‘I’m afraid not, Lene. It’s just us.’
She looked at him for a long time. Her green eyes widened slowly and her hands flopped between her knees.
‘Just us? Are you serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then God help us,’ she muttered.
He nodded. ‘I certainly hope he’s manning the switchboard.’
She gestured towards the cliff edge.
‘I don’t suppose we dragged all that rope up here unless you were thinking of using it?’
‘I am, as it happens. I have to get down to the shore.’
‘Did you see something? Right now when you nearly succumbed to your death wish?’
He hesitated. He couldn’t explain it. It was a hunch. She would think he was out of his mind.
‘There’s a frozen waterfall below the edge created by that brook over there,’ he said. ‘You should take a look at it. It’s magnificent.’
‘No, thanks.’
She pressed herself closer to the boulder.
He nodded and looked across the fjord. The superintendent suffered from vertigo.
‘There’s nothing down there,’ he said. ‘Rocks, water, ice … nothing.’
She got up, and he looked at her rucksack and then at her face.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. ‘We’ll find somewhere to pitch the tent and cook some food. This is a bad place.’
‘Especially if you’re prone to sleepwalking,’ she said.
‘Quite.’
He stepped out into the howling wind and gazed at the distant slopes of the basement rocks from where a glacier must once have transported the giant boulder which was now standing like a lonely, forgotten sentry at the edge of the world. He surveyed the upland. Moss-covered ridges, some willow thickets and bare, stony plains with snow in the hollows as far as the eye could see. But Michael sensed something further inland even though nothing moved; there were no noises or reflections, only this faint humming, watching presence.
Then his concentration gave way to a semi-conscious flashback. He had caught a glimpse of cobalt blue; a colour that had no business being here.
Lene was standing with her thumbs tucked inside the straps of her rucksack, ready to go.
‘What is it, Michael?’
‘Blue,’ he muttered.
‘Blue?’
He snapped his fingers impatiently.
‘Cobalt blue. Like they use in ceramics. The colour everyone wore in the Eighties.’
‘Where?’
He pointed to the boulder.
‘Over there.’
Michael walked around the monolith and pulled off his rucksack. He kneeled down and narrowed his eyes against the sun’s reflection in the glittering silicon specks in the granite.
‘Michael?’
Carefully he brushed pebbles and gravel aside at the base of the boulder and felt something soft under his fingers. A shoelace or a piece of string. He pulled it out into the light. The cobalt-blue shoelace was trapped under a stone, which he brusquely pushed aside. He yanked the shoelace and lifted out a sturdy grey-leather and Gore-Tex hiking boot from the hollow. He looked inside it.
‘Scarpa, size ten,’ he said. ‘Right foot. It’s a fine boot. And new. Look at the sole.’
‘It’s damaged,’ she said.
The small metal eyes that kept the bootlace in place had been blown clean off the leather.
‘A bullet would have left a mark like that,’ he said. ‘It’s dark brown inside. It’s full of dried blood.’
They looked at it in silence. Her shoulder touched his and he could smell her. She smelled of wind and sunshine and sweat. It was a nice smell.
He cleared his throat.
‘Do you think it was his?’ she asked.
‘I’m absolutely sure of it. He must have buried it before they found him.’
‘And hoped,’ she said.
Michael nodded.
‘He hoped that one day someone would find it.’
‘It’s evidence,’ she said. ‘We can get DNA confirmation from the blood.’
‘We can prove that Kasper Hansen was here, but we can’t prove who killed him,’ he pointed out.
‘But now you won’t have to scale down that wall, Michael!’
‘We’ll discuss it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
*
They pitched their tent on a fairly level piece of ground among willow thickets half a kilometre from the cliff edge and the lonely boulder. Michael cleared away the scree and erected the tent, which involved nothing more than feeding two flexible aluminium rods through channels in the canvas and laying out the groundsheet and their sleeping bags inside it.
They had heated up some food and eaten it, though neither of them was particularly hungry, and they had boiled water for tea, to which Michael added brandy from his hip-flask.
Keith Mallory had given it to him for his thirty-fifth birthday. It was silver, flat and concave, with a fine, aged leather cover, and embossed with a warm inscription over the winged dagger from the Englishman’s old regiment – the 22nd SAS – and their motto: Who Dares Wins. He unscrewed the cap again and waved the hip-flask.
‘More?’
Lene was now a dark shape that blocked out the first stars on the northern sky. She stuck out her cup.
‘Yes, please. What a fine hip-flask.’
He held it up and looked at it. He could feel the inscription under his fingertips.
‘A present from a friend,’ he said.
‘A friend?’
‘I have friends.’
‘Of course you do,’ she said in a neutral voice. ‘I suggest we take turns to keep a lookout?’
‘I’ll take the first four hours,’ he volunteered.
‘What’s your friend’s name, Michael?’
‘Keith Mallory.’
She looked at him, and on a sudden impulse asked, ‘Is he in the same line of work as you?’
‘He is, as it happens. Only he’s better at it.’
She drained her cup.
‘We’re not alone,’ she said quietly, and Michael watched her calm, clear profile against the still bright evening sky. There was no anxiety in her voice. At most, it was stating a fact.
