The Last Fix

by K. O. Dahl

  'And the father?'

  'He died when she was ten or eleven. Originally she came from a foster home and was adopted.'

  'A foster home,' Frølich said. 'So Katrine was adopted by a drunk?'

  'I presume the mother was not a drunk when she adopted Katrine.'

  'Nevertheless.'

  'Mistakes are made by all public authorities, Frølich. For all I know, there may be people doing twenty years in prison because of your mistakes.'

  The younger detective was about to contradict her, but she swept him aside: 'At the centre we have a girl of fourteen who lost four teeth as a result of police brutality.'

  'Fourteen? Rubbish.'

  'The people who beat her up were more concerned with the fact that she was taking part in an anti-racist demonstration than her age. The point is that mistakes are made everywhere, Frølich. And I have dedicated half of my life to trying to correct such mistakes. Care for drug addicts is a continual process of repair. One shot of heroin for a thousand kroner in the street can be the start of a slow suicide or several years of fighting against addiction, costing society ten million kroner. Even if Katrine does end up as a statistic at some point, you don't need to rush to put her on the list. It would be better to find out who killed her.'

  'Where did she grow up?' Gunnarstranda intervened.

  'In fact, I'm not sure, but I think it was Krokstadelva or Mjondalen, Stenberg, somewhere around there, in one or other of the innumerable clumps of houses between Drammen and Kongsberg.'

  'And Katrine's biological parents?'

  'Katrine knew that her real mother died when she was very young and that was all. I didn't talk with her about that much.'

  'What did you talk about?'

  'A lot about her father. She really loved him. The father who died when she was ten or eleven. That may be a possible explanation for her syndrome, feeling drawn to a father figure, but all that is just speculation.'

  Gunnarstranda nodded slowly. He said: 'There's one thing we need to know. You said something about sexual abuse in childhood years. Does that apply to Katrine, too?'

  'I don't know.'

  'What do you mean by that?'

  'Katrine was inscrutable in this respect. I have my suspicions, but I don't know for sure.'

  'What do you base your suspicions on?'

  'I have my own ideas. There are often such stories behind a great many cases like hers, as I said. These symptoms of hers - prostitution, withdrawal, drug addiction - they can be explained by a variety of factors. But picture a girl with a strong attachment to a father, then the father dies, the mother turns to drink and strange men wander in and out of the house… I don't know. As I said, she was inscrutable.'

  'Is there anyone who could help us clear up this point? Someone who was particularly close to her?'

  'There's Ole, of course. They were together for quite a while, even though it was sporadic.'

  'Sporadic?'

  'Yes, he wanted a closer relationship than she did. You have to understand… Katrine didn't like people getting too close… then there's Henning, the conscientious objector you met at our place. He spent a lot of time with Katrine. There's Sigrid, a social worker with us. Sigrid Haugom. Katrine often confided in her, but I doubt Sigrid knows any more than we do. It is not our practice to keep secrets about our patients - amongst ourselves, I mean.'

  Gunnarstranda reacted. 'But isn't that what all confidentiality is based on? Do you mean that the patients at Vinterhagen cannot rely on the employees' ability to keep secrets?'

  Annabeth stared at him in bewilderment.

  'You were very quick to hide behind client confidentiality,' the inspector continued.

  'Successful treatment depends on openness, Gunnarstranda.'

  The policeman glared at her.

  'In fact, that is part of our ideological platform. Complete openness,' she explained in a gentle voice.

  Gunnarstranda dropped the subject. He said: 'As far as her male circle of acquaintances was concerned… was there any competition? Did Katrine's boyfriend have rivals?'

  'To be honest, I have no idea,' Annabeth said. 'Don't take too much notice of me. I may have imagined this jealousy of Ole's. I know very little about these things.'

  Gunnarstranda was making motions to return to the car.

  'You don't need to drive me back,' Annabeth said. 'I need some fresh air and it's late. I'll stretch my legs.'

  'Before that I need the names of everyone at the party on Saturday.'

  Annabeth s reflected. 'Is that really necessary?' 'I'm afraid so, fru Ås.'

  She took a deep breath and met Frank Frølich’s eyes. 'Come on then,' she said. 'Take notes.'

