1222

by Anne Holt

  Really skinny woman with even thinner hair and a terrible voice; light brown almost yellow bag, can be worn as a rucksack. Doesn’t look heavy. Not very big. Keeps her eye on it all the time!

  Fat git with pale hair; laptop case. Brazilian flag on the flap.

  ‘What have you got there?’ asked Magnus Streng. ‘Have you tasted this sauce, Hanne? Cranberry, I think.’

  I wasn’t really listening to him. My eyes moved down the list.

  There.

  Veronica.

  She was one of only six people Adrian had mentioned by name.

  Veronica. Cool girl wearing Gothic clothes and an Enga top; black shoulder bag. Not big, but looks a bit heavy. I think she’s got a bottle with her. (Hope so, anyway!)

  ‘Your food’s getting cold,’ said Berit, pointing at my plate with her fork. ‘Eat!’

  ‘If you had something valuable,’ I said, folding the list up carefully before tucking it back in the pocket, ‘here in the hotel, I mean, would you have chosen to drag it around with you? In a bag, for example? Or would you have put it somewhere? Hidden it?’

  ‘I’ve got cupboards I can lock,’ said Berit with a smile. ‘And a safe as well. Why?’

  ‘Obviously,’ I said, trying not to sound impatient. ‘But if you were one of the guests?’

  She popped a large piece of meat in her mouth and didn’t answer before she had finished chewing and swallowed it.

  ‘Hidden it, I think. It would depend on the size, of course.’

  I measured about twenty-five centimetres between my index fingers.

  ‘Well. Carting something like that around involves a certain element of risk. I mean, you could leave your bag behind somewhere, just misplace it. It’s probably easier to steal something out of a bag than from a hiding place in your hotel room. On the other hand, it’s fairly easy to get into the rooms here. If you’re intent on stealing something, that is. We rely on people’s honesty, and in principle that always works out well up here on the mountain. Has someone ... has someone stolen something from you?’

  ‘Oh, no. It was just something that occurred to me. A thought. Nothing really. By the way, have you got a list of all the guests? With names and addresses, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. I’m assuming things could get a bit tricky when it comes to ...’ she smiled apologetically before going on, ‘when it comes to who’s going to pay. For board and lodging and ... I’m sure it will be some insurance company. Norwegian State Railway’s insurers, or the individual guests’. I don’t know. But I have to have the names in any case.’

  ‘Could I have a copy of the list?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know whether ...’

  ‘Please. It could be important.’

  She looked from Magnus to Geir as if they could clarify, in their roles as doctor and solicitor, whether the list might be subject to some kind of rule of confidentiality. Neither of them spoke. I wasn’t even sure they’d grasped what we were talking about.

  ‘OK,’ she said eventually. ‘After dinner.’

  ‘Just one more thing,’ I said in a whisper. ‘Do you think you could find out what Kari Thue was actually going to do in Bergen? And whether those people she surrounds herself with are people she met on the train, or if they already knew each other? If they were going to the same place, I mean?’

  ‘Can’t you just ask her?’

  ‘She doesn’t like me.’

  ‘She doesn’t like me either.’

  ‘But your position means you can camouflage the question. You could say that —’

  ‘OK, OK,’ she mumbled, her mouth full of food. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Calm settled over our table.

  Veronica and Adrian were also eating in silence. Adrian wiped his soup bowl with a piece of bread, stuffed it in his mouth and emptied his beer glass before he’d finished chewing.

  It certainly wasn’t the staff who were providing him with alcohol.

  Beneath the table, Veronica’s red feet were dancing up and down, nervously and continuously.

  I stared at her for so long she might have felt it. At any rate, she suddenly looked up. I looked away as quickly as possible, only to realize that Kari Thue was staring intently at me, and with far less discretion than I had shown towards Veronica. Mikkel, whom I hadn’t noticed until now, was heading slowly towards our table. Halfway across the floor he hesitated, took one step towards us, then suddenly speeded up and ran up the stairs to the lobby. His two strongest companions sat back down uncertainly at the table just behind Kari Thue, as if they weren’t quite brave enough to follow without their leader’s permission.

