Mockymen

by Ian Watson

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

When a young British couple, who make jigsaw puzzles, are hired by an ageing Norwegian to take nude photos of themselves in a sculpture park in Oslo, they are drawn into a web of occult Nazi horror. Even more horrifying will be the fate of the whole world some years later if alien visitors achieve their secret aims. However, the aftermath of events in that Oslo park will provide Anna Sharman with a key to unlock those aims. Anna is a rebel within Britain's intelligence service at a time when most of the world appeases the aliens because of the gifts they bring - and if she must lose her own body in order to discover the truth, she will do so.

Release date: November 14, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 406

Sample

July had been a wretched month so far. When it wasn’t raining, it was drizzling. This ought to have been good news for the reservoirs, but the water companies were whining that England needed weeks of sustained downpour. Those greedy privatised utilities hadn’t re-invested enough of their profits. While umbrellas were bumping into one another, water was being imported by tanker all the way from Portugal, where there were floods of the stuff. Apparently there was a genuine drought in Scandinavia, but Scandinavians probably organised their affairs more sensibly.

The persistent precipitation was not good for profits at the Fernhill Farm Craft Centre. Steve and I were selling a reasonable number of jigsaws by mail order, but we also relied on visitors. A silvery-haired old gent, who arrived in a black Mercedes on a quiet Monday morning, piqued our interest.

The gravelled car park was always at least half full, but the vehicles belonged either to our fellow craftsfolk or to God’s Legion which owned Fernhill. Steve had just fetched a couple of mugs of coffee from the tea-room in the former milking parlour, back to our unit in a converted byre. Usually we saw to our own drinks, but our autojug had quit the day before, and we had forgotten to bring its twin from home. Shuttling an essential piece of domestic equipment to and fro was obviously a non-starter. We would need to buy a replacement.

“Look,” I said, “a rich customer.”

The well-heeled gent might wish to have a book expensively bound in tooled leather by Nigel, next door to us. No: an umbrella occupied one of the gent’s hands, and a walking stick, the other. Forget any book, unless it was pocket-sized. Maybe he was interested in commissioning a hand-engraved goblet from Charlotte, on our other side?

The man looked to be in his late seventies. Leaning on his stick, he glowered at a God’s Legion mini-bus, which was painted in luridly clashing blue and green and yellow. Eyecatching, was the idea. A prominent day-glo scarlet slogan proclaimed salvation through Jesus.

As a rule God’s Legion refrained from parking any of their distinctive “troop transports” at Fernhill in case the sight was off-putting to visitors who were only interested in a collector’s dolls’ house or a souvenir Victorian-style glass paperweight. What we would generally see here would be one or other of the Legion’s more anonymous builder’s vans. Big in the building trade, the Legion was. The former farmyard here at Fernhill showcased hundreds of pieces of reclaimed architecture: convoluted old chimney-pots several feet tall, marble fire-places, towering iron gateways.

“He can drive,” I said hopefully, “but most of the time he’s sedentary. So he’s a jigsaw addict. Big tray on his rug-covered lap. His housekeeper bringing a mug of hot chocolate.”

In addition to house repairs, God’s Legion was also into health food, grown on Glory Farm ten miles away. Many of the legionaires, male and female, lived communally in a manor house renamed Salvation Hall, and worked for bed and board and pocket money, under the eye of their leader, a schismatic Baptist minister named Hugh Ellison. Charismatic, vain and autocratic, Ellison banned the fifty residents of Salvation Hall and the similar cohorts at Glory Farm from watching any television, so I’d heard.

The aim of the Legion was to rescue young folk who had gone astray in London, runways from broken homes or refugees from abuse. To rehabilitate those vulnerable orphans of the streets, train them, bring Christ back into their lives, and also fruitful labour. The Legion was steadily expanding its business and property interests to fund its good works. Legion workers had converted the derelict farm-house and outbuildings of Fernhill into the workshops and showrooms of the present craft centre. Legion girls ran the tea-rooms, selling glory-food. However, no obtrusive propaganda was on show, nor were any of us craftspeople interested in being born again. Rents for the units just happened to be very moderate. Maybe us craftspeople were window-dressing, proof that the Legion was no doctrinaire cult but a broad-minded, benevolent body.

The silver-haired man began to walk slowly towards the yard, around which were the majority of our workshops and showrooms. He paused to look into Ben and Barbara Ackroyd’s ceramics studio (specialists in signs and plaques, hand-made, painted to order, world-wide mail-order service).

