1222

3

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.

And of course there might be the odd Swede or Dane hiding amongst us.

Since the number of foreigners resident in Norway comprises barely 9 per cent of the population, we were a little way off reality. But otherwise we had most elements. Self-confident young people in horrendously expensive clothes who didn’t exchange a single word with dross like Adrian and his miserable girlfriend. Stressed businessmen with top-of-the-range laptops, desperately trying to get an internet connection. Screaming kids and middle-aged women. A handball team of fourteen-year-old girls were completely incapable of grasping the point of showing some consideration for others. They made a racket all over the hotel, arguing loudly over who was going to share a room with whom. Some adults were demonstratively uninterested in what was going on, while others chatted animatedly about everything from the allocation of beds and the unexpectedly delicious food to the bridge tournament that was under way down in the hobby room. What we had in common, and what distinguished us from the Kurds, the Germans and the South African, was that nobody was really all that worried. While the two Muslims constantly cast terrified glances at the windows and shrank before both Kari Thue and the roar of the storm, the rest of us were more or less having a nice day out. The Germans did seem excessively delighted at being able to add a hurricane to their list of experiences, but even after six large strong beers none of them was able to hide their respect for the storm and their fear of its consequences. The South African seemed to have a more scientific fascination with the whole thing. He often went over to the window where he would shake his head, place one hand against the glass and peer myopically out into the whirling snow as if he were searching for something. A couple of times he clambered up onto the windowsill and rested his forehead against the cold glass, seemingly lost in dreams.

The rest of us just sat down in our Norwegian way, and turned into a little piece of Norway.

Which, when I thought about it, was bound to lead to a crime sooner or later. A quick calculation told me that it would happen within five days, from a purely statistical point of view, taking the average and making no adjustments whatsoever to allow for current circumstances.

But in five days I would be far, far away from Finse.

We all would.

I’d better mention the dogs as well. There were four of them on the Bergen train when it came off the rails, and they were all rescued. A poodle, a Gordon setter, and something that I later discovered was a Portuguese water dog.

The fourth and final dog frightened the life out of everybody around it, and the owner had to lock it up, keeping it away from children and other sensitive souls.

I had fallen asleep.

Fortunately I realized this straight away when Geir Rugholmen shook me by the shoulder. I quickly turned my head away and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. I dribble terribly in my sleep.

‘Is it true what the doctor said?’

He was speaking quietly in a strained whisper.

‘What?’

I straightened up in my chair and raised my arms. He was too close.

‘Are you with the police?’

‘I was. It was a long time ago. Can you move a bit further away, please?’

I drew my head back irritably to show how I was feeling. I glanced at the clock, which was showing five thirty. In the morning.

‘What sort of police?’ he persisted, without moving.

‘Norwegian. I was a perfectly ordinary Norwegian police officer.’

‘Don’t be difficult. What did you work on?’

‘I was with the Oslo police for twenty years. I worked on all kinds of stuff.’

‘What rank were you?’

‘Why are you asking me all this?’

Geir Rugholmen flopped down heavily on one of the chairs.

‘Enough,’ he said drily. ‘I don’t understand why you have to be so unpleasant. There’s a body out there on the porch. Frozen stiff.’

He covered his face with his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.

It struck me that I liked his smell. He smelled of mountain and man and fresh air. I’m not all that keen on mountains or men or being outside. Not that I actively dislike any of those things, but they have no importance in my life. And yet the smell of his clothes reminded me of something I couldn’t quite get hold of, something warm and safe that I had presumably tried to forget.

‘It was pretty stupid to go out there,’ I said. ‘Talk about asking for it. Freezing to death, I mean.’

‘He didn’t freeze to death.’

I tried to look uninterested. Geir Rugholmen got stiffly to his feet. Shook his head, smiled wryly and pointed over at the windows, which on sunny days presumably provided a fine view of Finsevann and the mighty Hardangerjøkulen glacier on the far side of the lake. The windows were deep and the ledges served as seats.

‘Your pal doesn’t seem to need much in the way of comfort,’ he said.

I hadn’t been alone after all. Adrian was asleep on the window ledge in an icy draught, with a jacket under his head and a blanket over him. His feet were sticking out in their worn-down trainers, and the cap was still pulled well down over his eyebrows. His breathing was regular.

‘What happened?’ I said as Geir Rugholmen turned to leave.

