The driver was a policeman. At any time he could have drawn level with her, sounded his siren and pulled her over to the side of the road. So why didn’t he?
She didn’t know Lillehammer’s side roads well enough to cope with the labyrinth of one-way systems, so she kept going toward the centre of town, hoping to lose her pursuer at one of the many sets of traffic lights. But he was always there, and the damn lights were always green!
Soon she was on Mesnadalsvegen, the main road that passes close to the train station and goes under the bridge that carries the railway line. She didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. The road was too big and too fast, and it was taking her out of town. Away from safety.
Her fears grew when she entered Sorgendalstunnelen, a long dark tunnel that sloped downhill. She knew that at the bottom she would be committed to the E6 highway - which would take her into the countryside.
But before the E6 - she had forgotten - there was a small roundabout, the junction for Strandtorget shopping centre. The black car was close behind her as she approached it.
She stayed in the straight-ahead lane and moved carefully forward on to the roundabout. And then - at the last possible moment - she spun the steering wheel sharply, ignored the angry blares from the other drivers and screeched all the way round the roundabout. And then she was racing back up the hill, changing lane repeatedly, weaving among cars whose drivers had no reason to hurry.
As soon as she entered the tunnel she reached forward to turn off her lights. Then she floored the accelerator and sped as fast as she could up the hill, ignoring the speed limit and the double yellow lines that forbade overtaking. Once out in daylight again she continued to race uphill, hoping to get round the left-hand bend and under the railway bridge before the black car came back into view.
At the top of the hill she slammed on her brakes and made an abrupt left turn into Jernebanetorget, the road to the railway station. Then immediately she swung sharp left again, on to a narrow road that she knew would take her back under the track and round to the station’s car park.
A red and white barrier blocked the entrance. She pushed the button and waited for a ticket, anxiously looking behind her. Finally the barrier lifted. The car park was almost full, but at the far end she found a space. As she walked quickly toward the pedestrian subway that led to the station, she looked back.
The black car was at the entrance and the barrier was lifting.
Now she was running again, through the subway, aware of people going the other way, but not daring to ask them for assistance. Not daring to say, Please help me I’m being chased by the police!
In the station hall she went straight to the pay-point and paid the parking fee, then rushed outside to the taxi rank. Her heart sank when she saw the taxi that was first in line, the garish green Subaru with the bearded young driver.
He tried to hide his surprise. “Where to this time, lady?”
“The station’s long-stay car park.”
Now he showed his surprise. “But that’s just round the corner! You’d be quicker walking and I’d have to charge you the minimum fare, a hundred kroner.”
“I know all that. Just take me there.”
She handed him a two hundred kroner note. “You can keep the change if you drive fast and promise not to tell anyone you’ve seen me.”
He reached for the money. He looked thrilled.
Elin got in and the bearded man started the motor. But he was slow to pull out. Several other taxis were milling around, blocking his way.
Elin looked back. She could see the policeman coming out of the station building.
“Please hurry!” she said.
“I’m trying my best, lady. But it’s a little bit crazy here right now, because of the disruption yesterday.”
Elin remembered. The postman had used the same word. “What disruption?”
“There was a problem near Hamar. The signalling system went down because of the recent snowfall, and all the afternoon trains were cancelled.”
“But that can’t be true. A friend of mine was traveling yesterday!”
His next words toppled a world that was already teetering.
“Well, your friend won’t have travelled very far. After two o’clock all the trains were cancelled.”
Chapter 38
Cally could make no sense of the grilling that she and Neep had just received from the police.
It had ended only when she pushed the buzzer that summoned the doctor. When he arrived she said, “I would like these men to leave now. My friend is badly injured and he doesn’t need this kind of hassle. And neither do I.”
Before leaving, the policemen had told her that if she tried to discharge herself from the hospital she would be liable to arrest on suspicion of multiple crimes, from wasting police time to piracy on the high seas – or whatever the fuck it was they had said. By then she had stopped listening.
But in spite of the police questioning, or maybe because of it, Neep now seemed more alert.
“This is like something from a Kafka novel,” he said. “We know we are right, but nobody believes us. We both saw Hawkeye’s body. And I know for certain that Richard is dead.” His voice faltered. “Cally, I dragged him across the snow.”
He waited a moment before continuing. “And I know that the man who chased you over the mountain is also dead. I skied past him on two separate days. Yet these policemen tell us there are no bodies. They can’t be missing them by accident.”
Cally had a lot of questions in her mind, too, but she kept them there. Neep needed to rest.
But he seemed determined. “Can you go into my bag and see if Elin brought my laptop?” he asked. “Maybe they’ve got WiFi here.”
“Neep, you should try to relax.”
“Please let me do something useful.” There was desperation in his voice.
Cally took his computer from the bag in the cupboard and switched it on. Then she followed his guidance as to how to put it online: a simple matter - he said - of ignoring all the warnings that appeared on the screen.
