But the noise faded, and everything was quiet again. There was no sign of any helicopter.
When she looked in the other direction, there were no cars on the Espedalen road. And there were no signs of life around the other cabins that were dotted irregularly along the shore of the lake. Just as there was nothing to show that Neep was in great danger inside his cabin.
But he obviously was. Whatever these guys were now doing to him, it wouldn’t be kind.
They hadn’t been kind to Hawkeye.
Changing her mind about the pulk, she buckled into the harness and started down the hill.
It took her just ten minutes to reach the lake, ten minutes in which she learned that skiing down a steep hill with a loaded sled was reckless and dangerous and scary, especially if the contents included petrol and bullets. She learned that it took all her strength to resist the weight that pressed through the rigid tow-bars, to control the pulk over the bumps and the twists, and to avoid the trees that seemed to cluster more thickly the more her speed increased.
At the bottom of the slope she hauled the sled into a stand of conifers, as near to the cabin as she dared, and stood until her chest stopped heaving and the painful lactate left her legs.
The gable of the cabin faced her: a windowless wall with a metal-capped stone chimney from which wispy smoke was rising. On the lake side of the building there were two windows. Below them a drift of snow had built up. Beyond the windows a ladder hung horizontally on the wall.
It gave her an idea.
First she had to get to the cabin without being seen. There was no chance of hiding her tracks, but at least if she headed straight for the chimney the tracks wouldn’t be visible from inside the building. And from the chimney it wouldn’t be far to the garage.
She got out the binoculars and trained them on the garage, checking its doors, evaluating the woodpile beside it. Then she unfastened the bungee cord that secured the pulk’s canvas cover. She laid the cover on the snow, emptied the contents of Neep’s rucksack on to it and set to work. She didn’t have a precise plan, but she was aware that she had been hauling the sled because it contained things that could be used to destroy Hawkeye’s hut. It was now a matter of using those things against this other cabin.
She unscrewed the stopper from Neep’s thermos, poured away the last drops of saft, and carefully put five of the large rifle bullets into the flask. Then she filled it up with petrol from a jerry can. She took the cord that she had used to relocate her elbow, cut it in half and wound the end of one piece round the thread of the stopper. Then she screwed the stopper as tightly as she could, clamping the cord in position.
She eased a few bullets into the metal bottle, filled it with petrol and attached the other piece of cord. Carefully she lifted the flask and the metal bottle into the rucksack. Then she placed the jerry can and the axe beside it.
After a search through Neep’s things she removed the battery from his head-torch and pushed it into one of his socks, then swung the sock against her hand, trying the weight. Not satisfied, she added the spare battery. The sock went into the rucksack and was followed by Richard’s duvet. Then she cut the elastic bungee cord off the pulk’s cover, rolled it up and put it in the top section of the rucksack, with the knife. The cigarette lighter went into her pocket.
Then she could see that everything was ready.
And she knew that all she had to do, as soon as her hands stopped shaking, was defeat the two men and rescue Neep.
Chapter 31
Even when they took off the hood, Neep had very little idea where he was, though he had tried hard to stay focussed, hoping that if he kept up with what was happening it would maybe help him control his fear.
Being at the mercy of one psychopath had been terrifying enough. Now there were two of them. But at least with the hood off he had something to look at, something to clear his mind of an endlessly looping video sequence in which Richard struggled helplessly in the Norwegian man’s grip, the knife severed his throat, the blood spurted obscenely.
Richard had been right. He should have shot the bastard. The bastard who, after punching Neep in the teeth, had instructed him to drag Richard’s body and then Richard’s kit behind the hut and cover it all with snow, then cover the bloody trail he’d made in doing it, and finally cover the big red stain where the fight had been. During all this the Norwegian had spoken in a calm, measured voice that seemed to bear little relation to the battered face from which it issued.
Richard had really given him a hammering. Neep had no doubt that if it had not been for the knife, Richard would have killed the big man.
But now Richard was dead and the man had his rifle back. All because the friend that Richard had been counting on had been too much of a coward to pull the trigger when he’d had the chance.
Before starting from Bergbu, the big man gave Neep a long, appraising look. Then he said in his calm tone, “Sometimes when we shoot an elk in the mountains, we deliberately don’t kill it with the first bullet. We just wound it in one leg. Then we make it walk it down to the valley, beating it with a stick to force it to keep moving. It saves us the effort of carrying the carcass down the hill. It is very effective but very, very cruel. I’d rather not do it in your case. But if I need to, I will.”
Then the man stayed silent while they skied down the track he had made on his way up, until they reached the point where the other gunman lay dead. Here the big man stopped and spoke into a radio. He spoke in Norwegian, but although Neep did not understand what was being said, the angry tone of the man’s voice was unmistakable. He was arguing with whoever was at the other end of the radio link.
And he seemed to lose the argument. For when he came over to Neep there was a hint of weariness in his voice.
“I suggest you take a shit,” he said. “It will save us a lot of mess later.”