“He wants a nameplate for his house.”

“No, Steve, he’s just resting.”

A ceramic nameplate featuring daffodils or bunny-rabbits might be a bit naff for our dignified gent. You might well say that what Steve and I produced at Majig Mementoes was naff. Yet you had to find a commercial gimmick, a vacant niche in the craft world. When we applied for the unit, the name of our enterprise had provoked suspicion from Hugh Ellison, who had vetted us personally. What was this about magic? Here at Fernhill we would find no New Age craftspeople peddling pagan symbolism!

Majig Mementoes is merely a catchy name, we explained. Jig, from jigsaw – plus magic moments, treasured memories, as in the song. We would turn any photograph into a special personalised jigsaw. Wedding photograph, holiday photo, baby or pet portrait, pic of your house or your garden at its best, or your classic car. The jigsaw could be a surprise present for someone. It might serve as a promotional ploy, advertising your business. Rectangle or circle or star-shape: you name it. Your initials linked together. Car-shaped, yacht-shaped, cat-shaped. If a client had no suitable photo available, I could take excellent pictures with my digi-camera. We also imported speciality collector-jigsaws from America and Sweden, mostly for sale by mail-order.

“What kind of specialities” demanded Ellison, “does Sweden offerR?” He had this knack of echoing the final sound in each sentence – a trick to avoid the usual “urns” or “ers.” No hesitations figured in his speech.

Craggy and patriarchal he looked – someone who would roll up his sleeves (after first removing the well-tailored jacket and the chunky cufflinks) and plunge rescued souls into a tub of water to cleanse them. Alas, he was losing his hair, and wore what remained rather absurdly long in the camouflage style of a vain bloke who cannot admit to reality.

“SwedenN – ”?

“Nothing naughty,” Steve hastened to reassure him. “A company in Helsingborg makes the most difficult jigsaws in the world. 40,000 unique pieces to the square metre. That’s over twenty-five pieces to the square inch.”

“That ought to keep Swedes out of mischiefF.” As if Swedes were forever romping in the nude, feeding each other wild strawberries.

We would undertake any reasonable jigsaw commission. Steve, with his woodworking skills, and some accountancy courtesy of a training course offered by the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas. Me, with my qualifications in photography and graphic design, and some marketing know-how, thanks again to CoSIRA, which had oiled the wheels for us to take out a bank loan for working capital.

Ellison’s next question was, “Is a unit at Fernhill big enough for you to manufacture jigsawsZ?” Now he had his financial hat on. (Let not a mischievous gust of wind blow into the little office behind the tea-rooms, where he interviewed us, and expose his comb-over! Steve explained how the colour separation, litho-printing, spray- mounting, and lamination would be carried out by a printing firm in Blanchester, our county town nearby, which would also produce the cardboard boxes. Our main expense had been the computer and software for editing and tweaking electronic pictures, and the scanner for digitizing customers’ own photos.

The silver-haired gent had moved on, to pause outside Donald and Daisy Dale’s Chess Yes! (Hand-made, hand-painted sets, characters out of Arthurian Legend to Star Trek; unusual commissions welcomed.) Still, the brolly did not go down – not until the old man reached our own unit, and proceeded to step inside. We were in luck. Calling out a cheery greeting, we busied ourselves so he would feel at ease while he looked around, though we did sneak glances.

A framed oval jigsaw held him spellbound. Two lovely twin sisters, early teenage, with blond pigtails, were leaning laughing against the basin of the Fountain of Trevi in Rome. Both girls wore polka-dot frocks, one of yellow spots on red, the other of red spots on yellow. Photo by proud Daddy, who lived in our own village of Preston Priors and who ran a Jaguar dealership in Blanchester. Daddy had sent out our jigsaws of his girls as Christmas presents to relatives at home and abroad. He had been only too happy to let us to keep one on permanent show at Fernhill. Whether all the recipients would be enchanted by the proud gift (“See what lovely children I have!”) was, perhaps, another matter.

In his younger years our visitor must have been handsome in a Germanic way – him driving a Mercedes directed my mind along these lines. Lofty brow, aquiline nose, blue eyes, jutting chin, and no doubt a flaxen mop of hair in times gone by. His broad shoulders had shrunken in. He no longer stood so straight and tall in his posh suit, as once he must.

