The Body in the Fjord

Pix finished her chocolate bar, crumpled the papers, and stuffed them in her pocket. She walked back into the room and sat down at the desk. The list looked somewhat skimpy, yet it would serve as a mnemonic.

Jennifer Olsen was in excellent physical shape. Oscar would be no match for her. Had she somehow determined a direct link between him and her father’s and grandmother’s deaths? Had she waited for her mother to die before seeking revenge? Pix thought that someone like Jennifer would feel getting rid of Oscar Eriksen was morally justified. The law might not be able to get to him, but she could. Jennifer had been upset at Erik’s death and Kari’s disappearance. Upset at the tour’s response. Pix didn’t see any links there or links to any kind of smuggling, although there was the man with a bag on her balcony. Had they thought he had been spotted and decided Jennifer better cry wolf? Fatigued now, Pix wrote hurriedly, O.M.—yes! The rest iffy.

Had she missed anybody? The bachelor farmers, but Pix felt safe in crossing them off. They might have descended like a hoard of their Viking ancestors on the man for cheating at cards, beating him to a pulp, but slipping out at dark to give the miscreant a helping hand to whatever the opposite of Valhalla was did not seem their style.

Everyone else on the tour had either arrived at Voss when Pix and Ursula had or were, like the farmers, such far-fetched possibilities that even suspicious Faith would have eliminated them—such as Mrs. Fields, with her malfunctioning hearing aids and inhalers, all too genuine, Pix had observed. She was spunky, though.

The guides had been with the tour since the beginning, the stewards since Kari and Erik had disappeared, but they had been in Bergen, ready to take their places, Pix recalled. The country was narrow, only exceeding a hundred miles across in the south. It didn’t take long to get from one place to another. Presumably, Captain Hagen had been

on the west coast, waiting for the tour to arrive and board his vessel. Pix couldn’t think of any ties any of them would have had to Oscar Melling, but they all knew Kari and Erik. She wrote down their names under Staff and wearily decided to call it a night. Sonja’s antipathy toward Kari and her preference for Erik had been obvious. Who knew what else had been going on within the Scandie Sights staff? The weight of the two deaths pressed on her. Erik’s, so untimely, especially ironic in this country, which had one of the world’s highest life expectancies. Erik was supposed to have seen many decades come and go. She was beginning to feel she had—and very recently.

Pix folded up the cryptic notes and put the paper in her passport case with the pictures of Kari and Erik, Hanna and Sven. She took the one of Kari’s parents out and held it in front of her. She had never asked Marit if she knew what had happened to Sven—if she knew where he was now. It was a stupid oversight. All this time, she’d been imagining Kari on an identity quest involving both parents, but perhaps she already knew where her father was, although Pix had never heard any mention of him. She must remember to ask Marit in the morning whether Marit had ever known Oscar Eriksen, although surely she would have mentioned this.

Pix opened the list one last time. Only Lynette and Roy junior were too young and far removed not to have been directly touched by the war. Others besides Jennifer might be nursing secret wounds—and hatreds, including the staff.

She filled her pockets with everything Faith had thought she might need, added her camera, and went to bed. Just before climbing in, she took the torn piece of newspaper and put that in her passport case, as well, then slipped it into the bag she carried with her wallet, guidebook, and treats for Mother.

She didn’t bother to pull the light-obscuring drapes. She didn’t need to. Pix set the alarm, put the clock on the table, and fell promptly, deeply asleep.

When the alarm rang at three, it pulled Pix from a troubled sleep of twisted dreams. She swung her legs over the side of the bed in the half dark and tried to recall some of the images, but in the way of dreams, the harder she struggled to visualize them, the more elusive her memories became. Marit had been there, but a stern Marit. Pix had been trying to get to a child, a child who was crying. At one point, a vivid picture of herself shouting reappeared and vanished. Giving up, but unsettled, she went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, peed, ready to face the inevitable. The trip ended today. It was now or never. Never sounded pretty good, but then, it also meant she’d never know.

