Yours Until Death Read Free Page B

Kept my eyes onJoker’s until I was too far away for him to jam a switchblade between my shoulders.
    Not a sound behind me. Nobody laughed. Nobody ever laughs when he’s a witness to high treason. At any rate, not before the king’s left the throne room. I was conceited enough to think my performance would become myth. Some day when somebody recited the gang’s history beside a shining blue camp-fire in the future’s lonely desert.
    On the way down I got on the bike. The Lone Ranger riding into the sunset. Trouble was, the real Lone Ranger was constantly busy rescuing people. And this Lone Ranger was me.

5
    Roar was waiting where I’d left him. He gazed at me. Open admiration. I jumped off his bike and we wheeled it between us back to his building.
    He said, ‘What did you do?’
    I said, ‘I just went up there and took it.’ As if there’d been nothing to it.
    She didn’t have to introduce herself. I knew. She came fluttering towards us like a terrified bird, her dark hair a cloud around her face. She wore blue corduroy trousers, a light white turtleneck, and a red and blue ski jacket she hadn’t had time to fasten.
    ‘Roar!’ she called from fifty metres away. ‘Where have you been?’
    She grabbed her son’s shoulders, staring at him. Her hair curled wildly. It was cut very short at the neck. She had one of those thin white necks that make you cry inside and remember the thousands of swans you used to see in Nygård Park when you were a kid. That make you regret deeply and sincerely that you’ve never found such a neck to cry against, ever loved another’s more – if you ever have.
    ‘Mum,’ Roar said. ‘This is … It was Joker and they – they took my bike and so I went …’
    She looked at me. Frost in her eyes. Said in a voice you’d welcome on a beach when it’s thirty degrees in the shade, ‘Who are you?’ And to Roar, ‘Has this man done anything to you?’
    ‘Done anything to me?’ He looked at her. Baffled.
    She shook him. ‘Answer me, boy! Answer me!’ She turned to me again and burst into tears. ‘Who are you? If you’ve so much as touched him, I’ll kill you!’
    Her face was blotchy, her little nose shone, and the dark blue eyes sparked like gas flames.
    ‘My name’s Veum, Fru,’ I said. ‘And I haven’t –’
    Roar interrupted. Now he had tears in his eyes. ‘He hasn’t, he’s helped me – he’s the one who got my bike back. He got my bike from Joker’s hut so you wouldn’t …’
    He began crying and she looked at him helplessly. Then she hugged him and murmured something in his ear.
    It was almost completely dark now and lights shone in most of the windows. Cars went by. Tired, stooped men left them and walked to their doors and to their lifts. Then it was up to their wives and their dinner tables twenty metres above earth, twenty metres closer to outer space and a new workday closer to eternity. A little drama played itself out on the pavement in front of the building they lived in, but not one looked up, not one noticed that a young woman, a little boy, a not-so-young man and a new bicycle stood there. We could just as well have been alone in an out-of-the-way spot in the Sahara.
    The face looking over Roar’s shoulder was at least twenty years too young. The mouth had the injured pout of a little girl who’s been denied her lollipop, but it was a full, sensuous mouth. It told you she’d get what she wanted when she grew up. Just you wait. The dark blue eyes were calm now. They looked like flowers you didn’t pick and then regretted not picking for the rest of your life.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was so frightened. He’s never been gone so long before. I … Well…’
    ‘I understand,’ I said.
    She stood up and held out a hand while she brushed the hair back from her forehead with the other. ‘I’m … My name’s Wenche Andresen.’
    I held her hand a few seconds. ‘Veum. Varg Veum.’
    She looked surprised, and I realised she’d