“May I ask some questions?”

I would have put his accent as educated Tyneside, if it had not been subtly foreign. Steve and I were all attention.

#

That van: did all of us here belong to God’s Legion?

Definitely not. I explained the situation.

Who had paid for the special advertising feature in the county newspaper on Saturday, profiling the craft centre? It was the four-page spread which had brought us to his attention.

Why, that had been Hugh Ellison’s notion to promote the place. God’s Legion bore half the cost. Collectively, us craftspeople paid the rest. Nowhere in the profile was there any mention of glory or redemption.

He consulted our brochure. “You are Chrissy Clarke. Chrissy is short for Christine. I suppose you sympathise with the aims of these evangelists.”

“Not especially! It’s only a business arrangement. The rents are cheap.”

Our visitor probed our background a bit more, which I thought was rather impertinent, but he was a potential client.

Steve and I had met as students at art college in Loughborough. Both of us were keen on jigsaw puzzles. Photography and graphics; woodworking; blah blah. I did not go into details about how we were only renting our cottage, or how on earth we would ever find a chance to have kids.

Changing tack abruptly: how tiny could the pieces of a jigsaw be made? As soon as I mentioned that company in Sweden: could we show him an example of their products right now?

Of course we could.

The miniature intricacy delighted him. “This is very fortunate. Majig, I do like that name.”

Steve chuckled. “God’s Legion were a bit suspicious of it at first.”

Those blue eyes twinkled. “I can guess why.”

“We had thought about calling ourselves Jiggery-Pokery”

“What does that mean? I do not know the words.”

“It means something crafty,” I intervened. “It’s from a Scots word for trick, which probably comes from the French for game. But really, it suggests deceitfulness.”

“You explain well to a foreigner.”

“That’s because I had a German boyfriend for a little while before I met Steve.” Heinz had been studying graphics at Loughborough. I had thought he was sweet.

“A German boyfriend? That’s good.”

“Because you are a German?” My tone was a touch tart.

“Because it broadens the mind. In fact, Miss Clarke, I am Norwegian. My name is Knut Alver, and I have a proposal…”

#

What a proposal it was, certainly as regards the fee he offered, and the fringe benefits – a quick trip to Norway at his expense, returning via Sweden and Copenhagen.

To give Mr Alver his due, he made the commission sound as normal as he could. He felt very nostalgic, so he explained, for the land of his birth. Unfortunately, he was terrified of air travel. Boat trips made him seasick. A car journey to Norway would be too gruelling at his age, even if a chauffeur was at the wheel.

In Oslo, he went on, there is a sculpture park – the creation of a certain Gustav Vigeland. This park and its statues epitomise the spirit of Norway. Mr Alver wanted majig mementoes of the place, to assemble at his leisure. By so doing, he would be putting his own life in order metaphorically, before the grim reaper came for him.

He wished us to go to Oslo and take pictures of various sculptures in the park by moonlight. We should carry our film to that Swedish firm, for them to produce four custom-made jigsaws with as many thousands of pieces as they could pack into each. He would pay the Swedes in advance on our behalf. Mr Alver tapped the Swedish box we had shown him.

“Keep Publishing: that is what the name of the company means.”

Steve grinned. “Persistent people, eh?”

Mr Alver regarded him oddly, then chuckled.

What’s more, Alver went on, we must drive with our film the three hundred or so miles from Oslo to Helsingborg in Sweden in a hire-car, for which he would pay.

“It is good to keep in touch with the ground. Even railway trains are somewhat detached from the landscape. I have never liked trains – ”

There seemed to be few forms of transport of which he did approve! Ours is not to reason why. A drive through Sweden could be lovely and fascinating. I did correct him on one point.

“No films are involved, Mr Alver. I use a digital still camera. The images store electronically on a pop-out card.”

“Oh… These pictures must be taken late at night, by moonlight. Is it technically possible with such a camera – as regards exposure?”

Simpler and faster. Camera on a tripod. Half a minute or so by moonlight should be fine. Bright and early next morning, we would return to take the same pictures by daylight. The Swedish company’s computer would tweak the digi-pictures to enhance and smooth out grain and add in extra detail.

“This is excellent – better than I hoped.” Then Mr Alver proceeded to broach the slightly bizarre aspect of the commission.

