‘What the hell are you doing?’ Harry asked from the corridor. Routine procedure.
‘What’s it look like?’ The voice was younger than the face, sonorous with the distinct Swedish tone that Swedish dance bands and revival preachers adore for some unaccountable reason. ‘I broke in to check if you had anything of value, of course.’ It wasn’t just a Swedish tone, he was speaking Swedish. He raised both hands aloft. The right one held a universal adapter, the left a paperback edition of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral.
‘You’ve got nothing at all, have you.’ He threw the items on the bed. Peered into the little suitcase, and glanced enquiringly at Harry. ‘Not even a shaver.’
‘What the …’ Harry ignored routine procedures, strode into the room and smacked the suitcase lid down.
‘Easy, my son,’ said the man, holding up his palms. ‘Don’t take it personally. You’re new to this establishment. The question was only who would rob you first.’
‘Who? Do you mean …?’
The old man proffered his hand. ‘Welcome. I’m Cato. I live in 310.’
Harry looked down at the grimy frying pan of a hand.
‘Come on,’ Cato said. ‘My hands are the only part of me it is advisable to touch.’
Harry said his name and shook his hand. It was surprisingly soft.
‘Priest’s hands,’ the man said in answer to his thoughts. ‘Got anything to drink, Harry?’
Harry nodded towards his suitcase and the open wardrobe doors. ‘You already know.’
‘That you haven’t got anything, yes. I mean on you. In your jacket pocket, for example.’
Harry took out a Game Boy and tossed it on the bed where all his other possessions were strewn.
Cato angled his head and looked at Harry. His ear folded against his shoulder. ‘With that suit I might have thought you were one of the by-the-hour guests, not a resident. What are you doing here, anyway?’
‘I still think that should be my line.’
Cato put a hand on Harry’s arm and looked him in the eyes. ‘My son,’ he said in his sonorous voice, stroking the cloth with two fingertips. ‘That is a very nice suit. How much did you pay?’
Harry was about to say something. A combination of courtesy, rebuff and threat. But he realised it was pointless. He gave up. And smiled.
Cato smiled back.
Like a reflection.
‘No time to chat. I’ve got to go to work now.’
‘Which is?’
‘There you are. You’re a bit interested in your fellow mortals as well. I proclaim the Word of God to the hapless.’
‘Now?’
‘My calling has no church times. Goodbye.’
With a gallant bow the old man turned and departed. As he passed through the doorway Harry saw one of his unopened packs of Camel protruding from Cato’s jacket pocket. Harry closed the door after him. The smell of old man and ash hung in the room. He went to push up the window. The sounds of the town filled the room at once: the faint, regular drone of traffic, jazz from an open window, a distant police siren rising and falling, a hapless individual screaming his pain between houses, followed by breaking glass, the wind rustling through dry leaves, the click-clack of women’s heels. Sounds of Oslo.
A slight movement caused him to look down. The glow from the yard lamp fell on the skip. There was the gleam of a brown tail. A rat was sitting on the edge and sniffing up at him with a shiny nose. Harry was reminded of something his thoughtful employer, Herman Kluit, had said, and which perhaps, or perhaps not, was a reference to his job: ‘A rat is neither good nor evil. It does what a rat has to do.’
* * *
This was the worst part of an Oslo winter. The part before ice has settled on the fjord and the wind blows through the city-centre streets, salty and freezing cold. As usual I stood in Dronningens gate selling speed, Stesolid and Rohypnol. I stamped my feet on the ground. I had lost sensation in my toes and pondered whether the day’s profits should go on the hideously expensive Freelance boots I’d seen in the window of Steen & Strøm. Or on ice, which I had heard was for sale down at Plata. Perhaps I could filch some speed – Tutu wouldn’t notice – and buy the boots. But on reflection I thought it was safer to nick the boots and make sure Odin got what was his. After all, I was better off than Oleg, who’d had to start from scratch selling hash in the frozen hell by the river. Tutu had given him the pitch under Nybrua Bridge where he competed with people from all the fucked-up places round the world, and was probably the only person to speak fluent Norwegian from Anker Bridge to the harbour.
I saw a guy in an Arsenal shirt further up the street. Usually Bisken, a pimply Sørlander who wore a studded dog collar, stood there. New man but the procedure was the same: he was gathering a group together. For the time being he had three punters waiting. God knows what they were so frightened of. The cops had given up in this area, and if they hauled in pushers off the street it was only for appearances’ sake because some politician had been shooting his mouth off again.