nears his goal it’s like some fucker comes along and wallops him in the face with a club, sending him back to his own stone age. Inger seemed all right. Sandra seemed all right. Veronika seemed all right. But no. They were all too good to be true. That’s the hidden truth. Nobody is as they make out. They sell themselves as beautiful fucking buttercups, but when you unwrap them they snap at you.

Give them cancer, cancer, cancer.

He walks with purpose, his arms paddling through the air, as though to sweep aside anything that gets in his way.

He can handle Inger. A grown woman screaming because her daughter has transformed her face into a hundred small bloody squares, who says she regrets ever having taken him into the house. There there, Inger. It’s going to be all right. He can also handle Veronika. When he left them, mother and daughter were sitting on the sofa with their arms round one another. They feel they’ve been through something together. But Sandra. He can’t handle her or his own feelings for her. They brim over, he’s unable to hold them down. Whenever other girls pass him he doesn’t react. They can be as hot as may be, they can have jugs that are heaven-sent, legs and asses that are primo, but it makes no odds. When she comes running along from side to side with those knees of hers, then he just has no control over himself.

But now.

Now he’s in control of himself.

Daniel, you’re a coward. It’s time you showed who you are.

All right. It’s a deal, bitch. You asked for it.

He runs. The last metres through the schoolyard, over the football pitch. It’s already dark all around. There isn’t the slightest breeze, no friction other than what he himself creates against the world.

‘Daniel!’

He stops dead.

‘Daniel!’

A dark figure appears over by the school, becoming clear under the lights by the football pitch. Be angry now, he says to himself. Be hard.

She runs quickly towards him. Fast, small feet across the gravel. The pulse in his necks throbs, he clenches his teeth. Sandra speeds up, she looks a wreck, her hair is dishevelled and her eyes tired.

‘Daniel!’

She stops just in front of him. They look at one another. He bends over slightly, she raises herself on her tiptoes. They throw their arms around each other, kiss.

‘Fuck,’ he says, feeling her soft lips, how they take shape to fit his, her warm, wet tongue, how it seeks his, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck.’

‘Fuck,’ she says, sniffling.

‘Fuck,’ he says, closing his eyes, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck.’

‘Fuck,’ she says, sobbing.

‘It’s you and me, baby,’ he says, placing his hands on her behind.

‘Touch me,’ she says, ‘never stop, Daniel William Moi.’

‘Fuck,’ whispers Daniel, ‘I didn’t mean it. You know that.’

‘I know,’ she whispers, ‘I know.’

‘I just get so fuckin’…’

‘I know,’ she whispers again, ‘you don’t need to say anything.’

They break off from the fantastic kissing he can’t live without and stand looking at one another under the lights of the football pitch.

‘Daniel?’

She reaches her hand out, strokes him gently across the cheek.

‘Yeah?’

‘Have you seen Malene and Tiril’s dad?’

‘No…’

They look in the direction of the substation.

‘What do you think is going on?’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t know — did you say anything to them?’

‘No,’ she says, ‘but I think it’s kind of horrible … I feel I know something I shouldn’t, and I feel I ought to say it, but—’ Once more she brings her hand to his face again, strokes his skin with her fingers, and once more he loves it. ‘But Daniel,’ she says, warily. ‘Am I the one you love?’

Is she going to start this again?

He can’t believe his ears. They’ve been snogging each other for two minutes, they’ve forgiven one another — and she starts this again? He feels like beating her senseless. Can she not fucking leave well enough alone?

‘Veronika,’ she says, nervously, ‘you need to tell me what’s going on. I saw the two of you, in town. I saw her. You have to tell me what’s going on.’

He breaks eye contact. Okay. That’s how it is.

‘Sandra.’ He shifts his weight to his other foot. ‘Don’t worry about this. Will we go into the woods and look for the father of those girls? Just, don’t be concerned about this—’

She just stands there. ‘I need to know, Daniel. I have to know if it’s me you want.’

He sighs and looks up towards the sky. ‘Please. I need you to trust me now.’

She nods. ‘Yeah, and I need you to be honest with me. You had your arms around her. You live with her. I have to know—’

‘She fancies me.’

Sandra takes a step backwards. The corners of her mouth begin to quiver. She stammers: ‘Does she want … but … so, do you want to be with her?’

‘I—’ he stops himself, this has to come out right. ‘I’m not able to protect myself when I’m with you.’

Furrows appear on Sandra’s forehead, her hands begin to clench.

‘When I’m not with you I sometimes think I should break it off, that we shouldn’t be together.’ Daniel is conscious these words aren’t coming out right, he can hear how dangerous it is saying them out loud, yet he’s unable to stop: ‘But when I see you, then I just want to have you.’

Sandra weeps inaudibly. Her body is limp. He doesn’t like looking so he turns his head and continues: ‘I didn’t know she wanted to be with me. Not like that. Not in that way. But she did. I can get on fine without her, but at the same time it’s like she … fuck, you know? It’s as if she’s good for me somehow, while you’re not good for me, even though you’re the one I need. Do you understand?’

Sandra has closed her eyes. She looks like she’s going to keel over, as though her knees are going to give way any second.

‘Do you understand?’

She doesn’t say anything. She just stands there with her eyes shut, crying. Fucking hell, she looks so beautiful. Okay, he thinks. Not so strange she has to mull it over a bit. She’s just got a considerable dose of honesty right in the face. But if she managed to listen to what he was saying, then she’s understood who he needs. That was what she wanted to know, wasn’t it? Who it is you want. He’s said it as clearly as he could, without lying. He likes Veronika, he’s not planning on letting her down. If Sandra’s thinking of a life with him, then she’ll have to learn to deal with Veronika. Just like Veronika will have to face the fact that it’s Sandra he needs.

‘Sandra?’ he says in a soft voice. ‘Are you all right with this?’

‘Did she cut herself for you?’

She opens her eyes, they’re overflowing with tears.

He nods.

Sandra swallows. ‘Just one more thing, Daniel, then I’ll let everything be.’ She brings her hand to her throat, fiddles with her necklace. ‘I need to know who you are.’

‘Hm?’

‘I need to know who you are. What you’ve seen. What you’ve done.’

Ponderous beasts surround the football pitch, crippled mongrels. They’ve emerged from out of the woods. Groups of small boys stand just behind them, all dressed in beige wadmal, all barefoot, all with horses’ heads, all with bleeding eyes. One of the boys holds a lance in his right hand. He raises it and at the same moment the horse heads begin to scream, a piercing, depraved shrieking, and the sky overflows with a rapacious light, and there, in the heavens, the sun is on fire, burning with raging flames. The boy with the lance summons the muscles in his body, tenses his arm, brings it back and sends the lance up into the sky.

‘A wolf,’ whispers Daniel and sees the beasts withdraw, moving backwards into the woods, followed by the boys in horses’ heads.