“That park is most magical by moonlight. It is open all round the clock, and perfectly safe for a stroll at any hour – ”

One good reason for taking the pictures at midnight was that we should have the place pretty much to ourselves. During daylight hour’s tourists, particularly Japanese, infested the Vigeland Park, so he had heard.

“All of the granite sculptures in the park are nude figures – of men and women, young and middle-aged and old, and of boys and girls and babies. The park is a celebration of the cycle of life – ”

Here came the delicate part of the commission. The Norwegian gent insisted that Steve and I in turn must press our own naked flesh against the sculptures he specified, embracing those granite nudes. Two photos of Steve doing so; two photos of myself. Resulting in four jigsaws. Circular ones, each half a metre across. In black and white.

Steve is skinny. Rabbit-skinny, is the way he refers to it. Imagine a rabbit dangling, skinned, in a butcher’s shop. He’s red-headed – curly-haired – and covered in freckles. I’m plumper. Frankly I’m a little plumper than I ought to be, though my breasts are petite. Good child-bearing hips, and never mind about the milk-supply. Usually I wear my long dark hair tied up. Neither of us were pin-ups, but of course that is true of most people.

“I require nothing frontal. I am an old man. Nudity is not titillating to most Norwegians. This is a… symbolic thing. You will understand when you see the sculptures. Adopt whatever pose is most comfortable.”

I nodded reassuringly at Steve. Free trip to Scandinavia. Nice fat fee for a little work.

“And there’ll be nobody in the park but us?” Steve asked.

“There will be a few people, but it is a big place. I want you to take the photographs on the central elevated platform. From there you can see all around. The sculptures provide cover – ”

For our exposure, ho.

“I imagine you will wear clothing which you can remove quickly – ”

Quite, a dress without knickers underneath. I could forgo a bra. Steve should wear underpants in case he zipped himself.

After the jigsaws were produced in Helsingborg, we should take the ferry across to Denmark and fly back with the four boxes of jumbled pieces from Copenhagen, where we would leave our rent-a-car. On our return, we would phone Mr Alver so that he could come to Fernhill to collect the goods. He would not confide his address to us because, frankly, he was something of a recluse, who feared being burgled now that he was frail. This was another quirk I could easily live with. He would book our flights and a hotel room in Oslo near the park, and a hotel in Helsingborg. Tickets and such would arrive in the post. Half of our fee he would pay in advance right now, and in cash.

And so it was agreed. And shaken upon. Mr Alver insisted on clasping my hand, and Steve’s too. He hung on to us for about five times longer than your average handshake. Maybe this was a Norwegian expression of sincerity.

At the top of the fifty-mile-long fjord, the Scandinavian Airline Service jet commenced its turn towards the airport. What a compact city Oslo seemed, hemmed in by hills. A wilderness of more hills rolled far into the distance. The same landscape stretched for a distance equal to about half the length of Europe, with only a few million Norwegians to stipple the empty spaces.

The plane banked westward, past the stocky twin-towered city hall of red brick on the waterfront. Probably we flew over the sculpture park, but without spotting it.

A taxi took us from the airport to a street of shops and businesses, called Bogstadveien, and decanted us at a certain Comfort Hotel. This sounded suspiciously like a sex establishment, but proved to be patronised by Norwegian families on holiday. Our room was tastefully mock art nouveau, recently revamped. One oddity was that each landing of the Comfort Hotel boasted a communal trouser press. During our stay I never saw any of these presses in use. What if, overnight, someone stole a guest’s pants? Maybe no one would dream of such a prank in Norway.

People might be too busy guarding their trouser pockets! -in view of the sky-high price of a beer in the hotel bar, and anywhere else – not to mention the cost of meals, clothes, books, and all else. Norway was a seriously costly country.

We had arrived around six in the evening. A glance at the bar and restaurant tariff sent us out along the street, past shops and a few other hotels and bars, in search of somewhere more reasonable – until we wised up and returned. Beer at six pounds a glass was the norm. We would eat and drink in the hotel, and not feel guilty that we were exploiting Mr Alver.

We booked a coach tour of Oslo for next day, picking up from our hotel early on. National Gallery (for a gape at The Scream by Munch), Viking longboats, Kon-Tiki et cetera, ending up at the Vigeland Park. Clear sky permitting, we could return to the park late the same night simply by walking from Bogstadveien, no great distance, according to the hotel receptionist.

