See You Tomorrow

106. CHANGE

After a good pizza at Hinna Bistro, with beef, bacon, onions, chilli, nachos and extra cheese, and a long, warm night filled with plentiful sleep and fertile dreams, they took it easy on Friday. They slept almost until noon, had a nice breakfast of chocolate milk, pâté, beetroot and eggs, and for the sake of propriety, Cecilie put Tong’s chocolate chip cookies at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, while at the same time she threw out his black Puma trainers, which were lying in the hall. After they had drunk some coffee and Cecilie had consumed a large portion of Neapolitan ice cream, they rolled Tong up into an old carpet in the basement and spent the rest of the day on the sofa with their feet up, with crisps and soft drinks on the table, watching a couple of good films, a repeat viewing of The People Under the Stairs and A Tale of Two Sisters. They lounged and loafed about the house, Rudi entertaining and adding to the ambience by quoting lines from the Korean film, not without his thoughts drifting to the homeland of the recently departed, while he contorted his Mick Jagger mouth into horrific grimaces: That woman is strange! And so is this house!

They listened to Motörhead and Aerosmith, and later on that night Jan Inge put on a record from his dad’s old vinyl collection, Best of George Jones. They ordered a takeaway from Peder’s, deep-fried pork with curry sauce for Jan Inge, Chinese pepper chicken for Cecilie and Peder’s Burning Peppercorn Biff Pizza for Rudi, who, when Cecilie pointed out that they had had pizza yesterday, replied that just because he gets pussy the one day it doesn’t mean he’s tired of it the next. They changed into jogging pants and sweatshirts, ate, enjoyed the warm feeling of relaxation and refrained from talking too much, a fire engine drove past the house, and they went to bed, worn out, around midnight.

Saturday ambled along at the same leisurely pace, punctuated only by Jan Inge taking a spin in the car to deliver the haul to the island of Fogn and the barn of one Halldór Buonanotte Ljótsson from Isafjördur. The people out west just call him Buonanotte, because those Icelandic names are, as Rudi says, apaininthefuckinghole to pronounce. He did not come by the name through saying ‘good night’ every time he shot somebody, he was given it because for years he said ‘Buonanotte’ when he met people, due to Halldór thinking it meant good day. But no matter, when it comes to shifting loot, Halldór knows his stuff, can read people and make sales: Buonanotte on Fogn? He could sell tinned sweat. If you want your stuff dispersed far and wide on this side of the country, Halldór is the man to talk to, Buonanotte’s barn is where it happens. He sits in there like a Scrooge McDuck of the underworld, presiding over a sea of stolen goods, some space at the entrance for the tractor, but otherwise there’s little room for anything else; a vast horde of PCs, Macs, iPods, iPads, valuable car parts and everything a man could want, even a painting by Munch. Halldór came to Norway at the beginning of the millennium because he was weary of sheep, writers, fish and alcoholics, ‘and there’s nothing else in Iceland,’ as he put it, before adding, ‘yeah, and bloody Isbjörg, who I caught riding the neighbour one day, Ólafur from Sudureyri’. That Halldör has managed to stay under the radar since arriving in Norway is no inconsiderable feat; he’s never been inside, and remains unknown to the people in Lagårdsveien 6, they have no idea that the Icelandic ‘sheep farmer’ with an Alsatian named Geysir has a barn off the coast of Ryfylke filled with everything that has disappeared in the region since the turn of the century, and Fogn, well, what can you say?

An island with 300 inhabitants in the municipality of Finnøy, a tiny place with an athletics club, a youth club, a farmers’ club and a prayer club, not to mention an ever enthusiastic scouts troop — a transparent little society, in other words. Truth be told everyone out there knows what else Halldôr is up to, in addition to his greenhouses full of tomatoes and his hen house by the church, but sure, the islanders are proud of the few who have put up sticks out there, who have chosen to tough it out, who, like them, can pick up a pair of binoculars from their windowsill and glower over at the lights of Stavanger in the night-time, where the city slickers dwell thinking they are something. When the people of Fogn find such an enterprising man in their midst, a capable Icelander with his sleeves rolled up all year round, who never pisses in his toilet, but insists on relieving himself in the open air, who will turn up in his tractor ready to lend a hand to anyone on the island, who trains the boys’ football team, with a grin like a beaming equator around his head, a big, burly man who comes with Geysir by his side and good humour to boot, always has something sharp in his pocket and a good bit of salted sausage in his hand; when the people of Fogn are gifted such a fine man on the island, then they figure that what he gets up to and what he doesn’t get up to in his barn may be of concern to others, but it is no business of theirs. Because nobody has anything against Halldór, and it is obvious he must give these fellows who arrive on the ferry and drive up to him late at night strict instructions, because they may not be the best behaved individuals, but when they are on their way to Halldór they know how to conduct themselves, so what, then, is the problem?

