Phantom(28)

We told each other about all the things we were going to do and become, about the places we would go, smoking and sniffing everything we could buy with his summer job money.

I told him about my foster-father, how he had thrown me out because my foster-mother had made advances on me. And you, Oleg, talked about a guy your mother had been with, a cop called Harry you claimed was ‘top notch’. Someone you could trust. But something had gone sour. First of all, between him and your mother. And then you had been dragged into a murder case he was working on. And that was when you and your mother had moved to Amsterdam. I said the guy probably was ‘top notch’, but it was a pretty corny expression. And you said ‘fricking’ was even cornier. Had anyone told me the word was ‘frigging’? Even that was childish. And why did I speak such exaggerated cockney Norwegian? I wasn’t even from the East End of Oslo. I said exaggerating was a principle I had, it emphasised a point and ‘fricking’ was so wrong it was right. And the sun shone, and I thought that was the best thing anyone had said about me.

We begged for money on Karl Johans gate for fun. I nicked a skateboard from Rådhusplassen and swapped it for speed on Jernbanetorget half an hour later. We took the boat to Hovedøya, swam and bummed beers. Some girls wanted me to join them in Daddy’s yacht and you dived from the mast, only just clearing the deck. We caught the tram to Ekeberg to see the sunset and there was the Norway Cup, and a sad football coach from Trøndelag was looking at me, and I said I would give him a blow job for a thousand kroner. He stumped up and I waited until his trousers were round his ankles before I scarpered. And you told me afterwards he had looked ‘totally lost’ and turned to you, as if asking you to take over the job. Jeez, how we laughed!

That summer never ended. Then it did after all. We spent your last pay packet on spliffs, which we blew into the pale, empty night sky. You said you were going to return to school, get top grades and study law, like your mother. And that afterwards you would do fricking Police College! We laughed so much we had tears in our eyes.

But when school began I saw less of you. Then even less. You lived up on Holmenkollen Ridge with your mother while I crashed on a mattress in the rehearsal room of a band who said I was fine there so long as I kept an eye on their gear and stayed away when they were practising. So I gave up on you, thinking you were comfortable back in your conventional little life. And that was about the time I started dealing.

It happened quite by chance. I had milked a woman I was staying with, then I went to Oslo Central and asked Tutu if he had any ice. Tutu had a bit of a stammer and was slave to Odin, the boss of Los Lobos in Alnabru. He had got his name from the time Odin, needing to launder a suitcase of drugs money, had sent Tutu to a state bookies’ in Italy to put a bet on a match that Odin knew was fixed. The home team was supposed to win 2–0. Odin had instructed Tutu how to say ‘two–nil’, but then came the turning point. Tutu was so nervous and stammered so much as he tried to place the bet that the bookie only heard tu-tu and wrote it on the coupon. Ten minutes before the end the home side was of course leading 2–0, and everything was peace and light. Except for Tutu, who had just seen on the betting slip that he had put the money on tu-tu: 2–2. He knew that Odin would kneecap him. He has a thing about kneecapping people. But then came turning-point number two. On the away bench was a new forward from Poland whose Italian was as bad as Tutu’s English, so he hadn’t picked up that the game was a fix. When the manager sent him onto the field, he played as well as he thought they had paid him to do: he scored. Twice. Tutu was saved. But when Tutu landed in Oslo that night and went straight to Odin to tell him about his stroke of good fortune, his luck evened out. He started by giving the news that he had blundered and put the cash on the wrong result. And he was so worked up and stammered so much that Odin lost patience, grabbed a revolver from a drawer and – turning-point number three – shot Tutu in the knee long before he came to the bit about the Pole.

Anyway, that day at Oslo Central Tutu told me there was no more ice to be h-h-had, I would have to make do with p-p-powder. It was cheaper and both parts are methamphetamine, but I can’t stand it. Ice is lovely white bits of crystal that blow your head off whereas the stinking yellow shit you get in Oslo is mixed with baking powder, refined sugar, aspirin, vitamin B12 and the devil and his mother. Or, for connoisseurs, chopped-up painkillers that taste of speed. But I bought what he had with a tiny bulk discount and had enough money left for some A. And since amphetamines are an unadulterated health food compared with meth, just a bit slower to work, I sniffed some speed, diluted the meth with more baking powder and sold it at Plata with a fantastic mark-up.