Fireraiser

by Torkil Damhaug

  He let them into the hall, turned again to Karsten. – Do you have a phone? If so, it is to be turned off and locked away until you leave.

  Reluctantly Karsten pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket.

  – That’s the way it is here, said Adrian with a wink.

  The hunchbacked woman was standing at a kitchen counter and looked up as they passed. According to Adrian her name was Sonja and she was Sæter’s sister. Seated at a table was the chubby girl Karsten had seen last time. She was holding a Game Boy in her hands, but she looked older than he remembered her; could be about Synne’s age. He nodded, and she glared at him without reacting.

  Adrian led him up to one of the rooms in the loft, where there were two bunk beds. Clothing and rucksacks on one of them.

  – I’m guessing you think it’s best to have the top one, he said with a grin. – So I’ll take the bottom one and keep an eye on the door. Maybe you should take a nap. Don’t be surprised if you get woken up tonight.

  He went out. From the window Karsten saw him cross the yard with Sæter and a couple of the dogs, Adrian straight backed, Saeter bent and waddling like an enormous bird. They disappeared into one of the outhouses, emerged with skis and ski poles, which they carried over towards the edge of the forest.

  A few minutes later, two cars turned into the yard and parked next to Adrian’s. It was dark by now, but once everyone had climbed out, Karsten was able to count nine people. A little later he heard the tramping of boots on the staircase and the door to the room was pushed open. The pair who came in looked to be about his own age, perhaps slightly older. Both were wearing combat trousers and army boots. One was scrawny, thin as a shrimp, a fringe plastered across his forehead. The other was taller and overweight, his curly hair cropped short and with acne scars on both cheeks. He pulled off his sweater; the shirt underneath had huge patches of sweat below the arms and on the back.

  The Shrimp tossed a plastic bag on to Karsten’s bed. Inside were a few clothes and the maths book. He said: – Gonna sit around here doing maths, are you? Shit, I think we should call you Einstein.

  – Okay by me, said Karsten, and fished the book out. – And I’ll call you two Heisenberg and Schrödinger.

  – Funn-ee, the fat one said, pretending to understand the joke.

  – You the one who shagged that Paki slag? the Shrimp went on. – How intelligent was that, then?

  I’ll stay here until tomorrow, Karsten thought. Not one day longer.

  Sonja had made thick pea soup, and omelette with bacon and potato. The chubby girl helped her serve it. Karsten was starving, but too tense to eat much. He looked around the room, counted fifteen people. Several he recognised from the meeting two days previously. At the top of the table was Noah, with his Mohican hairdo and broad, flat nose. Next to him, the good-looking woman. Her name was Gail; she had an English accent and called herself head of the female section. Not exactly a demanding responsibility, since she was the only woman there. Sonja and the girl spent most of the time in the kitchen.

  Opposite Karsten were his two room-mates. The Shrimp made a few efforts to be funny, but when Kai joined them at the table he fell silent. Kai was no taller than the Shrimp, but twice as broad.

  After the plates had been cleared away, Sæter rigged up a flipover.

  – Welcome to the second day of our seminar, he announced. – Our country is about to embark on what is known as the ‘quiet week’. Well it won’t be quiet here, I can promise you that.

  A couple of people chuckled. Gail pulled a face that was perhaps intended to be a smile. Adrian said she had a masters degree from an English university and was sharp as a razor. Philosophy or something like that; Karsten hadn’t been listening properly.

  – As soon as I’m finished, we’re going to hear someone’s personal story, Sæter went on, looking over at Karsten. Then he went on to talk about what was going to happen the next morning, something he referred to as manoeuvres. He spoke of chains of command, and about dividing the group into teams. Karsten gave up trying to follow it. In the brief interval before it was his turn, he sat stiff as a winter-frozen insect in his chair. Adrian came across and patted him on the shoulder.

  – You okay about this?

  – Dunno. Not exactly how I imagined things.

  Adrian sat beside him. – Got a suggestion. Instead of you standing up there with nothing prepared, let’s do it as an interview. I ask you a few questions, and you answer to the best of your ability.

  Karsten nodded weakly. – Sounds better.

  Once everyone had returned to their seats, Sæter spoke again. He introduced Adrian, even though most of those in the room must have already known who he was. – Adrian Wilkins is a front-line soldier, someone who has fought in the battle for the future of our civilisation.

  Adrian stood up and didn’t appear at all embarrassed by the introduction. He confirmed that he had been a soldier in Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan, and revealed that he was planning to join the British forces in Iraq. Suddenly there was an air of intense interest in the room. He went on to say a few words about Muslims and their view of the world. We would be making a big mistake if we generalised and underestimated them. Muslim culture has retained many of the values now lost to us. The courage to defend what one believes in. The value of honour. Taking care of those closest to us, our families, all of those with whom one has close ties.

  – But take a look at the statistics. How many Norwegian women are going with Muslim men and giving birth to their children?

  He looked out across the gathering.

  – Quite a few, someone answered.

  – Far too many, Noah shouted.

  – And how many Muslim women with Norwegian men?

  – None.

