The Bat (7 page)

“I would.”

Birgitta sighed. “I didn’t think it would be like that. I was sure we would get married and have children and live in a little suburb of Malmö with a garden and
Sydsvenska Dagbladet
on the doorstep, and now—now I can hardly remember the sound of his voice, or what it was like to make love with him, or …” She looked up at Harry. “Or how he was too polite to tell me to shut up while I was babbling on after a couple of glasses of wine.”

Harry grinned. She hadn’t commented on the fact that he hadn’t drunk any of the wine.

“I’m not polite, I’m interested,” he said.

“In that case, you’ll have to tell me something personal about you, other than that you’re a policeman.”

Birgitta leaned across the table. Harry told himself not to look down her dress. He sensed her aroma and greedily breathed in the fragrance. He must not let himself be duped. Those cunning bastards at Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Dior knew exactly what was required to trap a poor man.

She smelled wonderful.

“Well,” Harry began, “I have a sister, my mother died, I live in a flat I can’t get rid of in Tøyen, Oslo. I have no lengthy relationships behind me, and only one has left any marks.”

“Really? And there’s no one in your life now?”

“Not really. I have a few uncomplicated, meaningless relationships with women I occasionally ring if they don’t ring me.”

Birgitta frowned.

“Something wrong?”

“I’m not sure if I approve of that kind of man. Or woman. I’m a bit old-fashioned like that.”

“Of course, I’ve put all that stuff behind me,” Harry said, raising the glass of Perrier.

“And I’m not sure I like these glib answers of yours, either,” Birgitta said, raising her glass.

“So what do you look for in a man?”

She rested her chin on her hand and gazed into the air considering the question. “I don’t know. I think I know more about what I don’t like in a man than what I do.”

“What don’t you like? Apart from glib answers.”

“Men who try to check me out.”

“Do you suffer a lot?”

She smiled. “Let me give you a tip, Casanova. If you want
to charm a woman, you have to make her feel unique, make her feel she’s being given special treatment, something no one else gets. Men who try to pick up girls in bars don’t understand that. But I suppose that means nothing to a libertine like you.”

Harry laughed. “By a few I mean two. I said a few because that sounds a bit wilder, it sounds like … three. One, by the way, is on her way back to her ex according to what she told me the last time I saw her. She thanked me because I had been so uncomplicated and the relationship had been so … well, meaningless, I assume. The other is a woman I started a relationship with and who now insists that since it was me who left, it is my duty to ensure that she has a modicum of a sex life until either of us finds someone else. Hang on—why have I gone all defensive here? I’m a normal man who wouldn’t harm a flea. Are you implying that I’m trying to charm someone?”

“Oh yes, you’re trying to charm me. Don’t deny it!”

Harry didn’t deny it. “All right. How am I doing?”

She took a long swig from her wineglass and gave the matter some thought.

“B, I reckon. Moderate anyway. No, I think it will have to be a B … you’re doing quite well.”

“Sounds like B minus.”

“There or thereabouts.”

It was dark down by the harbor, almost deserted, and a fresh wind had sprung up. On the steps to the illuminated Opera House an unusually overweight bride and groom posed for the photographer. He directed them hither and thither, and the newlyweds seemed to be very annoyed at having to move their large bodies. In the end, though, they came to an agreement, and the nocturnal photo session in front of the Opera House ended in smiles, laughter and perhaps a little tear.

“That’s what they must mean by bursting with happiness,” Harry said. “Or perhaps you don’t say that in Swedish?”

“Yes, we do, you could be so happy you burst in Swedish, too.” Birgitta took off her hairband and stood in the wind by the harbor railing, facing the Opera House.

“Yes, you could,” she repeated, as if to herself. She turned her freckled nose to the sea, and the wind blew her red hair back.

She looked like a sea nettle jellyfish. He didn’t know a jellyfish could be so beautiful.

Harry’s watch showed eleven as the plane landed in Brisbane but the stewardess on the speaker insisted it was only ten.

“They don’t have summer time in Queensland,” Andrew informed him. “It was a big political issue up here, culminating in a referendum and the farmers voted against it.”

“Wow, sounds like we’ve come to redneck country.”