‘Hm?’ Sandra juts her chin out. ‘I didn’t hear what you said.’

The sound of footsteps coming across the gravel behind them. Daniel and Sandra turn around. Malene. It’s Malene.

60. INTERNATIONAL EMOTION (Tiril)

She should sit at the front of the stage playing piano. Sing. Just her, a piano and the audience. Like Amy Lee. But she can’t play the piano. It’s just as well Thea is taking care of the music so she can concentrate totally on vocals. There’s a video like that on YouTube, where Amy is sitting on a stool singing while the guitarist in the band is responsible for the music. But Amy is kind of fat there and doesn’t look too good, and the backdrop isn’t great either.

‘Candles?’

Tiril has pictured it. That they can cut out the spotlight and the coloured lights. It would be a lot more intense if they bought a load of candles — pillar candles, purple and white — and turned off the lights in the hall.

‘Yeah, good, eh?’

Tiril and Thea walk through the double doors into the gym hall. Lots of people are there, things are already underway and Svein Arne is busy helping with rehearsals. He’s the one responsible for organising things, Svein Arne Bendiksen. He’s in charge of the school revue and he’s a musician — good at everything. People say he held the county record in playing fast on the guitar when he was younger and he’s able to play the saxophone, the piano and the oboe, and one time a guitarist from a really huge band, Tyler Straits or something, heard Svein Arne play, and he said that Svein Arne was a mega talent.

‘I’m certain it would look good,’ Tiril continues, as they hurry into the hall. She unbuttons her jacket and waves to Svein Arne.

‘Tiril! Thea! Great!’ Svein Arne comes towards them smiling. ‘Good stuff, we can have you on soon.’

‘Listen, we were thinking,’ Tiril says, ‘about the lighting…’

‘You’ll have to talk to the lighting crew about it…’

‘Yeah, I know, but you’re the director,’ Tiril laughs, ‘or the manager. Anyway, what about if it’s all totally dark, right, when we’re introduced. Then we, like, come on stage, Thea in white, me in black, and I go and light up ten or twenty big candles while Thea plays the intro…’

Svein Arne nods, clearly impressed. His long curls bobbing about his enthusiastic face. ‘But if it’s going to be that dark, then maybe you should consider wearing something other than all black…’

‘Nah, I’ll have some candles right beside me…’

He laughs. ‘Right, just make sure you don’t catch fire then. Great. That sounds atmospheric. You’re on in about twenty minutes. We’re going through the programme in the same order as tomorrow. I’m just going to finish up with the dancers from Eksilstuna. You have to see them, they’re really good.’

He jogs back to the stage: ‘Right, okay, we’ll go again. Ingrid, Susanna, wasn’t it, yeah, Susanna, Kadi … Kadija, yes, Malin, Badra! Mina! Ulrik! Okay, let’s take it from … let me see … what is it Taylor Swift sings there … we are never, ever, ever, yeah two times on ever, no wait, actually it’s three times here…’

‘Taylor Swift,’ Tiril snorts. ‘Candles. Thea, you play the intro. I’ll go and light them. It’ll look cool, yeah?’

Tiril takes off her jacket. Then she gets a look in her eyes. Money. Twenty pillar candles. That’ll cost a bit. She can’t afford it. She’s not getting paid before next week.

‘Thea?’

‘Mhm?’

‘I was wondering … can you get the money for candles?’

‘Sure,’ Thea says, with a facial expression as if it were an odd question.

‘Cool. We’ll buy them tomorrow. He’s really good, Svein Arne, isn’t he?’

‘Mhm, yeah, he can play so many instruments.’

They survey the gym hall. Strange when it’s filled with people from other countries. They’re all being put up in pupils’ homes. There’s one in Tiril’s year who has a Finnish girl from Jyväsklä staying with her, another in Malene’s year who has a girl from Antsirabe in Madagascar living with her — she’s really cool, she’s going to give a speech, apparently, and recite a poem. And Ulrik, he’s going to play the guitar; cute, little Ulrik, so popular he makes all the girls melt.

‘They’re all from twin towns of Stavanger,’ says Thea. ‘Do you know anyone?’

‘Well…’ she wrinkles up her nose, ‘spoke a little with a girl from Denmark…’

‘They’re from, let me see,’ Thea counts on her fingers, ‘Fjardabyggd, that’s in Iceland somewhere, Esteli in Nicaragua, Houston, in Texas of course, and from Esbjerg in Denmark, Nablus, that’s in Palestine…’

‘Yeah, yeah, Brainy, I know, you’re so good at…’

Thea continues: ‘And from Aberdeen in Scotland, from Eksiltuna in Sweden, and Jyväskylä and Antsirabe…’

Somebody pokes Tiril on the shoulder. She turns around.

Bunny’s little brother.

What the hell is he doing here?

‘Can I have a word?’

There´s something different about him. For one thing, he’s on his own. He never usually is. He’s always with those annoying friends of his. For another, he doesn’t have that cheeky grin on his face. And thirdly, he’s just standing calmly. He has a pair of headphones around his neck. She can’t remember ever having seen him stand quietly.

‘I don’t have the time.’

‘It’s all right — we’re not on for another twenty—’

Thea. Great. You had to open your mouth.

‘Just a couple of minutes,’ says Shaun. ‘Five. Tops. Promise.’

‘Listen,’ says Tiril, folding her arms, ‘you’ve ratted to Kenny, you’ve spat in my hair, you’ve—’

Shaun shakes his head. ‘I didn’t rat to Kenny. I wasn’t the one who told him.’

‘Yeah. Right.’

‘Can you not just come outside with me for a sec? Just for a bit. Five minutes. Two minutes.’

‘Where Kenny is standing waiting with your idiot mates to beat the shit out of me. Do you think I’m stupid, Shaun?’

He remains standing, quite still. Tiril tries to remain firm, but can’t maintain it. Some old memories well up inside her, from primary school, when she and Shaun used to have pretend fights in the snow, when he tripped her up, when she threw snowballs at him, when she sat on his chest and gave him typewriter torture.

‘One minute.’

She gets to her feet.

‘Okay. One minute. Max.’

Shaun nods and begins walking towards the door. His body isn’t swaying from side to side as much as usual. He’s small, almost a foot shorter than her. He walks with his hands in his pockets and his head down. She follows him. Out through the foyer, out the front doors. Shaun walks a little away from the gym hall, over behind a tree.

She comes to a halt when she reaches him. ‘Well, what is it?’

‘I—’

‘He’s bang out of order, Kenny, you are aware of that? Do you know what he did?’

Shaun nods. ‘I can’t do anything about it, some others told him, and Kenny … Kenny’s not quite right in the head, it’s not my fault.’

‘What do you want, so?’

‘I—’

Tiril takes a deep breath. Her chest rises.

‘Have you got a fag?’

Shaun nods. He takes a ten-pack from the pocket of his baggy hoodie. They sneak around to the side of the gym hall. He produces a lighter, lights one for her and then one for himself.

