Trophy (34 page)

Lake Kjæsvatnet appeared to be alive. The north-easterly wind pushed the water onwards in small, white horses, and the wind cut through their clothing whenever they weren’t sheltered by stretches of valley and rocks, or when they plodded through small willow thickets in heavy melting slush. The ice constantly cracked underneath their boots. Lene took care to tread in Michael’s footsteps, one hundred metres behind him, visible for miles around in her red parka. The sun was still high in the sky; it was a beautiful, yet utterly bleak and strangely oppressive landscape.

Even though it was heavy going, they had made surprisingly good progress, he realized after a fresh look at the map. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and studied the shores of the lake. Nothing. Not so much as a migrating bird on the restless, black water, and nothing moved between the frozen rushes or in the small birch thickets along the shore.

This is where they spent their last night, he thought. Kasper and Ingrid. By a campfire, he remembered. The weather had been fine and the night sky endless and starry.

He heard Lene’s boots in the soft snow behind him.

‘Are we going down to the lake?’ she asked.

Michael looked at his watch.

‘Why not? We have almost four more hours of daylight left.’

‘Is anyone here?’

‘Not a living soul.’

They walked through the birch trees and down to the stony shore where the ice had started to melt between the tussocks. There were only a few crisp and perforated ice floes left along the shore.

Again, they stood beside each other and looked across the narrow stretch of water that disappeared towards the north-east.

Lene shuddered.

‘You could lose a whole army up here,’ she said. ‘There is … nothing here.’

‘There are the Sami and their reindeer,’ Michael said.

She stretched up on tiptoes and looked around.

‘Where?’

‘In theory,’ he said.

‘But the two of them were here?’

He nodded. The article in
Verdens Gang
had only stated that the search-and-rescue team had found an empty creel and the remains of a campfire that Kasper Hansen and Ingrid Sundsbö had left behind, but hadn’t specified where around Kjæsvatnet the findings were made.

‘They were abducted somewhere near the lake,’ he said.

‘I can see how that would be possible,’ she said. ‘Anything could happen up here.’

‘Just like in the Himalayas,’ he said.

‘And in Afghanistan. Nobody ever sees what they do.’

Michael looked at her.

‘Exactly. No one ever sees it. That’s how they get away with it. Let’s walk on.’

*

‘Is this it?’ she asked. ‘Is this the place from the DVD?’

Michael ran his hand down a boulder scoured by a glacier. Where the boulder faced Porsanger Fjord, the ice and the wind had polished it to a deep curve. At its foot lay scree broken off by the frost, pebbles and gravel. And that was it. An anti-climax, just like he knew it would be.

‘This is it. He was standing right here when they found him.’

Michael pointed.

‘And he ran over the cliff there.’

He walked right up to the edge, and the wind that blew up the side of the hundred-metre-high rock face filled his trousers and jacket until the seams strained. The north-easterly wind, which had pushed the waves along the surface of Kjæsvatnet, whipped up tall waves in the fjord that marched steadily south-west in long, white bearded rows. Huge mountains rose on the other side of the fjord, many of them still snow-covered. Peak after distant peak. There was
snow in the saddles between the mountain tops as well. An endless wasteland. He leaned into the wind and looked down at the shore below. The meltwater brook had left white stalagmites up against the cliff face in many melting layers and while he looked, a chunk of ice the size of a car broke off the wall and crashed into the black fjord below. It disappeared under the surface and reappeared further out, shaking off cascades of saltwater. It bobbed up and down, looking for a new equilibrium in the water as it drifted out to sea.

A couple of curious terns dived down to inspect the new attraction, but quickly lost interest and flew away.

He heard her call out and turned around.

‘Get back here, Michael!’

He looked down between his boots and realized he was standing on the edge of the crumbling, eroding cliff.

He walked over to Lene, who was cowering behind the boulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Her lips trembled.

‘I thought you were going to fall! … What were you thinking, man? What use would you be to anyone if you fell?’

‘None whatsoever. Sorry. And yes, this is where it happened.’

Lene was still fuming. And she was frightened.

‘How can you be so sure?’

