Trophy

Steffen Jacobsen

Translated from the Danish
by Charlotte Barslund

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Quercus

This edition first published in 2014 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2014 by Steffen Jacobsen

The moral right of Steffen Jacobsen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78206 937 9
Print ISBN 978 1 78206 936 2

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Steffen Jacobsen
is a Danish orthopaedic surgeon and consultant. He lives in Denmark.

Also by Steffen Jacobsen

Finnmark, northern Norway
24 March 2011, 18.35
70° 29´ 46.97˝ N 25° 43´ 57.34˝ E

When they found him, he was watching the sun go down behind the mountains west of Porsanger Fjord, knowing that he would never see it rise again. The cold chased the twilight across the water. A few steps in front of him, the plateau dropped steeply down to the sea. It was his only escape, but in the fading light and the state he was in, he knew he couldn’t make it down a hundred-metre-long wall with an overhang. This was the end and he chose to face it. He refused to be their quarry any longer.

He knew that the hunters had driven him towards this point all day: to the edge of nothing. He limped across loose granite scree, tossed aside the empty hunting rifle and sat down behind a boulder, polished by the wind into a comfortable curve that supported his back. Nearby a brook channelled meltwater away from the glaciers. It ran white, fast and
smooth over the edge, hitting the shore of the fjord far below.

He could see headlights from the occasional vehicle on the other side of the fjord, less than fifteen kilometres away – and in another world. He tucked his hands under his armpits, rested his chin on his knees and inspected his hiking boot, which had been pierced by the client’s bullet several hours ago. His foot was still bleeding; he could see blood being forced through the bullet hole, but it no longer hurt very much. He pulled off the boot and gritted his teeth when he did the same with his sock, stiff with congealed blood. He wedged the boot under the boulder and covered it with gravel and pebbles. Perhaps one day someone would find it.

They were good boots. Like all of his equipment – the camouflage jacket and the hunting trousers, the fleece jumper, the thermal underwear and the compass. He also had a laminated map of Finnmark with headlands stretching out into the Barents Sea between Porsanger Fjord, Lakse Fjord and Tana Fjord.

The first stars and planets started to glow in the sky. He recognized Venus, but none of the others. Ingrid would know their names. The plants, animals and constellations were in her genes.

He pulled out his hands from his armpits, and although he wasn’t a man of faith, he folded them and said a prayer for his wife. Ingrid must have got away. She was faster on
skis or on foot in the mountains than he had ever been, and he had managed to hold out so far. Until now.

They had embraced each other that afternoon when they heard the hunters’ whistles and realized that they had been found. He had kissed her cold lips and pushed her away, into the meltwater at the edge of the glacier. She hadn’t wanted to leave him but he pushed her again, hard, so she almost tripped. He would stay in full view on the ridge so that the hunters would come after him. She was to move along the glacier and then up into the terrain. If she ran for the rest of the day and through the night, she would reach Lakselv by dawn.

Ingrid had put on the skis and shot like an arrow down the snow-covered slope before disappearing between the dense pines where she would be hidden from view. She would outrun them.

He had seen his wife for the last time at the top of an elevation and at the same time spotted the hunters as they appeared over the next hilltop. The afternoon sun was behind them and the hunters cast long shadows. The ones at the front had caught sight of him, their whistles echoing once more through the lowlands.

*

His Norwegian wife had taught him to love the bleak landscape of northern Norway. They hadn’t been to the mountains since the birth of their twins two years ago, and they couldn’t wait any longer. When they saw a weather forecast for
Finnmark that promised calm, cloudless days, he persuaded his mother to have the twins and booked two seats on the plane from Copenhagen to Oslo – and onwards from Oslo to Lakselv.

There they had dined at the almost empty Porsanger Vertshus. It was early in the season and the hostess had been delighted to see them. Afterwards they had shared a bottle of good red wine in their room, made love under cold duvets and slept a heavy and carefree slumber.

The next morning they had walked north along the east shore of Porsanger Fjord, hitched a lift with a truck going to Väkkärä, and then headed into the mountains. Their plan was to hike thirty kilometres north-north-east to Kjæsvatnet, pitch their tent, do a bit of fishing, take a few pictures … just have a couple of days to themselves before returning to Lakselv.

They had walked under the spring sun, inhaling the scents which the thousands of lakes and moors, whose black ice cracked under their boots, released in the spring. He had caught a couple of winter-dopey trout in Kjæsvatnet and the fish lay heavy, cold and firm in his hands. He wrapped them in moss inside his creel and Ingrid lit a campfire. The frost made the trees creak, but they snuggled up in their sleeping bags close to the fire, leaning against the trunks of a small copse of birch while they ate.

Later that night he was woken up by the low, steady sound of a helicopter far away in the east, but thought nothing of it. They often heard helicopters fly patients to the hospitals
in Kirkenes or Hammerfest, or taking supplies or crew to the oilfields in the North Sea. The county covered almost 18,000 square miles and was practically uninhabited, except for the two of them, a few windswept villages along the coast, the nomadic Sami and their reindeer.

He had fallen asleep again and had no clear recollection of waking up. From then on, everything was brief, disjointed fragments: a glimpse of a cold, starry night as their tent was cut from its frame above them; Ingrid’s short cry; a blue crackling flash. Pain and darkness. He couldn’t move a muscle, yet he could feel himself being lifted up in his sleeping bag and carried away under the stars.

Later he realized that they had been incapacitated with an electric stun gun. Just like in the movies.

The silhouette of the helicopter blacked out the sky above them. They were put on the floor inside it, and the aircraft wobbled as the men embarked.

Weightlessness. Transport.

Their kidnappers had not said one word, not to each other, not to Ingrid or to him. A few minutes later one of them leaned forwards with a syringe in his hand and stuck the needle through Ingrid’s sleeping bag into her thigh, and her semi-conscious whimpering stopped.