Neep hoped this was some kind of joke. But the man raised his rifle. “Do it now.”
Just before they reached the car the big man told Neep to stop and take off his skis, then he opened the car door, brought out the hood and placed it over Neep’s head. The driver stayed hidden in the vehicle. The journey wasn’t far, and it ended with a diversion on to a bumpy side road along which they continued for a few minutes, long enough to be hidden from passing traffic. Then Neep was pushed roughly up three steps and made to turn left into this room. The hood was only taken off after he had been tied to a chair, his wrists fixed tightly to the arm-rests, his ankles bound to the chair legs.
At that point the big man left the room, presumably - Neep thought - to go and attend to his own wounds. He had not uttered a word since getting into the car.
Now Neep could see he was in a cabin, in a big room with wooden floors and wooden walls. On the wall facing him there was a stone fireplace with an iron stove. He had felt the fire’s heat as soon as he came into the room. There were windows on two other walls. On one side the curtains were drawn shut. On the other side they were open, and if he straightened his back he could see the white expanse of a frozen lake.
He could also see that he was now facing someone who seemed to be trying to look like Anders Breivik, the terrorist who killed seventy-seven people back in 2011.
Neep knew the face well. It had been plastered over his paper’s front page for weeks. He also knew that Breivik was in prison, serving as near to a whole-life sentence as Norwegian law would permit.
This fake Breivik was wearing a mask, and not a very good one at that, missing features like eyebrows and lips. In other circumstances Neep would have found it amusing, ridiculous even. But now it was sinister, the more so because it conveyed no emotion whatsoever.
The masked man was wearing a dark military uniform and black leather gloves. On his head he had a black army cap, and from under it the stalk of a headset microphone emerged. He was busying himself with a camera mounted on a tripod, as if he was composing a shot. After a moment he turned his attention to a laptop computer. Then he lifted the microphone
that was connected to it and placed it on a table close to Neep.
Apparently satisfied, he retreated a few steps before speaking.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting”, he said, in a voice that took Neep by surprise. It was unexpectedly loud, and the sound didn’t come from the man’s mouth. Instead, it issued from a loud-speaker placed next to the computer. The real voice was being modulated through the computer, transformed into what sounded to Neep like the tones of an educated white American male. At close quarters Neep would have been able to hear the real voice, but the man seemed to be keeping his distance deliberately.
The voice continued. “As you know, my colleague has been informing me of progress by radio, but even so, we have not had so much time to prepare. Anyway the camera is rolling. So now it’s time for make-up.”
With that he took a quick step forward, grabbed Neep’s hair with one hand and then punched him hard in the face. Then punched him twice more.
Neep cried out in pain.
The man stopped and studied Neep’s face, then grabbed his hair again and punched two more times, now aiming at the other side of the face.
He stepped back, assessing his work.
Neep was coughing blood from his mouth. He could see that blood was also coming from the cords around his wrists. He thought of the dead hunter rotting in the cabin in the mountains. Now he knew how he had died.
The masked man took another step back. He adjusted his gloves and waited for Neep’s sobbing to subside before speaking again.
“That piece of strenuous activity has achieved three important results. First, it has made me feel a great deal better. You and your friends have seriously disrupted my arrangements. You have killed one of my comrades, someone who was very close to me, and that has upset me greatly. Second, you have now totally abandoned your resolution to be brave, to work out where you are, and to plan how you are going to escape when the opportune moment presents itself. Am I right?”
There was a pause.
The man adjusted his gloves. “You need to nod more vigorously - otherwise there will be more strenuous activity.” He waited for Neep’s reaction then said, “That’s much better, thank you. The third result is that you now look ready for the camera. And that is very important, for when we publish this video you will be an internet sensation. A life sacrificed in the cause of Norway’s freedom.”
The man went back to the recording devices and checked them. The meticulous way in which he did this contrasted starkly with the fanatical persona he had been displaying for the camera. Neep wondered how much of the man’s behaviour was play-acting, and how much was genuine madness. And he wondered how far he would take his threat about sacrificing a life. He knew he would learn the answer very soon.
“Before we get to that,” the man said. “We will have a question and answer session - to help warm up the audience. Tell me your name”
“Grahame Newton.”
“Occupation?”
“Journalist.”
“Ah, a level below the cockroach in terms of benefit to mankind. Where are you from?”
Neep was now answering quickly, “Aberdeen, Scotland.”
“So, from a country that recently had a chance to choose its own independent destiny, but decided on the cowardly route? Don’t you agree?”
Neep hesitated. He was imagining the recording of his answer being broadcast on TV news.
The man adjusted his gloves again. Then he took a few steps forward and delivered another hard punch.
And then, once again, he retreated. His care in concealing his real voice gave Neep a glimmer of hope, in spite of the renewed pain. Why bother to keep a secret from someone you are just about to kill?