‘We’re probably the only ones in second year who smoke.’

He nods. ‘I was the only one who smoked in sixth class too. Going to try to quit soon.’

‘Me too. Not good for the singing voice.’

Tiril is pushed for time, but she looks him over. Small, scared and strange, that’s what he is. Her eyes fall on his headphones. ‘What are you listening to?’

Shaun gives an embarrassed shrug. ‘Ah, nothing.’

‘Give me a look at your phone, then.’

‘Eh,’ he says, shifting his feet.

‘Give me a look.’

Shaun takes his phone out of his pocket, makes a face, not eager to let her see. But Tiril grabs it, begins to scroll. Just hip-hop, just shit music. Eminem, Rihanna and a load of bands she’s never heard of — David Banner, Khia, Akinyele… what the fuck? Her finger stops moving. She glances up at Shaun.

‘Eh…’ He blushes.

‘Put it in my mouth?’

‘Eh, yeah, that…’

‘What the fuck is this … smell your dick? We fuck virgins?’

She removes the headphones from around his neck, puts them on and presses play. A sleazy drumbeat. A siren. A creepy man’s voice whispering: Cum girl, tryna get your … what’s he singing? Tiril raises one eyebrow at Shaun while she taps the next song on the playlist. A faint drumbeat, another creepy voice, a woman this time: All you ladies pop your … what is she singing?

Tiril takes off the headphones. Her cheeks are flushed, she tries not to swallow but can’t manage. The little, embarrassed halfwit stands there in front of her and she doesn’t have time for this.

‘Awesome Pornrap for Shaun,’ she says.

‘Eh, yeah…’

She shakes her head.

‘You are a sick slacker,’ she says, handing him the phone.

He takes it and shrugs again, as if that’s the only thing in the world he’s able to do. ‘Yeah, I suppose I am, all right,’ he says in a low tone.

‘That music,’ she says. ‘It’s, like — Jesus, Shaun.’

Again he shrugs. ‘I know. That’s the kind of stuff I like.’

Shaun gazes at her, looks at her for longer than any boy has ever done.

‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

‘Huh?’ His eyes flit about.

‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’ Tiril asks again, aware of an antsy warmth in her body and suddenly realising what all this is about. Without quite being able to explain it to her herself, without being able to take it in her hand and look at it shimmer, she decides to say yes when he asks if she’ll be his girlfriend. No, she decides to be the one in control, so she blows out the smoke and says: ‘Shaun. Do you want to go with me, or what?’

His eyes grow large.

‘What? Do you want to get down on one knee or something? Are you not able to speak now?’

She gives him a thump on the shoulder, but Shaun stands there, as though rooted to the spot, his eyes growing larger and larger.

‘Come on,’ Tiril says, ‘now you’ve got what you want. You need to cut back on the porno rap. There’s proper music out there. Have you heard Evanescence? And don’t make such a big deal out of this here. Kiss me. Make it quick. I haven’t got all night.’

Shaun blinks a few times, raises himself ever so slightly up on his toes, and gives her a kiss, a slightly awkward one, but nice all the same.

61. BRILLIANT, SPOFFI! THIS IS GOING TO WORK LIKE A DREAM! (Rudi)

Granted, at first sight, yeah. At first sight Jan Inge may not cut such an impressive figure as he does when you see him in action. But then we´re talking discrimination, Rudi thinks, and isn’t that a mortal sin? What we’re looking at then is a type of racism, a type of Nazism, obesity Nazism, and what was it we learned in primary school about not judging people by their appearance, their race or creed? It’s bullying, pure and simple. And Rudi’s seen it so many times when he’s been in the presence of the great Jan Inge, and he doesn’t mean ‘great’ as in fat, but ‘great’ as in brilliant, and what would Gran have to say about that? Shame on you! People who meet Jan Inge and look away, people who talk shit behind his back, call him a hobbit, or people who quite simply talk shit to his face. Do they not think he’s hurt by that?

Great men have feelings too.

The worst Rudi’s experienced was the time they had a job on with the Tornes Gang from around Haugesund. A shower of bastards. Doped out of their minds all day long, swapping women all the time, swindling each other, no conscience and no love, either for the profession or for the people engaged in it. It had seemed so promising, a nice decent break-in up in Haugesund. They’d come by information, they needed people, they’d heard about Jani’s gang — naturally enough, word gets around. But Jesus, Mary and Holy Saint fucking Joseph. It started from the minute they met them. ‘Whataboutye,’ said the Tornes guy, the one with ears as big as an elephant, ‘fat ass there is Jan Inge, is he?’ ‘Whataboutye,’ his brother chipped in, Tornes guy number two, the one with such a tiny nose you’d think he’d snorted it away, ‘all right hi, Porky, you going to drive the Skoda, are you?’ ‘Whataboutye,’ Tornes guy number three takes over, the youngest brother, the one with the mental big wart on his forehead, ‘all right hi, Fatso, are you the one called Videoboy?’ Oh fuck, Gran, wash my mouth out with Domestos. I’m happy you didn’t have to see that. That’s how they went on, for two whole days, and if it hadn’t been for Jan Inge himself refusing to let Tong and Rudi do over the whole Tornes Gang and cut them into pieces, then that’s what would have happened to them, and they would have been messed up and smelt even worse.

It’s only fair and proper, thinks Rudi, that I stand in Jani’s shadow.

Der Führer, without making invidious comparisons.

Look how he puts his arm around Pål. Strolling along in the lee of the substation. Seems like a sound bloke, Pål. Heart in the right place. Feels like one of us in a lot of ways, thinks Rudi, as he hears Jan Inge say: ‘Are you with us, Pål? Will we do this? Go through with, what I like to call, a time-honoured classic?’

When they meet people they’re going to cooperate with in some way or another, Rudi often feels that he can’t really talk to them, like they’re living in a world far removed from his. But Pål. Top bloke, plain and simple. Really good feeling, knowing they’re not just doing this for the money, but also to help their fellow man.

Fellow Man.

That was a book, so it was. Granny was always on about it. She had books on the brain, Gran. Sitting there with her books. Hamsun and Agatha Christie and whatever their names were. Nothing wrong with that, total respect for book people, Rudi thinks, even though I’ve chosen the real life and everything it has to offer, instead of the book life with all it has to give.

Pål doesn’t reply. But Jan Inge allows him time.

It’s all about being calm, pensive and dignified.