Jan Inge had a pleasant trip. While he drove across Rennesøy, he pictured Cecilie’s pregnant stomach and Tong’s blasted face, and thought about change and what it actually is. He saw the landscape open up, drove on towards Fogn, where the terrain shifted to undulating hills, and when the Volvo neared its destination he could make out Halldór’s outline against the side of the barn; a dark giant. Jan Inge smiled at the familiar sight, got out, greeted the big Icelander, felt the wind on his bald patch, which seemed to be expanding by the day, and together they heaved the stuff inside.

Halldór looked it all over, nodded, mumbled and counted on his perpetually dirty fingers, before Jan Inge and the Icelander sat down for a chat in the barn, just inside the large doors, where he has a seating area consisting of an old green sofa, a pair of good leather armchairs from the seventies, and a table. Halldór served coffee with a splash of spirits while he chewed on a Viking sausage from Svindland’s of Flekkefjord, patted Geysir, and stroked his beard while listening with interest to Jan Inge’s account of his eventful Thursday. ‘Það er nefnilega það,’ he said, again and again, a sentence he utters so often that the whole of Fogn now uses it; when one of the boy scouts does something noteworthy, the scout leader can be heard to say það er nefnilega það, and when one of the pupils at the school distinguishes himself, the teacher will not be long in uttering það er nefnilega það, and the same goes for the prayer group, when one of the members informs the rest that the 400 kroner they sent to Somalia before Christmas has been used to build a church, then Hilde Østhus folds her arms across her sunken breasts and says: það er nefnilega það.

‘Yeah,’ Jan Inge says. ‘It was actually a time-honoured classic. Impossible to go wrong. But. Well. The human factor.’

‘Það er nefnilega það,’ Halldór nodded, and poured some more coffee and spirits.

‘But we’ll be okay. We have an alibi. We avoided leaving any trace behind. Pål has everything to lose if he gives us up. Our problems are inside of us. Murder. Living with murder.’

‘That can be hard.’

‘A scratch in the mental paintwork,’ Jan Inge said, ‘to make a comparison.’

‘Well well,’ Halldór said, ‘if anybody can manage, you lot can, Jan Inge.’

‘Good to hear you believe in us, Buonanotte.’

‘Það er nefnilega það,’ Halldór uttered once again as he dropped a piece of sausage for Geysir. ‘So Tong is daudur. Jahérna. In the graveyardium.’

‘Yes… there was that, of course.’

‘You have to bury him,’ Halldór said, raising one bushy eyebrow and sipping from his cup. ‘Even if he was a djöfulsins djöfull.’

‘Djöfulsins?’

‘An evil man.’

‘I understand.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Halldór said, rising to his feet. He pointed at Jan Inge. ‘Bald spot. I think you’re getting a bald spot.’

‘I think so too. But, Buonanotte?’

‘Já, hvað ertu að spá, feiti hlúnkur?’

‘Change. That’s what I’m thinking about. What do you think of change?’

‘Jæja,’ Halldór said, rubbing Geysir under the ear. ‘Breytingar. I think it’s God’s gift to okkur dauðlegra.’

Halldór paid a few thousand kroner notes for the haul, asked Jan Inge to say hello to the others and tell them they were always welcome to the barn whether for business or a party, because he appreciated having such good colleagues and nobody should deny themselves a knees-up now and then, and before Jan Inge had rattled off over the hills and sailed round the corners from Eidsbrotet in the direction of the ferry, Halldór threw a stick which Geysir loped after and mumbled helvítis djöfull and það er nefnilega það, before telling him that he would spend his evening reminiscing about the only Korean he had ever known, a silent one with jet-black hair: ‘Because you know, Jan Inge, in Isafjördur we don’t have many immigrants from far-off places, but we have a music school and an amateur theatre group and for two months we don’t see the sun and it’s not uncommon for planes not to take off or land for days at a time, so change, well, us Icelanders are so used to it that we don’t know what it is.’

When Jan Inge made it home that afternoon, he was greeted with the spectacle of Rudi and Cecilie lying on the sofa snogging, practically eating each other’s faces, in the old way, a sight he had not seen in years; when Jan Inge made it home, his mind was really bubbling, it was as though the winds of change themselves were attempting to outrun one another up there, and it was clear to him that important matters had to be taken care of the next day. He cleared his throat in the doorway, thankful for the good atmosphere that had marked the last all-too-warm days of September, and when Cecilie had untangled herself from Rudi, sat up and buttoned her jeans, when Rudi had finished grinning, clicked his fingers a number of times and said, ‘You were seconds from viewing an adult movie there, brother,’ Jan Inge sat down in the wheelchair and said: ‘We’re going to have to make some changes here.’

Sunday dawned with a long-awaited downpour over Stavanger and an equally long-anticipated westerly wind.

