Encircling 2

by Carl Frode Tiller

  More often than not Uncle Willy and Odd Kåre asked you, me and Bendik to come with them on these trips. Not so much to help with loading and unloading the van, although obviously we did that too, but more because then we actually looked like a team of movers, sitting up there in the cab in our baseball caps and tatty T-shirts, with our work gloves in our laps. Besides which, it was a long trip and since one of the two adults always drove a couple of miles ahead of the van in a car so he could come back and warn us if there happened to be a police roadblock or anything else a bit dodgy on the road, we were also there simply for the company.

  How cool we felt, sitting there with the windows rolled down and our elbows resting on the sills, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, smoking, cursing and swearing. It’s a bit embarrassing to think about it now, but I remember how we changed our way of talking and started using the sort of lingo we thought real crooks would use. We referred to the police as “the cops” or “the fuzz,” money was “dosh” or “dough” or “bread” and once, when a dissatisfied business associate threatened Odd Kåre by saying he was going to call the police, Bendik was all for “liquidating the bastard.”

  “Why do you talk like something out of a Donald Duck comic,” one of the bikers asked us once when we were lugging boxes of liquor into the storeroom behind their clubhouse. And when Uncle Willy and Odd Kåre both burst out laughing and we realized that they had been asking themselves that same question, well, I have to admit we felt pretty small and stupid. After that I seem to remember we toned it down a bit and went back to talking more or less normally. But the nickname they gave us stuck: from then on we were the Beagle Boys or the Beagle Gang, eventually shortened to the B Gang, and this, mark you, was long before the rise of that other notorious B Gang in the Oslo underworld.

  You might think we would have dropped out of school completely by this time, but we hadn’t. Far from it, in fact. The more we got up to, the greater the risk became, and the greater the risk, the more important it became to put up a good front and not be associated with any stupid shenanigans, Uncle Willy said, and so we actually started to behave ourselves. We were quiet in class and polite to the teacher and what’s more we almost stopped skipping school completely. And while Bendik and I pulled ourselves together enough to get pass marks in all our subjects and even got the odd “G” for “Good” in our report cards, you grabbed the opportunity to show what a bright pupil and bookworm you really were. Suddenly you didn’t need to hold back in order to seem like one of us. With Uncle Willy’s warnings as an excuse you would sit down with your books at the oddest moments in the strangest places, and it wasn’t always school books either, it could just as easily be books you’d bought or borrowed from the library, or that you’d taken from the vicar from hell’s bookshelves. You never let us see your report card, though, that I remember. No fucking way. Probably because your marks were so much better than Bendik’s and mine that you saw them as some sort of proof that you weren’t one of us after all. Like you had to draw the line somewhere.

  In any case ninth grade was one long success story for all three of us.

  I remember the Duck came over to us one day when we were sitting outside on a bench and she was on playground duty. “You know,” she said, “you three ought to be really proud of yourselves.”

  I doubt, though, that that’s what she said when the cops called her in for an interview and she found out how we’d been spending our evenings and nights for the past two years. Because of course we did eventually get caught. One July evening in ’86 the doorbell rang and no sooner had I opened the door then I was in handcuffs, looking on open-mouthed as two burly policemen pulled out drawers and looked in cupboards and turned everything in the apartment upside down. I acted innocent, pretended to be mystified and asked them what they were doing, but they wouldn’t tell me a thing. Then, with nosy neighbors leaning over the fence, gawking and pointing, I was led out of the house and placed in the back seat of one of the two waiting police cars. The other car was for Grandad I realized, because just before we drove off I heard him whining and complaining and asking the cops if they thought this was any way to treat an old man.

  I don’t remember how long I sat in that cell, but I certainly had plenty of time to wonder how on earth they’d caught onto us. I just didn’t get it. We’d been so damn careful. We’d even stopped using Grandad’s shed to store our plunder. Instead we stashed everything we pinched in an old barn belonging to Uncle Willy that was just next to his cottage out at Gullholmstrand.