‘I’ve had enough.’

‘You said the body was frozen stiff. But he didn’t freeze to death. So what happened?’

He stopped without turning around.

‘Are you finally giving in? Do you really want to help?’

I didn’t want to help at all. The only thing I wanted was to be brought down from the mountain, away from all these people and the storm and the bloody snow, which as time went by had made it difficult to see out. Trying to focus on something in all that chaos where there was nothing on which to focus made me feel sick and dizzy.

I didn’t reply, but he stayed where he was.

‘He was shot,’ he said. ‘At close quarters, as far as I can tell.’

‘Shot.’

He slowly turned around. Took a couple of steps towards me before stopping, wiping the snuff from the corners of his mouth with his thumb and index finger, and taking a breath before saying something.

‘My name is Hanne Wilhelmsen,’ I said, pre-empting him. ‘And many people would probably say that I can be a little difficult.’

Geir Rugholmen took my outstretched hand without smiling.

‘They’d be right. Geir, as you have no doubt forgotten.’

‘No. So who’s out there?’

He didn’t let go of my hand.

‘Cato,’ he said after a brief hesitation. ‘The football priest. Cato Hammer.’

For some reason I was not surprised.

That surprised me.

In order to avoid giving away what I was thinking, I looked over at Adrian. I was trying to come up with a reason why I had thought of Cato Hammer even before Geir Rugholmen answered my question. My own antipathy towards the man could of course be the reason, but then it struck me that I would have much preferred to see Kari Thue dead. Leaving aside the fact that I didn’t really want to see anyone dead. Let alone murdered.

I just wanted to go home.

Adrian snored a little, and turned over in his sleep. Then he curled up into a ball and his breathing became calm and even once again.

He reminded me of a stray dog that has been badly treated.

‘We’ve taken pictures from every angle and every side as best we could in the storm,’ said Geir Rugholmen, groaning beneath the weight of what until recently had been Cato Hammer, a priest at Ris church in Oslo, born in Trondheim, raised in Kristiansand, and with an inexplicable connection to the Brann sports club.

The woman with the quiet voice who had spoken at the information meeting was looking around as if she didn’t know what to do. I remembered that somebody had introduced her as the director. She herself preferred a less pretentious title.

‘Berit Tverre,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m the manager of Finse 1222.’

Her hand was ice-cold, her skin chapped and rough. She was wearing blue knee breeches, khaki socks with a woven pattern, and a thick, beige woollen jumper. Her hair was blonde and caught up in a ponytail, and her eyes were as blue as those on a poster girl for Nazi Germany. A healthy, beautiful hotel manager aged about thirty-five.

‘I was the one who found him,’ she said, clasping her hands in front of her mouth and blowing on them. ‘Bloody hell, it was cold holding that camera. I hope the pictures turn out OK.’

She held out a digital camera to me as if I had suddenly been elected to lead the investigation, without any indication of agreement on my part. I didn’t take it. Berit Tverre hesitated, then put the camera down on a large industrial oven. I hoped it was a while since it had been switched on.

‘I don’t really know if the kitchen is the most suitable place to keep a corpse,’ I said. ‘But I don’t suppose environmental health will be paying us a visit in this weather.’

Geir tipped the body onto an island in the middle of the room. The island was made up of a gas hob, a large sink and an old-fashioned oven with an iron grate. Each part was a different height from the rest. Berit had placed a lid over the sink. Above the whole thing hung a fan, a rectangle several metres long made of frosted glass with aluminium fittings. For a moment it made me think of a coffin, which might descend on the corpse at any moment.

Cato Hammer definitely looked uncomfortable lying there. His eyes were wide open. His mouth was gaping, his tongue pressed against his palate. The entry wound went through the left cheek immediately below the eye, and you didn’t need years of experience as a police officer to see that the shot must have been fired at close quarters. I would even hazard a guess that the barrel of the gun had touched the skin. A bluish circle was visible around the hole. As soon as Geir hauled the corpse inside, I had noticed that the exit wound was large. I felt no compulsion to look at it more closely.

‘Shouldn’t we,’ Geir began breathlessly, ‘shouldn’t we take his temperature? To find out how long he’s been dead?’

‘If you feel like sticking a meat thermometer in his liver, carry on.’ I brushed the dead man’s face gently with my hand and went on: ‘You could try with the brain. Or some internal organ. Personally, I wouldn’t bother. We won’t learn much from a measurement without precise instruments.’

