by Anne Holt
She looked around. Presumably it didn’t feel quite so good to be standing on a table having a reasonable conversation with me as when she was hell-bent on deposing Berit. At the same time, it would be a defeat to climb down from her makeshift speaker’s podium, as both Berit and Mikkel had tried to get her to do. She chose to start with a compromise, and sat down. It was obviously uncomfortable sitting in that position, like a child with her legs tucked up, because she slowly shuffled towards the edge. Eventually she was standing on the floor. But she didn’t say anything.
‘I’m waiting,’ I said with a smile.
‘Yes, what are we going to do, Kari? What do we do now?’
It was one of her courtiers, a lady in her fifties with a tan that owed much to a sunbed, who was asking. She had been among the first to attach herself to Kari Thue, that very first evening after the intermezzo with the two Kurds.
Still no answer. Kari Thue swallowed, and the room was so silent that I could hear the wet sound of her larynx moving.
‘Look, everybody – look!’
One of Mikkel’s gang had got to his feet. He was standing right by the window overlooking the terrace. He waved his hand and went on:
‘The weather! Look!’
The terrace had been covered in deep snow for a long time. The door was completely blocked. You could only see out of the top half of the window, although not many people had noticed this as the view had disappeared thanks to the constantly falling snow.
The cloud cover had broken up. It was still snowing heavily, but the light slicing through the whirling flakes was white and intense. It was as if the sun itself wanted to remind us that it was still up there. That it hadn’t forgotten us, and that it would soon knock aside this monstrous storm that had already been allowed to torment us for far too long.
Kari Thue was forgotten. Everything but the weather was forgotten. A number of people got up and went over to the window, as if they couldn’t really believe what they were seeing. Others clapped their hands and laughed, some tentatively, others light-heartedly. The woman with the knitting dried her tears over Roar Hanson and screamed with joy.
The whole thing lasted a minute or so.
The sky closed up once more. The grey darkness pressed against the windows. The snow reverted to its dirty grey colour, and became a wall of miserable weather once again.
A huge collective sigh rose up to the ceiling.
‘The temperature is rising,’ Geir said cheerfully. I had been so focused on the weather that I hadn’t heard him come in. ‘At the moment it’s minus twenty-one, and the wind is already down to twenty-four metres a second. That’s only a strong gale! Nothing compared to what it has been.’
Like most of the others, I looked from Geir to the windows and back again. It was as if that glimpse of better times was an illusion. There was nothing in the monotonous, limited view to suggest that the weather was likely to improve in the foreseeable future.
‘Very good,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Does that mean they’ll be coming for us soon?’
‘Well,’ he gave a broad grin, ‘everybody will be staying at Finse for one more night. But if it continues to improve, I should think the first of us could probably be heading for town as early as tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps,’ Berit added sceptically. ‘We have no experience of this amount of snow. We don’t even know what it looks like out there. The railway lines will have to be cleared, and —’
‘Let’s be optimistic,’ said Geir. ‘I should imagine they’ll allocate a helicopter to us after all we’ve been through. One more night, and then we’ll all be off home.’
He was obviously ignoring the fact that the police would want to have their say about the chances of our leaving Finse as soon as it became physically possible. But given the current situation, I didn’t think there was any point in reminding him of that.
Despite the fact that the upbeat atmosphere plummeted noticeably when it turned out that the break in the cloud cover above Finsevann was extremely temporary, Geir’s optimism seemed to be infectious. Nobody was talking about Roar Hanson’s death any longer, nor about the safety of the guests. They were talking about the wind and the weather, and a few had already begun to bet on when the first helicopters would arrive at Finse. People spread themselves out around the seating areas, and many went up to the Millibar for coffee while they waited for the tables to be set for a delayed lunch. Some of the teenagers started singing.
It was hard to understand that this shower had just been told that yet another person had been murdered. On the other hand, a comparatively long time in the police had taught me that people have a phenomenal ability to let themselves be distracted by good news. None of them had any kind of close relationship with either Roar Hanson or Steinar Aass, with the possible exception of the knitter. I wasn’t even all that convinced of her honesty when she broke down at the thought of her colleague’s death. She was sitting there now with a blissful smile on her face, slurping coffee with lots of cream and glancing constantly at the windows in the hope that God would once again show His grace.
Kari Thue had sat down. She was flicking through a book with an interested expression on her face; I didn’t believe for one moment that she was reading it.
The Kurds must have been there the whole time, but I hadn’t seen them until now. They came hurrying out of Blåstuen, heading for reception. I followed them with my eyes all the way, but they didn’t turn around or give any other indication that they wanted to talk to me or anyone else. The woman kept her head down, while the-man-who-might-have-been-her-husband held her forearm in an authoritative grip.
Magnus Streng was obviously feeling better. I could see him up in the lobby. He was talking quietly to Berit, who suddenly leaned over and gave him a warm hug.
Things were starting to return to something resembling normality. And nobody had asked a question about the really big lie: the need to improve the insulation in the hole left by the railway carriage, and to check the staircase. Not one of the guests at Finse 1222 had any idea that four strange men from the secret carriage were sitting behind a locked door in the cellar. Nobody had even asked why it had been necessary to gather everyone down in Blåstuen.