‘Let me tell you a story,’ he hears Jani say, from over in the thicket. ‘A little story. My father — I won’t mention his name or where he lives — my father had some problems once. Lets put it like that. Some problems that his kids, my sister and me that is, weren’t completely aware of. If you and I were to walk the miles together, I could tell you all about it. About what a child sees, about what a frightened little child understands and what a grown-up understands, and what a person who sees an axe coming down on their throat understands. You like horror, Pål? No? I could — and maybe I will? — show you some films one day. Suspiria? No? You haven’t seen Nightmare in a Damaged Brain? The Thing? No? Carnival of Souls? You haven’t seen it? Night of the Living Dead? The Hills Have Eyes? Hm. You sure I haven’t met you before? Anyway. My father. He had an insurmountable number of problems. And this is in spite of being a happy-go-lucky guy. If there’s one thing that characterises him, it’s his unbelievable good humour. It’s almost mystifying. But problems. Big problems. But you know, we were just kids, and I mean, what did we know about adult life. I mean, what were we? A trifle, blades of grass in the field. So, we’re talking the very early eighties here — keywords are Blondie, Wham! Blade Runner, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, John Holmes, Desiree Cousteau — and let me make it quite clear that we’re anti-porn. We’re feminists, twenty-four hours a day. At your service, women! The eighties — reminds me of Speedos and tight shorts, Rossignol skis and Björn Borg, things your kids will never know anything about. Smells they won’t associate with anything. I mean, who remembers Kim Carnes? Me, Pål. Me. Or, hold on … ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ … no, now I’m getting mix — Rudi! Eighty? Eighty-one? Eighty-two?’

‘No idea, that’s your area of expertise.’

Jan Inge nods: ‘I think I might be wrong, forget that about Kim Carnes.’ He plods on for another few steps with Pål, who still remains silent. Rudi has begun patting Zitha, the dog breathing calmly to his touch.

Jan Inge breathes in and out heavily. ‘I’m showing faith in you now, Pål. Because I like you. But also because I want to show you that in our firm, we’re different. We’re not some cocaine-snorting gang of idiots from around Haugesund. We work with, and for, people. We don’t bow to the Hell Angels or the Bandidos. We don’t jump for joy because David Toska and his gang come to town. We work away quietly. We’re almost like part of the very bedrock of the city. Anyway. My dad. So he had a large number of insurmountable — is that what it’s called? Insurmountable? Rudi? Insurmountable or insuperable?’

Rudi pouts while pondering the question. ‘Errrr,’ he says, ‘I think you could use either of them.’

‘Right. They were the problems he had. Insurmountable and insuperable. I can just say it right out: the biggest problem was my mother. A she-devil, Pål. The mother of all fears. A heart of glass. We can talk about it another time, when the two of us are sharing a pipe by the ocean — I’m speaking metaphorically now — then, we can talk about it. But now we’re discussing my Dad. And I’m getting to the point. Around this time, he was made an offer. An offer, Pål. Just like you.

Now Rudi feels a tugging in his chest. This is precisely what he loves about Jan Inge. Standing here, on an ordinary Wednesday, watching him in action. His thoughts flying hither and thither, his words too, and who knows what he’s after but then it comes, the point.

‘Yes,’ he hears the master say. ‘My father got an offer. This was the oil age now, Pål, not the internet age—’

‘Mayhem! Get thee behind me!’ Rudi makes the sign of the cross with two fingers and holds them towards the sky.

Jan Inge laughs his reedy laughter. ‘It’s the era of oil, and my father is in that business and he gets an offer. While he’s up to his neck in problems. Will he accept a job over there?’

‘Over there, land of the brave, hom—’

‘Will he? A lucrative position, Pål, good money, a new life. He gets an offer, a time-honoured classic, if you think of life as simply time and this as a classic.’

‘Hah. You listening, Poffi?’

‘You follow me, Pål?’

Pål nods.

‘Simple as that. Dad went to Houston. Difficult for us as kids to understand back then. Easy to understand now. And you? Now you’re being made an offer. What do you say, Pål?’

Rudi can’t manage to keep still any longer. This is just too much. He lets go of the dog, who responds by following him. He stands in front of Pål, looks him in the eyes, grips his jaws in both hands and says: ‘Brilliant, Spoffi! This is going to work like a dream! Hallefuckingluja! Can I kiss you?’

Pål looks bewildered. Rudi gives him a friendly shove. Jan Inge takes out his inhaler, shakes it and sucks on it.

‘So. Now we can listen to what you have to say, Pål.’

‘I’m in. But…’ he pauses uncertainly.

‘What are you thinking about, brother?’

‘Well…’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘No, it’s just — what were you thinking of doing to me?’

Rudi smiles. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘it’ll be fine. We’re experienced. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Right … but … will it … hurt?’

‘Look, Joffi, there’s being hurt and there’s being hurt … you can take a little bit of pain.’

‘But … will I wind up in hospital? Will I be able to walk afterwards?’

‘Shit,’ Rudi says. ‘You’re a nice guy, Toffi. Don’t think about that. Think about the money! Ah. See this here, this is one of the best days of my life. When I die, I’ll remember four things: Chessi’s face, Jani’s face, Lemmy’s face and that beautiful face of yours, Schmoffi.

Zitha barks.

‘Yeah, yours too, fuckmutt,’ Rudi says and in his head Coldplay begin blaring at full volume: Du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du.

‘It’s so bloody good,’ he says ‘to feel that you’re alive. I can’t wait to tell Chessi.’

‘What?’ Jan Inge shoots him a dubious look. ‘No details, not before you’ve cleared it with me.’

‘No, no,’ laughs Rudi. ‘Jesus, I mean, I can’t wait to tell her that it’s time we started thinking seriously about things — kids, y’know, maybe getting a place of our own, taking the relationship a step further!’

A darkness brims in Jan Inge. It flows from his little blueberry eyes and washes down over him.

62. HONEY (Malene)

Malene walks out the front door and out into the street, heading in the direction of Folkeviseveien.

She went home when Thea and Tiril left for the rehearsal, the same time as Sandra disappeared into the darkness to meet Daniel. The wild sensations the day had thrown up vanished quite abruptly, the tingling of her skin, the heat of her body, which had made her feel strong and new. She couldn’t manage to take control of the situation. All of a sudden, Sandra didn’t need her any more; suddenly it was Tiril who had taken over everything, as though she were the big sister. Malene no longer felt at ease wearing the bright red lipstick.

‘Will I go with you?’ she’d asked. Sandra had shook her head. ‘No, no, course, you have to do this yourself.’ Malene had hastened to add, ‘Don’t let him ride roughshod over you, Sandra, okay?’

Dad wasn’t at home when she got in. The house looked like it was abandoned right in the middle of something. The living room door was wide open. One slipper at an angle to the other in the centre of the kitchen. A single saucer with a slice of bread on the kitchen table. A half-empty glass of juice. Zitha’s rubber bone on Dad’s pouf.

Malene cleaned up, but the sight of her hands annoyed her. She thought they looked like the hands of a forty-year-old as she loaded the dishwasher, as she hung up damp towels in the bathroom and as she placed Dad’s shoes beside one another.

Soon it was nine o’clock. She looked over her homework. She flicked through the channels on the TV. Clicked around on Facebook.