  They sat watching her. She could have graced an illustration in a Norwegian fairy tale. The long skirt, flat shoes and a small square rucksack on her back. Kjerringa med staven. The Woman with the Walking Stick. Except that this woman had no walking stick. 'Do you know why all women teachers walk around with a rucksack like that on their backs?' Frølich asked with a thoughtful air.

  'For books,' Gunnarstranda suggested.

  The other man shook his head. 'It fits exactly into the kitchen sink,' Frølich said.

  'The rucksack?' Gunnarstranda asked.

  'Yes, so they're firmly in position when their old man wants to give them one.' Frølich laughed at his own joke.

  Gunnarstranda peered up at him with disgust.

  'The rucksack on the woman's back,' Frølich explained, 'is stuck in the sink…'

  'I understood,' Gunnarstranda cut in. 'I don't think being single is doing you any good.' He stood up. 'You'd better check out the travel agency. And now we have a few names to be getting on with.'

  'And you?'

  Gunnarstranda looked at his watch. 'I have to go home. Change clothes. Go to the theatre.'

  'You?' Frølich burst out in dismay. 'To the theatre?'

  Gunnarstranda ignored the comment. Instead he perused Frølich’s notes. 'I'll take in this Sigrid Haugom on the way there,' he said. 'See you.'

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Domestic Chores

  She must have been a nice sort of girl, thought Frank, pondering what the tattoo around her navel could have meant. It didn't have to mean anything. Even teenage girls had tattoos these days, around the tops of their arms, on their shoulders, buttocks, breasts. People had tattoos everywhere. But, he went on to think, that special tattoo still suggested that he might never have been particularly close to her. He had male friends with tattoos; Ragnar Travis had tattoos all over his upper torso. However, since he did not know any women with tattoos he automatically assumed it was probable that he would not have got to know this woman.

  Frank Frølich found a gap between two cars and parked the police vehicle a few metres away from the drive to the block of flats in Havreveien. Standing alone in the slow lift up to the third floor, he was still wondering about the tattoos. Ragnar Travis considered tattoos attractive. But as for me,

  Frank thought, I could never look at a tattoo and see only that. After all, a tattoo is part of the body on which it is tattooed. Thus, Frank had to conclude, he regarded the body as part of the very decoration. Any body art that cannot be removed becomes part of the person. Or the person becomes part of the tattoo. And in that case the motif is pretty important, he thought. Thank God she hadn't chosen something banal like a cat or… Katrine Bratterud had had a kind of flower pattern with lots of flourishes tattooed around her navel. Irrespective of whatever stories Annabeth s and any of the others served up to him Katrine would stand out as the woman with the embellished abdomen - a dead body with a painting on her stomach; this painting would stand out and be an inseparable dimension of Katrine B whenever he thought about her as a living person. But that's my problem, he thought. I see Katrine's decision to adorn her stomach as one of her dominant traits, and that's where my assessment of her breaks down, he thought, opening the lift door to his floor. Because this was not just any flower. It was a l
ush, ornate flower - with two narrow but equally luxuriant petals licking their way down to her groin. Odd, he continued to think, that my mind is on the tattoo rather than all of the other stuff: the drug addiction, her childhood…

  Frank's shoulders sank as he stopped in front of his own door. It was open. He knew what that meant. From inside he could hear the sound of the vacuum cleaner. This was the last thing he had wanted today. The day had been too long, there had been too much hassle and there had been too little food for that. He stood in front of the door for a few seconds thinking. He could cut matters short, flee into town, have a beer first and then work on the theory that she would have left after a couple of hours. No. Not now, not when Gunnarstranda could ring up any moment to discuss details. He pushed the door open and stepped over the yellow vacuum cleaner blocking the way.

  She stood in her usual energetic pose, shouted a brief greeting over the noise but made no move to switch off the machine. 'There's food on the kitchen table,' she yelled.

  Frank's mother had two children she looked after very well. For Frank's sister this sacrifice was a welcome relief. Two small children and a husband doing shift work meant that you appreciate a helping hand. It was different for Frank. He was annoyed by her reproaches regarding the mess in the flat and the beer bottles in the fridge, and her fussing.

