Wishing that she’d had the sense to tell the hotel woman to give the sodding wallet to Richard when he came back in from the ski place, she unlocked her door and went in to the corridor. In the old days, in a situation like this she would have waited for someone to go past and then followed them.
And soon she wished she had done that now.
For when she was passing a window on the stairway it all very nearly went wrong. The sound of a dog barking in one of the rooms and the simultaneous sight of a car going past with a flashing blue light were enough to spook her for a second. And a second was long enough to start the almost forgotten sequence that had once been so very familiar. The fear, the powerless anxiety, the inability to move, the sense that all doorways were blocked, all walls closing in. Then the attempt at level-headed struggle; sometimes it worked, resistance isn’t always futile. Not now, thank you, not here, I’m fine here in this nice place and there’s just no need for this. But then harder to breathe, sweating, can’t swallow, feel sick, legs shake. Fight it damn you! I said no! I’m done with all this now, it’s over! Let me fucking well breathe!
And then it stopped.
Just like that.
And she was still standing up.
So she had been spared the dizziness and the whirling, the sense that everything was slowing down in that strange speeded-up way. Spared the once-inevitable submission to the dark-bringing assailant who would haul her to the ground and start the convulsions that would always leave her with cuts and bruises, and would sometimes leave her, if the episode was a really bad one, with a mess of vomit and urine to explain.
Aware that she was shaking, she moved across to the window so that she had something to lean against - and some excuse for being here. Isn’t it amazing to think it’s a main road? It’s just so peaceful, she got ready to say, if anybody came past. People always meant well, but except on the special occasions they had never made things better. Especially the ones who insisted on calling an ambulance – best get it checked out, my dear – who insisted on making it formal, getting it recorded.
But no-one came up or down the hotel stairway, and her breathing gradually steadied and the knot in her throat gradually uncoiled. The headache would come soon, but not yet. And it would help if she took a drink of water, maybe another couple of benzos too. But not yet. Let’s get this damn wallet thing out of the way first.
Downstairs she was relieved to see the reception area was quiet. Apart from Elin there was only a police officer, a bald-headed man in a dark uniform. He was leafing through the route book. He looked up at her then turned back to the book.
“My God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!” Elin said.
“I’m okay, honestly. It’s just, you know, the time of the month.” Cally raised her fingers to put it in quotation marks. “It always hits me hard on the first day and I didn’t expect it right now.”
“We have things in the shop, if you need -”
Cally cut her off. “No, I’m okay. I just need to sit down with a glass of water. Anyway, you’ve got enough to do without worrying about me. I expect you’ve hardly had a break all day.”
Elin raised a hand to wave away the suggestion. “I’m used to it. And I’ll get a break soon, when my colleague gets in. And when the policeman has finished asking me questions.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “He’s with Operation Hawkeye.”
Cally manufactured a smile. “So if you could give me the wallet I’ll go right back to my room.”
Elin handed it over. “And do you still want the cake you ordered? If you don’t feel like having it tonight, it’s no problem. We can keep it until Sunday.”
“No, please go ahead with it. It’s for a little celebration and I want to surprise my friends.”
When she was safely back in her room Cally checked her face in the bathroom mirror. As the hotelier had said, she was very white. She would definitely need some make-up. But there was no other evidence, apart from her hair which was damp with sweat. She had gotten off lightly.
She poured a glass of water and took one benzo and two paracetamol. She checked her watch: nearly half past six. Half an hour to make herself look normal before dinner. It wasn’t such a tall order. She had coped with worse before now, much worse.
She quickly undressed and turned on the shower, not caring about the way the water ran down the curtain and spread all over the bathroom floor.
* * *
Dinner was a relaxed affair, and their waitress, a pleasant woman from Latvia, allowed the Scots plenty of time between courses. Cally didn’t say much. The men were used to that. But she listened politely to Neep talking about his newspaper’s supplement on rural business, a big post-referendum review of the way forward for the Scottish countryside. The project had left him almost exhausted. Then Richard described how he had been to Hell and back today. He had taken an early bus to this Helvete canyon, had walked into it and had seen no devils. He had then skied along a high track over the mountain and down to the church for his appointment with the pastor. He’d gotten a lot of useful material for his thesis, so his extra day in Norway had been well worth it. She zoned out when he started on about how the Norwegian Lutheran church had treated the nickel miners who settled in this valley in the nineteenth century. In spite of the paracetamol her headache had kicked in and she needed a bit of quiet. But before that there was one thing she wanted even more.
After the dessert course the waitress brought out the cake, and Cally thought it was worth all the money. A nice cake with a winter scene confectioned in white and green icing and with three little snowpeople on skis. The men were surprised. She had her speech ready but it didn’t come out the way she wanted and she embarrassed herself by blubbering.
“This is to thank you for making it possible for me to come here, to do this kind of . . . normal stuff. This wonderful normal stuff. When I first met you I could hardly get around, could hardly even get out of Crombie House. But you helped me get through all that. Now, I’ve not had an ‘episode’ for a whole year. And for a whole year I’ve even held down a job.”
