by Anne Holt
But of course we knew nothing of this on 16 February.
The fact that yet another person had died, before it was even common knowledge that Roar Hanson had been murdered, was all I could think about as Geir and Berit climbed down from the window and stood in front of me, silent, resigned, and with so many questions that they couldn’t even manage to ask a single one.
‘Leave him there,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope the snow will cover him before anybody sees him. After all, you have to stand on the window ledge to see him. Nobody does that.’
Apart from the South African, I thought.
But I hadn’t seen him since the carriage fell. Now I came to think of it, he was the only one who had gone away when I suddenly started speaking and everybody gathered around me. Perhaps he had gone over to the wing in the seconds before the accident. Perhaps he was just scared of Kari Thue, and was staying in his room.
At any rate, I had other things to think about.
It was ten past nine in the morning, and soon the lobby would once again be full of guests and fresh rumours.
ii
‘I’ve told you, it wasn’t a pit bull! It was a cross breed! A quarter Staffordshire terrier and ...’
Muffe’s owner had got up. Someone, presumably Berit, had shown him where the body was. The man was now standing with the dead dog in his arms, giving Berit hell while occasionally appealing loudly to people walking past.
‘Look what they’ve done! Look! He was locked in. I looked after my dog, I did everything you asked me to do.’
Nobody seemed to care. On the contrary, if anyone did stop, it was more to express relief that the beast was dead.
The man started to weep. He buried his face in the short fur and sniffled as he murmured the dog’s ridiculous name over and over again. Berit was silent, completely motionless; for a moment it seemed as if she was almost floating. I wheeled my chair towards her without really knowing what to say to the grieving owner.
‘This is just crazy,’ said Veronica. ‘Who did this?’
She and Adrian were coming out of the kiosk. The boy was dangling a big bottle of cola between his index and middle fingers. He looked scruffier than ever, and even at a distance of several metres I could smell yesterday’s drink on him. Since he was definitely not permitted to buy anything in the Millibar, I began to wonder if Veronica had brought an entire cupboard full of booze with her to the mountains.
Her voice was surprisingly deep.
‘Who the fuck has treated the dog like this?’
‘It’s them,’ sobbed the owner. ‘It’s them!’
He nodded at Berit and me. I raised my eyebrows and pointed at the wheelchair without saying a word.
‘Was it you?’ said Veronica, looking sideways at Berit.
‘No,’ said Berit, swallowing. ‘And what’s more, I am not answerable to you. Go and get something to eat. Breakfast is served.’
‘I’ll eat when I feel like it,’ said Veronica, placing one hand on the body of the dog.
The man took a step towards her as if he were harbouring a quiet hope that this girl, dressed all in black and with her ridiculous make-up, might be a witch who could bring life back to the dead body.
‘Lovely dog,’ she said calmly, running her hand over the fur.
‘Best dog in the world,’ said the man.
Adrian said nothing. He hardly even noticed me. Nor was it the dead dog that interested him. His eyes were fixed on Veronica’s face, and he had completely forgotten to pull down his cap. His mouth was half open. A thin string of saliva vibrated between his lips with each short, shallow breath.
Adrian was deeply in love. This bothered me, for some reason. I didn’t need to bother about the boy any more. His interest in me from the first day had long since died; no one but Veronica existed for Adrian. It wouldn’t last long. As soon as help arrived, the boy would be moved to a youth care facility, which would pay more attention to him than either I or his temporary great love.
Or they wouldn’t pay any attention to him at all, which unfortunately was more likely.
He wasn’t my responsibility, and he never had been.
And yet I couldn’t suppress a vague feeling of unease, a nagging sense that this anaemic, antisocial woman wasn’t exactly the best influence on Adrian.
And what I disliked most of all was the fact that she was letting him get drunk every night.
‘I need to talk to you.’
Geir came from behind me, and I jumped when he tapped me on the shoulder.
