The Body in the Fjord ff-8

by Katherine Hall Page

  But Inspector Marcussen had the last word. “Activities on land. No boat trips.”

  That morning, Ursula Rowe had awakened early, even for her. She lay in bed for a while, thinking of the pain her old friend Marit was suffering. Hans was gone—and Hanna. Kari was all Marit had left. In a country that seemed to abound in relatives, Marit had few. Her brothers had settled in the United States and they were both dead now—Marit’s ties with their families reduced to a Christmas card each year. It was the same with Hans’s family. When Kari was first reported missing, her grandmother had heard from some concerned cousins, but there was no one she could really turn to in her loneliness and fear. No one except Ursula. These last days, the two women had spent most of their waking hours together, talking of the past, their childhoods together. Happy times. Marit had told Ursula that she had the feeling if she could just wait, everything would be all right, but the waiting was agony. So she had known from the beginning that she needed Ursula—and Pix—with her.

  Old women don’t require much sleep, Ursula told herself as she got out of bed. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to waste the time left to her; maybe her body didn’t need it anymore. She might doze in the day and turn in early, but she wakened often and arose with the dawn.

  Yes, she was worried about Pix. Perhaps it had been foolish to send her by herself to investigate the closet on the boat. Ursula should have gone, too. She put on her robe and went across the hall to tap lightly on her daughter’s door. She would surely be back by now. There had been no response, so Ursula had knocked harder.

  Again, the door remained shut. She went back to her room and called Pix’s room number. She let the phone ring fifteen times, hung up, and tried again. Then she called the front desk for them to try. They did not receive an answer, either.

  “Please have someone come up with a key immediately. I want to be sure my daughter is all right.” Ursula had felt her throat constrict with apprehension, yet her tone suggested only instant compliance. A security guard had appeared and together they opened the door.

  Pix’s bed had been slept in, but she was not in the room. Ursula looked and quickly noted that her daughter’s jacket was gone, although apparently nothing else. She had thanked the guard and then awakened Marit.

  “I can’t imagine that she is still at the boat, but we have to check. We’ll check the grounds, too.”

  The two women, wearing several layers against the chill morning air, had walked straight to the dock. It was deserted, as were the grounds they passed through. The clerk at the desk had given them an odd look but made no comment beyond saying, “God dag.” Guests sometimes did strange things, and dawn strolls were comparatively tame.

  All the doors on the Viking fjord cruiser were locked. They knocked and called Pix’s name but got no response. They checked the area around the hotel. Captivated by the light, maybe Pix had decided to take some photographs of the old houses. On impulse, they went into the church, St. Olav’s.

  Here, Marit had turned to Ursula. “We have to tell the police.” Ursula sank to her knees, said a prayer for

  her daughter—and Kari’s safety—allowed herself a sob, then got up and followed Marit to the phone box in front of the post office. The conversation was brief. “They will find the inspektør and we are to wait in the hotel lobby.”

  Thirty minutes later, Marcussen had entered with the smell of sleep and only a hasty wash still on him.

  Although he had already received the message, Ursula had needed to say it directly herself. “My daughter, Mrs. Samuel Miller, the one who found the body of Oscar Melling, is missing and we think it is very serious.”

  So had the inspector. After obtaining some more information, he’d disappeared into the room behind the front desk, leaving an officer with them. After a while—a wait that seemed interminable to Ursula—he had returned to tell them a search of the area would be under way as soon as possible and that he himself was going down to the boat with the captain.

  Now as the tour members filed out of the Dragon Room, Marcussen motioned for Ursula and Marit to stay.

  “As you must have assumed, we have nothing to report yet. I’m very sorry. Will you come with me where we can talk in private? There are some things I don’t understand.”

  Some? thought Ursula ruefully as she followed him out the door.