She had raised her fingers to put ‘episode’ in quotation marks. Now she folded her hands in her lap and gripped them hard. ”And the really good news is that, as of next month, I’ll no longer be in sheltered employment, but in a proper job. I’m being promoted to Domestic Services Manager at Crombie.”
Chapter 4
The figure wearing the black military cap and the white latex mask was looking carefully in a mirror fixed to a log-beamed wall. The reflection showed that the mask fitted well, but was rough in appearance. That was alright; it was supposed to look false. It was supposed to look sinister, too, and the absence of eyebrows and lips ensured that it did. A hundred of them had been made. Right now they were being parcelled up by the two men who were working at a table in the corner of the same log-beamed room.
Tomorrow the parcels would be sent to the most extreme right-wing nationalists in the country, posted in small batches from twenty different towns. The accompanying letters asked each Fellow Patriot to wear his mask when the signal came, and to show support for the campaign to free the Great Leader by carefully following the detailed instructions. Nothing had been left to chance. The pixel-density of the photographs that the patriots should take of themselves was specified, as were the poses they should adopt. There was guidance on how to upload the images anonymously, and the URLs of the social media sites were listed. There was a paragraph about how important it was to use each particular site only on its designated day - and about the need to act quickly on that day, before the authorities had time to close the site down.
The mirrored reflection showed that, as specified, the neck-piece of the mask was long enough to fit neatly under a buttoned shirt. The black cap and the black uniform accentuated the paleness of the face, while the black leather gloves added a certain menace. A blood-red Templar cross on the jacket lapel provided the sole point of colour.
Satisfied with the ove
rall effect, the masked figure moved over to a tripod and activated the camera mounted on it, then crossed to a laptop computer and put on a headset microphone. Then it was time for a sound test, to make sure the mask did not interfere with the voice-modulation programme. The script was in English, of course. This had to go viral right away.
“Our great leader warned us of the danger of cultural Marxism. He showed how the so-called social democratic parties were opening the doors to a flood of Islamic immigrants. Norway did not listen and the flood has swollen. Our leader warned us that our major cities would soon be overwhelmed by Muslims - and we can see that he was right. Now it is time for all true patriots to do their solemn duty and regain their cultural self-confidence, time for them to stop this rush toward national suicide. The events that you have witnessed show that we in the European Resistance Movement can fight back, that we are fighting back, and that we can drive this impure scum from our nation.”
The masked figure stopped the camera and the sound recorder, and carefully watched the computer screen as the video played back, making notes on a paper pad. Need more lip-movement – accentuate consonants? Longer pauses between sentences? And/or take viewer’s eyes away from the mouth. Clenched-fist salutes? Fist-over-heart gestures? Adjust voice tone to make it deeper?
Then it was time to record the sequence again and replay it once more, this time making fewer notes.
The replay was just finishing when there was the sound of a car pulling up outside.
The bigger of the two men working at the table reached a hand down to his trouser cuff and pulled a knife from a sheath strapped to his ankle. Moving quickly for a man of his size, he crossed to the door and stood beside it.
Outside there was the sound of a car door closing noisily. Then a long pause, ten seconds. Then the same sound again, the car door closing. The big man relaxed. He moved to the window and parted the curtains.
After a few moments a bald-headed man wearing a police uniform came in to the room. Without any preamble he said, “Tomorrow will be okay. A big group of Dutch skiers from Tronablikk hotel will make an early start and go up to the DNT cabin at Storkvelvbu. That knocks out the morning for us, because the area will be too busy, but the Dutch are planning to keep going after Storkvelvbu and stay the night at another cabin a few kilometres to the west. So the afternoon will be okay.” He stepped across to the window and looked out. “I’d much prefer to go up and burn it all right now. But the sky is still too clear. The flames would be seen from the upper valley road.”
The big man replaced his knife in its sheath. He said, “I think we’ve got enough to do tonight as it is. Anyway there’s no need to worry. Today is only Monday and we’ve still got lots of time and lots of options.” He pointed to the man sitting at the table, a lean forty year-old with tanned, weather-beaten features. “Olav should be able to deal with everything on the mountain tomorrow. But if he can’t, then I’ll have time to do it on Wednesday. By then I’ll have posted all the parcels. And even if there’s a problem on Wednesday, I can re-arrange our old friend and then bring him down in instalments.”
The voice from the mask sounded just a little impatient. “After Friday this area will be crawling with police. So we need to get on with it, and we need to do it properly. Our old friend made it clear that he knew a lot about us, and I’m not inclined to believe his promise that he hadn’t told anybody else. In the state he was in he would have promised us anything. So we need to make sure his body vanishes completely. And even without the kind of ‘rearranging’ that I think you’ve got in mind, there’s already no shortage of DNA up there - and we shouldn’t forget that in this country the police have the resources to analyse it properly. So the cabin needs to be burned before Friday. And I think we should search his house again, also before Friday, just in case we missed anything. Any volunteers for that?”
