The Last Fix (14 page)

    Police
Inspector Gunnarstranda was sitting in his office. He had taken his place
behind his cramped desk on which there was a black computer, an electric
typewriter, a mug jammed with biros, a pile of periodicals, a hole punch, an
empty, faded red ash tray inscribed with cinzano in peeling white letters on
the side and a great many loose sheets of paper.

    He
undid the buttons of his blue blazer and loosened the tight knot of the
tramline-blue tie over his shirt. The chair creaked as he leaned back and crossed
his legs, forcing the trouser material up and exposing one unusually white leg
over the edge of the sock. One angry black shoe bounced up and down in the air.

    The
telephone rang. He lifted the receiver. 'And thank you, too,' he said. 'I've
just arrived. Yes, it was great. I seldom go to the theatre. But that's what
it's like being a policeman. I have to sort out a few things here even though
it's late.'

    One
hand rested on the typewriter. The other pulled out the report he had just
pounded into shape. He read through it as the voice continued to speak into his
ear.

    'The
less we say about that the better,' he said, listening for a while, then he
grunted a goodbye and cradled the telephone. He sat gazing out of the window.
It was beginning to get dark outside. So it was very late. Nevertheless it was
too early to see stars in June; all he could see was the flashing green light
of a plane flying so high no sound could be heard.

    There
was a knock at the door. Frank Frølich stuck his head in. Gunnarstranda
nodded.

    'Like
it?' Frølich asked, closing the door behind him. He lumbered over and
slumped down in his chair, which groaned under the weight. He was wearing blue
jeans, trainers and a T-shirt with a Friends of Beer logo beneath a blue denim
jacket. His wavy, grey hair was in a mess and so long that it was growing over
his ears. He needs a haircut, thought Gunnarstranda, a haircut and to go on a
diet. Frølich’s stomach bulged out beneath his ribs, and, sitting
upright in a chair, as he was now, it was only a question of time before he
would be able to use it as a coffee table.

    'Like
what?' asked Gunnarstranda;

    'The
play.'

    Gunnarstranda
took his time and looked down at himself. He straightened his tie and cuff
links. 'No,' came the conclusion. 'I didn't.'

    'What
was wrong with it?'

    'The
crowd who took me there.'

    'But
they have nothing to do with the play. What did you see?'

    'Faust.'

    'I've
heard it's supposed to be shit-hot.'

    Gunnarstranda
considered this. 'Well, I liked the play. The text is good apart from these
temptations to which he's exposed. I mean, they were so banal: young women in
suspender belts and all that. I had expected a bit more from Goethe, not to
mention Mephistopheles!'

    'Who
did you go with?'

    'Falk-Andersen,
his wife and his sister.'

    'Proper
bit of match-making, eh?'

    'Proper
pains in the arse more like. Of course, they enjoyed the play.'

    'And
who is Falk-Andersen?'

    Gunnarstranda
sighed. 'A botanist. Retired academic. Even if I'd tried I'm not sure I could
have offended any of them.'

    'Very
good,' Frølich said. He sat back in his chair with a glazed look, then
said, 'I've been talking to the people at the travel agency where Katrine
Bratterud worked.'

    Gunnarstranda
raised his arm and checked his watch. He realized he should have eaten a long
time ago and tried to work out if he was hungry.

    'Fristad
rang,' mumbled the detective inspector. 'Director of Public Prosecutions.'

    Then
came the cough. He put his feet on the floor and succumbed to it heart and
soul. Pains shot through his chest, his breathing was like a rotten elastic
band and he knew he looked dreadful.

    After
the attack had finally abated, he swung round his chair, opened the window wide
and took out a short, fat stump of a roll-up from his pocket.

    'Don't
think that's very healthy,' Frølich ventured.

    The
police inspector waited until his breathing was normal before answering.
'Nothing's healthy. Working's not healthy, sleeping's not healthy, even the
food we eat makes us ill.' He stuck out his lower lip like a monkey as he lit
the roll-up, so as not to burn his lips.

    'Why
don't you roll a new one?' Frølich exclaimed in disgust.

    'If I
light them several times, 1 can reduce my smoking to eight a day,'
Gunnarstranda retorted. 'Eight a day.'

    'So
you think it's healthier to smoke that tarry goo than to have a few puffs at a
fresh one?'

    'You
sound like Falk-Andersen's sister!' Not to burn himself Gunnarstranda was
holding the tiny dog-end with the nails of his thumb and first finger. The
fingers formed a circle and he pursed his lips as he blew the smoke out.

    'I
don't give a damn if you smoke yourself to death,' Frølich said in
desperation. 'It's the aesthetics of it that I find distasteful.'

    'OK,
OK,' mumbled the inspector, swinging round and dropping the extinguished, brown
tobacco-corpse in a long-necked ashtray behind him. He wore a lop-sided smile
and fetched a new roll-up from his pocket. 'Nine a day,' he grinned, and lit
up.

    Frank
Frølich shook his head.

    'You're
right,' Gunnarstranda said, inhaling. 'This one's better; this one won't make
me ill. By the way, Fristad was wondering why we didn't trot out the standard
phrases to the press - mutilated body, vicious rape, the worst I've seen in my
police career and so on.'