  – Well, said Adrian, – at any rate it’s very rare. And why is that?

  – They’re not allowed to.

  – Exactly. It actually says in the Koran that it is a punishable offence. Now we might suppose that Norwegian men are simply too feeble to be of any interest to a woman from, for example, Pakistan.

  A mixture of laughter and grunting from the room.

  – But that of course is not the whole story. If we tried this as an experiment, we would soon find our hypothesis confirmed. Pakistani men in Norway guard their women in the same way as they do back home. They don’t hesitate to make threats and use violence. We’ll hear an example of this very soon.

  He gestured in Karsten’s direction.

  – The Pakis and Somalis and the others who come here are allowed to carry on as before. They can have their own closed and internal economies, establish a Muslim society within society. The only thing they have to fear is if some of their women start mating with Norwegian men. So they do their best to make sure it hardly ever happens. It’s perfectly natural; this is the way things have always been. The struggle for territory, and for the women to bear our children. If only a fraction of the most pessimistic prophesies of the environmentalists turn out to be correct, natural catastrophes and the disappearance of the most basic necessities of life in other parts of the world is going to lead to a migration of peoples on a scale the world has never seen before. Compared to it, the flight from the Huns and the Mongols in the Middle Ages will be nothing more than a trickle. Within a few years these migrating people will be in the majority in Europe, and in Norway too. Do we intend to do nothing to prepare ourselves for this situation?

  He let the question hang in the air for a few moments.

  – Some people are worth more than others, he said suddenly. – The first thing is to dare to think this. Then dare to say it. Then take the decisive step. Action is the only thing that shows who you are. What distinguishes those who lead from the rest of the herd? They act, while others hesitate.

  Karsten looked around the room. Gail with the pretty face was sitting behind and to the side of him. She was wearing a denim skirt and a skimpy black pullover, and the look she was giving Adrian left no doubt that she was ready to fo
llow him into battle. Probably up into the bedroom, too. Karsten suddenly thought of what it would be like to have them in the bunk bed below his. Just then Adrian approached him, patted him on the shoulder, left his hand there. Karsten staggered to his feet and stood beside the chair, his mouth so dry that his tongue was glued to his palate.

  – I spoke earlier about my pal Karsten.

  Just that word, pal, and the hand holding round his shoulder was enough to make Karsten lift his head and look at the people sitting there. The Shrimp gave a big fake yawn, but Gail was smiling at him, her head slightly to one side. Sæter, sitting beside her, nodded slowly.

  – As I was saying, Adrian went on, – Karsten has landed himself in trouble. His mistake, if that’s what we want to call it, is that the girl he’s dating is a Muslim. And suddenly he finds her whole family is involved.

  He described the attack by the Pakistanis in the black BMW. How Karsten had called and asked for help from the only people he could trust. The rescue was made to sound like a commando raid carried out behind enemy lines. They’d got him to safety by the skin of his teeth, and unharmed apart from a small knife wound to the stomach.

  Once Adrian was finished, everyone applauded, and he stepped to one side and led the applause for Karsten, who had yet to say a word. Karsten stood there, his face burning, like some kind of hero, a rescued Private Ryan, and he found it impossible not to dip his neck. Not deeply, in fact scarcely noticeable, but that was what he did, several times. He bowed.

  22

  He jumped down to the floor, woke up and stood there, staring round the room in confusion. The sound of the sleeping bodies in the bunk beds, the draught from the open window, the light outside. It was night, but the moon was visible between the curtains.

  The phone!

  Deep in his sleep he had heard her voice. It came up towards him, pressing itself through layer after layer. That was what had forced him up and out of bed.

  He had done everything right before leaving her apartment, as though following a set of instructions. Wipe the mortar, wipe the bath tap, straighten the sheet on the bed to make it look as though only one person had been lying there. Afterwards he had destroyed the card file, burned every newspaper cutting about the fires, burned the panties he had secreted at the back of the cupboard. All the data on his computer and his phone had been saved on to a USB stick, which now lay hidden behind a beam in the loft, together with a bag of capsules he had grabbed from her bathroom, and the keys to the apartment.

  He had remembered everything, but not her telephone. When he left, it was still lying there on the table, with the message he had sent her just before she let him in. Any chance of a visit?

  He pulled on his clothes and boots, slipped out into the corridor. It was ten minutes past midnight. Almost two days since he had left her apartment. Somebody had to have been in there.

  He let himself out. One of Sæter’s dogs began barking out in the enclosure. He felt like running over there, grabbing the beast by its fur and killing it with a single punch. Need to calm down, he thought as he jogged towards the car. Get down there, think of something on the way.

  It was the night before Palm Sunday. A chilly night, spring still not quite arrived, not quite made up its mind. A few gangs hanging round the streets in Lillestrøm. He drove slowly down Storgata, turned left, parked. Three or four teenagers skateboarding on the stage in the square. A police patrol car at the other end. He moved into the doorway of the bank, looked up and located her living-room window. A weak light shining there. It was morning when he’d left; if the lamp had been on, he wouldn’t have noticed.

