The meanest Flood (29 page)

‘Laing?’

‘Yeah, old guru type from the sixties. Dead now. Said something like, “the me that I’m trying to be is the me that’s trying to be it”. Maybe he was quoting someone else, I don’t know. Made sense to me suddenly. Put me in touch with my own slave and my own free man. They were always at war but these days they live together. Still have the odd scrap, but they know they’re dependent.’

‘You could’ve bought all those CDs,’ Geordie said. ‘Put them on a credit card, pay for them later. That’s what every other guy would’ve done.’

‘Trouble with that, Geordie, I’d be paying twice as much. Making The Man even richer than he is now.’

‘But you’d have them,’ Geordie told him. ‘And right now they’re still in the shop, sitting on the shelf, and you can’t take them home and listen to them. You’ve held them in your hand, you know you’d really enjoy every one of them, and you know you’ll never get hold of them in England.’

‘That’s all right,’ Sam said. ‘I can live with it. This is not gonna stop me sleeping nights.’

‘And the debt would?’

‘Yeah. I’d be wild-eyed. Start drinking again. Sell my music collection and pour it down my throat. This’s the kind of guy I am.’

They were in the Coco Chalet in Prinsens gate, drinking dark Italian roast and waiting for the Andersens, Holly and her partner, Inge Berit. Sam had taken JD’s glasses off and apart from the beard he looked more or less normal.

There were candles on the tables, and white paper tablecloths. In one corner was an old His Master’s Voice record player with a brass horn sitting on a carved mahogany dresser. The coffee was hot and as black as night and tasted smooth and bitter in the flickering light. The cafe had mirrored walls and the wooden seats were arranged in small booths and before Sam had finished his first cup of coffee he called the waitress over and ordered another one.

‘I woke up this morning with a plook on my neck,’ Geordie said.

Sam looked over his coffee cup. ‘There’re times,’ he said, ‘you dangle a conversation under my nose and I don’t know what to say. It’s happened before, with other people, when I’ve been drinking, out of my skull. Or sometimes on a case when I’ve come across a psycho, say, or someone who believes the world is a mirage.’

‘What’re you saying, exactly?’

‘Well, plooks,’ Sam said. ‘You woke up this morning with a plook on your neck. What’m I supposed to say about that? Seems like the most mundane subject in the universe. Somebody’s plook on somebody’s neck. I’ve got other things on my mind.’

‘That’s because it’s not your plook on your neck,’ Geordie said. ‘If Sam Turner woke up with a plook on his neck it’d be a perfectly valid subject for discussion. We’d’ve got started on it over breakfast and we’d still be talking about it now. Wouldn’t be long before we were enquiring where the emergency room was, get the fucker lanced.’

‘I don’t wake up with plooks,’ Sam told him. ‘Last time I had a plook, Margaret Thatcher was in charge. Since she’s been gone my blood’s purer.’

‘It’s this attitude you have,’ Geordie said. ‘Like some things are good for conversation and some aren’t. And you’re not consistent about it. Another time you’d’ve thought plooks was a great subject.’

‘Never.’

‘You would’ve, Sam. I know you.’

‘Never in my wildest dreams would I have anything to say about plooks. I can’t think of anything less interesting. God only invented plooks to bore people to death. It’s one of His ways of making life harder for people who can’t see past the end of their nose. And it keeps all His mates in the cosmetics industry sailing round the Caribbean. Wherever they go, I don’t know. Mustique?’ Geordie smiled. He had this smile that involved his eyes, something between a smile and a frown, and it conveyed a knowing irony. Janet couldn’t stand it and told him not to do it, but Sam had never said anything about it. Geordie spoke through it. ‘See what I mean? You’re talking metaphysics already.
God only invented plooks to bore people to death.
You start off telling me plooks aren’t interesting and a couple of breaths later you’re considering their place in the order of the universe.’

Sam sipped from his cup. ‘Great coffee,’ he said. ‘Say what you like about Norwegians, but they know how to make coffee.’

‘Is that the end of the plook conversation?’

‘Yeah. Tell me something interesting.’

‘How about sex?’

‘What kind?’

