Read The Fourth Man for Free Online Page A

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