‘But what about you? I mean, you said…’

‘Once upon a time I was a tactical investigator,’ I said. ‘As a lawyer you ought to know that’s something completely different from what the crime scene technicians do on CSI.’

‘I work in property development,’ said Geir. ‘As a police officer you ought to know that’s something completely different from criminal law. And I don’t waste time watching television programmes. What do we do now?’

I slowly wheeled my chair around the corpse. There wasn’t much room, and I got stuck for a while by the windows. It looked as if Cato Hammer might have broken his arm. Without touching it, I leaned forward. There was something about the angle of the lower arm. The palm of the hand looked unnatural, lying there with the thumb in the wrong place.

‘I’m afraid that’s my fault,’ said Geir. ‘As far as I know, nothing was broken when I picked him up. I – I dropped him on the floor out there. I’m sorry. As I said, we have got photos of him as he really looked. What do we do now?’

Both the entry and exit wounds showed that Cato Hammer had been shot with a heavy-calibre weapon. A revolver, in my estimation.

‘They make a loud noise,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Where did you actually find him?’

‘Two or three metres from the door,’ said Berit Tverre. ‘And it was a close thing.’

‘What was?’

‘Well, he was practically buried in the snow. I could see his hands and a bit of his left leg. I only went out to put up a new thermometer.’

‘Remember that.’

‘What?’

‘Remember how much of the body was visible,’ I said, without taking my eyes off the dead man.

In spite of the fact that the corpse looked terrified, on closer inspection there was something trusting about his expression. It looked as if he had been enormously surprised at first, and had then happily decided that the surprise was a positive one. Perhaps he had caught sight of his God in time, and realized that things weren’t so bad after all.

‘What in the world could he have been doing out there?’ asked Geir. ‘Outside? In this weather? Or do you think he was shot first and then dragged outside afterwards by -’

‘That,’ I broke in, ‘is probably a key question. If we find out what Cato Hammer was doing outside in a snowstorm in the middle of the night, we’ve got the murderer on a plate. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to get any answers out of poor Cato here.’

‘I mean, he is pretty well used to the mountains,’ said Berit, looking at the corpse with an expression that suggested melancholy rather than grief. ‘He ought to know better than to go outside now. In this weather. I don’t understand it. He knows… he knew the mountains.’

‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

‘He’s been here before. To the hotel, I mean. Several times. Most of those who say they know the mountains are lying. But he…’

I thought I could see the hint of a blush on her face. On the other hand, she did have rosy cheeks anyway.

‘He was also pretty cautious by nature,’ said Geir, looking sceptically at the dead man.

‘Did you know him as well?’

‘Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far. I’m on the board at Brann. Which means it’s more or less impossible to avoid bumping into this idiot.’

‘But… cautious? What do you mean by that?’

Geir shrugged his shoulders.

‘He kept his guard up. Tried to be nice to everybody, kind of. A bit… polished around the edges. Wanted to please everybody. That sort of thing.’

He wrinkled his nose and adjusted the snuff.

‘I had the opposite impression,’ I said. ‘I mean, he must be regarded as controversial, surely?’

Geir didn’t reply.

‘Have you got one of those dolls they use to teach CPR?’ I asked.

‘A what?’

‘One of those… It’s called Resusci Annie, or something like that, isn’t it? The doll you use to learn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?’

‘No,’ said Berit Tverre sceptically.

‘It’s a bit too late to try mouth-to-mouth on Hammer.’

Geir laughed. Under the circumstances, the shrill, girlish laughter made him seem even more unsure of himself.

‘Some other kind of doll, then,’ I said. ‘Life-sized. Have you got anything like that? If not, maybe you could make one. Out of blankets and a cabbage, for example.’

‘And why would we want to do that?’

It really is amazing how slow people can be. Even educated people who are familiar with the mountains. I looked at Berit Tverre, waiting for the penny to drop.

‘Oh,’ she said eventually. ‘We put the doll in the snow in the same spot, and see how long it takes for it to get covered in snow to the same extent.’

‘That would at least give us some kind of indication of the time of the murder,’ I said, nodding. ‘If the weather remains as bad, more or less. And it would be a useful thing to do. For those who will end up investigating this eventually. Which will be incredibly straight-forward, of course.’

