Trophy (35 page)

He jumped when he sensed her right behind him. He hadn’t heard her leave the tent and was impressed by quite how still and silent she could be, while at the same time she had scared him half to death.

‘Would it kill you to cough or make a noise before you sneak up on me like a sodding ninja?!’

Even Michael could hear the crisp crack of fear in his voice.

‘Sorry,’ she grunted, and put her hand on his burned shoulder. ‘Was that them? The helicopter. Are they here?’

‘Yes. Please would you move your hand?’

‘Sorry. Are you happy now?’ she asked.

‘No.’

Lene had a walkie-talkie in her pocket and an earpiece in her left ear. And empty, useless hands.

Michael hadn’t uttered one word for the last ten minutes. She could hear his rasping breathing as he abseiled down the frozen waterfall on the cliff wall. The thin red-and-blue climbing rope quivered like a bowstring on top of the camper mat Michael had placed between the rope and the cliff edge. At times it would move slightly to one side or the other, as if he were swinging in large arcs across the wall. He had seemed calm but distant as he hammered in pitons and anchor bolts to the mountain to attach the rope. Then he had flung the coil into the abyss, strapped on the climbing harness and disappeared over the edge after one last, expressionless gaze at Lene, who was sitting behind the boulder. No power on Earth could make her walk up to that edge, whereas Michael looked as if he had lowered himself down vertical cliff faces his whole life.

He had left the machine gun with her.

How long did it take to abseil a hundred metres? One minute? Twelve
minutes had passed. She took the walkie-talkie out of her pocket and pressed the
send
button hard.

‘Michael?’

The rope gave the most violent jerk she had yet seen. The chafing of the rope was starting to wear through the camper mat. If the rope came into direct contact with the cliff it would probably fray and then snap.

‘… Yes …?’

‘What are you doing? Are you there yet?’

She heard a cross between a grunt and a sigh.

‘Most of the time … I just hang here. The end of this sodding rope has looped itself around some of the icicles and got wedged under a protrusion … I can’t get the bloody …’

Lene heard the sharp sound of an ice axe in action and closed her eyes.

‘Can’t you just jump the last stretch?’

‘Thirty metres? I don’t think so. I’ll call, or whatever it is you do, when I’ve landed, okay?’

‘Okay …’

She sat down behind the boulder and delved into her pocket for the last Snickers. She had to do something.

*

Michael dangled his arms along his sides. They ached with lactic acid and he was forced to take a break from hacking away with the ice axe. Overall, he was comfortably suspended and nicely balanced with the iron spikes from his climbing boots against the ice wall, but an offshoot from the meltwater
stream sent a constant spray of icy droplets over his helmet, head and shoulders. The water found its way under his collar and down the warm skin on his back, past the rubber cuffs on his sleeves and down his chest. He raised his face up into the spray, blinked hard and stared imploringly at the rope which was trapped somewhere above him.

He looked down between his boots at the narrow shore below him. Rocks. Ice. A sliver of snow on the north face of the cliffs. Nothing. He bent his legs, pushed his climbing spikes against the ice and slowly and diagonally kicked off the wall. When he hit the wall again, he grabbed the rope above his head and started running across the wall, hanging horizontally with one hand on the rope and the other wielding the ice axe. He reached the limit of his swing, set off again with all his strength and whacked the ice axe into the far end of the curve.

He started climbing upwards to offset the terrible pull of the rope. The ice axe bit deeply into the porous ice. The rope slackened and he could breathe more freely. He could see every detail of the rock behind the thin shell of clear ice. Michael climbed past the looped rope, leaned forwards, yanked it free, and was finally able to lower himself down.

He stood on the shore for a long time, with his hands on his knees, breathing in quick, hard gasps until he could speak normally again.

‘I’m down,’ he said into the walkie-talkie.

‘… Down …?’ he heard.

‘Yes, down!’

‘… Good … fine …’

He silenced the radio.

‘Right, bloody brilliant,’ he muttered, and looked about him.

The ice lay like duvets on the shore and in between the rocks in the shallow water. The beach was six metres at its widest. Michael skirted around the frozen waterfall. This, he thought, must have been the very spot where Kasper Hansen hit the ground.

