But the Muffasa family never went to church.
In their own quiet way, they tried to keep Ramadan. They celebrated Eid with relatives from Los Angeles, who always took the time to come. And if Mr Muffasa didn’t actually face Mecca and pray five times a day, he often found time to pray when the garage was empty and quiet before closing time.
Mr and Mrs Muffasa read the Koran in the most user-friendly way. They honoured the prophet Muhammad and prayed that peace be with him, without that preventing them from decorating a Christmas tree so that the children wouldn’t feel left out.
When she died, Mrs Muffasa’s children found a kind of will in the drawer of her bedside table. Her memorial service was to be held in the Church of the Epiphany, and was to be organised by the reverend’s wife.
This caused rumblings in the family ranks, and their mother’s eldest sister threw herself in hysterical tears over the washed and dressed body that lay with folded hands in the coffin, with a cross on either side. But Mr Muffasa insisted. His wife had been of sound mind when she decided on how she wanted to be remembered. No one could dissuade him from fulfilling her final wish, and so Mrs Muffasa was buried in consecrated ground in front of a full Christian congregation.
The funeral was the last time Al Muffet had seen his older brother.
Three years of silence. And then he rang last night.
Al Muffet got out of bed and dressed himself with swift, silent movements. He had some paperwork he could do to pass the time. Anything was better than lying in bed not being able to sleep, plagued by this anxiety that he could not explain.
He and Fayed had never been friends. They put up with each other, as brothers do, but they had never understood each other. While little Ali hid behind his mother’s skirt and was adored by all her Episcopalian friends, Fayed wandered the streets alone and yearned to be with the extended family in Los Angeles, where he could go to the mosque with his uncle every day. There he could eat traditional food and learn more Arabic than the few words he managed to grasp from his father’s mumbled prayers. As an adult, he didn’t deserve to be called a practising Muslim, but on the whole, he upheld the traditions and married a Muslim woman. And when Ali Shaeed Muffasa became Al Muffet in the seventies, his brother Fayed accused him of being an Arab Uncle Tom. The brothers had barely spoken since.
Al Muffet had no idea what Fayed wanted. He had asked outright, but had avoided being positively rude. After all, they were brothers, and as their father was still alive, he didn’t want any dramatic bust-ups in the family, as that would kill the old man.
Fayed was coming to visit.
Fayed, who was a middle manager for a gigantic electronics company based in Atlanta, and who barely had time to see his own children, had phoned to say that he would drop by on the 18th of May. A curt comment that it wasn’t so strange that he wanted to know how Al and the girls were getting on out in the sticks was the closest he came to an explanation.
‘I’ll drop by,’ he had said.
Al Muffet crept past his daughters’ bedrooms. He knew the old house well enough now to step carefully over all the boards that creaked. At the top of the stairs he stood listening for a moment. Catherine’s steady breathing and Louise’s snoring made him smile. He felt calmer. It was his house and his life. Fayed could drop by as much as he liked. No one could harm Al Muffet or his daughters.
He went quietly downstairs and turned on the lights in the kitchen. He put on the kettle and took the cafetière out of the dishwasher, before getting the file he had brought home from the office from his bag.
‘Dad?’ Louise looked at him in surprise from the doorway.
He jumped and dropped the cafetière on the floor.
‘Is anything the matter?’ his daughter asked. Her hair was tangled and her pyjamas were too big.
‘No, sweetpea. I just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.’
He found the dustpan and brush in the scullery.
‘But why are you dressed, Dad?’ Louise sounded quite anxious now, and came closer.
‘Watch out for the glass,’ he warned. ‘Nothing’s wrong, nothing at all. I just thought that I could use my sleepless night to do some work. Shall I make some warm milk for us both? Then we can have a natter before you go back to bed. Would you like that?’
She gave a big smile and sat down at the table.
‘What fun,’ she said and grabbed an apple. ‘Just like when I was little. I must tell you what happened when Jody and I got…’
Al Muffet half listened as he swept up the broken glass. At least Louise had been reassured. He only wished he could say the same about himself.
V
The young police lawyer was bored. He had been fining people for nearly three hours in an attempt to empty the overcrowded cells. Over half of them were teenagers whose bodies were still not rid of the national-day celebrations. They stood in front of him, one after the other, with hangovers, staring at the floor as they stammered their polite apologies and promised never to do it again. A couple of older drunk drivers tried to drum up an argument, but piped down when threatened with continued detention, and were then released on bail.
The remainder were old acquaintances. Most of them were in fact grateful for free accommodation in a place that was at least warm and dry. The police lawyer had never seen the point in fining people who then had to go to social services to get the money to pay the fine. But he was just doing his job, and soon enough he’d gone through the list.
‘How’s things?’
The young man held out his hand to Bugs Bunny. He normally gave arrestees nothing more than a nod, but Bugsy was in a class of his own. He was a thief by profession and had been a very good one in his day. But he had lost all the fingers on his left hand during a disastrous attempt to blow a safe in the seventies, and alcohol had consumed the rest of his body since then. His real name was Snorre. He had been given his nickname in the days when he still had teeth, because they were so big, and it had stuck ever since. Now he kept himself busy by stealing from lorries that had been left open, cellar storerooms with simple padlocks, and the odd shop. But he was always caught. The notion of modern surveillance equipment had passed him by. He would stand there, resigned, with the stolen goods under his arm as the alarm sounded and the security guards came bounding over.
Bugs Bunny had never physically hurt another person.
‘Not good,’ he complained and sat down carefully on the spindly chair.
‘You don’t look good either,’ the police lawyer said.
‘Cancer. Down below. Really bad.’
‘Are you getting any help?’
‘Pah, not a lot they can do now, you see.’
‘So why did you attempt to break into a chemist shop then?’
‘The pain. The bloody pain.’
‘You’re not up to a chemist shop, Bugsy. Alarms and all that. And the stronger drugs are locked away in a store cupboard that I quite honestly don’t think you could bust, even if you did, against all odds, manage to get into the shop. It was a bit stupid of you, you know.’
Bugsy moaned and rubbed his neck with his left hand.
‘Yes,’ he mumbled. ‘But fucking hell, it hurts.’
The police lawyer tipped his chair back. It was quiet in the small room, and they could hear an argument going on out by the front desk. Someone was crying – it sounded like a young woman. The police lawyer looked at Bugs Bunny’s face, and he could have sworn he saw tears in the worn old man’s eyes.
‘Here,’ he said suddenly and took his wallet out of his jacket pocket. ‘The offies are open again today. Get yourself something strong.’
He handed him a five-hundred-kroner note. Bugs Bunny’s toothless mouth dropped open in disbelief. He shot a glance at the uniformed policeman on duty by the door, who just smiled and looked away.