Michael looked at the sun on the other side of the fjord. It drew long, blue shadows across the distant valleys and left the peaks glowing.

‘You’ll be able to see it in a couple of hours,’ he explained. ‘When the stars come out. You can see them in the last frame on the DVD. I got an astronomer to calculate the position based on the altitude of the stars and their individual position. It’s very accurate indeed. In fact, it was the easiest task of them all.’

Lene wiggled out of the rucksack strap, laid it on the scree and sat down.

‘Clever thinking,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

She patted the ground beside her.

‘Sit down. It’ll be dark soon. And then you can tell me all about it.’

‘All about what?’

She smiled to him.

‘Your surprise, Michael.’

He raised a singed eyebrow.

‘You think I have a surprise for you?’

‘I know you better now. Or at least I think I do …’ She nodded to herself. ‘A bit better, I mean. And I know that you wouldn’t just wander up here, enter this arena without an exit strategy, make yourself a target, without having something up your sleeve. Please tell me you have something, Michael!’

He gestured towards the empty horizon. The wind tugged at his sleeve.

‘Like what? A buried tank? An F-16 fighter squadron? The Frogmen Corps?’

‘Yes!’

Michael shook his head.

‘I’m afraid not, Lene. It’s just us.’

She looked at him for a long time. Her green eyes widened slowly and her hands flopped between her knees.

‘Just us? Are you serious?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then God help us,’ she muttered.

He nodded. ‘I certainly hope he’s manning the switchboard.’

She gestured towards the cliff edge.

‘I don’t suppose we dragged all that rope up here unless you were thinking of using it?’

‘I am, as it happens. I have to get down to the shore.’

‘Did you see something? Right now when you nearly succumbed to your death wish?’

He hesitated. He couldn’t explain it. It was a hunch. She would think he was out of his mind.

‘There’s a frozen waterfall below the edge created by that brook over there,’ he said. ‘You should take a look at it. It’s magnificent.’

‘No, thanks.’

She pressed herself closer to the boulder.

He nodded and looked across the fjord. The superintendent suffered from vertigo.

‘There’s nothing down there,’ he said. ‘Rocks, water, ice … nothing.’

She got up, and he looked at her rucksack and then at her face.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. ‘We’ll find somewhere to pitch the tent and cook some food. This is a bad place.’

‘Especially if you’re prone to sleepwalking,’ she said.

‘Quite.’

He stepped out into the howling wind and gazed at the distant slopes of the basement rocks from where a glacier must once have transported the giant boulder which was now standing like a lonely, forgotten sentry at the edge of the world. He surveyed the upland. Moss-covered ridges, some willow thickets and bare, stony plains with snow in the hollows as far as the eye could see. But Michael sensed something further inland even though nothing moved; there were no noises or reflections, only this faint humming, watching presence.

Then his concentration gave way to a semi-conscious flashback. He had caught a glimpse of cobalt blue; a colour that had no business being here.

Lene was standing with her thumbs tucked inside the straps of her rucksack, ready to go.

‘What is it, Michael?’

‘Blue,’ he muttered.

‘Blue?’

He snapped his fingers impatiently.

‘Cobalt blue. Like they use in ceramics. The colour everyone wore in the Eighties.’

‘Where?’

He pointed to the boulder.

‘Over there.’

Michael walked around the monolith and pulled off his rucksack. He kneeled down and narrowed his eyes against the sun’s reflection in the glittering silicon specks in the granite.

‘Michael?’

Carefully he brushed pebbles and gravel aside at the base of the boulder and felt something soft under his fingers. A shoelace or a piece of string. He pulled it out into the light. The cobalt-blue shoelace was trapped under a stone, which he brusquely pushed aside. He yanked the shoelace and lifted out a sturdy grey-leather and Gore-Tex hiking boot from the hollow. He looked inside it.

‘Scarpa, size ten,’ he said. ‘Right foot. It’s a fine boot. And new. Look at the sole.’

‘It’s damaged,’ she said.

The small metal eyes that kept the bootlace in place had been blown clean off the leather.

‘A bullet would have left a mark like that,’ he said. ‘It’s dark brown inside. It’s full of dried blood.’