Now she’s outside. It’s daft. It’s idiotic. Out spying on Sandra and Daniel. But she can’t help herself. Sandra is having a torrid time and Veronika has it rough … is she jealous, is that it?

She walks quicker.

‘You’re such an idiot, Malene,’ she whispers.

She hurries along past the tower blocks in Jernalderveien and comes out on the plateau above the primary school, from where she’s afforded a view. There they are. Daniel and Sandra. In the middle of the football pitch, underneath the lights. She slackens her pace, lets her feet move slower across the tarmac. She knows she should turn around, but she’s can’t manage to.

Malene straightens up. Walks as naturally as she can out on to the gravel pitch. What will she say when they spot her? She doesn’t know Daniel. He hardly knows who she is. He’s a dangerous boy — who can tell what he’s capable of.

She draws closer. He’s so handsome. Everything about him is beautiful and strong. It’s hard to act naturally when people are so good-looking. How are you supposed to act, when the presence of another person is so overwhelming? She would never have dared go out with a boy like that. He gives a lot but he takes more. What he touches would always be left dazzled but also diminished. It’s not possible to come away from Daniel William Moi intact.

Malene scuffs her feet on the gravel so they’ll notice her. She’s only a few metres from them. What’s she going to say when they ask her why she’s here?

Sandra turns. So does Daniel. What eyes he has, what a mouth. If he opens it up the whole world will disappear down his throat

‘Malene?’

She raises her hand in a clumsy greeting and refrains from looking at Daniel.

‘Hello, fancy meeting you two,’ Malene says, trying to make her voice sound as unaffected as she can.

‘Hi…’ Sandra looks nervous. ‘This is Daniel…’

He gives her a quick look, a look that says she should get out of here as quick as she can.

‘Well,’ she hastens to say, ‘I’m heading to the school to listen to Tiril. Not too many people paying her much attention at the moment, so I figured I’d better be there for my little sister.’ Malene knows she’s speaking too fast, and she knows she’s a bad liar. ‘Yeah,’ she giggles nervously. ‘Y’know, Evanescence, heh heh, have to support little sis.’

You need to go, Malene.

It’s in their faces, it’s in their body language.

She sees two men come into view down by the substation. They’re coming out of the woods, they resemble characters in a computer game. One of them is ungainly and as tall as a tree, the other quite small and fat. They’re momentarily lit up by a streetlamp outside the kindergarten, before they disappear from under it, heading in the direction of the main road.

‘I see,’ Daniel says, ‘you’re one of the sisters. The gymnast? Heard about your tumble. Bummer. Ankle was it?’

One of the sisters? Has Sandra been talking about her?

‘Yeah…’ Malene nods.

She looks at Sandra with uncertainty, whom for her part, avoids Malene’s eyes.

‘Okay, but anyway, Malene,’ Sandra says, with an affected smile, ‘we’re just going to have a chat…’

Another figure appears beneath the light outside the kindergarten. And a dog. They look like they’re part of the same computer game. First the towering figure, then the little, fat round guy, and now a normal man with his head down, and finally a dog sniffing along. Malene juts her chin out and squints.

It’s Dad.

She feels something shoot through her stomach, a needle-thin pain.

She points at the substation, ‘I’m…’ she says to Daniel and Sandra, ‘I’m just … that’s my dad.’ The others turn to look. ‘He’s out walking Zitha, our dog, that is…’

Dad bends over. Picks something up. It’s a stick. He holds it up high in front of Zitha, who’s wagging her tail expectantly. Then he stops dead, his head turns in their direction, his hand suspended in the air.

He looks like he doesn’t want to be seen, Malene thinks. It’s completely obvious. Dad doesn’t want to be seen.

He relaxes his body, his face breaking into that nice smile of his, shouts ‘Come on, Zitha!’ and throws the stick toward the goalposts.

Zitha sets off in pursuit. Dad strolls towards them.

This is embarrassing.

‘Hi!’

Dad’s big, warm smile.

‘Malene, didn’t expect to see you.’

Dad’s big, false smile.

He puts his hand out as he reaches them. He whistles for Zitha. Daniel shakes his hand and introduces himself. ‘I’m going out with Sandra.’

Dad smiles. ‘I know Sandra all right. Nice evening, eh?’

Zitha comes running over with the stick in her mouth, drops it at Dad’s feet and he commends her.

‘Out walking the dog?’ Daniel asks, bending over and running two hands along Zitha’s snout.

‘Oh yes,’ Dad says, ‘every day. What are you lot up to?’

Daniel’s grins and he says: ‘Darkness imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror, I cannot live, I cannot die, trapped in myself.’

Dad gives a start, as though someone had hit him in the face.

‘Heh heh,’ laughs Daniel, ‘Metallica. Your T-shirt.’

Dad laughs and looks down at his chest, the old T-shirt barely visible under his jacket.

‘Best band in the world,’ says Daniel.

Dad smiles. ‘Well, I better be getting home,’ he says. ‘Enter Sandman, y’know. Heh heh. Are you heading home, Malene?’

She nods, knows she’s been given away, but it makes no difference.

She smiles at Sandra, gives her a hug.

‘See you around,’ says Daniel.

The windows of the tower blocks are lit up in the darkness. All those people crammed together. It looks cheery and sad at the same time. Malene is aware of her father’s heavy form beside her. He walks along, making small talk about something, but she’s not following what he’s saying. She’s just aware of him plodding along, aware of something being terribly wrong. She stops as they get to the last tower block. She stares at him for such a long time that he’s forced to make eye contact with her.

Malene puts her head to the side.

‘Honey,’ he says, ‘everything’s going to be fine.’

63. Y-E-A-H-W-E-A-R-E-J-U-S-T-F-I–X-I-N-G-O-U-R-S-E-L–V-E-S-A-C-O-U-P-L-E-O-F-S-A-N-D-W-I–C-H-E-S-H-E-R-E-T-H-A-T-S-F-I-N-E (Veronika)

She can feel his breath in the room. Soon he’ll steal around the corner, soon he’ll come and lick her face. Veronika straightens up on the sofa beside her mother. They’ve been lying beside each other for almost two hours. Neither of them have stirred, nor said much. Sweetheart, you must never do that again. No. Do you promise me? Yeah. You’ll tell me, won’t you, if anybody does something bad to you? Yes. You’ll let me know, won’t you, if Daniel seems dangerous?

Her mother has stroked her hair, taken her hand and entwined her fingers in her own. They’ve breathed in and out together. Watched an episode of CSI: Miami. And now the wolf is here. Veronika doesn’t know how this day was born or how it is going to die. She doesn’t know if it’s been a horrible day or a fantastic day. She’s proud and she’s embarrassed, she feels whittled, she feels sharp. But he’s here now.

Veronika runs a hand through her hair: here is Daniel. He’s been to see his slut of a girlfriend. Has he licked her face? She fixes him with her eyes.

Daniel smiles. Not so much self-assurance.

‘Do we have anything to eat?’

