Anne Holt - 1222

When the racket started and total chaos ensued, the Kurd opened his grey-brown jacket and reached for a gun he was carrying in a shoulder holster. With lightning speed he dropped down behind the pillar by the reception desk in the firing position – one knee on the floor, the other foot in front. Shocking in itself. However, the biggest surprise, and something that I couldn’t understand at all, possibly as a result of my own prejudices, was that the Kurdish woman did the same thing. In contrast to the man she took her gun out of its holster and aimed it at an imaginary foe by the stairs. Her loose, shapeless dress was obviously specially made, and did not hinder her from drawing her gun or moving at lightning speed. Only when the cold from the stairs reached her and it was clear that nothing else appeared to be threatening us did she slip the revolver back in its holster.

During the minutes that followed I was able to establish that no one apart from me had noticed this peculiar behaviour. At first this struck me as rather strange. However, on closer consideration it seemed logical; everybody had either been on the move, or had sought protection in a reflex action with their faces covered. The two Kurds hadn’t seen me, and quickly reverted to their roles as the over-protective immigrant and his terrified, weeping wife.

I decided to leave it at that for the time being.

Perhaps they weren’t Kurds at all.

Perhaps they weren’t even married.

For some reason I was thinking of Cato Hammer.

The murder of the controversial priest was actually the least of our problems. I was sitting in my chair by the kitchen door, where I had more or less helplessly witnessed rather too much in the course of just about half an hour. Kari Thue’s attempt at mutiny had been quite threatening. Nor was it easy to digest the idea that two apparently typical representatives of our new underclass had behaved like highly trained agents. However, the violent event that had taken place somewhere near the western wall was the worst thing. As I tried to suppress my fear by sorting out all the thoughts I had had about the murder of Cato Hammer during the past few hours, I had serious doubts that the western wall was still standing. The temperature in the hotel was dropping at an alarming rate. During the past twenty-four hours we had lived in an atmosphere of coffee, food, sweat, and dog. Now all the smells were gone. Only a dry, menacing cold seared my nostrils. Outside it was still almost minus thirty, a fact I couldn’t quite manage to assimilate. I had put on my padded jacket and wrapped a blanket around my crippled legs. That was when I discovered that the wound in my thigh had opened up. A red flower was growing on the chalk-white bandage, and had already spread to the ragged edges where my trouser leg had been cut open. I looked around for another blanket.

And I was still thinking about Cato Hammer.

The remarkable thing was that so many people had known him. I don’t mean they’d heard of him, most of us had. As I struggled with my anxiety over what could have caused the temperature to drop so sharply, it struck me that almost everyone I had encountered after the accident had willingly admitted to some kind of link to Hammer. He had been Magnus’s patient. Geir knew him from the board at Brann football club. I’m absolutely certain Berit Tverre blushed when she mentioned the priest’s earlier visits to the mountains. There was nothing odd about the fact that Roar Hanson knew Hammer, of course; they had known each other at college, and worked together.

Adrian had just been furious.

Furious and foul-mouthed. He had behaved quite differently towards Cato Hammer than to anyone else from the train.

‘The carriage!’

Geir was standing in front of me. I recognized him only when I saw the yellow ski goggles. They covered virtually his entire face before he pulled them off and leaned on my chair, panting.

‘The carriage has fallen down!’

The carriage.

I had of course noticed it when we were in the station, unaware that just a few minutes later we would be sitting in a derailed wreck. The hotel and the wing containing the apartments, both of which were so close to the railway that they looked like part of the station complex, were joined together by an old railway carriage. It was suspended some three or four metres above the ground, and made it possible to move between the buildings without going outside. It looked like a big toy train, a rusty red reminder that Finse was the country’s only genuine station community; you could get here only by train. The carriage didn’t even fight with the architecture. The whole complex was just one big piece of patchwork in any case, and the suspended carriage was an amusing salute from the residents of Finse to Norwegian State Railways. From all the conversations I had listened to over the past twenty-four hours, I had gathered that the carriage was filling up with snow. The fixings were old, and gaps had appeared by the wall of the wing. Not large gaps, but more than enough to make some people anxious early this morning. Quite rightly, as it turned out.

‘There are huge amounts of snow packed tight between the buildings,’ said Geir, gasping for breath. ‘So the carriage didn’t fall all that far. It’s lying at an angle on the snow. The other end is still attached to the wall, and it looks as if the only damage is that the door leading into the carriage is still on the wall. On our side a whole chunk of the wall has been torn away, taking the door with it. Thank goodness nobody was inside the carriage when it fell.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We certainly have been incredibly lucky on this trip.’

He looked at me.

‘Everything all right with you?’

I nodded and said: ‘I just need Dr Streng to have a look at my leg. It’s started bleeding again. I’m sure it’s nothing serious. How are you?’

He was a little surprised; he frowned and straightened his back. He took his time inserting a sizeable plug of snuff, and smiled.

‘This stuff is good for you!’

‘What are you going to do about the hole?’ I asked.

‘Johan’s fetching the Poles. We’ve got enough material in the cellar. I should think we’ll get -’

‘Fetching the Poles? The joiners? In this weather? From up in…’

Geir started tucking the blanket more tightly around me. His breath turned into a light mist, hitting my face in warm puffs and making me feel even colder. As far as I knew, the four joiners were in one of the buildings several hundred metres away.

‘Johan can drive a snowmobile at the South Pole in June,’ said Geir with a smile. ‘It’s winter down there when it’s -’

‘I know,’ I interrupted him. ‘When it’s summer here. But I had the distinct impression that nobody could get away from here. That nobody could be outside at all.’

‘Well, Johan can. He wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been essential. But he can. When he has to.’

I pushed him away when he started lifting my feet so that he could tuck the blanket around them.

‘Tell me about this Johan.’

‘He was born up here. One of the few. According to the local mythology he was born outdoors in a winter storm and grew up in a snow cave at Klemsbu, but of course that’s just nonsense. His father was the stationmaster, and they lived very well. But it’s true that he could ride before he was five years old. His older brother fixed up a snowmobile for him so that it was physically possible for such a little scrap to reach the accelerator and the brakes on the handlebars. Nowadays Johan lives at Ustaoset and owns a wilderness centre. He attracts filthy rich Americans and scares them to death out in the wilds. There’s money in that kind of thing. But he’s often here. Fortunately he was here when the crash happened. There are some fairly rigid restrictions when it comes to driving snowmobiles, so he’s a member of the Red Cross, which allows him to drive often enough. Anyway, you’ve met him. Don’t you remember? He was the one who brought you here.’