The bald man in the police uniform said, “I can do it. I need another couple of days to finalise the IT arrangements, but I’ll definitely be able to do it by Thursday.”
The man called Olav looked up from the table. He said, “I’ll load the pulk-sled tonight, as soon as we’ve finished with the other business. And I’ll start up the mountain tomorrow afternoon.” He turned to the man in the police uniform. “You’re sure there will be no-one else up there?”
“Pretty sure. Now that the weekend is over, the hills will be a lot quieter. As far as I can tell, the only other people planning to tour in the general area will start from Vesterheim hotel. There are just three of them, and they’re only going as far as the other DNT cabin, at Storhøliseter. So they should be well away from you.”
Chapter 5
Elin Olsen was glad the day was finally drawing to a close. She didn’t know what she had picked up - maybe just some kind of ‘flu. Whatever it was, it was making her feel exhausted.
She was in the lounge of Vesterheim hotel, setting out coffee cups. The purpose of serving after-dinner coffee in the lounge was to entice the guests up from the dining room, one floor below, so that the waiting-staff could get on with clearing the tables. It was a good little system, one of the many that she had learned from her neighbour, Morten Espelund, a man who liked to describe himself as the former previous owner of Vesterheim. The title was his way of retaining a sense of legacy while at the same time distancing himself from the cowboy interregnum between his tenure and Elin’s.
Another thing Elin had learned was that Morten’s keen sense of tradition would cause him to come walking through the hotel entrance every evening at precisely eight o’clock, to drink the single glass of brandy that had been part of his daily routine for decades. He now referred to it as his “wages”. It was the only payment Elin could make him accept for preparing the ski tracks. To begin with he wouldn’t even accept the free drink. He had said it would be fairer if he paid her for letting him drive around in the machine, because it gave him such a leisurely way of checking on his reindeer - much easier than going out on skis. And then of course he had started on one of his lengthy grumbles about the local authority’s refusal to grant him a permit to use a snow-mobile. She had learned to keep away from that subject.
Normally the two of them would have a chat as he sipped his brandy, and he would go over his track-preparation plans for the next few days. Invariably she would agree to them. He could forecast the weather better than she could – better than the professionals could – and if he said it was going to snow tomorrow, then tomorrow it would snow.
So, all in all Morten Espelund was a model of dependability.
Which made Elin feel all the more surprised that, although it had gone eight-fifteen, he had still not arrived.
It hardly constituted an emergency but it made her realise how much she worried about the old man, living alone in the draughty farmhouse he had bought a few years back, just after selling Vesterheim to an investment company. Most people in his circumstances would have taken the money and gone, bought a nice house in the city or on the coast. Not many would have moved just along the road to an old place whose rock-bottom price had been a fair reflection of its value, even allowing for the extensive upland that came with it. And not many would have then devoted their retirement to campaigning for the welfare of wild reindeer.
When she finally saw his signature red parka coming through the door it was almost eight-thirty and the coffee had already been served. He was carrying two large bags. She felt a preposterous surge of relief and had to stop herself rushing over to embrace him.
“Hi, Elin. Sorry I’m so late,” Morten said, as he put the bags behind the reception counter. “I’ve got a lot of meetings this week and I thought I should do a clothes-wash tonight. I started looking out one or two things and then it just got out of hand. I’ve got another bag in the car. I hope you don’t mind.”
As Elin gave him his brandy she noticed that her hand was trembling. She saw that Morten noticed it too.
She said, “Of course I don’t mind. I give you so little in return for all t
he things you do for me. And as I’ve said before, I wouldn’t mind if you left your laundry for the staff to do. You’ll be here all night waiting for the washing machine to finish.”
The old man shook his head. “I’d rather do it myself, thanks. I’m of a generation that thinks a man’s underwear should be a personal matter. And this evening I’d like to scan some documents into your computer and print them. Because I’m so hopeless with computers that job usually holds me up for a few hours. So the washing machine will be finished long before I am.”
He hung his parka on a hook by the door, then sat on his usual seat behind the desk and took a sip of brandy. He hesitated, as if unsure of himself, but then pointed in the general direction of the car park and said, “I noticed that your young man’s car is outside your house.”
“Yes. Ash is cooking for us tonight - an Indian dish that his mother used to make.”
“Elin, I know it’s none of my business, but you are looking very tired, and you’ve been looking tired for days.” Morten’s expression was full of concern. “I can still remember how it feels to be in charge of this place in the middle of the winter, when it seems like it’s been a long time since the start of the season but it will be just as long till the end of it. So why don’t you let me look after the desk for the rest of the evening? Go and have a little free time and recharge your batteries. You’ll need all your energy for the sports weekend.”
Elin didn’t know what to say. She was afraid that if she said anything at all she would make a damn fool of herself. Already she could feel her eyes welling up.
The Red Mitten Page 3