‘When I was young,’ Geordie said, ‘I dunno, maybe I was seventeen

‘Couple of years back?’ Sam said.

‘Funny. D’you wanna hear this?’

‘So far my tongue’s not hanging out,’ Sam said. ‘I’m at the stage I’m suspending my disbelief, waiting, hoping, the story will be a good one. But teenage sex? Y’know, it doesn’t hold a lot of dramatic possibilities. Not much chance of a slow build and an unexpected, even enlightening, resolution. But I’m listening.’

‘It’s not a story, it’s an anecdote. Something I remember from being sixteen, seventeen, when my whole body was tuned to sex. My brain, too. I’d wake up in the morning and I’d be thinking about sex, and I’d go to bed at night and the last thing I thought about, that’d be sex, too. And in between, all day long, there’d be sex everywhere: in my mind, in my fingers, my eyes, my ears. I could be turned on by the sun shining on my arms, or if there was no sun, then just by the thought of sun on my arms. You know what I mean?’

‘Where are you going with this?’

‘Nowhere special. I’d look at girls on the street and I’d imagine having them in bed or having them right there on the street. It was safe because I wasn’t gonna do it, but inside my head I could watch this girl, any girl really, walk along the street and within a couple of seconds I’d have her clothes off and we’d be going at it, back door, front door, you name it, she’d have me in her mouth and I’d have her in my mouth and there’d be juices and sweat everywhere. It was a whole orgy. And then the girl would’ve walked around the corner and I’d look up and here comes another one. I couldn’t stop it, it was like that for months, seemed like years, I couldn’t think of anything else.’

‘Sounds more or less normal,’ Sam said. ‘That’s why people hate teenagers, because they’re like that.’

‘And then I’d get the guilts,’ Geordie said. ‘Like I’d wonder if they could see what I was thinking, the girls I was having these fantasies about. Because I’d know that it was written all over my face. Staring eyes, tongue hanging out, bits of drool on my chin. And I’d think if they could see my brain working away on them, they’d call the police and have me arrested. I was always surprised I got away with it.

The outer door opened and two middle-aged women came into the room. They looked around, from table to table. Sam got to his feet and took a step forward. ‘Holly,’ he said. ‘Hi.’ He was smiling, happy to see her.

Holly Andersen smiled back, not quite as broadly as Sam. They stood in front of each other and stared. Geordie could see they hadn’t finished with each other. They’d given up and gone in different directions, made separate lives for themselves. But they hadn’t finished with each other, there was still something living there between them, something neither of them had been able to kill. It was important to note it, Geordie thought, to know it was possible. He didn’t think either of them would want to restart their relationship, and if they did restart it there would be no guarantee that it would work. But there was something there nevertheless. It was obvious that both of them knew it. And Geordie picked it up in the space of a few seconds, tangible as the cups on the table and perhaps just as fragile.

Sam held out his hand and she took it and for a moment they came together in a dry embrace. Their lips grazed each other’s cheeks. When they stood back Sam said, ‘Twenty years?’

‘Nearly,’ Holly said. ‘Nineteen. You’ve grown a beard.’

‘You haven’t changed,’ he said.

But she laughed him away.
‘You’ve
stayed young, Sam, while I’ve grown old.’

He shook his head but Geordie could see she was right. Her face was on the point of collapse. The crow’s feet around her eyes had trampled the flesh, giving her a tight, skull-like appearance. You could see she had been beautiful a long time ago but the years had eaten their fill of her.

‘This is Inge Berit,’ Holly said, indicating her friend, a woman the same age as herself. Small and blonde with a tummy like a football.

‘Yes.’ Sam gave his hand to the other woman. ‘We met before, briefly.’

‘Pleased to meet you again,’ Inge Berit said with her Norwegian accent.

‘And Geordie you’ve met,’ Sam said.

‘Yes, hello again,’ Holly said. Inge Berit smiled at him and offered her hand. Geordie took it and gave it a shake. ‘Come and sit down,’ Sam said. ‘D’you want coffee?’ When they were settled Holly said, ‘Geordie told us you think someone wants to kill me.’ She said it lightly, in the same tone of voice she might have used to pass the time of day.