  My first thought was that Janne must have ratted on us. Even though we’d seen less and less of her towards the end of lower secondary she did still know a fair bit about what we got up to and considering how we’d treated her over the years, it wouldn’t have been so surprising if she’d decided to get back at us by going to the police and telling what she knew. The fact that by this time she had gotten herself a boyfriend also made me think it even more likely that she was the culprit, because it was easy to see that this guy had given her self-confidence and self-respect. I had bumped into her one day coming out of the corner store in the Prairie with him, carrying bottles of cola and a pile of videos and it was as much as she could do to say hello. Fucking unbelievable. Only months before she’d been just about begging to be allowed to tag along with us, but now that she was with her boyfriend—who was ten years older than her and every bit as fat—she felt so superior that she couldn’t even be bothered to stop and talk to me. Because that’s exactly what happened. I stopped and made it quite clear that I was all set for a bit of a chat, but even though both she and the boyfriend could see this, all she said was “Hi, Tom Roger,” then she stuck her nose in the air and walked on.

  So the thought that crossed my mind as I sat in that cell staring at a wall covered in swastikas and dicks and I love so-and-so and so-and-so was that this new confident and oh-so-fucking-high-and-mighty Janne had finally felt able to get angry at her tormentors and that this in turn had prompted her to call the cops and tell them what we were up to. That she was going out with a guy who was ten years older than her must have made her feel safe and thus brave enough to do it, or so I thought. Even though she had absolutely no reason to feel safe, of course, because if it turned out that she really had been the one to inform on us, we wouldn’t just say “naughty, naughty” and leave it at that, that’s for sure.

  Another possibility was that one of the neighbors had got suspicious and called the cops. Like I said, we had stopped using Grandad’s shed for fixing up the bikes and storing stuff, so they couldn’t have seen us bringing in stolen goods, that I simply don’t believe. But there was always the chance that somebody had begun to wonder how come Grandad could afford all the things he could obviously afford. Because no matter how many fucking times Uncle Willy and Odd Kåre Hindmo told him to be careful and not throw money about, he was—and still is—such a terrible dandy and if he saw something he liked—a gold chain or a watch, say, or something to wear—he just had to have it. He loved to strut around in his new made-to-measure suit and he could hardly take a walk down to the newsstand for cigarettes without lugging the huge mobile phone he’d bought along with him. “I was so poor when I was a boy,” he used to say if anyone criticized his extravagant ways, “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

  A third possibility was that Arvid and Berit had got wind of our activities. As far as I was concerned there was no way you would have said anything to them. You were a cold, hard bastard and an exceptionally good liar and you would never have admitted anything no matter how much pressure they put on you. On the other hand, though, they were worried sick about you at that time. For at least a year you’d done your very best to make them think you didn’t give a shit about school and that you were in grave danger of failing one subject and another. In fact, just before the Christmas break in eighth grade you even went so far as to doctor your report card so it looked as if you’d gotten much worse marks than you actually had, and obviously this, together with
the fact that you spent all your time, day and night, with Bendik and me, meant that they kept even closer tabs on you than ever, so who knows what they might have discovered with all their spying. You took precautions, of course. You knew that they searched your room every now and again, so you kept your money and anything else that might arouse suspicion at my house, and you knew they read your diary, so you invented a day-to-day routine that was a far cry from your actual life. But still, when they kept such a fucking close eye on you there was no telling what they might find out.

  But the most likely explanation, as far as I could see, was that the informant had been Peder Raade: after what had happened at his birthday party that year he certainly had a clear motive, but he had also made certain remarks that seemed to point the finger at him and no one else. What had happened at his birthday party was that Ma had been entertaining some of his friends with routines from her time as a clairvoyant and medium. Not only did she read the tarot cards and tell the fortunes of those who wanted her to, she even spoke to the late grandfather of one party guest. Apparently Peder hadn’t said a word while all this was going on, in fact he’d looked as though he was enjoying himself and when his guests remarked that he’d have no problem playing the stock market now that he had a fortune teller to consult he just chuckled. But once the last guest had gone he hit the roof. “What have I told you about that goddamn gypsy crap,” he roared at Ma, and when she tried to excuse herself by saying that the others had encouraged her and that they had even seemed to think it was fun, he had asked her how stupid she could be. Didn’t she realize they’d gone along with it just so they could make a fool of her and him? Didn’t she realize that they’d been laughing at her all evening, he roared, and then he’d beaten the shit out of her. “She looked like her nose and her mouth had changed fucking places when she came home,” as Uncle Willy said.

