Norwegian by Night

CHAPTER 14

Kadri holds the huge D-battery Maglite in his hand and looks down at the woman cop he has just bludgeoned. He doesn’t like hitting women — though it doesn’t especially bother him, either — and she certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve it personally. But he needed that box, and he was pretty certain that asking her for it wouldn’t have done the trick.

‘You should have checked the closet,’ he says to her in English. ‘You check the shower, but not the closet. Who would stand in a shower? Everyone gets killed in a shower. Don’t you go to the movies? Psycho. Dead in the shower. The Mexican in No Country for Old Men. Dead in shower. Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath. Almost dead in the shower, or in the bath, anyway. But she did that thing with her toe and got out OK. Still the shower, though.’

He looks at his feet for a moment. Then he says, ‘Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Dead in shower. John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Very dead in shower. But never closets. I can’t think of anyone shot in a closet. This is why I hide in closets.’

Kadri scratches his stomach. ‘So, look. I’m taking the box and going for a coffee. Get well soon.’

Kadri checks her pulse, confirms that she’s alive, picks up the box, places it under his arm, and walks out the front door. He strides up the street directly past the police car, gets on his Vespa scooter, and heads directly to the nearest Kaffebrenneriet for a bun.

It is good to see the process working as it should. Burim is infiltrating the Serbs with more than his penis, and will come back with valuable information. Gjon is collecting the guns that Enver asked for. The box — whatever is in it — has been recovered.

The sun is shining, and the air is dry and bracing. If you wave your hands in front of your face, you can pull the summer into your lungs and feel its peace and serenity. Just what an accomplished man needs.

And peaceful it is. There is no history here. No weight. No echoes or whispers of tragedy on the breeze. It is odd, really. Because, for Kadri, when he leaves Oslo itself and meets colleagues in other towns to talk politics, play cards, buy and sell drugs and the usual, he can feel the expanse of Scandinavia — the big sky, the vastness of the land — reveal itself. It is as though the lonely cannot fill that much space. It taunts them, spreads them too thinly.

They should sing, like they do in the Balkans. And dance. Something in them, here, prevents them from expressing the few words that could free them, connect them, rejoin them to each other and the heavens. They should live life. And laugh at death.

But they don’t. Their Lutheran cloaks smother them and take their voices away.

Whatever is causing it, though, it is not history. There is no history here to speak of. Some old boats and a wooden church — that’s not history. This is the part of Europe without a history. No Romans. No Christians. No Crusades. No religious wars. Only old gods and trolls and blondes wearing fur. Really, what’s to be depressed about?

How I miss our sad songs sung together for joy!

But now is not the time for sadness. Or joy. It is the time for coffee.

Kadri rocks back and forth on his toes impatiently as a Swedish girl — here in Norway for the summer because of the higher wages — delicately pours the steamed and fluffed milk into his latte, leaving on top the signature flourish of the café.

Kadri plops his forty kroner on the table and then stares deeply at the coffee.

After a moment, the girl looks at it, too.

Kadri looks up at her and says, ‘Why did you paint a vagina in my coffee?’

‘What?’

‘Vagina. In my coffee. In the foamy bit.’

‘It’s a leaf.’

‘A leaf?’

‘Yes. A leaf.’

‘You ever seen a leaf like that?’

They both consider the design in the coffee foam again.

‘It’s my first day,’ she says.

‘You were trying to make a leaf?’

‘Yes.’

‘So it’s a leaf.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Keep the change.’

A middle-aged couple pushing a lime-green pram stands to leave one of the wrought-iron tables, and Kadri springs for it. He gives a little chuckle as he wiggles into the chair.

Ah, life. So many twists and turns. So much unexpected, and so little of it preventable. We do what we can to find balance. And to stay calm, we retreat to the simple pleasures. Like coffee and a good smoke.

Once he’s well seated, Kadri whips out his iPhone and jabs at some little icons. He waits for Enver’s phone to ring.

It rings a few more times than expected. Hell, who knows what Enver is doing from one minute to another? Besides, Kadri is going to do his part, be a good soldier, pay his respects. But he isn’t going to take the extra step towards making any of this his own problem. It isn’t his kid. Kadri didn’t kill anyone. Not in Norway, anyway. The sooner this all ends, the better. Let Zezake step into the process, if it comes to that. Kadri has the box. That’s enough for now.

