‘I think you’re absolutely right.’
The two women laughed.
‘D’you know what?’ Olaug said. ‘I’m glad they sent you. I like you. And there’s no need to blush, my dear. I’m just a lonely old lady. Save it for an admirer. Or perhaps you’re married? You’re not? No, well, that’s not the end of the world.’
‘Have you ever been married?’
‘Me?’
She laughed as she set out the cups.
‘No, I was so young when I had Sven that I never had a chance…’
‘You didn’t?’
‘Well, yes, I probably did have a chance or two. But a woman in my situation had such low prestige in those days that the offers you received were generally from men no-one else wanted. It’s not called “finding your match” for nothing.’
‘Just because you were a single mother?’
‘Because Sven was the son of a German, my dear.’
The kettle began to give a low whistle.
‘Ah, I understand,’ Beate said. ‘He must have had a tough time growing up.’
Olaug stared into the air without sensing that the whistling was getting louder.
‘The toughest you can imagine. Just thinking about it can still make me cry. Poor boy.’
‘The water…’
‘There you see. I’m getting senile.’
Olaug lifted the kettle from the stove and poured water into their cups.
‘What does your son do now?’ Beate asked, looking at her watch:
4.15.
‘Import-Export. Various things from the old communist countries.’ Olaug smiled. ‘I don’t know how much money he’s making out of it, but I like the sound of it. “Import-Export.” It’s just nonsense, but I like it.’
‘Anyway, it’s all worked out fine. Despite the tough time he had growing up, I mean.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t always like that. You’ve probably got him on your records.’
‘There are lots of people on our records. Many who’ve turned out alright, too.’
‘Something happened once when he went to Berlin. I don’t know quite what. He’s never liked talking about what he does, Sven hasn’t. Always so secretive. But I think he might have been visiting his father. And I think it made him feel better about himself. Ernst Schwabe was a dashing man.’
Olaug sighed.
‘But I may be wrong. Anyway, Sven changed.’
‘Oh, how?’
‘He became calmer. Before, he was always chasing things.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Everything. Money. Excitement. Women. He’s like his father, you know. An incurable romantic and ladies’ man. He likes young women, Sven does. And they like him. But I suspect he’s found someone special. He said on the phone that he’s got some news for me. He sounded excited.’
‘He didn’t say what it was?’
‘He wanted to wait until he got here, he said.’
‘Got here?’
‘Yes, he’s coming this evening. He has a meeting first. He’s staying in Oslo until tomorrow, then he’s going back.’
‘To Berlin?’
‘No, no. It’s a long time since Sven lived there. Now he lives in the Czech Republic. Bohemia, he usually calls it, the show-off.’
‘In… er… Bohemia?’
‘Prague.’
Marius Veland stared out of the window of room 406. A girl was lying on a towel on the lawn in front of the student building. She was not unlike the one in 303 whom he had secretly christened Shirley, after Shirley Manson from Garbage. But it wasn’t her. The sun over Oslo fjord had hidden itself behind the clouds. At last the weather had begun to warm up – a heatwave was forecast for the week. Summer in Oslo. Marius Veland was looking forward to it. The alternative had been to go home to Bofjord, the midnight sun and a summer job at the petrol station. To Mother’s meatballs and Father’s endless questions about why he had begun to study Media Studies in Oslo when he had the grades to train to become a civil engineer at NTNU in Trondheim. To Saturdays at the community centre with drunken locals, screaming classmates who had never left their own neighbourhood and thought that those who had were traitors; to the dance band that called itself a ‘blues band’, but always managed to mangle Creedence Clearwater Revival and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
That was not the only reason for him to be in Oslo this summer, though. He had landed the dream job. He was going to listen to records, watch movies and get paid for typing up his opinions on a PC. Over the past two years he had sent his reviews to several of the established papers, without success, but last month he went to So What! where a friend had introduced him to Runar. Runar had told him that he had wound up the clothes business he was running to start Zone , a free paper whose first issue would come out in August, if everything went to plan. The friend had mentioned that Marius liked writing reviews; Runar had said that he liked his shirt and employed him there and then. As a reviewer, Marius’s brief was to reflect ‘new urban values by dealing with popular culture with an irony that was warm, well informed and inclusive’. Such was Runar’s formulation of Marius’s assignment, and for it Marius would be richly rewarded, not in cash, but in free tickets to concerts, films, new bars and access to a milieu where he could make interesting contacts with a view to his future. This was his chance and he needed to be properly prepared. Of course, he had a good general background in pop, but he had borrowed CDs from Runar’s collection to do some further swotting up on the history of popular music. In recent days it had been American rock in the ’80s: R.E.M., Green On Red, Dream Syndicate, Pixies. Right now Violent Femmes was on the CD player. It sounded dated, but energetic.
The girl below got up from her towel. It was probably a little cool. Marius followed her with his eyes towards the neighbouring block. On her way she passed someone walking with a bike. From his clothing he looked like a courier. Marius closed his eyes. He was going to write.
Otto Tangen rubbed his eyes with nicotine-stained fingers. A sense of unease had spread through the bus, though it may have seemed to the outside world like calm. No-one stirred and no-one uttered a word. It was 5.20 and there had not been so much as a movement on one of the screens, just tiny fragments of time spurting by in white digits in the corner. Another drop of sweat rolled down between Otto’s buttocks. Sitting like this you began to have paranoid thoughts, you imagined that someone had been tampering with the equipment and that you were sitting watching a recording from the previous day or something of that kind.
He was drumming his fingers on the table beside the console. That bastard Waaler had banned smoking in the bus.
Otto leaned to the right and squeezed out a silent fart while looking at the guy with the blond shaven skull. He had been sitting in a chair without saying a word ever since he arrived. Looked like a retired bouncer.
‘Doesn’t seem our man’s turning up for work today,’ Otto said. ‘Perhaps he thought it was too hot. Perhaps he postponed it till tomorrow and went for a beer in Aker Brygge instead. They said in the weather report that -’
‘Shut up, Tangen.’
Waaler spoke in a low voice, but it was loud enough.
Otto gave a deep sigh and flexed his shoulders.
The clock in the corner of the screen said 5.21.
‘Has anyone seen the guy in 303 leave?’
It was Waaler’s voice. Otto discovered that Waaler was looking at him.
‘I was asleep this morning,’ he said.
‘I want room 303 checked. Falkeid?’
The head of Special Forces cleared his throat.
‘I don’t consider the risk -’
‘Now, Falkeid.’
The fans cooling the electronics buzzed as Falkeid and Waaler exchanged looks.
Falkeid cleared his throat again.
‘Alpha to Charlie Two. Come in. Over.’
Atmospheric noise.
‘Charlie Two.’
‘Clear 303 right away.’
‘Received. Clearing 303.’