The Last Pilgrim (31 page)

Bergmann turned when he heard a sound near the main building. A large figure was leaning against one of the rough-hewn timbers that formed columns on either side of the front entrance.

“A city guy, I see,” said the man as he approached. Two English setters trotted over to Bergmann to say hello. Finn Nystrøm was of stocky build and half a head taller than Bergmann, and his handshake was strong and firm. In the dim light he looked much younger than sixty, though Moberg had said that was how old he was. Maybe it was just his long, thick hair pulled back into a ponytail that made him look younger.

“Long drive?” asked Nystrøm.

Bergmann nodded.

“You’d better write your name and phone number in the registration book, even though you’re the law here at the moment.”

“Actually, I was planning to drive back tonight,” said Bergmann.

“Then we’d better go inside, though I was thinking of turning in pretty soon. So we can’t stay up talking all night.”

Bergmann moved like a sleepwalker as he followed Nystrøm, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of the man’s Icelandic sweater so as not to get lost. The two dogs padded behind him.

They entered the main building, which looked to be well maintained judging by the tasteful, discreet prints on the log walls and the fact that half the room keys behind the reception desk had been handed out to guests. Bergmann stood there, swaying like a drunk.

“Here,” said Nystrøm, going behind the desk. He placed a key on its surface, which was made from a massive birch plank. “You look tired. I’ll put you in room 204. It’s in the small cabin near where you parked.”

Bergmann was beyond tired. He could hardly even hold on to the key properly. Yet he was still alert enough to sense that there was something oddly familiar about Finn Nystrøm. He turned around at the door.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Nystrøm asked without looking up from his paperwork. In the subdued lighting Bergmann felt sure that he’d seen him somewhere before.

He shook his head. Nystrøm looked up and gave him a brief but friendly smile, treating him like a fool, just as Moberg had done at first.

“You’ll sleep well in the mountain air,” he said, looking back down at his papers. “Leave your window open a crack and you’ll drop off like a reindeer in molting season and wake up a new man in the morning.”

“Have you ever been on TV?” asked Bergmann. “I mean, sometime in the past few years?”

Nystrøm laughed.

“On TV?” he said. “That TV channel doesn’t exist, Bergmann. But now that you mention it . . . maybe once in the late seventies, but that’s so long ago I hardly even remember it.”

Bergmann shook his head, but said nothing more.

As he pulled the covers over him in the cold room, he realized how little sleep he’d had recently. He couldn’t even recall the last time he’d slept the whole night through. He placed one arm over his mouth and nose and breathed in what he imagined was the cool perfume from the hollow of Hadja’s throat.

He awoke to the sound of dogs barking out in the yard, and the sun was already shining on his face through a slit in the curtains. It was a plain room, verging on spartan. The walls were paper thin, and from the next room he could clearly hear a woman singing in the shower, accompanied by a man’s steady snoring. After lying in bed a little longer, he heard heavy footsteps on the gravel outside. The outer door of the cabin opened and the sound of boots grew louder, followed by two loud knocks on the room door.

Then Finn Nystrøm walked right in.

“Rise and shine,” he said. “It’s almost nine o’clock.”

“Give me a few minutes,” said Bergmann, looking at the man’s furrowed and weather-beaten face. He didn’t look as young as he had the night before. Bergmann suddenly recalled that he’d asked Nystrøm if he’d ever been on TV, and he blushed with embarrassment. In the light of day it was obvious that he’d never seen this man before, much less ever heard his name until he’d started investigating the murder of Carl Oscar Krogh. Nystrøm was wearing the same sweater and pants that he’d had on the night before, with a heavy Sami knife stuck in his belt and a pair of new hiking boots on his feet. He looked like a slightly vain outdoorsman with traces of gypsy blood. Not someone that Bergmann had remembered seeing on TV or in the newspapers.

“Do you like to fish?” asked Nystrøm, rubbing his newly shaven chin. The faint scent of shaving cream filled the room, reminding Bergmann of the times he’d spent the night at Erlend Dybdahl’s place as a boy and watched his friend’s father shave. He would dab his face with a brush that he’d dipped in foam from a red-and-white Gillette canister. Bergmann had always wondered what it would be like to have a father and smell that scent every day. “Okay,” said Nystrøm. “Breakfast is over at ten, but I’ll fix you something if you don’t get there in time.”

“Kaj Holt,” said Bergmann as he sat up, fumbling for the pack of cigarettes in his jacket, which lay on the ice-cold linoleum floor. “Tell me about Kaj Holt.” The brisk mountain air coming in through the open window made him shiver.

“Not before breakfast,” said Nystrøm. “You can borrow a fishing pole from me. I’ll loan you my best one.”

Bergmann muttered, “All right,” and turned to face the window, where sunlight was playing over the curtains.

“You can’t wear these,” Nystrøm said, picking up his old sneakers in the big claw of his right hand. “What size do you wear?” he asked, dropping the shoes on the floor.

“Forty-three,” said Bergmann.

“Forty-three?” said Nystrøm, sounding resigned as he rolled his eyes. As if that were the shoe size of music-school applicants and not a big-city policeman. “Get dressed and grab some breakfast. We leave in half an hour,” he said.

Bergmann watched the broad back of his Icelandic sweater disappear as the door slammed shut.
What sort of man is this Nystrøm?
he wondered as he climbed out of bed. Associate professor of history, Torgeir Moberg’s protégé, who abruptly abandoned his career to marry a gourmet chef and take over this mountain lodge in the middle of nowhere.