I had seen more than enough. So had Cato Hammer, I expect. I ran my hand over the staring, dead eyes. The body had already begun to thaw, and it was easy to close his eyelids.

My chair was halfway across the floor before Geir pulled himself together.

‘What shall we do with the body?’

‘Put him in the freezer,’ I suggested. ‘Or put him outside again. Find a sheltered spot and cover him up with a tarpaulin or something along those lines. Use your imagination. There ought to be enough cold places up here. Where’s the train driver?’

Without waiting for an answer I moved off and added:

‘Let the dead take care of the dead.’

‘Hang on a minute!’

I stopped, and even managed not to sigh.

‘What are we going to do?’ Geir persisted. ‘There’s a murderer out there, and as far as I know you’re the only one with any kind of police experience, and -’

‘Listen to me,’ I said, turning my chair around. It isn’t completely impossible for me to be nice if I want to be. ‘This so-called Royal Carriage,’ I said, drawing quotation marks in the air. ‘As far as I understand it, the passengers from that carriage have been installed in the top apartment in the wing. I have no idea who was on board. But at any rate, I certainly don’t believe they were royals. Our royal family simply doesn’t behave that way. But as the platform was actually cordoned off in Oslo, and as the whole thing is surrounded by such enormous secrecy, then I have to conclude that there must be police officers among them. Security guards, perhaps, if not from the palace. And since this is definitely a case for the police, it would be an excellent idea to seek them out and explain the situation.’

There was of course an ulterior motive to my sudden attack of volubility. I was looking directly into Geir’s eyes as I was talking. Once again I saw that faint flicker I couldn’t quite interpret. He licked the corner of his mouth as if he wanted to divert attention from the fact that he was blinking too often.

‘I think you both know who’s up there,’ I said with a smile.

Neither of them said anything, but nor did they exchange glances. Berit Tverre was looking downwards at an angle, and I was unable to see what she was studying so carefully. In the silence between us I realized I was afraid of the hurricane for the first time since I woke up on the floor in the reception area after having been rescued from the train. The gusts of wind were so strong that we could hear the clink of glass and the rattle of tins. At brief, irregular intervals we heard loud thuds and bangs against the outside walls, as if the weather gods were beginning to believe that it might at last be possible to tear down this building, after all those stormy mountain winters.

‘I think you know,’ I repeated, moving towards the door leading into the lobby. ‘But that’s none of my business, of course. None of this is, fortunately. But I’m still -’

A violent gust of wind against the wall brought me to an abrupt halt.

‘I’m still going to give you a piece of advice,’ I went on when the unexpected surge of fear had abated. ‘Fetch one of the doctors. There are plenty of them around. Not because they can be of any help to Cato Hammer, but because it would be a good idea to conduct a preliminary examination. When it comes to the actual murder, that can wait. There’s no point in starting an investigation here and now. Wait for better weather. Wait for the police. Let them do what they can, and this will all be cleared up in no time.’

I had reached the door; I pushed it open and rolled out of the room.

Nobody made any attempt to call me back.

I couldn’t sleep, of course.

I had moved over to the long table, and I didn’t really know if it was because I wanted to get closer to Adrian, or further away from the kitchen. Geir and Berit had emerged and walked past me without a word. I had no idea what they had done with the corpse out in the kitchen. With the roar of the storm it was impossible to say whether they had bundled Cato Hammer into the walk-in freezer or whether he was still lying on the metal worktop; the thought reminded me that I was hungry.

Adrian was still curled up on the window ledge with his back to the storm. The blanket had partly slipped off. I was close enough to pick up the smell of badly dried clothes and sweaty feet, but far enough away for him not to notice when I turned my chair to look at him more closely. He was completely motionless.

Once upon a time I had been able to sleep like that too.

The boy looked good. As he lay there now, not screwing his mouth up in that practised, dismissive expression, I could see that his lips were full. Even though they were dry with flakes of loose skin and a sore right across the centre of his lower lip, the half-open mouth gave away how young he was. His teeth were white and even, his tongue pink and happy, like a puppy’s tongue. A little spot by the side of his nose was the only defect on his beardless face: you could call it a beauty spot. I was tempted into pushing the cap up from his eyebrows. I didn’t complete the movement. He sat up with a jolt, a protective hand held in front of his face.

‘It’s only me,’ I said quietly. ‘Wouldn’t you rather lie down on the sofa over there?’

