It was Saturday, and I was going through the friends I had who might be willing to lend me money. Didn’t take long. None.
Then it struck me who ought to lend me money at least. If he knew what was good for him.
I sneaked onto the bus, travelled eastwards, back to the proper side of the river, and got off at Manglerud.
This time Truls Berntsen was at home.
He was standing in the doorway on the fifth floor of his block and heard me give him roughly the same ultimatum I had given in Blindernveien. If he didn’t dig deep for five big ones, I would let it be known that he had killed Tutu and buried his body afterwards.
But Berntsen was cool. Asked me into his flat. He was sure we could come to some agreement, he said.
But there was something all wrong about his eyes.
So I didn’t budge and said there was nothing to discuss, either he coughed up or else I would grass on him for money. He said the police didn’t pay people to grass on officers. Five thousand was fine though, he said, we went way back, we were almost pals. Said he didn’t have much cash at home, so we would have to drive to an ATM, the car was down in the garage.
I chewed on that one. Alarm bells were ringing, but the craving was a bloody nightmare, it shut out all sensible thoughts. So, even though I knew this was not good, I nodded.
‘So, you’ve got the final result, have you?’ Harry said, scanning the crowd in the cafe. No suspicious types. Or, to be more accurate, loads of suspicious types, but no one who could be presumed to be police.
‘Yes,’ Beate said.
Harry shifted his grip on the phone. ‘I think I already know who clawed Gusto.’
‘Oh?’ There was surprise in Beate’s voice.
‘Yep. A man on a DNA register is usually a suspect or a convicted criminal or a policeman who might have contaminated a crime scene. In this case it’s the last. His name’s Truls Berntsen and he’s an officer with Orgkrim.’
‘How do you know it’s him?’
‘Well, the sum of things that have happened, you could say.’
‘Fine,’ Beate said. ‘I don’t doubt your reasoning is solid.’
‘Thank you,’ Harry said.
‘And yet you’re wrong,’ Beate said.
‘What?’
‘The blood under Gusto’s nails doesn’t come from anyone called Berntsen.’
But while I was standing in front of Truls Berntsen’s door — he had just gone to get the car keys — I looked down. At my shoes. Bloody fantastic shoes. Then I began to think about Isabelle Skoyen.
She wasn’t dangerous like Berntsen was. And she was mad about me. Wasn’t she? Perhaps?
Mad and a half.
So before Berntsen returned I leapt down seven steps at a time and pressed the lift button on each floor.
I jumped on the Metro for Oslo Central. At first I thought I should ring her, but changed my mind. She could always snub me on the phone, but never if I turned up in wonderful, drop-dead-gorgeous person. Saturday also meant her stable lad was off. Which in turn — since nags and pigs are pretty bad at getting food from the fridge — meant she was at home. So at Oslo Central I got into the season-ticket carriage on the Ostfold line as the journey to Rygge cost a hundred and four forty, which I still didn’t have. I walked from the station to the farm. It’s quite a distance. Especially if it starts raining. It started to rain.
As I came into the yard I saw her car, one of those 4x4s people drive to barge their way through city-centre streets. I knocked at the farmhouse door. But no one opened it. I called, the echo resounding around the walls, but no one answered. She could of course have gone for a ride on a horse. Fine, I knew where she kept her cash, and out in the country people still didn’t always lock their doors. So I pressed the handle, and, yes, it was quite open.
I was on my way up to the bedroom when suddenly there she was. Big, standing legs apart on the stairs, wearing a bathrobe.
‘What are you doing here, Gusto?’
‘I wanted to see you,’ I said, turning on the smile. Turned it right up.
‘You need a dentist,’ she said coldly.
I knew what she meant, I had some brown stuff on my teeth. They looked a bit rotten, but it was nothing a wire brush couldn’t fix.
‘What are you doing here?’ she repeated. ‘Money?’
That was the thing with Isabelle and me, we were the same, we didn’t need to pretend.
‘Five big ones?’ I said.
‘That won’t work, Gusto, we’ve finished with that. Should I drive you back to the station?’
‘Eh? Come on, Isabelle. What about a shag?’
‘Shhh!’
It took me a second to suss the situation. Bit slow on the uptake, I was. Have to blame the fricking craving. There she stood, middle of the day, in a bathrobe but fully made up.
‘You expecting someone?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer.
‘New fuck buddy?’
‘That’s what happens when you go missing, Gusto.’
‘I’m hot on comebacks,’ I said and was so quick she lost balance as I grabbed her wrist and pulled her to me.
‘You’re wet,’ she said and struggled, but no more than she did when she wanted it hard.
‘It’s raining,’ I said, biting her earlobe. ‘What’s your excuse?’ I already had a hand up under her bathrobe.
‘And you stink. Let me go!’
My hand stroked her shaven pussy, found the crack. She was wet. Dripping wet. I could get two fingers up at once. Too wet. I felt something sticky. Pulled my hand away. Held it up. My fingers were covered with something white and slimy. I looked up at her in surprise. Saw the triumphant grin as she leaned over to me and whispered: ‘As I said. If you go missing…’
I lost it, raised my hand to slap, but she grabbed it and stopped me. Strong bitch, that Skoyen.
‘Go now, Gusto.’
I felt something in my eyes. If I hadn’t known better I would have said it was tears.
‘Five thousand,’ I whispered in a thick voice.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Then you’ll come back. And we can’t have that.’
‘You cunt!’ I shouted. ‘You’re forgetting a few seriously important points. Cough up or I’ll go to the papers with your whole set-up. And by that I’m not referring to our shagging, but the fact that the whole clean-up-Oslo stuff is your and the old boy’s doing. Fricking pseudo socialists. Dope money and politics in the same bed. How much do you think Verdens Gang will pay?’
I heard the bedroom door open.
‘If I were you I’d make a run for it now,’ Isabelle said.
I heard the creak of the floorboards in the blackness behind her.
I wanted to run, I really did. Yet I didn’t move.
It came closer.
I imagined I could see the stripes on his face light in the dark. Fuck buddy. Tiger boy.
He coughed.
Then he stepped into the light.
He was so drop-dead gorgeous that, sick as I was, I could feel it again. The desire to place my hand on his chest. Feel the sun-warmed, sweaty skin under my fingertips. Feel the muscles that would automatically tense in shock at whatever bloody liberties I took.
‘Who did you say?’ Harry said.