‘That’s right,’ Sam said. ‘Two people, women, two of the women who lived with me before I met you, have been killed.’

Inge Berit said, ‘We thought you were making a joke.’

‘Nicole?’ Holly said. ‘Nicole’s dead?’

Sam nodded. ‘In Leeds, last week. Someone broke into her house in the middle of the night. Stabbed her and her husband.’

Holly drew in her breath. ‘My God. And who else? The other one, what was she called?’

‘Katherine.’

‘Yes, Katherine. I can’t believe this.’

‘It’s true,’ Sam said. ‘Katherine was in Nottingham. It was the same scenario, the same guy. The only thing that connects them is me.’

They fell silent. Inge Berit put her arm around Holly’s shoulder and pulled her close. Holly reached up and held her friend’s hand. ‘Do you know who he is? Anything about him?’

Sam shook his head. ‘We’re getting closer. There’s some indistinct video footage back in England, and Geordie thinks he may have spotted the guy here yesterday.’

‘In Oslo?’

‘Calmeyers gate.’

‘Jesus, Sam, you’re frightening me.’

‘You should be frightened,’ he said. ‘Both of you. I’d like you to be frightened enough to go away.’

‘Where to?’

‘Wherever,’ he said. ‘Get out of town, out of the country. Go to Paris or Rome, anywhere but Oslo for as long as it takes to get this guy off the street.’

The two women looked at each other.

‘We could go to the Politi,’ Inge Berit said. ‘They’d give us protection.’

‘That’s an option for you,’ Sam said. ‘But the first thing they’d do is arrest me and send me back to England. The English police think I killed the others.’

‘And how do we know you didn’t?’ Inge Berit said. Holly put a hand on her friend’s thigh and squeezed gently. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Sam’s capable of a lot of things, but he wouldn’t do that.’

‘Cheers,’ he said.

Inge Berit looked at her friend, then turned her attention back to Sam. ‘Could you be wrong about this?’ she said.

‘I don’t think so. There’s a chance, but do you want to take it?’

Holly’s friend shook her head. ‘No, we’ll leave tomorrow. I don’t know where, but we’ll go somewhere.’ Holly said, ‘What does he look like, just in case.’

‘Sometimes wears a trilby,’ Sam said. ‘Might have braid on his trousers, like a waiter.’

‘He’s one metre seventy-eight and sixty-eight kilos,’ Geordie said. ‘He’s clever, obviously. But he thinks he’s cleverer still, so he’ll probably give himself away.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Holly said.

‘I was watching the street yesterday,’ Geordie told her. ‘This’s my speciality, surveillance. I get the surveillance jobs because I’ve got the patience. And because I’ve done a lot of it, I know how it works.’ Geordie looked at Sam and the two women, to make sure he had their attention.

‘When you’re watching somebody,’ he said, ‘the most important thing is they don’t see you. Soon as they see you the game’s over. So you’ve got to make yourself as small and quiet and invisible as possible. And you do that by not being in the same street as the guy you’re watching. Best possible way is to have a flat in the street you can use and if that’s not possible you need to be in another street, wherever, but so far away that you can’t be seen as part of the terrain. Then you use glasses, binoculars, which I always have with me. To the other guy you’re just a speck on the landscape, but because you’re using binoculars you can bring him up as close as you like.

‘All right, so that’s the principle. You still with me? Good. The next thing is, if you don’t want to be seen you don’t do anything that’s gonna draw attention to you. Like in movies they have guys on surveillance wearing shades. They’re wearing shades in hotel foyers or outside in the middle of winter. Nobody does that in real life. You’re on surveillance you wanna fade into the background. And that’s how I spotted him the first time, because the guy came down the street with a limp. I don’t know what he’s supposed to be, maybe a druggie, something like that, and he’s dragging his left leg after him, really pronounced limp. I mean, how many times do you see that, a guy with a limp? Sometimes you see somebody on crutches, but not that often, and you might see some old guy with a stick. But somebody limping really sticks out. So I check his height and weight and you can bet the guy’s a dead ringer for the one we’re after.’