“I should have made it clear,” the man continued. “Whenever I ask you if you agree with me, you have to say Yes. So, do you agree?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. Now you will tell me why you have been trying to disrupt our operation.”
“We weren’t trying anything. We were touring. We got lost and it was dark. We broke into a cabin to save our lives. Your . . . comrade slipped on ice. He was trying to kill my friend.”
“And this friend, where is he now?”
“It’s a she. And I don’t know where she is. She got lost in the storm and I expect she has died out in the snow.” Now Neep was sobbing again. “She isn’t very strong.”
“And how many people know where you are. Know where you have spent the last two nights?”
“No-one. No-one at all.”
“You don’t have phones?”
“No. Elin told us they wouldn’t work in the mountains.”
“And this Elin, this is your friend?”
“No, she owns the hotel at Vesterheim, where we stayed on our first night.”
“Ah, yes, the traitor who sells her soul for the sake of filling her hotel, even if it is with the offspring of foreign scum.”
Neep hoped that didn’t require an answer.
The man paused for a moment, and then said, “Mr Newton, this is really going very well. We’ll soon be finished.”
He faced the camera and adopted a military pose. “Our great leader suffers in an Oslo prison like a common criminal. His crime? Trying to free his country from the curse of cultural Marxism, from the creeping poison of Islam. Trying to make Norway achieve its destiny as a great nation.”
He paused for effect.
Neep was now almost sure this was play-acting rather than madness. It was all too exaggerated. But the man’s next words made him reconsider.
“As you have seen, here in the heartland of Norway we true patriots have stopped short of making blood flow in the cause of freeing our leader from prison. But soon you will witness the sacrifice of a life. And we will make a further sacrifice each week until our leader is free.” He paused again. ”And you should know that each one of these victims has been proud to give his life in this great cause.”
He stopped speaking, moved to the camera and pushed a button. Then crossed back to Neep, grabbed his hair with one hand and punched him in the face. Then punched him again.
He took his usual few steps back before saying, “Now I’m going to ask you if you feel honoured to give your life. And you will say ‘Yes, I am honoured’. You might not want to say it right away. But you will want to say it eventually. So I suggest you save yourself any further unpleasantness, which I will in any case edit out of the video. And, you never know, I might just be bluffing. I might be prepared to let you live, after all, to keep you here for a few days until the video has been published on the internet, and then drive you to a remote spot in the mountains and release you. But if you want to have any chance of that happening, you need to do what I have asked.”
He went back to the camera.
Neep realised he was close to collapse. He didn’t know whether he was going to live or die. But he knew that unless he did as he was told, this beating was going to continue. What was the point of prolonging it? His nose was broken, he was sure of that, and he thought he had felt his cheekbone crack. He was bleeding heavily. Blood was dripping down his forehead and into his eyes.
He moved his head to shake it away.
As he did so, he saw a movement outside the cabin.
Someone was out there, crouching, trying to keep hidden. Someone wearing a blue jacket.
It was Cally! She was still alive! But what the hell was she doing here?
He stole another glance. She was carrying a ladder.
Jesus Christ! These people will kill her.
He looked over to his captor. The man was still fiddling with his camera, so he hadn’t seen Cally yet.
But then there was a slight noise from the cabin wall, as if something had been propped against it.
The psychopath looked up sharply.
Neep recognised an opportunity to die bravely. He felt a kind of gratitude.
He gripped the arms of his chair as hard as he could, steeling himself. Then he started to shout. “Y
ou are just a pathetic bastard! A stupid pathetic bastard who hides behind the mask of a murderous pathetic coward! You think you can make me confess to any old shit. Well, you can just fuck off!”
He kept repeating the “Fuck off” as the blows rained down on his face and head. Kept repeating it when his chair overturned and the kicking started. Knowing his shouts would anger the mad man. Hoping they would divert his attention from what was happening outside. Not caring, now, whether the bastard’s punches and kicks killed him. He could just fuck off.
Eventually there was the sound of footsteps on the floor and the big man came into the room. The maelstrom ceased and Neep realised that he wasn’t dead yet. He still had a flickering sort of consciousness. But all the pain had stopped. From the floor he could see the mad man’s shoes and then his legs and then in a distorted sort of view he saw the man’s head, which seemed to be speaking to him.
The words were interrupted by a loud bang that came from outside the cabin.
Then there was another bang.
Neep saw the mad man lift his hands impatiently and heard him say something in Norwegian to the other man, the big man who had killed Richard with his knife.
Neep heard the big man go outside.
To where Cally was.
Chapter 32
Before starting to bang the garage doors together, Cally had looked inside the big red car. The keys were still in the ignition. A good sign – the men felt safe here. And that might improve her chances of taking them unawares.
If she had been a more confident driver she would have done something with the car, driven it into the side of the cabin maybe. But instead she turned its radio on, hoping the sound would entice one of the men into the dimness of the garage. She was acutely aware that she was relying on only one of them coming out to investigate the banging noise. If they both came she was lost.
The Red Mitten Page 18