  He looked over at the police car, thought he could make out two figures inside. The time was now one forty. He walked around the block, stopped outside the street entrance, let himself in with the key he had picked up from home. Her postbox was so full, circulars were sticking out through the opening. That was when he made up his mind. Had made up his mind long before, because he had no choice.

  The stairs were bathed in bright light. Loud music and the roar of someone laughing from an apartment on the first floor. He didn’t look out through the large windows. Hurried on up as though he lived there. Didn’t stop until he reached the top floor. He pressed his ear against the door to her apartment, heard nothing from the other side.

  He ran through the risks one more time. She’d been away from work on Friday without giving any reason. He had discovered she had a sister, but that sister didn’t live here. And then there was the policeman, whom she was about to break up with. Didn’t she say he was away somewhere?

  He let himself in. Stood still inside the doorway, sniffing the air. The smell of something putrid that had not been there before. It made him feel safe; it wouldn’t have smelled like that if they’d found her. He peered into the front room. The phone still lay there on the table, and he had to stop himself from crying out. He darted over and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. That familiar feeling of inviolability took hold of him. He couldn’t be cornered; the margins were always on his side, even when he made a mistake. It was fate, and it made him think of Elsa and the cards she had read. Things would be different after Easter, she had predicted, and he had always trusted what she said.

  On the way out, he stopped outside the bathroom. The light was still on in there. He thought about it for a moment. Then he opened the door. The rotting smell hit him. It was mingled with a touch of perfume. The dark, heavy one she put on before going to work. The shower curtain he had drawn across remained untouched. He pulled it back. The water was a reddish brown and smelled like a bog. A hand, chalk-white and wrinkled, above the surface of the water. He bent forward, compelled to touch it. It was cold and slippery, and when he stroked it, the skin came away beneath his fingers. He raised the arm, felt it; large patches of skin had come loose from the muscles below and glided effortlessly away as he rubbed up and down on it.

  Just then he noticed the head, had to let go the hand and stand up straight. It was bent backwards, dark brown, and looked to have swollen to twice its size. Around the mouth and nose a yellowy-white scum like cauliflower had formed. He couldn’t resist touching it, and put his hand down into the water. The doorbell rang. For a fraction of a second his brain related the sound of the ringing to his touching the face below the water. He jumped back, slipped on the wet floor, fell and hit his head against the rim of the toilet bowl. He lay there for five seconds, maybe ten, before there was another ring. He got up, went into the living room. He started to open the catch on the veranda door but changed his mind, hurried into the bedroom. As a key slipped into the lock and was turned, he lay down and wriggled underneath the bed.

  – Monica?

  It was a man’s voice. He imagined the policeman. Horvath, that was his name. He was powerfully built, but if he took him from behind, he could easily knock him out. Lying there, he tried to imagine it. Horvath leaning over the bathtub, his fist pounding into the back of his neck.

  – Monica?

  Now the voice came from the living room. He drew his breath, held it, counted the seconds. Reached five before a cone of light swelled into the bedroom. Steps across the floor, stopping next to the bed. The tips of two boots less than twenty centimetres from his face. The shoes retreated a step; the duvet hanging down on to the floor was lifted up. Now I’ll see his face, he thought. But the boots turned and moved away again, back to the living room.

  He took two long, deep breaths, held it in again. A sound from the bathroom. Not as loud as a scream, nor as low as a groan. More like the wordless grunt of some huge animal. And then the footsteps again, a low moaning probably from out in the hallway, and then silence.

  Go away now, he urged from his hiding place, but from out in the hallway he heard the voice again, and in his mind’s eye he could see the policeman’s face, and that silly red moustache.

  – Something’s happened here, he heard the voice say. – Dead person.

  That’s the way he talks about his woman, he thought.<
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  – Five minutes. I’ll wait. I’m a police officer.

  As though he hadn’t known it. And now the place was going to be crawling with all sorts of God knows what because of this dead person.

  – The street door’s locked. I’ll go down and unlock it.

  The address was repeated. Then the front door latch clicked. He slithered out.

  The light in the stairwell seemed very much stronger now, and the windows on to the street grew bigger with every floor he went down. He passed the first-floor flat where someone was having a party. Looked out. In the yard below, ten metres from the street entrance, stood the policeman. He was holding his phone and moving with short steps in a tight circle, as though chained to an invisible bolt. There was no loft in the building, but he had noticed steps down to a cellar. The door at the foot of them was probably locked, but there was no other place for him to hide. He went down another step, heard the street door being unlocked. Heavy footsteps, voices. He spun round, began running back up, thought of the veranda, the possibility of getting up on to the roof. Ran down again, stopped outside the door where the party was going on. As they came tramping up, he leaned against the wall, put his finger on the doorbell and pretended to be waiting for someone to open up. They passed behind him, the first two carrying something between them. Without turning his head, he sensed they were wearing red and yellow overalls. After them what had to be the policeman. Further up the staircase the footsteps stopped.

  Now he rang the bell properly, so the sound of it could be heard out in the corridor. He bowed his neck, cursed silently, waited for the policeman to speak, could hear his voice already: Who are you? What are you doing here?