  Naturally the stupid bastard regretted it afterwards, but even though he begged and pleaded with Ma to come back to him, and even though Ma later admitted that she had been tempted to return to a life where she never had to worry about money, there was no way that was ever going to happen. She had lived with wifebeaters twice in her life and if there was one thing she had promised herself it was that if ever a man lifted his hand to her again, just once, she’d be out of the door that very minute. But then, of course, Peder Raade felt insulted and humiliated. How dare a woman like Ma say no to a man like him, that’s what he must have been thinking. So then he started phoning the fucking house and writing letters in which he made all sorts of threats: how he was going to destroy her and that crooked fucking family of hers and all that kind of thing, and that was why I was so sure it was him who had ratted on us.

  When I got out of jail and was able to talk to you I found that you’d had exactly the same thought and had come to exactly the same conclusion, and when I shook my head and told you what had really happened your face fell, just as mine had done during my first interview when the cops told me that this was the first major drug bust they had made in Namsos.

  Drug bust?

  Talk about being taken for a ride.

  Here Bendik and Odd Kåre Hindmo had been, going behind all our fucking backs and doing deals with those bikers, and when we thought we were carrying a little batch of cigarettes here or a box of watches and jewelry there, we’d actually been driving from Oslo to Trøndelag with a vanload of drugs. Once, twice or sometimes even three times a month for a whole year we’d done this. We’d been running the risk of several years in prison or various young offender institutions and we’d made nothing out of it.

  Luckily, at the trial Bendik and Odd Kåre swore that no one but them knew about the drugs, so Grandad and Uncle Willy and I were only found guilty of theft and handling stolen goods. And if they hadn’t found so much cash at our house we would probably have got off scot-free, because strictly speaking the cops didn’t know shit about what we’d been doing. They had simply been following a tip-off about this fucking motorbike club being involved in drug trafficking and it was pure coincidence that Uncle Willy happened to have parked the moving van outside our house on the very day that the police made their move. At first I refused to say anything about how I had come by so much money, but when it dawned on me that the cops actually believed I had made it from running drugs and that I risked being sent to prison for however many years, I had no choice but to tell them about our little business.

  But neither you, Erik or Albert had been dragged into it, which was always something. And you couldn’t do enough for me, I remember, to repay me for keeping your name out of it. When we went down to the video store to rent some films you always insisted on paying; that same summer, when Grandad and I had to scrape and repaint the outside of the house, you came over every single morning to give us a hand, and if anybody did or said anything to me that wasn’t exactly nice you would get way angrier than you needed to on my behalf.

  But in actual fact our time together was over and we both knew it, and not just because you were starting upper secondary in the autumn and I was going to do mechanics at the Tech. During that last year it had also become more and more clear how different we actually were as people. We had both worn denim jackets with the badges of hard rock bands sewn on the back, W.A.S.P. on mine and AC/DC on yours. But while you were actually into the music and spent more and more time listening to it and reading about it, I didn’t really care. I tended to get the song titles, the bands and the musicians all mixed up and I couldn’t have cared less whether a record had been issued in one year or another or on which label. Hard rock was just a way for me to tell the world who I was and who I wanted to be, no more than that. The same went for a whole lot of other things. When it came to politics, for example, you, Bendik and I all claimed to be as left-wing as it was possible to be, but while you defended your opinions with long speeches about capitalism and the exploitation of the working class, Bendik and I confined ourselves to stating that we “hated the establishment,” as we put it. What mattered to us was to be extreme, and to be honest we could just as easily have been at the opposite end of the political spectrum.