The familiar sky was back, the sky people from Rogaland County are so used to it that they don’t stop as they walk along the Vågen inlet — like the tourists always do — and gape at the changing clouds, at the curious formations taking shape, scudding along before dissolving into constantly new figures. We have cats and dogs and trolls and goblins above our heads, Gran used to say to Rudi when he was a little boy, do you see them, sweetheart? But on this morning the people of Rogaland stopped, one and all, not least Jan Inge who got up before the others, went out on to the veranda and witnessed the ground beneath the scrap heap of a garden receive the wondrous drops of rain. He stopped. Now that the habit was broken, he realised that all through these white, cloudless days at the tail end of September, he’d missed the vault of the sky, and perhaps never realised how dependent upon it he’d been. His heart missed a few beats and he realised that it was because he had longed for the vast, variable and regularly stunning sky over Stavanger.

Jan Inge stood with his coffee cup to his lips and let the rain pour down on his head. He watched the water cleanse the veranda and listened to it splash and splatter against all the clutter in the garden while he marvelled at how a man like himself, so concerned with order, could have allowed such disorder to fester on the property. He breathed in the smell of wet autumn, looked up towards the sky and determined the wind direction; clearer skies lay off to the east and the gusts were carrying them this way. In a few hours, he thought, the rain will pass. He closed his eyes and pictured the days ahead in strong colours as he drank a mouthful of coffee and performed a few tentative knee bends as a foretaste of the workouts he would put himself through in the near future.

Different times, he thought.

Change, he thought.

Buonanotte is right. God’s gift to mankind.

Jan Inge went back into the living room. He put on a record by Hank Williams, the performer he and Beverly are so fond of, he pictures them listening to Hank one heavenly day when she gives him her hand. He will sit with his arm around the generously fragranced and just as generously formed woman and they will look at the opalescent flame of a candle flicker on the table before them, her blouse not quite adequate to keep her breasts concealed, and Hank Williams will sing like he sang for Jan Inge this morning: I can’t help it if I’m still in love with you.

He drank himself to death, Hank, wasn’t even thirty when he died.

Big changes.

While Rudi and Cecilie still lay sleeping, or swapped body fluids, who knows, Jan Inge went down into the basement and got out the three navy boiler suits they had knocked off from a warehouse while on a job in Nordfylket in 2007, garments which had seen plenty of use at break-ins since. He brushed the dirt off them and laid them out on the kitchen table, then he fetched the work shoes from the closet in the hall, which he lined up on the floor between two table legs, first Cecilie’s small ones, thereafter his medium-sized and lastly Rudi’s enormous pair. He went and got the work gloves from the storage room in the basement, they smelt somewhat musty, the storage room had been subject to some mould problems that they needed to sort out soon, but in spite of that they could still be used. Finally he got a roll of black bin bags — never any shortage of those in the house — placing them beside the boiler suits just as Hank Williams sang I heard that lonesome whistle blow and Jan Inge felt a lump in his throat and pushed that wondrous image of Beverly to the back of his mind so as not to allow the pain and longing to gain the upper hand on a day with so much to do.

What will it take, he thought, unable to dismiss the image, what will it take for her to be mine?

More wealth than I can offer?

A toned physique?

Once again he pushed away the picture of Beverly in his mind’s eye, now clothed in a fluttering, almost transparent dressing gown, and attempted to concentrate on what was going to take place. He went to the bookshelf and took down the Bible, the only real book there, with the exception of The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal and Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal, a book about Lemmy, White Line Fever, and around thirty titles on horror movies; The Art of the Nasty, How to Survive a Horror Movie, The Golden Age of Crap and so on. Jan Inge appreciated the reassuring weight of The Good Book in his fleshy hands and settled into the wheelchair to leaf through the thin Bible paper. He read a few pages about Moses, the man of God, whom near the end of his life was told by the Lord to go to the top of Mount Abarim and look out over Canaan at the land the Lord had given to the Israelites, and he found himself strangely moved by the poetry that shone from the pages when the Lord told Moses, in no uncertain terms, that he would die while he looked out over the land and would not enter it since he had been faithless to the Lord. Jan Inge thumbed further and read a few pages about Saul, whom the Lord commanded to go out and punish the poor Amalekites for what they did to Israel, and it sent shivers down his spine as he read how the Lord instructed Saul not to show any mercy but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys. After that he read about Nathan visiting King David. Nathan recounted a terrible tale of a rich man who had slaughtered a poor man’s only lamb instead of taking something from his own abundant livestock, and King David burned with anger at this and said to Nathan that this man must die. But then the situation took an abrupt turn because Nathan pointed his finger at King David and said, ‘You are the man!’ and accused him of having scorned the word of the Lord and having killed Uriah the Hittite and taken his wife, and so the Lord, according to Nathan, decreed that misfortune would rain down on King David, that his wives — so he had lots of them, Jan Inge thought and again the image of Beverly came gliding into his head, this time attired in a smart waist-length jacket and high heels with golden pearls — that these wives would be taken from him and given to another man and this man would lie with them in broad daylight, because David had acted secretly, and to top it all, the son he had with Bathsheba, the wife he had taken from Uriah, would not be allowed to live. And so it was. The Lord allowed illness to strike down the newborn boy and he died, but David lay with his wife again not long after and they had another son and he was called Solomon. However, a prophet turned up who wanted to call him Jedidiah in honour of the Lord, whatever that means, Jan Inge thought, and became aware of that feeling he sometimes gets when he’s reading up on things, that he is lacking in a little knowledge here and there.

