The Body in the Fjord ff-8

by Katherine Hall Page

  “Pix,” whispered Kari. “Someone’s coming. Get ready.”

  Yes, there was the sound of a car. The engine stopped. A door slammed—one door.

  Someone was fumbling with the lock and then light streamed in. Pix was momentarily blinded.

  It was Sven, who was carrying a plastic bag, which he hastily set down inside the door. As he turned to leave, Kari called in a feeble voice.

  “The woman. The woman you brought here is dead.”

  “What!” cried Sven, rushing to where Pix lay. “This can’t be…”

  As he leaned over to check, Pix let him have it full force with Faith’s superhold hair spray. He screamed and fell back. Kari was waiting with the Thermos and brought it down on his head hard, twice. The man fell to the ground. Quickly, they searched his pockets, taking his wallet, keys, matches, some coins, and a knife. There was nothing else.

  They left the food. With luck, he’d be there long enough to get very hungry.

  Outside, after locking the door, they fell into each other’s arms, laughing deliriously. The low stone hut had a sod roof. It looked so innocuous—a flower or two sprouting amid the grass, and a well-worn wooden door.

  “We did it! It was so easy! You’re a genius, Pix!” Kari hugged her again.

  Modestly, Pix said, “You were pretty handy with that thermos.” She made a mental note to write to the company, thanking them for the versatility of their product. She had almost gotten away by throwing hot coffee at Carl, and now they had gained their freedom using the handy vacuum bottle again.

  “Now,” she continued, “let’s see if we can retrace his route and find the nearest police station or phone.”

  “Police!” Kari’s expression changed. “No way! They’ll never believe me. We have to see this through to the end. I need to clear my name.”

  “But we have Sven and they’ll arrest Carl. Inspector Marcussen will believe us.”

  “The things that were in the closet are at the bottom of the fjord or hidden in some other place. Sven’s wife will miss him soon and come to investigate. They’ll deny we were ever here. Say that we’re crazy. It will be my word against Carl’s and Sven’s. They’ll probably accuse Erik, if anything. Remember, the police already think I may have killed him. And there will always be a cloud

  hanging over me and my grandmother. Suspicion is a terrible thing.”

  It was late in the evening, Sunday evening, and the sun still felt warm. They were alive and free, but Pix was forced to agree with Kari. It wasn’t over.

  Ten

  Kari drove like a woman possessed. Pix wondered whether this was her normal style or an aberration produced by the present situation. Whatever it was, she was going to have to tell the girl to slow down or neither would have a tale to tell to any grandchildren.

  The first part of the trip had been less dramatic. They’d had to drive carefully to follow the marks made by Sven’s drive across the flat expanse that lay before them when they’d emerged from the hut. The hut was the only sign of civilization as far as the eye could see. Behind them, a wall of rock stretched across the horizon; its dramatic cliffs looked seamless.

  “It’s Hallingskarvet,” Kari had said. “The railway lies to the south of it, across the vidda. You came that way in the train.”

  “And what is that?” Pix had asked, pointing straight ahead to one of the largest snowcapped mountain ranges she’d ever seen.

  “Oh, that—that’s Jotunheimen, the home of the trolls and giants, but I don’t think they’ll bother us,” she added mischievously. “It’s quite far away. I’m assuming road number fifty is in that direction. If I’ve guessed wrong, we’ll know fairly soon, because there aren’t any other roads for quite a distance. But Sven had to get here easily,

  and he left a good track to whatever road he did take. The ground is soft now from the snow melting in the mountains.”

  After several trips, the car had indeed left a distinct path, one that traced an old route across the countryside. The grass was green, but the only wildflowers Pix saw were arctic varieties. In places, the ground was completely covered in heather, its pale lavenders and pinks adding color to the gray fields strewn with boulders.

  “When we get to the main road, all we have to do is guess the right way to turn. It shouldn’t be hard. We just head west.”

  “How far do you think we are from Balestrand?” Pix asked, giving herself up to the navigator.

