Anne Holt - 1222

The boy hesitated. I had gone for a cheap trick, but Adrian wasn’t exactly surrounded by people who trusted him, and I had to use what I could. He opened and closed his mouth a few times before he finally began:

‘He said… That dickhead said…’

Something was going on over by the reception desk.

‘He’s been shot!’ shouted a girl’s voice. ‘That priest, he can’t have had a brain haemorrhage. He’s been shot in the head!’

Adrian swung around in the direction of the noise. I tried to raise my upper body from the chair by supporting myself on the armrests, but I still couldn’t see who was shouting. The first thing that struck me was that I was witnessing a diametrically opposed reaction to the explosion of panic this morning. This was more like an implosion. People were heading into the reception area. Nobody said anything. I tried to move forward.

‘It’s true,’ sobbed the voice. ‘I was just having a look around, that’s all. I was just… There’s a big hole in his face and he…’

It was the handball girl in the red tracksuit.

‘There, there. It’s all right.’

A male voice was attempting to console her.

‘Is this true? Have you been lying to us?’

There was no mistaking Kari Thue’s voice. I changed my mind and rolled back. The people who had been in the side wing up to now were on their way up to us. They were moving slowly and hesitantly, as if they didn’t really want to believe the story that was travelling from mouth to mouth, and which eventually made everyone hurry along. Mikkel, wearing his pink handkerchief, was pushing his way through to the reception desk. I could see Adrian out of the corner of my eye. He had climbed up onto the table where the flasks of coffee had just been refilled for the fourth time since lunch. For some reason he had taken off his cap, but he quickly put it back on again.

‘Liars!’ yelled Kari Thue. I couldn’t see who she was talking to, but assumed Berit Tverre was her target. ‘Isn’t it obvious that we all have the right to know that we’re trapped here with a… murderer! ’

It was as if someone had turned a gigantic volume control up to the highest level. People were pouring endlessly from the stairs and from the wing where the staff had started to lay the tables for lunch. They crowded into the reception area, talking over one another. Everybody was moving in towards the same spot: a terrified fourteen-year-old girl dressed in red, whose youthful curiosity had led her to trip over Cato Hammer’s earthly remains.

Geir Rugholmen shot out of the kitchen. He stopped, took a deep breath, and was obviously searching for someone with his gaze. It turned out to be me. He stared at me for several seconds before silently forming these words with his lips:

‘What do we do now?’

You could have made a better job of hiding the corpse, I thought. Then it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know where it was. Later I would learn that they had put the dead priest in the delivery area outside the kitchen, just inside the uninsulated door keeping the storm at bay. It was minus ten in there, I was told, so from a preservation point of view it was absolutely fine. However, if the intention had been to keep the murder a secret, they could have come up with something better. Nor was I completely sure what the chef thought about having a corpse lying in the area where he received fresh produce and equipment on a daily basis. Presumably he had no idea it was there.

‘What do we do now?’ Geir mimed again.

I was unable to come up with an answer.

‘The only sensible course of action is to split up,’ shouted Kari I Thue. ‘I have the right to decide for myself who I can trust. Who I choose to be snowed in with. At any rate, we ought to form two separate groups.’

I couldn’t believe my ears. Or eyes. I must have looked like an idiot sitting there, right in the corner by the kitchen with a coffee cup on a rustic cupboard beside me, open-mouthed with astonishment as more and more people gathered around Kari Thue at the other end of the room. The girl in red had already been forgotten. She had done her bit, and I couldn’t see her anywhere. I hoped one of the adults had gone with her to her room. Thank goodness nobody even glanced in my direction. For the first time since the accident I considered asking Geir to help me get away. To a room where I could be by myself. With a key in the lock enabling me to keep everyone else at a distance until the storm was over and I could make my way home to Krusesgate without needing to exchange a single word with anyone. That might well be worth the humiliation of being carried.

But Geir was busy with an entirely different matter.

The long table had been elevated to a kind of speaker’s platform following the train crash. Kari Thue was standing on its broad surface talking loudly and quickly, with much gesticulation, while Berit Tverre tried in vain to get her to come down. Geir was pushing his way through the crowd to help out.

‘Since we have access to two buildings,’ yelled Kari Thue, ‘I would suggest that one group takes whatever food and drink they need over to the apartment wing, while the other group remains here. The train carriage linking the two buildings can easily be blocked off at each end. And guarded, of course. I would like to volunteer to serve on a committee responsible for dividing everyone into two groups. This committee should consist of… three members. You…’

She pointed at the knitting woman, who clutched her work tightly and looked as if it was all she could do not to break down completely.

‘And you…’

The finger curled over and beckoned the businessman I thought I recognized, but whose name I couldn’t recall.

‘I suggest that the three of us spend the next hour coming up with a split that most people will be happy with. As far as I understand it…’

At this point her voice shot up to a falsetto. Berit had grabbed hold of Kari Thue’s forearm and was determinedly trying to pull her off the table. Kari Thue jerked her arm violently upwards. Berit let go and would have fallen, but for the press of people behind her.

‘Get down from there!’ shouted Berit. ‘At once! I’m the one who…’

The rest of the sentence was lost in the racket, and I could no longer see her. So far about fifty people had gathered in the lobby. There were still approximately three times as many scattered around the two buildings, and more and more were steadily arriving. Mikkel, the lout from St Paal’s Bar, had brought his gang along and stationed them behind the crowd, where they were amusing themselves by shoving everybody forwards. They seemed totally uninterested in what was going on, except as an opportunity for some entertainment. A few started shouting out that they agreed with Kari Thue. Others tried to help Berit. The man from South Africa had climbed up on the window ledge and was standing with one foot on the table, earnestly pleading with Kari Thue to calm down. I was picking up only odd words in broken Norwegian, but it was enough for me to understand that the man was seriously concerned. Moreover, he was the only one of us who was still as neatly and correctly dressed as when the accident happened; he was wearing a grey suit with a narrow stripe, a shirt that was still clean, and a deep red silk tie, perfectly knotted. It didn’t help much. Kari Thue flung her arm out at him, but missed. She was still talking non-stop.

‘We’re dealing with a brutal murder here! We’re much safer if we split up! I have the right to choose who I -’

Geir had climbed up onto the opposite end of the table. He ran towards her, bent his head just a hair’s breadth from the lamps suspended from the ceiling, and without a second’s hesitation he flung his arms around the skinny woman and locked her down. Her little rucksack was crushed between his stomach and her back, but Geir didn’t even seem to notice.