‘Dad.’

The mother rat licked the metal. It tasted of salt. She gave a start as the fridge sprang into life and began to hum. The church bells were still ringing. There was a way into the nest she hadn’t tried. Hadn’t dared to try since the human blocking the entrance was not yet dead. But the high-frequency howls of her young were making her desperate. So she did. She darted up the jacket sleeve of the human. There was a vague smell of smoke. Not smoke from a cigarette or a bonfire, but something else. Something in gas form that had been in the clothes, but had been washed out so that only a few molecules of air were left between the innermost threads in the cloth. She approached the elbow, but it was too narrow there. She stopped and listened. In the distance there was the sound of a police siren.

There were all those brief moments and choices, Dad. Those I thought were unimportant, here today, gone tomorrow, as it were. But they pile up. And before you know it they have become a river that drags you along with it. That leads you to where you are going. And that was where I was going. In fricking July. No, I wasn’t going there! I wanted to go elsewhere, Dad.

As we turned in towards the main building Isabelle Skoyen stood on her drive, in her tight riding breeches, legs akimbo.

‘Andrey, you wait here,’ the old boy said. ‘Peter, you check the area.’

We got out of the limousine to a cowshed smell, the buzz of flies and distant cowbells. She shook hands stiffly with the old boy, ignored me and invited us in for a coffee, ‘a’ being the operative word.

In the corridor hung pictures of nags with the best bloodlines, the most racing cups and fuck knows what. The old boy walked along by the photos and asked if one was an English thoroughbred and praised the slim legs and impressive chest. I wondered whether he was talking about a horse or her. Nevertheless, it worked. Isabelle’s expression thawed a little and she became less curt.

‘Let’s sit in the lounge and talk,’ he said.

‘I think we’ll go to the kitchen,’ she said and the ice was back in her voice.

We sat down, and she put the coffee pot in the middle of the table.

‘You pour for us, Gusto,’ the old boy said, looking out of the window. ‘Nice farm you have here, fru Skoyen.’

‘There’s no “fru” here.’

‘Where I grew up we called all women who could run a farm “fru” whether they were widows, divorced or unmarried. It was considered a mark of respect.’

He turned to her with a broad smile. She met his eyes. And for a couple of seconds it was so quiet all you heard was the retard fly banging against the window trying to get out.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Good. For the moment let’s forget these photos, fru Skoyen.’

She stiffened on her chair. In the phone conversation I’d had with Isabelle she had at first attempted to laugh off the suggestion that we could send the photographs of her and me to the press. She said she was a single, sexually active woman who had taken a younger man, so what? First of all, she was an insignificant secretary to a councillor, and second this was Norway. Hypocrisy was what they pursued at American presidential elections. So I had painted the threat in bright colours with concise strokes. She had paid me, and I could prove it. She was a punter, and prostitution and drugs were issues she tackled in the press on behalf of the Social Services Committee, didn’t she?

Two minutes later we had agreed a time and place for this meeting.

‘The press writes enough about politicians’ private lives as it is,’ the old boy said. ‘Let’s talk about a business proposal instead, fru Skoyen. A good proposal may, unlike blackmail, afford advantages to both parties. Agreed?’

She frowned. The old boy beamed. ‘By business proposal I don’t mean of course that money is involved. Even though this farm probably doesn’t run itself. That would be corruption. What I’m offering you is a purely political transaction. Covert, I’ll grant you that, but this is something practised every day at City Hall. And it is in the people’s best interests, isn’t it?’

Skoyen nodded again, on her guard.

‘This deal will have to stay between you and us, fru Skoyen. It will primarily benefit the town, although if you have political ambition, I can see a possible advantage for you personally. Given that is the case, it will of course make the path to a leading chair at City Hall much shorter. Never mind a role in national politics.’

Her coffee cup had stopped halfway to her mouth.

‘I haven’t even considered asking you to do something unethical, fru Skoyen. I just want to illustrate where we have common interests and then leave it to you to do what I think is right.’

‘I do what you think is right?’

‘The City Council is in a tough spot. Even before last month’s unfortunate developments, the steering committee’s aim was to get Oslo off the list of Europe’s worst towns for heroin use. You were to reduce drugs turnover, addiction among young people and not least the number of overdoses. Right now nothing seems more unlikely. Isn’t that right, fru Skoyen?’

She didn’t answer.

‘What’s needed is a hero, or a heroine, to tidy the mess from the bottom upwards.’

She nodded slowly.

‘What she has to do is to clear up the gangs and the cartels.’

Isabelle snorted. ‘Thanks, but that’s been tried in every town in Europe. New gangs spring up again like weeds. Where there’s demand there will always be new suppliers.’

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Just like weeds. I see you have a field of strawberries, fru Skoyen. Do you use a mulch?’

‘Yes, strawberry clover.’

‘I can offer you a mulch,’ the old boy said. ‘Strawberry clover wearing Arsenal shirts.’

She looked at him. I could see her greedy brain working at maximum revs. The old boy looked pleased.

‘Mulch, my dear Gusto,’ he said, taking a swig of coffee, ‘is a weed you plant and allow to grow unhindered to prevent other weeds from appearing. Because strawberry clover is a lesser evil than the alternatives. Do you understand?’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Where weeds will grow anyhow it’s a good idea to plant a weed that doesn’t destroy the strawberries.’

‘Exactly. And in this little analogy the City Council’s vision of a cleaner Oslo is the strawberries, and all the gangs selling dangerous heroin and creating anarchy on the streets are the weeds. While we and violin are the mulch.’

‘And so?’

‘And so you first have to do the weeding. And then you can leave the strawberry clover in peace.’

‘And what is it that is actually so much better for the strawberries?’ she asked.

‘We don’t shoot anyone. We operate discreetly. We sell a drug that does not end in overdoses. With a monopoly in the strawberry field we can raise the prices so high that there are fewer and fewer young people recruited. Without our total profit going down, it has to be admitted. Fewer users and fewer sellers. Junkies will no longer fill the parks and our city-centre streets. In brief, Oslo will be a delight to behold for tourists, politicians and voters.’

‘I’m not on the Social Services Committee.’

‘Not yet, fru Skoyen. But then weeding is not for committees. For that they have a secretary. To make all the small, daily decisions which in their entirety constitute the real action taken. Naturally you follow the council’s adopted policies, but you are the person who has daily contact with the police, who discusses their activities and ventures in Kvadraturen for example. You will of course have to define your role a bit more, but you seem to have a certain talent for that. A little interview about drug policies in Oslo here, a statement about drug overdoses there. So that when success is a fact the press and your party colleagues will know who is the brain behind — ’ he put on his Komodo dragon grin — ‘the market’s proud winner of this year’s biggest strawberries.’