hand over their mobile to a man who says he needs to go away to make a personal call. The best he can hope for is to wait until he leaves the train and look for a public telephone.
If he is to get hold of Elisabeth before she finishes work today, he needs to take action soon. Should he stay on the train until its final destination? Or is it better to get off along the way, at a smaller station? It will be easier to keep track of what is going on in a small town, fewer people around. However, if he is discovered and someone comes after him, he will be making their job easier.
An ad above the luggage shelves further along the carriage attracts Thorleif’s attention. He looks at the pictures and reads the caption. Get your dream cabin now. Under the caption there is a scenic photo of mountains and open spaces, white, beautiful and dramatic with small dark cabins dotted around the landscape. It says Ustaoset at the bottom as if the ad promotes a film starring the Norwegian winter.
Thorleif straightens up in his seat. The ad reminds him of Einar Flotaker, a childhood friend with whom he lost contact after they both had children. But Thorleif will never forget the trip they made as teenagers many, many years ago to Einar’s family’s cabin in Ustaoset. It was the height of winter, Thorleif recalls, and it was down to minus thirty degrees Celsius when they arrived. Once they got off the train they had to walk quite a distance from the station lugging their supplies and skis before they reached it. Inside the cabin it was minus twelve degrees before they got the fire going, and it wasn’t until the next day that they could take off their coats and walk around in normal indoor clothes.
The cabin is probably still there, Thorleif thinks. And I can’t imagine that anyone is using it at the moment.
Chapter 51
The footsteps stop right in front of him. Henning blinks and looks up, sees red shorts and a naked torso. Gunnar Goma is smiling down at him.
‘What are you sitting here for?’ his neighbour asks him, cheerfully but surprised. Henning looks around. He is slumped on the stairwell.
‘I–I don’t know,’ he replies.
It’s like waking up in the middle of a dream. Or perhaps he is dreaming? No. If he had been, his feet wouldn’t have been hurting.
‘How long have you been sitting here?’
‘I’m… I’m not really sure.’
Their voices echo between the walls.
‘I was just going out for a run, and then I find you here. I thought you were a ghost.’
Henning tries to get up. The pain shoots through his feet again.
‘It looks as if you’ve stepped on some glass.’
‘What time is it?’ Henning stammers.
‘Time? I don’t know, I never look at the clock these days. I look outside to see if it’s light or dark, hot or cold. That’s all a man of my age needs to know.’
‘Mm.’
Henning wants to pull himself to standing, but the banister is on the opposite side to him.
‘Do you have some disinfectant upstairs?’ Goma asks him.
‘I think so.’
‘Okay, you can’t stay here. Take my hand.’
Henning looks up at him.
‘Take my hand,’ Goma repeats.
Henning finds Goma’s face and eyes, discovers a determination and a gravity he hasn’t seen there before. He never would have thought that he would need helping up the stairs by a seventy-six-year-old bypass patient naked from the waist up. Nevertheless, he holds out his hand and staggers to his feet. He moves like a drunk. They take the stairs one step at a time. Goma wheezes. His old hand feels rough and full of cartilage. Working hands, Henning thinks. All the time he can hear someone sawing, hammering or hitting something in the courtyard.
They reach his flat. Henning fishes out his keys and opens the door, allows himself be led into the hallway. He stops, looks at the folding steps and the smoke detector, then he looks at Goma.
No, Henning tells himself. This is a job you need to do on your own.
He thanks his neighbour for his help.
‘Don’t mention it,’ Goma says.
Henning looks down. ‘Sorry, I don’t really know what… what happened-’
Goma holds up his hands. ‘Don’t worry about it. We all have our senior moments. I once came round just as I was about to go into Kondomeriet. I don’t know how I ended up in front of a sex shop.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes. But once I was there, I obviously had to go in and-’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Henning interrupts him and holds up his hand. A long moment passes in silence. They look at each other.
‘Can I offer you a cup of coffee or something?’ Henning asks.
‘No, thank you, I’m off to Sultan’s to buy tomatoes.’
‘Some other time perhaps?’
‘Yes, I would like that.’ Goma looks at him for a long time. ‘Right. Got to go. You take it easy now.’
‘You too.’
Chapter 52
It has just gone five o’clock when Thorleif gets off at Ustaoset Station on wobbly legs. He stops and surveys the area, looks at what must be Hallingskarvet mountain range up to his right. The peaks are covered by velvety circles of mist. Dotted randomly around the landscape below are cabins, big and small, in a range of colours. In front of him the mountain hotel, with its brown and red cladding, takes up a fair amount of space. There are several apartment blocks close to the hotel. Route 7 winds its way towards Haugastol and Bergen in parallel with the railway tracks. Across the tracks there is a little lake that sparkles in the late afternoon sunshine.
Thorleif starts to walk. It is hot. He gets even hotter when he realises it’s too late to call Elisabeth. She is bound to be home by now, probably busy feeding their starving children and irritated that he isn’t back yet or answering his mobile.
Normally she would have gone to the gym on a Thursday night, but now she will have to stay at home. Otherwise he could have tried calling her there. But she won’t be going tonight even if she could find a babysitter at short notice. Isn’t there anyone else he can call? Someone he can get to visit Elisabeth or who could bring her to a neutral place?
Calling her sister, his in-laws or his parents would set any number of alarm bells ringing. And if he had been the one hunting someone, apparently with access to unlimited funds, the first thing he would have done would be to check with their next of kin or friends to see if there had been any sort of contact. One of the football mums, perhaps. But Thorleif barely knows who they are or what their names are. Nor does he have their numbers. Besides, it occurs to him, it would be stupid to get even more innocent people mixed up with this. You’ll just have to wait, Thorleif concludes, until Elisabeth is back at work. This means she faces an unbearable evening and night.
As the train continues on towards Bergen, Thorleif follows a man and a woman who also have business in Ustaoset on a Thursday afternoon. They walk separately. Thorleif takes care to lag behind them while simultaneously looking as if he knows his way around. As if it was quite natural for him to get off the train right there, right now.
He leaves the platform, crosses route 7 and walks down towards the petrol station. Ustaoset’s only supermarket greets him with the words lebensmittel and groceries displayed above one other on a white wall.
