1222

by Anne Holt

  Adrian flung his arms wide and roared: ‘Stop it! Stop it, Hanne! Veronica hasn’t—’

  ‘No, you stop it,’ Veronica said sharply. ‘Just shut up, Adrian!’

  He glared at her with his mouth open before collapsing. It was as if the air slowly ran out through his gaping mouth until there was nothing left of the skinny boy’s body but a limp, soft shell.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Veronica, keeping her eyes fixed on mine.

  ‘You shot Cato Hammer,’ I said. ‘And you had a gun in your bag, which you kept hidden up in your room until now. Adrian noticed that something was in the bag when you arrived at the hotel. Not all that big, but heavy. He hoped it was ...’

  Adrian whimpered. I stopped, then went on:

  ‘Adrian thought it was something completely different.’

  She didn’t even reach for the bag. It was lying there beside her, on the end of the sofa between her thigh and the armrest.

  Not a glance at the compromising bag.

  Not even the slightest quiver in her hand. She simply sat there, motionless as always, smiling enigmatically.

  I hadn’t expected this.

  I was sweating.

  ‘You’re the only one who’s had a room to yourself,’ I said. ‘The only one, apart from the staff. Of course you could have hidden the gun in the room and locked the door, but you thought it was safer to leave it in the bag and hide the whole thing. To be honest, I think you felt the revolver was difficult to deal with once you had killed Cato Hammer. You found it hard to look at it.’

  She definitely blinked this time. The small tip of a wet, pale pink tongue ran over her lower lip.

  ‘But I don’t think that’s what stopped you from using it again,’ I said. ‘It was something quite different that made you murder Roar Hanson with an icicle, and I will come back to the reason why you didn’t choose to use the gun a second time.’

  ‘Icicle? Icicle! Icicle ...’

  The word ran through the room like a cockroach. At first it was whispered, then spoken out loud, and finally it was shouted; in disbelief and delight, with doubt and a huge exclamation mark: Icicle!

  ‘I didn’t understand that business with the icicle,’ I said quietly when Langerud had exercised his authority to calm people down. ‘An unusual weapon. Difficult to handle. It places particular demands on the attacker, not least in terms of skill and precision. But something Adrian had said came back to me.’

  The boy was weeping. He had pulled off his hat and was pressing it to his face to muffle the humiliating sobs. I wanted to console him. I wanted to put my arms around him and rock him and say that he’d just been bloody unlucky yet again. I wanted to whisper calming words in his ear and reassure him that at some point in the future he would meet an adult he could trust. One day.

  I couldn’t help Adrian. Perhaps no one could help Adrian.

  ‘Hanne Wilhelmsen.’

  Per Langerud placed a hand on my shoulder, and I came to with a start.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to —’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No!’

  ‘I think this is —’

  ‘Adrian told me you’re a black belt in Tae Kwondo,’ I interjected, fixing my gaze on Veronica once more. ‘I thought he was lying. Or that you were lying to him. But it’s true, isn’t it? You are.’

  ‘I am a black belt.’

  Hence the self-control, I thought, and took a deep breath.

  ‘If anyone could commit murder with an icicle,’ I said, ‘it would have to be a martial arts practitioner. You are also a genuine dog lover.’

  Her tongue ran over her lower lip once again.

  ‘The only time you really bothered about anyone other than Adrian was when the dog died. Muffe. You were furious. You talked about laws and regulations, and you wanted to find out who was responsible. You patted the body and sympathized with the owner. It was a touching show of concern, given how dismissive you have been towards everybody else. Nothing would stop you from going into a room with a pit bull locked inside. On the contrary, you are one of the very few people in this hotel who would dare to do so. Possibly the only one, apart from the owner. That’s what I think, anyway.’

  I smiled briefly, and noticed that I was having difficulty in breathing.

  People were no longer sitting quietly. This had nothing to do with a lack of interest in my ridiculous public interrogation, a clear infringement of all Veronica’s rights and, moreover, without any perceptible stringency. When some people started whispering, and others didn’t even bother trying to talk quietly, when conversations were conducted across the room and grew louder and louder, it was because people were already convinced. Veronica Koht Larsen, the girl with the pack of cards who usually sat by the kitchen door, that scary creature dressed in black who always had that peculiar, grubby lad trailing behind her, was a murderer. The whole thing was so sensational it was hard to keep quiet. This was such a major experience that it had to be shared with others in order to become real.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  The pressure on my lungs was increasing, and once again I felt that searing pain from the wound in my thigh, the pain I shouldn’t be able to feel. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth just as Veronica got to her feet.

  The hum of conversation in the room stopped abruptly.

  Nobody moved.

  Veronica was also standing still. She had looped her bag over her shoulder before any of us had realized what was going on.

  ‘In that case,’ she said calmly, her voice clear and melodic, ‘can anyone tell me why the hell I would use an icicle as a weapon when you all seem to think I have a revolver in this bag?’

  When the helicopter arrived, most of the guests had thought their stay at Finse 1222 was at an end. Many had fetched their outdoor clothes from various corners and from their rooms, and a few had brought down their small amount of luggage. Veronica was one of them. She had thought she was going home, and had brought her bag downstairs. Now she had slipped her hand inside it in an almost imperceptible movement.