Her mother shakes her head, shrugs, takes a deep breath.

‘No, there’s not much, I’m afraid. Some bread, maybe. You’ll have to take a look.’

He nods, doesn’t meet her eyes and walks to the kitchen.

Are you scared, Daniel? You held me close, you caressed me and you put your arms around me. But you don’t want me. You’re letting me down, Daniel William Moi. Don’t you know who you want?

Veronika gets to her feet. She signs the word for ‘eat’ and makes her way towards the kitchen. On her way she tucks her T-shirt into the waistband of her trousers so the material is taut over her breasts.

There he is. Standing with the knife in one hand. His other hand on top of the bread. He’s slicing it. She opens the fridge, takes out the ham slices, as well as the butter, and places them on the worktop. Then she stands beside him. He smells of outdoors, he smells fresh, doesn’t smell of his slut girlfriend. The blade of the knife flashes in his sinewy hand and slices through the bread. Daniel cuts slowly. Veronika moves a tiny bit to the side, her body just barely making contact with his. Daniel doesn’t move.

Hm? Can you feel this?

He doesn’t move. A vein appears in his neck. He clenches his jaw, his teeth grind. Veronika reaches for the ham, allows her forearm to brush against his.

Daniel doesn’t move. She can hear his breath, she thinks she can see claws growing out of his paws. She can see his mouth opening, fat glistening on his lips, his tongue slipping out between his teeth. His head turns in the direction of the living room, she reads his lips: ‘Y-e-a-h-w-e-a-r-e-j-u-s-t-f-i-x-i-n-g-o-u-r-s-e-l-v-e-s-ac-o-u-p-l-e-o-f-s-a-n-d-w-i-c-h-e-s-h-e-r-e-t-h-a-t-s-f-i-n-e.’

She catches his eye, mouths: ‘I-a-m-n-o-t-y-o-u-r-l-i-t-t-l-e-s-is-t-e-r.’

His ears stand on end, his snout narrows. He mouths: ‘W-h-a-t-a-r-e-y-o-u-t-h-e-n?’

She takes his hand and presses it against her crotch. She mouths: ‘I-a-m-w-h-a-t-y-o-u-n-e-e-d.’

His lips move towards her, kiss her.

That’s what I thought.

I see your yellow eyes.

Nothing is settled yet.

Veronika feels his hand, slipping around her pubic bone, and feels the fingers of his other hand gently stroking the cuts on her face. She gives him her tongue.

64. ME AND TOMMY POGO, MADLAVOLL SCHOOL 1983 (Rudi)

‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

‘Huh?’

‘Shitshitshit!’

‘What?’

‘Holy mother of God.’

‘Huh?’

‘Tampon!’

‘Huh?’

‘Tampon!’

‘Where?’

‘There!’

‘Where? I can’t—’

‘There!’

‘Huh, where?’

‘There, for fu—’

‘I’m telling you, I can’t see—’

‘By the shop!’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh holy fuck.’

‘That’s right.’

Rudi and Jan Inge have stopped at the edge of the woods, Rudi feels his adrenalin pump as he points down towards the shop on the corner, at the man standing there.

‘Oh no,’ says Jan Inge in despair.

‘Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no.’

‘Has he seen us?’

‘Youcanfuckinbetyourasshehas,’ says Rudi. ‘I can feel his eagle eyes on us.’

Jan Inge wipes his forehead with a clammy hand.

‘Tampon.’

‘Tampon.’

‘Pogo.’

‘Tommy.’

Rudi spits and grates his canine teeth against one another. ‘That’s torn it, like my Dad, that badger used to say. And you know how seldom I mention him, or any of the other voles in my family. What the hell is Tampon doing here? Doesn’t he live on Mosterøy?’

‘He must be working so, you gobshite.’

‘Don’t call me things like that, Jani. It’s hurtful.’ A line forms between Rudi’s eyes. He doesn’t dare take his eyes from the man standing on the corner. ‘Working?’

‘How would I know,’ Jan Inge hisses, ‘what a guy from Mosterøy is doing in Madla. It’s a free country.’

‘Sure, all too free. Jesus!’

‘Keep it down, he’s looking at us,’ Jan Inge says. He’s speaking with the voice of a thinker now. The voice of a leader. Rudi finds that reassuring. ‘Look at him,’ Jani continues, ‘look at him standing there trying to psych us out.’

‘Pogo. Jesus fucking Christ.’

‘Please,’ says Jan Inge. ‘Not God and not His Son. You know I don’t like it when you’re profane.’

‘Sorry, it’s that foul mouth of mine. I’ll never get shut of it. You know as well as I do that if there’s one person who respects the Lord, it’s me.’ He shakes his head slightly. ‘Look at him. Standing there staring at us. That bloody beard and all. He was really young when he first got facial hair, did you know that?’

‘No?’

‘Oh yeah. Must have been in sixth class.’

‘That is young.’

‘Was a hard bastard, Pogo. None of us saw it coming.’

‘Jan Inge gives Rudi a quick glance, ‘The force?’

‘Rudi nods. ‘One day he’s laying into Ullandhaug-Remi with a nail-bat — you know Remi’s back was never the same? One day he’s laying into Remi with a nail-bat behind the greasy spoon, because he happened to glance in the direction of Elisabeth from Springarstien, and the next thing he’s applying for—’

Jan Inge nudges Rudi in the side. ‘He’s on the move.’

Rudi blinks rapidly. ‘Andwhatarewegoingtosaywearedoinghere? We’re screwed now, amigo.’

‘Not so fast,’ says Jani, irritably. ‘Smile.’

‘Hm?’

‘In the name of Saint Catherine of Siena — smile! And let me do the talking.’

‘Youcanbloodywellbetyourlifeonit. And I hope you have a good explanation as to why we’re here. Leadership — now.’

Rudi puts on his broadest smile, but he gets the feeling it’s no more convincing now than when people ask him to smile for a photograph. ‘Shit,’ he whispers as he watches Tommy Pogo approach. ‘He’s kept away for months — you’d almost think he’d been on paternity leave or quit the force, and then he shows up here.’

‘Shut it. Smile. And let me do the talking!’

‘Yo! Tampon!’

He’s only a few metres away from them. Tampon keeps himself in great shape. He’s so in form and fit-looking it’s almost threatening, thinks Rudi. A healthy mind in a healthy body, as Granny used to say when she saw Rock Hudson on TV. Look at that. The beard covers up his harelip. The bright, blue eyes. The tanned, healthy skin. The shiny hair. Guy’s got muscles coming out of everywhere. Impressive looking, there’s no getting away from it.

‘Tommy Tang! Well, well, what’s the long arm of the law doing on the old stamping ground?’

Tommy gives them a cheeky grin, a grin Rudi can remember, a grin which made all the women in Tjensvoll, Madla and Gosen melt and dream of going on a date with Pogo.

‘Heh heh, indeed, was just about to ask the two of you the same thing.’

