Anne Holt - 1222

‘A knife?’

I noticed she was blinking more rapidly now. Whether this was a sign of insecurity or of something quite different and even more desirable, I couldn’t say.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not with a knife. So what are you going to do? Now you’ve got the information you thought you had a right to?’

She looked around. Presumably it didn’t feel quite so good to be standing on a table having a reasonable conversation with me as when she was hell-bent on deposing Berit. At the same time, it would be a defeat to climb down from her makeshift speaker’s podium, as both Berit and Mikkel had tried to get her to do. She chose to start with a compromise, and sat down. It was obviously uncomfortable sitting in that position, like a child with her legs tucked up, because she slowly shuffled towards the edge. Eventually she was standing on the floor. But she didn’t say anything.

‘I’m waiting,’ I said with a smile.

‘Yes, what are we going to do, Kari? What do we do now?’

It was one of her courtiers, a lady in her fifties with a tan that owed much to a sunbed, who was asking. She had been among the first to attach herself to Kari Thue, that very first evening after the intermezzo with the two Kurds.

Still no answer. Kari Thue swallowed, and the room was so silent that I could hear the wet sound of her larynx moving.

‘Look, everybody – look!’

One of Mikkel’s gang had got to his feet. He was standing right by the window overlooking the terrace. He waved his hand and went on:

‘The weather! Look!’

The terrace had been covered in deep snow for a long time. The door was completely blocked. You could only see out of the top half of the window, although not many people had noticed this as the view had disappeared thanks to the constantly falling snow.

The cloud cover had broken up. It was still snowing heavily, but the light slicing through the whirling flakes was white and intense. It was as if the sun itself wanted to remind us that it was still up there. That it hadn’t forgotten us, and that it would soon knock aside this monstrous storm that had already been allowed to torment us for far too long.

Kari Thue was forgotten. Everything but the weather was forgotten. A number of people got up and went over to the window, as if they couldn’t really believe what they were seeing. Others clapped their hands and laughed, some tentatively, others light-heartedly. The woman with the knitting dried her tears over Roar Hanson and screamed with joy.

The whole thing lasted a minute or so.

The sky closed up once more. The grey darkness pressed against the windows. The snow reverted to its dirty grey colour, and became a wall of miserable weather once again.

A huge collective sigh rose up to the ceiling.

‘The temperature is rising,’ Geir said cheerfully. I had been so focused on the weather that I hadn’t heard him come in. ‘At the moment it’s minus twenty-one, and the wind is already down to twenty-four metres a second. That’s only a strong gale! Nothing compared to what it has been.’

Like most of the others, I looked from Geir to the windows and back again. It was as if that glimpse of better times was an illusion. There was nothing in the monotonous, limited view to suggest that the weather was likely to improve in the foreseeable future.

‘Very good,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Does that mean they’ll be coming for us soon?’

‘Well,’ he gave a broad grin, ‘everybody will be staying at Finse for one more night. But if it continues to improve, I should think the first of us could probably be heading for town as early as tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps,’ Berit added sceptically. ‘We have no experience of this amount of snow. We don’t even know what it looks like out there. The railway lines will have to be cleared, and -’

‘Let’s be optimistic,’ said Geir. ‘I should imagine they’ll allocate a helicopter to us after all we’ve been through. One more night, and then we’ll all be off home.’

He was obviously ignoring the fact that the police would want to have their say about the chances of our leaving Finse as soon as it became physically possible. But given the current situation, I didn’t think there was any point in reminding him of that.

Despite the fact that the upbeat atmosphere plummeted noticeably when it turned out that the break in the cloud cover above Finsevann was extremely temporary, Geir’s optimism seemed to be infectious. Nobody was talking about Roar Hanson’s death any longer, nor about the safety of the guests. They were talking about the wind and the weather, and a few had already begun to bet on when the first helicopters would arrive at Finse. People spread themselves out around the seating areas, and many went up to the Millibar for coffee while they waited for the tables to be set for a delayed lunch. Some of the teenagers started singing.

It was hard to understand that this shower had just been told that yet another person had been murdered. On the other hand, a comparatively long time in the police had taught me that people have a phenomenal ability to let themselves be distracted by good news. None of them had any kind of close relationship with either Roar Hanson or Steinar Aass, with the possible exception of the knitter. I wasn’t even all that convinced of her honesty when she broke down at the thought of her colleague’s death. She was sitting there now with a blissful smile on her face, slurping coffee with lots of cream and glancing constantly at the windows in the hope that God would once again show His grace.

Kari Thue had sat down. She was flicking through a book with an interested expression on her face; I didn’t believe for one moment that she was reading it.

The Kurds must have been there the whole time, but I hadn’t seen them until now. They came hurrying out of Blåstuen, heading for reception. I followed them with my eyes all the way, but they didn’t turn around or give any other indication that they wanted to talk to me or anyone else. The woman kept her head down, while the-man-who-might-have-been-her-husband held her forearm in an authoritative grip.

Magnus Streng was obviously feeling better. I could see him up in the lobby. He was talking quietly to Berit, who suddenly leaned over and gave him a warm hug.

Things were starting to return to something resembling normality. And nobody had asked a question about the really big lie: the need to improve the insulation in the hole left by the railway carriage, and to check the staircase. Not one of the guests at Finse 1222 had any idea that four strange men from the secret carriage were sitting behind a locked door in the cellar. Nobody had even asked why it had been necessary to gather everyone down in Blåstuen.

The whole thing was like magic. You wave one hand dramatically so that no one notices what you are doing with the other hand. In this case it was Kari Thue who had performed a magic trick. Little did she suspect that her performance had made it possible for us to take in the men from the wing and hide them without anyone noticing a thing.

The world really is happy to be deceived.

‘You look a bit down,’ said Geir, patting me on the shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ll help you back up to reception.’

I didn’t know if I wanted him to do that. To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted.

‘Cheer up, Hanne! The weather is improving. One more night, and then we can all head for home.’

That was exactly what was getting me down.

‘I don’t know if we can get through one more night,’ I said quietly, so that the others wouldn’t hear. ‘It’s the nights in this place that scare me. So far we haven’t had one single night without a murder.’

Geir blinked and swallowed. It looked as if he were about to say something. A word of consolation, perhaps. He couldn’t come up with anything. Just as well – I was frighteningly right. Instead he followed me as I slowly wheeled my chair across the room towards the stairs leading up to the lobby, and my fixed spot by the Millibar.