‘Shit,’ he mumbled. ‘I was dreaming.’

I hadn’t seen the sweater he was wearing before. It was a bit too small, even for a skinny boy like him. He was still wearing his own thick hoodie underneath the sweater; it was sticking out at the neck and wrists, as if he were caught in a cocoon and were trying to escape.

‘You shouldn’t go to sleep in clothes that are too tight.’

‘I’m cold,’ he said, yawning.

‘Try it the other way round. Put the sweater inside with the hoodie on top.’

‘It’s too bloody scratchy.’

‘Would you rather be itchy or cold?’

He didn’t reply, and pulled a face as he turned his head.

‘You can borrow my padded jacket to put over you,’ I said, pointing over towards the sofa by the bar.

I wouldn’t get any more sleep tonight.

‘Veronica lent me this,’ he said, looking down at his chest. ‘She knitted it herself.’

‘So her name’s Veronica, then.’

He grinned and looked up.

‘Look at this…’

He lifted the sweater slightly. Just above the lower part at the front, Vålerenga’s logo had been knitted into the pattern, roughly and with letters that could be made out only with difficulty. Adrian laughed, a dry, unfamiliar laugh.

‘It’s a bit stupid having the logo so low down, really.’

‘Not very Nemi, being interested in football,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t you try to get a bit more sleep?’

Instead of replying he stretched and put his feet on the floor. He gave an enormous yawn. His breath was musty and smelled of stale alcohol.

‘Who’s been giving you drink?’

‘Somebody.’

‘The somebody who gave you the sweater?’

‘Mind your own fucking business.’

I moved away.

‘Anyway, it’s not fair,’ I heard Adrian mumbling. ‘Some people were allowed to bring their luggage from the train. I wasn’t. Were you?’

‘I was unconscious,’ I said, struggling to get a drink of hot chocolate out of the machine in the bar. ‘So the answer is no.’

‘My iPod’s still there. And my clothes. I haven’t even got a tooth-brush.’

‘You can buy one down in the kiosk.’

The machine must be switched off. There were no lights showing. I was manoeuvring my chair behind the counter to look for the plug when a thought struck me.

‘You were awake during the rescue operation,’ I stated casually. ‘Did you notice whether most people managed to bring their stuff with them?’

‘Noooo…’

Adrian considered the question.

‘That woman with the pink kid was yelling because she got it into her head they weren’t going to take the buggy. And then there was some idiot who wanted to take a massive great trunk with him. They wouldn’t let him. I didn’t really think about my own bag. At the time. I just wanted to get away from…’

‘Were you brought out early?’

‘Early?’

‘Yes, were you among the first to arrive at the hotel?’

I’d given up on the chocolate machine, and was looking at Adrian. He flushed red.

‘I’m fifteen years old, for fuck’s sake. I keep on hearing that I’m just a kid, only a kid.’ He put on a voice that was presumably meant to represent a middle-aged, female childcare expert. ‘In which case it’s only right that I was among the first to be rescued!’

‘That’s absolutely true. But that means you were here when people started to arrive. Do you remember anything else about that business with the luggage?’

Adrian stood up and came over to me. With quick, sure movements he examined the front and back of the machine before getting down on all fours, fishing out a plug and inserting it in a socket that I couldn’t see.

‘It ought to work now,’ he said. ‘Can you reach?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘There wasn’t actually all that much luggage,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Now you come to ask. People just came pouring in, all cold and bad-tempered. But there were a few of those arseholes, those business types in suits and so on who had their laptops with them. They clung to their computers like that woman from our carriage clung to her kid. And then there was an old woman with a knitting bag. At least, that’s what she said it was. And then there were loads of girls with ordinary handbags. And then of course Veronica had her black bag. And then -’

‘Can you write this down for me, Adrian?’

‘You what?’

‘Could you possibly be very kind and write down everything you can remember about the luggage? Who had what?’

‘Write it down! I can’t see a computer around here. Can you?’

‘By hand, Adrian. You can write things down by hand, can’t you?’

He was suddenly preoccupied with getting a cup of hot chocolate from the machine.

‘I don’t care how bad your handwriting is,’ I said.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Anyway, why should I?’

‘Because I’m asking you nicely. And because it’s actually important to me. And because I think you’re a really sweet, lovely boy, deep down.’

At least he was old enough to appreciate irony. He could smile. Chocolate came frothing out of the dispenser.