    'And
what did you answer?'

    'Nothing.'

    'But
was it rape?'

    'Looks
like it,' Gunnarstranda said.

    'We
have to find out what she was doing after midnight,' Frølich said.

    'She
went to a fast food place.'

    'Is
that right?'

    Gunnarstranda
nodded. 'They have identified the food we saw in her stomach as minced meat,
bread and potatoes, most probably fast food. So it seems as if it was right
that she brought up Annabeth s's fine supper. Our problem is to find out when
and where she ate the meal.'

    'I
was talking to her colleague,' Frølich said. 'A lady of about fifty, the
aunty-type, you know, with grownup kids, liked to keep an eye on the girl… she
says she was good at the job and attractive and cheerful and happy and all
that.'

    'And?'

    'Well,
she knew the girl was undergoing treatment, off drugs and off bad influences.
The lady at the travel agency says something odd happened…'

    The
telephone rang. Gunnarstranda sent it an angry glare. It continued to ring. Frølich
asked, 'Aren't you going to answer it?'

    His
tooth enamel glistened and the lenses of his glasses flashed as Gunnarstranda
snatched the receiver and slammed it down straightaway.

    Frølich
stared at the dead telephone.

    'Go
on,' said Gunnarstranda.

    'On
the day she disappeared a guy entered the shop and went for her.'

    'That's
the second person who's told us about the incident,' Gunnarstranda said. 'The
girl rang Sigrid Haugom on the Saturday and said the same. What does she mean
by…
went for her?'

    Frølich
read his notes. 'A roughneck, about forty years old with salt and pepper hair,
pony tail, earring and an ugly scar on his arm. The man threatened Katrine and
tried to attack her but gave up when Katrine asked… Katrine asked me… asked me
to call the police.' Frølich peered up.

    'This
lady,' Frølich said, 'was left in shock. She asked Katrine who he was
and why he had flown at her. She says Katrine admitted she had known the man
once, but she had not seen him for many years.'

    'What
is salt and pepper hair?'

    Frølich
reflected. 'Salt-and-pepper colour.'

    'Black
and white?'

    'No,
more grizzled, a bit like me.'

    'You're
grey, not grizzled.'

    'Some
say I'm grizzled.' 'How did he threaten her?'

    
Frølich
read from his notebook. '
You do as I say,
or:
You bloody do what I
tell you.'

    'So
she had refused to do something for this man?'

    Frølich
nodded. 'Sounds possible.'

    'It's
not much of a lead, of course.' Gunnarstranda pulled a face. 'So we're looking
for someone from the drugs scene who recently threatened our girl. The woman
from the travel agency had better have a look at the rogues' gallery. And you
can check with the boys in Narcotics if this salt-and-pepper roughneck rings
any bells with them.'

    It
was Frank Frølich’s second visit to the Vinterhagen centre; this time he
was not pelted with rotten tomatoes. He was sitting with Henning Kramer in what
appeared to be a classroom. Beside the board hung a poster with the legend
Say No to Drugs
- and a picture of an athlete, presumably a sports star.
Frank was not sure who it was. Her face meant nothing whatsoever to him. To
fill the time, he let his eyes wander through the window where there was little
to attract his attention except for the yellow accommodation building. The
place seemed quite dead. There was no visible activity to be discerned at all.
Not so strange perhaps, he thought. They must be affected by what had happened.
Almost three minutes had passed since he asked a simple opening question to the
man sitting on the dais. From that moment Henning Kramer had been studying a
corner of the ceiling with his first finger resting against the tip of his chin
as he ruminated. 'Feel free to answer,' Frølich said to Kramer.

    'I'm
thinking,' he said.

    'From
what I've heard you spent a lot of time together. You must have known what she
was like.'

    'Who
she was or what she was like?'

    Frølich
sighed and faced the intense man who was still staring at the ceiling with the
same concentration. 'Is there any difference?' he asked with a yawn.

    'Perhaps
not,' Kramer mused.

    Frølich
realized he had before him a man who weighed words and therefore he essayed a
linguistic compromise: 'What sort of person was she?'

    Kramer
closed his eyes. 'Katrine was carrying a dream,' he said, opening his palms,
'the dream of being crazy, the dream of standing on the motorway and
hitch-hiking and feeling free, jumping into a car and saying or doing something
which would amaze the driver.
Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it
rained and took us all the way to New Orleans.
That's it, isn't it? The
point, and Katrine didn't realize this, is that drivers are no longer amazed.
You can't say anything that hasn't been heard before. There is nothing that has
not been said before, or done for that matter, and the poor kids with flared
pants and headbands hitch-hiking by the roadside or those rolling naked in the
mud at the Roskilde festival, they might think they're demonstrating a counter-culture
but they're just a tourists' sideshow, which for some people might be a nice
reunion with another time. It's a bit like seeing those keyrings with the image
of Jerry Garcia, the ones you can buy at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco.
You don't believe it until you see them, but when you do, it's proof that the
so-called youth revolution has finally been absorbed into history and canonized
by the middle classes. So it's sad for those who still believe they're living
in the sixties or the seventies because what they believe they're part of is
nothing!'

    Kramer
jumped down on to the floor and strolled over to the window where he stood with
his back to Frølich.