Well aware of her laden pockets, she closed the door behind her after looking up and down the empty corridor an unnecessary number of times. She fully expected a hand on the shoulder again, but this time it would be the inspektor, or one of the other members of the Norwegian politi, not Carol Peterson.

She moved slowly down the stairs and then more quickly to the door to the outside. She put her hand on the long horizontal bar and pushed. It didn’t move. Damn Marcussen! Forget about trust. He’d locked the door. What was worse, the glowing red light above indicated the alarm had been set. There was a sticker—SECURITAS—that she hadn’t remembered seeing before, although from the prevalence of these elsewhere, Securitas seemed to be the security system of choice throughout the country. So much security, so little crime. She could hear the inspektor’s views now. “Try not to take any walks,” he’d said. Well, he was making absolutely sure she, for one, wouldn’t.

The idea of lowering herself from the third-floor balcony occurred to her; however, it was fraught with not simply the danger of discovery but the danger of falling and breaking an essential bone or two, which would be an enormous inconvenience and certainly counterproductive. No, she’d have to go out the front door. There was no other way. Coming back wasn’t a problem. By that

time, she’d either have a tale to tell or could once more use the “couldn’t sleep” line and let them think what they wished. She crept down the corridor to the door that led to the lobby, just before the gift shop. The door had a window in it and she could see that there was only one person on the desk. Marcussen had stationed a man by the front door, but his head was lolled over in sleep. She could hear his snores even through the door. The clerk disappeared into the back room and Pix catapulted out, running noiselessly in her soft Reeboks to the bar, crouching down behind the substantial mahogany.

The clerk returned with a magazine and seemed to be arranging herself for the night. There was no way Pix could leave without being seen. For a moment, time froze. The policeman slept, the clerk seemed transfixed by the printed page, and Pix’s muscles began to ache from the awkward position she was in. The phone rang. The night clerk spoke rapidly in Norwegian, her cheeks turning pink. A boyfriend? A tryst? Please, please, please. The young woman hung up and took a compact from under the counter, then a comb. Definitely an assignation. But where? Pix felt the balls of her feet growing numb. She tried carefully bouncing up and down to keep the circulation going. The compact was snapped shut and comb thrown down. The clerk ran her fingers through her hair and fetched a large pocketbook from a drawer. She disappeared again into the back room. More work needed to be done apparently, and what Pix was counting on was that a larger mirror was needed. She had to assume this is what the clerk was headed for, which would give Pix enough time to get out the door. But if that was not what was up and she returned right away, Pix would be stymied.

She had to take the chance. She crawled out from behind the bar and continued on all fours, passing close to the somnambulant officer of the law. She couldn’t stand up. There might be one of those mirrors showing someone in the back room exactly what was going on in front. Her heart was beating rapidly and, despite the cleanliness of

Kvikne’s, her hands and knees were beginning to feel skitten.

She was almost at the door. Now, she’d have to stand up to open it. The light seemed glaring and surely someone would spot her. A quick twist and she was outside. Glancing behind her, the scene looked impossibly serene. A cop in the arms of Morpheus and an absent clerk dreaming of more active arms. Reassured that she hadn’t been seen, Pix didn’t waste any more time in contemplation, but took to her feet and sprinted across the lawn, taking care to stay well away from the lighted path. Every dark bush suggested a figure, yet she reached the village, still apparently the only person up and about.

Cautiously, she clung to the shadows of the few buildings and made her way to the dock past the towering Midsummer bonfire pile. This time, there were no voices issuing forth from the Viking cruiser, and so Pix hurriedly climbed on board and went downstairs to the lower deck. Piece of cake. She was feeling pretty cocky—until she realized the door to the main cabin was locked, too. “I thought Norwegians were supposed to be so honest,” she mumbled to herself. “All these locked doors.”

She didn’t see any indication of an alarm, no telltale stickers. She had also looked for an alarm system during the day, without finding any signs of one on board. Anyway, she had no choice. Taking the skeleton keys from her