The Leopard(44)

‘Coming,’ Harry said.

He walked into the kitchen. Looked at the cupboard under the sink. Hesitated. Then he took down the photos of Rakel and Oleg and put them in his inside pocket.

* * *

‘Hong Kong?’ sniffed Øystein Eikeland. He turned his bloated alky face with huge hooter and sad drooping moustache to Harry in the seat next to him. ‘What the hell d’you do there?’

‘You know me,’ Harry said as Øystein stopped on red outside the Radisson SAS Hotel.

‘I bloody do not,’ Øystein said, sprinkling tobacco into his roll-up. ‘How would I?’

‘Well, we grew up together. Do you remember?’

‘So? You were already a sodding enigma then, Harry.’

The rear door was torn open and a man wearing a coat got in. ‘Airport express, main station. Quick.’

‘Taxi’s taken,’ Øystein said without turning.

‘Nonsense, the sign on the roof ’s lit.’

‘Hong Kong sounds groovy. Why d’you come home actually?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the man on the back seat.

Øystein poked the cigarette between his lips and lit up. ‘Tresko rang to invite me to a get-together tonight.’

‘Tresko hasn’t got any friends,’ Harry said.

‘He hasn’t, has he. So I asked him, “Who are your friends then?” “You”, he said, and asked me, “And yours, Øystein?” “You,” I answered. “So it’s just us two.” We’d forgotten all about you, Harry. That’s what happens when you go to . . .’ He funnelled his lips and, in a staccato voice, said, ‘Hong Kong!’

‘Hey!’ came a shout from the back seat. ‘If you’ve finished, perhaps we might . . .’

The lights changed to green, and Øystein accelerated away.

‘Are you coming then? It’s at Tresko’s place.’

‘Stinks of toe-fart there, Øystein.’

‘He’s got a full fridge.’

‘Sorry, I’m not in a party mood.’

‘Party mood?’ Øystein snorted, smacking the wheel with his hand. ‘You don’t know what a party mood is, Harry. You always backed off parties. Do you remember? We’d bought some beers, intending to go to some fancy address in Nordstrand with loads of women. And you suggested you, me and Tresko went to the bunkers instead and drank on our own.’

‘Hey, this isn’t the way to the airport express!’ came a whine from the back seat.

Øystein braked for red again, tossed his wispy shoulder-length hair to the side and addressed the back seat. ‘And that was where we ended up. Got rat-arsed and that fella started singing “No Surrender” until Tresko chucked empty bottles at him.’

‘Honest to God!’ the man sobbed, tapping his forefinger on the glass of a TAG Heuer watch. ‘I just have to catch the last plane to Stockholm.’

‘The bunkers are great,’ Harry said. ‘Best view in Oslo.’

‘Yep,’ Øystein said. ‘If the Allies had attacked there, the Germans would’ve shot them to bits.’

‘Right,’ Harry grinned.

‘You know, we had a standing agreement, him and me and Tresko,’ Øystein said, but the suit was now desperately scanning the rain for vacant taxis. ‘If the sodding Allies come, we’ll bloody shoot the meat off their carcasses. Like this.’ Øystein pointed an imaginary machine gun at the suit and fired a salvo. The suit stared in horror at the crazy taxi driver whose chattering noises were causing small, foam-white drops of spit to land on his dark, freshly ironed suit trousers. With a little gasp he managed to open the car door and stumble out into the rain.

Øystein burst into coarse, hearty laughter.

‘You were missing home,’ Øystein said. ‘You wanted to dance with Killer Queen at Ekeberg restaurant again.’

Harry chuckled and shook his head. In the wing mirror he saw the man charging madly towards the National Theatre station. ‘It’s my father. He’s ill. He hasn’t got long left.’

‘Oh shit.’ Øystein pressed the accelerator again. ‘Good man, too.’

‘Thank you. Thought you would want to know.’

‘Course I bloody do. Have to tell my folks.’

‘So, here we are,’ Øystein said, parking outside the garage and the tiny, yellow timber house in Oppsal.

‘Yup,’ Harry said.

Øystein inhaled so hard the cigarette seemed to be catching fire, held the smoke down in his lungs and let it out again with a long, gurgling wheeze. Then he tilted his head slightly and flicked the ash into the ashtray. Harry experienced a sweet pain in his heart. How many times had he seen Øystein do exactly that, seen him lean to the side as though the cigarette were so heavy that he would lose balance. Head tilted. The ash on the ground in a smokers’ shed at school, in an empty beer bottle at a party they had gatecrashed, on cold, damp concrete in a bunker.