  Pix Miller was not a drinker. Yes, she was partial to a dram of scotch now and then, particularly Laphroaig, but hangovers had been few and far between. The one she had now, she thought, not even able to open her eyelids, unaccountably turned to lead, was the mother of them all. The grandmother, the great-grandmother. Her leaden lids flew up. Wait a minute—she wasn’t sure if she was speaking aloud or not because of the pounding in her head—I wasn’t drinking.

  The coffee. The farmer. That sweet little flaxen-haired wife. She wasn’t back in their hytte or whatever it was,

  nor on their streamlined water taxi. Where the hell had she

  awakened this time?

  At least she’d awakened.

  It was dark and cold. She moved one arm carefully, then the other, and wiggled her legs around, checking to see that everything worked. It did. Someone had thrown a blanket over her. Unfortunately, it did not afford much warmth. She still had her jacket on and she buttoned it to her neck. Her hand groped the ground next to her. It was dirt, but as her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she could tell she wasn’t outdoors. She sat up unsteadily and touched the wall beside her. It was rough-hewn stone—another cabin or farm building. Pix was becoming uncomfortably intimate with Norwegian rural architecture, although the opportunity for a monograph in the immediate future was slight. In any case, she would have preferred to study the subject in a crowded folkemuseum.

  The effects of the drug had not worn off—her headache was worse, if anything, and the thought of food was quelled as soon as it arose lest it lead to immediate vomiting. But her mind was beginning to clear. A perfect setup. The farmer with his water-taxi service was a familiar figure on the local fjords and among certain people it would also be known that he would pay a good price for Tante Inge’s coffee spoons, too. Scandie Sights stopped to visit the farm throughout the summer, but the goods were probably delivered at other times. Maybe arranging the farm visit had been the source of the initial contact: like-minded people meeting one another. It must have been the farmer on Jennifer Olsen’s balcony at Fleischer’s Hotel, mistaking it for Carl’s room next door. The argument Pix overheard the following evening at Stalheim had either been over the screwup, or maybe something more—splitting the take? And it had been the dark-bearded farmer on the boat in Balestrand the other night when Pix first tried to search the closet. Dark-bearded. Pix heard Carl’s voice screaming after her as she tried to escape. “Stoppe”

  had been clear. Also “Sven.” Dark hair, east coast—a city boy, his wife had said, the right age—could the farmer be Kari’s father? Had she discovered his identity and what he was doing?

  The ground was hard and damp, yet sitting up hurt more. She debated putting the blanket under her, then decided it would quickly absorb moisture from the earthen floor and would do more good draped across her.

  She knew she should get up and start to search the place for a door or window—some way to get out—but she couldn’t summon the strength at the moment. If she could sleep, she might feel better when she woke up. Next time, she’d tell Faith to put some analgesics in her survival kit—that is, if there was a next time.

  Pix drifted off into a half sleep. Images of Carl laughing, his face grotesque, passed through her mind. Was Jan a part of it, too? And Sonja, Anders? The captain? Was Scandie Sights itself a front?

  She thought she could sleep. It was the most sensible thing to do, and Lord knows, that was what she was. “Pix is so sensible,” everyone always said. “So dependable.” It sounded like a dog, a hund….

  Mice. She wasn’t a mouse, but the place had mice. She didn’t mind mice, yet the idea of those scratchy little
feet running across her midriff was not appealing. But no, not mice. Something bigger than mice. A cat? She searched her mind for recollections of Norwegian wildlife. A fox? A troll?

  A person. Someone had coughed. Not an animal cough. A definite human cough. Then a voice speaking rapid Norwegian.

  Pix replied with one of her few Norwegian phrases—she was really going to have to get some tapes—“Jeg snakker ikke norsk. Snakker du engelsk?”—I don’t speak Norwegian. Do you speak English?

  The person did. “Don’t move. I have a gun.”

  Oh no, not again, thought Pix, lying absolutely still.