‘It was him!’ shouted the dog owner. ‘He’s the one who killed Muffe!’
Veronica spun around. Her eyes narrowed to two lines framed in thick kohl with a cold, almost scornful glint just visible in the middle.
‘Are you aware that this is against the law,’ she said. ‘There is an animal welfare law in this country and you—’
‘And you can shut your mouth,’ snapped Geir, going right up to her.
She held her ground.
Adrian smiled inanely.
‘I didn’t kill the bloody thing,’ said Geir. ‘And if I had, you can be sure I would have had a good reason. What is more, we have bigger problems in this hotel than a dead dog. I suggest you and your boyfriend go and sit down. Any more fuss about that animal and I’ll ...’
Whatever he was intending to do was left hanging in the air. The threat was equally effective. Veronica assessed him with her gaze before indifferently shrugging her shoulders and heading for the dining room. Adrian trailed along behind her.
‘Come with me,’ said Berit to the dog owner, who was still crying. ‘Let’s find a place for Muffe.’
She put her arm around his shoulders and led him away.
‘Room 207,’ whispered Geir, bending over me.
‘I thought it was 205,’ I said, slightly confused.
‘Steinar Aass jumped from 205. There are clear marks from his shoes on the window ledge, and a piece of the snowmobile suit was caught on a nail. But in room 207 ...’
He looked around and waved me closer to the reception desk so that we wouldn’t be in the way of the people who were beginning to pour in from their rooms.
‘Someone has been in there too. The window is open. The whole room is full of snow and ice. Ice, Hanne! Great big, long icicles! Everything that was outside the window has been smashed, either by the storm or when the window was opened. But somebody has obviously managed to stretch to the side and get hold of more that way.’
I said nothing.
‘Magnus could be right, Hanne! At any rate, someone has been collecting icicles in room 207. You would never find icicles inside a room unless somebody had put them there. Snow, yes. Masses of snow. But ice?’
Still I said nothing.
I had far too many thoughts, far too much to say.
More and more people were coming down from their rooms. It was difficult to gauge the atmosphere. Some seemed to be in a good mood, almost cheerful, while others were walking with their heads down. Two of the girls from the handball team looked as if they had been crying; they weren’t quite so grown-up any longer, the adventure in the mountains wasn’t so exciting any more and they wanted to go home. The woman who was forever knitting couldn’t quite make her mind up where she wanted to be, and was wandering back and forth between the long table and the door of the kiosk. Mikkel suddenly appeared from the stairs. He threw an unfathomable look in my direction before sauntering towards the breakfast room without saying anything.
A new, unfamiliar fear was clutching at my throat. I coughed. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I opened them wide as I tried to concentrate on breathing calmly.
‘Is something wrong?’ whispered Geir.
‘No,’ I said, meeting his gaze. ‘But I need a place where I can be alone. The office? I have to have space and time to think. OK?’
‘Of course,’ he said, pushing my chair towards the reception desk.
I didn’t protest, and my hands rested idly on my lap.
i
/>
Logic, I thought.
How I was going to be able to think logically and systematically in the chaos of impressions we had all had to deal with, I didn’t know. I only knew that I had to start somewhere.
Geir had wheeled me back to the office. The flip chart was still there, and Magnus’s red sketch of Roar Hanson’s body was still hanging from the pale brown wooden blinds. The big hole in his stomach looked like a gaping mouth. A small Cupid’s bow cut into the top of the oval, where the marker pen had caught and come off the paper.
Despite the fact that I had no basis on which to draw one single conclusion, I had decided we were dealing with just one perpetrator. I felt it was out of the question that two murderers entirely independent of one another should strike in the situation in which we found ourselves, with such a limited number of people and over a period of two days. And yet the difference in method was worrying. I was still not completely convinced that Magnus’s theory about a frozen spike was correct, but it would probably serve as a starting point for the time being. However, it was difficult to understand why someone would use an icicle when he or she obviously had access to a gun. Earlier I had guessed that Cato Hammer had been killed with a revolver, but of course it could just as easily have been a heavy-calibre pistol.