  “It’s hard to say. But we will definitely be there before morning.” They had driven on for a bit; then Kari complained: “What’s bumping against the back of my seat? Can you move it?”

  Pix twisted around to look.

  “It’s a suitcase. He must have planned to drop the food off and then meet Carl someplace. Damn, we didn’t think of that. They were going to pick up the Viking stuff on the last day of the tour, which is today. It would be too much to hope that Carl would have stayed on in Balestrand. I would have thought they’d meet at the farm, except Sven wouldn’t have his suitcase with him if that was the plan. I don’t think they trust each other enough to let one person go off with the silver. They’d stay together until they got their money.”

  “And even without the added liability of having kept us prisoners, Carl, Sven, and his wife will have to get out of the country with the Viking silver right away. It will be too risky to stay.”

  Pix agreed. “Yes, so that suggests Sven was on his way to Bergen and the ferry across the North Sea to Newcastle. Do you have any idea where they’d meet in Bergen?”

  “No, but we can head straight for the ferry. Unless we can come up with a better plan.”

  “Whatever we decide, there’s something we need to do as soon as possible. It’s time to call Mother.”

  Kari grinned. “And Bestemor. Now, what’s in his suitcase?”

  It was at this point that she saw the paved road ahead, let out a whoop, and hit the accelerator. Sven had treated himself to a brand-new BMW and it responded immediately. Pix did, too.

  “Pull over and I’ll get the case. I don’t want to take my seat belt off.” She was feeling extremely middle-aged. She used to drive pretty fast herself when she was younger. Now thoughts of mortality—and wanting to know the ends of a great many stories—slowed her down.

  The suitcase yielded little except for the knowledge that Sven favored boxers and was carrying his passport. He also had a framed photo of his wife and children.

  “The rat!” Kari exclaimed, the needle of the speedometer quivering forward. “I bet he’s leaving them!”

  “Pond scum—or fjord scum,” Pix added. Her children, she thought with a pang, would appreciate the nicety of her distinction. The suitcase, down to the box of condoms, tucked in with a flask of brandy, had all the earmarks of a future bachelor’s, including the picture of former loved ones as a sweet memory. Would he have said he was a widower or what?

  “I think the future Sven had planned for himself didn’t include a wife and children, especially not the children.” She wasn’t sorry for his wife. Since Pix had arrived on the tour, so many people had been wearing so many masks, and the disguise of the happy farmer’s wife, living off the land for generations, seemed particularly repellent. She wondered if any of it was true.

  “Do you think Mrs. Sven really did grow up on the farm? Was it a lie, or were her parents and grandparents at their hytte?”

  Kari flew around a curve in the road, disturbing some birds, which were searching for food along the side. They scattered into the air with much screeching and flapping of wings.

  “I never saw anybody else, but I wouldn’t think she’d lie that way. It would be bound to get back to somebody in Vik or one of the villages nearby. She probably did grow up there and probably hated it.”

  Pix thought of Sonja. She’d grown up in a tiny village, Undredal, and was definitely not going back.

  “And was it just Carl from Scandie Sights, or Jan, too? Maybe the other stewards? He could have gotten to them, the way he had w
ith Erik.”

  “I would be surprised. Jan will go into his family business, the oil business. Carl used to make fun of him, but I think he was jealous of his position. I know everyone thinks we are all the same in Norway, but there are some families that are maybe a little above the rest of us—a little older, and a lot more money. Jan’s is like that. He does the tours because he enjoys them and his father thinks he should do something to practice his English. As for the stewards—Anders, I would doubt, and Sonja is too stupid to keep her mouth shut. Carl would never involve her.”

  So, there was no love lost here, as well, Pix thought.

  “She doesn’t seem particularly fond of you, either.”

  Kari tossed her head. The car swerved.

  “She was after Erik all last summer. She made a total fool of herself, and poor Erik was very embarrassed. I had to go to Bergen and put a stop to it. She has Anders now. He might be nice, but nothing like Erik. Oh Pix, I can’t believe I’ll never see him again! And what will I tell his parents? The truth might kill them, too.”

