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Sweden was endless. And boring beyond belief. Lene drove the white Passat a few hundred metres in front of Michael. For hours they had followed the ruler-straight E45 through snow-powdered pine forests. The sun had shone through the right side window, but was now at her back. Michael’s only distraction had been the changing regional accents on the radio up through various Swedish counties.

They had stopped at the same petrol station, had drunk the same weak, Swedish coffee, and eaten the same bland sandwiches, but had ignored each other’s presence. Michael had waited until she had filled up the car, been to the lavatory and bought supplies. He had stayed close, but in the background, with a loaded pistol tucked into his belt behind his back, ready to blast anyone who approached her to the ends of the earth. He had monitored traffic patterns, memorized registration numbers, car models, and was convinced they had not been followed at any point.

South of a godforsaken place called Porjus, his mobile vibrated against his thigh.

‘Michael? I need to sleep. I mean it,’ she said.

‘Now? I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Lene. I really don’t.’

‘I’m pulling over at the next lay-by, Michael. I’m shattered. I need a break. This is going to kill me otherwise.’

‘All right then,’ he grunted.

*

The lay-by had a view of a small, dreary town by a dried out riverbed. Michael parked fifty metres from the Passat. Two sturdy truck drivers in green body warmers and clogs were chatting next to a couple of incredibly long trailer trucks loaded with pine trunks. The men held tall, steaming Thermos mugs in their hands and looked like they were enjoying themselves. Michael’s mouth watered at the sight. He hadn’t had a decent cup of coffee since the scout hut.

The Passat had stopped under the snow-covered branches that reached across the lay-by. White smoke was pouring from the exhaust, but he couldn’t see Lene inside. He tightened his parka around his neck, plodded across the tarmac and cupped his hands against the side window of the Passat.

She lay curled up in a foetal position on the back seat with her hands between her knees and her eyes closed. Michael could hear faint harmonica music from the car radio. He rapped his knuckles on the window, but she didn’t move. Then he opened the door and turned off the engine.

‘Lene?’

‘Go away.’

‘You’ll freeze to death,’ he said.

‘Turn on the engine,’ she mumbled without opening her eyes.

He straightened up and looked at the unbroken cloud cover. The truck drivers were watching him. Not much happened around here.

‘This is … not okay,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Just lying there with the engine running.’

One angry, green eye opened a fraction.

‘Are you worried about global warming? Tell me you’re joking, Michael. Please.’

He opened the boot and found a sleeping bag.

‘I’m going to stand here until you climb inside it,’ he said.

‘Die,’ she said.

He waited.

‘I’m still here, Lene. The door is open and the engine is turned off.’

He closed and locked the door when she had obeyed orders, and walked back to the Audi. The truck drivers left the lay-by with hissing air brakes and swaying cabins. He got into his own car, drummed his fingers indecisively on the steering wheel, yawned and realized how exhausted he was. Thirty minutes? What could go wrong in thirty minutes?

Everything.

He thought about the indefatigable GPS transmitter in Chief Superintendent Charlotte Falster’s white Passat fifty
metres away, and muttered curses under his breath. One of them had to stay awake. He swore again and pulled his collar up around his ears. He opened the side window so the cold would keep him awake and turned on the laptop.

He would allow her a few hours’ sleep while he kept watch and felt very Christian, almost altruistic. They wouldn’t reach Lakselv until late evening anyway, and whether it was this side of midnight or the other really didn’t matter. All they had left to do was drive through the small Norwegian town at the bottom of Porsanger Fjord and onwards up Route 98 to Børselva. From then on it was roughly forty kilometres north-north-west to their destination. On foot.

He had studied every available map and satellite photo in detail, and the landscape looked terrifying: deep ravines with meltwater rapids, glaciers – and glacier crevasses – ridges … wild, scattered, impassable moraine ground, with thousands of rocks the size of anything from a car to a tower block. And only a few mapped paths.

Right now, hiking across Finnmark seemed utterly impossible to him, even if he had been well rested or relatively unhurt. But he was neither. They had everything they needed in terms of kit: good boots, warm, waterproof clothing, a small Trangia, a tent, freeze-dried food, energy drinks, sleeping bags and more – but it wasn’t about having the right gear. There was also the human factor. Especially his. Lene had the strongest possible motive for being here and to go on long after her body had hit a wall: she wanted to avenge
her daughter but, more importantly, she wanted to stop the men from hurting anyone else ever again. His own motives were rather more prosaic, almost tawdry by comparison.

He closed Google Earth with the depressing satellite photos of the frightening landscape up north and looked instead at the sunny beach in the Seychelles he had chosen as the background screen on the computer. You could almost warm your hands on that picture, he thought. Then he sensed movement through the windscreen and saw Lene walk along the lay-by with her hands tucked under her armpits, and the short, stiff gait of someone who feels the cold and has just woken up.

Without a word she got in next to him and stared straight ahead.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

She shuddered and hugged herself.

