by Tore Renberg
Then he spits, spins around and leaves.
He staggers out on to the forest path not too far from Daniel and Sandra, tall as a tree, looking neither right nor left, just walking like some sort of Frankenstein in fast motion.
Over by the substation the shorter guy emerges from the bushes. He looks around as though he doesn’t want to be seen. Then he crouches down in front of his dog. He puts his nose against its snout and stays like that for quite a while. Eventually he straightens up, heaves a sigh with his whole body and begins walking. With heavy steps at first, which become gradually lighter. Then he bends down and unhooks the lead from the dog’s collar. He picks a stick up off the ground. The dog freezes, its ears standing straight up. The man holds the stick in the air in front of the keyed-up dog, holds it until the animal is about ready to burst. Then he hurls it in the direction of the football pitch by the school and calls out:
‘Go Zitha! Go on! Good girl!’
The man disappears from view. Daniel turns to Sandra. They look at one another, pupils flitting from side to side in an attempt to capture each other’s gaze.
‘What was that?’ he whispers.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you ever spoken to him?’
‘No … I think his name’s Pål or something, but no, I’ve never really met him,’ she says.
They hold hands, fingers entwining.
‘But you know the daughters?’
‘Well, yeah, a little.’
‘It seems like they’re in trouble.’
‘Yeah’.
They squeeze one another’s hands, tight.
‘What are we going to do about it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sandra sobs. ‘I’m not able to think about it right now. What about us? Are we in trouble? Daniel?’
Daniel looks at her for a long time. Then he says:
‘We’re not in trouble, baby, no fucking way.’
She sobs involuntarily and feels her knees give way.
‘But you need to be getting home,’ he says.
‘Yeah, Mum and Dad are going to kill me, I’m way too late.’
‘Listen, sexy. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. All right? I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?’
Sandra nods.
‘I’ll come by the shop,’ he continues, ‘you text me when Tiril has gone and then I’ll come. Then we’ll think about what we can do. Okay? Don’t tell anyone about what you’ve seen, no one, okay?’
She nods again.
‘Every day,’ she says, ‘every day for the rest of our lives, just you and me.’ She strokes him across the cheek. ‘And it felt amazing,’ she adds.
‘That was only the beginning,’ Daniel says proudly, ‘shame we were disturbed.’
‘We have the rest of our lives,’ she whispers, giving him yet another kiss, a long one, and Daniel thinks about how he wants a kiss like that every day, then his life would be in order, then everything would be okay.
She tears herself away from him, reluctantly, and runs off.
Look at that girl.
Look at that ass.
That’s the meaning of life running off right there.
When she’s out of view he begins searching for the moped helmet. His arms are tired, as though he’s been chopping wood all day. Life can be so fucking good. Play the drums. Work out. Party with Dejan and the others. But if your woman wants you to stay home with her then you better know what to say. Sure thing, baby. Because when you’ve found a girl who puts up with a lot and gives back so much, you need to hold on to her, hold on tight.
But what is the father of those two girls up to?
There’s my helmet. On the gravel in front of the substation.
Girls. They’re taking over the whole world.
31. § 196 (Tong)
To the right of the sea-green cell door hangs the torn-out page of a notepad. There’s nothing written on it. It’s just hangs there, sellotaped to the wall, at head height next to the light switch.
There’s a cork notice board on the wall between the door and the bed. No pictures pinned to it, no family photos, just two postcards and three pornographic clippings. Mina from Flekkefjord, a cheerful brunette with a navel piercing, small tits and an African ass. And two other girls, without names, kissing one another.
There are tinned foods, bottles, ketchup, a couple of sandwich spreads as well as some toiletries lying on the end of the desk. Along with two packs of chocolate chip cookies. CSI: Miami is playing out on a 24-inch flatscreen on the centre of the desk. A few binders stand along the bookshelf, in addition to a couple of crime novels. Harlan Coben. Wilbur Smith. A book about meditation: Meditation, Path to the Deepest Self.
He stands in the centre of the room. Feels the weight distribution on the soles of his feet. Three points. Under his big toe, under his little toe and on the edge of his heel. Takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and exhales slowly while he feels the balance strengthen his body. Neck straight. Muscles tensed from his armpits to his fingertips. Knees active, thighs strong. Silent.
There’s enough jabberers, in here as well as out there, and if they’re not talking your head off then they’re telling you what you want to hear and one is just as bloody annoying to listen to as the other.
Tong opens his narrow eyes. Tightens his fists. He propels himself towards the torn-out page taking only a couple of purposeful strides. He opens his palms, kicks out with his right foot and makes contact with it before landing with precision on the floor again. Bullseye.
He straightens up, bows as though a master stood in front of him and walks the few steps to the little bathroom, where he – unlike many other inmates – has his own shower. Tong is in newly renovated A3 and he’s a guard’s helper, two advantages in so old a prison, with so many dingy cells, run-down blocks, poor ventilation and often times four men to a room.
