Yes! She isn’t married! It’s her brother!
Frølich, stony-faced: ‘And her?’
‘Her?’
‘Is she implicated too?’
‘Don’t think so. Seems more like his mother in fact. Although she’s younger. But I don’t know. Where there’s shit, there’s usually a lot more to wallow in, as my uncle used to say. He was a farmer.’
A lot more to wallow in. He blinked. ‘How do you mean “like his mother”?’
Yttergjerde shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just something I said. No idea. Why are you so curious?’
‘Eh?’ He could feel the sweat breaking out again.
‘Faremo,’ Yttergjerde said impatiently. ‘Why are you so curious about Faremo?’
‘A tip-off. Someone said I should take note of the name.’
Yttergjerde turned round, his eyebrows raised. His powerful hands wrenched the top off a Coke bottle.
Frølich blinked. Get this conversation over with before it stinks to high heaven!
Yttergjerde, pensive, ears pricked up: ‘A tip-off?’
‘Forget it. I only needed to know who we were talking about. And how are things otherwise? Still with the Thai patootie you were checking out?’
‘Gentlemen prefer blondes!’
‘So she finished it?’
Yttergjerde used his forefinger to scrape out the plug of tobacco. He grinned, showing his brown-stained teeth. ‘Hey, at the station it’s me who finishes relationships!’
Frank Frølich went to the toilet to be alone and think. He was alarmed by his own reaction, the boundless joy he had felt when he found out that Elisabeth was Jonny Faremo’s sister and not his wife. But the brother’s being a criminal was a problem. What was the right way to behave now?
He looked at his reflection. He told himself aloud: ‘The right thing would be to confront her, to talk about her brother. No, you must cut the connection.’
He sat down on the toilet seat and chewed his knuckles. What is the right thing to do? Break all contact over the phone? Stammer out: You know I can’t have a relationship with the sister of a criminal! Only to get the obvious response: Frank, is it me you’re interested in, or my brother?
He ran the back of his hand across his forehead. Was this actually so unusual? Others must have been in this situation too. He tried to console himself by finding examples. The head of Inland Revenue discovers one day that his wife is fiddling taxi bills and deducting them from tax. No. Irrelevant. This is about relationships. There are socialist party members who go to bed with right-wingers and vice versa. Women prison officers who start relationships with inmates.
This last analogy makes him sweat even more.
A male priest, who is against women becoming priests, woos a woman priest. A militant neo-Nazi goes to the wrong pub and realizes he is homosexual. Fatuous examples. Use your head! The chairman of a local right-wing extremist party finds out his daughter has got engaged to a black man who, in fact, is a great guy.
Frank Frølich shook his head at himself. Is that why I’m getting anxious, because it’s about me this time? Is this panic caused by my paranoia, or is the fact that her brother has done time the real problem?
He imagined the conversation again: You have to understand, Elisabeth. I’m a cop! Your brother is a member of a gang. These are not people who are open to the general blather about individually tailored safeguards and fresh starts in life with roses and violins. Jonny and his pals are hardened criminals. We’re talking about organized crime!
He shook his head at himself. As if she didn’t already know these things!
Well, isn’t that the heart of the problem?
Yes, the problem is that she has kept her mouth shut. She knows I’m a policeman, has always known that. We first met because I was a policeman. So she should have said something about her brother a long time ago!
The brutal truth of this conclusion unnerved him at first. Afterwards it was like emerging from the water after holding your breath too long. The conclusion would be his platform. She had kept her mouth shut, she had manipulated him, kept things quiet, had played with him.
Straightaway he took a decision.
He washed his face with cold, clean water, dried it with a paper towel and went out, back to his office.
Gunnarstranda had arrived. He said: ‘You look pale, Frølich. Tired?’
Frølich took his jacket, threw it over his shoulder and walked towards the door. ‘No, just bloody sick of paperwork.’
Gunnarstranda peered over his glasses. ‘Take it easy. Soon be Christmas. Then, on Christmas Eve, some jealous young brat is bound to exact his murderous revenge for being cuckolded.’
Gunnarstranda’s wheezing laughter followed him out into the corridor.
When she next rang he answered the phone. All his unease was instantly swept away by her gentle, veiled voice.
She wanted to go to the cinema.
He said yes.
They met outside the Saga cinema. First of all, they went to Burger King. He had a baconburger and she wanted a milkshake. A vanilla milkshake.
‘I only eat burgers at McDonald’s,’ she said as they sat down by the window facing the street. There were almost no customers on the first floor. Apart from a father with two daughters who were making a mess and smearing ketchup all over their clothes.
‘Shall we go to McDonald’s instead?’
‘No. Now I want to have a milkshake. When you come to visit me I’ll make you a banana milkshake. You’ll like it.’
‘Have you thought about inviting me home?’
She, glancing up: ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘No, why shouldn’t you indeed?’
Silence – uneasy silence. And then – as if she had read something in his facial expression, as if a light had gone out somewhere: ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Hmm?’
‘I can see there’s something wrong. Tell me what it’s about.’
He took another bite. The burger tasted of cardboard. But it was better to stuff cardboard in your mouth than fly off the handle. Besides he didn’t know how to express himself. Immediately he became hot and flustered. He didn’t like the place: the stench of frying oil, the stuffy air, cold walls and the harsh light that turned your skin an unhealthy shade of pale and your eyes colourless. ‘There’s something I have to talk to you about,’ he said quickly.
‘Wait,’ she said.
‘Right,’ he said.
‘First of all, there’s something I have to say to you. It’s about my brother.’
He held his breath. Can she read my mind?
‘My brother, Jonny. He…’ She went off into a dream and fidgeted with her serviette. The slim fingers folded the serviette, then again, as she gazed pensively out of the window.
‘What about your brother?’ he heard his own voice say as she chewed her lower lip.
‘We live together.’
‘And?’
She tore the serviette slowly into two pieces. ‘Jonny… he’s… he’s done time.’
She stared at him now. He stared at her. The toxin was gone; the narcosis that made him feel as if he was fumbling in her presence, incapable of action in a deadened cotton-wool world, had worn off. His body felt as if it had been squeezed out of a cocoon. An unpleasant, clammy straitjacket had been removed. He breathed more easily, his heart wasn’t beating like a drum any more, his ears weren’t rushing like gushing blood. The person on the other side of the table was a fragile creature with dry lips whose sapphire-blue eyes avoided him, the same as prisoners who lower their gaze as they frantically search for fragments of a story they can fabricate, revealing dry lips with tiny flakes of skin hanging off, which sting but which they feel an irresistible urge to moisten.
This is what I am waiting for, for her to moisten her lips and serve up the first lie. What is going on inside my head?