A sign at the cross street pointed her up the hill toward the kirke. As it happened, she wasn’t the only one going in that direction. A pair of reindeer trotted along just ahead of her, snuffling and snorting. She couldn’t keep up with them, but stayed in their tracks and the walking seemed easier. The widely-spaced street lamps showed the odd human boot track, too. She climbed above the houses and at the top of the hill, her four-legged companions diverged and started downhill again. She read the sign in front of the church, printed in several languages, “Lutheran State Church. Northernmost Church in the World.” The wind had blown the snow off the steeple’s conical roof in places and she saw that it was black atop the red tower. Another sign outside the door read, “No Guns in Sanctuary.” The gun rack held one rifle. Presumably, there was no fear of a polar bear following an unarmed worshiper into the sanctuary.
In the vestibule, Dinah took off her boots and lined them up in a rack next to four other pairs. No inside slippers were provided. A wooden table held a large coffee urn, several plates of cookies, and picture postcards describing the church, which apparently never closed. Brochures in every language were displayed on graduated shelves and a motley collection of souvenirs had been laid out for purchase on the honor system. Pens, mugs, socks, and cutesy stuffed polar bears with button eyes. Dinah’s eye was drawn to a pair of red, fleece-lined mittens with “Longyearbyen” embroidered on the cuffs. She took off her gloves and tried them on. They were a perfect fit and much warmer than what she had. Like everything else in Norway, the mittens cost three times what they would have cost anywhere else. But when the chill factor dipped below zero, any additional warmth seemed a bargain at twice the price. There were also a few chemical hand warmers which she dropped into her bag. She happily overpaid for her merchandise and padded into the sanctuary in her sock feet.
She sat down in a pew near the back to soak in the ambience. Colorful frescoes adorned the walls, ornate murals decorated the ceiling, and an aura of warm light bathed the altar and chancel. It was beautiful, except for a pervasive cheesy odor, suggestive of the many sock feet that had tramped across the carpet.
Three female tourists ambled around taking photographs in a hushed, reverent way, and an elderly man knelt in front of the altar. Dinah took off her coat and gazed around at the kindly faces of the plaster saints. After a while, her spirits began to lift. Maybe she should start going to church more often. The denomination didn’t matter. Her love of mythology had turned her into something of a pagan. There had been so many interesting gods over the course of human history and so many of their biographies read the same. Jesus hung on the cross for three days and was pierced with a spear. Odin hung on that big ash tree for nine nights and was pierced with a spear. Both died voluntarily. Both arose from the dead. To his credit, only Jesus spoke of forgiveness.
Dinah pulled Inge’s note out of her purse and smoothed it out on her lap. You ruined Maks’ life and now you would ruin Colt’s. You chose. You don’t get to change your mind like Lofoten light. Lofoten light. Alliterative. Poetic. Like the faux librarian. Could he be Inge? Or perhaps Maks, the Fata Morgana songwriter? She folded the note and put it back in her purse. For what it was worth, she would leave it for Thor. She thought about his quirky line about imitating American TV cops and smiled. She wished she’d had more time to get to know him, but such was life. She would give him her e-mail address and ask him to let her know if he ever solved the murder of Fritjoe Eftevang.
The elderly man finished his prayers and doddered down the aisle past her. He looked frail and mopey. Perhaps he was here to prepare his mind for that final journey south. She hadn’t noticed when the tourists left, but they were gone. She checked her watch. Four o’clock. Maybe Thor had gone back to his office. If she went back to the hotel, she could phone him and tell him about Inge’s note and the senators’ plans to sky off home to D.C. tomorrow, although he probably had been informed already. Maybe he’d suggest they have a last supper together. If he was still unreachable, she’d write him a short letter and leave it with the front desk.
She snuggled into Erika’s coat and returned to the vestibule to put on her boots. As an afterthought, she helped herself to a chocolate chip cookie, and sashayed out into the darkness.
The first shot confused her. The second tore through her right arm. She tasted blood and chocolate and hit the snow in a heap.