‘Heh heh,’ Rudi laughs in reply, ‘after you, sir.’

‘Heh heh. No, by all means, Rudi.’

‘Heh heh.’

‘Heh heh.’

‘Tam-pon. It’s a long time since we met around these parts. They were the days, eh?’

‘You’re right there,’ laughs Tommy Pogo. ‘Yeah, so I’ve just moved back. Living on Sommerstien.’

‘Hah.’ Rudi slaps his palms together. ‘There you go. Back to the land of childhood. You hear that, Jani, Tampon has moved home.’

‘I heard,’ says Jan Inge, in a strained tone.

‘And what are you two doing here?’ Tampon lets his gaze drift from Jan Inge to Rudi and back again.

Jan Inge’s face breaks into a broad, self-confident smile. ‘Will we tell him, Rudi?’

Rudi looks at his friend uncomprehendingly, his thoughts running around confusedly in his head, but he understands by the look Jani gives him that all he needs to do is follow his lead. ‘Yeah, let’s just spit it out.’

Jan Inge laughs. ‘We must be getting a bit sentimental in our old age, just like you. We were sitting at home — we’ve had lots to do recently, a load of work with our removal company — and it was almost as if all this moving we were doing for other people made us aware of how little we move ourselves, if you know what I mean—’

‘Yeah,’ says Rudi enthusiastically, ‘that we’re just over there in Hillevåg and never get the finger out—’

‘And then Rudi said: “Jani, I wonder how things are out in Madla these days. In Tjensvoll. In Gosen. In Haugtussa.” You know how it is, he’s from around here.’

‘I know that, heh heh.’

‘So here we are. Breathing in the diamond air of the eighties.’

‘Diamond air?’

‘Yeah. A comparison.’

Tommy Pogo’s smile lets them know he doesn’t believe a word.

‘So you’re living here. Your kids are going to school in Gosen then?’

‘Yeah, Ulrik’s in third year. Kia’s in first year. They’ve got a good set-up for her there.’

‘Oh, yeah, forgot about that acc—’

‘Yeah.’

‘Something to do with ski—’

‘Slalom. In Ålsheia. She’s paralysed from the neck down.’

‘That’s tough.’ Rudi shifts his weight from one foot to the other. ‘So. Heard about how things are with Remi, by the way?’ Rudi grins, but he can feel Jani’s eyes burning into him.

Tommy Pogo takes out his mobile and looks at it. ‘No,’ he says, putting the phone back in his pocket, ‘but listen, Rudi, now that I have you here.’

Pogo takes a step closer. He cocks his head a tiny bit to the side. Rudi moves backwards.

‘That key,’ says Tommy.

‘Key?’ Rudi says, his eyes flitting about.

‘The key to the centre.’

‘The key to the centre?’

Tommy Pogo smirks. ‘Rudi, come on, I’ve been wondering about it for almost thirty years. Where did it get to?’

‘Oh! The key to the shopping centre!’ Rudi relaxes and slaps the palm of his hand off his forehead. He laughs, and thirty years seem to disappear, and for a few seconds he feels like it’s old times, and he almost has to stop himself from giving Tommy Pogo a hug. ‘Heh heh,’ he chortles. ‘The key to the shopping centre. Christ. I’ll tell you where it’s got to.’

Rudi produces a bunch of keys, begins flipping through them and finally holds up an old Union one.

Pogo sticks his chin out. ‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Is that it?’

Rudi’s eyebrows dance up and down.

‘You’ve held on to it,’ says Pogo, nodding. ‘Well! I’d better be off home,’ he adds, reaching out and shaking both their hands. ‘I’ll drop by one day.’

‘Yeah, by all means,’ Jani says, ‘by all means.’

Rudi smiles: ‘Sure thing. We’ll be home all right.’

‘Tomorrow,’ says Tommy Pogo, ‘why not tomorrow?’

‘Hey, why not,’ says Rudi, feeling Jan Inge’s eyes boring into him.

‘Good,’ Tommy Pogo says, ‘it’s agreed. See you tomorrow. Steak, chanterelle mushrooms and Brussels sprouts?’

‘Wha?’

‘My favourite meal.’ Tommy turns to go, but stops as though he’s just thought of something, spins back around and asks: ‘By the way — Tong, isn’t he getting out soon?’

‘Yeeah…’ Rudi notices his voice doesn’t sound right.

‘That’s right,’ Jani says swiftly, ‘he’s out tomorrow. Big day for us.’

‘Right, yeah,’ Tommy Pogo says, smiling. ‘Had a feeling he was out around now. Great. Then I’ll have a chance to catch up with him too. Apparently he’s had an okay time in Åna, or so I hear. All right. Talk tomorrow.’

Pogo walks off in the direction of Sommerstien.

Rudi shakes his head. Harelip Pogo. Strange to think of. Once he was in the Tjensvoll Gang, now he heads up Project Repeat Offender for Rogaland Police District. It’s screwed up how life goes. Once Tampon was his best mate, now Pogo is one of Rudi’s biggest problems.

Tomorrow,’ he sighs. ‘What are we going to do now? Call the whole thing off?’

Jan Inge shuts his eyes for a couple of seconds, before slowly opening them again. ‘We go through with things as planned. Tampon’s not going to suspect us after meeting us here and then calling in tomorrow.’

Rudi nods. Go through with it. Masterly.

Jan Inge looks at Rudi. ‘What was the story with that key?’

Rudi smiles. ‘Tommy and me,’ he says. ‘We got our hands on the key to the backdoor of Tjensvoll Shopping Centre. Nicked it from a coat in the break room. At first we used it to get in and knock off fizzy drinks and beer. But after a while we rented it out to people. We put a limit of two crates of beer each. Me and Tommy sat up in Vannassen and ran the whole thing. The police didn’t know what was going on. The alarm would go off, they’d drive down, but there was never anybody there. People just unlocked the door, got in and got out. The cops thought there was something wrong with the security system. Heh heh. It all went to hell when Janka couldn’t control himself. He filled a whole shopping trolley with beer. They copped on then.’

‘Nice all the same though,’ says Jan Inge, nodding. ‘That kind of style is right up my street.’

‘Yeah,’ says Rudi. ‘One of our better moments. Was Tommy who came up with it, of course. I probably would’ve just broken a window, gone in and picked up the beer.’

‘Yeah, that you would.’

‘Hah. The dark side lost a good man there.’

‘True. A kind of Anakin Skywalker in reverse, that Tommy.’

Rudi looks down at the bunch of keys, rubs the old Union one between his finger and thumb. ‘I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw it away,’ he says. ‘It felt pretty intense seeing him. Back here, like. Same old Tampon in a way. Somewhere or other inside that buff cop’s body is the mate I once had. Steak with chanterelle mushrooms and Brussels sprouts. Wasn’t a lot of that when Tommy was a boy. Did I ever tell you about the time we broke into Madlavoll School?’