They were disturbing, compelling stories. Jan Inge was struck by the magnificence of The Good Book, how rewarding it always was to peruse it, equally as gratifying as watching a horror film, and for the same reason, because they both spoke about truth, about goodness, about how after one blow it’s all too late; and didn’t both of them speak of change? As disturbing and captivating as the stories might be, and as much about truth and change as they may be, neither the one about Moses, nor the one about Saul nor the one about Nathan, David and Bathsheba could be used this Sunday. On the whole, the task — finding an appropriate eulogy for Tong — presented problems. It seemed almost like The Good Book didn’t have anything to say about one such as Tong, had no words to sum up his life and act as encouragement in the wake of what had happened on Thursday. Jan Inge turned page after page while Hank Williams sang about loneliness, while the clock ticked on past nine, around to ten and then half past ten, but no stories and no quotations with the right wording or content seemed to stand out. He sat enthralled in the wheelchair for a long time by the words of Job, who can bring what is pure from the impure, but to use a quote like that, which would obviously be directed towards Cecilie’s child and the question of whether it was Tong’s, would be pure madness. Job’s words about there being hope for the tree, because it can grow again after being cut down, while all hope is lost for the dead man because he will not, also seemed too harsh for such an occasion.

Weary of reading the gauzy pages, Jan Inge put the book in his lap and tried instead to listen to the sound of his own heartbeat.

He had often felt the pace begin to slow after a while.

Thump-thump, thump-thump.

It was not something he took lightly.

To close one’s eyes, lean back, listen to one’s own heart and interpret one’s own inner voice: he had frequently found this to be the path to solving many problems.

The first problem it cleared up, quite literally, was the weather outside. After a few minutes in the wheelchair with The Good Book in his lap, it stopped raining. Jan Inge noticed the changes in the sound around him, the rustle of the rain suddenly gone.

Thump-thump, thump-thump.

Again he shut his eyes so he could listen to his own heart and decipher his inner voice.

Thump-thump, thump-thump.

He tried to keep his eyelids at rest, which he often found difficult, as they had a tendency to quiver faintly on his eyeballs, and he listened as intently as he could.

Cold, cold heart, Hank Williams sang.

Jan Inge opened his eyes. He got up out of the wheelchair. He paced up and down the living room a number of times shaking his head. Hank sang about a woman with a cold heart, and it was a long way from a love song about a cold woman to the story of Tong, but still. Jan Inge’s heart began to pound as the felt the truth foray forward: the story of Tong wasn’t a story of warmth. The story of Tong wasn’t the story of a good person. It was — and at this point Jan Inge was contrite for having such terrible thoughts — the story of a cold heart.

And it has to be said, he hurried to add, that there can be many reasons for a person to have a cold heart.

But there they were. There were the words his own heart had tried to communicate to him. Thump-thump, thump-thump.

The various parts of the breakfast Jan Inge had prepared several hours earlier had either begun to dry up, melt or go stale, so he went into the kitchen to make another at the same time as he decided that since it seemed like Cecilie and Rudi were going to sleep the whole day through, he would have to wake them. He cut some fresh slices of bread, he put on fresh coffee and brewed a little tea, threw out the tomatoes and cucumber slices he had put out some hours before, cut up a few new ones as well as some fresh cheese so everything appeared more pleasing. He read a few pages of the Saturday edition of Stavanger Aftenblad, which had lain unopened all of yesterday, running his eyes over a piece about a serious assault and robbery in Madla, taking note of the fact that the police were without any leads, and as he perused an article concerning a girl (15) who had died in the early hours of Saturday morning as a result of injuries sustained from being hit by a moped, he reflected on how sad it was when people died so young.

Then he went into the hallway and walked to their door. He put his ear against it. There was the sound of whispering within. He held his breath and tried to listen, but it was impossible to hear what they were saying, so he gave up, took a few steps backwards and mustering as much energy in his voice as he could, called out: ‘Breakfast!’

Dressed in boiler suits and accompanied by the peal of a church bell in the distance, with minds set firmly on the future, Rudi and Jan Inge carried the carpet with Tong inside up from the basement after breakfast, which Rudi had praised as being fit for a king. Cecilie walked in front, making sure they did not trip on the ends of the rolled-up carpet which brushed each step, and they managed to manoeuvre Tong’s body up the narrow, steep staircase that had not been built with that kind of thing in mind back in 1972 when Thor B. Haraldsen and Veslemøy Sivertsen hung up a sign beside the front door which read ‘Welcome to Veslemøy, Thor, Jan Inge and Cecilie’.

