Anne Holt - 1222

‘Freezing cold,’ I suggested.

I put the glass down on the floor. Released the brake on my chair and nodded briefly to the doctor before setting off slowly. He didn’t take the hint.

‘We can go and sit over here,’ he suggested, trotting after me with two glasses of red wine in his hands in the hope that I might change my mind. ‘Then we can look at the weather!’

I gave up and parked by the window as he suggested.

‘Not much to look at,’ I said. ‘Whiteness. Ice. Snow.’

‘And wind,’ said Dr Magnus Streng. ‘Just listen to that wind!’

He was right there. For one thing, the roaring from outside was so loud that everyone had to raise their voice in order to be heard. What was more remarkable was that the wind was making the window panes vibrate, as if the storm were a living thing with a loudly pounding heart. The view was completely devoid of reference points. No trees, no objects, even the walls of the rooms at right angles to reception had disappeared in a whirling chaos of snow, without anything to focus on.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said a voice behind me. ‘Those windows will hold. They’re triple-glazed. If one goes, there are still two left.’

Geir Rugholmen was clearly not a person to hold grudges. He sat down on the edge of the table and raised his glass in a toast. It looked like Coca-Cola.

‘Absolutely,’ I said.

‘Fascinating,’ said the doctor happily. ‘These windows aren’t quite as big, but in Blåstuen’- he was referring to the hotel’s common room on the lower floor – ‘you really do see the proof that glass is an elastic material. Now, Rugholmen, what can you tell us about these rumours that there’s royalty among us?’

I actually thought I saw a slight shift in the expression on the face of the mountain man. Something watchful, a flicker in his eyes before he sought refuge behind the glass he was holding.

‘Nothing but talk,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.’

‘But that carriage,’ Magnus Streng protested. ‘There was definitely an extra -’

‘Is everything OK with you?’ asked Rugholmen, looking at me with a little smile, as if he wanted to draw a line under our earlier discussion.

I nodded, then shook my head as Magnus Streng once again offered me the glass of red wine.

‘Everybody should be sorted for tonight by now,’ said Rugholmen. ‘And we must be grateful that people were moved across to the other buildings in time. Right now it’s absolutely impossible to be outside. The wind would just blow you off your feet, and the snow is something else.’

‘When is somebody going to come for us?’ I asked.

Geir Rugholmen burst out laughing. His laughter was happy and melodious, like that of a young girl. He took out a tin of snuff.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he said.

‘How long is the weather going to be like this?’ I wondered.

‘For a long time.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Hard to say.’

‘But surely you must be in contact with the Met Office,’ I said, not even trying to conceal my irritation.

He tucked a fresh plug under his lip and slipped the tin into his pocket.

‘It doesn’t look good. But you should just take it easy. There’s enough food here, and warmth, and plenty to drink. Make yourself at home.’

‘If it had to happen,’ said Magnus Streng, ‘it’s fantastic that we were only a few hundred metres from the station. As far as I understand it, that’s why we weren’t travelling too fast. Less than seventy kilometres an hour, they said. We really can talk about a blessing in disguise. And then there’s this hotel! What a place! What service! Nothing but smiles and kindness. You’d think they took in accident victims every single -’

‘Who’s actually responsible?’ I interrupted, looking at Geir Rugholmen.

‘Responsible? For the hotel?’

I sighed.

‘For the accident?’ he asked sarcastically, throwing his arms open wide. ‘For the weather?’

‘For us,’ I said. ‘Who’s responsible for the rescue operation? For getting us down from here? As far as I know, it’s the local police who carry the operational responsibility. What does that involve? Is it Ulvik police district? Is there a local representative? Is the Mountain Rescue Service in Sola -’

‘That’s a hell of a lot of questions you’ve got there,’ Geir Rugholmen interrupted me, speaking so loudly that those sitting nearby stopped talking and looked over in our direction. ‘It’s hardly my job to answer questions like that!’

‘I thought you were part of a rescue team. The Red Cross?’

‘You’re wrong there.’

He slammed his glass down on the table.

‘I’m a solicitor,’ he said irritably. ‘And I live in Bergen. I’ve got an apartment here and I’ve taken a week off work to sort out the kitchen before the winter skiing break. When I heard the bang it didn’t take much imagination to work out what had happened. I’ve got a snowmobile. I helped you and plenty of other people, and I’m not asking for any thanks for that. But you could at least try to be a little bit more pleasant, don’t you think?’

His face was so close to mine that I felt a fine shower of saliva as he hissed: ‘If you can’t be grateful, you could at least be a little bit more polite towards a bloke who instead of painting his kitchen has been shuttling back and forth in this fucking awful weather to bring both you and your bloody chair to safety!’

I’m used to people going off and leaving me alone. That’s what I want. It’s a question of finding the balance between being rude and reserved. Too much of the latter simply makes people curious and more intrusive, just like Magnus Streng, who had clearly decided to get to know me better. But I had obviously gone too far when it came to the former.

‘I do apologize,’ I said, trying to sound as if I meant it. ‘I am of course grateful for your help. Particularly for the fact that you went to get my chair when the weather had worsened. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.’

I was lying. Geir Rugholmen looked at me expressionlessly for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders and gave a wry smile.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘And I can tell you that we’re holding an information meeting in…’ he glanced at his diver’s watch made of black plastic, ‘half an hour. It’s going to be held here. Because of you, in fact. It was my idea. And just so we’re clear: it’s going to take a while before anybody comes to fetch us. It’s impossible to say how long. The power lines are down to the west of Haugastøl. The snowstorm is so severe that not even diesel snow ploughs can get through. There’s no chance of a helicopter in weather like this. We’re simply cut off. So you might as well try and relax for the time being. OK?’

Without waiting for an answer he finished off his drink and walked away.

Adrian had found someone.

This surprised me. I had noticed it a little earlier; he sauntered across the rough, worn wooden floor with an older girl trailing behind him. She might have been around eighteen. It was hard to say, actually. She reminded me of a less attractive clone of Nemi, the cartoon character. Thin as a rake, and dressed all in black with coal-black hair. Only the mouse-coloured roots showing along her parting, a silver-coloured piercing in her lower lip, and her pale skin diverged from the monotonous black. Her make-up was so thick she could have been fifteen or twenty-five. The two of them sat down on the floor with their backs to the wall and their arms around their knees right next to the kitchen door. They didn’t appear to be talking to one another. They just sat there like two mute, antisocial individuals in a group of people who had become positively relaxed during the course of the evening.