Chapter Fifteen
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. What was happening? She slithered across the snow on her belly, scrambling for her life toward a snow bank, maybe twenty feet away. She didn’t know, but she thought the shots had come from somewhere down below, from one of the barracks-style houses. She reached the bank, turned, and flattened her back against its highest point. She didn’t have the nerve to peek over the top. She ran her tongue around her mouth and spit out a gob of bloody cookie crumbs. In her terror, she had bitten the inside of her cheek and a painful, bloody ridge had formed.
Her thoughts were churning. She had seen the action heroes and heroines in the movies do this scene a hundred times. What did they do after they reached cover? They drew their guns. Terrific. She hadn’t noticed if the rifle was still in the church’s gun rack, but the elderly man had probably taken it. He’d left only a minute ahead of her. Was he the shooter? The target? Had a drunken hunter mistaken her for a polar bear?
She drew her body up into a hunker, being careful to keep her head below the rim of the snow bank, and assessed the damage to her left arm. The sleeve of the parka had been shredded and so had the flesh of her upper arm. Blood oozed toward her elbow. She stifled a gag and shuddered. On the bright side, at this temperature, she would freeze to death before she bled out.
Without a gun, all she could do was cower and pray until help arrived or else make a run for it. People in the movies were always “making a run for it,” but where was her “it” and could she get there without being shot again?
Why wasn’t a crowd forming? Was the sound of gunfire so routine on a Thursday afternoon in Longyearbyen that nobody bothered to check out the source? The sound of a siren would be music to her ears. Her arm felt as if it were being flayed by a thousand whips.
She duck-walked to the end of the snow bank nearest to the street she’d taken up the hill and peeked over the top. She didn’t see any movement, but there weren’t many streetlights up here and the shooter could still be out there in the dark, waiting for her to show herself.
Footsteps sounded in the snow behind her. She twisted her head around so fast she nearly lost her balance. A man and a woman were walking toward the church from another direction. The man had an old-timey camera with a telephoto lens slung over his shoulder. The woman was shining a flashlight on a map. Not assassins. Ordinary tourists.
“Help! I’ve been shot!”
“Hva?” The man wheeled around as if he’d heard God speak to him out of a burning bush.
“Police! Call the politi, p-p-please.” She began to feel lightheaded. She pushed herself to her feet and held out her arm to the woman.
The woman shone her light on the bloody sleeve and screwed up her face in horror. “Ekkel! Blødende!”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” said Dinah, but she fainted instead.
***
The nurse at the hospital was cool and matter-of-fact. She finished stitching Dinah’s wound and began to bandage it. “It is not grave. A bit of torn flesh is all.”
“A bit of my torn flesh.”
“Who did this was a bad shot. Not from Longyearbyen, I think.” Her name was Vanya and she radiated the warmth and compassion of a mackerel. She busied herself at a tray table across the room and returned with a loaded syringe. “This is for tetanus.” She jabbed the needle into Dinah’s other arm.
“Ouch.”
“And this is an antibiotic.” She handed Dinah a bottle of pills. “Take one twice a day for seven days and have your doctor
change the bandage when you return home.”
“What about pain pills?”
“You can buy ibuprofen at the apotek.”
“Thanks for the TLC.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.” Dinah hopped off the examination table, grabbed her shirt, and tried to ease her painful left arm through the sleeve.
Nurse Vanya came up behind her and guided the arm. “You will be sore for a few days.”
“I will be sore until the creep who did this to me is behind bars,” she said and stalked out of the room.
Thor got up from his seat. “The nurse said…”
“Don’t tell me that I’m lucky or that the damage was minor or say anything whatsoever to minimize my suffering, do you hear?”
“I hear.” He was holding a clear plastic bag with Erika’s parka inside and a folded blanket. “Lean on me.” He offered her his arm. “If your suffering has eased by the time we get back to your hotel, I’ll buy you dinner and a bottle of wine.”