There wasn’t so much as a seabird landing or the sound of a distant boat engine. The fjord was deserted as far as the eye could see. He waded out into the water to the top of his boots and studied the seabed. The water was greenish, but blue and shimmering further out where the sun hit the surface. He walked back past the frozen waterfall in a northern direction and stopped and stared up at the wall twenty metres on. A narrow, straight ravine stretched from the shore all the way up to the plateau. It was just as inviting as a staircase, and a geriatric with a Zimmer frame could easily scale it.

Something round and white at the foot of the cliff caught his attention. The shore was covered with surprisingly uniform, dark grey stones the size of potatoes and polished by the water, and the spring snow was grey and grubby, but in the shade something bright white glowed. He bent over the object and frowned. It was shiny, and domed, and stuck out
of the surrounding gravel. It gave a crisp, hollow sound when he tapped it with the ice axe. Carefully he started removing pebbles and sand and discovered that the bony dome was really the tip of a large, irregular block of ice, which was almost buried in a hollow: in eternal shadow, and isolated by the gravel and the sand. The ice was greenish and long, and black veins ran through it. Michael surmised that the block could have lain there for years. He began digging it out with the broad blade of his axe, easing the handle under the lump, lifting it up from its nest, and then fell backwards onto the ice. Shocked, he raised his hands to his face and closed his eyes while his heart pounded dry and hard in his chest. He gulped several times before he was able to open his eyes again.

Inside the block was the perfectly preserved head of a woman: regular features, and smooth, black hair that floated eternally inside the green ice. The head was balanced on a short neck that had been severed cleanly, right below the throat, with near-surgical precision. The woman’s eyes were half closed, with a meditative, almost dreamy expression. There was a hint of a sleepy smile around her bloodless lips. A young, black-haired woman. Ingrid Sundsbö.

Michael’s fingers shook, and he felt hot tears stream down his cheeks. Her scalp had been exposed to the elements; wind, ice and water had scoured away the crown of her hair and the skin, so only the white scalp, as smooth as porcelain, was left. The rest of her head was intact.

Piano wire, he thought automatically. The hunters had garrotted her with a thin wire, probably while pressing a knee into the back of her neck. Suddenly he knew which one of them had done it. Afterwards they had put her head in a sack and tossed it to her husband, a few seconds after the time when he had cried out in triumph – in the belief that she had escaped. When he had seen the contents of the sack, his soul had been snuffed out like a candle. Kasper Hansen had jumped: Michael knew that now. He had done what Johanne Reimers couldn’t do. He had never been hit by a rifle bullet.

Michael sat for a long time with his back against the red granite, staring at the ice block by his side. Then he stuck his hand in his pocket and found and drained the hip-flask.

He covered the ice block with grey, round stones, gravel and sand before he left the shore. She should stay here, he had decided. As close to her husband’s body and spirit as possible.

*

He had climbed almost seventy metres up through the narrow ravine, and it was just as easy as it had looked down from the shore. His walkie-talkie crackled; perhaps it had done so for a while without him being aware of it.

‘Yes?’

Michael held the walkie-talkie to his ear and thought how absurd it was to make radio contact when all she had to do was walk up to the edge and call out to him in a normal voice.

‘Someone is coming, Michael, where are you?!’

‘Who?’

‘Get up here … now!’

He began to hurry. There was plenty to hold on to, so it would take at most twenty seconds before he could push his way through the turf a few metres from Lene, who was shifting from foot to foot by the rope with her back to him.

He put his hand on her shoulder.

She spun around with her pistol half out of the holster. Her eyes were blurred and intensely focused at the same time, and her face was deadpan.

‘Easy now. It’s me!’

Her eyes lit up and she stamped the stony ground.

‘Jesus Christ, Michael! How the hell did you get back up here?’

He made a half-turn and pointed.

‘From over there. Nature’s up-escalator.’

‘How …? Never mind. Someone’s coming.’

She dragged him behind the boulder and handed him the binoculars.

‘Where?’

‘There.’

She pointed north-east, and he stepped out into the sun with the binoculars to his eyes.

There was nothing stealthy about the man’s approach. He walked briskly and in a straight line across the stony plateau, as if taking a stroll in his lunch break, and he was approximately
three hundred metres from their position. He was alone and Michael recognized him instantly.

