Phantom(10)

Stein. The silent elder brother. The first to recognise the cuckoo by the plumage, but smart enough to keep his distance. The clever, bright, smart lone wolf who upped and left for a student town as far away as possible and as soon as he could. Who tried to persuade Irene, his dear little sister, to join him. He thought that she could finish school in fricking Trondheim, that it would do her good to get away from Oslo. But Mum put a stop to Irene’s evacuation. She knew nothing of course. Didn’t want to know.

Irene. Attractive, lovely, freckled, fragile Irene. You were too good for this world. You were all I was not. And yet you loved me. Would you have loved me if you had known? Would you have loved me if you had known that I was shagging your mother from the age of fifteen? Shagging your red-wine-soaked, whimpering mother, taking her from behind against the toilet door or the cellar door or the kitchen door while whispering ‘Mum’ in her ear because it made both her and me hot. She gave me money, she covered my back if anything happened, she said she only wanted to borrow me until she was old and ugly and I met a nice, sweet girl. And when I answered, ‘But, Mum, you are old and ugly,’ she laughed it off and begged for more.

I still had the bruises after my foster-father’s punches and kicks the day I rang him at work and told him to come home at three, there was something important I had to tell him. I left the front door ajar so that she wouldn’t hear him come in. And I spoke into her ear to drown his footsteps, said the sweet nothings she liked to hear.

I saw the reflection in the kitchen window, of him standing in the kitchen doorway.

He moved out the next day. Irene and Stein were told that Mum and Dad had not been getting on well for a while and had decided to separate for a bit. Irene was broken-hearted. Stein was in his student town, and he answered with a text: ‘Sad. Where would u like me to go 4 Xmas?’

Irene cried and cried. She loved me. Of course she searched for me. For the Thief.

The church bells rang for the fifth time. Crying and sniffling from the pews. Cocaine, incredible earnings. Rent a city-centre flat in the West End, register it in some junkie’s name who you pay off with a shot, and start selling in small quantities by stairways or gates, ratchet up the price as they begin to feel secure; coke folk pay anything for security. Get on your feet, get out, cut down on dope, become somebody. Don’t die in a squat like a bloody loser. The priest coughs. ‘We are here to commemorate Gusto Hanssen.’

A voice from far back: ‘Th-th-thief.’

Tutu’s tribe sitting there in biker jackets and bandanas. And even further back: the whimpering of a dog. Rufus. Good, loyal Rufus. Have you come back here? Or is it me who has already gone there?

* * *

Tord Schultz placed his Samsonite bag on the conveyor belt winding its way into the X-ray machine beside the smiling security official.

‘I don’t understand why you let them give you such a schedule,’ the flight attendant said. ‘Bangkok twice a week.’

‘I asked them to,’ Tord said, passing through the metal detector. Someone in the trade union   had proposed that the crews should go on strike against having to be exposed to radiation several times a day. American research had shown that proportionally more pilots and cabin crew died of cancer than the rest of the population. But the strike agitators had said nothing about the average life expectancy also being higher. Air crew died of cancer because there was very little else to die of. They lived the safest lives in the world. The most boring lives in the world.

‘You want to fly that much?’

‘I’m a pilot. I like flying,’ Tord lied, taking down his bag, extending the handle and walking away.

She was alongside him in seconds, the clack of her heels on Gardermoen’s grey antique foncé marble floor almost drowning the buzz of voices under the vaulted wooden beams and steel. However, unfortunately it did not drown her whispered question.

‘Is that because she left you, Tord? Is it because you have too much time on your hands and nothing to fill it with? Is it because you don’t want to sit at home—’

‘It’s because I need the overtime,’ he interrupted. At least that was not an outright lie.

‘Because I know exactly what it’s like. I got divorced last winter, as you know.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Tord, who didn’t even know she had been married. He shot her a swift glance. Fifty? Wondered what she looked like in the morning without make-up and the fake tan. A faded flight attendant with a faded flight attendant dream. He was pretty sure he had never rogered her. Not face on, anyway. Whose stock joke had that been? One of the old pilots. One of the whiskey-on-the-rocks, blue-eyed fighter pilots. One of those who managed to retire before their status crashed. He accelerated as they turned into the corridor towards the flight crew centre. She was out of breath, but still kept up with him. But if he maintained this speed she might not have enough air to speak.