She realised that the pulk was a problem. It was full of stuff that would let this new skier torch the place and destroy the evidence, and it contained spare ammunition for his rifle. But there was no time for emptying jerry cans and hiding knives and saws and bullets.
She made a quick decision. Took off her rucksack and put it in the pulk, then clicked the bungee cord back in place.
She picked up the sled’s harness and fastened it around her waist. It was too big, but there was a strap to adjust. She drew it tight.
Then she clipped into her skis and set off, moving fast.
Chapter 28
When Neep and Richard stepped out of Bergbu hut it was still dark, and they had no idea they were being watched.
Neep had been awake for only a few minutes. Last night he had kept the stove burning for as long as the firewood lasted, and gradually the hut had grown warmer. He remembered setting a fresh candle burning by the window, before unrolling Cally’s sleeping bag and getting into it.
The next thing he was aware of was his friend’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him back to consciousness. He didn’t know how long Richard had been back, or whether Richard had had any sleep. He thought not. But there was no time for questions.
And now they were outside the hut, almost ready to go.
Richard rubbed some wax on to Neep’s skis and then, while Neep was having his usual difficulty in clipping into Hawkeye’s old-fashioned bindings, he started rubbing it on his own.
“You might as well get going,” Richard said. “I’ll come right behind you.”
But before Neep could move, the big Norwegian man walked out from the trees, aiming his rifle at them.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s wonderful to meet you at last.”
Neep looked up in surprise. As he did so, he saw Richard take a step forward and at the same time raise one hand to his head, as if to adjust his hat. Neep could see he had something in his other hand, the tub of ski wax by the look of it.
Jesus Christ! What was he thinking?
“Enough!” the Norwegian shouted. “You move only when I tell you to move.”
“Sorry! Sorry” Richard said. But he took another pace forward.
“Last chance, buddy. One more step and I will shoot you.”
Richard obeyed. Stood still. Hung his head.
The Norwegian seemed to relax. He said, “And where’s the third member of your little gang?”
“Right over there!” Richard shouted, and raised one hand to point.
The Norwegian was fooled for only a second, but it was long enough for Richard to rush forward, raise his other hand and hurl the wax tub. It caught the Norwegian full in the face.
And then Richard was on him, head-butting and punching the big man, bringing him to the ground, giving him no chance to fire his weapon. He hit the man repeatedly, forcing him to release his grip on the gun.
“Take it, Neep!” Richard shouted and then grappled his way on to the man’s chest and sat like a cage-fighter, aiming blow after blow at the man’s head.
Neep finally got his foot out of his ski binding and rushed forward. He took the rifle and then stood back - in time to see the Norwegian raise his legs and pull a knife from a sheath above his ankle, but not in time to stop him plunging it into Richard’s side.
The fight was over.
Richard slumped on to the snow, gasping in pain. He shouted, “Shoot the bastard, Neep! Now!”
The big man rolled over quickly and took hold of Richard, using him as a shield. He pulled Richard’s head back and covered his mouth with one hand. With the other hand he held the knife at Richard’s throat.
The man looked up at Neep. “Big decision for you, buddy. The knife wound isn’t so bad. He’ll recover from it. But no way will he recover from the next one. Up to you.”
Richard was struggling to free himself from the man’s grip. Neep was in no doubt that Richard wanted him to fire, even if the shot killed Richard as well.
The Norwegian waited.
He seemed to know what the decision would be.
When Neep laid the rifle on the ground, several things happened in quick succession.
First the Norwegian drew his blade hard across Richard’s throat, bringing a powerful spurt of red blood. Then he dropped Richard’s body and picked up the rifle. And then he landed a heavy punch on Neep’s horrified face.
Chapter 29
Elin Olsen had always liked the matter-of-fact way in which Ash Kumar talked about his helicopter. Even at the start of their relationship there had been none of the impress-the-new-girlfriend stuff. Instead there had been a gradual, almost reluctant introduction to the machine. First Ash had taken her on a few short flights over Lillehammer. Then he had let her see how her hotel looked from above, and had asked her to show him the things that were important to her, like the forest roads where the ski tracks would run in winter, the lake at the bottom of the hill, her hut at Bergbu.
Then one memorable day he had suggested that she might “take a shot at driving”.
At first it had all been confusing. There was one control-stick that steered the machine when you moved it sideways, but which also regulated the angle of climb or descent when you moved it back or forward. There were pedals that also steered, or at least made the aircraft rotate. And there was yet another stick which - though it looked like a handbrake - functioned as a kind of accelerator.
So there had been a lot to get used to. But after a few sessions it had begun to make sense, and now she was addicted. Today, starting at the heliport in Lillehammer, she was able to give a running commentary.
”Pre-flight checks done, outside and in. Start-up engine. Check harness and helmet are secure. Check engine readings. Pull up on collective lever to lift off. Make one slow rotation to check all is clear. Don’t look at controls; keep eyes outside. Pull back on cyclic stick to increase forward airspeed, then lift collective lever and climb to one hundred feet above ground level. Be aware of cross-winds. Keep her straight with the pedals; be gentle with them. Lift collective lever to gain more height. Stabilise at five hundred feet above ground level, keeping below the cloud base.”