The whole thing was like magic. You wave one hand dramatically so that no one notices what you are doing with the other hand. In this case it was Kari Thue who had performed a magic trick. Little did she suspect that her performance had made it possible for us to take in the men from the wing and hide them without anyone noticing a thing.
The world really is happy to be deceived.
‘You look a bit down,’ said Geir, patting me on the shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ll help you back up to reception.’
I didn’t know if I wanted him to do that. To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted.
‘Cheer up, Hanne! The weather is improving. One more night, and then we can all head for home.’
That was exactly what was getting me down.
‘I don’t know if we can get through one more night,’ I said quietly, so that the others wouldn’t hear. ‘It’s the nights in this place that scare me. So far we haven’t had one single night without a murder.’
Geir blinked and swallowed. It looked as if he were about to say something. A word of consolation, perhaps. He couldn’t come up with anything. Just as well – I was frighteningly right. Instead he followed me as I slowly wheeled my chair across the room towards the stairs leading up to the lobby, and my fixed spot by the Millibar.
‘I need coffee,’ I said. ‘Lots and lots of coffee. I have no intention of going to sleep again until we’ve been rescued. The next time I lie down, it will be in my own bed.’
i
‘This ought to do,’ said Berit, putting down a three-litre thermos. ‘Milk?’
‘Normally, yes, but since the intention is to keep me awake, I think I’ll take it black. I’m sure it’s just my imagination, but I think it works better the darker it is.’
The very thought
that I wouldn’t sleep before tomorrow afternoon at the earliest was making my head feel unbelievably heavy. Geir had suggested I should have a little nap on my own in the small office behind reception. Nobody was going to be murdered at three o’clock in the afternoon when everybody was awake, he insisted with a wry smile. And he was right, of course. Anyway, I said I’d rather not, but I did agree to use the office. One hour in the land of dreams would make me even sleepier. From experience I knew that I could be on the go for another twenty-four hours as soon as I had passed over the borderline between deathly tired and overtired. A strong dose of caffeine would therefore be more useful than a one-hour nap.
‘Do you need anything else?’
Berit threw her arms wide as if she could offer me whatever I might wish for. I looked at a dead computer screen and tried to come up with something.
‘No. But thank you anyway. You’re a marvel, Berit. I’m so impressed by the way you’ve dealt with all this.’
‘It’s doing you good to be in the mountains,’ said Geir with a smile, clipping the back of my head before moving towards the door. ‘You should come here more often!’
It was half past two in the afternoon, and I couldn’t really see the humour in what I was planning to do.
ii
Sometimes I imagine that I still have feeling in my legs. I have never wanted to bother anybody with complaints about an injury for which I have only myself to blame, so I never speak about that hint of pain that reminds me from time to time of what it’s like to stand on two legs.
Not that I usually have all that many people to share my thoughts with. It can be weeks between those occasions when I have to speak to anyone other than Nefis, Ida and old Mary, our housekeeper. This is the life I have chosen, and this is the way my life has turned out.
But now I was sitting alone, and feeling lonely.
It was very strange.
The wound in my thigh was hurting. I mean, really hurting. Of course I realize it was my imagination; I’ve seen the pictures of the severed nerves in the small of my back. Like porridge, the surgeon had said, peering in fascination at the pictures they had taken when they operated on me.
There is no possibility that the cells below my navel can send any kind of signal to my brain. Communication has broken down for ever, something that I accepted long ago. And yet it was as if I could still feel the searing pain in the wound left by the ski pole. Not like a phantom pain, but like a real injury that hurt.
It was strange to feel so alone.
Cato Hammer must have had many enemies. Perhaps enemies was the wrong word. He wasn’t dangerous enough for that. Too rotund and nice. His constant pronouncements were irritating rather than sharp, loud rather than offensive. And yet I was still certain that many people must have felt like me: the man was intolerably self-obsessed in his alleged concern for others.
But that kind of person doesn’t usually provoke murder.
The flip chart was still in the corner of the little office. The sheet on which I had written the names of the two victims was untouched. I moved slowly over to the chart and picked up the red marker pen. Beneath the two names I drew a line, dividing the sheet in two. Then I began to add more names.
Einar Holter, the train driver I had never met.
Elias Grav, I wrote.
Steinar Aass.
Sara.
I wished I knew her surname. The way it looked now on the sheet of paper, you might have thought I didn’t like the little girl. Not using her surname showed a lack of respect, as if she were worth less than the others. As if she were a dog. Or a cat, with no relatives, no sense of being part of a real family.
Rosenkvist, I wrote slowly in my best handwriting. Sara Rosenkvist. It suited her.
Four people were dead, and nobody could be blamed for their deaths apart from this bloody storm. Einar, Elias, Steinar and little Sara Rosenkvist. They had been torn from their lives as unexpectedly as the two who had been murdered. And just as pointlessly. And yet when the police got here, to this cold place, tonight, tomorrow or in two days at the worst, they would concentrate on the two names at the top of the list of the fallen at Finse during the storm of February 2007. They would put all their resources and manpower into the investigation, and within a day or two they would have driven the perpetrator into a corner, and would have made sure he was looking through prison bars for the next fifteen years or so.