Enver picks up the telephone. He is breathy and humourless as ever.

They speak in Albanian.

‘So, I got the box with the stuff in it.’

‘Was there any trouble?’

‘I hit a woman cop on the head, but she’s there, and the box and I are here. She’s alive. So, that’s pretty much that.’

Enver is silent for a moment. He does this when he’s thinking. It makes Kadri cringe. If you know your mind, why not speak it?

‘They take that sort of thing seriously here.’

‘Look, Enver. Whatever, OK? I was behind her. Thump. Like the good fairy asked the bunny not to do to the field mice. She knows nothing. Can I open the box? It’s an ugly box. I’d like to get rid of the box.’

‘No.’

‘No? No what? No, I can’t open it, or no, it’s not ugly? Because, believe you me, it’s ugly. It’s all pink with little silver …’

‘You can’t open it. I don’t want you losing anything. I assume it’s locked. I expect to find it locked when you bring it to me.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Glåmlia.’

Kadri scratches his chest where the gold chain occasionally pinches some hairs.

‘Any chance that’s near Paris? I’d like to go to Paris.’

‘It’s near the Swedish border. Look it up on that stupid toy of yours.’

‘There’s something you should know.’

Enver says nothing.

‘The box? It wasn’t in her flat. It was in the apartment where it happened. And I was right. An old man lives there. And I had to hide in the closet. And it smelled bad. Like somebody peed. Maybe an old man. Maybe a young boy. I’m thinking he peed because something scary was happening outside the closet. If it was a boy, then maybe the old man got him out of there later. So I think I was right about the old man. I think maybe he knows something. And I think maybe he even has the boy. It doesn’t tell us where to look. But it tells us where not to look, you know?’

Enver hangs up without saying goodbye.

These calls are so unsatisfying. Never a thank you.

Yes, please, go back to Kosovo. Take your sullen attitude with you. The war is over.

Just before he can take a sip of his coffee, Kadri feels a tap on his shoulder.

He looks up and sees a uniformed police officer in his mid-thirties. He is wearing a blue shirt and tie.

‘What?’ Kadri says in English.

‘You’re under arrest.’

‘What are you talking about? I’m drinking coffee at a coffee shop. I’m smoking a cigarette outside, like everyone else.’

‘Like movies?’

‘What do you mean, “Do I like movies?”’

Petter had been holding his walkie-talkie, and now he raises it to his mouth and says, in Norwegian, ‘Is that the guy? Is that the voice?’

‘That’s him,’ crackles Sigrid through the radio.

Petter then tells Kadri he is under arrest, but Kadri begins to laugh.

‘You don’t have a gun. Why should I come with you? Because you have nice manners?’

‘Because they do.’

Petter signals behind Kadri, and Kadri turns to see two very serious men in black flack-jackets holding Heckler & Koch MP5 9mm submachine guns.

‘That’s the Beredskapstroppen.’

‘What?’

‘Delta force.’

Petter sees Kadri’s smug face melt.

‘They’ll shoot me here, in the café?’

‘No,’ says Petter. ‘They’ll shoot you there, in the chest.’

Then Petter leans in closely and whispers, ‘They are Santa’s little helpers. They know when you’ve been naughty or nice. And you’ve been very, very naughty.’

‘You’re maybe a little crazy, you know that?’ says Kadri.

Petter walks back to the squad car and buckles into the driver’s seat. He adjusts the rear-view mirror so he can see Sigrid lying in the back, her head with an ice pack on it, and a foul expression on her face.

‘I’m supposed to take you to the hospital. You might have a concussion.’

‘I can’t. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Don’t be stubborn.’

‘I’m not being stubborn. I have to make calls and get this wrapped up. It would take me longer to explain it to you than to do it myself.’

‘You should probably call your father before this makes the newspapers.’

‘Oh, Christ. Does it have to make the papers?’

