‘Use this,’ Harry said. He placed a mobile on the kitchen counter, obviously newly purchased and still wrapped in plastic.

‘So he took away your life but let you live,’ she said. ‘Did he get his revenge?’

‘The best kind,’ Harry said, striding towards the door.

Harry closed the door of the main house behind him and stopped dead. Stared. He was tired of running. But he was even more tired of staring down the barrels of guns. And this one had two. It was a sawn-off shotgun. The man at the other end was Latino. As was the man with the pistol beside him. Both of them had prison muscles and both a scorpion tattooed on the side of his neck. Harry towered enough over them to see the cut strip of alarm cable dangling on the side of the gate behind them and the white Camaro parked on the other side of Doheny Drive. The tinted window on the driver’s side was halfway down, and Harry could just discern cigarillo smoke seeping and a white shirt collar.

‘Shall we go inside?’ the man with the shotgun said. He spoke with a distinct Mexican accent while he flexed his neck on each side, like a boxer before a match. The motion stretched out the scorpion. Harry knew the tattoo symbolised an enforcer, and the number of squares on the tail the number of people killed. The tails of both men’s tattoos were long.

6

Saturday

Life on Mars

‘“Life on Mars”?’ Prim said.

The girl on the other side of the table looked at him with incomprehension.

Prim burst into laughter. ‘No, the song, I mean. It’s called “Life on Mars”.’

He nodded in the direction of the TV where David Bowie’s voice emanated from the sound bar below it into the large loft. From the windows he had a view over Oslo’s central west side and towards Holmenkollen Ridge, glittering like a chandelier out there in the night. But right now he only had eyes for his dinner guest. ‘A lot of people don’t like the song, they think it’s a little odd. The BBC called it a cross between a Broadway musical and a Salvador Dalí painting. Perhaps. But I agree with the Daily Telegraph who named it the best song of all time. Imagine! The best. Everybody loved Bowie, not because he was a lovable person, but because he was the best. That’s why people who haven’t been loved are willing to kill to be the best. They know that will change everything.’

Prim took hold of the wine bottle standing on the table between them, but instead of pouring from where he sat, he got up and walked around to her side.

‘Did you know that David Bowie was a stage name, that his real name was Jones? I’m not actually called Prim, it’s just a nickname, but only my family call me that. But I’d like to think that when I get married my wife will also call me Prim.’

He was standing directly behind her and, while filling her glass, he stroked her long, fine hair with his free hand. Had it been a couple of years ago, even a couple of months ago, he would not have dared touch a woman like this for fear of rejection. Now he had no such doubts, he was in total control. Having his teeth fixed had helped, of course, as well as starting to go to a proper hairdresser and taking advice on which clothes to buy. But it wasn’t that. It was something he exuded, something they were unable to resist, and knowing that endowed him with a confidence which was in itself such a strong aphrodisiac it alone could have carried him, that placebo effect that was self-perpetuating with every turn as long as he kept the cycle going.

‘I’m probably old-fashioned and naive,’ he said, walking back to his side of the table. ‘But I believe in marriage, that there’s a person out there who’s the right one for each of us, I really do. I was at the National Theatre recently seeing Romeo and Juliet, and it was so beautiful I cried. Two souls nature intended to be inextricably linked. Just look at Boss over there.’

He pointed to an aquarium atop a low bookshelf. A single shimmering gold-and-green fish was swimming within. ‘He has his Lisa. You can’t see her, but she’s there, the two of them are one and will be until they both die. Yes, one will die because the other dies. Like in Romeo and Juliet. Isn’t that beautiful?’

Prim sat down and slid his hand across the table towards her. She seemed weary tonight, empty, off. But he knew how to brighten her up, all he had to do was flick a switch.

‘I could fall in love with someone like you,’ he said.

Her eyes lit up immediately, and he could feel the warmth from them. But he also felt a little pang of guilt. Not in manipulating her in this way but because he was lying. He might fall in love, but not with her. She was not the one, the Woman who was meant for him. She was a stand-in, someone he could use to practise on, test approaches out on, say the right things to, in the right tone of voice. Trial and error. Erring now didn’t really matter, it was on the day he would declare his love to the Woman that everything had to be properly in tune, perfect.