Blood on Snow

Chapter 7

She was sitting curled up in the only armchair in my flat, staring at me.

She was even more beautiful like that: frightened, alone, vulnerable. Dependent.

I had — somewhat unnecessarily — explained that my flat wasn’t much to boast about, basically just a simple bachelor pad with a living room and an alcove for the bed. Clean and tidy, but no place for a woman like her. But it had one big advantage: no one knew where it was. To be more precise: no one — and by that I do literally mean no one — knew where I lived.

“Why not?” she asked, clasping the cup of coffee I’d given her.

She’d asked for tea, but I’d told her she’d have to wait till morning, and that I’d get some as soon as the shops opened. That I knew she liked tea in the morning. That I’d watched her drinking tea every morning for the past five days.

“It’s best if no one knows your address when you’re in my line of work,” I replied.

“But now I know.”

“Yes.”

We drank our coffee in silence.

“Does that mean you don’t have any friends or relations?” she asked.

“I have a mother.”

“Who doesn’t know...?”

“No.”

“And obviously she doesn’t know about your job either.”

“No.”

“What have you told her you do?”

“Fixer.”

“Odd jobs?”

I stared at Corina Hoffmann. Was she really interested, or just talking for the sake of it?

“Yes.”

“Right.” A shiver ran through her and she folded her arms over her chest. I’d turned the oven on full, but with the single-glazed windows and temperatures down at minus twenty for over a week, the cold had got the upper hand. I fiddled with my cup.

“What do you want to do, Olav?”

I got up from the kitchen chair. “See if I can find you a blanket.”

“I mean, what are we going to do?”

She was okay. You know someone’s okay if they can ignore things they can’t do anything about and move on. Wish I was like that.

“He’s going to come after me, Olav. After us. We can’t hide here for ever. And that’s how long he’ll go on looking. Believe me, I know him. He’d rather die than live with this shame.”

I didn’t ask the obvious question: So why did you take his son as your lover?

Instead I asked a less obvious one.

“Because of the shame? Not because he loves you?”

She shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

“We’ve got plenty of time,” I said. “And as you can see, I haven’t got a television.”

She laughed. I still hadn’t fetched that blanket. Or asked the question that for some reason I was desperate to ask: Did you love him? The son?

“Olav?”

“Yes?”

She lowered her voice. “Why are you doing this?”

I took a deep breath. I had prepared an answer to this question. Several answers, actually, in case I felt that the first one didn’t work. At least, I thought I had prepared some answers. But at that moment they all vanished.

“It’s wrong,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“What he’s doing. Trying to have his own wife killed.”

“And what would you have done if your wife was seeing another man in your own home?”

She had me there.

“I think you’ve got a good heart, Olav.”

“Good hearts come cheap these days.”

“No, that’s not true. Good hearts are unusual. And always in demand. You’re unusual, Olav.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.”

She yawned and stretched. Lithe as a pussycat. They have really flexible shoulders, so wherever they can get their heads in, they can also squeeze their whole body. Practical for hunting. Practical for flight.

“If you’ve got that blanket, I think I might get some sleep now,” she said. “There’s been a bit too much excitement today.”

“I’ll change the bed, then you can have that,” I said. “The sofa and I are old friends.”

“Really?” she smiled, winking one of her big blue eyes. “Does that mean I’m not the first person to spend the night here?”

“No, you are. But sometimes I fall asleep reading on the sofa.”

“What do you read?”

“Nothing special. Books.”

“Books?” She tilted her head to one side and smiled mischievously, as if she’d caught me out. “But I can see only one book here.”

“The library. Books take up space. Besides, I’m trying to cut down.”

She picked up the book that was on the table. “Les Misérables? What’s this one about, then?”

“Lots of things.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Mostly about a man who gets forgiveness for his sins,” I said. “He spends the rest of his life making up for his past by being a good man.”

“Hmm.” She weighed the book in her hands. “It feels a bit heavy. Is there any romance in it?”

“Yes.”

She put it down. “You didn’t say what we’re going to do, Olav.”

“What we have to do,” I said, “is fix Daniel Hoffmann before he fixes us.”

The sentence had sounded stupid when I formulated it inside my head. And just as stupid when I said it out loud.