He bends down and takes hold of the blue-and-white towel with the words ‘Correctional Services’ written across it. Squeezes it before lifting it to his forehead and wiping the small band of sweat below his hairline from the half-hour of training he’s been doing since he was locked in for the night.
A day and a half, then he’ll be out. Then a new life begins. A new style. A new Tong. Quit the drugs. Quit working with Jani and Rudi. He’s moving up a notch. Get the situation with Cecilie sorted out. In or out. All or nothing.
Third conviction. Åne prison is all right but he’s tired of it. The first time, in the mid-nineties, was okay. A good bunch on C2 back then, the older screws still say it. ‘Jesus, Tong,’ Hangelanden says, ‘what you lot had going on in C2 back then, best block we’ve ever had.’ Were good, those times. Almost everyone was someone you knew. Rune, Espen, Diddien and … anyway. All in the past. Only immigrants here now. Back then it was ninety per cent white and ten per cent black. Now it’s the other way around. Now it’s ninety per cent immigrants. The blacks sitting in for rape, the paedos and then the Lithuanians, the Polacks and the Romanians. Idiots who can’t pull off a real job, the ones who stand in your room at night rummaging through your handbag. The ones who smash your windscreen and take your stereo. The ones who are happy to get into a fight, who bump off one another all the time and who send the daily wage they get at Åne home to Poland and think life’s hunky-dory in here. Fifty-six kroner. Fantastic immigration policy. What are they doing here? Tong is adopted but no way does he see himself as a foreigner. He’s Norwegian, he just has the wrong complexion. Simple as that. Send the fuckers home. Close the floodgates. Full stop.
Doing time in Åne isn’t like it was. Things were slacker, there were more fights in the exercise yard and the screws weren’t as extreme about doing everything by the book as they are now.
Tong has stayed clean this time. He’s kept away from the others, been strict. Not that he’s become a Christian or anything, but simply because he couldn’t face it any more. And he’s tried to get that into that kid Bønna’s skull. But he doesn’t get it. He thinks prison is fucking great, you ca
n relax here and it’s a lot less stress than outside. ‘Bønna,’ Tong says, ‘listen to an old dog, that’s what I used to think too. But when you land in here for the third time, then you start to see you’ve screwed up. You realise it’s a pile of shit, the whole thing. You’re fed up with it.’
Tong turns the tap on, lets the water run for a few seconds, bends down, opens his mouth and drinks. He’s got an okay bathroom at least. Was a relief coming here after the first few months in the old block. Rooms without ventilation, rooms without a bog.
Being in the nonce wing is different from doing time for assault or dope. First time he was sent down was for complicity in trafficking of grade A drugs. Four years, got probation after three. That was all right. The second time, aggravated assault, eighteen months, probation after a year. No problem for Tong to get out on probation once he’s inside. No difficulty adapting to the system. But this time it’s different. Being stuck on the nonce wing is very fucking different. Even though he’s not a paedo, even though every inmate in the prison knows who Tong is – he’s not even on the paedo wing – it’s different. The looks the other prisoners send him, they’re different. It’s as though they enjoy it, the fact that he’s not serving time for drugs or violence. As though they want to make him out to be a bit of a paedo all the same.
And if he runs into that girl, that little fucking whorebag, if he so much as catches sight of her again, then she’ll be sorry. No fucking way she looked like she was fourteen. No fucking way she behaved like she was either.
Everything had gone well. They were partying after the warehouse job in Orre. They’d made off with over sixty laptops and a load of other equipment. Then they headed over to that horny bastard Hansi’s place, and there’s always a young crowd there, girls and boys, and line after line on the glass table. She sat on his lap, wanted cocaine and speed and everything she could get, rubbed her crotch against him like he was a car and her pussy was the car wax. He took her into the bedroom and banged her in every hole a woman has. What’s wrong with that?
That’s what he said to the lawyer: ‘Listen, Hanne, no fucking way did she look fourteen, I was off my head, but I didn’t do anything wrong. She wanted me and I wanted her and what’s wrong with that?’
Hanne did her best. She was his prosecutor last time and like he told her: ‘I’ve had you as a prosecutor, Hanne, you were one vicious bitch, now I want you on my side.’ Ah well. Not her fault. It was that slut’s fault.
What he’s going to do about Cecilie, he really doesn’t know.
But he’s done working with those idiots. Rudi and Jani. All done.
Tong gets to his feet. He takes a chocolate chip cookie from the open packet and chews it slowly. His hair is jet black, his facial features are sharply carved as though someone had cut them with a knife. He swallows the biscuit, making sure there’s no crumbs left in his mouth. He straightens up, tenses his body, opens his eyes wide, doesn’t blink. Assumes the stance. Finds balance. Propels himself at the wall.
WEDNESDAY 26 OCTOBER
The only card I need
Is the Ace of Spades
Motörhead
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 zo
mbies 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.