There’ll be many more breakfasts like that, Jan Inge pointed out, in his most optimistic tone of voice, while at the same time being conscious of sweating like a pig from actual manual labour, many more breakfasts, yes indeed, when there’re four of us living in the house. He hoped for a response to confirm that there actually would be four of them living in the house, but it was not forthcoming and he thought about how there is a time for everything, and now was the time for work, not confrontation. Show, don’t tell, as they say in the world of the scriptwriter, a term they’d had a good laugh about once when it turned out that Rudi had misunderstood and presumed it meant to put on a real show as opposed to talking. In spite of his error, Rudi still maintained that the two could often be one and the same, because as he said, what could make for a better show than a good talk?

They stowed Tong and his carpet beneath the curtains by the door to the veranda and went to fetch all they could scrape together of picks, hoes and digging equipment, because it was a deep hole that needed to be dug. None of them had any expertise in the area, but Jan Inge knew this much; if you were going to bury a person in your garden — a comrade with a cold heart — you needed to put him a long way down. That much was obvious. That body, it would have to be laid far below. In a garden a child would soon be running around playing. A garden that would soon be fixed up and made neat and tidy, a garden that would be used in the future. The mere thought of Tong lying just beneath the soil while they played croquet for example, or barbecued pork chops made him feel unwell.

But there was little to bring croquet or pork chops to mind for the time being. The old mattresses Mum, poor cow, had dozed on before she died, lay there, bearing little resemblance to mattresses any more, as well as the two wheelbarrows, riddled with rust, from when Mum and Dad worked in the garden, from when Dad had plans for the house. Some hubcaps and tyres lay over in the east corner, along with the remnants of some car parts they had stolen from a parking lot in Forus around the turn of the millennium, so worn and in such bad condition that not even Buonanotte could offer anything for them, while in the west corner a load of planks lay rotting from the time Rudi got it into his head to extend the veranda; nothing ever came of it, but who knows what might happen now. The broken lawnmower was just as rusted as the wheelbarrows, and Cecilie’s old Raleigh bicycle equally so, all of them strewn like dead tin soldiers against the west side of the hedge, not far from Mum’s washing machine, which she never used, old witch, and the sofa from the den. It’s seen its fair share of video films, that sofa, Jan Inge said, from the time it was new and red and bought at a flea market in Kannik School. And then there was all that assorted junk, broken tools and equipment, the smashed TV Jan Inge used to have in his room together with the VCR, which also lay there as a reminder of the old, difficult days, as did the three panel heaters Dad bought before he left, but why there were eight mouldy pallets at the end of the garden was something Jan Inge could no longer recall, nor what the broken shears had to do with anything, nor the door handle, but the rusty rotary clothes line, that awoke strong memories, and was in many ways the most acute image of his childhood, because when he was small it always put him in mind of an umbrella, and he always thought about lifting it up in his little hand against the rain.

But soon they would have a big clear-out and everything would go. There was a skip in front of the house, and there was no point offering prayers up to old memories now.

Change.

They cleared the odds and ends off the centre of the lawn, where Jan Inge had decided that Tong would be laid to rest. Rudi remarked on that particular detail of the plan; why he should lie under the middle of the lawn and not in a corner, he didn’t get that, but he nodded as Jan Inge held forth about not sidelining old friends, the way we do here in this country. Look at Italy, said Jan Inge, they honour their old, while we, we’re embarrassed by them and their drooling, bingo and walking frames.

It was hard work digging such a deep hole. They counted themselves lucky that Thor B. Haraldsen had planted a hedge back in the day, a hedge nobody had trimmed for years, so at least no one had a clear view of all the hacking and digging they carried out that afternoon, because it took considerably longer than they had imagined. How hard can soil be, exclaimed Jan Inge in amazement, while being conscious that manual labour was something he did all too seldom, because the pounds were running off him at record speed.

After a few hours of hacking and digging, punctuated by some short breaks to drink and smoke, which saw Rudi actually crack and begin to smoke again, who knows why, perhaps because Cecilie smiled at him with such love; after a few hours’ work, Jan Inge stood at the side of the two-metre-deep hole and signalled that they could stop. He placed his feet apart and put his hands on his hips, which almost felt slimmer already to him. He looked down into the darkness of the hole beneath. Rudi came to join him from one side and Cecilie from the other. All three of them stood looking down into the soil.

‘Yes,’ Jan Inge said.

Rudi nodded. Cecilie nodded.

‘I think now we can say that Tong has got his temple.’

‘Temple, brother?’

‘Tomb, might be a better way of putting it.’

‘I’m getting a bit of an Egyptian vibe here,’ Rudi smiled.

‘Heh heh, indeed. I had such a crush on her, what was her name, the little one—’

‘Susanna Hoffs,’ Rudi nodded.