  It was hard. Pix was tempted to advise a severely edited version, with the cooperation of the police, but there were too many secrets, too many lies in life—especially family life.

  “You tell them what you told me. They will know that at the end Erik was doing as he had been taught, and that will be a comfort to them.”

  They drove in silence for a while. It was past midnight. Pix

  was dying of thirst and hunger. She had taken the sandwiches the farmer’s wife made—what was her name anyway?—from her pocket and left them at the hut. The sandwiches she had pressed on Pix along with the coffee as she rushed Pix to the fjord taxi. They couldn’t take the chance that Mrs. Sven might have added knockout drops to the smør.

  The Côte d’Or chocolate bar! She dug it out, unwrapped it, and handed half to Kari.

  “I’ve never tasted anything so good in my life,” the girl said.

  “I’ll tell Faith,” answered Pix, savoring each mouthful.

  They finally came to a phone—and a Coke machine—outside a small gas station. Pix was charmed to note it had a sod roof. Her family, those increasingly mythical creatures, would enjoy this country. Jan had patiently explained about sod roofs the day they were on his bus. The roof framing was covered with layers of birch bark, then sod in the old days. Now people used heavy plastic sheeting under the sod and trimmed the edges with the birch to suggest authenticity. “And we don’t bring our lawn mowers up,” he’d joked. She hoped he was what she and Ursula had thought. Okay, his family was in the oil business, but that didn’t mean he was passing industrial secrets to a tour member or anybody else. Carl had always seemed a little too perfect, too polished. Jan, she reminded herself, had on unmatched socks the first day. Kari hit the brakes and they jerked to a halt outside the station. There were no signs of life, but Sven had thoughtfully left a full tank of gas and they didn’t need to fill up.

  “This is a very popular place in the winter for cross-country skiing, and hiking soon of course. In between…” Kari shrugged and pointed to the dark station.

  Having felt justified in taking a loan from Sven’s coins as well as using his car, they headed for the phone and machine. Kari thought it best that she be the one to call Ursula—speaking to the desk clerk in Norwegian, simply asking for “Fru Rowe.”

  The clerk answered and put the call through to the room.

  She had been instructed to let the inspectør know if either Fru Hansen or Fru Rowe received any calls, but she didn’t think he meant her to disturb him. She conscientiously noted the time and put the message in an envelope with his name on it for the morning.

  Ursula picked up the phone on the first ring.

  “It’s me.” Kari was careful not to identify herself, and the gasp from Ursula told her she didn’t need to. The clerk could still be listening in, although Kari doubted it. It would have been very rude. “I’m fine. So is the other lady, who is with me. And we’ll see you soon. I don’t want to take much time, so here’s what we want to know—and maybe there’s a little something we hope you two can do.”

  They couldn’t drive any longer. It wasn’t fatigue, hunger—or thirst. The Coke machine had taken care of that. It was the fjord—glistening, dead calm, straight in front of them—the end of the journey, or part of the journey.

  “Now what?” Pix said, stepping out of the car. She had taken over the driving so Kari could rest.

  “We find a boat.”

  Of course. Pix added piracy to the growing list of crimes—breaking and entering, larceny—she found herself perpetrating in this law-abiding nation.

  No one had conveniently left their keys on board any of the craft moored at the dock, so it appeared they would have to row to Balestrand. Pix spent her Maine summers either on the water or in it, so she was a strong oarswoman. Kari, too, had learned the art on the fjords of the east coast around Tønsberg, rowing to the nearby islands.

  On the way, they had driven through Stalheim, and Pix shivered when she saw the hotel perched high above the valley. From Stalheim, they had followed the twisting road down to Vangnes, on the shores of the Sognefjord, coming to a stop at this deserted pier. Balestrand lay directly across the water.