The Kurds had guns. I hadn’t seen his, but the movement of his hand towards the shoulder holster had been unmistakable. She definitely had a revolver. Therefore, I ought to suspect both of them. For some reason I couldn’t keep them in focus; their faces slid away every time I tried to add them to the overview of possible perpetrators I had set up in my mind’s eye.
I used to call it intuition in the old days.
It could no longer be trusted, of course.
I wheeled my chair over to the flip chart. The pen was lying on the metal lip below the paper, and I slowly took off the cap. Cato Hammer, I wrote at the top of the page.
The name told me everything and nothing. Red letters against cheap greyish paper. I tried to see past my own slanting handwriting. A name is an icon. A brief expression of the person who bears it.
I used to be able to do this. Once upon a time I was good.
I wrote Roar Hanson under the name of the other priest. Four letters in each forename. Roar and Cato. Six letters in each surname. Hanson and Hammer.
Coincidences. I wasn’t looking for coincidences. I was looking for connections.
Both were priests. They had been at college together. They were the same age. They had worked together in the past, and they were working together now. Or rather: their involvement in the church commission wasn’t actually a job, I supposed. More of a project, presumably. Cato Hammer was an outgoing person, known all over the country. Fat, jovial and a football fan. Roar Hanson was anonymous and grey, about as exciting as a grand master in chess.
I tore off the sheet of paper. Wrote the names again, this time with Roar Hanson at the top.
I had to start with the person I knew best.
I hadn’t exchanged a word with Cato Hammer. All I knew about the man was what I had read or seen on TV. Most public figures turn into paper dolls on the way from reality to representation in the tabloids. Knowing this should of course have stopped me disliking Hammer. But as I’ve said: I’m not particularly bothered about becoming a better person. Although I have to say that I knew Roar Hanson slightly better. If it hadn’t been for Adrian’s constant interruptions, I would have known even more. I felt a surge of adrenalin at the thought; I could have shaken him like a rag.
Forget Adrian, I tried to tell myself.
Roar Hanson had definitely found something out. Or rather, he thought he had found something out. The man had been walking around like a living ghost, stooping and almost transparent with despair. Of course I had no way of knowing if he was right in his assumptions about who had shot Cato Hammer. It would have been considerably easier if we had been allowed to complete our conversations; he had been on the point of sharing his suspicions with me on two occasions.
I refused to think about Adrian.
The boy was lost anyway. He wasn’t my problem.
Someone knocked on the door.
I didn’t want any visitors. Didn’t need them.
‘Come in,’ I said.
‘Is this where you’re sitting?’ Magnus asked rhetorically, settling himself down on the office chair behind the cluttered desk without asking if it was OK.
‘Yes, I’m sitting here – it’s all I can do.’
He looked curiously at the flip chart.
‘Can I join in?’ he asked.
‘With what?’
‘With this ... thought game. Because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Thinking?’
I sighed. A little too loudly. A little too demonstratively.
‘Hanne Wilhelmsen, my good friend.’
His voice had changed character. It had greater depth without sounding contrived, as if there were another man hidden inside that short body. I didn’t understand him. He called me his good friend, even though he didn’t know me. The constant switching between joker and omniscient sage, doctor and clown, wag and sharp observer was beginning to erode the sympathy I definitely felt for the man.
‘Hanne Wilhelmsen,’ he repeated, clasping his chubby hands at the back of his neck.
The odour of sweat hit my nostrils. It was more difficult to handle now I was clean. He smiled, as if he understood without letting it bother him. At any rate, he didn’t lower his arms.
‘You can’t quite make up your mind,’ he said, not taking his eyes off me. ‘On the one hand, you find it difficult to dislike me. My whole ... appearance stops you from feeling sorry for me. People, by which I mean people in general, are sympathetic towards those of us who suffer the brutal and unpredictable caprices of nature. To dislike me would be to lose the illusion of being a good person, more than anything. Believe me, I have understood this ever since I was a little boy. To be honest, I have exploited it. A great deal.’