‘Yeah, Susanna Hoffs,’ Jan Inge said. ‘She was cute as a button, so she was. “Eternal Flame”. Was she small? Or were the other girls just really tall?’

Cecilie tapped the spade against the ground and inquired as to whether they were planning to discuss the Bangles all day or what, and that was certainly true, Jan Inge affirmed, they didn’t have a single minute to waste jabbering, before he looked towards the veranda door, a meaningful expression on his face that both Cecilie and Rudi understood: It was time to fetch Tong and lay him in the unhallowed ground.

‘Tempo, tempo,’ Jan Inge whispered as he and Rudi lifted the carpet with Tong, because speed was ‘of the essence’, as he put it, just hotfoot it across the veranda and heave him in the hole. With or without the carpet, Rudi wondered, and Jan Inge and Cecilie weighed up the pros and cons, but seeing as none of them could picture themselves using the carpet after Tong had lain dead in it for almost three days, they decided to bury it with him. Jan Inge was of the opinion there was a certain dignity about that, which Rudi agreed with, because if there was one thing in the world he held in high regard it was a sense of dignity.

Tong’s face, which they had not looked at since it was blown apart on Thursday night, had congealed into a decomposed mask. All three were struck by a feeling of detachment upon viewing it, because, as Rudi pointed out, it simply did not look real. It did not even resemble a face. If someone had shown this to him, Rudi said, and he didn’t know what it was, he would have guessed it was some sort of half-thawed minced meat. Or a heart, Cecilie said. Ironic, Jan Inge added.

Tong’s body resembled a puppet without a puppeteer as it rolled out of the carpet and into the hole. There were no muscles, nothing in the arms or legs to take the fall, and it was both frightening and fascinating to see it collapse upon itself, joint by joint, as it slid down to meet the ground below.

‘Rudi, spade,’ Jan Inge whispered, and Rudi picked it up hurriedly and began shovelling earth, while Jan Inge moved a couple of steps away, took up position on the adjacent side of the grave and cleared his throat.

‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt,’ he said.

‘I think it’s dust to dust,’ Cecilie remarked.

‘We don’t have the time to be so particular,’ Jan Inge said, and while Rudi threw spadeful after spadeful of soil on top of Tong’s body, Jan Inge pondered how this must be how priests feel when they go to work. Day in, day out, carrying out their sombre duty.

When Rudi was finished patting down the earth, Jan Inge requested their attention. Cecilie nodded and took Rudi by the hand and together they looked like a navy-clad bride and groom.

‘I’ve spent the morning and afternoon in contemplation,’ Jan Inge said, in a solemn tone.

‘That’s not in the least bit surprising,’ Rudi said, blithely.

Jan Inge raised his hand, palm open, to indicate he had something important to add, and Rudi nodded without saying anything more.

‘I’ve been pondering,’ Jan Inge said, putting his hands into the pockets of the navy boiler suit, ‘what took place on Thursday. We have to face to it. Our plan was good. The Trojan horse worked. You, Cecilie, and you, Rudi, delivered. But our dead friend, he ran amok and exploded.’

‘Ran amok and exploded. You hear that, Chessi?’

She nodded.

‘I have to admit it took me by surprise,’ Jan Inge continued. ‘I’m no stranger to shocks or twists, I often feel I can see the glint of the blade before the knife leaves the hilt, but this time the surprise was genuine. I hadn’t foreseen any of this.’

‘We didn’t see it coming either, bruv,’ Cecilie said, consolingly.

‘No,’ nodded Jan Inge. ‘Tong was one tough nut, we knew that. We also knew that given certain circumstances, he was capable of doing the unexpected. But this? After being such a model prisoner in Åna? After all that meditation?’

Rudi’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down visibly, but Cecilie assuaged any emotion by lifting his hand to her mouth and giving it a kiss.

‘No,’ Jan Inge repeated, ‘the conclusion I’ve reached, dear friends — dear Tong, if you can hear me — is that—’

Jan Inge broke off and cleared his throat. Cecilie and Rudi remained holding hands, Rudi with eyes narrowed and ears pricked.

‘That,’ Jan Inge attempted to continue, obviously moved by what he was thinking, ‘well, I’ll just say it straight out: Tong walked the earth with a cold heart.’

A gust of wind swept through the garden and clouds gathered above their heads.

‘It’s not a nice way to put it,’ Jan Inge said, slowly and deliberately. ‘I mean, is how I feel now the way the mother of a rapist feels, as she has to come to terms with the fact that her son, the boy whose nappies she once changed and has loved for so long, had a cold heart?’

Neither Cecilie nor Rudi had anything to say in the light of such a grave comparison.

‘I mean,’ Jan Inge said, bending down to the ground and picking up a rusty spanner, which he began to turn in his hand, ‘I mean, of all the people we know. Hansi, for instance. A prize idiot.’

‘Such an asshole,’ Rudi snorted.

