4

Billy T. was fascinated. Heheld the glass up to the light and studied a ruby-colored spot wedged inside pink pack-ice. Russian Slush was most certainly not the best drink he had tasted. But it looked beautiful. He twisted the glass toward the chandelier on the ceiling and had to screw up his eyes.

“Sorry—”

Billy T. held his hand out to a waiter in blue trousers and immaculate collarless white shirt.

“What is this, in actual fact?”

“Russian Slush?”

One corner of the waiter’s mouth tugged almost imperceptibly, as if he didn’t quite dare to smile.

“Crushed ice, vodka, and cranberries, sir.”

“Oh, I see. Thank you.”

Billy T. drank, though strictly speaking he might be said to be on duty. He had no intention of presenting the bill to the Finance Section; it was seven o’clock on a Monday evening, December 6 to be precise, and he could not care less. He sat on his own, fingering his glass as he scanned the room.

Entré was the city’s new, undisputed “in” place.

Billy T. had been born and raised in Grünerløkka. In a two-room apartment in Fossveien his mother had kept him and his sister, elder by three years, in line while she worked her fingers to the bone in a laundry farther up the street and spent her nights mending clothes for extra payment. Billy T. had never met his father. It was still unclear to him whether the guy had done a runner or his mother had turned him out before their son had arrived into the world. Anyway, his father was never mentioned. All Billy T. knew about the man was that he had been six foot six in his stocking soles, a womanizer of the first order, and an out-and-out alcoholic into the bargain. Which had in all likelihood led to an extremely premature death. Somewhere far back in his memory, Billy T. had gained an impression that his mother had one day come home surprisingly early from work. He could only have been about seven years old and kept off school because of a bad cold.

“He’s dead,” his mother had said. “You know who.”

Her eyes forbade him from asking. He had gone to bed and had not got up again until the following day.

There was only one picture of his father in the apartment in Fossveien, a wedding photograph of his parents that had, surprisingly enough, been allowed to remain on display. Billy T. suspected that his mother used it to prove that her children had been born in wedlock, if anyone should be impudent enough to assume any different. If a stranger were to set foot inside the front door of their overcrowded apartment, the wedding photograph was the first thing they spotted. Until the day when Billy T. had come home in his stiff uniform, having passed his exams at what was then called police college. He had sprinted all the way. Beads of sweat hung from the synthetic fibers of his clothing. His mother refused to let him go. Her skinny arms were locked around her son’s neck. His sister sat laughing in the living room as she