by Dick Francis
‘He rang Per Bjørn Sandvik’s house twice, but they said he wasn’t in. It seemed to worry him very much.’
There was a tray on the coffee table in front of her laden with an untouched dish of open sandwiches. They made me feel frantically hungry as I hadn’t eaten since a pin-sized breakfast, but she gave them an indifferent glance and said ‘He left them. He said he couldn’t…’
Try me, I thought: but hostessing was far out of her mind.
‘Then Per Bjørn Sandvik rang here. Only a little while ago… but it seems hours and hours… Arne was relieved at first, but then… he went so quiet… I knew something was wrong.’
‘What did he say to Per Bjørn? Can you remember?’
‘He said Ja, and No. He listened a long time. He said… I think he said… don’t worry, I’ll find him.’
‘That was all?’
She nodded. ‘Then he went into the bedroom and he was so quiet… I went to see what was the matter. He was sitting on the bed, looking at the floor. He looked up at me when I came. His eyes were… I don’t know… dead.’
‘And then?’
‘He got up and began packing a suitcase. I asked him… he said don’t worry me… so I just stood there. He packed… he threw things into the case… and he was muttering away, mostly about you.’
She looked at me intently but still with the numb lack of emotion.
‘He said… “I told him, I told him David would beat him… I told him at the beginning… he still says David hasn’t beaten him but he has, he has…” I asked Arne what he was talking about but I don’t think he even heard me.’ She pressed her fingers against her forehead, rubbing the smooth skin. ‘Arne said… “David… David knew all day… he made the trap and put himself into it as bait… he knew all day.” Then he said something about you using some girls and an old man, and something about orangeade… and a premonition you invented. He said he knew you would be the end of everything; he said so before you came.’
She looked at me with the sudden awakening of awareness and the beginnings of hostility.
‘What did you do?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry, Kari. I gave Arne and Per Bjørn Sandvik a chance to show they knew more than they ought about Bob Sherman’s death, and they took it.’
‘More than they ought…?’ she repeated vaguely: then overwhelmingly understood. ‘Oh no. Oh no. Not Arne.’ She stood up abruptly. ‘I don’t believe it.’ But she already did.
‘I still don’t know who killed Bob Sherman,’ I said. ‘I think Arne does know. I want to talk to him.’
‘He’s not coming back. He said… he would write, and send for me. In a few weeks.’ She looked forlorn. ‘He took the car.’ She paused. ‘He kissed me.’
‘I wish…’ I said uselessly, and she caught the meaning in my voice though the words weren’t spoken.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In spite of everything… he likes you too.’
It was still not yet eight o’clock and Per Bjørn was still in the interview room when I got back to the police station.
‘His lawyer is with him,’ Knut said morosely. ‘We won’t get a word out of him now.’
‘We haven’t had so many already.’
‘No.’ He flicked the paper with the telephone numbers which was lying on his desk. ‘This other number… it isn’t the lawyer’s.’
‘Whose, then?’
‘It’s a big second class hotel near the docks. Dozens of incoming calls; they couldn’t remember one more than any other. I have sent a policeman down there with a description of the man with yellow eyes.’
‘Mm. Whoever he spoke to at the hotel then telephoned the lawyer.’
‘Ja,’ he said. ‘It must be so. Unless Arne did.’
‘I don’t think so, from what his wife said.’
‘He had gone?’
I nodded. ‘In his car.’
He put his hand again on the telephone. ‘We will find the number and put out an alert: and also check with the airport and the frontier posts with Sweden.’
‘I know the number.’ I told it to him. He looked surprised, but I said, ‘I’ve been in his car… and I’ve a memory for numbers. Don’t know why.’
He put out his alerts and sat tapping his pencil against his teeth.
‘And now we wait,’ he said.
We waited precisely five seconds before the first call came through. He scooped up the receiver with a speed which betrayed his inner pressure, and listened intently.
‘Ja,’ he said eventually. ‘Ja… takk. thank you.’
He put down the receiver and relayed the news.
‘That was the policeman I sent to the hotel. He says the man with yellow eyes has been staying there for a week, but this evening he paid his bill and left. He gave no address. He was known to the hotel as L. Horgen. My policeman says that unfortunately the room has already been cleaned because the hotel is busy, but he has directed them to leave it empty until we’ve searched it and tried for fingerprints. Excuse me while I send a team to do that.’
He went out of the office and was gone a fair time, but when he came back he had more to tell.
‘We’ve found Arne’s car. It is parked not far from the quay of the Nansen shipping line, and one of their ships left for Copenhagen an hour ago. We are radioing to the ship and to Copenhagen to pick him up.’
‘Don’t let them relax at Fornebu,’ I said.
He looked at me.
I grinned faintly. ‘Well… If I wanted to slip out by air I’d leave my car beside a shipping line and take a taxi to the airport. And Arne and I once discussed quite a lot of things like that.’
‘He’d know you’d guess, then.’
‘I’d pin more hope on the ship if he’d left his car at the airport.’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘A good thing you’re not a crook,’ he said.
A young policeman knocked, came in, and spoke to Knut.