Sigrid sees Petter shrug. ‘The police chief inspector was assaulted in connection to a murder,’ he says. ‘But I suppose you’re right. We can pretend it didn’t happen. Or, if it is in the reports, I’m sure Dagbladet won’t care very much.’

Sigrid moans.

And then her father calls.

Sigrid looks at the phone. ‘Papa’ flashes on the screen. It is not merely a headache. She’s in terrible pain — a throbbing, pulsing, pounding, relentless jackhammer to the cerebral cortex.

She curls into a foetal position in the back seat.

‘It’s my papa.’

She sees Petter shake his head. ‘Better answer it. He never leaves the farm, but he always seems to know everything.’

‘He does have a way. Push the answer button for me. I can’t find it.’

He hands her the phone.

‘Yah. Hi, Papa.’

‘So?’ he says.

‘So what?’

‘What happened?’

It occurs to Sigrid at this moment, though she is unsure why, that the American saying ‘adding insult to injury’ surely derived from someone’s literal experience.

‘I got hit on the head.’

There is a pause on the other end of the phone.

She waits for it to end. But, oddly, the pause continues.

‘Papa?’

‘Yes?’

‘You have nothing to say?’

‘Now that you ask … Why didn’t you bring a gun?’

‘I told you. I was hit on the head. I didn’t need a gun. I needed a helmet.’

‘Well, there’s no arguing with that, I suppose.’

‘Can we take this up again later, Papa? We need to regroup at the station, and try to see straight through this. And right now I need to throw up.’

The search for the missing boat on the Oslo fjord required a helicopter, and required paperwork and phone calls that Sigrid was not able to file or make when she returned to the station. Petter had to take over the office management. Most of her energy was spent insisting that she didn’t want to go to the hospital.

She either had a concussion or she didn’t have a concussion. If she had one, she shouldn’t sleep. At the police station she would not be able to sleep. So, clearly, being at the police station with a concussion was good for her health. If she did not have one, she did not need to be at the hospital. With aspirin and a cold pack, Sigrid was able to make a convincing argument — to herself — that her office was the only logical place for her to be.

With the helicopter airborne, she was now receiving regular reports. The biggest decision had been whether to send it directly south towards Nesodden, or whether it was best to head south-west towards Drøbak and along the route towards Denmark.

They chose the Drøbak direction in the end. If they took the more easterly route they would fly to Nesset or so, then turn west over land to meet up with the coast, and then travel south, backtrack, and take it north all the way back to the helipad. That would burn a lot of costly fuel, so the decision was to gamble on the Drøbak side, take it as far south as the boat engine could be expected to go, and, if they found nothing, fly overland to meet up with the Nesset area and head up towards Kjøya, Nebba, and the other hamlets in that area. Engines on that kind of boat typically had a 12-litre tank, and so guessing its range was rather straightforward.

The co-pilot was in regular contact with Petter once he came back from lunch and resumed his duties of keeping Sigrid awake. The mission took several hours because of the distance, the tree cover along much of the coastal route, and the bewildering range of sports craft and leisure craft on the water. Trying to tell whether a small boat was moored, adrift, derelict, utilised, or even fitted the description was tiring and time consuming for the pilots.

By four o’clock that afternoon, they had managed to locate it. With the change of tide, it was more than a nautical mile from the little blue house. When it was finally inspected by local people, they found no signs of Sheldon or the missing boy.

‘Where is it?’ Sigrid demands.

‘It was adrift off of Kaholmene. Near where they sank the German ship.’

‘I know where it is, Petter. Everyone knows where it is.’

Petter is getting increasingly concerned about Sigrid’s general welfare and blood pressure in particular, but thinks it wiser, and perhaps safer, to say nothing.

‘Call the local police there. I think Johan is still chief. Tell him what we’re looking for. Maybe they’ll come up with something.’

Enver’s crotch vibrates again. He reaches low and takes out the mobile phone to read the text message.

‘At the car,’ it reads.

It is late afternoon now. Enver takes one last look at the house through the binoculars, and decides that the man and woman aren’t going anywhere. Secretly, he’s thrilled for a chance to get up and stretch.

But he doesn’t stand. He crawls on his stomach until he’s over a small knoll, and then slinks low to stay out of the cabin’s line of sight.