‘But a cold heart?’ Jan Inge said, continuing to rotate the spanner. ‘No. Hansi has a stupid heart. And Melvin, for example, who went solo. A cold heart? No. An extreme heart, perhaps, but not a cold one. Buonanotte?’

‘No.’

‘No!’

‘Right. Buonanotte. An amusing heart. And Stegas?’

‘Ha ha.’

‘A wet heart,’ Jan Inge said in a fluty voice, laughing, and tossed the spanner away. ‘And Pål,’ he added, clipping the wings of the laughter he had spread, ‘what about Pål?’

‘I liked that Pål guy,’ Rudi said, promptly. ‘A good heart, I would’ve said.’

Jan Inge nodded in agreement. ‘And Cecilie, if I may ask — what would you say about Mum and Dad, if you’re able to talk about them without upsetting the child in your stomach?’

Cecilie let go of Rudi’s hand and lit up a cigarette. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you couldn’t say Dad had a cold heart, maybe more of a … I don’t know … a stuff-and-nonsense heart, I think? And Mum … it wasn’t hard, just weak. A fish heart.’

Cecilie turned to Rudi. ‘What about your people?’

‘Who do you mean,’ Rudi knitted his brows, ‘you mean … are you talkin’ about … do you mean my fami … is it my fam—’

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ Cecilie smiled, blowing out smoke before stretching up on her toes to kiss him.

‘Anyway,’ Jan Inge said, seizing the chance to speak as the sky above them grew more and more unsettled, ‘anyway, the way I see it, Tong had a cold heart. And it’s awful for me to have to say these things, because I don’t want to be seen as a racist or anything, and it’s unpleasant that having now broken one of my fundamental principles and shot someone, having taken my place in the murky ranks of the men of violence, it turned out to be an immigrant. It’s horrible for me to have to say these things, because standing here, I have difficulty thinking of anything positive to say about the man lying beneath us.’

It grew quiet in the garden.

‘And it pains me to say,’ Jan Inge said after a while.

Once again there was silence.

‘He had too little love in him,’ Jan Inge whispered, after another pause. ‘And that is the knowledge we can glean from this.’ He added, pensively, ‘That it’s all about love.’

Rudi nodded and looked at Cecilie. ‘That’s what I always say,’ he whispered. ‘He got that from me.’

‘What was that, Rudi?’

‘Nothing,’ Rudi said. ‘Well put, brother,’

It grew quiet around the grave as the first raindrops spattered on washing machines, VCRs and spades. They stood there and let it come down upon them, both the rain and the scary feeling of having buried a person they had, or thought they had, known so well; a person who ate chocolate chip cookies and hardly ever spoke, and when it came down to it — they now understood — had never allowed anyone to get close to him or allowed himself to express too much. A person they had not known at all. About whom they could not think of anything good to say. And in this atmosphere, images began to float through Cecilie’s mind. She pictured the flashing intensity in Tong’s eyes as she sat astride him, the animalistic hunger and snapping of his mouth when she offered him hers to kiss, pictured Tong, smiling, pulling into their driveway years before, with the window rolled down and a cigarette dangling from his lips, proud of coming home with thirty-five thousand after a simple break-in in Eiganes. There was a Tong they were on the point of forgetting, Cecilie felt, and because of this she turned to Rudi, whose shoulder-length hair was damp and lined face wet, and to Jan Inge, and said: ‘But even though he didn’t have enough love inside him, either for us or for anyone else, that doesn’t mean we’re going to be just as bad.’

‘That’s beautifully put, baby,’ Rudi said.

Jan Inge stood beside them, conscious of a tear perched precariously in his eye.

They remained there, all three of them, as the rain grew heavier, in front of Tong’s grave, each wrapped in their own thoughts. Three people dressed in boiler suits by some freshly dug ground, surrounded by old junk. On impulse, Rudi began to stomp on the soil, bringing his large soles down on the grave as he walked, after a fashion. Having gone back and forth like this for a while, he turned and looked into Jan Inge’s tiny blueberry eyes.

‘If Tommy Pogo shows up again,’ Rudi said, ‘I wouldn’t like the thought of him coming out here into the garden.’

‘Calm down,’ Jan Inge said.

‘Easy for you to say,’ Rudi said, ‘you’re the laidback type.’

‘Should Pogo,’ Jan Inge said, ‘turn up, we’ll tell him we know who he is and what he’s trying to do, we’ll tell him we have nothing to hide, and if he, or any other investigators from Lagårdsveien 6, ask where we were on Thursday, we have an alibi, and we’ll make sure to let them know that we think it’s a pretty lousy thing for Lagårdsveien to be harassing ordinary removal people and putting the frighteners on us or whatever it is he thinks he’s up to, and then we’ll point out the garden and the clear-up we’ve carried out—’

Rudi shook his head, flabbergasted.

‘Jesus, you are one hell of a managing director.’

‘And then,’ Jan Inge continued, ‘then we’ll make sure to tell him that from now on there’s going to be some changes out here in Hillevåg. Changes, Rudi, you hear me?’