“I reckon so, mate. Up until a few years ago long-haired men were refused entry to the state. It was banned outright.”

“You’re joking.”

“Queensland’s a bit different. Soon they’ll probably ban skinheads.”

Harry stroked his close-cropped skull. “Anything else I ought to know about Queensland?”

“Well, if you’ve got any marijuana in your pockets you’d better leave it on the plane. In Queensland the drugs laws are stricter than in other states. It was no coincidence that the Aquarius Festival was held in Nimbin. The town’s just over the border, in New South Wales.”

They found the Avis office where they had been told a car would be ready and waiting for them.

“On the other hand, Queensland has places like Fraser Island, where Inger Holter met Evans White. The island’s
actually no more than a huge sandbank, but on it you can find a rainforest and lakes with the world’s clearest water and sand that is so white the beaches look as if they’ve been made out of marble. Silicon sand it’s called, because the silicon content’s so much higher than in normal sand. You can probably pour it straight into a computer.”

“The land of plenty, eh?” said the guy behind the counter, passing them a key.

“Ford Escort?” Andrew wrinkled his nose, but signed. “Is it still going?”

“Special rate, sir.”

“Don’t doubt it.”

The sun was frying the Pacific Highway, and Brisbane’s skyline of glass and stone glittered like crystals on a chandelier as they approached.

From the freeway eastward they drove through rolling green countryside alternating between forest and cultivated field.

“Welcome to the Australian outback,” Andrew said.

They passed cows grazing with lethargic stares.

Harry chuckled.

“What’s up?” Andrew asked.

“Have you seen the comic strip by Larson where the cows are standing on two legs chatting in the meadow, and one of them warns: ‘Car!’ ”

Silence.

“Who’s Larson?”

“Never mind.”

They passed low wooden houses with verandas at the front, mosquito nets in the doorways and pickup trucks outside. They drove past broad-backed workhorses watching them with melancholy eyes, beehives and penned pigs blissfully rolling in the mud. The roads became narrower. Around lunchtime they stopped for petrol in a little settlement
a sign informed them was called Uki, which had been chosen as Australia’s cleanest town for two years running. It didn’t say who had won last year.

“Holy macaroni,” Harry said as they trundled into Nimbin.

The town center was about a hundred meters in length, painted all colors of the rainbow, with a crop of characters that could have come from one of the Cheech & Chong films in Harry’s video collection.

“We’re back in 1970!” he exclaimed. “I mean, look over there. Peter Fonda in a clinch with Janis Joplin.”

They slowly cruised down the street as somnambulist eyes followed them.

“This is great. I didn’t think places like this existed anymore. You could just die laughing.”

“Why?” Andrew asked.

“Don’t you think it’s funny?”

“Funny? I can see it’s easy to laugh at these dreamers nowadays. I can see that the new generation thinks the flower-power lot were a bunch of potheads with nothing else to do except play guitars, read their poems and screw one another as the whim took them. I can see that the organizers of Woodstock turn up for interviews wearing ties and talk with amusement about the ideas of those times, which obviously seem very naive to them now. But I can also see that the world would have been a very different place without the ideals that generation stood for. Slogans like peace and love may be clichés now, but back then we meant it. With all our hearts.”

“Aren’t you a bit old to have been a hippie, Andrew?”

“Yes. I was old. I was a veteran hippie, a slyboots,” Andrew grinned. “Many a young girl received her first introduction into the intricate mysteries of lovemaking with Uncle Andrew.”

Harry patted him on the shoulder. “I thought you were just talking about idealism, you old goat.”

“Of course. This was idealism,” Andrew said with indignation. “I couldn’t leave these fragile flower buds to some awkward, pimply teenager and risk the girl being traumatized for the rest of the seventies.”

Andrew glanced out of the car window and chuckled. A man with long hair, a beard and a tunic was sitting on a bench and making the peace sign with two raised fingers. A placard with a drawing of an old, yellow VW camper announced “The Marijuana Museum.” Beneath, in smaller letters: “Admission: one dollar. If you can’t pay, come in anyway.”