It takes more than twenty minutes to walk back to the car through the woods, out to the road, and then around the bend where he’d made an effort to hide it, but wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped.

Gjon and Burim are leaning against the trunk. They are smoking and talking quietly when Enver shows up.

Both look up when he steps onto the dirt road, brushing off his trousers and straightening his hair.

When Enver is close enough, Gjon whispers, ‘You heard about Kadri?’

‘What have you got to eat?’

‘Huh?’

‘What do you have to eat? What did you bring? A sandwich? What?’

Gjon and Burim look at each other and then at Enver. ‘We don’t have any food. Why would we have food?’

‘You were supposed to bring food.’

‘Kadri was arrested. I don’t know what he did,’ says Gjon, ‘but he was a few blocks from the apartment when he got picked up.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I was waiting for him outside the flat,’ says Gjon. ‘He went in to look for the box and told me to …’

‘Told you to what?’

‘Well … I suppose he told me to pick up a few sandwiches.’

‘Right.’

‘Yes. But then I ate them.’

Enver says nothing. He just stands and looks at the two of them.

The impulse to stand straighter, to stop leaning against the car, comes over Burim, but he suppresses it.

‘I didn’t know they were for you. I figured one was for Kadri and the other for me. And then the police went inside and, when he came out, he walked right past me. So I ate them both.’

Enver still says nothing.

‘I called him first and told him that the woman cop was there,’ Gjon adds.

‘Who else is coming?’ Enver asks.

‘And then Kadri was the only one out.’

‘Who the f*ck else is coming?’

Burim speaks for the first time, ‘No one.’

‘Give me the rifles.’

Burim and Gjon look at each other and hesitate, too long.

‘There are no rifles. You didn’t bring those either. No food. No weapons. No soldiers. Why did you bother coming at all?’

‘Enver, it isn’t like back in Kosovo. You don’t find AKs under every pile of hay. In ’97 we looted millions, billions, of rounds of ammo. Here, you need to take classes and get a licence to shoot ducks.’

‘There’re rifles behind the counter at Intersport on the main street.’

‘But you need a permit to touch them. And if you buy one they can track us, because we need to register them.’

‘So instead of doing your job, you decided to protect yourselves from possible future paperwork. And the men?’

‘You’ve crossed a line, Enver,’ says Gjon. ‘You killed the mother of your child. Some think you’re cursed.’

‘But you’re here,’ Enver says to Burim.

He was here, but Burim had not wanted to come. He’d explained to Adrijana about the missing boy and the old man, and she’d listened very carefully. She didn’t raise her voice or begin a new and complex lecture. She just listened, and when he was finished she said, ‘I don’t know anything about this. If someone I knew had them, or was even looking, I’d have heard.’

‘But you’ll ask your people about it,’ Burim had said.

If Kadri was really threatening to expose their romance, he wanted it over. He wanted the threat lifted.

‘I can’t believe you just said, “Your people.” Is that really where we are?’

‘We’re in danger.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Adrijana had said.

When Burim got the call from Kadri, he knew he had no choice but to go and pretend that everything was fine. Show that he didn’t suspect he was suspected.

Burim reasoned that there was only one way through this. And that was for Enver to leave the country. Kadri was a punk and a drug trafficker, but, as far as Burim knew, he wasn’t a murderer. Though maybe he was. Stories from the old country blew north like leaves on a wind. There was no telling one from another. No way to know where each one came from.

There was another way, of course. It was for Enver to be arrested — to be locked in a cage where he belonged and leave everyone alone. But they’d still keep calling in favours. Keep saying that Burim’s family owed him. That Burim was a soldier and needed to step up and serve the country.

And there was a final way, though he was afraid to even think it. Enver could die.

Burim was afraid to even harbour these sorts of thoughts. He never had. It was just that one small favour, one peculiar but insignificant request, had morphed into larger ones. They grew and expanded, until last year he was holding half a kilo of heroin in a box that he’d placed in the middle of the kitchen table, and just stared at it. It was worth tens of thousands of kroner, this brown lump from Afghanistan — a country where a bunch of tribesmen grew poppies in open fields as helicopter gunships sniped at them by day, and the Taliban came by at night for their cut. And there it was on his kitchen table, by the salt and pepper shakers, embraced in a cute little pink-and-blue hug that Adrijana had just bought at some fancy kitchen store at Oslo City near the train station.

