Anne Holt - 1222

‘They had no choice,’ I said, wheeling my chair towards the door.

‘They always have a choice, surely…’

‘Not in this case.’

I made a quarter turn.

‘We’re not just talking about a dangerous prisoner here. We’re talking about a dangerous prisoner whose position is such that he can make demands. There is no other explanation for choosing to take the train; the prisoner himself must have insisted on it. For whatever reason.’

The last comment was a straight lie. The reason why a prisoner would prefer to take the passenger train to Bergen rather than travel by plane or car was terrifyingly obvious. But there were limits to how much I was prepared to share with Geir Rugholmen. For the time being, at least.

‘And there aren’t many things more dangerous than a prisoner who can get the police to do something as idiotic as this,’ I went on. ‘So I’m sticking to my recommendation: leave the people on the top floor alone. I’m absolutely certain they have nothing to do with the murder of Cato Hammer. The problem of having a murderer in our midst is, to put it mildly, considerably greater than having a gang of nervous guards upstairs.’

I moved away from him and out through the door. The beginnings of a headache reminded me how tired I was. In spite of the fact that the conversation with Geir Rugholmen had been interesting, at least for him, I had not stopped brooding for one minute about the telephone number Berit Tverre had been given by someone working within the police security service minutes after the accident.

The kitchen was filled with the aroma of chicken soup, and the chef was no longer in a bad mood. On the contrary, he gave me a small portion to taste in a coffee cup.

‘An hors d’oeuvre,’ he said. ‘To stimulate the appetite.’

He called it mulligatawny. I didn’t correct him, even though there were neither pieces of apple nor rice in the greasy, rich soup, with the oil forming little beads on top of golden brown deliciousness.

It was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

Soup for the soul, that’s what the Americans call that kind of thing.

And we certainly needed it.

Time was passing noticeably slowly. Perhaps it was because I felt hungry all the time. We had barely finished a huge lunch before I felt the pull in my midriff that had me looking around for something to put in my mouth. When I didn’t find anything I leaned over to Adrian and tucked a hundred kroner note into his hand.

‘Will you go to the kiosk for me, please? Get some snacks. Crisps or peanuts. And half a litre of cola.’

‘I’m not your fucking errand boy. And you eat a hell of a lot, I have to say. That can’t be good. You’ll end up looking like a…’

He wasn’t sure what I’d end up looking like. I can understand that. I have a certain amount of self-awareness. I look younger than I am, and I weigh sixty-four kilos. Slightly less than I should, since my height is 172 centimetres. If I’m measured while I’m lying flat out on the floor, that is. Which I never do, but my height was written down in my passport at the time when I was able to stand. Getting fat isn’t a problem, but I often feel hungry. Almost all the time. A psychologist who was once forced on me ages ago got a little bit too hung up on that particular point.

‘Are you a good boy or are you not a good boy?’

Adrian was actually good-looking when he smiled.

‘I’m a very good boy,’ he laughed.

He was a mystery in many ways, was Adrian Droopyjeans. When he tucked the note in his pocket and set off, Veronica stood up and followed him. I still hadn’t heard her say a word. She moved surprisingly silently. Since there was no longer any trace of snow or dampness on the floor, most people had started going around in their stockinged feet. The woolly socks she had borrowed from Adrian looked very strange with the Nemi-inspired clothes. She reminded me of a slinking black cat with bright red paws. And she had a magnetic attraction when it came to dogs – they always came up to her wagging their tails, no matter how deeply asleep they appeared to be when she walked by.

Cracks had appeared in the windows facing out towards Finsevann during the course of the morning. Only in the outer panes, to be fair, and Berit Tverre had dismissed the whole thing as a normal sign of wear and tear when one cracked; a silent flash of shattered glass. When the rest of the pane followed, she shrugged her shoulders and reminded us that there were two layers left. Nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing.

The strange thing was that people believed her.

The dramatic events of the morning had once again altered the atmosphere. While the previous evening had been relaxed and the new day had begun with a sullen nervousness, it now seemed as if most people had succumbed to silent resignation.

We were simply waiting.

We were waiting as best we could, for the storm to abate, for help to come. We were waiting to go home. In the meantime, there wasn’t much we could do. Since we were all travellers, there was plenty of reading material to swap with each other. There was a pile of well-read paperbacks on the long table. And there was a relatively well-stocked bookshelf down in the hobby room. Several people had taken the opportunity to buy books from the hotel, despite the fact that the selection was severely limited. One was about Roald Amundsen and one was about the history of Finse. Also on offer was a not particularly tempting coffee table book about the Bergen railway.

That was it.

The gang of poker players had put away their cards, but not in order to read. They were sitting at the longest table in St Paal’s Bar. All wearing earpieces, with their mp3 players on cords around their necks. Some were humming quietly and morosely along. I felt a rising antipathy towards the leader of the gang, a broad-shouldered lad in his twenties with a pink handkerchief tied around his head. The others called him Mikkel. His hair was presumably blond, but was dark with grease and hair gel. His eyes were blue, almost powerful. His face would have been attractive but for the mouth, which was set in an expression of spoilt discontent. The rest of the group behaved like puppies around him. So far I hadn’t seen Mikkel fetch his own beer once. He had also won a fortune off the others at poker. I would bet that same fortune on the fact that he was cheating, and the others knew it. Without doing a single bloody thing to put him in his place.

I looked away from him.

Beyond the cracked glass in the window, the air had taken on a strange colour.

It was too light, somehow.

Up to now the whiteness had actually been grey. The daylight was filtered through heavy clouds and vast amounts of falling snow. Finse 1222 had been surrounded by a muted light that was almost semi-darkness. Something was different now. Above the lashing wind and the violently swirling snow, the cloud cover must have broken. At least, I couldn’t come up with any other explanation for the dazzling whiteness that made it even more difficult to see out. Perhaps it was a good sign. Perhaps the weather was beginning to change. I pushed that optimistic idea aside as a series of thuds, bangs and thumps from the eastern wall made people look up anxiously from their books and old newspapers.

Roar Hanson came padding towards me. He hesitated and was about to turn away when I gave him an encouraging smile.

‘Am I disturbing you?’ he asked softly.

‘Not at all,’ I said, nodding towards an empty chair. ‘You might even be able to help me with something I’ve been wondering about.’