‘Coming,’ Harry said.

He walked into the kitchen. Looked at the cupboard under the sink. Hesitated. Then he took down the photos of Rakel and Oleg and put them in his inside pocket.

***

‘Hong Kong?’ sniffed Oystein Eikeland. He turned his bloated alky face with huge hooter and sad drooping moustache to Harry in the seat next to him. ‘What the hell d’you do there?’

‘You know me,’ Harry said as Oystein stopped on red outside the Radisson SAS Hotel.

‘I bloody do not,’ Oystein said, sprinkling tobacco into his roll-up. ‘How would I?’

‘Well, we grew up together. Do you remember?’

‘So? You were already a sodding enigma then, Harry.’

The rear door was torn open and a man wearing a coat got in. ‘Airport express, main station. Quick.’

‘Taxi’s taken,’ Oystein said without turning.

‘Nonsense, the sign on the roof ’s lit.’

‘Hong Kong sounds groovy. Why d’you come home actually?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the man on the back seat.

Oystein poked the cigarette between his lips and lit up. ‘Tresko rang to invite me to a get-together tonight.’

‘Tresko hasn’t got any friends,’ Harry said.

‘He hasn’t, has he. So I asked him, “Who are your friends then?” “You”, he said, and asked me, “And yours, Oystein?” “You,” I answered. “So it’s just us two.” We’d forgotten all about you, Harry. That’s what happens when you go to…’ He funnelled his lips and, in a staccato voice, said, ‘Hong Kong!’

‘Hey!’ came a shout from the back seat. ‘If you’ve finished, perhaps we might…’

The lights changed to green, and Oystein accelerated away.

‘Are you coming then? It’s at Tresko’s place.’

‘Stinks of toe-fart there, Oystein.’

‘He’s got a full fridge.’

‘Sorry, I’m not in a party mood.’

‘Party mood?’ Oystein snorted, smacking the wheel with his hand. ‘You don’t know what a party mood is, Harry. You always backed off parties. Do you remember? We’d bought some beers, intending to go to some fancy address in Nordstrand with loads of women. And you suggested you, me and Tresko went to the bunkers instead and drank on our own.’

‘Hey, this isn’t the way to the airport express!’ came a whine from the back seat.

Oystein braked for red again, tossed his wispy shoulder-length hair to the side and addressed the back seat. ‘And that was where we ended up. Got rat-arsed and that fella started singing “No Surrender” until Tresko chucked empty bottles at him.’

‘Honest to God!’ the man sobbed, tapping his forefinger on the glass of a TAG Heuer watch. ‘I just have to catch the last plane to Stockholm.’

‘The bunkers are great,’ Harry said. ‘Best view in Oslo.’

‘Yep,’ Oystein said. ‘If the Allies had attacked there, the Germans would’ve shot them to bits.’

‘Right,’ Harry grinned.

‘You know, we had a standing agreement, him and me and Tresko,’ Oystein said, but the suit was now desperately scanning the rain for vacant taxis. ‘If the sodding Allies come, we’ll bloody shoot the meat off their carcasses. Like this.’ Oystein pointed an imaginary machine gun at the suit and fired a salvo. The suit stared in horror at the crazy taxi driver whose chattering noises were causing small, foam-white drops of spit to land on his dark, freshly ironed suit trousers. With a little gasp he managed to open the car door and stumble out into the rain.

Oystein burst into coarse, hearty laughter.

‘You were missing home,’ Oystein said. ‘You wanted to dance with Killer Queen at Ekeberg restaurant again.’

Harry chuckled and shook his head. In the wing mirror he saw the man charging madly towards the National Theatre station. ‘It’s my father. He’s ill. He hasn’t got long left.’

‘Oh shit.’ Oystein pressed the accelerator again. ‘Good man, too.’

‘Thank you. Thought you would want to know.’

‘Course I bloody do. Have to tell my folks.’

‘So, here we are,’ Oystein said, parking outside the garage and the tiny, yellow timber house in Oppsal.

‘Yup,’ Harry said.

Oystein inhaled so hard the cigarette seemed to be catching fire, held the smoke down in his lungs and let it out again with a long, gurgling wheeze. Then he tilted his head slightly and flicked the ash into the ashtray. Harry experienced a sweet pain in his heart. How many times had he seen Oystein do exactly that, seen him lean to the side as though the cigarette were so heavy that he would lose balance. Head tilted. The ash on the ground in a smokers’ shed at school, in an empty beer bottle at a party they had gatecrashed, on cold, damp concrete in a bunker.

‘Life’s bloody unfair,’ Oystein said. ‘Your father was sober, went walking on Sundays and worked as a teacher. While my father drank, worked at the Kadok factory, where everyone got asthma and weird rashes, and didn’t move a millimetre once he was ensconced on the sofa at home. And the guy’s as fit as a fuckin’ fiddle.’

Harry remembered the Kadok factory. Kodak backwards. The owner, from Sunnmore, had read that Eastman had called his camera factory Kodak because it was a name that could be remembered and pronounced all over the world. But Kadok was forgotten and it shut down several years ago.

‘All things pass,’ Harry said.

Oystein nodded as though he had been following his train of thought.

‘Ring if you need anything, Harry.’

‘Yep.’

Harry waited until he heard the wheels crunching on the gravel behind him and the car was gone before he unlocked the door and entered. He switched on the light and stood still as the door fell to and clicked shut. The smell, the silence, the light falling on the coat cupboard, everything spoke to him, it was like sinking into a pool of memories. They embraced him, warmed him, made his throat constrict. He removed his coat and kicked off his shoes. Then he started to walk. From room to room. From year to year. From Mum and Dad to Sis, and then to himself. The boy’s room. The Clash poster, the one where the guitar is about to be smashed on the floor. He lay on his bed and breathed in the smell of the mattress. And then came the tears.

21

Snow White

It was two minutes to eight in the evening when Mikael Bellman was walking up Karl Johans gate, one of the world’s more modest parades. He was in the middle of the kingdom of Norway, at the mid-point of the axis. To the left, the university and knowledge; to the right, the National Theatre and culture. Behind him, in the Palace Gardens, the Royal Palace situated upon high. And right in front of him: power. Three hundred paces later, at exactly eight o’clock, he mounted the stone steps to the main entrance of Stortinget. The parliament building, like most of Oslo, was not particularly big or impressive. And security was minimal. There were only two lions carved from Grorud granite standing on either side of the slope which led to the entrance.

Bellman went up to the door, which opened noiselessly before he had a chance to push. He arrived at reception and stood looking around. A security guard appeared in front of him with a friendly but firm nod towards a Gilardoni X-ray machine. Ten seconds later it had revealed that Mikael Bellman was unarmed, there was metal in his belt, but that was all.

Rasmus Olsen was waiting for him, leaning against the reception desk. Marit Olsen’s thin widower shook hands with Bellman and walked ahead as he automatically switched on his guide voice.

‘Stortinget, three hundred and eighty employees, a hundred and sixty-nine MPs. Built in 1866, designed by Emil Victor Langlet. A Swede, by the way. This is the hall known as Trappehallen. The stone mosaics are called Society, Else Hagen, 1950. The king’s portrait was painted…’