Then, a few days later, Kadri called and asked for it. So Burim brought it to the Åpent Bakeri in an orange JanSport backpack that Adrijana would eventually find missing and wonder how she could have been so dumb as to lose. He handed it to Kadri and then — as though a malignant tumour had been excised — the brick of brown terror was gone.

Later, there was not a trace of it except for the fifteen thousand kroner that Kadri eventually gave him. So Burim went to Paléet and bought some books for Adrijana, subscribed to eMusic.com for two years at their discount price, bought a new winter jacket for himself, and put the rest in their savings account.

He remembers walking out of the bank that afternoon near Majorstuen, arms laden with purchases, wondering what had just happened. He didn’t quite understand, but some part of him knew that he’d just signed a deal with people who didn’t keep their promises. And the idea had filled him with dread.

Gjon gets on one knee on dry dirt and opens a small green sack. He removes three large Bowie knives with wooden handles and brass hilts.

Enver is on the phone making a call. He does not tell them whom he is calling. When the call is over, Enver looks back at the man who was once his friend.

Gjon hands the knives to Burim and Enver. Both regard them with some confusion, each for different reasons.

Enver asks the question that Burim is also thinking. ‘What are we supposed to do with these?’

Gjon stands up, unlocks the trunk of the Mercedes, and puts the green bag back in place beside the spare tyre and the bucket of cleaning materials.

Burim then hears Gjon answer in a way he’d never heard before.

‘Whatever the hell you want, Enver. This is your mess! I want this done with. And then I want you and your bastard kid to f*ck off and never come back.’

Burim takes a step back with his knife.

Enver is motionless. Then he nods. Just nods. Then he asks Gjon for a cigarette. Gjon’s shoulders droop slightly, and he reaches into his pocket to take out the soft pack of Marlboro Reds that was almost empty, and taps the pack against the first joint of his left hand to shake one loose.

American soldiers, he saw, used to pack their cigarettes. They’d take one out and bang the filter against a table, or rock, or a friend’s helmet so that the tobacco would compress and the white cigarette paper would form a hollow funnel at the end that used to burn fast and bright before the soldiers took their first drags.

Russian soldiers did the opposite. They rolled the cigarettes between their two fingers and thumbs so that the tiny leaves separated and crinkled. Whatever the weather, the Russians soldiers cupped the matches between their two hands from the bottom, and shielded them so the winds wouldn’t blow out their precious flames.

He hands one to Enver, who puts it in his lips.

‘Light it for me,’ he says.

Enver is holding the Bowie knife in his right hand.

Gjon slides his own blade into his belt and takes the Swedish matches from the pocket of his blue jeans.

He strikes a match along the side of the pack and immediately cups it like the Russians. He holds the flame gently in his hands, as though he were cupping a small bird before release.

‘Hold it higher for me,’ says Enver.

Gjon steps in closer and raises his two hands closer to Enver’s face. Close enough so that, even in the shadowed daylight, the flame glints off Enver’s tired eyes.

As Enver leans forward to place the tip of the cigarette into Gjon’s cupped hands, Burim sees the tip of the Bowie knife angled up to Gjon’s torso.

Then, as the cigarette is lit, he sees the two men look hard at each other.

There have been so many conversations about what they call home. The smells of the land. The taste of the food. The values of the men, and the memories of the women. They talk about those who are lost and what it is we owe the dead. What the Serbs did to us. If every recollection, every so-called fact, is not real, then at least the emotions are, and they come from memories that have been torn from life.

He had looked into history to find out what was true and what was myth. He had followed Adrijana to the library, and spent hours on the Internet looking up the names of villages he’s heard them talk about. Bela Crkva. Meja. Velika Krusa. Djakovica. There had been Serbian massacres in every one of them. But Burim has never been to these places. Never experienced it. His debt to Enver, in particular, and the cause of Kosovar independence — and dignity — is abstracted and distant.

