She shuddered and hugged herself.
‘Turn on the heating,’ she said.
Michael complied and switched on the engine. He handed her a Snickers bar, she tore off the wrapping and devoured it ravenously.
‘How far is it from here?’ she asked, and folded the chocolate wrapper neatly before putting it in her pocket.
‘Around four hundred kilometres,’ he said. ‘As the crow flies.’
‘Christ. I had no idea Sweden was so … vast.’
‘It’s a huge country,’ he agreed. ‘Haven’t you been up here before?’
‘Me? Why on earth would I want to do that?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s beautiful and clean and … practically deserted,’ he said. ‘You can go hiking, skiing. Fishing. People actually live here, Lene.’
‘What do they live on? And how do you know?’
‘Judging by the trucks, I’d say they make their living from forestry. Once we pass Lakselv, it’s only forty kilometres. On foot,’ he added with a hint of sadism.
‘Jesus Christ …’
‘… and the Holy Ghost. There are no roads where we’re going.’
‘And then what happens?’ she croaked.
Michael leaned back and folded his hands in his lap.
‘Interestingly, the best and the worst outcomes are one and the same,’ he said. ‘It’s unique. A classic dilemma. I’ve given this a great deal of thought. The exact circumstances can play out in a number of ways, depending on the opposition.’
‘The opposition? Is that how you refer to a bunch of psychos? I’m sorry, but that all sounds terribly academic, Michael. Hasn’t it crossed your mind that they might just have hired a guy to lie in wait and shoot us without bothering with questions?’
‘Of course. But I’m betting that they can’t resist the temptation to gloat, boast of their cleverness to us – and besides, they’ll want to watch. Like you say, they’re psychos.’
‘If they’re there.’
Michael nodded.
‘True.’
He thought about the small group of Serbian mercenaries whom Pieter Henryk had hired to free his kidnapped daughter. Europe had been flooded with operatives from the Balkan wars; from every corner of the kaleidoscopic conflict in the Nineties. They spoke the same language, they were cheap, worked hard and got on with each other, though they might have been on opposite sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, and they got the job done without drawing unnecessary attention to themselves.
But it wouldn’t be the hunters’ style to hire someone to do the killing for them, he thought.
‘It’s an assumption,’ he said. ‘A hypothesis. You can see that, can’t you?’
‘A hypothesis?’
Michael flared up.
‘I’m not clairvoyant. I can’t read their minds, Lene! I’m doing my best here with whatever facts I happen to have available. It’s called improvising. And I’m sorry if I’m so bloody academic.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ She put her hand on his forearm. One of her rare physical gestures. ‘Are you scared?’
He turned in his seat and stared at her in disbelief.
‘Of course I’m scared, woman! If I wasn’t, I’d either have had a lobotomy or swallowed a handful of Valium.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.’
She looked down.
‘It’s just that I still don’t understand why you do this. Why do you?’
‘It’s one way to make a living,’ he grunted. ‘Might not be a very good one, but that’s how it turned out. It’s the one thing I’m fairly good at.’
She let out a hollow laugh and her breath came out in small clouds.
‘I refuse to believe that’s true, Michael. You’re resourceful. Surely you could do anything you wanted.’
‘I’m almost forty-four years old, Lene. I did try to get other jobs at one point, but it didn’t work out. I’ve finally learned to accept that this is what I was meant to do. It’s important to believe that. If you don’t, you won’t last very long in this business.’
She smiled.
‘How are your hands? Do you want me to change the bandages?’
Michael spread out and bent his fingers on his lap. The bandages were filthy and damp, but he wasn’t in much pain.
‘Later, perhaps,’ he said.
She opened the door and put a foot on the tarmac.
‘You just let me know.’
She looked up at the low sky, which had turned cloudy.
‘Four hundred kilometres, you said?’
‘Give or take,’ he replied. ‘Let’s stop and get a decent meal soon. According to the sat nav, there’s a town with a restaurant in seventy kilometres.’
‘Our last supper?’ she asked.
‘I hope not,’ he said.
Chapter 50
Could sounds be trapped in a landscape? And could they one day be set free? Lene wondered. Because whenever the path steered away from the thundering river that flowed to her right, their footsteps echoed between the walls of the ravine, making it sound as if they were being followed. Then the path returned to the foaming river and the boiling, frothing water would wipe out all other sounds.
The river crashed through a narrow ravine between steep rock faces. The path mostly ran parallel to, or over, the fast stream, and had been eroded by spring meltwater in several places. In other parts it veered away from the water and was hidden behind the tall, wet rocks that were scattered chaotically between the rock walls.
The path lay in constant shade, so it was cold down here, but at least they were sheltered from the strong north-easterly wind that tore through the cloud cover above their heads.
She looked at her watch. It was almost eleven o’clock and they had been hiking for four hours since leaving the car park in Børselva. There they had spent the last few hours of the night in separate cars, until Michael had stuck his hand inside the Passat and sounded the horn. She had jerked upright and banged her head against something hard.