Rudi clapped Jan Inge on the back. ‘Well said,’ he whispered.

Jan Inge filled his lungs with air and then exhaled.

‘I just don’t want any more grief,’ whispered Jan Inge.

‘There won’t be any more grief,’ Rudi replied, in a soft tone.

The rain grew heavier, turning the ground wet and muddy.

Jan Inge turned to Cecilie. He had broken out in a nervous rash, his eyes were red, the corners of his mouth were quivering and she saw him as she had seen him so many times before so very long ago.

‘Are the two of you moving out?’ he asked, trembling.

Cecilie looked at him askance. ‘Moving out?’

‘Moving?’ Rudi said, looking puzzled. ‘Wherethefuckdidyougetthatideafrom, brother of tears?’

Jan Inge sniffled. ‘I dunno,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Have you thought of any names for the baby yet?’

Cecilie and Rudi looked at one another, the way parents do when they ask each another, wordlessly, if they are going to reveal their secrets to the world, and Cecilie nodded to Rudi.

‘Steven,’ Rudi said, ‘if it’s a boy.’

‘Jambolena,’ Cecilie said, ‘if it’s a girl.’

‘Jambolena?’ Jan Inge whispered and cleared his throat. ‘Isn’t that … a tree?’

There was a sound in the distance.

‘It’s going to be fine,’ Cecilie whispered. ‘Changes, right? There’s a lot that’s going to happen soon and we’re going to be happy together. It begins now, Jani, you hear me?’

‘Yeah,’ Jan Inge said, ‘yeah, you’re right. A nursery. Mariero Moving. Clear-up. We’re going to take everything up a notch. Everything is going to be good.’

The sound grew louder, came within earshot, and their eyes turned in the direction of the source. It was coming from the front of the house. It was the revving of an engine, a motorcycle, or moped perhaps on the street outside. They looked at one another.

‘Hm,’ Jan Inge said.

The sound ceased. Most likely the ignition being turned off.

‘Okay,’ Rudi said.

Cecilie cocked her head to the side. ‘Is that outside our place?’

Jan Inge exchanged looks with the others. They put down the spades and other tools, walked up on to the veranda, signalling silently to one another with seasoned expertise while removing their muddy footwear and slipping out of their boiler suits, before going into the living room. Cecilie gave the boys a quick once-over, fixing Rudi’s hair a little and wiping some dirt off Jan Inge’s face, and then they made their way into the kitchen. Jan Inge gave Cecilie and Rudi one last look before drawing the curtain carefully aside and peeking out.

There was a moped in front of the house. An old Suzuki, red with a black leather seat, the kind people drove when Jan Inge was small.

His attention shifted to the front door.

There was a boy standing there.

‘What is it?’ Cecilie whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ Jan Inge whispered back.

‘Who’s out there?’ Rudi said in a low voice.

‘I don’t know,’ Jan Inge replied in a hushed tone.

‘What does he want with us?’ whispered Cecilie.

Jan Inge shook his head resignedly. ‘More changes, maybe,’ he whispered.

‘Looks that way, headmaster,’ Rudi sighed, as the doorbell rang. The three of them walked slowly in line out into the hall. Jan Inge opened the door.

A beautiful boy with deep-set eyes, wearing a leather jacket, stood before them. He looked gaunt and tired. He did not look like he had slept in several days. He held a black crash helmet in his hands.

‘Hi,’ the boy said, with a quick nod.

‘Hi,’ Jan Inge said. ‘What do you want?’

The boy looked at them, ‘I know who you lot are,’ he said.

Jan Inge cleared his throat. ‘Okay?’

Oh Jesus, he thought, are we going to have to open up the grave again?

The boy tossed the moped helmet from one hand to the other.

‘You have something I want,’ he said, ‘and I have something that none of you want.’

Rudi took a step towards the boy.

‘Is it the internet you’re on about?’ he said sternly.

Jan Inge put a hand on Rudi’s shoulder, but he paid no heed. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you can’t go round knocking on strangers’ doors talking like that, you get me? One more word and I’ll get my baseball bat and clobber you with it. Youhearmebirdseed?’

The boy remained unflustered. ‘You have something I want,’ he repeated.

‘What exactly do you mean?’ Jan Inge asked.

‘I want in,’ Daniel said, ‘in to where you lot are.’

‘Jesus,’ Jan Inge said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I know what you’ve done,’ the boy whispered and stared right into Jan Inge’s eyes.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Pål Fagerland,’ the boy said.

Oh no, Jan Inge thought, clenching his teeth as hard as he could, do I have to get the shotgun, do I have to murder again?

‘I don’t need any more changes right now,’ Cecilie whispered while she looked over the unusually beautiful boy with his deepset, hungry eyes, his bright mouth, sharply defined jaw and long-fingered hands. Then she brought her hand to her stomach to safeguard her child against this terrible, ineluctable world it would one day be part of.