No reaction.
Frølich and the doctor looked at each other. The doctor had his hands in his pockets, waiting.
‘Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea,’ Frølich said.
Freddy Ramnes shook his head. He took a plastic half-litre bottle of Coke out of the pocket in his roomy jacket and put it on the table. ‘Bye, Ilijaz,’ he said, moving towards the door.
They walked back down the same corridor without speaking. ‘If I were to die while working here,’ Freddy Ramnes said in a voice quivering with anger, ‘I would like my gravestone to say I was killed by the Norwegian penal policy. Those with political responsibility have given me the happy dilemma of either securing him with straps or doping him up every evening so that he doesn’t do away with himself.’
‘Was he doped up now?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Does that mean he would have problems remembering names?’
‘No. It means he’s calm, but absolutely indifferent to what you or I might say. A lobotomy is much the same, according to those who are au fait with such things.’
‘What’s he suffering from?’
Freddy Ramnes walked on a few metres. Now that he had vented his fury, he was collecting himself and trying to regain the dignity his emotions had blown to pieces a few moments ago. ‘If I were a specialist in psychiatry, I might be able to tell you. The only thing I can do is apply for a place for him in an institution and receive rejections. After all, he is in an institution, isn’t he?’ Ramnes pulled a bitter face.
Frølich didn’t know what to say.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Ramnes continued in a gentler vein. ‘They’re just labels anyway. Psychotic personality disorder, bipolar personality disorder, schizophrenia, you name it, he might have it. Cynics might call it prison psychosis.’
‘As I said, I had some contact with Ilijaz six years ago and he was a very different person.’
Ramnes breathed in. ‘The only thing I know is that the illness and the symptoms have developed while he has been serving his sentence. It had already started when I first came here. Intense fear, withdrawal, paranoia. And it’s simply getting worse.’
‘Does anyone visit him?’
Ramnes stopped and gave him a sceptical look.
‘You seem like a decent person, Frolich. However, we’re now moving into an area where I’m bound by professional secrecy and you’ll have to direct your enquiries to others.’
25
This was the first time in eighteen years that Inspector Gunnarstranda had taken time off work. The evening before he had discovered that Kalfatrus wasn’t swimming straight. Afterwards he sat down with a glass of whisky in front of the goldfish bowl and watched the fringetail swim in and out of the magnifying glass that the curve of the glass created. The fish was lopsided. He fell asleep in the chair and when he awoke he simply neglected to go to bed. Just sat there watching the goldfish, illuminated by the street lamps outside the window. He could feel that something was wrong. For one tiny insane moment he saw himself walking with the fish in a plastic bag; he saw himself sitting with the red fringetail in the vet’s surgery:
And what’s the matter with this chap?
Well, you know, it doesn’t swim straight.
The situation was not the most satisfying. But at the same time he couldn’t rid himself of a sense of unease. He had been sure that the tiny fringetail would outlive him. It was worrying that the contrary appeared to be the case. He attempted to work out what this worry was based on. Was it concern for the fish or concern for himself? Was his worry an expression of his fear of loneliness – a life without Kalfatrus – or was this unease in some specific way more altruistic, in that he was actually concerned about the fish’s general condition? He wondered if a fish could feel pain.
The previous evening he had tried everything: changing the water, washing the bowl, washing the sand at the bottom, adding prescribed conditioners and food. Despite this, it swam even more askew and the characteristic gaping mouth was less in evidence.
If it dies now, he thought, it might be from old age. Was that likely? He tried to think back. When had he bought the fish? He couldn’t remember. And he had no idea how many years a fish like this could live. The only thing he could remember was that it cost seventeen kroner. The next moment he imagined himself standing by the telephone, dialling and asking the following question: Um, I was wondering if you could tell me how long a fringetail costing about seventeen kroner could live?
He lit up a cigarette and reflected as he blew smoke rings in the direction of the goldfish bowl. For the first time in many years he felt a diminishing commitment to work. And what displaced all that was the sight of a red and yellow fish swimming askew. Damn you, damn you, if you die now, before me!
26
Frank Frølich regarded himself in the mirror in front of his bed. He reconstructed the sequence of events in his head:
I had discovered someone was in my flat. Elisabeth had let herself in before I arrived. She had taken a shower. She sat cross-legged in the living room. She was sitting in front of the hi-fi listening to music, dressed only in underwear.
He stood up and went into the living room. Stared at the stereo. In the TV screen a reflection of himself and the furniture he had bought for the room.
He went to the doorway and stared at his hi-fi equipment again. She was sitting with her back to me as I came in and said she had let herself in with the key from the key dish. He saw her back in front of him as she stalked over to her clothes on the chair. He remembered the brush of her lips against his. He saw the sway of her hips as she walked across the floor. The clink of the key as it dropped into the bowl in the kitchen. He went to the kitchen door. Stood staring at the bowl of keys, small coins, various steel screws, drawing pins, the odd krone coin and other bits and bobs. No house key.
So she hadn’t put the key back.
Why not? But he had heard the clink of the key in the bowl. If she hadn’t put the house key back, what had she put in it instead? He took hold of the bowl with trembling hands. It was a piece of hollowed-out birch, a so-called wooden nipple with delicate carvings on, a dish he had bought at an art-and-crafts fair when he went fishing on Lake Osen in Trysil. He tipped the contents of the bowl onto the kitchen worktop: coins, some screws, a safety pin, a dud 5-amp fuse, an anti-nuclear-weapons badge, another badge against joining the EU. One of the coins rolled off onto the floor – a euro. A green marble rolled after it. He caught it. Yes, there was a key. He took the key. It’s not mine! It wasn’t a house key. And he had never seen it before. It was a long, narrow key with a strange cut, a key to a special kind of lock. What is going on here? Why had she put back a completely different kind of key? And why had she not put back his house key? Why had she lied to his face? What would this key fit?
A key. But what was it hiding? Where is the lock?
Frank Frølich walked stiffly back into the living room and dropped into a chair. She hadn’t put back the key. In a flash he saw bones glowing in the ashes. The key has been burned. No, stick to the facts! The house key is irrelevant. What is relevant is the key she left in the bowl.
Once again he saw the contours of her body moving away from him – across the floor. The clink in the bowl. Everything had been a bluff, a red herring. Either the bluff was because she wanted to hang onto the house key – or perhaps it was because she wanted to put the other, strange key in his bowl. Third option: she wanted both, to deposit this key and keep his key so that she could collect it later.