  Magnus Streng was insatiable. He ate and ate. I liked him. I liked him very much, but I didn’t really know why. I didn’t understand the man at all. He was unusually friendly and outgoing, but he also had a unique way of suddenly taking offence that bordered on presumption. Sometimes he almost seemed conceited, or at least over-fond of his superior intellect, his impressive level of knowledge and his memory. One moment he could appear to be wallowing in the misfortune of others, for example when he couldn’t hide his hopes that the entire community of Finse had been devastated by the storm. At the same time he showed a concern for other people, an insight and understanding into their lives that I found touching. Magnus Streng was a man who could be deeply serious, which in itself was a rare quality these days.

  Now he was asking for even more food. The grease from the sauce was smeared around his large mouth like Vaseline, and I had to turn away.

  Geir Rugholmen, on the other hand, was a simple soul.

  Face value, that’s what the Americans say about people like him.

  Perhaps he was the only person among all the adults at Finse 1222 who I could definitely say had not murdered either of the priests. Geir was a genuine man who said what he thought and was in a position to rise above most things. He would be a useless liar, I imagined, quite simply because he wouldn’t see any point in lying. It didn’t matter to Geir Rugholmen what others thought about who he was and what he said.

  He was simple. Totally uncomplicated.

  People like that don’t commit murder. They turn their backs and move on.

  That was what I believed. Absolutely.

  It was more difficult to get a handle on Berit Tverre. She had changed over this last couple of days. She had become so different that I barely recognized her from that evening during low season when we came tumbling into her hotel, demanding care, food, lodgings and protection from a storm of which even she was afraid. Absolutely terrified, to be honest. She had changed so radically that it made me uneasy.

  While the others at my table ate their way through the main course and dessert, I looked around. My companions were chatting and laughing, relieved because it would all soon be over, and because most things would soon be back to normal. Meanwhile, I let my gaze roam over a collection of people I would never forget.

  The woman with the knitting was knitting. The dog owners were watching the clock and keeping an eye on their pets, who were tied up in the lobby, gazing longingly at the aromatic plates from which we were eating. The young handball players were giggling in the way that fourteen-year-olds do, and the Germans were happy because they were allowed to knock back beer and sing drinking songs that made others laugh in embarrassment. The members of the church commission were sitting at a long table of their own; some were drinking wine, others water, and the knitter had a glass in front of her containing a liquid that looked like whisky.

  Perhaps it was apple juice.

  Perhaps they were just as anxious as I was.

  But they were hiding it well, all of them.

  I was starting to feel sure I knew who had murdered Cato Hammer and Roar Hanson.

  However, one of many problems was that people were not behaving in a manner that matched my theories. They were certainly opening the way for other ideas about connections and causality. Since every theory must be refutable in order to be valid, I ought to dismiss the idea that h
ad been growing stronger in my mind over the past few hours. I ought to start again from the beginning.

  I didn’t want to do that. Not yet, anyway.

  An even bigger problem was that the weather had seriously begun to change. Through the top part of the window in the dining room I could see that it had stopped snowing.

  To put it simply, I didn’t have much time.

  What’s more, I had lost my appetite.

  I can’t remember when I last left good food lying untouched on my plate, but I just couldn’t manage a single piece of the delicious venison with cranberry sauce, and asparagus that the chef had got hold of from goodness knows where.

  If only the snowstorm had gone on for a little bit longer, I thought; and allowed the waiter to take my plate back to the kitchen, virtually untouched.

  i

  ‘He answered no to your first question. This is a written answer to your second question.’