‘Sweet and lovely,’ he repeated. ‘Absolutely.’

He burnt his mouth on the hot drink.

‘Paper,’ he said, sucking cool air onto his tongue.

‘There’s bound to be some over there,’ I said, pointing towards the reception desk. ‘And a pen.’

He shrugged his shoulders and ambled across the floor with the cup in his hand. He was still wearing the tight woollen sweater that made his upper body look small and misplaced on top of the wide jeans that were far too long.

I heard footsteps on the stairs. At first I thought the noise was coming from outside.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Adrian in a churlish tone of voice. ‘Can’t you tell the time, or something?’

In spite of this, Magnus Streng nodded pleasantly at the boy as he walked across the room, followed by Geir Rugholmen, and stopped in front of me.

‘I hear you’ve been informed,’ he whispered. ‘It would be a great help if you could come with me to the kitchen to take… a closer look at the whole thing.’

‘I’ve already seen everything worth seeing,’ I said quietly, keeping an eye on Adrian who was searching rather too intrusively behind the reception desk.

‘Adrian! You’re supposed to be finding some paper, not poking around in other people’s belongings!’

‘Please? I’d really appreciate it.’

Dr Streng was persistent. I hesitated for a moment, turned my chair around and gestured towards the kitchen door, where a large metal sign informed us:

It is dangerous to go near the electrical wiring with a fishing rod or line.

Adrian was left alone once again.

When I got back it turned out that he had made a remarkable list. First of all, it was packed with detail. He hadn’t observed every single passenger as they arrived at the hotel, but he had written a precise description of some fifty passengers and what they had brought with them from the train. Adrian had only named six of them, which was perfectly reasonable; he hadn’t known anyone before the train crashed. The rest were so accurately described that I immediately knew to whom he was referring. The boy was unusually observant, particularly in view of the fact that he walked around with his cap pulled down over his eyes the whole time. It was also clear that he had the ability to work quickly; I could hardly have been away for more than forty minutes.

However, the most remarkable thing of all was the appearance of the list. His handwriting was as elegant and even as if it had been print, with a style that has not been taught in Norwegian schools since before the war. Although the paper was blank and unlined, it looked as if Adrian had used a ruler. There were full stops and straight margins, graceful loops and beautiful capitals, like something from a textbook on calligraphy. Nor could I find one single spelling mistake in the six-page document.

But I knew nothing of this as I followed Dr Streng and Geir Rugholmen into the kitchen. The only thought that struck me as I glanced at the boy for the last time before the door closed behind me was that I would really like to know what time he had settled down to sleep on the window seat.

I was hardly the only one who had heard what he said when Cato Hammer was standing on the table holding what was to be his last address to a large congregation.

I could only hope that no one had taken much notice of Adrian’s outburst.

No one apart from me, I mean.

‘Actually, I think he was a good man,’ said Dr Streng as he slowly moved around Cato Hammer’s corpse with his rolling gait. ‘Even though he did a lot of stupid things. He had his demons, that’s for sure. From time to time he struggled terribly. Both with his God and the one downstairs.’

‘It sounds as if you knew him,’ I said.

The doctor didn’t reply. He merely nodded slowly and meaningfully as he examined details on the dead body. The nose, with its strange, bluish-yellow colour. The eyes, which were open, frighteningly. I knew I had closed them earlier. He stopped by the damaged arm and leaned forward, looking at it closely. Geir Rugholmen hastened to explain his little accident while moving the body. Dr Streng waved his right hand airily and moved on.

‘I am bound by my vow of patient confidentiality,’ he said eventually, without taking his eyes off the corpse. ‘But given the circumstances, I can tell you that Cato Hammer was once my patient. Just a few years ago, in fact. I had quite a small private practice alongside my post at the university. Since I can safely say that Cato Hammer’s needs when it came to medical treatment lay outside my field of competence, I referred him on after two or three consultations.’

He stopped, placed his hands on his back and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. He reminded me of a penguin on patrol.

‘Mmm,’ he said several times; I hadn’t a clue what he was confirming to himself.

‘What was it?’ I asked.

‘Sorry?’

Streng sounded surprised.

‘What was he suffering from?’

‘The incurable loneliness of the soul. Yes indeed.’

‘He didn’t exactly seem to be lonely,’ mumbled Geir.