‘Turn on the heating,’ she said.

Michael complied and switched on the engine. He handed her a Snickers bar, she tore off the wrapping and devoured it ravenously.

‘How far is it from here?’ she asked, and folded the chocolate wrapper neatly before putting it in her pocket.

‘Around four hundred kilometres,’ he said. ‘As the crow flies.’

‘Christ. I had no idea Sweden was so … vast.’

‘It’s a huge country,’ he agreed. ‘Haven’t you been up here before?’

‘Me? Why on earth would I want to do that?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘It’s beautiful and clean and … practically deserted,’ he said. ‘You can go hiking, skiing. Fishing. People actually live here, Lene.’

‘What do they live on? And how do you know?’

‘Judging by the trucks, I’d say they make their living from forestry. Once we pass Lakselv, it’s only forty kilometres. On foot,’ he added with a hint of sadism.

‘Jesus Christ …’

‘… and the Holy Ghost. There are no roads where we’re going.’

‘And then what happens?’ she croaked.

Michael leaned back and folded his hands in his lap.

‘Interestingly, the best and the worst outcomes are one and the same,’ he said. ‘It’s unique. A classic dilemma. I’ve given this a great deal of thought. The exact circumstances can play out in a number of ways, depending on the opposition.’

‘The opposition? Is that how you refer to a bunch of psychos? I’m sorry, but that all sounds terribly academic, Michael. Hasn’t it crossed your mind that they might just have hired a guy to lie in wait and shoot us without bothering with questions?’

‘Of course. But I’m betting that they can’t resist the temptation to gloat, boast of their cleverness to us – and besides, they’ll want to watch. Like you say, they’re psychos.’

‘If they’re there.’

Michael nodded.

‘True.’

He thought about the small group of Serbian mercenaries whom Pieter Henryk had hired to free his kidnapped daughter. Europe had been flooded with operatives from the Balkan wars; from every corner of the kaleidoscopic conflict in the Nineties. They spoke the same language, they were cheap, worked hard and got on with each other, though they might have been on opposite sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, and they got the job done without drawing unnecessary attention to themselves.

But it wouldn’t be the hunters’ style to hire someone to do the killing for them, he thought.

‘It’s an assumption,’ he said. ‘A hypothesis. You can see that, can’t you?’

‘A hypothesis?’

Michael flared up.

‘I’m not clairvoyant. I can’t read their minds, Lene! I’m doing my best here with whatever facts I happen to have available. It’s called improvising. And I’m sorry if I’m so bloody academic.’

‘No, I’m sorry.’ She put her hand on his forearm. One of her rare physical gestures. ‘Are you scared?’

He turned in his seat and stared at her in disbelief.

‘Of course I’m scared, woman! If I wasn’t, I’d either have had a lobotomy or swallowed a handful of Valium.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.’

She looked down.

‘It’s just that I still don’t understand why you do this. Why do you?’

‘It’s one way to make a living,’ he grunted. ‘Might not be a very good one, but that’s how it turned out. It’s the one thing I’m fairly good at.’

She let out a hollow laugh and her breath came out in small clouds.

‘I refuse to believe that’s true, Michael. You’re resourceful. Surely you could do anything you wanted.’

‘I’m almost forty-four years old, Lene. I did try to get other jobs at one point, but it didn’t work out. I’ve finally learned to accept that this is what I was meant to do. It’s important to believe that. If you don’t, you won’t last very long in this business.’

She smiled.

‘How are your hands? Do you want me to change the bandages?’

Michael spread out and bent his fingers on his lap. The bandages were filthy and damp, but he wasn’t in much pain.

‘Later, perhaps,’ he said.

She opened the door and put a foot on the tarmac.

‘You just let me know.’

She looked up at the low sky, which had turned cloudy.

‘Four hundred kilometres, you said?’

‘Give or take,’ he replied. ‘Let’s stop and get a decent meal
soon. According to the sat nav, there’s a town with a restaurant in seventy kilometres.’

‘Our last supper?’ she asked.

‘I hope not,’ he said.

Could sounds be trapped in a landscape? And could they one day be set free? Lene wondered. Because whenever the path steered away from the thundering river that flowed to her right, their footsteps echoed between the walls of the ravine, making it sound as if they were being followed. Then the path returned to the foaming river and the boiling, frothing water would wipe out all other sounds.

The river crashed through a narrow ravine between steep rock faces. The path mostly ran parallel to, or over, the fast stream, and had been eroded by spring meltwater in several places. In other parts it veered away from the water and was hidden behind the tall, wet rocks that were scattered chaotically between the rock walls.

The path lay in constant shade, so it was cold down here, but at least they were sheltered from the strong north-easterly wind that tore through the cloud cover above their heads.

She looked at her watch. It was almost eleven o’clock and they had been hiking for four hours since leaving the car
park in Børselva. There they had spent the last few hours of the night in separate cars, until Michael had stuck his hand inside the Passat and sounded the horn. She had jerked upright and banged her head against something hard.