He beamed. An entire finger could have fitted between his front teeth.
‘You and I are basically very similar,’ he went on. ‘We are both different from other people, albeit in different ways. What separates us ...’
Finally he unclasped his hands and leaned forward.
‘Do you know what my father used to do when I was growing up?’
I had no idea what old Streng used to do when Magnus was growing up. The need to know didn’t feel all that compelling.
‘Every evening after I’d had my bath and before bedtime, he used to take me into his office. Every single evening. I would be wearing my pyjamas. Striped flannel pyjamas with sleeves and legs that my mother had shortened. Turned up, I think they say. Always flannel pyjamas. With blue and white stripes. He was a man of the old school, my father. A giant of a man. A real outdoor type. I would curl up on his knee while he leafed through his books. He would show me animals. Ants busily building their anthills. Elephants in Thailand with enormous logs perfectly balanced above their jaws. Hunting lions and grotesque hyenas, cleaning up the savannah and disposing of infectious corpses. Hummingbirds hovering over the most fantastic flowers.’
He closed his eyes. His smile changed, as if he were looking back and into himself.
I really didn’t understand Magnus Streng.
‘We would sit there for quarter of an hour,’ he said, still smiling and without opening his eyes. ‘Never more, never less. Then he would close the book and put me to bed. And that is the difference between you and me.’
He was right, actually. Nobody showed me books with pictures of animals before bedtime, despite the fact that my father was a professor of zoology. Nor could I recall any flannel pyjamas. However, I had no idea what point Magnus Streng was trying to make. Other than to highlight the fact that he had a kind daddy. I agreed; the difference between us was immense.
‘My father didn’t say much,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t really necessary for him to say anything. The message was clear enough:
we are all needed. We are necessary here on earth. Small and large, fat and thin, ugly and beautiful. I was good enough. I am good enough.’
‘You don’t know me,’ I said sharply.
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve read about you, but I suppose I don’t know you. That’s true.’
‘Do you know what the Public Information Office is?’
His smile died away. He seemed confused. Disappointed, perhaps, but only for a moment. Then he leaned back in the chair again.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘There’s a Public Information Office for meat. For fruit and vegetables too, I imagine. And as far as I know there’s a Public Information Office for eggs and poultry. And no doubt one for fish. And for ... Why in the world ...’
‘Could Cato Hammer ever have been involved in something like that? Some project? An – an advertising job? Something like that?’
‘Cato Hammer? No, no, no. You mean the Public Information Service! The Public Information Service Foundation. That’s something completely different.’
I tried to think back to the last conversation I had had with Roar Hanson before Adrian turned up. Magnus could be right. Perhaps he had said Public Information Service. Not Office. Not that the difference meant anything to me.
‘Cato Hammer worked there for many years,’ said Magnus contentedly. ‘He was a man of many talents, you know. He had a degree in economics as well as being a priest. Such educational combinations are no longer so uncommon. I have a brother who is a qualified engineer as well as a doctor, and you have no idea what an advantage that is in today’s —’
‘What do they do?’ I interrupted him.
‘Who?’
‘The Public Information Service Foundation!’
‘They administer funds. Billions of kroner. Literally, I think. At any rate, it’s not a question of doing a great deal.’
‘Who owns ... Who do they administer this money for?’
‘For the church, of course. For the Norwegian church. Some of the problems involved in separating state and church are linked to property. Wealth. The church is rich. The church is a real Croesus. As it has acquired most of its fortune as a state church, allocating all of this causes a serious schism. Possessions. Funds. Property. Houses and church buildings. Does all this belong to the state, to you and me in other words? Or does it belong to the church, so that the faithful can take it with them in exchange for the privileges they have, which are protected by law if we dismantle the entire edifice of state belief?’