'You'regrey, not grizzled.'
'Somesay I'm grizzled.' 'How did he threaten her?'
Frølichread from his notebook. 'You do as I say, or: You bloody do what Itell you.'
'Soshe had refused to do something for this man?'
Frølichnodded. 'Sounds possible.'
'It'snot much of a lead, of course.' Gunnarstranda pulled a face. 'So we're lookingfor someone from the drugs scene who recently threatened our girl. The womanfrom the travel agency had better have a look at the rogues' gallery. And youcan check with the boys in Narcotics if this salt-and-pepper roughneck ringsany bells with them.'
Chapter Ten
Itwas Frank Frølich’s second visit to the Vinterhagen centre; this time hewas not pelted with rotten tomatoes. He was sitting with Henning Kramer in whatappeared to be a classroom. Beside the board hung a poster with the legendSay 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. Tofill the time, he let his eyes wander through the window where there was littleto attract his attention except for the yellow accommodation building. Theplace 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 theman sitting on the dais. From that moment Henning Kramer had been studying acorner of the ceiling with his first finger resting against the tip of his chinas he ruminated. 'Feel free to answer,' Frølich said to Kramer.
'I'mthinking,' he said.
'Fromwhat I've heard you spent a lot of time together. You must have known what shewas like.'
'Whoshe was or what she was like?'
Frølichsighed and faced the intense man who was still staring at the ceiling with thesame concentration. 'Is there any difference?' he asked with a yawn.
'Perhapsnot,' Kramer mused.
Frølichrealized he had before him a man who weighed words and therefore he essayed alinguistic compromise: 'What sort of person was she?'
Kramerclosed his eyes. 'Katrine was carrying a dream,' he said, opening his palms,'the dream of being crazy, the dream of standing on the motorway andhitch-hiking and feeling free, jumping into a car and saying or doing somethingwhich would amaze the driver. Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before itrained and took us all the way to New Orleans. That's it, isn't it? Thepoint, 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 hasnot been said before, or done for that matter, and the poor kids with flaredpants and headbands hitch-hiking by the roadside or those rolling naked in themud at the Roskilde festival, they might think they're demonstrating a counter-culturebut they're just a tourists' sideshow, which for some people might be a nicereunion with another time. It's a bit like seeing those keyrings with the imageof 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 theso-called youth revolution has finally been absorbed into history and canonizedby the middle classes. So it's sad for those who still believe they're livingin the sixties or the seventies because what they believe they're part of isnothing!'
Kramerjumped down on to the floor and strolled over to the window where he stood withhis back to Frølich.
'Katrinenever 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 canescape to. Freedom has to be grasped; it's here, inside yourself, and you findit in the things you do and think. It's about being your own master and masterof the situation you find yourself in. You can't escape to freedom, only fromit. It's only when you stand up and accept the world as it is, place yourselfin it and grasp your own reality that you are free.'
Frølichstifled 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 inhis 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 thatFrank would collect Julie on these days. But the timing was bad. He would haveto send her a message.
AsFrank couldn't think of any other things he needed to remember, he cleared histhroat 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, shewas officially clean and had a job with a travel agency.'
'Shecouldn't cut the mustard though because she couldn't be with normal people.'
'Whatdo you mean?' Frank asked, elated to have steered the conversation away fromabstractions.
'Shecouldn't be normal. She wasn't capable of it. It made her feel sick at thatbloody party of theirs; she couldn't take the reality they had to offer.'
'Soyou don't think she was really ill at the party?'
'Shewas no more ill than I am now!'
'Youmean she threw up because she could not take their reality?'
'Yes.'
'Butwhat 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'seyes flashed. 'She hated the thought of signing up to a culture where youchange your personality as you change your clothes. These so-called modelsthat Vinterhagen serves up, they waltz off from a job where theypreach for a natural release of endorphins in the brain, where they repeattime after time how dangerous drugs are, how empowering it is to tell thetruth, to admit to your own mistakes and to recognize that life in itself isone long intoxication, then they waltz off and don another dress, orsuit, or hat, and instead of evangelizing that same claptrap they getplastered over supper before daring to say a few words of truth to each otherand drink even more so that they can shag each other behind the bushesand blame the booze afterwards. Don't you see?'
'Aren'tyou one of these models yourself?'
'Ihope not.'
Frølichwatched him, unsure about how to continue. 'I understand what you're sayingabout 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 musthave known what the world was like, how it worked. She can't have thrown upbecause her hypotheses proved to be correct.'
'You'remistaken there,' Kramer said in a gentle tone. 'That is the precise reason whyshe spewed up. She spewed up the two of them: Bjørn and Annabeth.'
'Why?'
'Because…'Henning Kramer hesitated and fell silent.
'Tellme.'
'Onceupon a time she screwed Bjørn Gerhardsen while she was whoring to getmoney for dope.'
Frank'sbrow furrowed with scepticism. That particular piece of information stank. Heunderlined his own perception by pulling a face and shaking his head.
'It'strue,' the other man retorted – before continuing in a calmer key: 'Well, Idon't give a shit whether you believe me or not. The point is that sherecognized 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 indoing that. But the problem was that the guy didn't appreciate that he had tokeep a low profile. My God, it traumatized her. She did have sex on the oddoccasion, but it was a difficult thing for her. And then the guy turns it onand wants her again, right, for nothing, behind one of the bushes in the garden.'