‘I am talking about the spirit, my good man. About cracks in the soul. About the eternal inner struggle between good and evil. Or in Cato Hammer’s case, between God and Satan. It’s not easy, that kind of thing. Not easy at all.’

Well I never, I thought, but managed to hold my tongue.

‘I referred him to a psychiatrist,’ said Streng after taking a deep breath. ‘Even though I was of the definite opinion that the best thing for him would be to talk to an educated and experienced theologian. Which I told him, in fact. But it didn’t help. I think he simply didn’t dare to go down that road.’

Silence descended over the kitchen, as if we were all rather embarrassed to have learned that the boastful TV celebrity Cato Hammer had been in need of psychiatric help.

‘It would have been helpful…’ said Dr Streng so suddenly that I jumped. Then he stopped. Peered at the bullet hole. His head was just on a level with the corpse, but he didn’t look for anything to stand on. ‘It would have been helpful,’ he repeated, ‘if someone had taken the trouble to check the temperature of the body when he was found.’

Geir caught my eye. A little twitch at the corner of his mouth was all he allowed himself. And he didn’t give me away. Instead he shrugged his shoulders apologetically and said: ‘There are only electronic thermometers here in the hotel. For medical use, I mean. And we didn’t think it was a good idea to take the temperature inside the ear of a corpse.’

‘Hmm,’ said Streng. ‘But the best thing would have been the liver. A meat thermometer would have done the job perfectly. There must be one of those around, surely? I mean, the brain is a bit of a mess,’ carefully he lifted Hammer’s head and examined the brutal exit wound, ‘so the simplest method, which is to shove the thermometer up here…’ he pointed at the priest’s nostril, ‘and into the brain would presumably have told us very little. When was he brought inside?’

Geir looked at his watch. ‘Just over an hour ago.’

‘It’s quite simple to work out, actually,’ said Magnus Streng. ‘In principle it takes twenty-four hours to halve the difference in temperature between the body and its surroundings. In other words, if it’s minus twenty-five outside and we start with the premise that Hammer was an active, healthy man with a body temperature of thirty-seven degrees, then the difference will be…’

‘Sixty-two degrees,’ I said.

The doctor smiled and nodded.

‘In other words, twenty-four hours in the snow would give our man here a core temperature of six degrees,’ I added. ‘Thirty-seven minus half of sixty-two, which is thirty-one. Six degrees. I’d call that dead. But he wasn’t lying out there for that long. And he’s been lying in here for a while. And he was partly covered by snow, which protected him. Plus the strong wind out there is an uncertain factor when it comes to the actual temperature. Plus…’

Streng smiled again and held up his chubby hands.

‘I got your point quite some time ago.’

Berit Tverre came into the kitchen. She was out of breath, and hadn’t got round to removing all her outdoor clothes. Her voice almost disappeared as she made her way around the partition screening off the washing-up area, struggling to take off her capacious anorak.

‘It’s pointless. I’ve tried three times. The first time, Mr Cabbage Head was completely covered in snow in four and a half minutes. The second time it took almost quarter of an hour. The last time it happened so fast I didn’t even have a chance to check how long it took.’

‘Ergo,’ I said, ‘in this case we will just have to rely on good old tactical work.’

‘Which should be easy, according to you.’

I looked enquiringly at Geir.

‘That’s what you said when you were in here earlier,’ he insisted. ‘You said this investigation would be incredibly simple. Or something along those lines. Is that what you think?’

I nodded.

‘We have a very limited number of suspects, all of whom are trapped up here. A limited geographical area to examine, to put it mildly. I think the murder will be cleared up in a day or two. Once the police have taken over, of course. I mean, they have to make a start first.’

‘But in the meantime…’ Berit Tverre said hesitantly.

‘In the meantime you can do as I said, and fetch one of the police officers I assume are in the top apartment. Or you can do what you’ve told everybody else to do, just chill out and relax. This storm has to die out at some point.’

In the meantime, I thought, there’s a murderer with a heavy-calibre weapon wandering around amongst us. In the meantime we can only hope that the intention of the person in question was to kill Cato Hammer, and that he or she would not dream of harming anyone else. While we are waiting for the police, I thought without saying anything, we could pray to the gods every one of us must believe in that the perpetrator was rational, focused, and did not suspect any of us of knowing who he or she was. And that he or she would have no reason to suspect that anyone might be starting to investigate the case here and now.

‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘Everything will be fine.’