The meanest Flood

young man hadn’t seen him. He had been careful to leave Calmeyers gate three times to change clothes and to alter his posture and body language. Nothing special, nothing that would stand out. He’d walked the length of the street in a black donkey-jacket and a woollen cap. He’d returned an hour later with the shuffle of a bespectacled elderly gentleman, complete with black cane and leather gloves. And towards the end of the afternoon, when the shadows were long on the ground, he’d managed an impersonation of a Norwegian businessman complete with white shirt and camel overcoat.
    He’d noticed the boy, Sam Turner’s assistant, taking an interest in a Norwegian sailor wearing a T-shirt and waterproof jacket, a peaked cap with a badge. The sailor was gripping the pavement with his toes to stop himself rolling overboard, and Danny had clutched his buttocks together and gritted his teeth and passed so close to the young man that he could have reached out and touched him. But he still didn’t merit a second glance. The boy’s eyes were full of the sailor.
    Later there had been another man with a limp and the furtive sidelong glances of an alcoholic or a drug addict, and the boy had been similarly fascinated by him. Danny’s magic had kept him concealed. Danny’s magic and his subtlety. Sam Turner and his crony were easy, like playing with children.
    Sitting alone in the Scandinavian Hotel writing lists of the things he missed in his confinement, Diamond Danny Mann decided to give it a few more hours. Turner might be prepared to play cat and mouse but the magician certainly was not. If he saw Sam Turner the next day he would go ahead and dispose of the third girlfriend, Holly Andersen. And if he didn’t see Sam Turner the next day he would do exactly the same.
    That would be courageous and imaginative. To take the woman’s life without sighting Sam Turner at all. Because the man was here, in Oslo, he had to be. The alternative was unthinkable. The illusion depended on his presence.
    Danny smiled to himself. He added one more item to the list. An Americano on the terrace of the City Screen cafe, overlooking the river in summertime. He switched off the bedside light. The woman’s fate was sealed. There was nothing anyone could do about it. The magician turned on to his side and within a few minutes he was asleep, snoring gently, slipping into dreams of earlier, less troubled days.
     

24
     
    Sam and Geordie had been in Akers-Mic in Kongensgate, browsing through one of the largest collections of CDs in Europe. Sam had bought a couple of Jo Ann Kelly recordings, songs he’d only heard rumours about. He’d found an early collection by Shirley Horn and a few of her friends. Songs recorded in her living room which every record shop in England had told him were deleted. He’d found nearly two dozen CDs he thought he couldn’t live without but whittled them down to three so he’d stay within his own estimation of who he was.
    ‘Some kind of frugal early-twenty-first-century romantic private eye,’ Geordie said. Soon as he said it he thought he’d gone over the top. On the other hand he wanted to keep the mood frivolous and relaxed. Didn’t want Sam disappearing inside himself.
    Sam took it on the chin. ‘Frugal? Maybe,’ he said. ‘Cash always has a way of getting away. I used to suspect the rich guys had a magnet, so it didn’t matter how you tried to hang on to it, they always got it back.’
    ‘It’s the Protestant work ethic,’ Geordie said. ‘Makes it impossible for you to enjoy anything unless you’ve got into a sweat earning it.’
    ‘That’s true, too,’ Sam said. ‘There was a time I hated that. Being trapped inside some concept from the Middle Ages. I’d go spend all my money, then I’d go around spending everybody else’s, trying to break free.’
    ‘But it didn’t work?’
    ‘Made me a few enemies,’ Sam said. ‘Bought me some debts. Didn’t feel any freer at the end of it. More of a prat, though. That’s when I realized that the old Laingian thing was true.’
    ‘Laing?’
    ‘Yeah, old guru type from the sixties. Dead now. Said something like, “the me that I’m trying to be is the me that’s trying to be it”. Maybe he was quoting someone else, I don’t know. Made sense to me suddenly. Put me in touch with my own slave and my own free man. They were always at war but these days they live together. Still have the odd scrap, but they know they’re