See You Tomorrow by Tore Renberg Page A

while he strides across the forest floor.
    Good thing Tong’s out on Friday, he thinks. Not the same when the gang isn’t together. He brings in good money, Tong. He puts Chessi in better humour, he’s always been able to do that. He’s a psycho all right. But he’s always ready for action.
    Pål, Pål, Pål.
    Have you taken a beating from me? Is that it?
    Are you out for revenge? Is that it?
    Are you the devil, Pål?

 
    15. A WOMAN DRESSED IN JEANS AND A LONG-SLEEVED SWEATER WALKS ACROSS A YARD (Jan Inge)
    120 kilos now. 120 on the nose. 120 on board.
    Jan Inge has been holding the telephone in his hand for almost a minute. He has been standing like a statue on the living-room floor with the phone two feet from his stomach and his eyes turned to the ceiling. Typical me, he thinks, lost in thought. That’s what everyone says, that he has great concentration. And no one dares disturb him when he’s thinking, there’s no one who lacks respect for JANI WHEN HE’S THINKING.
    He pictures it like that. In big letters.
    Like those neon signs in small American towns beset by gruesome atrocities.
    Jan Inge has always been like that, with his head full of big letters.
    He puts away the phone. Jan Inge misses the old house telephone. He nods, making the fat on the back of his neck wobble. Grey with red numbers. That telephone worked like a dream, but hi-tech advances meant they had to throw in the towel. So much new technology at the moment that it’s becoming a problem. Mobile phones are okay, with top-up cards at any rate, but all this pressure on you to use the internet, it’s not good. It’s not like it was in the good old days.
    There it is again. THE GOOD OLD DAYS. You can’t say it without big letters.
    Jan Inge glances at the wheelchair at the far end of the hall.
    120 on the nose.
    It’s important Rudi doesn’t screw this up. He needs to see through the fog. But if there is one thing Jan Inge has learned, it’sthat where it seems most foggy, that’s where the gold might be, and if you want to get your hands on the gold, you have to venture into the fog. As long as Rudi keeps his wits about him and doesn’t start blabbering.
    Jan Inge takes the inhaler from the pocket of his jogging pants and sucks. He shuffles across the floor in felt slippers, down the long hallway. He stops in front of the wheelchair.
    120 on board.
    He has always been fat. Or at least thickset and chubby. So was Mum, may you rest in purgatory, you detestable person. There have always been a few surplus kilos on this body, always a little extra to offer, but 120? He was weighing in at about 100 for a number of years. Nice round number. Easy to relate to. It accorded him a little class, some executive authority. It’s only right for a boss to be a few kilos heavier than the others. Rudi, lanky though he is, weighs ninety-five after all. But after a while it started to rise. An occasional check on the scales now and again. Oops. 105. Down to 100. Oops. No, seems to have gone up, this … 110 …
Jani 110, since when?
    It rhymes, Tong said, just before he went inside.
    They had done a job in Jæren, a clean break-in, got lots of computers, just easy-to-sell stuff that would mean clean cash from Buonanotte. Well planned, well executed. Keys, swipe cards, the whole shebang. There had never been a single mistake on Tong’s watch, never been anyone sent down. If there is one man you can count on, it’s Tong, because he doesn’t count on anyone. Thank Christ he’s getting out on Friday. He carried out the job itself perfectly, but then? You’d think he had suddenly become an amateur again. Thirty-five years old, tonnes of experience, and he ends up doing something like that? It’s the drugs, Tong. Jan Inge has told him a thousand times. You think your senses are sharpened. But that shit has chomped lumps out of that brilliant brain of yours. We have a policy in this company, we rack up a few lines before we go to work, to get our heads up