‘We’re not?’
‘No.’
Michael pulled his knees up to his chest, reached inside the dome tent for a sleeping bag and wrapped it around himself.
‘Have you seen … or heard anything?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I just know it. Someone is up here.’
‘I’ve never believed in a sixth or seventh sense,’ he said.
‘Perhaps now is a good time to start,’ she said. ‘I’m fairly certain. Good night.’
‘Sleep tight.’
She slipped through the tent opening, zipping the flaps down behind her, and he heard her rustling around inside. There was something comforting and normal about the sounds she made.
Michael picked up the machine pistol, checked that it was loaded, and flicked aside the safety catch. He unzipped his sleeping bag, pulled it up around his legs and lower body, zipped it up again and tried to find a comfortable position against a wide willow trunk. He placed the machine pistol across his lap. It was heavy and felt very real. He could just about see his own cloudy breath and he pondered what she had said.
There was nothing out there. Even the car headlights across the fjord had disappeared. The boulder down by the cliff edge stood out sharply against the dark grey waters of the fjord. Taut, upright and black like a Chinese character.
*
Perhaps he had nodded off for a moment. Or maybe he had got out of the habit of keeping watch. The last time had been with Keith Mallory in that sodding church loft in Grozny.
Half asleep, he watched a star on the western sky. It appeared brighter than the others. Or maybe it was a planet? One of the gas giants?
The star moved. Quickly.
He opened his eyes wide and observed the phenomenon. It moved with u
nnatural speed, it turned green and began flashing and then he heard the rotor sound … faintly, like a trapped insect.
Michael straightened up, now completely awake.
The helicopter’s navigation lights reflected spookily in the fjord. At times the engine sound disappeared, but it always came back. There was no hesitation or indecision about the flight. The helicopter vanished behind the nearest mountains towards north-east and the noise grew more distant before it faded away altogether.
He jumped when he sensed her right behind him. He hadn’t heard her leave the tent and was impressed by quite how still and silent she could be, while at the same time she had scared him half to death.
‘Would it kill you to cough or make a noise before you sneak up on me like a sodding ninja?!’
Even Michael could hear the crisp crack of fear in his voice.
‘Sorry,’ she grunted, and put her hand on his burned shoulder. ‘Was that them? The helicopter. Are they here?’
‘Yes. Please would you move your hand?’
‘Sorry. Are you happy now?’ she asked.
‘No.’
Chapter 52
Lene had a walkie-talkie in her pocket and an earpiece in her left ear. And empty, useless hands.
Michael hadn’t uttered one word for the last ten minutes. She could hear his rasping breathing as he abseiled down the frozen waterfall on the cliff wall. The thin red-and-blue climbing rope quivered like a bowstring on top of the camper mat Michael had placed between the rope and the cliff edge. At times it would move slightly to one side or the other, as if he were swinging in large arcs across the wall. He had seemed calm but distant as he hammered in pitons and anchor bolts to the mountain to attach the rope. Then he had flung the coil into the abyss, strapped on the climbing harness and disappeared over the edge after one last, expressionless gaze at Lene, who was sitting behind the boulder. No power on Earth could make her walk up to that edge, whereas Michael looked as if he had lowered himself down vertical cliff faces his whole life.
He had left the machine gun with her.
How long did it take to abseil a hundred metres? One minute? Twelve minutes had passed. She took the walkie-talkie out of her pocket and pressed the send button hard.
‘Michael?’
The rope gave the most violent jerk she had yet seen. The chafing of the rope was starting to wear through the camper mat. If the rope came into direct contact with the cliff it would probably fray and then snap.
‘… Yes …?’
‘What are you doing? Are you there yet?’
She heard a cross between a grunt and a sigh.
‘Most of the time … I just hang here. The end of this sodding rope has looped itself around some of the icicles and got wedged under a protrusion … I can’t get the bloody …’
Lene heard the sharp sound of an ice axe in action and closed her eyes.
‘Can’t you just jump the last stretch?’
‘Thirty metres? I don’t think so. I’ll call, or whatever it is you do, when I’ve landed, okay?’
‘Okay …’
She sat down behind the boulder and delved into her pocket for the last Snickers. She had to do something.
*
Michael dangled his arms along his sides. They ached with lactic acid and he was forced to take a break from hacking away with the ice axe. Overall, he was comfortably suspended and nicely balanced with the iron spikes from his climbing boots against the ice wall, but an offshoot from the meltwater stream sent a constant spray of icy droplets over his helmet, head and shoulders. The water found its way under his collar and down the warm skin on his back, past the rubber cuffs on his sleeves and down his chest. He raised his face up into the spray, blinked hard and stared imploringly at the rope which was trapped somewhere above him.
He looked down between his boots at the narrow shore below him. Rocks. Ice. A sliver of snow on the north face of the cliffs. Nothing. He bent his legs, pushed his climbing spikes against the ice and slowly and diagonally kicked off the wall. When he hit the wall again, he grabbed the rope above his head and started running across the wall, hanging horizontally with one hand on the rope and the other wielding the ice axe. He reached the limit of his swing, set off again with all his strength and whacked the ice axe into the far end of the curve.