#

Our fellow sightseers proved to be a mixed bag of Americans and Europeans. Japanese tourists rated entire coaches to themselves. The day was balmy, clouds few and fluffy in a blue sky. Those Viking boats in the museum at Bygd0y – we were getting our bearings – were huger than I had expected. Likewise, the crowds of visitors. This was also true at the Vigeland Park, at least by day.

“God, it’s so Teutonic – ”

Steve was right.

A monumental sevenfold row of wrought-iron gates topped by huge square lamps led to a grassy avenue lined with maple trees. This sward led to the powerful central axis of the park, which was crisscrossed by geometrical paths. We crossed a long bridge, many pale grey granite physiques young and old upon its parapets. A few figures were grappling with a dragon of mortality, which eventually sapped its victim. Likewise, at the gates, lizards had been gripping young children.

From the bridge, upward and upward the park rose, stage by stage, flight of steps by flight of steps, towards a distant monolith. The impression was of a hugely elongated, flattened ziggurat, a Nordic Aztec temple.

A mosaic labyrinth enclosed a great fountain. Around the fountain’s rim, muscular bodies were entwined with sculpted trees resembling giant stone broccoli, infants dangling from the branches. Over-sized nude men bore the weight of the massive basin. Struggle. Growth. Sexuality. Death.

Ascending past stone bodies (and many camera-toting Japanese), we came to an oval plateau. So many tourists milled about here that we might have been negotiating an open-air dance floor.

On rising plinths a zodiac of hulking figures, young and old, embraced and wrestled and clung to one another. It was four of those groups to which Steve and I must attach ourselves that night, when the place was quiet. Those plinths and their burdens partitioned circular stairs leading to the summit, where a monolith soared thirty or forty feet high.

So phallic, that fountaining column of bodies! Those at the base looked like corpses. Higher up, frozen movement began -a yearning ascendance skyward. The tip was a swarm of small children suggestive of cherubs or magnified sperms.

“It’s like some sort of nature-worshipping Nuremburg rally! The Nazis must have loved this place when they were here.”

Quite, Steve. The park was still being finished during the Second World War, when Norway was occupied – so the tour guide on the coach had explained.

My idea of the history of Norway consisted of the Vikings followed after a giant void by Ibsen, then by Resistance heroes being parachuted into forests to sabotage Nazi U-boat bases and heavy water factories. (Not everyone was a Resistance hero – a certain Mr Quisling, whose name became a by-word for treachery, had headed a puppet government of collaborators.) Stonecarvers did not complete work on the monolith in the park until 1943. I imagined black-clad SS officers strolling by, blond frauleins on their arms, psyching themselves up to breed more of the master race to replace losses at Stalingrad.

Those various lizards and dragons in the park might be a mordant echo of the way Norwegian life was being strangled by tyranny, as well as a perennial image of the way death finally defeats life – but not before new children are spawned.

“It isn’t my cup of tea, either,” I admitted. “It’s all so heavy. I’ll feel like a human slug pressing myself up against the figures…” Tonight, tonight. If the sky stayed clear. Clouds were in short supply over Scandinavia.

“You’ll look great.”

Would Mr Alver think so too? And likewise of Steve, draped against granite? Such puny physiques, ours, compared with the adamantine anatomy on show. Evidently this did not matter, compared with the symbolism. When we had checked the positions of the groups we were supposed to interact with – to the north, south, east, and west – we retraced our steps, a thousand of them, so it seemed, before we regained the vast wrought-iron gateway. We said goodbye to the coach courier and walked back to the hotel to be sure of the distance. The journey only took fifteen minutes.

#

Viewed from the monolith plateau by the light of the moon, this park could have designed to summon aliens from the sky, to be their landing site.

Or to summon something, at any rate.

Pompeii-like, a race of giants was petrified in the midst of life’s yearnings and raptures and struggle, or melancholy acceptance.

Far away down below a tall beaming granite mother ran, child in her outstretched arms, her long stone hair blown back. We had passed her earlier; and also a grinning father hoisting a lad up by the wrists high above his own head. By contrast, up top all adults were kneeling or bending or sitting bunched up, or they only came into existence at the knee. An elderly seated couple consoled each other. A kneeling wrestler hurled a woman over his shoulder. Only children stood upright.

The exaggeration of the figures – the massive, sleek stylization – banished any notion that these bodies might momentarily come to life. Yet to run my hand over the smooth granite surfaces was to discover, by touch alone, sinews and muscles which had been invisible even in bright daylight. Only physical contact revealed the hidden dimension.

