Part 12 (1/2)

We went back to the car.

'I've been thinking about your treatment.'

'Lack of it, you mean.'

'Why not in Moscow? We would have more time together.'

'More time dribbling and s.h.i.+tting myself. What's the good of that? I don't want it. I certainly don't want you exposed to it.'

'Isn't that my choice?'

'Maybe. But the way I see it, I go on until it's too painful or just too much for us both. Then I take a couple of bottles of pills, we lie down and only you wake up.' I hit the key fob. 'What do you think?'

She opened her door and stared across the roof at me. 'Brilliant. And I get left to clean up the mess.'

3

Christiania was a short distance away. While I drove, Anna scanned the guidebook. In 1971, the abandoned eighty-five-acre military camp at Christianhavn, on the eastern edge of the city, had been taken over by squatters who proclaimed it the 'free town' of Christiania. The police tried to clear the area, but it was the height of the hippie era and people looking for an alternative lifestyle poured in from all over Denmark. The following year, bowing to public pressure, the government allowed the community to continue as a social experiment. About a thousand people had settled in, transforming the old barracks into schools and housing and starting their own collective businesses, workshops and recycling programmes.

'A thousand people on an eighty-five-acre site.' I glanced across at her. 'Where would a concerned sibling start looking?'

'She'll have turned up needing somewhere to stay. There's nowhere you can pay to stay in Christiania. I think Slobo promised to help her do the runner, told her this was the perfect place to hide, and finished off with the oldest trick in the trafficking book: saying he had a friend who would help her and even get her a job.'

'Whatever, she'd also have needed to eat and drink. Even if she's already been moved on, someone must have seen her.'

She ran her finger down the page. 'Car-free Christiania has a market, some craft shops, and several places where you can get coffee and something to eat. The main entrance is on Prinsessegade, two hundred metres north-east of its intersection with Badsmandsstraede. You can take a guided tour of Christiania. There's a Pusher Street information office next to the Oasen cafe.'

'Can you get us to that intersection?'

'We're almost there. Left in four or five blocks.'

'Does Pusher Street mean what I think it means?'

She nodded. 'Since 1990, the story of Christiania has been one of police raids on Pusher Street. The police, decked out in riot gear, have patrolled Christiania regularly, staging numerous organized raids leading to some ugly confrontations and arrests.'

She went back to the map page. 'This is the one. Left here.'

I found a s.p.a.ce on a street full of bars and cafes just off Prinsessegade. I pushed enough coins into the machine to last us a few hours and stuck the ticket on the dashboard.

We walked a couple of hundred yards to an alleyway. A short way down it, a big wooden sign announced, 'You are entering Christiania.' On the reverse, for our benefit on the way back, it said, 'You are entering the EU.'

An information board told us that guided tours left from there at three in the afternoon. Another showed a camera with a red slash through it. The dealers had never gone away, Anna said. No dealer likes a camera in his face.

We walked between walls plastered with graffiti and murals. A familiar smell hung in the air. The slightly sickly, pungent scent of cannabis thickened the further we went. A woman cycled past us on a bike with a huge wooden box on the front containing a pair of muzzled Rottweilers.

A young guy with dreadlocks stood guard by a fence, radio comms in one hand, oversized spliff in the other. I guessed the system worked like the one the Amish had in the film Witness. One call and the community came running - or, in Christiania's case, the dealers. The guidebook had said that the narcotics police, backed by the Riot Squad, had raided Pusher Street several times, arresting any of the dealers who didn't pack up and run fast enough.

'Does it say why they don't just close the whole place down and be done with it?'

'There would be riots. The hash market turns over millions a year.'

Anna read some more from the guidebook as she walked. Perfect. It made us look like tourists in search of a 'sanctuary for anyone who is tired of the consumerism and routine of everyday life'.

It must have sounded idyllic to a girl raised in an environment of chaos and gangsterdom after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Slobo wouldn't have had to sell this one too hard.

'Turn on, tune in, drop out - whatever. Lovely until the money runs out and you realize you have to get a haircut and some work clothes and earn a living.' I grinned. I was starting to sound like Tresillian.

Graffiti covered every inch of wall.

Living to lower standards for a higher quality of life.

Loud music bounced out at us from somewhere out of sight.

A guy in a sweater full of holes ambled towards us.

'Pusher Street?' Anna showed him the map.

He pointed wearily. Christiania was Copenhagen's second biggest tourist attraction after the Tivoli Gardens and every one of them probably wanted to be able to tell their friends back home they'd dared visit Pusher Street.

'Have you seen this girl?'

Anna produced her picture but he'd already gone.

4

We came to a small market. Three or four stalls sold T-s.h.i.+rts, hats and scarves. Anna showed the stallholders Lilian's photograph but none of them recognized her. I wondered if they would have recognized their own mothers. Everybody looked slightly dazed.

Anna spotted a bar. 'As you said, she had to eat and drink ...'

We went in. The big airy room was full of guys with wispy beards and woolly hats with earflaps. It was us who looked weird. We did what any concerned family member would do. We went up to the bar and held out Lilian's picture. The girl had pierced eyebrows and a nose-ring. Her hair was bleached.

'Have you seen this girl?'

'I'm sorry, no.'

'Do you mind if we ask your customers?'