by Ruth Ware
“Hello,” I said, wearily. I’d gone through my story with the man at the desk—at least as much of it as I thought safe to give, and as much as his English would permit. He was obviously the night porter, and he looked and sounded more Spanish or Turkish than Norwegian, although his Norwegian seemed to be better than his English, which was fine when it came to stock phrases about checking in and opening hours, but not up to a garbled tale of mixed identity and police.
I had seen him showing the only ID I had with me—Anne’s—to the manager, and heard his low, guarded tones, and heard my own name repeated several times.
Now the man sitting opposite me folded his fingers and smiled, slightly nervously.
“Miss—Black Lock, is that right?” He pronounced it as two words. I nodded.
“I don’t completely understand—my night manager tried to explain—how do you have Anne Bullmer’s credit cards? We know Anne and Richard well; they stay here sometimes. Are you a friend?”
I put my hands over my face, as if I could press back the tiredness that was threatening to overwhelm me.
“I—it’s a really long story. Please, can I use your phone? I have to contact the police.”
I had made up my mind as I hung, dripping and exhausted, over the polished check-in desk. In spite of my promise to Carrie, this was my only chance to save her. I didn’t for one second believe that Richard would let her live. She knew too much, had screwed too much up. And without the headscarf I had no chance of passing myself off as Anne, and without Carrie’s passport I had no chance of posing as Carrie, and both were lost somewhere in the bay, fathoms down. Only Anne’s purse had survived, miraculously still in the pocket of the Lycra stretch pants as I crawled up the ladder, out of the water.
“Of course,” Erik said sympathetically. “Would you like me to phone them? They may not have an English speaker on duty at this time of night. I must warn you, we don’t have a police station in the town, the nearest one is a few hours away in the next . . . what’s the word. The next valley. It will probably be tomorrow before someone can come out.”
“Please tell them it’s urgent, though,” I said wearily. “The sooner, the better. I can pay for a bed. I have money.”
“Let’s not worry about that,” he said with a smile. “Can I get you another drink?”
“No. No, thanks. Just please tell them to come soon. Someone’s life could be in danger.”
I let my head rest, heavy on my hand, my eyelids almost closing as he went back to the front desk, and I heard the sound of a phone receiver being lifted, and the beep-beep-beep-beep . . . beep-beep-beep of a number being dialed. It sounded like a long one. Maybe the Norwegian number for 999 was different? Or perhaps he was calling the local station.
It rang. Someone at the other end picked up and there was a brief exchange. Through the haze of exhaustion I heard Erik saying something in Norwegian out of which I could only pick the word hotel . . . then a pause and then another burst of Norwegian. Then I heard my own name, given twice, and then Anne’s.
“Ja, din kone, Anne,” Erik said, as if the person on the other end had not heard correctly, or had not believed what he’d heard. Then more in Norwegian, and then a laugh, and finally. “Takk, farvel, Richard.”
My head jerked up from my supporting hand, and every part of me went suddenly cold and still.
I looked out to the ships in the bay, to the Aurora, its lights disappearing in the far, far distance. And . . . was it my imagination? It looked as if the ship had stopped.
I sat for a moment longer, watching its lights, trying to measure them against the landmarks of the bay, and at last I was almost sure. The Aurora was no longer moving west up the fjord. It was turning around. It was coming back.
Erik had hung up, and was dialing another number now.
“Politiet, takk,” he said as someone answered.
For a moment I couldn’t move, frozen with the realization of what I’d done. I hadn’t believed Carrie’s assertions about Richard’s web of influence, not really. I’d dismissed them as the paranoia of a woman too beaten down to believe in the possibility of escape. But now . . . now those fears seemed all too real.
I set the coffee cup gently down on the table, let the red blanket fall to the floor, and, very quietly, I opened the terrace door and slipped outside, into the night.
- CHAPTER 34 -
I ran, up through the winding streets of the little town, my breath tearing in my chest, stones cutting into my bare feet and making me wince with pain. The streets petered out, and the streetlights began to disappear, but I ran on in the dark and the cold, stumbling through invisible puddles and over wet grass and graveled paths, until my feet grew too numb for me to even feel the cuts and the stones.
Even then I kept going—desperate to put as many miles as possible between myself and Richard Bullmer. I knew that I could not keep this up, that at some point I was going to have to give in—but my only hope was to keep going as long as possible, until I found myself some kind of shelter.
Finally, I could not run anymore. I let myself drop back to a kind of gasping, limping jog, and then as the lights of the village grew smaller in the distance, I slowed to a walk, a painful, stumbling walk, along a winding dark road that twisted into the darkness, climbing up the side of the fjord. Every few hundred yards I looked back over my shoulder, down into the valley, to the shrinking speckle of lights of the little portside town, and to the dark slick of the fjord waters, where the lights of the Aurora were coming closer. They were unmistakable now. I could see the ship clearly, and I could see, too, light beginning to tinge the sky above me.
Dawn must be coming already—God, what day did that make it? Monday?
But something seemed wrong, and after a few minutes I realized what it was. The lights were not to the east but to the north. What I could see was not dawn but the eerie green and gold streaks of the northern lights.