The ground began to crumble under her feet and she clung to the rock face. Gravel, soil and pebbles slowly broke off and tumbled into the river, before being carried away by the current with incredible speed. A tree trunk crashed into the bank just below her and knocked off her last bit of footing. Lene leaped forwards and managed to reach firm ground as the path behind her collapsed. The tree trunk rotated on its long axis, collided with the opposite bank, tore itself loose and smashed with a splintering crack through the next waterfall. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, but some distance in front of her Michael turned around and beckoned her on impatiently before marching ahead. Lene felt like screaming at him that she had almost just died, but gritted her teeth and walked on. All talking, all sudden and uncontrolled noises were strictly banned by Michael.

They were also forbidden from approaching each other. Michael kept far ahead, usually out of sight, and Lene felt exposed and alone whenever she couldn’t see his dense, dark figure. He was armed with the machine pistol which he carried on the shoulder strap, loaded and ready, while she had the pistol in her hip holster. For someone who had stated on more than one occasion that he didn’t like firearms, he
was handling the machine pistol with ease and routine expertise. Lene and the police’s firearms instructor both regarded her as an excellent shot, but she had an inkling that they were both complete novices compared to Michael Sander.

She speeded up until she spotted him again behind the next bend. The gorge widened and became more even, the distance between the big rocks on the bottom grew greater, the river itself broadened and the current slowed down. She could see more of the sky. Then she suddenly lost sight of him and felt her panic soar up her chest and tighten her throat.

She started jogging. There was vegetation now, low willow thicket and pine scrub in small clusters in between the moraine blocks. She considered calling out to him, but knew that he would be furious. She passed a rock the size of a family house and let out a startled cry when someone put a hand on her shoulder and she was pulled behind the rock.

‘Jesus Christ, Michael!’

‘Easy now … and keep your voice down.’

There was shelter from the wind behind the rock and a small area the size of a table-tennis table with dry gravel where they could sit without being watched by … the opposition.

Lene leaned her back against the dry rock. The granite was reddish, raw and young, and it would be fiery red and orange when the rays of the evening sun hit it. Michael was
surveying the terrain in front of them through a pair of small but powerful binoculars.

‘Where are we?’ she asked.

She was sitting on a rolled-up camper mat and could feel her thigh muscles twitching. If she made it back alive, she had sworn to herself that she would start running again, perhaps go hiking. The landscape sapped all the strength from her legs and made her blood scream out for nourishment. She felt nauseous due to low blood sugar, and bowed her head between her knees.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Low blood sugar.’

Michael rummaged around the rucksack and handed her a couple of energy bars and a Snickers. He took the kettle from their Trangia kitchen and squatted down by a babbling brook and filled it. Then he lit the Trangia, put the kettle on top of it and placed tea bags in their plastic mugs. He found a bottle of acacia honey and Lene stared at the golden stream being squirted into the mugs as she munched.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘It comes on suddenly,’ she explained. ‘My blood sugar plummets and it feels as if my skeleton is being pulled out through my feet.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘I’m the same.’

‘And what do you do?’

‘Keel over.’ He grinned.

He handed her the mug and blew on his own.

Lene looked down her red parka and then at his light grey one which blended into the landscape much better. She felt as conspicuous as a monk setting fire to himself at a summit meeting.

‘Why am I wearing the red coat, Michael?’ she asked. ‘Even a blind man could see me from fifty kilometres away.’

He looked at her parka without expression and sipped his tea.

‘I think you look nice,’ he said.

‘But red.’

‘Mmm, quite red.’

‘In fact, there’s nothing bright red up here except my coat,’ she said, and took in the horizon with a sweeping gesture.

Every trace of merriment or sympathy vanished from his face, which became tight and sombre once more.

‘The best and the worst, Lene,’ he said harshly. ‘Two sides of the same coin. We want to be found. In fact, it’s up to us to make sure that we are. I had hoped that you understood that. So, what do you want?’

She looked down, gathered up a handful of gravel and let it trickle through her fingers.

‘I want to be found,’ she mumbled. ‘And stop being so bloody patronizing. Where are we?’

Michael unfurled the map and consulted a hand-held GPS. He pointed to a long, narrow stretch of water.

‘We’re roughly six kilometres south of a lake called Kjæsvatnet. That’s where the two disappeared. The Norwegian police or army found a creel up there with Kasper Hansen’s initials.’

‘And after that?’

‘Eighteen kilometres, give or take. We’ve done very well, all things considered.’

Lene swallowed the last of the chocolate bar, scrunched up the paper into a ball and was about to wedge it into a crack in the rock when she felt a look of disapproval. She sighed, stuck the wrapper in her pocket and got up.

‘It’s uphill from here,’ he informed her. ‘This is where the plateau begins.’

‘Uphill? That’s just what I need right now, Michael.’