He leaned out the window and studied the property. It looked to be a decent place. Nystrøm stopped before the sod-covered eaves, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and whistled. The two English setters came running around the corner of the cabin where Bergmann was staying, and he suddenly pictured himself on the terrace of Krogh’s villa, looking down at the man’s dead setter.

Only after they’d been walking for fifteen or twenty minutes did it occur to Bergmann that he really didn’t have time for this. Finn Nystrøm apparently planned to be out all day, but Bergmann knew that he represented Fredrik Reuter’s best hope of finding the person who had virtually decapitated Krogh and gouged out his eyes. With every day that passed, it was less likely that a murder would be solved. That was an irrefutable fact. On the other hand, he couldn’t risk dropping Nystrøm. Besides, Bergmann found he actually liked the guy. It was just the opposite of the way he’d felt about Moberg, who had initially made a favorable impression, which had subsequently diminished considerably.

“Great, huh?” said Nystrøm as they reached the top of a hill that Bergmann had thought would never end. They had turned off the gravel road a ways back and begun climbing up through the interminable heath. Far below he could see the lodge and the small lake nearby. “Rondane,” he said, using his snuff tin to point to the left.

It took all Bergmann’s effort to catch his breath. Luckily Nystrøm had found a pair of well-used hiking boots for him to wear. They were size 44 and belonged to his wife’s son, but they would do.

“What a country,” said Nystrøm, squinting at Bergmann. “There’s good fishing down there.” The two setters were already way down the slope, heading for the famed fishing spot.

Bergmann straightened up to survey the landscape for the first time. Even though there was a brisk wind and the sun had disappeared behind several ominous-looking clouds, he had to admit the view was incredibly beautiful. For a moment he was seized with a touch of melancholy at the sight of the green mountain pastures, the open sky, and the seemingly endless ridges all around.

“Are you coming?” shouted Nystrøm as he began to head down the slope.

“What do you know about Kaj Holt?” Bergmann called after him. They couldn’t keep on making small talk as they had been.

But Nystrøm didn’t turn around, so Bergmann had to jog through the heath. “Kaj Holt!” he shouted again. Nystrøm stopped twenty-five or so yards away. Bergmann slowed down. The knapsack that Nystrøm had loaned him was only filled with a few logs, but it still felt as though the straps were about to slice right through his skin.

“Why are you so damned obsessed with Kaj Holt?” Nystrøm asked when Bergmann had caught up with him. He took off his knapsack and dropped it to the ground. Then he shook his head, grinned, and took out a pack of tobacco from a side pocket of his green touring pants.

“Because it was the last thing Marius Kolstad asked me to do,” said Bergmann as Nystrøm finished rolling himself a cigarette. “He asked me to find out what happened to Holt. And because Carl Oscar Krogh phoned Torgeir Moberg right after the three skeletons were found in Nordmarka, wanting to talk about Kaj Holt. And because Moberg only reluctantly told me that you were researching the people who were liquidated by the Resistance when you suddenly decided to disappear in 1981. That’s why I’m so obsessed with Kaj Holt.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Nystrøm, clicking his Zippo lighter to light his smoke.

“So, tell me about Kaj Holt.”

“Have you done much fishing?” said Nystrøm, weighing the two red fishing poles in his hands. He seemed completely uninterested in anything to do with Kaj Holt as he looked out across the water.

“No,” said Bergmann, dropping his knapsack on the ground. He was starting to be annoyed by Nystrøm’s tendency to change the subject.

“Give me a soda,” said Nystrøm, pointing at his bag. “And help yourself to a beer. It’s probably been a long time since you were this far away from your boss while on duty.”

Bergmann didn’t move. It didn’t take a genius to understand what Moberg had meant when he’d mentioned that Nystrøm had had a certain weakness. He opened the green Bergen knapsack Nystrøm had been carrying. Inside he found three half-liter soda bottles as well as a thermos of coffee, three cans of beer, a bottle of water, two cups, and a bottle of Rød Aalborg aquavit. As if that weren’t enough, he’d also brought along an old frying pan, a spatula, and a container of butter.

“We’re not going to drink the red schnapps, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Nystrøm, holding out his hand.

“I haven’t gone fishing since I was ten or twelve,” said Bergmann. That was when his mother had sent him to summer camp, which had been one long nightmare. But there was no need to tell Nystrøm about that.

“All right. You talk, and I’ll fish,” said Nystrøm, opening his soda. “Since you’re a policeman,” he went on, making a poor attempt to hold back a belch, “you can tell me whether this sounds plausible or not, since you’re so damned interested in what happened to Kaj Holt.”

Nystrøm took a container of bait out of his knapsack. “The official cause of Holt’s death was suicide,” he said, cutting the end of his line with the Sami knife. “But as far as I know, there was never any autopsy, and his file folder is missing from the archives of the Swedish Security Service, otherwise known as Säpo. I went there countless times ages ago. Säpo has files on hundreds of Norwegians, but they’d never heard of Kaj Holt. To top it all off, I was denied access to the regular police report from 1945, which probably still exists. So tell me whether you think this stinks or not: Holt’s file was missing from the Säpo archives, I wasn’t allowed to see the report filed by the regular Stockholm police, and, even more suspicious . . .”

“What’s even more suspicious?” said Bergmann. He was paying close attention, but was momentarily distracted by Nystrøm’s intonation. Was that the trace of an accent, a hint of some other language?

“The police officer who investigated Holt’s death was shot in the middle of the street in Stockholm only a few days after Holt’s body was found.”