Phantom(27)

Was that really him? Harry could not remember having such gentle features.

Rakel’s eyes gleamed, and he imagined he could hear her laughter, the laughter he loved, of which he never tired, and always tried to recall. She laughed with others too, but with him and Oleg it had a different tone, one reserved for them alone.

Harry searched the rest of the locker.

There was a white sweater with a light blue border. Not Oleg’s style, he wore short jackets and black T-shirts emblazoned with Slayer and Slipknot. Harry smelt the sweater. Faint perfume, feminine. There was a plastic bag on the hat shelf. He opened it. Quick intake of breath. It was a junkie’s kit: two syringes, a spoon, a rubber band, a lighter and some cotton wool. All that was missing was dope. Harry was about to replace the bag when he spotted something. A shirt at the very back. It was red and white. He took it. It was a football shirt with an imperative on the chest: Fly Emirates. Arsenal.

He looked up at the photograph, at Oleg. Even he was smiling. Smiling as though he believes, at least then, that there are three people sitting here who agree that this is wonderful, everything will be fine, this is how we want things to be. So why would it go off course? Why would the man with his hands round the wheel drive off course?

‘The way you lied you would always be there for us.’

Harry removed the photos from the locker door and slipped them into his inside pocket.

When he emerged the sun was on its way down behind Ullern Ridge.





8

CAN YOU SEE I’m bleeding, Dad? I’m bleeding your bad blood. And your blood, Oleg. It’s you the church bells should be tolling for. I curse you, curse the day I met you. You’d been to a gig at Spectrum, Judas Priest. I had been hanging around and joined the crowd of people coming out of the venue.

‘Wow, cool T-shirt,’ I said. ‘Where did you get it?’

You gave me a strange look. ‘Amsterdam.’

‘Did you see Judas Priest in Amsterdam?’

‘Why not?’

I knew nothing about Judas Priest, but at least I had done some swotting and found out it was a band, not a guy, and that the lead singer’s name was Rob something or other.

‘Great. Priest rules.’

You stiffened for a second and looked at me. Concentrated, like an animal that had caught a scent. A danger, or prey, a sparring partner. Or – in your case – a possible soulmate. For you carried your loneliness like a wet, heavy raincoat, Oleg, you walked with a bent back and shuffled your feet. I had picked you out precisely because of your loneliness. I said I’d buy you a Coke if you told me about the Amsterdam gig.

So you talked about Judas Priest, the concert at Heineken Music Hall two years ago, about the two friends of eighteen and nineteen who shot themselves after listening to a Priest record with a hidden message that said ‘Do it’. Except that one of them survived. Priest were heavy metal, had been into speed metal. And twenty minutes later you had spoken so much about goths and death that it was time to introduce meth into the conversation.

‘Let’s hit the high spots, Oleg. Celebrate this meeting of like minds. What do you say?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know some fun people who are going to do a bit of smoking in the park.’

‘Really?’ Sceptical.

‘No heavy stuff, just ice.’

‘I don’t do that, sorry.’

‘Hell, I don’t do it either. We can smoke a bit of pipe. You and me. Real ice, not the powder shit. Like Rob.’

Oleg stopped in mid-gulp. ‘Rob?’

‘Yes.’

‘Rob Halford?’

‘Sure. His roadie bought from the same guy I’m going to buy from now. Got any money?’

I said it in such a casual way, such a casual and matter-of-fact way that there was not a shadow of suspicion in the serious eyes he fixed on me. ‘Rob Halford smokes ice?’

He forked up the five hundred kroner I asked him for. I told him to wait, got up and left. Down the road to Vaterland Bridge. So, when I was out of range, to the right, I was over the road and down the three hundred metres to Oslo Central Station in minutes. Thinking that would be the last I saw of Oleg fricking Fauke.

It was only when I was sitting in the tunnel under the platforms with a pipe in my mouth that I realised he and I were not finished with each other yet. Nowhere near. He stood above me without saying a word. He leaned against the wall and slid down beside me. Stuck out his hand. I gave him the pipe. He inhaled. Coughed. And stuck out his other hand. ‘The change.’

With that, the team of Gusto and Oleg became a fact. Every day, after he had finished at Clas Ohlson, where he had a summer job in the warehouse, we went down to the city centre, the parks, bathed in the filthy water in Middelalder Park, and watched them building a new part of town around the Opera House.