Jani shakes his head. ‘No, don’t think so.’

‘Middle of the night. 1983. Tommy was always so bloody angry. You can’t see it any more. But he was, a fucking ball of rage. Hah. 1983. Middle of the night. Madlavoll School. Me and Tommy Pogo. We just ran through the empty corridors roaring and shouting. That was so fucking great.

65. PRAYER (Sandra)

Dear Lord, I don’t know who you are any more. I don’t know who I am any more. He’s hurting me, he’s tearing me apart, but I try to tell myself that if I am to be ruined, then I’ll be ruined by something beautiful. I’m not able to think about anything else. I hate the here and now, I want to go back to when I was small and you were standing in front of me. I no longer have the feeling you’re there. When I was little, I always knew you would come to me. All I had to do was wait, all I had to do was close my eyes. Now I don’t know where you are. But now is the time I need you. Why don’t you say something? Do you want me to suffer here on my own; is there some purpose behind it? You let me feel love but now you’re taking it away from me. I don’t understand the purpose of that. Please, I’m closing my eyes now, I’m lying here in bed. Breathe on me. Mum and Dad are upstairs in the living room. They’re pacing the floor, I can hear them. They’re talking together, you know that, talking about me. Mum is crying; can you hear that, she’s crying. She’s not used to this, she’s protected me her whole life — Sandra has never done anything to make Mum cry. But she doesn’t recognise me now. It’s not our Sandra, she says. You’ve skipped work, she says. Who is it you’re meeting, Sandra? Why don’t you talk to us? Why are you pulling away? We’re your parents, Sandra, all we want is to help you. The scary thing is Mum’s right — I’m no longer their Sandra. I’m Daniel’s Sandra. So breathe on me, Lord. Breathe first on me, then go up to the living room, get Mum to sit down and breathe on her eyelids and say: She is not your Sandra. She is Daniel’s Sandra. Is he leaving me? Is he not who he said he was? He’s not going to Veronika, he’s not going to her. Say it. He is not going to her. I’m the only one who knows who he is. Breathe on us. Breathe on Malene and Tiril’s father. Breathe on the sisters. Breathe on Mum. Breathe on Dad. Breathe on me. Now I’m calm. I’ll try to sleep, I know you’ll come and lie down beside me a little later tonight, like you always used to do. I know you’ll come. I know that it will be a new tomorrow and I know that everything will be fine.

66. 0162 (Tong)

He sits on the floor with his legs crossed. He’s switched off the TV and the light in the ceiling. The dark of night lies beyond the bars of the cell. He has his shoulder blades lowered, his arms hang limply by his sides and the palms of his hands face upwards. His head is perfectly straight. There’s a calmness around his eyes, around his mouth, in his arms, his stomach and his feet. Heavy hands, heavy fingers, eyes shut.

The prison liaison officer had escorted him back from the visiting room just before half-past eight. Piddien is from Loddefjord, skinny as a rake, talkative bugger, a guy Tong has always thought could just as well be in a cell himself. Piddien had given Tong a cheeky grin, as he had done each time he’d walked him back the last few weeks. He knows well that Tong is getting some action every Wednesday.

‘Well, Tong,’ he had said, giving him a slap on the back, ‘last time you’ll need to get dressed in Åna-issue clothes to get your end away. You’re out tomorrow, that’ll be good, eh?’

Tong hadn’t reciprocated the smile, or the slap, or anything else.

‘That’ll be good, all right,’ Piddien went on. ‘You wouldn’t exactly talk the hind leg off a donkey, but you’ve had an all right stay. Prisoner number zero one six two. You won’t be needing that any more.’

Tong had stood motionless in the doorway with his back to him.

‘You’ll be looking for something in carpentry, then?’

Tong nodded. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

‘Yes,’ Piddien had said, ‘that would suit you down to the ground, that would. Strong lad like you, likes physical work. Worn out at the end of the day, tired muscles. Heh heh, yes indeed. So, will your little lady be coming to collect you then?’

He feels the weight in his palms, the weight on his coccyx.

‘She’s not my lady.’

‘Heh heh, no, no, of course, ha ha.’

They should have meditation classes in prison. Tong has said as much to the people in administration. Everyone who lands in here has their body in a tangle. Their shoulders are so tensed up they’re practically scraping the ceiling. Being locked up isn’t the worst thing — it’s the waiting. The months between waiting to be sentenced and the time you first come in. That’s what screws you up, that’s what wrecks your head. When you first arrive, you’re hardly a person — you’re a knot. It’s not medication you need — it’s meditation. It’s not Subutex you need — it’s contemplation.

Tong meditates every day. A short session at midday and for an hour after lock-up. Then press-ups and a workout. He used to have a mop handle in the cell, to which he tied towels, then attached big industrial soap dispenser refills to the towels, making for an effective barbell. But they took that from him. They don’t like people getting too big.

Cecilie, Tong thinks, relaxing his jaw and feeling a softness in his throat, in his face. It was as though she was going to devour him. He entered the visiting room; she was there, as usual, but it looked like she’d been crying. He didn’t say anything. Nor did she. Her bony hand just trembled a little. Looked at the wall as if it were something other than a blank, white surface. But she stood up abruptly. Jumped like a little animal, right over to him, took off his trousers, then took off her own and sat on top of him and screwed him like it was the last time, or the very first. It all happened just like that, the whole thing. And then, while he was inside her, she started going on about her dad in Houston, and she talked about Rudi, something about her being so fed up with him she wanted to puke, and then she went on about not knowing what to do or something.

It seemed like she meant what she said. Tong listened to her, but as time went on and she went up and down on him he had difficulty following, her pussy was eating him and he just said what he always does when he’s about to come — that he’ll do fucking anything for the woman he’s riding. Then she opened her eyes wide, stared at him and said: ‘Do you mean that, Tong?’

He shut his eyes, clenched his teeth so hard it made his jaws ache.

When he was finished, she kissed him and said: ‘That was lovely, Tong. Listen. We’ve something on tomorrow. An insurance job. Do a guy over, cause a bit of damage, make it look like a clean break-in. Are you in?’

She’s fucked up, but gorgeous all the same: ‘Yeah, yeah, sounds good.’

Tong takes a deep breath through his nose, then exhales through his mouth. Last night in Åna. He’s leaving in the morning. As of tomorrow he can do what he wants. Just have to get that pathetic job out of the way. Rudi and Jani. It is so the last time he’s going to work with them.

His body rises. He no longer feels the floor beneath. He glides above a jungle landscape, green treetops drift by below him, a soft, warm wind brushes across his skin. He ascends, descends, and ascends again. He floats in the air over a waterfall, sailing over the plunging water, and there, close by, an eagle is wheeling, Tong opens his mouth, goes for the bird, sinks his teeth into its neck, hears it screech, feels the taste of metal in his mouth, and there, in the wild sky, stands a burning sun.