  “There was nothing in the closet, Mrs. Rowe. Yes, it did sound a little hollow in the back, but Captain Hagen told us that the boat has been remodeled so many times in its history that half of it sounds hollow. In this section, they’ve made bathrooms from what were the crew’s quarters—these were coastal boats, used for the mail and other deliveries. The closet backs onto a bathroom and it’s probably where the pipes are, but we are continuing to search the boat. We have not seen any signs of a struggle. In fact, no signs that anyone had been there, and it was all locked up tight last night, as usual. The captain checks himself last thing.”

  Pix had not shown Marit and Ursula, Faith’s bon voyage gifts. If she had had to say why, she would have acknowledged a recurrence of the adolescent impulse that prevents teenagers from telling their parents anything that might reflect unfavorably on a particular friend. Jeez, all Mother has to do is find out Faith gave me skeleton keys and she’ll never let me go over to her house again. It was absurd, of course. Pix had also felt somewhat reluctant to share the information that the wife of her mother’s spiritual adviser had slipped a can of Mace-like hair spray in for good measure. While Faith was not the leading light of the Ladies Alliance, she was a member in good standing, donating many jars of toothsome peach/cassis and wild strawberry jam to the Autumn Harvest Fair. The notion that the minister’s spouse was actively encouraging malfeasance among the parishioners would not go over as big as the jams, always popular items with their HAVE FAITH labels, the name of the catering company.

  “If it was locked, then she must not have been able to get on the boat at all.” Ursula’s anxiety increased. Pix had surely left the hotel on a mission—a mission dictated by her mother. Apparently, she’d never gotten there, let alone accomplished it. How could she have disappeared in the short distance between the hotel and the boat? Why hadn’t she returned immediately when she discovered the boat was locked?

  Marit spoke her fears aloud. “But where can she be if she’s not on the boat, or somewhere in Balestrand?”

  “According to the night desk clerk, no one left the hotel until the two of you went out this morning, and she swears she wasn’t away from her post, not even for a minute. They’re quite strict about it here. And we had a man stationed by the door. The clerk says he fell asleep, which he admits, but between the two of them, I’d say it was impossible for your daughter to have left by that door, and the other exits were alarmed.”

  “Then you think she still may be in the hotel?” Ursula had had high hopes of the boat, imagining Pix, perhaps tied up, but safe and sound in the closet.

  Marit gasped. “The sauna! Remember she’d gotten locked in the sauna the other night.”

  Ursula was halfway to the door. They were in the same large meeting room Pix had been in, only this time there wasn’t any coffee or cookies.

  “Mrs. Rowe, the sauna was one of the first places we checked. It was empty.” Ursula walked back to the chair she’d been sitting in. If she felt like slumping, she didn’t. She’d left her cane in her room, too.

  “I know how hard this is—for you both.” Marcussen looked at the two elderly women in front of him, each missing a loved one. Marit Hansen reminded him of many Norwegian women he knew. The set of her mouth, the way she walked. This was a stubborn woman, a strong woman. He was interested in her American friend. Both Americans had come across the ocean at a moment’s notice to do what they believed the police had not been able to do—find Kari Hansen. They all had no doubt they would be successful at unraveling the mystery. Now Mrs. Miller was missing and he could see the doubt in both her mother’s and Fru Hansen’s eyes. They had failed—and thus far, so had he.

  He infused his voice with a confidence he was far from feeling. “Let’s start again. Tell me the whole story from

  the beginning—from Kari’s call at the station in Oslo…” Officer Jansen came in with a tray. “

  Kaffe

  ?”

  Pix was aware of movement and a shape moving toward her.

  She infused her voice with as much bravery as she could muster, “I’m an American tourist and my name is—”

  “Pix!” the voice shrieked. Arms were flung about her and she was enveloped in a warm, if slightly uncomfortable, embrace. “What are you doing here!”

  It was Kari. At last.

  “I have the same question for you,” Pix said, joy washing over her—and relief. She could just make out the girl’s features in the dark. Kari’s face looked thinner, and older, but it had been some years since Pix had seen her.

  “Wait—let me get my blanket. You feel cold.” Kari bustled away, obviously much more familiar with the layout of the place. She wrapped the blanket around Pix and the two huddled close together.