  Geir handed me a sheet of paper, placed a large glass of strong beer on the desk, sat down on a chair he had moved across from one of the other work stations, and stroked his beard. It now covered his cheeks completely, thick and dark with greyish streaks at the corners of his mouth. He pushed a substantial plug of snuff under his lip. I didn’t really understand what he was waiting for. I didn’t need him any longer. It was possible that he had read the message from Severin Heger, but by no means certain. If he had, it wouldn’t have meant anything to him, so I had no need to worry.

  There was just a name; a name and a few simple facts on a piece of white paper.

  Margrete Koht. Born 14.10.1957. Died 07.01.2007. Convicted of embezzling 3,125,000 Norwegian kroner in 1998. In-patient at Gaustad Hospital from the date of the verdict until her death.

  Margrete, that was it.

  During my last conversation with Roar Hanson, he talked about a woman. I had tried to remember the name, just as I had tried to remember everything Roar Hanson had said and done. The key to the murder of Cato Hammer lay with Roar Hanson. I was convinced of that. I had spoken to him and seen him devastated by mental agony during the last twenty-four hours of his life, and I had hoped that in spite of Adrian’s interruption and the priest’s own hesitancy, I might find clues and answers in what remained of him within my memory.

  But I hadn’t been able to recall the woman’s name. It was mentioned in passing, and disappeared in my own confusion about the man’s disjointed talk of the Public Information Service, which I thought was an organization that had something to do with meat and vegetables.

  It was when the two of us were working in the Public Information Service. I remembered his voice had trembled slightly. I mean, Cato was ... He took a deep breath and held it as if he needed to brace himself. I really can’t understand why I didn’t raise an objection at the time. Why I didn’t do anything. And Margrete ... I can’t bear it. Of course I couldn’t have known, but it seemed so ... unthinkable that he would ...

  As soon as I saw the name on the piece of paper, I remembered what Roar Hanson had said. Word for word. I closed my eyes and saw him standing there in front of me. Nervous and shrunken. Watchful glances in all directions. He sat there hitting his painful, injured shoulder as he talked, a middle-aged priest doing penance for a sin that wasn’t even his own.

  Perhaps he didn’t see it that way. He had talked about Cato Hammer’s betrayal and greed, but he was just as devastated by his own guilt, his own failure to raise the alarm about something I was beginning to think I had worked out.

  ‘Isn’t there something you should be doing?’ I asked without looking up from the piece of paper. ‘Clearing some snow? Digging out some houses? Anything, really.’

  It was nine thirty on Friday evening.

  From the lobby I could hear laughter and quiet music. One of Mikkel’s gang had speakers with his iPod, and for the first time since the accident the clearly defined boundaries between the different groups from the train were becoming blurred. Middle-aged ladies were laughing as they bobbed around the floor dancing, celebrating the fact that the storm had abated. The fourteen-year-olds were allowed to sit with the bad boys. Eventually I had felt compelled to whisper in Berit’s ear that the boys were busy getting two of the handball players drunk. The church commission had temporarily dissolved itself, and its members were dispersed throughout all the different rooms, relaxed from the effects of red wine and various other beverages. Elias Grav’s widow was the last person I saw as I fled to the office, weary of all this happiness. She was still shocked following her husband’s death, but at least she had come down from her room and politely asked for something to eat. The cheerful and friendly assistant from the kiosk had put her arm around the widow’s shoulders and accompanied her down to the dining room.

  Johan still hadn’t got the satellite phone working, so I had been left with no choice. I had been forced to ask Severin for help.

  When I watched him hurry down to the cellar after the others earlier in the day, I had decided to forget all about the secret carriage. It had nothing to do with us, and that was that. The murders of Cato Hammer and Roar Hanson were a different matter altogether from this business of the men who were determined not to let anyone near them, and who were hardly likely to emerge from their hiding place until Finse was virtually empty. When the rest of us had gone, picked up by Sea King helicopters or trains or all-terrain vehicles, only then would the four men in the cellar leave the hotel and eventually be conveyed to their destination, probably under cover of darkness.