Then the machine needed a little less attention and Elin’s main task was to navigate. To begin with she used the E6 highway as a handrail, following it northward as far as the village of Tretten. Then she turned left on a west-north-west bearing and flew over forested hills until the lights of the ski resort of Skeikampen let her fix her position.
Then it was just a matter of staying on the same bearing, and trusting the compass to guide her over the featureless landscape, to take her to a point where she could pick up the electricity pylons in the hills above Tronablikk hotel and use them as a handrail toward Vesterheim.
And the system worked. About fifteen minutes into the flight she reached the power cables. Exactly on time. She felt good about that.
But as she made a right turn over the cables, she was surprised to see a lone skier, standing beside a pylon and apparently bending over a rucksack.
She pointed, and spoke into her mouthpiece, “Look! Over there.”
Ash had already seen the skier. He said, “It’s early in the day to be in such a remote spot. We’d better see if everything’s okay. Put us into a hover near the pylon, but keep well away from the lines.”
The wind had been rising and Elin did not need the warning.
She eased back on the sticks and stabilised at about seventy feet above the ground. In the gusty conditions it was hard to keep the aircraft from rotating and she needed to concentrate on the pedals. But she was able to see the skier move away from the pylon. He took a few strides and then stopped and dropped his poles.
He pointed one hand obliquely toward the sky and the other hand obliquely at the ground.
“He’s alright”, Ash said. “And he has just helped you with another part of the pilot syllabus. He’s giving us the standard signal that all is ok.”
Elin looked down. The
skier still had his arms in the position and now he had removed his hat, presumably to reassure them that he didn’t need help.
When Elin saw his face she leaned forward abruptly.
It was Gunnar, her ex-husband.
In her sudden movement she pressed too hard on the right pedal. The machine rotated sharply.
The voice in her headphones sounded anxious. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes, I’m fine. My foot just slipped. There’s such a lot to think about . . .”
Feeling both confused and embarrassed, Elin forced herself to concentrate. She lifted the machine away from the pylon, then took it back up to cruising altitude and turned it toward Vesterheim.
And now she could see that she had another handrail, the ski tracks that Gunnar had made on his way up from the Vesterheim side. They were faint in the flat light, but she could see them stretching off into the distance.
What the hell was Gunnar up to? Surely to God he hadn’t spent the night at Vesterheim. Surely he wouldn’t dare. And even if he had stayed there, it would have taken him almost two hours to get up here on skis.
Then the sky cleared for a brief moment and in the better light she could see that the tracks she had thought were Gunnar’s had in fact been made by a machine. But Gunnar had definitely been on skis.
What was going on?
She flew on, through the gap where the high valley narrowed, just before the ground started to dip.
And saw the track-cutting machine. Her track-cutting machine. Which should not have started so early – and should not have come so far from Vesterheim. It must have set off before daylight.
As she drew closer to it she could see that the driver was wearing a familiar-looking red parka. It was Morten Espelund.
And then she lost sight of him, when his track went into the forest. He probably hadn’t seen the helicopter. He certainly wouldn’t have heard it over the noise of his own machine.
Elin tried to put him out of her mind, because now she was only a few hundred metres from Vesterheim, on its uphill side, and she had to concentrate on landing the aircraft. She watched for blowing snow to show her the wind direction. Then, above a wide section of the ski tracks, where she knew the surface would be firmly packed, she swung round into a hover, checked the skids were horizontal and set the helicopter down.
She eased the throttle back and took off her helmet.
Now she wanted to be away from there, to be on her own. But she owed it to Ash to say, “Wow! That was fantastic!”
There was concern in his face. “Elin, are you sure you’re okay? You almost lost it back there.”
“I’m fine, honestly. I guess I got a bit spooked by being so close to the cables. I don’t know how you can bear to work for the power company.”
Ash wasn’t going to let her change the subject so easily. “Some new pilots get dizzy during a flight,” he said. “And a few are physically sick. If you are feeling dizzy or sick then I really do need to know about it.”
“Ash, I’m fine. I’m just a scaredy-cat when it comes to power cables.”
“Okay,” he said, though he still looked like he didn’t believe her.
Then he found his smile again.
“One final procedure”, he said, leaning across and removing his helmet. “Kiss the instructor goodbye. I’ll see you in a few days. Oh, and you did really well this morning. Great flying.”
Elin stepped out of the machine, walked fifty paces along the ski track then turned to watch Ash lift the machine off the ground and do his three-sixty to check all was clear.
And then he did another rotation, just for fun.
“Show-off!” she shouted.
As soon as he was gone she started down to the hotel, wanting to be off the ski-track before Morten Espelund came along in the machine. She didn’t want him to see her. And she didn’t want him to know that she had seen him. Not yet. She would get to the bottom of this in her own way.
Soon she reached the final bend in the track and could look down on to the hotel car park.
Immediately she was aware that something was wrong.