He started climbing upwards to offset the terrible pull of the rope. The ice axe bit deeply into the porous ice. The rope slackened and he could breathe more freely. He could see every detail of the rock behind the thin shell of clear ice. Michael climbed past the looped rope, leaned forwards, yanked it free, and was finally able to lower himself down.
He stood on the shore for a long time, with his hands on his knees, breathing in quick, hard gasps until he could speak normally again.
‘I’m down,’ he said into the walkie-talkie.
‘… Down …?’ he heard.
‘Yes, down!’
‘… Good … fine …’
He silenced the radio.
‘Right, bloody brilliant,’ he muttered, and looked about him.
The ice lay like duvets on the shore and in between the rocks in the shallow water. The beach was six metres at its widest. Michael skirted around the frozen waterfall. This, he thought, must have been the very spot where Kasper Hansen hit the ground.
There wasn’t so much as a seabird landing or the sound of a distant boat engine. The fjord was deserted as far as the eye could see. He waded out into the water to the top of his boots and studied the seabed. The water was greenish, but blue and shimmering further out where the sun hit the surface. He walked back past the frozen waterfall in a northern direction and stopped and stared up at the wall twenty metres on. A narrow, straight ravine stretched from the shore all the way up to the plateau. It was just as inviting as a staircase, and a geriatric with a Zimmer frame could easily scale it.
Something round and white at the foot of the cliff caught his attention. The shore was covered with surprisingly uniform, dark grey stones the size of potatoes and polished by the water, and the spring snow was grey and grubby, but in the shade something bright white glowed. He bent over the object and frowned. It was shiny, and domed, and stuck out of the surrounding gravel. It gave a crisp, hollow sound when he tapped it with the ice axe. Carefully he started removing pebbles and sand and discovered that the bony dome was really the tip of a large, irregular block of ice, which was almost buried in a hollow: in eternal shadow, and isolated by the gravel and the sand. The ice was greenish and long, and black veins ran through it. Michael surmised that the block could have lain there for years. He began digging it out with the broad blade of his axe, easing the handle under the lump, lifting it up from its nest, and then fell backwards onto the ice. Shocked, he raised his hands to his face and closed his eyes while his heart pounded dry and hard in his chest. He gulped several times before he was able to open his eyes again.
Inside the block was the perfectly preserved head of a woman: regular features, and smooth, black hair that floated eternally inside the green ice. The head was balanced on a short neck that had been severed cleanly, right below the throat, with near-surgical precision. The woman’s eyes were half closed, with a meditative, almost dreamy expression. There was a hint of a sleepy smile around her bloodless lips. A young, black-haired woman. Ingrid Sundsbö.
Michael’s fingers shook, and he felt hot tears stream down his cheeks. Her scalp had been exposed to the elements; wind, ice and water had scoured away the crown of her hair and the skin, so only the white scalp, as smooth as porcelain, was left. The rest of her head was intact.
Piano wire, he thought automatically. The hunters had garrotted her with a thin wire, probably while pressing a knee into the back of her neck. Suddenly he knew which one of them had done it. Afterwards they had put her head in a sack and tossed it to her husband, a few seconds after the time when he had cried out in triumph – in the belief that she had escaped. When he had seen the contents of the sack, his soul had been snuffed out like
a candle. Kasper Hansen had jumped: Michael knew that now. He had done what Johanne Reimers couldn’t do. He had never been hit by a rifle bullet.
Michael sat for a long time with his back against the red granite, staring at the ice block by his side. Then he stuck his hand in his pocket and found and drained the hip-flask.
He covered the ice block with grey, round stones, gravel and sand before he left the shore. She should stay here, he had decided. As close to her husband’s body and spirit as possible.
*
He had climbed almost seventy metres up through the narrow ravine, and it was just as easy as it had looked down from the shore. His walkie-talkie crackled; perhaps it had done so for a while without him being aware of it.
‘Yes?’
Michael held the walkie-talkie to his ear and thought how absurd it was to make radio contact when all she had to do was walk up to the edge and call out to him in a normal voice.
‘Someone is coming, Michael, where are you?!’
‘Who?’
‘Get up here … now!’
He began to hurry. There was plenty to hold on to, so it would take at most twenty seconds before he could push his way through the turf a few metres from Lene, who was shifting from foot to foot by the rope with her back to him.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
She spun around with her pistol half out of the holster. Her eyes were blurred and intensely focused at the same time, and her face was deadpan.
‘Easy now. It’s me!’
Her eyes lit up and she stamped the stony ground.
‘Jesus Christ, Michael! How the hell did you get back up here?’
He made a half-turn and pointed.
‘From over there. Nature’s up-escalator.’
‘How …? Never mind. Someone’s coming.’
She dragged him behind the boulder and handed him the binoculars.
‘Where?’
‘There.’
She pointed north-east, and he stepped out into the sun with the binoculars to his eyes.
There was nothing stealthy about the man’s approach. He walked briskly and in a straight line across the stony plateau, as if taking a stroll in his lunch break, and he was approximately three hundred metres from their position. He was alone and Michael recognized him instantly.
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