Read I Refuse for Free Online Page A

way down into the great void because his wife had gone to Oslo and taken the children with her, there were two sisters and two brothers, Egil, and Audun, and Audun had been in their class, but even though he was a neighbour and the same age as Jim and Tommy, they weren’t friends with him. There was no room for anyone else.
    And then Tommy caught sight of Siri and the police sergeant in the sunshine at the front of the house. The twins were sitting on the steps with their arms wrapped around their shoulders as though they were freezing cold and it was late autumn, but it wasn’t autumn, it was summer in all its glory, and the sergeant stood with his arms crossed and his shirtsleeves rolled up all the way to his armpits, and he was powerful, it was easy to see, which was the point, that it was for show. And he stood there waiting, he was waiting for Tommy, and Tommy understood right away it was him they were waiting for, all four of them, and he thought, I’m strong too, he may not be able to take me, not if I’m quick, I’m quicker than him. He could have stopped right then and headed off another way, but there was no other way, for Siri was there, and the twins. There was a car he hadn’t seen before parked by the road as well as the police car. The police car was a black Volvo, but this other one was red as a communist flag, a van with letters painted on the side, but neither Tommy nor Jim could read what it said. What’s written on that van, Tommy said, you’re long-sighted, aren’t you. Jim always sat by the large window at the back of the class. Sure I am, Jim said, but I can’t read it. I think maybe it’s a carpenter’s van, there’s a hammer painted on it. And a carpenter he was. He must have been new to Mørk because they hadn’t seen the van before, and if they had, they would have remembered it, being so red, and there was a yellow hammer painted on the doors at the back, he was definitely a communist.
    Jim followed Tommy all the way down although his mother was out on the doorstep of their house staring at them as they cycled past, and then they braked and got off their bikes by the Berggren house and propped them against the dustbins, and right behind the bins stood the police sergeant with his sunglasses on. He slowly uncrossed his arms and dropped them each side of his hip and let them hang there, as a pistolero would, slightly apart from his thighs with only the index finger crooked forward into an unnatural curl. He was smiling, he had a broad belt with a large buckle round his waist, and on the gleaming silver buckle there was a skull with eyes of red glass in the sockets.
    There were four bags on the front steps. The biggest was Siri’s, the next biggest Tommy’s and the two smallest were identical and looked like doll’s cases on the large flagstones. They were all so full they were bulging. Their schoolbags were on the grass. What’s going on here, said Tommy. You’re moving, said the sergeant. We can’t, this is our house. Oh yes, you can, the sergeant said, you can’t live here on your own, you can’t look after yourselves. Sure we can, Tommy said. Nonsense, the sergeant said, and anyway you have no rights in this world, you’re not sixteen yet. I’ll be sixteen in a very short time, Tommy said. You’re thirteen, the policeman said, do you think I don’t know how old you are, you’re in the seventh class, do you think I’m stupid. Two more weeks, Tommy said, and I’ll have finished school. For Christ’s sake, shut up, the sergeant said. Grab your bags and put them in the back of my car, and then we’ll go, no, not you two, he said to the twins, you take your bags and walk across the road. He pointed, and Tommy looked across the road. Herr and Fru Lien were standing on their front steps, they were waiting, they were watching what was happening, but stayed on their side of the road. We’ve spoken to them several times, and so has child welfare, they would like to have you,