  “I heard them bring you in. They left food if you are hungry. But I didn’t know who you were and I was afraid to find out. It could have been a trick, or someone who didn’t know I was here and might not be happy to find out. It seemed smart to wait, but I got too curious.”

  “You don’t have a gun.” Pix was not in the slightest bit hopeful.

  “No,” Kari said sadly. “Otherwise, I would have been out long ago.”

  “Where are we?” Pix asked. First things first.

  “I was drugged when they brought me here, but from the size and construction, it could be one of the old huts where the farmhands stayed when they brought the goats to the summer pastures, or it could be a hiker’s hut on the vidda. Whatever it is, it must be very remote, because it has no furniture and hasn’t been fixed up at all. Now people are using these as hytter, you know, and I would expect a table, chairs, and some bunk beds. A fireplace.

  There is nothing here. Because it’s so cold, I think it must be the vidda, but if we are high up in the mountains, that would be cold, too.”

  “And there’s no way out.”

  “The shutters must be barred shut from the outside and the door is locked. I tried to dig with my hands and the clip from my hair, but it was no use. And no loose stones. Believe me, I’ve pulled at every one of them.”

  Pix felt herself start to panic, but it dissipated at once. She’d come to Norway to find Kari and here she was, alive and well. Mission accomplished. Getting them out of a locked cabin God knows where would surely prove less difficult. And now there were two of them. Her headache was better and she was beginning to feel her energy returning.

  “You must tell me everything. Have you seen my grandmother? Do you know about Erik?” Kari’s voice ended with a sob.

  “Your grandmother is fine—worried, of course, but convinced you are alive. She’s with my mother at Kvikne’s Hotel. And yes, I’m so sorry—I do know about Erik.” Pix put her arm around Kari.

  “I’ve cried so much, I didn’t know I had any tears left, but I suppose I always will.”

  “Do you want to talk about what happened?” While Pix did not want to dredge up the tragic memory, she was eager to have the mystery solved. “Why don’t you tell me the whole thing, starting from your call to your grandmother from the station. Erik was still alive then, right?”

  “Yes.” Kari took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. Pix resolved to find out what else the young woman had in her pockets, yet for the moment, all she wanted was to discover the events of a week ago that had led to a death and abduction.

  “You must have found out about Carl; otherwise, you
wouldn’t be here,” Kari said matter-of-factly. Pix nodded in the dark, before realizing subtle gestures were out.

  “Yes. He had me—us—completely fooled.”

  “Me, too. Erik knew Carl from last summer. They were on the same boat then, also. You know, Erik is like me, an only child, and he never had a big brother to do things with. Suddenly, everything was Carl this and Carl that. I must admit I was a bit jealous. They were going fishing. They were going out on the town in Bergen between tours. But then I met Carl, or Charles—he uses both names. His father is English.”

  “I knew that, but not about the names.”

  “Oh yes, he loves English people—more than Norwegians. But I didn’t find that out until this summer. That’s what started the whole thing. He has two passports. It’s completely legal. He was born in Britain. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, last winter the three of us—and sometimes he’d bring a girl along—did lots of things together. He had plenty of money. I assumed his family was rich, and it was fun to be taken to restaurants like Theatercafeen and not think about a bill. He always insisted on paying. He knew so many things, especially about art and antiques. After a few days, he’d disappear on one of the winter tours and then come back to sweep us off our feet again. I was so stupid!”

  Kari started to cry again. “If I had had more sense, Erik would be alive today!”

  And Erik had been lacking in judgment, too, thought Pix, but she kept her mouth shut. She could picture Carl’s seduction of these two—a handsome, witty, charming older brother with deep pockets. What young person could resist someone like that? Where was the harm? How can one bite of an apple hurt me?

  “This part is hard to admit. I had a kind of crush on Carl, too. Erik is the only man I ever loved or ever will love, but Carl was very flattering—not in a crude way, but he made me feel special. Now I know it was all an act.”