Anne Holt - 1222

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little drop?’

Magnus Streng was offering me the glass of red wine again.

What I really wanted to do was to remind him that he was a doctor. That I had just been involved in a major accident, and had suffered loss of blood due to a ski pole penetrating my thigh. I really wanted to ask him if alcohol was appropriate medication for a middle-aged disabled woman with an indubitably lowered general state of health.

There are limits, even for me.

‘No thank you.’

But I didn’t smile. Which was equally effective, in fact.

‘No, right,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Enjoy the rest of your evening, then. I’m going to try and sort out this royal mystery.’

My mobile rang.

Well, it glowed silently. I always have the sound switched off. Up to now it had been in the pocket of my padded jacket. It had fallen out onto the floor when I was looking for a piece of chocolate. It showed fifteen missed calls.

Presumably the accident had been reported across the media. Since the satellite dish in Finse had either been blown down or buried in snow, there were no working televisions in the hotel or the private apartments. A few people had been listening to the radio during the afternoon and evening. None of them had anything new to report on a rescue operation. It seemed as if the matter was not being pursued at present; it could hardly be said that we were in great danger. I have to admit that it seemed pointless to risk life and limb in order to rescue survivors who were safe and warm, cosily installed in a charming hotel. And I don’t suppose the dead train driver was in any hurry to get down from the mountain. As far as the mysterious extra carriage was concerned, it seemed as if those passengers were also safely settled in the top, and doubtless most luxurious, apartment in the wing.

Basically, everything was more or less OK.

Apart from the fact that I had forgotten something.

I too have people who are close to me: a woman and a child.

I’d forgotten to call home.

Despite the fact that I was dreading speaking to Nefis, and was busy trying to come up with a strategy before I gathered the courage to call, I couldn’t quite forget Geir Rugholmen’s reaction to the question about the mysterious carriage. It was highly unlikely that Mette-Marit would be on the train. But there was an extra carriage. There had been security guards on the sealed-off area of the platform at Oslo’s central station.

‘I’m alive,’ I said before Nefis had time to say anything at all. ‘I’m perfectly OK and things aren’t too bad at all.’

The telling-off lasted so long that I stopped listening.

If the people in the last carriage weren’t members of the royal family, then who were they?

‘Sorry,’ I said quietly when the tirade on the other end of the line finally petered out. ‘I really am sorry. I should have called straight away.’

Whoever had been travelling in that last, completely different carriage between Oslo and Bergen, it was incomprehensible that nobody had seen them after the accident. That couldn’t possibly be true. Somebody must have helped them. Somebody from the rescue team must have helped them along the route from the tunnel opening to the hotel. As the rumours about the royal party grew, the only explanation I could come up with was that the people in the last carriage must have been taken out first, and were therefore already indoors and settled in the top apartment before the rest of us started arriving at Finse 1222.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Really I am.’

Nefis was crying at the other end.

I was alone in the reception area. The large room was actually just as much a social area for guests, with the table along the windows facing south-west, a couple of capacious wicker chairs next to the staircase, and shabby sofas and chairs in what could, with a little bit of goodwill, be described as the bar at the other end. Someone had switched off most of the lights. In the semi-darkness I rolled my chair over to the corner behind a robust pedestal table where flasks of coffee had been laid out, along with a little machine that evidently provided hot chocolate. Above the bar hung another of the roughly carved signs: Millibar. I almost smiled. For a moment I thought about settling down on one of the two small sofas for the night. It would definitely be more comfortable. I decided against it.

It was quarter past one, and I was completely alone.

The information meeting had been less than informative. We had been told that it was snowing more than anyone could ever remember. That it was windy and extremely cold. That the derailed train was blocking the track to the west, and that there was no hope of getting any help from the east for some considerable time. Help from the air was obviously out of the question. We were assured that there was sufficient food and drink for everyone for several days, and that the electricity supply was not a problem either. There was a generator if the situation became critical.

The last point was the only thing I didn’t know to start with.

A very boring meeting.

But afterwards I was still glad I’d been there.

The total number of people residing in the hotel and wing was now 196, not counting the passengers in the mystery carriage. This included the hotel’s seven employees, plus four men and one woman from the Red Cross rescue corps who had fortunately been in Finse getting everything ready before the start of the winter season. Three German tourists were the only ordinary guests. Two of them had arrived on the same train as the rest of us; they were the ones I had seen battling their way across the platform just before the train left Finse. They seemed pleased about the storm, and drank vast quantities of beer before being the very last to go to bed. The rest of the passengers from the train had been installed in the nearby buildings, which had names that fitted well with both the railway and the mountains: Finsenut, Elektroboligen and Tusenheimen. The distance between the main hotel and these buildings was no more than one hundred to three hundred metres, we were told. However, given the prevailing weather conditions, there was no possibility that they could come back for the meeting.

Of course, 196 people is not a valid number from which to draw statistical conclusions. There were, for example, too many men to allow a comparison with the normal population. And far too few people over sixty, as far as I could see. In addition, I had only managed to count four children under ten, plus the pink baby from the train, which I hadn’t actually seen since the accident. Nor did I know much about the professional background of the passengers, even if it subsequently emerged that the number of priests and church employees was alarmingly high. A whole swarm of them were on their way to a conference on church matters in Bergen. Among them was the not universally popular football priest. Although after the confrontation with Kari Thue, I at least had begun to look at the man through new eyes. During the information meeting he sat alone behind one of the pillars by the bar, making it impossible for him to see the woman in knee breeches who calmly and slightly too quietly asked us to be patient, this will take some time. Before I lost sight of him I noticed that he looked unusually serious. Kari Thue really could frighten people out of their wits.

Despite the limited number of people, and given the excessive proportion of both the servants of God and the medical profession, I still had the impression that I was observing a representative group of Norwegians. Sitting there up against the wall by the stairs leading down to the hobby room and up to the old railway carriage that was suspended in mid-air, forming a bridge between the hotel and the private apartments, I was looking at an almost entirely white collection of individuals. Apart from the two Kurds and the three Germans, there was just one person of non-Norwegian origin: a dark-skinned man in his fifties, who judging by his accent came from South Africa.