  For Balestrand—and Kvikne’s Hotel—was their final destination, after all. Odin and the others in the Norsk

  pantheon had smiled on them. Carl Bjørnson was still there. Everyone was still there, detained for their “safety” by the good inspectør. Detained so he could try to find out what was going on was more like it, Pix thought. But for whatever reason, Carl and the Viking silver were still safe in Norway, although Carl would not be safe for long if all went well. Pix had taken the phone and told Ursula what to do, carefully speaking in such a way that anyone listening would hear only a superficial conversation about getting together. Again, she had had a plan. “It’s all these town meetings, having to think of ways to raise money for things, like the library and the schools. I tend to think in index cards,” she’d explained to Kari, who continued to be impressed by her friend’s ingenuity. And it’s living with Faith, Pix added to herself, Faith the person. She was beginning to feel a little like Kari’s Faith the person—and it didn’t feel bad.

  They had untied a lapstrake wooden rowboat, double-ended, with the long oars favored by Norwegian mariners. It was a beautiful boat, well maintained, and Pix made a mental apology to its owner, promising to have it back as soon as possible.

  Pix had always found car travel conducive to serious conversation, intimate conversation. Something about the enforced closeness, the inability to leave. Something about talking or listening to someone with his or her eyes presumably on the road. Nothing face-to-face. This had been when her father had told her things about his childhood she’d never known, sad things. It was when Sam had proposed and they’d pulled over—to be face-to-face. She had thought this car trip would be the time when she could talk to Kari about Hanna and what Marit had revealed about Stalheim, but Kari had been asleep when they passed by. Now in the boat, in the soft darkness, Pix wanted Kari to know what Marit had told them.

  “You were sleeping when we went through Stalheim. It’s such a beautiful place, such a wonderful hotel. It’s hard to think of it in any other way, hard to imagine what it was like during the war.”

  “Marit told you?” Kari was rowing and she lifted the oars out of the water.

  “Yes. My mother was terribly sorry that your grandparents hadn’t shared this with her years ago. She wouldn’t have thought anything other than how lucky Hans and Marit had been to find a baby to adopt.”

  “I was very angry when she told me, but I didn’t let her know. Did she tell you my mother was a teenager when she found out?”

  “Yes.”

  “If they had spoken to her sooner, she might still be alive! Remember I said unless I cleared this up, we’d always be living with people’s suspicions? That was how Hanna must have felt. That to be a Lebensborn child was something
to hide from the neighbors and family, so nobody would be raising a finger, ‘tsk, tsk, tsk—bad blood.’” Kari sounded incredibly bitter. She had said “Hanna,” not “Mor”—a distant figure.

  Pix took a deep breath. The girl had started rowing again, hard. The water dripped in flashing strings of beads from each oar. A single bird flew high overhead. Of course, if Hanna had known sooner, she might not have rebelled so dramatically—and there wouldn’t be a Kari—but that wasn’t the point.

  “People make mistakes. Lord knows, I’ve made plenty, especially in child rearing.” Pix and Sam had thought they’d gain expertise with each new addition, but instead, they discovered whole new quandaries. “Hans and Marit thought they were protecting your mother. It was a hard call and we weren’t there. We don’t know what it was like in Norway then. They did what they did out of love.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Kari shot back.

  “Oh yes, it is. It’s a great excuse, the best. It may not always turn out right, but it’s a damned good excuse.” Pix paused. “I knew your mother, remember. Adored her. She could do anything—run faster, sing better, swim, cook, write funny poems—and she was so beautiful. But, although finding out her origins must have been a shock,

  I think she was a victim of her own intense personality colliding with a very mixed-up time in both our societies. So many contradictory messages. And she got confused.”

  “Still…” Kari sounded less vehement, or maybe talking and rowing at the same time was wearing her out. “I am going to try to find out who her mother was. They’ve opened the records. I don’t care so much about discovering who my Nazi grandfather might be, but my grandmother could still be alive and might tell me something about the family.”

  Nazi! That reminded Pix of Oscar Melling. She’d told Kari about finding his body and who he was, but she hadn’t asked about the Stalheim connection.