She hooked her unhurt right arm in his left. He was wearing a neatly pressed flannel shirt and gave off a light, woodsy scent. Had he spruced up and dabbed on aftershave for her benefit?
He said, “I’ll call my friend from the Radisson and postpone our date until tomorrow.”
So much for vanity. “No need to do that. I can tell you everything I know in the car in three Longyearbyen blocks.”
His car was parked just two feet from the door. He let go of her and handed her the blanket. “You can wrap this around your shoulders if you like.”
“I can survive two feet, but haven’t the Norwegians ever heard of underground parking?”
“Not practical on Spitsbergen. Most buildings are built on pilings. Otherwise, the heat of the building would melt the permafrost and it would sink.”
Tonight, he opened the passenger door for her and tucked her inside like a true gentleman. He tossed the blanket and the bag with Erika’s parka into the trunk and took his place behind the wheel. Dinah pulled down the shoulder harness with her right hand, but when she tried to use her left hand to snap the tab into the holder, a feeling like hot pincers bit into her biceps and she let go of the belt. “If there’s a seat belt law in Norway, I’m breaking it. If there’s a fine, give the bill to Senator Frye.”
“Do you always require immunity from the local laws?”
There was a hint of a smile in his voice and, in spite of her pain she felt a tingle of triumph. All it took to warm him up was getting herself shot. She said, “Laws are getting pettier all the time. In America, there’s a new batch of anti-bullying legislation aimed at keeping people from being mean to each other, but it’s legal to carry loaded guns. I thought Norway was more civilized than that.”
“Svalbard is a special case. We are on the frontier of the wilderness. The gun laws here are more relaxed than they are in the rest of the country.”
“And you Europeans call Americans gun-happy.”
***
He drove through a maze of parked snowmobiles and out onto the main street. She rested her head on the headrest, closed her eyes, and thought about Nurse Vanya’s opinion of her assailant’s skill. Was he a bad shot or a very good one? In her mind’s eye, she placed a rifle in Mahler’s hands and pictured what he could do with it. Even when he waxed benevolent about saving the world, he transmitted a menacing vibe. She imagined the gun in Valerie’s hands. She might have the temperament for murder, but she was small in stature and the recoil of a rifle would have knocked her down. Rod and Lee, on the other hand, were more than capable. They probably had to demonstrate their prowess with a gun to get hired as bodyguards.
Dinah dismissed Norris Frye out of hand. Even if he weren’t crippled by gout, he had no motive and anyway, he’d probably fall down and cover his head if somebody showed him a loaded gun. She had no trouble picturing Whitney Keyes holding a rifle. He probably went duck hunting in the Berkshires with the president of the National Rifle Association. And what about Colt Sheridan, whose first name was synonymous with a firearm? He had grown up in Montana where hunting was practically de rigueur and he had served in the military.
Thor said, “I’ve been asking myself who would attack the Norwegian agriculture minister with a laser and stab a journalist with a hotel carving knife. Now I must add to this skurk’s rap sheet a gun attack on a visiting banana expert.”
She laughed, which seemed to have been his intention. “Sounds like three very different crimes. Or three different skurks.”
“I don’t know, Dinah. Maybe one or two of these crimes are red herrings.”
“Why would Eftevang’s murderer think that shooting me was worth his while?”
“It depends on whether he, or she, intended to kill you or merely wound you. Perhaps, the purpose was to divert attention from the original murder.” He drove into the Radisson’s parking lot and parked. He helped her out of the car and squired her into the foyer. He unlaced her boots for her and said, “Go ahead into the restaurant, the fancy one, not the pub. I’ll call my friend and join you in a few minutes.”
Her arm panged. “I forgot to buy Ibuprofen at the pharmacy. Could you scare me up a bottle from the gift shop?” She reached for her purse.
“Please, no. The governor of Svalbard owes you dinner and a bottle of painkillers.”
“Well, then. Tusen takk.” She proceeded through the lobby and into the Brasserie Nansen where the state dinner had been held. “There’ll be two of us,” she told the hostess.