The ground began to crumble under her feet and she clung to the rock face. Gravel, soil and pebbles slowly broke off and tumbled into the river, before being carried away by the current with incredible speed. A tree trunk crashed into the bank just below her and knocked off her last bit of footing. Lene leaped forwards and managed to reach firm ground as the path behind her collapsed. The tree trunk rotated on its long axis, collided with the opposite bank, tore itself loose and smashed with a splintering crack through the next waterfall. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, but some distance in front of her Michael turned around and beckoned her on impatiently before marching ahead. Lene felt like screaming at him that she had almost just died, but gritted her teeth and walked on. All talking, all sudden and uncontrolled noises were strictly banned by Michael.
They were also forbidden from approaching each other. Michael kept far ahead, usually out of sight, and Lene felt exposed and alone whenever she couldn’t see his dense, dark figure. He was armed with the machine pistol which he carried on the shoulder strap, loaded and ready, while she had the pistol in her hip holster. For someone who had stated on more than one occasion that he didn’t like firearms, he was handling the machine pistol with ease and routine expertise. Lene and the police’s firearms instructor both regarded her as an excellent shot, but she had an inkling that they were both complete novices compared to Michael Sander.
She speeded up until she spotted him again behind the next bend. The gorge widened and became more even, the distance between the big rocks on the bottom grew greater, the river itself broadened and the current slowed down. She could see more of the sky. Then she suddenly lost sight of him and felt her panic soar up her chest and tighten her throat.
She started jogging. There was vegetation now, low willow thicket and pine scrub in small clusters in between the moraine blocks. She considered calling out to him, but knew that he would be furious. She passed a rock the size of a family house and let out a startled cry wh
en someone put a hand on her shoulder and she was pulled behind the rock.
‘Jesus Christ, Michael!’
‘Easy now … and keep your voice down.’
There was shelter from the wind behind the rock and a small area the size of a table-tennis table with dry gravel where they could sit without being watched by … the opposition.
Lene leaned her back against the dry rock. The granite was reddish, raw and young, and it would be fiery red and orange when the rays of the evening sun hit it. Michael was surveying the terrain in front of them through a pair of small but powerful binoculars.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
She was sitting on a rolled-up camper mat and could feel her thigh muscles twitching. If she made it back alive, she had sworn to herself that she would start running again, perhaps go hiking. The landscape sapped all the strength from her legs and made her blood scream out for nourishment. She felt nauseous due to low blood sugar, and bowed her head between her knees.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Low blood sugar.’
Michael rummaged around the rucksack and handed her a couple of energy bars and a Snickers. He took the kettle from their Trangia kitchen and squatted down by a babbling brook and filled it. Then he lit the Trangia, put the kettle on top of it and placed tea bags in their plastic mugs. He found a bottle of acacia honey and Lene stared at the golden stream being squirted into the mugs as she munched.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘It comes on suddenly,’ she explained. ‘My blood sugar plummets and it feels as if my skeleton is being pulled out through my feet.’
‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I’m the same.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘Keel over.’ He grinned.
He handed her the mug and blew on his own.
Lene looked down her red parka and then at his light grey one which blended into the landscape much better. She felt as conspicuous as a monk setting fire to himself at a summit meeting.
‘Why am I wearing the red coat, Michael?’ she asked. ‘Even a blind man could see me from fifty kilometres away.’
He looked at her parka without expression and sipped his tea.
‘I think you look nice,’ he said.
‘But red.’
‘Mmm, quite red.’
‘In fact, there’s nothing bright red up here except my coat,’ she said, and took in the horizon with a sweeping gesture.
Every trace of merriment or sympathy vanished from his face, which became tight and sombre once more.
‘The best and the worst, Lene,’ he said harshly. ‘Two sides of the same coin. We want to be found. In fact, it’s up to us to make sure that we are. I had hoped that you understood that. So, what do you want?’
She looked down, gathered up a handful of gravel and let it trickle through her fingers.
‘I want to be found,’ she mumbled. ‘And stop being so bloody patronizing. Where are we?’
Michael unfurled the map and consulted a hand-held GPS. He pointed to a long, narrow stretch of water.
‘We’re roughly six kilometres south of a lake called Kjæsvatnet. That’s where the two disappeared. The Norwegian police or army found a creel up there with Kasper Hansen’s initials.’
‘And after that?’
‘Eighteen kilometres, give or take. We’ve done very well, all things considered.’
Lene swallowed the last of the chocolate bar, scrunched up the paper into a ball and was about to wedge it into a crack in the rock when she felt a look of disapproval. She sighed, stuck the wrapper in her pocket and got up.
‘It’s uphill from here,’ he informed her. ‘This is where the plateau begins.’
‘Uphill? That’s just what I need right now, Michael.’
Chapter 51
Lake Kjæsvatnet appeared to be alive. The north-easterly wind pushed the water onwards in small, white horses, and the wind cut through their clothing whenever they weren’t sheltered by stretches of valley and rocks, or when they plodded through small willow thickets in heavy melting slush. The ice constantly cracked underneath their boots. Lene took care to tread in Michael’s footsteps, one hundred metres behind him, visible for miles around in her red parka. The sun was still high in the sky; it was a beautiful, yet utterly bleak and strangely oppressive landscape.
