The Last Fix

by K. O. Dahl

  Gunnarstranda: 'How did you hear about her death?'

  'Well, at today's morning meeting I brought the issue up as I hadn't heard from Katrine, and someone had seen the news last night, an item about a dead woman being found in Mastemyr. I don't know why but suddenly everyone was frightened it could be Katrine. Henning,- a social worker with us, was given the task of ringing her at work to check.' Sigrid's smile was weary. 'And I don't know if that was before or after you were contacted,' she added.

  'And you have no idea why she fell ill at the party or where she went after leaving you?'

  'Not a clue.'

  'When did you leave the party?'

  'I was picked up by my husband.'

  'When?'

  'Late, very late, it was beginning to get light.'

  'You have a nice husband.' 'He's always there for me. When we were younger I thought this self-sacrifice was a bit wearing. Now it's just great.'

  'But why did you stay so long?'

  'We kept going. I talked to Annabeth for a long time. It was a cross between a sewing circle and a business meeting. The last guests left at around half past four, I think. Afterwards I helped Annabeth to tidy up. Before I left, Bjørn came back from town.'

  'What time was that?'

  'As I said, it was beginning to get light, so I would guess it must have been around four in the morning.'

  'Was the party a success?'

  'Yes, I think so.'

  'Was there anyone in particular Katrine spoke a lot to during the evening?'

  'Well, that's hard for me to say. She left the party early and I sat quite a distance from her during the meal. I saw her with her boyfriend having coffee. That was all I noticed about her - until she was ill.'

  Gunnarstranda got to his feet and walked to the door.

  'Very nice to meet you,' Sigrid Haugom said to his back. The detective inspector turned in the doorway. He stood thinking.

  'Yes?' Sigrid said.

  'Do you know anything about her background, her childhood?'

  Sigrid shook her head. 'I went home with her once.'

  Gunnarstranda waited.

  'It was very sad.'

  'Why's that?'

  'Her mother lives in a pretty derelict house. She was living with a man, but she was alone when we arrived. It was Katrine's birthday and she hadn't remembered. The woman hadn't seen Katrine for two years, and she served up tinned spaghetti on paper plates.'

  Gunnarstranda pulled a face.

  Sigrid said. 'Katrine couldn't cope. She ran out and I think that was the last time the two of them saw each other.'

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  The Soirée

  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.'

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Freedom is Another Word

  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.

  'Katrine never understood that it is pointless to escape into freedom,' Kramer said, and, roused, turned around: 'Freedom is not a state of mind or somewhere you can escape to. Freedom has to be grasped; it's here, inside yourself, and you find it in the things you do and think. It's about being your own master and master of the situation you find yourself in. You can't escape to freedom, only from it. It's only when you stand up and accept the world as it is, place yourself in it and grasp your own reality that you are free.'

  Frølich stifled a yawn. Then he glanced up from his notepad. Kramer was out of breath, excited. Frølich looked down at the blank page in his pad and jotted in his neat handwriting: Remember to ring Eva-Britt before four. Julie, Eva-Britt's daughter, had a place in an after-school care centre in Majorstuen. Eva-Britt had a special meeting on Tuesdays and they had a tacit agreement that Frank would collect Julie on these days. But the timing was bad. He would have to send her a message.

  As Frank couldn't think of any other things he needed to remember, he cleared his throat and asked in a toneless voice, 'But that's what Katrine was doing, wasn't she? From what I've understood she was ridding herself of illusions, she was officially clean and had a job with a travel agency.'

  'She couldn't cut the mustard though because she couldn't be with normal people.'

  'What do you mean?' Frank asked, elated to have steered the conversation away from abstractions.

  'She couldn't be normal. She wasn't capable of it. It made her feel sick at that bloody party of theirs; she couldn't take the reality they had to offer.'

  'So you don't think she was really ill at the party?'

  'She was no more ill than I am now!'

  'You mean she threw up because she could not take their reality?'

  'Yes.'

  'But what was it that she couldn't take? In concrete terms.'

  'What?' Henning's smile was sardonic, caustic. 'She didn't want to be like them!'

  'Them?'

  Kramer's eyes flashed. 'She hated the thought of signing up to a culture where you change your personality as you change your clothes. These so-called models that Vinterhagen serves up, they waltz off from a job where they preach for a natural release of endorphins in the brain, where they repeat time
after time how dangerous drugs are, how empowering it is to tell the truth, to admit to your own mistakes and to recognize that life in itself is one long intoxication, then they waltz off and don another dress, or suit, or hat, and instead of evangelizing that same claptrap they get plastered over supper before daring to say a few words of truth to each other and drink even more so that they can shag each other behind the bushes and blame the booze afterwards. Don't you see?'

  'Aren't you one of these models yourself?'

  'I hope not.'

  Frølich watched him, unsure about how to continue. 'I understand what you're saying about seeing through double standards,' he said. 'But this person was an adult, academically bright by all accounts and she had a past on the streets. She must have known what the world was like, how it worked. She can't have thrown up because her hypotheses proved to be correct.'

  'You're mistaken there,' Kramer said in a gentle tone. 'That is the precise reason why she spewed up. She spewed up the two of them: Bjørn and Annabeth.'

  'Why?'

  'Because…' Henning Kramer hesitated and fell silent.

  'Tell me.'

  'Once upon a time she screwed Bjørn Gerhardsen while she was whoring to get money for dope.'

  Frank's brow furrowed with scepticism. That particular piece of information stank. He underlined his own perception by pulling a face and shaking his head.

  'It's true,' the other man retorted - before continuing in a calmer key: 'Well, I don't give a shit whether you believe me or not. The point is that she recognized the guy from the past, and that's fine. Annabeth s is not that sexy, I suppose, so her old man rents himself a tart now and then. He's not alone in doing that. But the problem was that the guy didn't appreciate that he had to keep a low profile. My God, it traumatized her. She did have sex on the odd occasion, but it was a difficult thing for her. And then the guy turns it on and wants her again, right, for nothing, behind one of the bushes in the garden.'

  'That night? At the party?'

  'Precisely.'

  'Are you sure about that?' the policeman snapped.