*

Lene watched Michael and suffered with him. His face had gone pale and drawn, and his hands, still holding the binoculars, were shaking. He had stopped breathing.

‘Who is it, Michael? Don’t forget to breathe.’

‘Be quiet.’

The straight-backed man stopped fifteen metres from them. His grey eyes watched them with interest, but his mouth was a straight, anxious line under his moustache. His face was narrow and gaunt. He shifted his gaze from her to Michael, and the lines of his mouth and face softened. He folded his hands behind his back and nodded briefly, army-style.

‘Tell me how you do it, Mike?’ he asked very clearly in English.

Michael smiled faintly, but he didn’t move.

Lene took a step forwards, and the stranger immediately took one step back. Michael yanked her arm hard. The two men looked at each other, and not at her.

‘Do what, Keith?’ he asked.

‘We’re close to the North Pole in this godforsaken wasteland, and yet here you are in the company of a beautiful woman.’

‘I guess I’m just lucky. Lene is a police superintendent. What went wrong, Keith, and can they hear me?’

Keith? Keith Mallory, Lene thought. Michael Sander’s friend. The trump card. She had known all the time he must have something up his sleeve; he was far too wise and experienced to walk into an ambush without having a backup plan.

‘They can’t hear us, Mike.’

He held up his left hand. The last joint of his ring finger was missing.

‘Everything was fine until I bumped into them at Gardermoen Airport in Oslo. Old pictures from a forgotten past. My cover was blown immediately. They had really done their homework. All the arseholes I served with have written books about the regiment’s heroic deeds – including quite a few who were never even there. Pardon my French, miss, but they really were arseholes.’

‘That’s okay,’ she mumbled.

‘They recognized me from a picture in a bloody book, Mike. That sodding finger I left behind in Iraq. So … Well, goodbye Magnusson, Norwegian-Scottish oil billionaire. An otherwise nice guy. S&W has done a fair amount of work for him over the years, so he was happy to have a doppelgänger for a couple of days. I’m the spitting image of him. Great idea of yours, Mike. And like you said, the money is good. But …’

‘Nobody’s perfect, Keith.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ Keith Mallory laughed a mirthless laugh. ‘Do something to them, Mike. Especially the young one. He’s pure evil. A sick fucker.’

‘I’ll try,’ Michael said.

Michael Sander raised his head and looked over the Englishman’s shoulder to the higher ground, with moraine debris and willow thickets further up.

‘How many, Keith?’

‘Three.’

‘Where?’

The Englishman smiled, but he didn’t move.

‘Somewhere right behind me. I’m sorry, Mike.’

‘So am I, Keith.’

Mallory started to turn, to indicate a spot behind him, when the shot was fired. The bullet arrived at the same time as its echo. It hit the small man between his shoulder blades, then passed through his chest, and Lene heard and felt a spray of blood hit her face and clothing. The Englishman’s knees buckled and he stumbled forwards without trying to cushion his fall. His legs lay tangled under his body, and his arms parallel to his sides, as if he had fallen while kneeling in prayer.

She started screaming, and looked down to her blood-splattered hands. She was about to run to the dead man when Michael grabbed hold of her. He was phenomenally strong and she couldn’t move.

‘Stand still, for Christ’s sake, woman!’ he hissed. ‘Look! Look, God dammit.’

‘What?!’

Michael held his hand in front of her chest and caught a quivering red and a green dot in his palm.

‘Laser sights. Two of them. Right above your heart. Now do you understand?’

She nodded and her legs nearly gave way under her.

The red and green dots wandered up to the machine pistol she carried over her shoulder. Very carefully Michael removed it, emptied out the ammunition with exaggerated, slow movements and tossed it aside. The busy little dots dived down to the pistol in her hip holster and he repeated the procedure. The pistol pinged when it hit a stone some metres away.

Then he meshed his fingers behind his neck and nodded to her.

She copied him.

‘Michael, can’t we …?’ she began.

‘No.’

‘He was your friend,’ she said, looking at the crumpled, immobile body.

‘Yes.’

‘So what does it mean, Michael?’

‘Nothing. It means nothing at all. We’re finished. They won.’

Two figures began to emerge from the rocks and the crippled willow bushes half a kilometre away. They strolled along at a leisurely pace. They had all the time in the world.