  ‘Good question,’ I said loudly, and took a forbidden risk. ‘A very good question, in my opinion. Perhaps you would like to answer it yourself?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Per Langerud, moving towards Veronica with his hand raised in a calming gesture. ‘Let’s just take it easy and—’

  ‘Stop.’

  She didn’t even raise her voice.

  I was right. It was a revolver, not a pistol. And it was pointing at me. Veronica moved slowly sideways.

  Somebody screamed and I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, Veronica was lying on the ground face down.

  The Kurd, or the man with the beard whom I had believed to be a Kurd, was sitting with his knee in the back of the skinny figure, locking her arms with one hand. The woman with the headscarf was also on one knee, holding a revolver in a two-handed grip as she pressed it to Veronica’s temple.

  Per Langerud roared, and behind me I could hear someone running across the floor. I didn’t hear what they yelled, but I yelled back:

  ‘Don’t touch them! They’re our people! Don’t touch them!’

  The three police officers stopped dead.

  ‘Let her get up,’ I said, moving my chair over towards Veronica.

  The woman slipped her gun into its holster and grabbed Veronica’s revolver. With a practised, sure hand she opened the gun and spun the chamber around.

  ‘Empty,’ she said, sounding embarrassed. ‘No ammunition.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Empty.’

  I had gambled with high stakes. Far too high, but I had won. I was so sure that the revolver was empty I had risked other people’s lives on the basis that I was right. Perhaps it was best if I stayed away from the police service after all.

  But there was no good reason to use an icicle as a murder weapon if you had a revolver. Unless it was broken, or out of ammunition.

  Veronica had had
one single bullet with her on the train to Bergen.

  I didn’t need to ask why. I was remembering another occasion, another time, in a completely different life. A man had inexplicably had two bullets in a magazine with room for nine. The explanation was that he had stolen the gun.

  There were just two bullets in the magazine.

  Both of them hit me.

  Veronica had stolen a revolver containing what should have been exactly the right amount of ammunition. I didn’t know whether she had planned to kill Cato Hammer on the train, or in Bergen. It no longer mattered. She had done it here at Finse, and when Roar Hanson threatened to expose her, she didn’t have a second bullet. But she did have an idea. Veronica was a clever woman, and the refinement of a weapon that actually melted would have been admirable under different circumstances.

  In theory, I mean.

  Veronica was sitting motionless on the sofa. Her arms were locked behind her back in handcuffs. The three police officers were busy ushering everybody else out of Blåstuen. They had to get people away from Veronica, away from everything that had happened, and the three representatives of law and order were probably wondering how they were going to explain to their superiors what had happened.

  Adrian was still sitting in Blåstuen like a forgotten rag doll that a little girl no longer cared about. He had stopped crying. The tears had left wide furrows down his grubby face. His nose was red and swollen, his eyes narrow.

  ‘Go,’ I said to him. ‘Off you go, Adrian. I’ll come and talk to you later. OK?’

  He got to his feet and allowed himself to be led apathetically up to the lobby by Berit.

  Veronica didn’t even look in his direction.

  She looked at me instead.

  ‘My mother didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you a good solicitor. Don’t say any more until then.’

  ‘She was far too religious.’

  For the first time she was showing signs of pure anger.

  ‘When Cato Hammer had been helping himself to funds for several years, and realized things were starting to get a bit uncomfortable, he managed ... He persuaded her to take all the blame. He knew that she would protect the church, above everything. The church was everything to my mother.’

  The words came pouring out of her. Some sentences sounded dead and flat until she suddenly raised her voice on the odd word. It was as if something had cracked inside the frail girl; she had to speak.

  ‘The church and me, that was all my mother had in the world. She would have done anything for both of us. But when my need for a mother was set against the church’s need for protection, I lost. Cato must have gone on and on about how much damage it would do to the church if one of its financial directors was convicted of embezzlement, told her that the whole church would —’

  ‘Veronica,’ I interrupted her. ‘I’m serious; don’t say any more right now.’

  ‘Wilhelmsen is right,’ said Langerud. ‘As soon as we’re done here, we’ll take you to Bergen, and you will of course have access to a solicitor there.’

  ‘Mum was just a simple secretary,’ she carried on, as if she hadn’t heard either of us. ‘A deeply religious secretary with access to a lot of money, and the authority to make payments. Money she never touched! A simple secretary with weak nerves, a great deal of anguish, and a blind faith in God. Both He and Cato Hammer betrayed her worse than ... worse than ...’

  The tears came. But her voice remained steady.

  ‘I couldn’t get my head around the idea that she’d done it,’ she said. ‘Stealing money. What would she have used it for? It was a straight confession. Nobody made a big deal out of the fact that all the police managed to trace was 800,000 in a recently opened account. Cato must have given her the money in sheer desperation when it was clear that the whole thing was going to come to light. She said she’d frittered away the rest. I didn’t believe that. We never had much money. Then she got ... She got sick, and she was put in hospital. I was only fifteen years old. Fifteen!’