What was actually the difference between these people?
Was the fact that Cato Hammer or Roar Hanson had lost their lives worse than the fact that Sara would never grow up ? Was Cato Hammer’s death a greater loss for his family than the fact that Einar Holter’s three children would barely remember their father by the time they were grown up? Why should society put all its resources into punishing the person or persons responsible for two of the deaths, while the others would be forgotten by the public as soon as they were in their graves?
Concentrate, I thought, and had some more coffee.
I stared at Cato Hammer’s name and tried to picture him in my mind’s eye. However hard I tried to see him as he had been when he was alive, it was only his dead, surprised expression as he lay on the kitchen worktop that had stuck in my memory.
The information meeting.
The thought suddenly struck me, and I realized why. I closed my eyes so that I could think back to that first evening, when only the train driver was dead and everyone seemed relieved and excited following the accident rather than shocked. Before Berit Tverre began to speak, I had seen Cato Hammer disappear behind one of the pillars in the lobby, and had noticed that he seemed different. Earlier in the evening he had been positively bubbling with obtrusive happiness and irritating energy. He had even managed the harsh confrontation with Kari Thue with a self-confident smile on his lips. Therefore, it had struck me as strange that he seemed so serious later on. Depressed, somehow.
Afraid?
When I saw him disappear behind the pillar, I immediately thought it was Kari Thue who had frightened him. I had no reason to reflect further on his change of mood at the time. But now, when I thought back, I became more and more certain that he had seemed just as mild-mannered and smug after Kari Thue’s bizarre rant as he had been before he got mixed up in the quarrel between her and the Kurds.
I tore off the sheet of paper and wrote Cato Hammer’s name again. Underneath it I drew a timeline, writing in the approximate times of the heated discussion and the information meeting. I used a green pen to mark the first event, black for the second. In green I wrote happy, eager and patient. Then I drew an arrow pointing to the right; I couldn’t indicate when his good mood had started to deteriorate. With the black pen I wrote serious, possibly afraid. After a brief pause I added a question mark after the last word.
As far as I could work out and recall, there was a gap of one and a half hours between the two events. Kari Thue had been in the lobby the whole time. Cato Hammer had been in the hobby room where the prayer meeting had taken place, and the big bridge tournament was under way. I had fallen asleep, but that could hardly have been for more than a few seconds, perhaps a couple of minutes. I was as sure as I could be that Kari Thue and Cato Hammer had not spoken to each other during the period that was marked out on the sheet in front of me.
Kari Thue had not frightened Cato Hammer.
At least not then.
It must have been someone else.
There were far too many people to choose from. And of course Cato Hammer’s change of mood didn’t necessarily have anything whatsoever to do with the fact that he was murdered a few hours later.
I was stuck, and wearily tossed the pen aside.
There was a gentle tap on the door.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ said Magnus, and came in without waiting for an answer. ‘So this is where you are, is it?’
There was no reason to answer either question.
‘I’m feeling much better,’ he said mildly, and sat down. ‘She’s a marvellous woman, that
Berit Tverre. She finds solutions to most things. What are you doing?’
‘Trying to think.’
‘I see! That can be difficult. Particularly under circumstances like these.’
‘Yes,’ I said, although I wasn’t sure what circumstances he meant.
He took out his thick horn-rimmed glasses and perched them on his nose.
‘What have we here,’ he said. ‘A ... timeline, I imagine.’
He leaned forward and peered at it. Then he clicked his tongue, which was obviously one of his many little habits.
‘So you noticed it too.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘This ...’
He smiled and took his glasses off again. The lenses were so sticky I felt like grabbing them and cleaning them.
‘This change of mood,’ he went on, put his glasses down on the desk. ‘Cato Hammer was cheerful and exhilarated from the time we arrived at the hotel. But he was taciturn and serious when he came back to the information meeting.’
‘Came back? From the hobby room, you mean?’
‘Yes, he was in there most of the time. But not all the time. Me, I was running about all over the place!’
His index finger waved about in the air.
‘We had a lovely little chat, you and I! I offered you some wine, but you were determined to stick to your vow of sobriety!’
‘I haven’t made any vow of —’
‘And then I went down to the hobby room. Hammer was there. Full of energy, I have to say. He had a voice, that man. And good humour, thank heavens. Perhaps a little too much good humour and eagerness to get involved. But then he left us. I had just bid six spades, and was sure of taking the game. Later, when I got back to the lobby, Cato Hammer wasn’t there either. He arrived just before the information meeting began. But then this building has countless rooms, so he could have been absolutely anywhere.’
‘Did you ever speak to him?’
‘No, I didn’t, actually. As I mentioned to you during our little session when we were ... viewing the body ... he was my patient. Something I would never have told you if the man hadn’t been dead. In such extraordinary circumstances, I must add. I have developed the habit of never speaking to my patients when I meet them outside the surgery, unless they speak to me first. It’s simply a matter of discretion. Respect for patient confidentiality.’