  In the end the only thing we had in common was the business, and when that collapsed, we drifted quite naturally and painlessly apart. I suppose we could have carried on stealing bikes and so on and through that we might have managed to stay friends, but that was never an option: unlike Bendik, you and I weren’t cut out to be crooks. All three of us had had much the same motive for doing what we did. We had all had a vague sense of having been hard done by and we tried to rid ourselves of the anger and shame and self-loathing that this filled us with by breaking the law. When we stole we weren’t really doing it for the money and other stuff, or not to begin with anyway. What we were after was respect and self-respect. Breaking the law quite simply made us feel free and powerful and independent. We were our own men and we did as we pleased, just like Erik and Grandad did when they produced and sold illicit liquor.

  But unlike Bendik neither you nor I were able to ignore the consequences of our actions. Neither of us was particularly scared of being caught or of the punishment that awaited us if that happened, that’s not what I mean. In fact I seem to remember that we had a pretty romantic view of life behind bars, liked to picture ourselves as the sort of jailbirds you always saw in Hollywood movies—you know, the sort of tough guy who everybody respects and who’s liable to punch or do a lot worse to anybody who so much as looks at him the wrong way or makes some snide comment. What I mean when I say that we couldn’t ignore the consequences of our actions was that our consciences began to trouble us more and more. We tried to ease our guilt by making it a sort of a rule that we would only steal from people who could afford to live without whatever we took. But even though this made it easier for us to keep going it still wasn’t easy. After all, just because a boat engine was expensive didn’t necessarily mean that the owner was rich, right? I mean it could just as easily belong to a family that had scrimped and saved for years to be able
to buy that particular engine. Or to some poor, hard-up fisherman come to that.

  “So what,” Bendik would say when we made such objections. “They can claim it back from the insurance. It’s not the owner we’re stealing from, it’s the fucking insurance company, that’s how you’ve got to look at it.”

  But we found it hard to look at it that way. We simply didn’t have it in us, neither of us, and once I’d done my time that was it for me, from then on I was going straight. Okay, so I’ve swindled a bit on benefits and I’ve notched up a couple of convictions for assault since then, but I’m glad to say I’ve never been mixed up in anything more serious than that. While Bendik has been a professional criminal all his adult life, or so I’ve heard, I’ve supported myself and my family by working as a car mechanic, a bouncer, a laborer, a vaccuum salesman and God knows what else. In the mid-90s I even set up and ran my own bodybuilding gym in Namsos. So I’ve tried my hand at various things over the years.

  As for you, well, you went on to upper secondary then spent several years at university, but when I met you at that class reunion you were working as a fucking receptionist in a hotel in Trondheim. I’ve heard a lot of weird things in my time, but for somebody to go to school for more than twenty years and then take a job as a fucking hotel receptionist, well, that takes the fucking cake, if you ask me, and I told you so, but you were hurt by that, I remember. You laughed and tried to make a joke of it by saying that you were a resting night porter, you could spend most of your working hours asleep, and this allowed you to make a gentle transition from student life to working life or something like that, but I could tell that you didn’t like being seen as the sort of guy whom everybody had expected such great things of, but who had never fulfilled his promise. Because that is how you were regarded at that goddamn class reunion if I’m to be perfectly honest. Not only by me but by just about everybody else as well. That whole party was just one big competition to see who had been most successful and gone furthest in life. While the hits of the 80s flowed from the loudspeakers, people stood around in their glad rags, smiling and bragging about themselves for all they were worth, not in so many words of course, no, no, they did it as subtly and discreetly as possible, usually by steering the conversation around to a topic that would allow them to shine and stand out from the crowd. That fucking jerkoff Audun, for example, the biggest trust-fund brat of the lot, kept trying to bring up the subject of taxes and customs duty, not because he disapproved of the high rates of taxation in Norway or the extortionate duty tariffs, not at all. I know this for a fact, because at one point, when he started complaining about how the duty on alcohol meant that his favorite brand of cognac cost three times more in Norway than it did anywhere else and I said that in that case he ought to do as I did and vote for the Progress Party, I’ll be fucked if he didn’t turn around and start defending the Norwegian tax system. No, all this talk about taxes was just an excuse to allow Audun to work his way around, slowly but surely, to letting us all know that he had paid over a million kroner in income tax the year before, thus leading everybody to understand that this was a man who was earning three or four million kroner a year, right? That’s why he went on the way he did. He just wanted to let us know how rich he was.