  I had decided to file the whole issue in the section allocated to things that were nothing to do with me.

  But then I needed them after all.

  ‘My, but you’re in a bad mood,’ said Geir. ‘I thought you’d cheered up a bit.’

  He picked up the glass of beer in both hands. His index fingers made patterns in the condensation as he turned the glass around slowly.

  ‘I’m not in a bad mood,’ I said, still not looking up from the piece of paper giving the name of the woman Cato Hammer had so brutally betrayed, if my assumptions were correct. ‘I’m sad.’

  I smiled briefly to take the sting out of what I had just said, and added:

  ‘Did it go all right?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure I’d put it quite like that.’ He drank some of his beer. ‘At first they didn’t want to open the door. I had to talk to your mate for bloody ages through it. As far as the gun went, the answer was a flat no. Not that I know what you want with ...’

  I gave him a quick warning look.

  He put down the glass and held up his hands, palms facing me.

  ‘No questions. I promise. But it didn’t take long for him to understand your query. He was prepared to help with that, at any rate. Eventually he pushed that piece of paper out through a crack this narrow’ – he measured a centimetre between his thumb and index finger – ‘before he shut the door again. What was it you actually asked?’

  He raised his hands again and stopped speaking.

  ‘They’ve got the very best equipment,’ I murmured. ‘I’m absolutely certain they have the best communication equipment there is. And at the other end there are people who have access to all the information in the world. Data. Registers. Everything. If Severin would just agree to help me, I knew things would work out.’

  I wasn’t sure if I was talking to him, or just summarizing for myself. I had taken out Berit’s list of names, and my gaze settled on one of my fellow passengers. One of the guests had a name that didn’t help me get where I wanted to be.

  But I had made significant progress.

  I hoped I had got far enough, and I folded up all the papers and tucked them in the side pocket where Adrian’s list already lay. There was a weather report on the desk. Berit had given me an odd look when I asked for it, but had given me a copy without any fuss. One of the staff had mapped the progress of the storm from Wednesday morning until an hour ago. I searched for what I needed. Then I folded that sheet of paper up as well and put it with the others. Un
fortunately Berit hadn’t managed to find out why Kari Thue was going to Bergen. I suspected that she had forgotten to ask.

  ‘Hanne,’ said Geir. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I mean, do you really trust me?’

  I looked up and into those grey eyes. Or brown. Or blue-grey. It was difficult to tell, actually.

  I nodded. It was true. I did trust Geir Rugholmen.

  ‘In that case, can’t you tell me about those four men in the cellar? After all we’ve gone through up here, I think I deserve to know.’

  ‘You deserve nothing,’ I said. ‘Apart from a medal for gallantry. A prize for a victorious campaign against the storm. An award for putting up with yours truly for two days. Which looks like turning into three.’

  He grinned, and the juice from the tobacco ran down between his front teeth.

  ‘I don’t want anything like that. I just want to know what that extra carriage was about.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said in all honesty.

  ‘Rubbish,’ he said.

  ‘No, I really don’t know. But I do have a distinct feeling.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Shall we have a smoke?’ I said. ‘Have you got any cigarettes?’

  He looked around, slightly confused.

  ‘Berit will be furious.’

  ‘Of course. Forget it. I think they’re guarding a terrorist. I think they were transporting a terrorist to Bergen.’

  ‘A – a terrorist? But what would ... why the hell would they be taking a terrorist to Bergen?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘There are both prisons and military institutions in Bergen as well, you know. At any rate, he was being moved.’

  ‘Moved where? And why? What makes you even think there’s a terrorist on Norwegian soil? And on the Bergen train!’

  ‘Keep it down,’ I hushed him. ‘The fact that I’m sharing my theories with you doesn’t mean the entire hotel has to know.’

  ‘The entire hotel? Everybody here knows about that bloody carriage! And how are they going to explain this, when everybody can just leave and say what they like to whoever they like?’