Anne Holt - 1222

The fact that he asked the question at all had to mean that he himself had his doubts. At any rate, he had a certain amount of understanding of the dilemma. Which once again underlined the seriousness of whatever he believed Cato Hammer to be guilty of.

Greed and betrayal, he had said.

Greed is linked to money. Capital. Mammon.

Greed is a mortal sin for Catholics. But it’s hardly something to get worked up about in a society where greed no longer makes people shudder, but is more likely to evoke a nod of approval.

I picked up the red pen and wrote greed above the timeline.

Betrayal?

Of course you can betray someone by being greedy.

Roar Hanson must have meant that the victim of Cato Hammer’s greed and betrayal was here at Finse.

If he was right, Cato Hammer couldn’t have discovered this until several hours after our arrival at the hotel. Strange. I could see him in my mind’s eye, going from room to room, chatting and shaking hands as he went. It had struck me at an early stage: Cato Hammer was the person who had the best overview of the assembled party, even if he had once made a mistake with the woman in the headscarf.

The confrontation between Kari Thue and Cato Hammer took place at approximately quarter to eight.

By that time we had already been at Finse 1222 for several hours, or at least many of us had. The last few were not rescued from the train until about five, but at any rate Cato Hammer had had plenty of time to acquaint himself with most people before eight o’clock. But he was as gentle as a spring shower, even after he had been shouted at in front of everybody.

If Roar Hanson was right in his assertion that there was someone amongst us who had good reason to kill Cato Hammer, why did the victim not know this himself? At least not before the information meeting, which began around ten. And even that was far from certain; his change of mood didn’t necessarily have anything to do with that. But for the time being, I chose to assume there was a connection.

I tore off the sheet and screwed it up. On a blank page I wrote:

The perpetrator was not recognized straight away.

I sat there for a while, looking at the words.

The perpetrator, I thought. It could just as easily be a man or a woman. Or perhaps not. If it was a woman, she would have to be strong. To kill someone with an icicle must demand both strength and technique, although I am ashamed to admit that I have never thought about how you use frozen water to kill a person.

It wasn’t necessarily an icicle.

There was a great deal to suggest that it was an icicle.

But when the murderer clearly had a gun, providing him or her with the easiest method in the world when it comes to killing people, why not use it again? If Roar Hanson was pierced through with an icicle or some other spear-like weapon, why on earth wasn’t he shot?

I pushed my hand into the side pocket of my chair and took out the box of painkillers. To be on the safe side I took three, and washed them down with lukewarm coffee.

Cato Hammer was murdered outdoors. Roar Hanson in the cellar. Geir thought it was fairly clear that the murder had tahen place in the dog room. There were no traces of blood outside the door. In fact, all the blood was concentrated in the spot where he and Berit found the body.

One outdoors. One indoors.

The wound in my thigh was extremely painful. I couldn’t understand it. I realized I was trying to raise my leg.

The two locations where the bodies were found had only one thing in common: they were out of the way. The chances of bumping into anyone outside in the storm at night, and in a locked room containing a pit bull, were negligible. At least if the murderer had noted the dog owner’s routine when it came to visiting the animal. I bit the marker pen so hard that the metal buckled.

Both victims went willingly to the slaughter, I wrote, before crossing out the last word and adding another.

Both victims went willingly to the slaughter rendezvous.

It couldn’t be any other way. Cato Hammer had been willing to go out of the hotel, in spite of the weather, to meet someone. That must mean that not only the perpetrator, but also Cato Hammer, were keen that the meeting should take place discreetly. Perhaps only Hammer.

It was difficult to see why Roar Hanson would go along with something similar. He had obviously been anxious about the meeting, because he had repeatedly asked his roommate to wait for him. I wasn’t sure what Sebastian Robeck might have done if he hadn’t fallen asleep.

It struck me that the explanation must lie in something I have no chance of understanding: religion.

Religion.

Nonsense. I really could not understand why the man had gone to meet someone he thought had murdered Cato Hammer, with no protection of any kind, in a room in the cellar where no one could come to his aid.

Did he want to give the murderer a chance? To turn over a new leaf?

The marker pen was running out, and squeaked horribly as I wrote:

Was Roar H. sympathetic towards the perpetrator?

Perhaps I was right after all. Perhaps there was enough of the priest left in Roar Hanson for him to take on the role of spiritual mentor, however stupid and naive it might seem to try and talk a murderer into seeing the error of his ways.

After the railway carriage fell, there were 118 of us in the hotel. Then the four mysterious guests had arrived, but they were under lock and key in the cellar, and did not need to be taken into account. Since both Steinar Aass and Roar Hanson had died, and I still counted myself as innocent, we were now down to 115 possible perpetrators. If I discounted all those under fifteen, I arrived at ninety-seven.

Ninety-seven suspects.

Far too many.

If I were to draw conclusions of a tentative and extremely temporary nature, based on the methods and the scenes of the crimes, then I was looking for someone strong and fit, who had access to a gun, and whose story could arouse the sympathy of a priest. This person must also carry within them a hatred powerful enough to make them murder Cato Hammer, with sufficient will to survive to kill Roar Hanson to avoid being unmasked.

Now I was going too far, of course. Unprofessional.

The Kurds had guns. Mikkel was strong and fit. I had no doubt that Kari Thue’s personality made it possible for her to feel hatred. Most of us could probably persuade Roar Hanson to feel sorry for us, at least on a bad day.

I couldn’t do this.

The best thing would be to mind my own business, keep my fingers crossed and wait for the police.

However, I did decide to look for Adrian. I had to find out what Roar Hanson had said to him when I was distracted by my annoyance at being given paprika-flavoured crisps, and failed to grasp why Adrian reacted so aggressively to the pallid priest with the white flecks at the corners of his mouth.

At least it would pass the time.

For some reason I was disappointed by the sight that met me when I got back to the lobby.

At one end of the long table right next to the shabby wicker chairs with the tartan cushions that were never used by anybody except the lady who knitted, Kari Thue and Mikkel were absorbed in a quiet conversation. The lobby was so full of people that they didn’t notice my arrival. Their heads were almost touching in a display of intimacy that I didn’t like. Kari Thue was sitting at the end of the table, Mikkel at the side with his back to me.

Of course I shouldn’t let it bother me.

The fact that Mikkel had saved my life and in addition had started to behave in a way that was bordering on the acceptable didn’t mean he was someone to be reckoned with. On the contrary, he was high on the list of those I suspected of having murdered both Cato Hammer and Roar Hanson. True, the list was extremely long and I had no evidence against the boy apart from the fact that he was strong and fit, but still: Mikkel was not my friend.