Here, in this tree-covered lane, two thousand kilometres from the whispered stories and the even louder silences, Burim watches these two men stare into each other’s eyes — and he sees, for the first time, how close death really is. What it is that terrifies Adrijana. What she smells on his clothes when he comes home at night. And what he brings into their bed with them. What stalks them is History.

Enver lights his cigarette and then lifts his head. Gjon opens his palms and drops the burning match. It taps the ground and then burns for a moment before being snuffed out.

Gjon does not look down at the knife. He does not step back, either. He just says to Enver, ‘What now?’

Enver takes a long pull on his cigarette, and feels the hunger fade. Then he nods to Gjon. ‘Last night they sensed me, but they saw nothing. Today they rested, and we all waited for the old man and the boy. Tonight we take the house.’

Last night, Rhea stared into the woods for a good, long time. Then she started walking to the wood line. She couldn’t see Enver watching her through the binoculars, staring at her, eyeing her black leather trousers, black boots, vintage leather jacket with steel zippers, bright-blue eyes, and very long black hair.

Watching her hips as she approached.

Far enough away to feel safe, but close enough to look carefully, she crouched down on the ground and started picking up small stones. And some not so small. Then she pitched them into the woods. She wasn’t aiming exactly in his direction. Instead, she was making a sweep.

But nothing happened. No flock of birds few off. No deer rushed out. No dog with a limp hobbled out, looking for love. Just silence.

Rhea turned back to Lars, shrugged, and walked back to where he stood. She slapped him a few times on the chest. ‘Thanks for putting up with me.’

And then, very unexpectedly for Lars, she began to cry. It only lasted a moment before she wiped her tears, smiled, laughed a bit, and slapped him on the chest again.

‘What a day!’ she said.

In silence, he fixed her a simple meal of pasta with tomato sauce from a jar. After dinner, he took off her clothes and put her in a pair of striped pyjamas. He shook out the duvet and pulled it up over her as she snuggled into a foetal position. He tucked in the edges to protect her against the cool night air, and stroked her hair. He read her a short story from an ancient issue of The New Yorker. Then he opened the window just a little so the room would be fresh, turned out the light, and retired to the living room to clean up and make sketches for a new video game he had in mind — one where you wander the famous sound stages of Hollywood with a giant gun offing zombie versions of actors and other celebrities.

This morning, Rhea had slept topless in bed with the covers pulled down as the rising sun warmed the cabin. Lars got up naked to make coffee on the iron stove. There were no neighbours for kilometres, so he went outside and ground the beans on the steps while looking out into the forest.

It was easy for Lars to imagine why Rhea got spooked. The path to the house is more than five hundred metres long through a thicket that Rhea once likened to the ride of Ichabod Crane fleeing the headless Hessian. But Lars grew up here. He knows these trees, the animals, the sounds they make, and their rhythms by day and night. They change with the seasons, and the seasons come, one after the other, with all their unique pleasures and challenges. Things are not spooky by themselves, Lars decides. They need us.

They spend the day quietly. Lars insists.

You had a miscarriage. And the next day our neighbour was murdered in our apartment. And your father is missing.

He’s my grandfather.

He might as well be your father.

I suppose.

There’s nothing we can do now but wait and rest. You need your strength. Your focus. We can play Scrabble in English. You can make up words and convince me they’re real.

Why don’t they release a missing-person report on him? Why don’t they put his face all over the news?

Sigrid said it’s because his name is the same as yours, and your name is on the door, and its possible that if the killers know he is missing they’ll start to look for him, too. Maybe they’ll wonder if he saw something. And they say a boy might be with him. If the killers are looking for the boy, and they know that Sheldon is missing, they’ll know the police don’t have him.

It all sounds a little convoluted.

It’s like chess. This woman … Sigrid. She’s cautious.

Does she think we’re in danger?

No. The crime seems unconnected to us. And there is no way the killers should know about this house. All the same, the police in Kongsvinger know we’re here. We should be safe.

They wait for calls throughout the day, and rest.

At six in the evening, while the day is still inviting and warm, Enver Bardhosh Berisha walks through the front door of their house with Burim and Gjon, and heads directly to the refrigerator.