Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

‘Are you feeling all right, Sandra?’

Sandra smiles. Her eyes look blurry.

‘She bore the brunt of it,’ says Tiril, placing an arm around her friend. ‘That’s why it took such a long time. We sat down. Took it easy. Went back home to get water and that.’

Sandra smiles again and nods. ‘Yeah, fine,’ she says, ‘my head’s a bit sore, that’s all, feel a little tired. I’m okay though.’

Frida looks at them. Once again letting her gaze wander from one to the next, fixing each of them momentarily with her eyes, and once again they feel both examined and exposed.

‘Listen to me,’ she says. ‘I don’t believe what you’re telling me, not for one second. You all know that. Judging by the body language on display, coming to expression through your beautiful, young physiques, and judging by what I’m seeing in your eyes, those beautiful, young pairs of eyes, there was no bicycle accident. But that’s just how it is. The lot of you are up to something. It may well be something completely innocuous, which a grown-up ought to disregard. It may not. Perhaps it’s something none of you realise the gravity of, perhaps something you should entrust to somebody who’s lived longer than you. But here’s what do I know. You are the ones responsible for making that decision. I’m going to take my leave of you in a moment and then you’ll either end up making a good decision or a bad one. One of you, most likely you, Tiril, will take control of the situation, and the rest of you, Shaun and Malene, will follow the course Tiril marks out for you. And well, what can I say? I wish you luck, you fine young people.’

Autumn 1996. Brother and sister were sitting at home in the living room, well wrapped up in old blankets and well stocked with crisps and cola. The light of the TV tinted the room, screams filled the air, and Jan Inge and Cecilie watched horror film after horror film while they listened to the stormy weather pummel the house in Hillevåg. Rudi was working a few hours east in Kvinesdal, he had been subcontracted out to the Botnevass Gang. Exactly what he was doing wasn’t clear, but the money was good and Rudi’s skill set was required. After he had been up there a couple of weeks the telephone back in Hillevåg rang late one night. Cecilie was having a bath while Jan Inge was sitting in the living room listening to his father’s old country records. He picked up the receiver. It was Rudi. His voice screeched like a circular saw. ‘No way I’m staying here a minute fucking longer, Jani.’ He said. ‘That whole Botnevass family are completely out of their tree. They’re hanging out in a bus parked in a field, they have the interior all decked out like a movie set and they’re filming one sick porn film after another, and their mother, she won’t have anything to do with them any more, while the rumour is that Grandpa Botnevass, that Solomon guy, the priest, is going to come down from the mountains and tear strips off the lot of them.’

‘Take it easy, calm down,’ Jan Inge said, and after a while he managed to talk Rudi around and to persuade him to stick it out for a couple more weeks. They needed the money.

He rang again a fortnight later, and this time not from Kvinesdal, but from a public telephone in Ben’s Kafé, after narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with another car in Gyadalen Valley and now there was no going back. Torleif Botnevass had shot his brother, Gordon Botnevass, over — according to their sister, Mary Botnevass — a quarrel about how to rob the Chinese in Flekkefjord. Or — if their cousin Anton Botnevass was to be believed — due to an argument over which Maiden album was the best, or as Hilde from the shop said: because of a spat over my snatch. ‘Christ,’ said Rudi, over the telephone from Ben’s, ‘this has gone way too far, Jani. I was standing just four metres from the little brother Torleif when he pumped bullets into the side of his big brother Gordon’s head. I don’t fucking like murder, Jani.’

‘Not good, that sounds awful, come on home.’

One hour later he walked in the door of the house in Hillevåg. ‘Christ,’ Rudi sighed, when he saw them, ‘it’s good to be around normal people again,’ and then he lifted Cecilie up in the air, held her close and told her there wasn’t a sexier woman on the planet.

A half-hour later, as they were sitting in the kitchen eating a supper of cured salmon and scrambled egg, Rudi pointed out the window at a van standing parked beneath the street light. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘Someone visiting?’

‘That,’ said Jan Inge, smiling to Rudi and Cecilie, ‘is our new company transport.’

‘Company transport? Ours? That sweet ride?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Jan Inge and pointed down the hall. ‘You see that door there?’

Rudi let his weary eyes wander in the direction Jan Inge indicated. There was a sign on the door of the spare room. He squinted. ‘Office,’ it read.

‘That is our office, Rudi.’

‘Eh? Have the two of you lost your minds while I was dicing with death?’

Cecilie smiled and put her arm around her brother. ‘You know,’ she said in a soft voice, the way she could sometimes speak, as though filled with deep affection, ‘you can’t expect to be gone for three weeks and come home without this man here devising something of genius.’

Jan Inge got to his feet — he was fifteen kilos lighter back then — and said: ‘Rudi, that was the last time you’re going to be hired out to some unknown nutcases. We’re putting things in order here at home. There’s a telephone in there. A separate line with it’s own number. You’ll find it in the phone book under Mariero Moving. Inside that office you’ll also find paperclips, folders, a pencil sharpener attached to the end of the desk, a ruler and a fax machine, everything an office worker could dream of. And our company car is parked out there on the street. A car which never — you hear me, never — will be used for anything other than this.’

‘And what is this? ’

‘It’s our moving company, brother. The moving company I run, with Cecilie responsible for cleaning and you as primary driver.’

Cecilie laughed, she really was in fine fettle around that time, and said: ‘Now you see what happens when you’re away for a couple of weeks, Rudi! Congratufuckinglations, you’ve got a new job.’

Rudi was a little piqued at first. He sure as hell wasn’t up for some ordinary job. He was fucked if he was going to go round breaking his back lifting big boxes full of books just because old women were on the move to sheltered housing in Lassa, no bloody way was he about to start paying tax, and he was sure as fuck not going to drive around wearing a stupid hat with Mariero Moving on it for the whole city to see — and so on. But he was quick to reconsider, he began to change his mind pretty much at the same time as he was speaking: He didn’t want to have this job in removals as a way to conceal his actual identity as a crook — even though it was undeniably a clever idea. Yes, only Jan Inge could come up with something so smart, give him his dues; open an office, set up another phone line, sort out a company car, company clobber, a logo, convert the garage, fuck, now that was what Rudi called genius. He had only been away a couple of weeks in Krazy Kvinesdal, where at this very moment Grandpa Solomon was probably pointing a shotgun at his progeny, who were no doubt lying around in the bus drinking hooch after yet another day of porn, picking them off one after the other while spewing Bible quotes from his mouth like spit, while old lady Rose Marie Botnevass was in all likelihood standing outside counting the gunshots and gobbing on the ground for every fallen son and daughter and niece and nephew — only a couple of weeks, and then to come home to…