They looked at it in silence. Her shoulder touched his and he could smell her. She smelled of wind and sunshine and sweat. It was a nice smell.

He cleared his throat.

‘Do you think it was his?’ she asked.

‘I’m absolutely sure of it. He must have buried it before they found him.’

‘And hoped,’ she said.

Michael nodded.

‘He hoped that one day someone would find it.’

‘It’s evidence,’ she said. ‘We can get DNA confirmation from the blood.’

‘We can prove that Kasper Hansen was here, but we can’t prove who killed him,’ he pointed out.

‘But now you won’t have to scale down that wall, Michael!’

‘We’ll discuss it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

*

They pitched their tent on a fairly level piece of ground among willow thickets half a kilometre from the cliff edge and the lonely boulder. Michael cleared away the scree and erected the tent, which involved nothing more than feeding two flexible aluminium rods through channels in the canvas and laying out the groundsheet and their sleeping bags inside it.

They had heated up some food and eaten it, though neither of them was particularly hungry, and they had boiled water for tea, to which Michael added brandy from his hip-flask.

Keith Mallory had given it to him for his thirty-fifth birthday. It was silver, flat and concave, with a fine, aged leather cover, and embossed with a warm inscription over
the winged dagger from the Englishman’s old regiment – the 22nd SAS – and their motto:
Who Dares Wins
. He unscrewed the cap again and waved the hip-flask.

‘More?’

Lene was now a dark shape that blocked out the first stars on the northern sky. She stuck out her cup.

‘Yes, please. What a fine hip-flask.’

He held it up and looked at it. He could feel the inscription under his fingertips.

‘A present from a friend,’ he said.

‘A friend?’

‘I have friends.’

‘Of course you do,’ she said in a neutral voice. ‘I suggest we take turns to keep a lookout?’

‘I’ll take the first four hours,’ he volunteered.

‘What’s your friend’s name, Michael?’

‘Keith Mallory.’

She looked at him, and on a sudden impulse asked, ‘Is he in the same line of work as you?’

‘He is, as it happens. Only he’s better at it.’

She drained her cup.

‘We’re not alone,’ she said quietly, and Michael watched her calm, clear profile against the still bright evening sky. There was no anxiety in her voice. At most, it was stating a fact.

‘We’re not?’

‘No.’

Michael pulled his knees up to his chest, reached inside the dome tent for a sleeping bag and wrapped it around himself.

‘Have you seen … or heard anything?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. I just know it. Someone is up here.’

‘I’ve never believed in a sixth or seventh sense,’ he said.

‘Perhaps now is a good time to start,’ she said. ‘I’m fairly certain. Good night.’

‘Sleep tight.’

She slipped through the tent opening, zipping the flaps down behind her, and he heard her rustling around inside. There was something comforting and normal about the sounds she made.

Michael picked up the machine pistol, checked that it was loaded, and flicked aside the safety catch. He unzipped his sleeping bag, pulled it up around his legs and lower body, zipped it up again and tried to find a comfortable position against a wide willow trunk. He placed the machine pistol across his lap. It was heavy and felt very real. He could just about see his own cloudy breath and he pondered what she had said.

There was nothing out there. Even the car headlights across the fjord had disappeared. The boulder down by the cliff edge stood out sharply against the dark grey waters of the fjord. Taut, upright and black like a Chinese character.

*

Perhaps he had nodded off for a moment. Or maybe he had got out of the habit of keeping watch. The last time had been with Keith Mallory in that sodding church loft in Grozny.

Half asleep, he watched a star on the western sky. It appeared brighter than the others. Or maybe it was a planet? One of the gas giants?

The star moved. Quickly.

He opened his eyes wide and observed the phenomenon. It moved with unnatural speed, it turned green and began flashing and then he heard the rotor sound … faintly, like a trapped insect.

Michael straightened up, now completely awake.

The helicopter’s navigation lights reflected spookily in the fjord. At times the engine sound disappeared, but it always came back. There was no hesitation or indecision about the flight. The helicopter vanished behind the nearest mountains towards north-east and the noise grew more distant before it faded away altogether.