He had seen droplets of a clear liquid being forced out of a second syringe. Then the man had kneeled down by his head and found his arm inside the sleeping bag.

*

He regained consciousness after swimming towards a glowing rectangle, and found himself sitting naked on a concrete floor, shivering from the cold and looking at an empty window frame, which was brighter than the surrounding wall. His body must have woken up before his mind because he had managed to stay balanced on his buttocks and heels. His hands were blue and swollen under the tight cable-tie around his wrists. A steel wire connected the cable-tie to a ring in the floor.

Stone slabs lay piled to the rafters at one end of the room and he guessed that they must be in one of the many abandoned slate quarries in the region.

He heard a sigh, a scraping of nails on concrete next to him, and rolled onto his side so that his face would be the first thing Ingrid saw.

They were pressed against each other, as much as the wires allowed, when the door was opened. Two dark figures appeared with the low morning sun behind them. Slate crunched beneath their boots as they crossed the hall; they ignored his furious questions in Danish, English and Norwegian. When he started swearing at them, a gun was put to Ingrid’s head.

The bigger of the two men pulled him by the hair to a sitting positionand took out their passports from his jacket pocket. In English, but with a Scandinavian accent, the man had checked their age and asked about their weight, if they were on any kind of medication, and if they knew what their oxygen uptake was.

He had briefly let himself be fooled by the man’s calm, conversational tone. As his accomplice’s gun was removed from Ingrid’s head, he gathered a blob of saliva in his mouth and spat at his interrogator’s boot.

The man didn’t move. Not one word was exchanged between the two of them, but the heel of his partner’s boot landed with a sharp crack on Ingrid’s foot. She screamed, and as he threw himself away, against the wires, he received a kick to his stomach.

The man resumed his questions – and got his answers. The padlocks were unlocked, the cable-ties around their ankles cut, and they were pulled to their feet and led outside.

Ingrid had to be supported, but he insisted on walking unaided.

Four more men were standing in the yard between the quarry buildings: black ski masks, camouflage jackets and trousers, to blend in with the icy grey, black and dark green colours of the mountains.

He looked into the man’s brown eyes.

‘You think you’re real heroes, don’t you?’ he said in Danish.

The man’s eyes narrowed and the corners of his eyes disappeared into his crow’s feet, but he made no reply.

The cable-ties around their wrists were cut and he held Ingrid close. She tried to cover herself with her hands.

Clothes, boots, equipment and food had been laid out on a table made up of doors resting on trestles. They were
ordered to put on thermal underwear, T-shirts, fleece jumpers, socks, camouflage jackets and trousers. The leader encouraged them to eat as much as they could of the pasta, muesli and bread on the table. It would be their last meal.

They had been bought by a client who would hunt them across the mountains for the next twenty-four hours, the brown-eyed leader informed them. It wasn’t personal. The client didn’t know who they were and they didn’t know who the client was. Other candidates had been considered, but the client had chosen them.

Ingrid buried her face in her hands, doubled up and sobbed. She kept saying the names of the twins over and over again.

He sensed movement behind a window. There was someone behind the filthy, broken pane. The blurred oval of a face, half shaded by a broad-brimmed hat.

Then the man slipped to one side and out of sight.

They would be given a two-hour head start, the leader continued. Then, if they were found within the timeframe, they would be executed by the client in whichever way he preferred. He pointed to a white, freestanding rock a couple of hundred metres away. At the foot of the rock they would find two pairs of skis and a hunting rifle with three cartridges in the magazine. He could use it if he wanted to. Did he know how to handle a rifle?

He nodded.

Ingrid collapsed and he pulled her brusquely to her feet.
He led her between the buildings, past the heaps of slate and out into the terrain.

The sun released its grip on the mountains in the east as they started running.

*

He saw the reflections from their headlamps in the wet rocks in the brook and his heart started beating fast and hard. His bladder emptied and the warmth spread down his thighs. He swore from shame, his desperate fears for Ingrid, the unreality of it all.

Then he got up and stepped out from behind his boulder, clearly visible against the light evening sky behind him.

The hunters emerged from the darkness and he screamed at them. One of them was limping and he wished that he had hit the bastard in his heart and not in his thigh. One light shone harsher and more brightly than the headlamps and he shielded his eyes with his hands. A camera light. The arseholes were filming him.

The hunters stopped twenty metres away from him and started clapping in unison – at first quietly, then with more force. He bent down, picked up a rock and hurled it at them, falling short. There were seven men in the hunting party. The red and green beams of their laser sights danced playfully up and down his body, criss-crossing his heart.

Then they began singing – and his brain switched off. He was standing with his back to the abyss in one of the most deserted and remote landscapes in the world while his
executioners bellowed, stomped and clapped their way through Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’. The men raised their voices. Their boots slammed down on the rock. The semi-circle opened to make way for the client. He stumbled forwards with his hunting rifle in his hands; he seemed to be hesitating: he lowered the barrel – only to raise it again.

He tried finding the client’s eyes below the broad-brimmed hat, searching for a glimpse of humanity, but was blinded by the floodlight. He shielded his eyes against it with his hands and couldn’t see Ingrid anywhere among them. A wild hope opened his throat and he screamed out in wild, wordless triumph.

The client bent double and threw up. He rested the butt of his rifle against the rocks and leaned on the barrel. The leader barked something short and sharp to him and he nodded and wiped his mouth.

Then the leader turned to his prey and tossed an object through the air in a languid arc.

Instinct made him reach out to catch the heavy, black, closed sack and he looked briefly at the silent, motionless men before he opened the sack and lifted out its content.

*

His world imploded. A moment later Kasper Hansen was dead.