“This way, please.” The woman picked up two menus and showed her to a table next to a window bordered by winking Christmas lights. Dinah situated herself in a cushy chair and scanned the room for familiar faces. Apparently, the Americans were dining elsewhere tonight, probably at the place with the Michelin star. It was just as well. She wasn’t sure how she would respond to seeing any of them just now and the thought of being trapped in a jet plane six miles over the Arctic Ocean with the person or persons who may have shot her gave her the heebie-jeebies. Maybe she should ask the governor of Svalbard to grant her asylum in addition to the painkillers.
A blue-eyed blonde who could have been Erika twenty years ago brought a pitcher of ice water to the table. Dinah shivered and asked for a hot buttered rum. While she waited, she stared out the window into the unrelieved gloom and racked her brain for a motive that would connect the three disparate crimes. Biotechnology? Politics? Financial corruption? Atrocities in Africa? Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll? It was a regular koldtbord of red herrings. And weapons. Had Thor intended to tell her that Eftevang was stabbed with a hotel knife or had it just slipped out when he was trying to be funny? If someone filched a carving knife from the chef’s cutlery set, wouldn’t he notice? Of course, a rifle could have been swiped from a gun rack anywhere in town and returned without attracting attention. Even if someone noticed, everyone wore ski masks.
Thor returned to the table and sat down just as her hot buttered rum arrived. He ordered a beer and when they were alone, he gave her the ibuprofen and appraised her with his inquisitive brown eyes. “You married or have a boyfriend?”
It wasn’t what she’d expected. “The latter.”
“Don’t you want to call him and tell him what happened? Prepare him not to hug you too tightly when he sees you again?”
She shook two pills out of the bottle, popped them into her mouth, and swigged them down with a slug of warm rum. “We’ve agreed to suspend physical expressions of affection for the time being.” She declined to ask him about his girlfriend. She took Inge’s letter out of her purse with her napkin and laid it on the table. “This was in the pocket of Mrs. Sheridan’s parka.”
He took the note out of the envelope and gave it a once-over. “Inge. The name you asked me about before. You said you didn’t know where you’d heard it.”
“It didn’t seem relevant
at the time. I tried to respect Erika’s privacy.”
“There is no immunity for withholding information from the police.”
“Arrest me. I’d feel a lot safer. Anyhow, I’ve been careful not to smudge the fingerprints, if there are any. At first, I guessed that it had to do with an affair Erika was having. Now I don’t know. Maybe Erika told Inge that she was going to pass ruinous information about her husband to the media. Maybe she tipped off Aagaard or Eftevang that Mahler would be on the senators’ plane. I suppose she could have met with one or both of them the night she sneaked away from the hotel. I neglected to tell you one other thing.”
“What’s that?” He did not look amused.
She steeled herself for a lambasting. “Erika left the hotel on the night of the murder. She was out for hours.”
“Anything else you haven’t regarded as relevant until now?”
“No.”
He made a sour mouth and reread the note. “Lofoten light. That’s a pretty way to express what seems to be a rather cruel rebuke.”
“Is Lofoten the Arles of Norway?”
“It is, actually. It’s a chain of islands in the Norwegian Sea with sheltered bays and picturesque fishing villages. A number of artists live there.”
Dinah told him about the man she’d met in the library. “I think it may have been Maks Jorgen or, perhaps, Inge—if Inge is a man. I was wearing Erika’s coat and before he saw my face, he said something in Norwegian. Kir or kar.”
“Kar means a guy, or a chap. Could it have been kjære?”
“Maybe. What does that mean?”
“It’s an endearment. Darling.”
“Someone who loves her then. Is there any way you can trace him?”
“If he’s Norwegian and has ever applied for a passport, his fingerprints and biometric identifiers will be on file.” He removed a plastic bag from his jacket pocket and slid the note inside. “Too bad the information can’t be obtained while you’re still here.”
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