“This is Nimbin’s dope museum,” Andrew explained. “It’s mostly crap, but I seem to remember they have some interesting photos of the Mexico trips with Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac and the other pioneers when they were experimenting with consciousness-expanding drugs.”

“When LSD wasn’t dangerous?”

“And sex was just healthy. Wonderful times, Harry Holy. You shoulda been there, man.”

They parked further up the main street and walked back. Harry took off his Ray-Bans and tried to look like a civilian. It was clearly a quiet day in Nimbin, and Harry and Andrew ran the gauntlet between the vendors. “Good grass! … Best grass in Australia, man … Grass from Papua New Guinea, mind-blowin.’ ”

“Papua New Guinea,” Andrew snorted. “Even here in the grass capital people walk around thinking grass is better if it comes from somewhere far enough away. Buy Australian, I say.”

A pregnant yet thin girl was sitting on a chair in front of the “museum” and waved to them. She could have been anything from twenty to forty and was wearing a loose, vivid
skirt and a buttoned-up blouse, making her stomach stand out with the skin stretched like a drum. There was something vaguely familiar about her, Harry thought. And from the size of her pupils Harry was able to conclude there had been something more stimulating than marijuana on her breakfast menu that day.

“Looking for something else?” she asked. She had observed that they hadn’t shown any interest in buying marijuana.

“No—” Harry started to say.

“Acid. You want LSD, don’t you.” She leaned forward and spoke with urgency and passion.

“No, we don’t want any acid,” Andrew said in a low, firm voice. “We’re looking for something else. Understand?”

She sat gazing at them. Andrew made a move to go on, but then she jumped up, apparently unaffected by the large stomach, and took his arm. “OK, but we can’t do that here. You’ll have to meet me in the pub over there in ten minutes.”

Andrew nodded, and she turned and hurried down the street with her large bump, a small puppy running at her heels.

“I know what you’re thinking, Harry,” Andrew said, lighting up a cigar. “It wasn’t nice to trick Mother Kindheart into believing we would buy some heroin. The police station’s a hundred meters up the street and we could find what we need on Evans White there. But I have a hunch this’ll be quicker. Let’s go and have a beer and see what happens.”

Half an hour later Mother Kindheart entered the near-empty pub with a man who seemed at least as hunted as she was. He resembled the Klaus Kinski version of Count Dracula: pale, lean, dressed in black with dark bags under his eyes.

“There you go,” Andrew whispered. “You can hardly accuse him of not testing the stuff he sells.”

Mother Kindheart and the Kinski clone made straight for them. The latter did not appear to want to spend any more time in daylight than was absolutely necessary and skipped the small talk.

“How much?”

Andrew sat demonstratively with his back to them. “I prefer there to be as few people present as possible before we get down to brass tacks, mister,” he said without turning.

Kinski tossed his head and Mother Kindheart left with a peeved expression. She probably worked on a percentage basis, and Harry assumed the trust between her and Kinski was as it always was with junkies: non-existent.

“I’ve got nothing on me, and if you’re cops I’ll cut your balls off. Show me the bread first, then we can get out of here.” He spoke fast, he was nervous and his eyes jumped about.

“Is it far?” Andrew asked.

“It’s a short walk, but a lo-ong trip.” What was meant to be a smile was a brief glimpse of teeth before it was gone.

“Good on ya, mate. Sit down and shut up,” Andrew said, showing him his police badge. Kinski froze. Harry stood up and patted the back of his belt. There was no reason to check whether Harry really had a weapon.

“What is this amateur dramatics stuff? I’ve got nothing on me, I told you, didn’t I?” He slumped defiantly into the chair opposite Andrew.

“I take it you know the local sheriff and his assistant? And they probably know you. But do they know you’ve started selling
horse
?”

The man shrugged. “Who said anything about
horse
? I thought it was grass we—”

“Of course. No one said anything about junk, and it’s unlikely anyone will so long as you give us some information.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you. Would I risk being beheaded for snitching just because two out-of-town cops who don’t even have anything on me come bursting in and—”

“Snitching? We met here, unfortunately couldn’t agree on the price of the goods and that was that. You’ve even got a witness that we met here on normal business. Do as we tell you and you’ll never see us again, and nor will anyone else here.”