He translated for me. ‘Mr Sandvik’s lawyer wants to see me, with his client. I’ll go along to the interview room… Do you want to come?’
‘Please,’ I said.
With Per Bjørn, his lawyer, Knut, me, and a note-taking policeman all inside with the door shut, the small interview room looked overcrowded with dark suits and solemnity. The other four sat on the hard chairs round the plain table and I stood leaning against the door, listening to a long conversation of which I understood not a word.
Per Bjørn pushed back his chair, crossed his legs and set fire to a cigarette, much as before. His lawyer, a heavy self possessed man of obvious worldly power, was speaking in an authoritative voice and making Knut perceptibly more nervous minute by minute. But Knut survived uncracked and although when he answered he sounded friendly and apologetic, the message he got across was ‘No.’
It angered the lawyer more than the client. He stood up, towering over Knut, and delivered a severe caution. Knut looked worried, stood up in his turn, and shook his head. After that the young policeman was sent on an errand, presently returning with a sergeant and an escort.
Knut said ‘Mr Sandvik…’, and waited.
Per Bjørn stood up slowly and stubbed out his filter tip. He looked impassively at the escort and walked calmly towards them. When he drew level with me at the doorway he stopped, turned his head, and stared very deliberately at my face.
But whatever he was thinking, nothing at all showed in his eyes, and he spoke not a word.
Knut went home, but I spent the night in his office sleeping on the floor on blankets and pillows borrowed from the cells; and I daresay I was less comfortable than the official guest downstairs.
‘What’s wrong with the Grand?’ Knut said, when I asked him to let me stay.
‘Yellow eyes is on the loose,’ I said. ‘And who knows what instructions Per Bjørn gave him?’
Knut looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You think there’s more to come?’
‘Per Bjørn is still fighting.’
‘Ja,’ he sighed. ‘I think so to
o.’
He sent a policeman out to bring me a hot meal from a nearby restaurant, and in the morning at eight o’clock he came back with a razor. He himself, trim in his uniform, seemed to have shed yesterday like a skin and arrived bright eyed and awake to the new day. I shivered blearily in my crumpled clothes and felt like a reject from a doss house.
At eight forty-five the telephone rang. Knut picked up the receiver, listened, and seemed pleased with what he heard.
‘Ja. Ja. Takk,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
He put the receiver back. ‘We’ve had a message from Gol. The man who was on duty in the ticket office on Sunday remembers that a boy from the College bought a ticket to Finse.’
‘Finse…’ I thought back to my timetables. ‘On the Bergen line?’
‘Ja. Finse is the highest town on the line. Up in the mountains. I will find out if he is remembered at the station there. I will find out if anyone has seen him in the streets or knows if he is staying.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘One can’t tell.’
‘No.’ I thought it over. ‘Look… the train for Bergen leaves at ten, if I remember right. I’ll catch it. Then if you hear that Mikkel is or isn’t at Finse, perhaps you could get a message to me at one of the stops up the line.’
‘Have you forgotten yellow eyes?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘All right. I will send you to the station in a police car. Do you want a policeman to go with you?’
I thought. ‘I might get further with Mikkel if I go alone.’
On the train I sat next to a total stranger, a cheerful young man with little English, and spent an uneventful journey looking out at peaceful fields and bright little dolls houses scattered haphazardly on hillsides.
At Gol there was a written message.
‘Young man disembarkation to Finse the Sunday. One knows not until where he gone. The questions is continue.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
The train climbed slowly above the tree line into a landscape of blue-grey rock and green-grey water. Snow scattered the ground, at first in patches, then in profusion, and finally as a thin white rug over every sloping surface, with sharp rock edges like hatchets showing through.
‘Is small snow,’ said my companion. ‘In winter in Finse is two metres.’
‘Two metres deep?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Ja. Is good for ski.’
The railway ran for a time alongside a fiercely cold-looking wind-ruffled grey-green lake and slowed with a sigh of relief into Finse.
‘Is hot summer,’ my friend said, looking around in surprise. ‘Is snow gone.’
He might think so, but I didn’t. Snow still covered everything worth mentioning, hot summer gone by or not; and icicles dangled from every roof like stiff glittering fringes. Once out of the warmth of the train the cold bit sharply and even in my ear-covering cap and padded jacket I wrapped my arms round my chest in a futile attempt to hold on to my body heat.
I was met by the bulk of the Finse police force in the shape of a broadly smiling officer of turnstile-blocking size.
‘Mr Cleveland.’ He shook my hand. ‘We do not know where is this boy Mikkel Sandvik. We have not seen him in the village. There are not many strangers here now. In the summer, and in the winter, we have very many strangers. We have the big hotel, for the ski. But now, not many. We have look for an old woman who is called Berit. There are two. It is not one, because she is in bed in the house of her son and she is… er… she is… old.’
‘Senile?’ I suggested.
He didn’t know the word. ‘Very old,’ he repeated.
‘And the other Berit?’
‘She lives in a house beside the lake. One and a half kilometres out of Finse. She goes away in the winter. Soon, now. She is a strong old woman. In the summer, she takes people who come to fish, but they have all gone now. Usually on Wednesdays she comes for food, so we have not gone to see her. But she is late today. She comes in the mornings.’