  So he flipped off his shoes and walked into the sitting room without paying any attention to her remark about the untidy shoelaces. The TV was switched on, but there was no sound. Floyd, the English celebrity cook, was cutting ginger into long strips and throwing them into a casserole before focusing his attention on a bottle of wine.

  Frølich slumped listlessly on to the sofa, put his legs up and rested them on the table that was not in fact a table - it was an old sea chest made of unplaned wood - but a multi-purpose piece of furniture: footstool, table and a perch for handy objects like a remote control and a mobile telephone.

  He looked at the TV screen. Floyd, with his red- wine nose and red-wine smile, smelled the casserole and then straightened up, poured red wine into a glass and knocked it back in one almighty swig. Frank raised the remote control and switched off the television.

  I may have seen Katrine in town, he mused. I might have turned my head for a second look… thought that she… or stolen a glance on the tram, noticed her profile when she was sitting with her nose in a magazine or a newspaper…

  His line of thought was broken when the hall door was opened with a bang. Vacuum cleaner first, Mum next. That was how she was. Unstoppable, like the dentist's drill in Karius and Baktus.

  'Take it easy!' he growled in a fit of irritation. But she ignored him as always and persevered with clenched teeth. The mouthpiece of the vacuum cleaner was already under the TV.

  'Careful,' he shouted.

  'Eh?'

  Mum pushed the mouthpiece between the cables, the DVD player and the TV.

  'Don't touch anything!' he roared, jumping up and over to the yellow vacuum cleaner and pressing the off button. The motor died with a slow whine. His mother straightened up and put her hands on her hips. She said nothing; she stood there with her stomach jutting forward, a pose which expunged all opposition.

  'I can manage this myself.' he ventured - in a meek voice. 'Christ, I've got my loose hackle flies here.' He pointed to the feathered trout flies on one corner of the table. 'The bloody vacuum cleaner might have sucked up my flies.'

  She sent him a stern look.

  'I'm trying to think,' he ventured, in an even meeker voice.

  'So think somewhere else!' Stomach first - out you go. 'Now I'm here, I'm going to help. Go into the kitchen and get some food down you.'

  He was beaten; he padded out of the room, closed the kitchen door and sat by the window looking out on to Europaveien - E6 - and stared down at the queue of cars crawling its way past.

  A corpse. A woman's dead body, with no clothes on, no jewellery, nothing. Just the eye-catching tattoo around her navel. Until the pathologist had cut open her stomach and folded the skin neatly to the sides.

  But it wasn't her lying on the table. It was something else. It wasn't her thoughts, her terror as she felt the cord around her neck tighten - until she blacked out. It's the other her we have to deal with, he thought, and visualized the dead body someone had tossed away - tossed away like a used item, like so much rubbish, like an empty shell. The lack of respect appalled him. Of all the acts the unknown perpetrator had committed against this poor woman, none was as grotesque as tossing her away, leaving her to lie there without dignity.

  I'm becoming soft, he said to himself. Tonight I'm going to sleep badly; I'm going to think about her.

  Frank chewed at a piece of bread covered with salami and a thick layer of prawn salad. Then he got to his feet and opened the fridge. He took out a litre of milk, checked the date, ripped open the top and quenched his thirst from the carton.

  At last there was silence in the sitting room. He could hear her reassembling the vacuum cleaner in the cupboard in the hall. 'No wonder you're not married,' she shouted to him. 'The way this place looks!'

  He found some cups and poured coffee that she had brewed in the machine. He observed the polished sheen of the kitchen window. At once he regretted his recent aggressive tone. 'Thank you,' he whispered, somewhat ashamed, as she sat down at the kitchen table. 'I'll drive you home afterwards.'

  'You won't ever get me on your motorbike again,' she swore and stood up to find some sugar cubes. Frank smiled at the memory of the time she had sat in the sidecar going down Ringveien. Mum holding on to her hat while being thrown around like a nut in a shell.

  'I've got a car,' he assured her.

  She shook her head. 'Then I'd rather take the

  Metro.' She smacked her lips as she chewed the sugar cube and took a mouthful of coffee. 'No one in the street is going to be able to say I was driven home in a police car!'