  She gasped for breath with a short panting sound.

  ‘For almost ten years she was locked up in a hospital. And she never told anyone she’d taken the blame for Cato Hammer. My childhood home was sold to cover the debt to the foundation. When she finally died in January this year, I found a letter among her papers, a letter she wrote in 1998. My name was on it. When I had read it I decided to—’

  ‘Shut up, Veronica!’ I said. ‘Langerud – do something!’

  The big man squatted down in front of her.

  ‘My mother has atoned for both of us,’ she said expressionlessly. ‘And I have already paid too much. I couldn’t let Roar Hanson destroy ... He said he was going to ... He ...’

  ‘Veronica,’ said Langerud. ‘That’s enough. OK?’

  She looked past him. He gently took hold of her chin and forced her to make eye contact.

  ‘Be quiet!’

  Suddenly he gave her a feather-light clip around the ear. It happened so fast I would have missed it if I’d blinked.

  ‘Do you understand? Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Veronica Koht Larsen. ‘I understand everything. I wish I’d understood it long ago. If only I’d understood everything when I was fifteen, then ...’

  She didn’t finish the sentence. She had already talked herself deep into two premeditated murders, despite the fact that I would never pass the information on to anyone. Per Langerud couldn’t think that way, and too much had already been said. True, Veronica would not say another word, not for several months, but none of us knew that as she stiffly got up from the sofa.

  She no longer reminded me of a cat. The woman who obediently followed Per Langerud through the big rooms in the side wing at Finse 1222 was not moving with stealth and suppleness. Her steps were short and stiff, with sudden moves to the side in order to maintain her balance. Her head was bowed. Even the black, loose clothes around her bony figure seemed greyer now, and made her look like a pencil mark that someone had tried hard to erase.

  It suddenly occurred to me that that person was me.

  i

  ‘The boy will be coming with me,’ I said.

  Berit was making lists of those who were to be evacuated together, and in which order. A decision had been made to start moving people out of the hotel tonight. Nobody would be able to sleep anyway, and the wind had dropped. There was no longer any reason to keep people here. Quite the reverse, in fact. The sooner the hotel was emptied, the sooner work on the repairs could begin. Johan had had help to clear the snow from the station platform. The tractors were dug out in record time. Many of the guests had joined in with shovels and unassailable enthusiasm. As far as I could gather from people coming in with red faces and frozen hands, the platform looked like a giant pool, a deep ice hockey rink with an edging of powdery snow. The electric lines along the track were still buried, and were no longer live.

  The helicopters could land.

  The first one was expected at any moment.

  ‘The boy will be coming with me,’ I repeated. ‘And I’d like to be the last to leave.’

  ‘In that case it won’t be until tomorrow some time,’ said Berit.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said, rolling my chair through the lobby, which was more or less empty.

  Some people were outside, some had gone to their rooms – if not to sleep, then perhaps to collect their thoughts after everything that had happened. The bar had been closed since the police arrived, and most people realized this was going to take time. Nobody minded. The evacuation would soon be under way, and that was the only thing that mattered now.

  Adrian was sitting alone by the kitchen door. Nobody was taking any notice of him. He had been sitting there ever since Berit led him up from the wing. He wasn’t doing anything or saying anything. He was just sitting there with his forehead resting on his knees and his arms around his legs, almost imperceptibly rocking from side to side.

 
The Kurd who was not a Kurd suddenly came over to me.

  ‘Thomas Chrysler,’ he said with a smile, holding out his hand. ‘That was an impressive performance you gave downstairs.’

  ‘Thomas Chrysler,’ I repeated softly, thinking that someone should have come up with something better when they were giving the man a false identity. ‘From the police security service, I presume?’

  He glanced around quickly. No one could hear us. But he still didn’t answer. His teeth were even below the bristly moustache.

  ‘I just want to ask you,’ he said instead, ‘how you could be sure Clara and I would step in and tackle Veronica Larsen? I mean, you put them there, right next to us. You asked them to sit there, Veronica and the boy.’

  ‘I saw you when the railway carriage fell; I saw you draw your guns.’

  His eyes narrowed. He studied me for a few seconds before breaking into a broad grin. His teeth really were strikingly white and even.

  ‘But surely you couldn’t have known that we —’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said, raising a hand defensively. ‘I had my reasons for believing that you were the good guys, OK? A little bird had ... well, not exactly chirruped in my ear, but at least given me a look that suggested you were to be trusted. Let’s leave it at that. It was nice to meet you, but I have to go and help the boy over there. Just one thing first.’

  Now I was the one glancing quickly over my shoulder.

  ‘I presume you were supposed to keep an eye on the train passengers,’ I said, suppressing a yawn. ‘You were working undercover in case someone was after your terrorist’s life, weren’t you?’

  His eyes grew even narrower. His eyelashes were so long they curled up over his heavy eyelids.

  ‘Terrorist?’

  The grin cracked into a hearty laugh.

  ‘We didn’t have a real terrorist with us,’ he said without raising his voice. ‘This was an exercise! Did you think ... No, no. This was an exercise. A very realistic exercise under extremely demanding conditions.’