Blood on Snow

Chapter 21

In spite of the extreme cold it snowed all night, and when the first people to get up in the morning darkness looked out across Oslo, the city had put on a soft, white blanket. Cars drove slowly through the snow, and people smiled as they edged their way round the clumps of ice on the pavement, because no one was in a rush — it was Christmas Eve, a time for peace and reflection.

On the radio they kept going on about the record-breaking cold and colder times ahead, and in the fishmonger’s on Youngstorget they wrapped up their last kilos of cod and sang “Merry Christmas” with that strange Norwegian voice that makes everything sound so happy and good-natured no matter what the message.

Outside the church in Vinderen the tape of the police cordon was still fluttering while inside the priest discussed with the police how to perform the Christmas service when everyone began to arrive that afternoon.

At Rikshospitalet in the centre of Oslo the surgeon walked straight from the young girl in the operating theatre out into the corridor, pulled off his gloves and went up to the two women sitting there. He saw that the fear and desperation hadn’t left their rigid faces, and realised that he had forgotten to take off his mask so they could see the smile on his face.

Maria Myriel walked up the hill from the underground station towards the supermarket. It would be a short day at work, they were due to close at two o’clock. And then it was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve!

She was singing a song in her head. A song about seeing him again. She knew she’d see him again. She had known it from the day he had come to take her away with him from... From everything she didn’t want to think about any more. His kind blue eyes behind his long blond hair. His straight, thin lips behind his bushy beard. And his hands. They were what she thought about most. More than other people did, but that was only natural. They were a man’s hands, but nice. Large and slightly square, the way sculptors imagine heroic workers’ hands. But they were hands she could imagine stroking her, holding her, patting her, comforting her. The way her hands would him. Every so often she felt scared at the strength of her own love. It was like a dammed-up stream, and she knew that there was only a tiny difference between bathing and drowning someone in love. But she wasn’t worried about that any longer. Because he looked like he’d be able to receive, and not just give.

She could see a group of people gathered in front of the shop. And there was a police car there. Had there been a break-in?

No, just a collision from the look of it. There was a car with its front wrapped round a lamp post.

But as she got closer she saw that the crowd seemed more interested in the window than the car, so perhaps there had been a break-in after all. A policeman emerged from the crowd and walked over to the police car, pulled out a radio microphone and began to talk. She read his lips. “Dead,” “bullet wound” and “the right Volvo.”

Now another policeman was waving and ordering the crowd back, and as they moved she caught sight of a shape. At first she thought it was a snowman. But then she realised that was because he was covered in snow, that there was a man standing there, leaning against the window. He was being held up by the long blond hair and beard that had frozen to the glass. She didn’t want to, but she moved closer. The policeman said something to her, and she pointed to her ears and mouth. Then she pointed to the shop and showed her name on her ID card. She had occasionally thought about changing it back to Maria Olsen, but had come to the conclusion that apart from the drug debt, the only thing he had left her was a French name that sounded a bit more exciting than Olsen.

The policeman nodded and indicated that she could unlock the shop, but she didn’t move.

The Christmas carol in her head had fallen silent.

She stared at him. It was as if he had grown a thin skin of ice, and under it were thin blue veins. Like a snowman that had soaked up blood. Beneath frosted eyelashes his broken gaze was staring into the shop. Staring at the place where she would soon be sitting. Sitting and tapping the prices of groceries into her till. Smiling at the customers, imagining who they were, what sort of lives they lived. And later, that evening, she would eat the chocolates he had given her.

The policeman reached inside the man’s jacket, pulled out a wallet, opened it, took out a green driver’s licence. But that wasn’t what Maria was looking at. She was staring at the yellow envelope that had fallen out into the snow when the policeman pulled out the wallet. The lettering on the front was written in ornate, beautiful, almost feminine handwriting.

To Maria.

The policeman strode off towards the police car with the driving licence. Maria bent down, picked up the envelope. Put it in her pocket. No one seemed to have noticed. She looked at the place it had been lying. At the snow and the blood. So white. So red. So strangely beautiful. Like a king’s robe.