  Frank cut himself another slice of bread. 'It's a civilian car,' he said. 'No police sign or anything.'

  'Oh yes,' she said, indifferent. 'How's Little Napoleon?'

  'As always.'

  'I hope someone puts that little bugger in his place one of these days.'

  'He's a good policeman.'

  'He's what your father would have called a right basket.'

  'You're only-saying that because you don't know him.'

  'Yes, thank God.'

  Frank sighed. 'He's a widower. He hasn't got enough to do. That's the whole problem. In a way he's married to the job.'

  'You are, too,' she said.

  'You get hooked. You can't avoid it.'

  'How's that?'

  'It's like this murder. It's a crazy thing to happen but it's impossible not to be caught up. Nor to want to sort it out.' 'That's all, is it? Or is it because you daren't come to grips with other things in your life?'

  . There she went again. Frank shook his head in despair. Before he managed to say anything the telephone rang.

  'Talk of the devil…' Frank's mother muttered. 'There he is, Little Napoleon ringing for his foot- soldier.'

  'Are you alone?' Gunnarstranda asked.

  'Like a mackerel in Drobak Sound,' Frank said, taking the cordless telephone into the other room.

  'Tell me when you're alone.'

  'Now,' Frank said, sinking into the sofa again. 'I thought you were going to the theatre,' he continued.

  'I am going to the theatre. Soon. I want you to go out to the rehab centre tomorrow. Talk to the lad with the goatee and ask him if he had anything going with the girl. If you can find anyone else who knows her, talk to them, too. Will you shut up!'

  'I didn't say a word,' Frank said.

  'I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to a woman grumbling away outside. That's done it. Now she's as mad as hell. Good, that's made my day. Well, see you.'

  'See you,' Frank said, staring at the telephone.

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  A House in Town

  The woman who
opened the door was closer to fifty than forty and had at one time been very attractive. She was slim, of medium height, dressed in a nice grey suit with a skirt reaching above her knees. She regarded Gunnarstranda with expectation and mild interest, like a nurse.

  'May I come in?' he asked straight out.

  'Of course, my dear. Please excuse me,' she said, beaming a broad smile which made her even more attractive. Her hair was completely grey, like silver, and Gunnarstranda guessed it was dyed. He assumed she had been blonde once.

  'Annabeth has told us everything. It has hit us hard. But I didn't expect a visit from the police so quickly.'

  She was bare-legged and moved with grace, without a sound. She showed him into a living room and invited him to take a seat. 'Back in a moment.'

  The sound of classical music could be heard through concealed speakers. It was The Magic Flute, Mozart, one of the few pieces the policeman knew well. The singing made him sentimental. It made him think of Edel. And as he pursued the memory, the man and the woman in the opera were singing in unison: 'Auf Wiedersehen, auf Wiedersehen.'

  Gunnarstranda looked around. The CD cover lay with today's newspaper on a coffee table in front of the suite. Otherwise the room was dominated by tables: small antique tables in elegant mahogany, one table in each corner, one alongside each wall, several bearing antique lamps, American-looking Tiffany lamps with shades of coloured mosaics.

  Gunnarstranda stood on an oval rug with an oriental pattern. The rug lay in the middle of the floor and softened the sound of his shoes which had made such a hard, formal click on the oak parquet flooring. He stood on the rug, rocking on the balls of his feet. He listened to Pamina warbling her way through an aria as Sigrid Haugom was rattling cups in the kitchen. On the edge of his awareness he could hear water running from a tap. He ran his eyes along the walls. A room of good taste, he thought, more taste than function: no books, no TV, but a suite of comfortable furniture, tables, lamps and pictures on the walls. His interest was caught by a potted plant on the window sill and he strode over. It was a bonsai tree and it was not thriving. He lifted up the pot and studied the plant with interest. His conclusion was that the poor tree was dying. He stood looking outside, lost in thought. The window was south-facing and the garden stretched gently down to a green hedge concealing a pair of tramlines behind. But over the hedge you could see the classic outline of the inner part of Oslo fjord, the islands, Bunnefjord and Nesodden. One of the blue Color Lines ships was rounding the headland towards Drobak and into the Skagerrak.