The Last Fix (11 page)

    '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.'

    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 lush, 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.

    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.