He squirmed like an impaled worm and in the end glanced at Irene for help.
‘Oleg and I have decided to live together,’ Irene said. ‘We’re saving up to put a deposit on a flat in Boler. We’d thought of working through till the summer and then…’
‘And then?’
‘Then we were going to finish school,’ Oleg said. ‘And then start studying.’
‘Law,’ Irene said. ‘Oleg’s got such good grades.’ She smiled the way she used to do when she thought she had said something stupid, but her usually pale cheeks were hot and red with pleasure.
They had been sneaking round and palling up behind my fricking back! How had I managed to miss that?
‘Law,’ I said, opening the bag which still contained more than a gram. ‘Isn’t that for people who want to make it to the top in the gendarmes?’
Neither of them answered.
I found the spoon I ate cornflakes with and wiped it on my thigh.
‘What are you doing?’ Oleg asked.
‘This has to be celebrated,’ I said, pouring the powder onto the spoon. ‘Besides, we have to test the product ourselves before we recommend it to the old boy.’
‘So it’s fine then?’ Irene exclaimed with relief in her voice. ‘We carry on as before?’
‘Of course, my dear.’ I put the lighter under the bowl of the spoon. ‘This is for you, Irene.’
‘Me? But I don’t think-’
‘For my sake, sis.’ I looked up at her and smiled. Smiled the smile she knew I knew she had no antidote for. ‘Boring getting high on your own, you know. Sort of lonely.’
The melted powder bubbled in the spoon. I didn’t have any cotton wool, so I considered whether to strain it through a broken-off cigarette filter. But it looked so clean. White, even consistency. So I let it cool for a couple of seconds before drawing it into the syringe.
‘Gusto-’ Oleg began to say.
‘We’d better be careful we don’t OD, there’s enough for three here. You’re invited as well, my friend. But perhaps you only feel like watching?’
I didn’t need to look up. I knew him too well. Pure of heart, blinded with love and clad in the armour suit of courage that had made him dive from fifteen-metre-high masts into Oslo fjord.
‘OK,’ he said and began to roll up his sleeve. ‘I’m in.’
The same armour suit that would take him down to the bottom and drown him like a rat.
I woke up to pounding on the door. My head felt as if a coal mine had been operating inside it, and I dreaded taking the plunge and opening one eye. The morning light seeped through the crack between the wooden boards nailed to the windows and frame. Irene was lying on her mattress, and I saw Oleg’s white Puma Speed Cat trainers sticking out between two amplifiers. I could hear whoever it was had started using their feet.
I got up and tottered towards the door trying to remember any messages about band practice or equipment that had to be collected. I opened a fraction and instinctively put my foot against the door. It didn’t help. The shove knocked me backwards into the room and I fell over the drums. One hell of a racket. After shifting the cymbal stands and the snare drum I looked up into the kisser of my dear foster-brother, Stein.
Delete dear.
He had grown bigger, but the Parachute Regiment haircut and the dark, hate-filled flinty eyes were the same. I saw him open his mouth and say something, but my ears were ringing with the sound of the cymbals. Automatically I put my hands in front of my face as he came for me. But he rushed past, stepped over the drum kit and went to Irene on the mattress. She gave a little scream as he grabbed an arm and dragged her to her feet.
He held her tight while stuffing a few possessions into her rucksack. She had stopped resisting by the time he pulled her to the door.
‘Stein…’ I started.
He stopped in the doorway and regarded me with a questioning expression, but I had nothing to add.
‘You’ve done enough damage to this family,’ he said.
He looked like fricking Bruce Lee as he swung his leg and kicked the iron door shut. The air quivered. Oleg stuck his head up above the amplifier and said something, but I was still deaf.
I stood with my back to the fireplace and felt the heat making my skin tingle. The flames and an antique bloody table lamp constituted the only light in the room. The old boy sat in the leather chair examining the man we had brought with us in the limousine from Skippergata. He was still wearing his all-weather jacket. Andrey stood behind the man untying the blindfold round his eyes.
‘Well,’ the old boy said. ‘So you supply this product which I have heard so much about.’
‘Yes,’ the man said, putting on his glasses and squinting round the room.
‘Where does it come from?’
‘I’m here to sell it, not to provide information about it.’
The old boy stroked his chin with thumb and finger. ‘In that case I’m not interested. Taking others’ stolen property always leads to dead bodies in this game. And dead bodies are trouble and bad for business.’
‘This is not stolen property.’
‘I venture to suggest I have a fairly good overview of supply channels, and this is not a product anyone has seen before. So I repeat: I will not buy anything until I have the assurance that this will not rebound on us.’
‘I’ve allowed myself to be brought here blindfolded because I understand the need for discretion. I hope you can show me the same sensitivity.’
The heat had made his glasses mist up, but he kept them on. Andrey and Peter had searched him in the car while I had searched his eyes, body language, voice, hands. All I found was loneliness. There was no fat, ugly girlfriend, only this man and his fantastic dope.
‘For all I know, you could be a policeman,’ the old boy said.
‘With this?’ the man said, pointing to his foot.
‘If you import goods, how come I haven’t heard of you before?’
‘Because I’m new. I don’t have a record and no one knows me, neither in the police nor in this business. I have a so-called respectable profession and have so far lived a normal life.’ He made a cautious grimace which I realised was supposed to be a smile. ‘An abnormally normal life, some might claim.’
‘Hm.’ The old boy stroked his chin repeatedly. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me to his chair so that I was standing beside him and looking at the man.
‘Do you know what I think, Gusto? I think he makes this product himself. What do you think?’
I deliberated. ‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘You know, Gusto, you don’t exactly need to be an Einstein in chemistry. There are detailed recipes on the Net for how to turn opium into morphine and then to heroin. Let’s say you get hold of ten kilos of raw opium. Then you find yourself some boiling equipment, a fridge, a bit of methanol and a fan, and hey presto, you’ve got eight and a half kilos of heroin crystals. Dilute it and you have one point two kilos of street heroin.’
The man in the all-weather jacket coughed. ‘It requires a bit more than that.’
‘The question’, the old boy said, ‘is how you get hold of the opium.’
The man shook his head.
‘Aha,’ the old boy said, stroking the inside of my arm. ‘Not opiate. Opioid.’
The man didn’t answer.
‘Did you hear what he said, Gusto?’ The old boy pointed a finger at the club foot. ‘He makes totally synthetic dope. He doesn’t need any help from nature or Afghanistan, he applies simple chemistry and makes everything on the kitchen table. Total control and no risky smuggling. And it’s at least as powerful as heroin. We’ve got a clever guy among us, Gusto. That sort of enterprise commands respect.’
‘Respect,’ I mumbled.
‘How much can you produce?’
‘Two kilos a week maybe. It depends.’
‘I’ll take the lot,’ the old boy said.
‘The lot?’ The man’s voice was flat and contained no real surprise.
‘Yes, everything you produce. May I make you a business proposition, herr…?’
‘Ibsen.’
