know.’
The driver looked at his watch.
‘Well they’re holding up the traffic. We lost at least three or four minutes back there on the bridge. Why don’t the police clear them off the streets?’
Jensen said nothing. He knew the answer to the question, nevertheless.
Demonstrations of that kind had been going on for the previous four years. They were still relatively insignificant in scale, but were being staged increasingly often, with participant numbers seeming to swell each time. The marches always followed roughly the same pattern. They began somewhere in the suburbs and headed for the city centre, either to some foreign embassy or to the coalition parties’ central offices, wherethe march would break up of its own volition once the participants had chanted slogans for half an hour or so. There was no legislation outlawing demonstrations. In theory it was for the police themselves to decide on an appropriate response. In practice, things worked rather differently. The Ministry of the Interior initially gave orders that the demonstrations were to be halted and dispersed, that placards and banners were to be examined, and confiscated if any of the slogans were considered indecent, distressing or offensive. The clearly stated aim was to protect the general public from experiences that might put people on edge or spread a sense of insecurity. But police intervention had exactly the opposite effect. Despite the fact that these were not mass demonstrations but generally just groups of a few hundred people, attempts to break up the demonstrations led to skirmishes, disorder and serious disruption of the traffic. After a time, the police were ordered to use other methods, but there were no specific instructions on the measures to be taken. The forces of law and order did their best. They stopped some marches, for example, while they subjected all those taking part to breath tests. The constant rise in drunkenness had led the government some years previously to pass a law making the abuse of alcohol illegal, not only in public places but also in the home. Being under the influence of alcohol in any setting at all had therefore become a criminal offence, a fact that had increased the burden of police work almost to breaking point. The new legislation had had no impact on drinking to excess, and it soon proved ineffective in clamping down on the demonstrations as well, since the marchers were never under the influence of alcohol. This strange circumstance was to Jensen’s mind the only essential feature that distinguished the demonstrators from thepopulation as a whole. Two years before, the alcohol policy had changed, with the new focus on price rises and chemical substances. In the meantime, the police had been ordered to leave the demonstrators in peace. It was decided by the government that the police should confine themselves to keeping certain foreign embassies under surveillance and directing the traffic along the march routes. Since then, the demonstrations had passed off calmly, but they were happening increasingly often, and more and more people were joining in, even though there was never a word about them in the papers, on radio or on television. There were rumours, however, of some anxiety at government level. In the most recent elections, voter turnout had slumped in a very disquieting way. No one understood why. Only vague figures had been released for publication, and these were commented on only in the most general terms. And the collaborating parties were engaging this year in propaganda more concentrated than they had ever employed before. The campaign had been launched back in the late spring, and was now accelerating to its peak.
Jensen had no clear conception of what the real aim of the demonstrations might be, but he thought he had some idea of how and when they had started.
The pain was intense and caught him off guard; it seared through the right side of his diaphragm, wild and merciless.