The moon was full. Clouds were few. Some people were loitering on the bridge of statues, but that was far away. With a wax crayon I marked the position of the tripod’s legs for reference in the morning. Steve stripped and leaned against that stone man hurling a woman away from him. He held still, skinned rabbit against moonlit granite.

#

We had finished with three of the groups. Hair hanging loose, I was about to shuck off my dress and sandals and mount a plinth to join a tight cluster of chunky stone girls. Bums outward, pigtailed heads bowed, these recent graduates from childhood appeared to be absorbed in comparing their presumably burgeoning genitals. What was within their charmed circle was solid rock, of course.

Which was when The Drunk arrived.

His short fair hair was tousled, his face, even by moonlight, weather-beaten. Checked shirt, jeans, workman’s boots. God knows if he had been spying, blending in ghostlike behind other sculptures. He addressed us in English. We were from Britain? Photographers? Midnight is the best time of day for photographs here! Himself, he comes to this place whenever he is in Oslo when the moon is full.

Although his voice was slurred, vocabulary and grammar were commendable for a drunk – and a feather in the cap of the local educational system. With the tipsy care of someone treading a line between obstacles, he chose his words.

“Like a fish on a hook I come here. Like a whale being winched.”

“Do you work on a whale-ship?”

The drunk shook his head.

“You’re a trawlerman?”

No, his job is to drive a giant bulldozer. Right now, he is employed in the construction of Oslo’s new international airport, forty kilometres away from the city in empty countryside. Do we know about it? Fornebu Airport (where we had landed) is to shut. Too many flights over the city. Hide the airport where nobody lives. Previously he worked building dams. Norway needs many new dams because of climate change, did we follow him?

Tugging a wallet from his back pocket, the man fumbled out a laminated card illustrated with his photo. This, we must inspect by the light of the moon.

“My permit to drive heavy engineering vehicles. Carl Olsson: my name. Actually it is not my name. I was adopted, do you understand?”

“Adopted, yes.”

“I would like to buy you a drink. Good open-air restaurant over there. Great view. But it is closed.”

Of course a cafe would be closed at half-past-midnight.

The construction site, up-country, is dry in the alcohol sense. Nothing to do there at night but watch television in huts. Monotonous! However, he’s well paid, so he can afford a binge in town. What else to do with his money?

We agreed about the hideous cost of alcohol.

Olsson showed his teeth, grinning. “If Norwegians drink, they knife each other – personally I do not.” He was a well-controlled drunk. “People believe this will happen. So it is illegal to carry even a little penknife. In the village where I was raised, dancing is banned. The people think it is the devil’s doing, dancing. That is near Bergen.”

“Do you go home much?” Why don’t you go bock home right now?

“Nothing for me there. I come here. When I am drunk, it feels better. Tomorrow afternoon I catch the bus back to the new airport. By then I will be sober.”

To come to this park, he needed to dull his senses? Mr Olsson seemed to have a screw loose.

“Please, will you take my photograph beside these stone girls and send it to me?”

I agreed – provided that he would go away afterwards.

“I don’t mean to be rude but we have a job to do here. We can’t do it if someone’s watching.”

Norwegians might not care a fig-leaf about nudity -according to Mr Alver – but Carl Olsson was more muscular than Steve. I worried about arousing the man.

“Yes, you want to be alone. I respect that.” Burrowing in a pocket, he found crumpled paper and a ballpoint pen. Resting paper on plinth, he printed. “This is the address of the construction site – ”

Steve stuffed the paper into his jeans. Mounting the plinth, Olsson draped an arm around the shoulders of those clustering closeted girls. My camera was already in position. The Drunk held still with total concentration until I told him, “It’s done.”

He jumped down, but then he lingered by the granite group, leering at us.

“There is somewhere deeper than this, somewhere no tourists ever see, hidden away in darkness where no daylight reaches. It is the other side of this park. I do not mean where that cafe is – I mean the under-side, the black side. Vigeland had a younger brother, you see. The younger brother built a private death-house for himself. It is in the hills where the rich people live, the Selma district. If you tell me your hotel and we go in a taxi I will show it to you.”

Thanks but no thanks. “You have your bus to catch tomorrow,” I reminded him.

“Will you be sure to send me the photograph?”

“Yes, yes.” Just go.

Out came that wallet again. “I pay you for the printing and postage.”

“No, no,