When the browser finished loading, Neep said, “Do a search on Anders Breivik. B-R-E-I-V-I-K. Then look for images of him. I want to confirm that the man in the cabin used an accurate face-mask and uniform.”
Cally did as she was asked, though it seemed a pointless exercise. Then she set the computer on the wheeled table that extended over Neep’s bed and pulled it close to him.
Neep peered at the screen for a long time. Then, in no apparent relation to anything displayed on it, he said, “The police think Richard was a murderer. We know that he wasn’t, but they say they’ve got proof that he was. And that so-called proof is shaping how they interpret everything. It’s a case of believing that one thing is true, and then allowing that one thing to influence all your other beliefs.”
Cally wished he would stop. But he pressed on. “And it might be the same with us – only in reverse. We’ve been thinking that there is a Breivik cell in Espedalen. And the guy who beat me up obviously wants everyone to think there is. When he was ready he would have broadcast the video of me getting tortured - by him in his uniform and face-mask.”
Cally said, “But now you think it’s not a Breivik cell, after all?”
“All I know is that if I was writing a story about this, I wouldn’t include so many things that don’t add up. It seems obvious that the people who chased us are also responsible for the bomb found at Vesterheim. But why would they plant only a small bomb, one that would have only caused “a lot of panic” as Elin put it? Look at the screen: Anders Breivik killed dozens of people. If a real Breivik cell now had the chance to blow up a hotel full of immigrant kids – precisely the kind of people you’d expect them to loathe and demonise - you’d think they would go for it. Kaboom! Not just cause a lot of panic. So why are they going to all this trouble? There must be a reason that we can’t see.”
As if the talking had used up all his strength, he slumped back on to his pillow.
And maybe when you wake up you’ll be able to explain how the bad buys can make all these dead bodies vanish. And when you’ve done that, you can then explain why they didn’t use the same trick right after they killed Hawkeye.
* * *
Elin Olsen found a secluded space in the hospital car park, behind a snow-covered hedge that she hoped would hide her car from anyone passing on the road. After leaving the train station she had driven to the centre of town, not knowing where to go, just relieved to be in a built-up area. At a set of traffic lights a white police car had crossed in front of her. She thought about following it to the police station, but changed her mind when she recognised the officers: the two men who had glared at her in the hospital.
She couldn’t trust them enough to follow them to the place they were going to. So there was a kind of logic in taking refuge in the place that they had just left.
She backed her car into the parking space then closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to get her heart-rate down to a normal level. Then she took out her phone and re-read the text Ash had sent, saying he was on the Oslo train. It was timed at 16.35, two and a half hours after the track had closed - when he was supposed to be on a journey that would take two and a quarter hours.
She looked at the phone, wondering who she could talk to, who she could ask for advice.
She realised there was no-one. Her life had dwindled to just two things: her hotel and her boyfriend. Until now she would have seen real progress in that, because before Ash came along there had only been the hotel.
She thought about Morten Espelund, but rejected the idea. She’d had never got to the bottom of his clandestine early-morning meeting with her ex-husband, Gunnar.
Undoubtedly Gunnar, with his financial background, would be able to tell her what the big letter meant, what kind of company it was that she was now a shareholder in. But she would rather stick pins in her eyes than ask him for help.
Then she remembered that the man from Aberdeen, Mr Newton, was a finance journalist.
He was close enough, a couple of minutes’ walk from where she was now.
Deep down she knew it was pointless, too long a shot. Even if the Scottish man was well enough to decipher the letter, and he probably was not, where would that leave her?
With an explanation that would tidy it all up?
Probably not.
With an explanation that would convince her that Ash wasn’t lying about his trip to Germany, that he wasn’t mixed up with crooked policemen?
Almost certainly not.
It was a waste of time.
Even so, she got out of the car.
Chapter 39
Cally had put on jeans and a tee-shirt, taken from the bag that Elin Olsen had brought in earlier. It was her little act of defiance. She had considered staging a bigger act, discharging herself and walking out the door, just to provoke the police into arresting her. Which would bring the British authorities into the matter. But she had thought better of it. She knew that without her drugs she was likely to over-react to everything, so she told herself to calm down, to play by the rules. For Neep’s sake. Sooner or later the police would see sense. And anyway, Richard was dead, and he wasn’t going to become more dead just because the police were incompetent.
To take her mind off the police, and the drugs, she had put Neep’s laptop on one of the chairs and she was sitting on the other one, looking at the screen.
She was reading about Anders Breivik, and thinking what a callous and evil man he was. On 22 July 2011 he had set off a car bomb in a crowded part of Oslo, in the full knowledge that the blast would kill innocent people. And he had done it just to create a diversion that would give him the opportunity to kill other innocent people, teenagers at a holiday camp on an island. In a world full of cruel men he was surely one of the cruellest.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the door burst open and Elin Olsen rushed in.