‘I’ll go there,’ I said, and listened to directions.
The way to the house of Berit-by-the-lake turned out to be merely a path which ran between the railway line and the shore, more a matter of small stones and pebbles through an area of boulders than any recognisable beaten track. With its roughnesses still half covered with crusty ice, it was easy to imagine that once the new snows fell it would be entirely obliterated.
17
I looked back.
A bend had taken Finse out of sight.
I looked forward. Nothing but the sketchy path picking its uncertain way through the snow-strewn boulders. Only on my right could be seen any evidence of humanity, and that was the railway. And then that too ran straight ahead behind a hill while the shore curved to the left, so that in the end there was just me and the stark unforgiving landscape, just me trudging through an energetic wind on a cold, wild and lonely afternoon.
The path snaked its way round two small bays and two small headlands, with the hillside on my right rising ever more steeply the further I went, and then all of a sudden the house lay before me, standing alone on a flat stony area spread out like an apron into the lake.
The house was red. A strong crimson. Roof, walls, door, the lot. The colour stood out sharply against the grey and white of the shore and the darker grey-green of the water; and rising beyond it at the head of the lake stood dark towering cliffs, thrown up like a sudden mountain against the Northern sky.
May be it was a grand, extraordinary, awe-inspiring sight. May be it should have swelled my spirit, uplifted my soul. Actually it inspired in me nothing more noble than a strong desire to retreat.
I stopped.
Surely Sandvik wouldn’t have sent his son to this threatening place, even if he did urgently want to hide him. Surely Mikkel was half the world away by now, with Arne cantering post haste in his wake to look after him.
Damned bloody silly place to build a house, I thought. Enough to give anyone the creeps, living with a mountain on the doorstep.
I went on. The house had a landing stage with a motor boat tied to a post like a hitched horse in a Western. It also had looped up lace curtains and geraniums on the window sills. Red geraniums. Naturally.
I looked in vain for smoke from the chimney, and no one stared out at me as I approached.
I banged the knocker. The door was opened straight away by a ramrod-backed old woman, five feet tall, sharp eyed, entirely self possessed. Far, very far, from dying.
‘Ja?’ she said enquiringly.
‘I’d like to talk to Mikkel,’ I said.
She took a very brief pause to change languages, and then in a pure near Scots accent said, ‘Who are you?’
‘I am looking for Mikkel.’
‘Everyone is looking for Mikkel.’ She inspected me from head to foot. ‘Come in. It is cold.’
She showed me into the living-room, where everything was in process of being packed away in crates. She gestured round with a fine-boned hand. ‘I am leaving now for the winter. It is beautiful here in the summer, but not in winter.’
‘I have a message from his father,’ I said.
‘Another one?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Already one man came this morning. Then another. Both of them said they had a message from his father. And now you.’ She looked at me straightly. ‘That is very many messages.’
‘Yes… I have to find him.’
She put her head on one side. ‘I told the others. I cannot judge which of you I should not tell. So I will tell you. He is on the mountain.’
I looked through the window to the wall of rock and the end of the lake.
‘Up there?’
‘Ja. There is a cabin up there. I rent it to visitors in the summer, but in the winter the snow covers it. Mikkel went up there this morning to bring down the things I do not want to leave there. He is a kind boy.’
‘Who w
ere the other men who came?’
‘I don’t know. The first one said his name was Kristiansen. They both said they would go up and help Mikkel bring down the things, although I said it was not necessary, there are not many things and he took the sleigh.’
‘The sleigh?’
‘Ja. Very light. You can pull it.’
‘Perhaps I had better go up there as well.’
‘You have bad shoes.’
I looked down. City casuals, not built for snowy mountains, and already darkly wet round the edges.
‘Can’t be helped,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘I will show you the path. It is better than the one round the lake.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I do not walk to Finse. I go in the boat.’
‘The second man,’ I said. ‘Did he have extraordinary yellow eyes?’
‘No.’ She shook her head decisively. ‘He was ordinary. Very polite. Like you.’ She smiled and pointed through the window. ‘The path starts over there behind that big rock. It is not steep. It winds away from the lake and then comes back. You will see it easily.’
I thanked her and set off, and found almost at once that she was right about the shoes. One might be able to see the path easily, but that was because it was a well-worn track through the snow, patterned widely on either side by the marks of skis, like a sort of mini highway.
I slithered along in the brisk wind, working round the hillside in a wide, ever upward-sloping U: but it proved to be not as far as I’d feared, because long before I expected it I came to the top of a small rise and found below me, suddenly only a few yards away, a sturdy little log hut, built to the traditional Norwegian pattern like a roofed box standing on a slightly smaller plinth.
It was already too late to make a careful inconspicuous approach. I stood there in full view of a small window: so I simply walked straight up and looked through it.
The cabin was dark inside and at first I thought it was empty. Then I saw him. Huddled in a corner, with his head bent over his knees, slowly rocking as if in pain.
There was only one small room. Only one door. I put my hand on its latch and opened it.