Even though it was heavy going, they had made surprisingly good progress, he realized after a fresh look at the map. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and studied the shores of the lake. Nothing. Not so much as a migrating bird on the restless, black water, and nothing moved between the frozen rushes or in the small birch thickets along the shore.
This is where they spent their last night, he thought. Kasper and Ingrid. By a campfire, he remembered. The weather had been fine and the night sky endless and starry.
He heard Lene’s boots in the soft snow behind him.
‘Are we going down to the lake?’ she asked.
Michael looked at his watch.
‘Why not? We have almost four more hours of daylight left.’
‘Is anyone here?’
‘Not a living soul.’
They walked through the birch trees and down to the stony shore where the ice had started to melt between the tussocks. There were only a few crisp and perforated ice floes left along the shore.
Again, they stood beside each other and looked across the narrow stretch of water that disappeared towards the north-east.
Lene shuddered.
‘You could lose a whole army up here,’ she said. ‘There is … nothing here.’
‘There are the Sami and their reindeer,’ Michael said.
She stretched up on tiptoes and looked around.
‘Where?’
‘In theory,’ he said.
‘But the two of them were here?’
He nodded. The article in Verdens Gang had only stated that the search-and-rescue team had found an empty creel and the remains of a campfire that Kasper Hansen and Ingrid Sundsbö had left behind, but hadn’t specified where around Kjæsvatnet the findings were made.
‘They were abducted somewhere near the lake,’ he said.
‘I can see how that would be possible,’ she said. ‘Anything could happen up here.’
‘Just like in the Himalayas,’ he said.
‘And in Afghanistan. Nobody ever sees what they do.’
Michael looked at her.
‘Exactly. No one ever sees it. That’s how they get away with it. Let’s walk on.’
*
‘Is this it?’ she asked. ‘Is this the place from the DVD?’
Michael ran his hand down a boulder scoured by a glacier. Where the boulder faced Porsanger Fjord, the ice and the wind had polished it to a deep curve. At its foot lay scree broken off by the frost, pebbles and gravel. And that was it. An anti-climax, just like he knew it would be.
‘This is it. He was standing right here when they found him.’
Michael pointed.
‘And he ran over the cliff there.’
He walked right up to the edge, and the wind that blew up the side of the hundred-metre-high rock face filled his trousers and jacket until the seams strained. The north-easterly wind, which had pushed the waves along the surface of Kjæsvatnet, whipped up tall waves in the fjord that marched steadily south-west in long, white bearded rows. Huge mountains rose on the other side of the fjord, many of them still snow-covered. Peak after distant peak. There was snow in the saddles between the mountain tops as well. An endless wasteland. He leaned into the wind and looked down at the shore below. The meltwater brook had left white stalagmites up against the cliff face in many melting layers and while he looked, a chunk of ice the size of a car broke off the wall and crashed into the black fjord below. It disappeared under the surface and reappeared further out, shaking off cascades of saltwater. It bobbed up and down, looking for a new equilibrium in the water as it drifted out to sea.
<
br /> A couple of curious terns dived down to inspect the new attraction, but quickly lost interest and flew away.
He heard her call out and turned around.
‘Get back here, Michael!’
He looked down between his boots and realized he was standing on the edge of the crumbling, eroding cliff.
He walked over to Lene, who was cowering behind the boulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Her lips trembled.
‘I thought you were going to fall! … What were you thinking, man? What use would you be to anyone if you fell?’
‘None whatsoever. Sorry. And yes, this is where it happened.’
Lene was still fuming. And she was frightened.
‘How can you be so sure?’
Michael looked at the sun on the other side of the fjord. It drew long, blue shadows across the distant valleys and left the peaks glowing.
‘You’ll be able to see it in a couple of hours,’ he explained. ‘When the stars come out. You can see them in the last frame on the DVD. I got an astronomer to calculate the position based on the altitude of the stars and their individual position. It’s very accurate indeed. In fact, it was the easiest task of them all.’
Lene wiggled out of the rucksack strap, laid it on the scree and sat down.
‘Clever thinking,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’
She patted the ground beside her.
‘Sit down. It’ll be dark soon. And then you can tell me all about it.’
‘All about what?’
She smiled to him.
‘Your surprise, Michael.’
He raised a singed eyebrow.
‘You think I have a surprise for you?’
‘I know you better now. Or at least I think I do …’ She nodded to herself. ‘A bit better, I mean. And I know that you wouldn’t just wander up here, enter this arena without an exit strategy, make yourself a target, without having something up your sleeve. Please tell me you have something, Michael!’
He gestured towards the empty horizon. The wind tugged at his sleeve.
‘Like what? A buried tank? An F-16 fighter squadron? The Frogmen Corps?’
‘Yes!’
Michael shook his head.
Trophy Page 35
