She wanted to have music on when they made love. She wanted precisely this music. But that was fine by him. There were two of them now; he was in her and she was in him. Her eyes betrayed no uncertainty, no pretence, no dissimulation. So the noise around them was of no significance; the music simply completed the picture, in the same way that on-shore breezes emphasize that air is something you breathe, that moisture states that water is matter in which you can swim. But he wasn’t listening to the words of the songs, he didn’t hear the drum rolls, or the backing vocals; his body was simply dancing with hers, he was focused on two lights quite close and at the same time far away, her blue eyes.
When he came in from the bathroom, she was lying on the bed reading. ‘Is that the same book?’ he asked.
‘The same?’
‘You always seem to be reading the same book.’
She put it down on the bedside table. ‘Have you ever heard anyone say that you can never go into the same river twice?’
‘Greek philosophy?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I don’t believe it’s possible to read the same book twice.’
She made room for him under the duvet.
A little later she asked him: ‘Why did you become a cop?’
‘I just did.’
‘You don’t even believe that yourself.’
He turned his head and looked into her face. Smiled instead of answering.
‘Are we in a private domain?’ she asked. ‘Keep off! Danger! Beware of the dog?’
‘I applied to Police College when I finished studying law and I got in.’
‘After law? You could have started in a solicitor’s office. You could have been a practising solicitor and earned millions. Instead of that, you run around snooping into other people’s business.’
‘Snooping into other people’s business?’
The intonation. It had been the tiniest bit sharp. But it was too late to moderate it after it was said. He cast her a glance. She was resting her head on his chest while the fingers of his left hand were following the pattern of the wallpaper. He stroked her hair with the other hand, knowing that she was trying to appraise the atmosphere.
‘It does happen, doesn’t it? You do snoop?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Are you annoyed?’
‘No.’
‘At least you aren’t a judge, that’s good.’
‘What’s the matter with judges?’
‘I have a few problems with judges, either because of the job they do or because they’re just so – judgemental.’
They lay in silence. Her head on his stomach. He lay there, playing with a lock of her black hair.
She said: ‘What are you thinking?’
‘That actually I could have become a judge. Perhaps from a career point of view I should have done.’ He was still playing with her hair. She was lying still. He said: ‘I like my job.’
She raised her head: ‘But why?’
‘I meet people. I met you.’
‘But there must have been something that made you consider becoming a cop. At some point, you must have wanted to become one, a long time ago.’
‘But why do you want to know?’
‘I like secrets.’
‘I guessed that.’
Her head went down again.
‘There was a policeman living in our street,’ he said. ‘The father of a nice girl in my class, Beate. He drove a Ford Cortina. The old model with the round rear lights – in the sixties.’
‘I have no idea what car you’re talking about,’ she said, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’
‘In the flat above me there was a girl called Vivian who went on the game, even though she was only eighteen or nineteen.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Ten maybe. I didn’t have a clue what a prostitute was. Didn’t have a clue about sex. The other boys talked about Vivian and showed me pornographic magazines with women baring their sexual parts. I thought the pictures were revolting.’
‘Were there pictures of her, of Vivian?’
‘No, but the boys wanted me to see what she did, or it gave them a hard-on, who knows? I was a late developer in this area. When I was ten, I was only interested in fishing, my bike and things like that. I remember Vivian as a rather drained, dark-haired girl with lots of thin, blue blood vessels on her legs. And her legs were always quite pale. She often sat on the steps smoking. Anyway, one day two men came along. One was wearing a coat and had slick, greasy hair. The other one, with a fringe, wore glasses and a short leather jacket. His face kept twitching. I was playing rounders with the other boys in the street and Vivian was sitting in her hot pants on the steps, smoking. When the two men came, she got up and went inside. Just sloped off.’
Frølich went quiet when the telephone rang.
She peered up at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to answer the phone now.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said and watched the telephone without moving a muscle.
They lay listening to the ring tones until they stopped.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Where was I?’
‘Two men and Vivian went off.’
‘One of the boys was called Yngve. He had a Tomahawk bicycle, one of those with a long saddle. Yngve picked up a stone and threw it at the two men. And we joined in immediately. The two men were the enemy, sort of. Then we picked up a couple of stones too.’
‘Two ten-year-olds?’
‘There were probably five or six of us. Yngve was the oldest, he was fourteen. My friends were thirteen and twelve. I was the youngest and I remember I was shit scared. I’d never been so frightened. The man with the twitch went for Yngve and he lay on the road bleeding. He had to go in the ambulance afterwards. I remember I ran behind the block of flats, panic-stricken. I hid between the rubbish bins and was sick, I was so scared.’
He looked down at his chest and met her eyes. He grinned.
She whispered: ‘Go on.’
‘Beate’s father sorted everything out. He was the undisputed king, he didn’t say a word, he didn’t flash police ID or a badge, he wasn’t in uniform, he just came and put the world back to rights. I suppose it all started there. His character – a symbol.’
‘Bruce Willis,’ she grinned.
‘He wasn’t a particularly nice man.’
‘Bruce Willis?’
‘Beate’s father.’
‘What did he do?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Beate became a heroin addict and died a few years ago. At the class reunion she was the only one who didn’t turn up and all the girls talked about how she had been mistreated, screwed by her father for years.’ He stretched. ‘Illusions fade and die,’ he said drily.
She didn’t say anything.
‘It’s inherent in the word. Illusion, something which isn’t real.’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘What do I like?’ He lay on his back thinking. ‘I like playing air guitar to ‘LA Woman’ by The Doors.’
‘You’re so boring. Come on. Say what you like doing.’
He stretched under the duvet and said: ‘I like looking out of the window when I wake up in bed in the morning.’
‘More,’ she said.
‘More what?’
‘More of what you like.’
‘You first.’
‘I like lying on the grass in the summer and seeing what images the clouds form.’
‘More.’
‘Cycling down a mountain on a mild summer’s evening.’
‘More.’
‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘I like copying down the titles of my records and organizing them alphabetically.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right.’ She snuggled down under the duvet. ‘It’s your turn,’ she whispered.
‘I like being on my own in a special place.’
‘So do I.’
She lifted her head from his chest and looked up. ‘A beach,’ she said. ‘In the evening when I sit there, eventually all I can hear is the lapping of the waves on the shore. If anyone comes and talks, you don’t hear it.’