The realization made me laugh—a bitter, mirthless choke that sounded shockingly loud in the still night air. What was it Richard had said? Everyone should see the northern lights before they died. Well, now I had. But it just didn’t seem that important anymore.
I had stopped for a moment, watching the shifting glory of the aurora borealis, but now at the thought of Richard I began walking again. With each step, I remembered Carrie’s frantic exhortations to get running and get out—her hysterical assertions about the reach of Richard’s influence.
It didn’t seem so hysterical now.
If only I had believed her—I should never have shown Anne’s ID at the hotel, or trusted Erik with even the few details I’d given him. But I just hadn’t quite believed that anyone, however wealthy, could have the kind of reach Carrie believed. Now I realized I was wrong.
I groaned, at my own stupidity, at the cold that was striking through my thin, damp clothes. Most of all at the fact that I’d left the wallet on the desk. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That was five thousand wet, soggy, but still usable kroner, and I’d left them there for Richard as a little golden hello when he turned up at the hotel. What was I going to do? I had no ID, nowhere to sleep, no means of buying so much as a bar of chocolate, let alone a train ticket. My best hope was finding a police station, but how? Where? And did I dare tell them the truth when I got there?
I was just considering this when I heard the roar of an engine behind me and turned to see a car coming round the bend, frighteningly fast, clearly not expecting anyone to be out here at this time of night.
I scrambled for the verge, lost my footing, and fell, sliding down a length of scree that left me bloodied and scraped, my leggings in tatters, and came to a halt with a splash in a pebbly ditch that seemed to be some kind of stream or drainage channel down to the fjord below. The car itself had screeched to a halt on the road some five or six feet above me, the headlamps pointing out into the valley, and the smoke from the exhaust billow
ing red in the rear lights.
I heard the crunch of feet on the road above. Richard? One of his men? I had to get away.
I tried to stand on my ankle, felt it give, and then tried again, more carefully this time, but the pain made me give a sob.
At the sound, a figure, lit from behind so that I could see his shape only in silhouette, peered over the edge of the road, and a voice said something in Norwegian. I shook my head. My hands were trembling.
“I d-don’t speak Norwegian.” I tried to keep the sob out of my voice. “Do you sp-speak English?”
“Yes, I speak English,” the man said in a heavily accented voice. “Give me your hand. I will help you out.”
I hesitated, but there was no way I could get out of the ditch without help, and if the man really intended to hurt me he could just as easily climb down here and attack me in the shelter of the ditch. Better to get out, where I could at least run if I had to.
The lights of the car shone in my eyes, blinding me, and I put my hand up, shielding them against the glare, but all I could see was a dark shape, and a halo of blond hair beneath some kind of cap. It wasn’t Richard, at least, that I was sure of.
“Give me your hand,” the man said again, with a touch of impatience this time. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m n-not hurt,” I said. “At least, my ankle hurts, but I don’t think it’s broken.”
“Put the leg there.” He pointed at a rock about a foot out of the ditch, “and I will pull you up.”
I nodded, and with a feeling that I might be doing something very stupid, I set my good foot to the rock and leaned upward with my right hand.
I felt the man grab hold of my wrist, his grip immensely strong, and with a grunt he began to pull, bracing himself against a rock at the edge of the ditch. The muscles and sinews in my arm were screaming in protest, and when I tried to put my weight on my bad foot, I cried out, but at last, with a painful, scrambling rush, I was up and out of the ditch, and standing trembling on the edge of the verge.
“What are you doing out here?” the man said. I couldn’t see his face, but there was concern in his voice. “Are you lost? Have you had an accident? This road leads directly up the mountain, it’s no place for a tourist.”
I was trying to think of how to answer, when I realized two things.
The first was that he was carrying something in a holster at his hip, the shape of it silhouetted against the car lights. And the second was that the car itself was a police car. As I stood there, frozen, trying to think what to say, I heard the crackle of a radio pierce the night.
“I—” I managed.
The policeman took a step forward, tipping his cap so that he could see me more clearly, and frowned.
“What is your name, Miss?”
“I—” I said, and then stopped.
There was another crackle from his radio and he held up a finger.
“One moment, please.” He put his hand to his hip, and I saw that what I had taken for a gun was actually a police radio in a holster, hanging next to a pair of handcuffs. He spoke briefly into the receiver and then climbed into the driver’s side of the car and began a longer conversation on the car radio.
“Ja,” I heard, and then a burst of conversation I didn’t understand. Then he looked up at me through the windscreen, and his eyes met mine, his gaze puzzled. “Ja,” he said again, “det er riktig. Laura Blacklock.”
Everything seemed to slow down, and I knew with a cold certainty that it was now, or not at all. If I ran now, I might be making a mistake. But if I didn’t, I might not live to find out, and I could not afford to take that risk.
I hesitated for just one second more, and then I saw the policeman replace the radio receiver and reach for something in his glove compartment.
I had no idea what to do. But I had not believed Carrie before, and it had nearly cost me everything.