There were people standing near the end of the building, looking up at the flag poles.
From each pole a figure was hanging. Each figure was the size and shape of a child. They were obviously not real children – they were light enough to sway in the breeze. But they all wore life-like clothes. And they all had ropes round their necks.
To make it clear that this was an execution.
Chapter 30
When Cally finally made it to the notch on the high ridge of hills, she stopped to rest. While her breathing recovered she took her hat from her pocket and used it to wipe the sweat from her face. Then she unfastened the harness and got the water bottle out of the sled. She had been keeping it for this moment, her reward for completing the strenuous ascent.
Some food would have been nice, too. Really nice.
But at least there would be no more climbing.
She had quickly discovered that hauling a pulk is hard work, especially hauling it uphill.
From the cabin her easiest option would have been to go straight down the slope, working the sled down in long traverses. But she had decided against that. There was every chance that the new skier would come back down the track he had made earlier - and on this lower ground there was no avalanche risk to stop him using a rifle.
She had opted instead for a circuitous route, and had looped through shallow dips and hollows that might conceal her tracks, all the time aiming for a gap in the line of hills above her.
It took her two hours to get there. To begin with she had looked for somewhere to hide the pulk, but had soon realised there was nowhere. Out on the open snow, the sled’s red canvas cover and red harness were just too obvious. She would have to haul it to the top of the ridge and leave it there.
Now she unclipped from her skis and looked around. The storm seemed finally to have passed, and the visibility was good enough to let her see back down to the cabin. She was hugely relieved that there was no-one on the track that the overnight skier had made. She could clearly see it snaking up from the cabin and into the mountains.
She turned and looked down the other side of the ridge. Her route-choice had worked out. The Espedalen valley was below her, the long frozen lake with the main road on the far side of it, the same road that the bus had taken, just a couple of days ago. It was not much of a road, admittedly – there wasn’t a vehicle in sight – but it was good enough.
There seemed to be a feasible way down to the lake, at first over a bare slope then through trees that were sparse, at least to begin with, so there should be no problem skiing among them. The thicker forest lower down might present some difficulty, but she would deal with that when she got there.
Remembering the binoculars, she turned back to the pulk and fished them out of Neep’s rucksack. Now she could make out a line of machine-prepared ski tracks in the forest. Even though they had a covering of new snow they would give her an easy way down to the lake.
She was looking for somewhere to hide the pulk when she noticed a movement below her. It was low in the valley from which she had just climbed, a long way below Hawkeye’s cabin.
Someone was down there.
Instinctively she crouched, making herself less visible.
She could make out two skiers, one well behind the other. They were going downhill and they would soon reach the spot where she had seen the first gunman leaving his transport yesterday morning, before the chase over the mountain. That meant they must have passed Hawkeye’s hut about an hour after she left it. She wondered how they could have failed to notice the track that her pulk had been leaving.
With the binoculars she could see that the lead skier had a brown jacket and a blue rucksack. She was certain it was her blue rucksack, because she was certain the skier was Neep. Even at this distance she could recognise his laboured way of moving.
But the other skier didn’t have the yell
ow jacket and black rucksack she was hoping for, the colours that would have made it Richard. The other skier was wearing green, and was carrying no rucksack. And he too was moving in an odd way, poling on just one side and holding the other pole horizontally.
Except that it didn’t look like a pole. It looked like a rifle.
Cally hoped Richard was safe. When she last saw him he was still a long distance away from Neep. Maybe they hadn’t met up after all? Maybe Richard got down to safety but Neep had been benighted?
Maybe, she realised, she hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on.
Except that Neep was in deep trouble.
Now there was another movement, lower down. A vehicle was making its way uphill, toward the two skiers. At this distance all that Cally could tell was that it was a big red car, and that its headlights shone with a blue tinge.
Presently it came to a stop, and minutes later the skiers reached it. They got in and the vehicle drove off, moving quickly down a winding track. Soon it went into trees and was lost to sight.
Cally put the binoculars in her pocket and rushed over to her skis. Now she would forget about hiding the pulk, or even about taking Neep’s rucksack. The important thing was to get to the main road as quickly as possible and call the police.
She was just about to start down the slope when she saw blue-tinged headlights moving along the main road. Shining from a red car. She was sure it was the same red car. It travelled at a steady, unremarkable pace and then turned on to a minor road that led round the end of the lake and then along the shore.
She took out the binoculars and watched the car stop at a cabin beside the lake, diagonally down the slope from where she was standing.
A man came out of the car and pulled Neep into the cabin. There seemed to be something on Neep’s head. The vehicle moved into a garage. Soon the driver came out and went into the cabin.
As Cally watched the action unfolding below her, her attention was distracted by the distant clattering of an engine, a helicopter by the sound of it. The noise seemed to be coming from behind her, from somewhere above the high hills she had wandered among yesterday. Those hills were still hidden by mist. For a wonderful moment her heart surged at the thought that it was the mountain rescue, alerted by Richard. Which would mean that Richard was safe.
The Red Mitten Page 17