The woman had washed her hair, but if anything she looked even more haggard than before. She opened the cupboard into which Cally had earlier put the bin bags, and said in an imploring voice, “Tell them you haven’t seen me. Please!” Then she went into the cupboard and pulled the door shut.
Cally folded the laptop and put it into her bed, hiding it under the pillow. She moved her chair so that the back was against the cupboard door then picked a magazine out of the rack.
She had just sat down when a nurse, another new one, opened the door. She too seemed to be in a hurry. “Has anyone come in here? A woman?”
Cally raised a finger to her mouth and nodded in the direction of Neep, who had fallen asleep but was now stirring. She spoke quietly. “No. No-one has come in.”
The nurse looked around the room then went out and closed the door.
Cally heard footsteps moving away along the corridor. She remained in her chair. Soon the footsteps returned and stopped outside the door. The nurse stood there for perhaps half a minute before finally moving away.
Cally got up and opened the cupboard door. Elin blinked at the light; she looked apprehensive.
“The nurse has gone,” Cally said. “But I expect she’ll be back soon. Stay where you are - and don’t make a sound.” She gave Elin a moment to get settled before closing the door. Then she sat down to read her magazine.
Several minutes passed before the nurse came back. When she opened the door, Cally turned and smiled as pleasantly as she could.
The nurse said, “I thought I would come and see if everything is alright. Perhaps you’d like a drink? Or some toast?”
She was taking a good look around.
Cally tried to look comfortable in her chair, too comfortable to disturb. She said, “We’re fine, thanks. As you see, we still have some fruit juice - and some water. Anyway, it’s nice to see my friend sleeping. He’s had such a bad time of it.”
The nurse fussed around Neep’s bed, examining his chart and checking the machine that controlled the flow from his drip-bag, but as Neep was snoring steadily there was little she could realistically pretend to do. After a few minutes she left. The sound of her footsteps retreated.
Cally had just got to her feet when Neep stopped snoring and opened his eyes. He pointed to the cupboard. “I think you should let Elin out now, before she suffocates.”
The hotelier seemed to have regained some composure, but even so it took her several minutes to tell them everything that had happened in the short time since she had left them.
When she stopped speaking Neep asked, “Can I see the letter?”
Elin put her bag on Cally’s bed, took out the large envelope and gave it to Neep. She said, “At first I thought Ash had been buying me a birthday present.”
“It can’t be a present from him,” Neep said after a few moments. “Otherwise this document, which is a share certificate, would have his name on it. The stockbrokers have to do it that way to prevent money-laundering. For the same reason, the money to buy these shares needs to have been taken out of your bank account – not his.”
Elin seemed embarrassed. “Unfortunately my account balance would not cover an amount like that.”
Neep looked up sharply. “Well it seems to have covered it well enough until now. This transaction is for 20,000 shares. But look here.” He held up a second sheet of paper and pointed to the bottom corner. “This figure here is your total holding. You now own 120,000 shares in a company called Lamechson Plc.”
“But I don’t know anything about this! I have never even heard of Lamechson.”
“Well, your boyfriend has – and he obviously thinks highly enough of it to open an illegal bank account in your name.”
Neep turned to Cally and said, “Would you prop me up a bit higher and give me the laptop? And then we’ll see what we can find out.”
Cally took the computer from its hid
ing place under her pillow and put it on his over-bed table. She said, “Neep, are you okay to do this?”
“More than okay. I’m just happy to be doing something.”
Cally was pleased to see the light back in his eyes. But, as she also needed to be doing something, she said, “Let me work the keyboard. It will be quicker. Do you want me to search for Lamechson?”
“Yes, ‘Lamechson Plc’. And try to get the company’s own website.”
Cally took the laptop over to her chair and sat down, then tapped the keys and made her selection. She said, “The home page has a picture of men standing on a kind of oil rig. It says Lamechson Plc, head-quartered in London, is a holding company that specialises in mining exploration. Originally our main focus was on Africa, but following a period of growth through strategic acquisition, we now have a global reach, with significant exploration leases in Europe, Russia and Scandinavia.”
She paused for breath. This stuff was hard going. “We continue to work extensively in Africa, notably in Nigeria, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we have also made recent joint-venture agreements in India and North America. We are listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market. For more information contact our Investor Relations team . . . and then it gives an email address as well as a postal address in London.”
Neep turned to Elin. “Does any of that mean anything to you?”
“No, nothing at all.”
“Your boyfriend has never worked for Lamechson?”
“Not that I know of. Before coming to Lillehammer he worked for oil companies, mainly in Norway and Scotland.”
“And he hasn’t spoken to you about any business ventures in India?”
“No. He has no real links with India. His family were in Uganda for a long time, several generations, and they came to Europe after they were kicked out by President Amin in the 1970s.”
Neep tried a different tack. “Cally, you said something about acquisitions. Is there a list of constituent companies?”
The Red Mitten Page 22