Screwing my courage for the pain I knew was coming, I began to run—not up the road as before but down, cross-country, scrambling headlong down the vertiginous side of the fjord.
- CHAPTER 35 -
It was growing light when I realized that I could go no farther, that my muscles, exhausted beyond endurance, just simply would not obey me. I was no longer walking, I was stumbling as if I were drunk, my knees buckling when I tried to climb over a fallen tree stump.
I had to stop. If I didn’t, I would fall where I stood, so deep in the Norwegian countryside that my body might never be found.
I needed shelter, but I had left the road a long time back, and there were no houses to be seen. I had no phone. No money. I didn’t even know what time it was, although it must be close to dawn.
A sob rose in my dry throat, but just at that moment, I saw something loom from between the sparse trees—a long, low shape. Not a house—but some kind of barn, perhaps?
The sight gave my legs a last shot of energy, and I staggered out from between the trees, across a dirt track, through a gate in a wire fence. It was a barn—although the name seemed almost too grand for the shack that lay in front of me, with its rickety wooden walls and corrugated iron roof.
Two shaggy little horses turned their heads curiously as I trudged past, and then one of them returned to drinking from what I saw, with a leap of my heart, was a trough of water, its surface pink and gold in the soft dawn light.
I staggered to the trough, falling on my knees in the short grass beside it, and cupping the water in my hands I drank great gulps of it down. It was rainwater, and it tasted of mud and dirt and rust from the metal trough, but I didn’t care. I was too thirsty to think about anything except slaking my parched throat.
When I’d drunk as much as I could, I straightened up and looked around me. The shed door was shut, but as I put my hand to the latch, it swung open and I went cautiously through, shutting the door behind me.
Inside there was hay—bales and bales of it—some tubs that I thought might be feed or supplements, and, hanging on the wall on pegs, a couple of horse blankets.
Slowly, drunk with weariness, I pulled the first one down and laid it over the deepest pile of hay—not even thinking about rats or fleas, or even Richard’s men. There was surely no way they could find me here, and I had got to the stage where I almost didn’t care—if they would just let me rest, they could take me away.
Then I lay down on the makeshift bed and drew the other blanket over the top of me.
And then I slept.
“Hallo?” The voice in my head spoke again, painfully loud, and I opened my eyes to a blinding light, and a face gazing into mine. An elderly man with a full white beard and a strong resemblance to Captain Birdseye was peering at me with rheumy hazel eyes, and a mix of surprise and concern.
I blinked and scrambled backwards, my heart thudding painfully, and then tried to get to my feet, but my ankle gave a wrench of pain and I stumbled. The man took my arm, saying something in Norwegian, but without thinking I jerked it savagely out of his grip, and fell back onto the floor of the barn.
For a few minutes we just looked at each other, him taking in my scrapes and cuts, me looking at his lined face and the dog barking and circling behind him.
“Kom,” he said at last, getting painfully to his knees and holding out his hand with cautious calm, as if I were a wounded animal that might snap at any provocation, and not a human at all. The dog barked again, hysterically this time, and the man shouted something over his shoulder that was clearly quiet, you! or something to that effect.
“Who—” I licked dry lips and tried again. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“Konrad Horst,” the man said, pointing at himself. He pulled out his wallet and flicked through until he found a photo of an elderly lady with rosy cheeks and a bun of white hair, cuddling two blond-haired little boys.
“Min kone,” he said, enunciating slowly. And then, pointing to the childr
en, something that sounded like “Vorry bon-bon.”
Then he pointed out of the barn door at an extremely elderly Volvo standing outside.
“Bilen min,” he said, and again, “Kom.”
I didn’t know what to do. There was something reassuring about the photos of his wife and grandchildren—but even rapists and killers had grandkids, right? On the other hand, maybe he was just a nice old man. Maybe his wife would speak English. At the very least they’d likely have a phone.
I looked down at my ankle. I didn’t have much choice. It had swollen to twice its usual size, and I wasn’t sure I could even hobble as far as the car, let alone make it to an airport.
Captain Birdseye held out his arm and made a little gesture.
“Pleese?” he rumbled interrogatively, as if giving me a choice. But it was an illusion. I had no choice.
I let him help me to my feet, and I got into the car.
It was only as we drove that I realized quite how far I had run the night before. You couldn’t even see the fjord from this wooded fold of the hillside, and the Volvo must have jolted down several miles of rutted track before we reached the semblance of a road.
We were turning onto the tarmac when I noticed something in the little well beneath the radio—a mobile phone. It was very, very ancient, but it was a phone.
I put out my hand, hardly able to breathe.
“May I?”
Captain Birdseye looked across, and then grinned. He put the phone in my lap but then tapped the screen, saying something in Norwegian. As soon as I looked at the phone, I realized what he was saying. There was no reception at all.
“Vente,” he said loudly and clearly, and then slowly, in what sounded like heavily accented English, “Wait.”
I held the phone in my lap, watching the screen with a lump in my throat as the trees flashed past. But something didn’t make sense. The date on the phone showed the twenty-ninth of September. Either I was miscounting, or I had lost a day.