Herman Kluit nodded to his Filipina housemaid for her to take away the empty glass.
‘You remember rightly, Harry,’ Herman Kluit said. ‘It’s still on my mantelpiece. Fortunately I do not know if it has ever been used. A souvenir. It reminds me of what there is in the heart of darkness. That’s always useful, Harry. No, I’ve neither seen it nor heard of it being used anywhere else. It’s a complicated piece of technology, you know, with all these springs and needles. Requires a special alloy. Coltan is correct. Yes indeed. Very rare. The person from whom I purchased my apple, Eddie Van Boorst, claimed only twenty-four had been made, and that he had twenty-two of them, one of which was twenty-four-carat gold. That’s right, there are twenty-four needles as well. How did you know? Apparently the number twenty-four had something to do with the engineer’s sister, I don’t recall what. But that may also have been something Van Boorst said to push up the price. He’s Belgian, isn’t he.’
Kluit’s laughter transmuted into coughing. Damned fever.
‘However, he ought to have some idea of where the apples are. He lived in a splendid house in Goma, in north Kivu, by the border to Rwanda. The address?’ Kluit coughed again. ‘Goma gets a new street every day, and now and then half the town is buried under lava, so addresses don’t exist, Harry. But the post office has a list of all the whites. No, I have no idea if he still lives in Goma. Or whether he is still alive, for that matter. Life expectancy in the Congo is thirty-something, Harry. For whites also. Besides, the town is as good as under siege. Exactly. No, of course you haven’t heard of the war. No one has.’
Dumbfounded, Gunnar Hagen stared at Harry and leaned across his desk.
‘You want to go to Rwanda?’ he said.
‘Just a flying visit,’ Harry said. ‘Two days including the flights.’
‘To investigate what?’
‘What I said. A missing persons case. Adele Vetlesen. Kaja will go to Ustaoset to see if she can find out who Adele was travelling with before she disappeared.’
‘Why can’t you just ring up and ask them to check the guest book?’
‘Because the cabin in Havass is self-service,’ said Kaja, who had settled in the chair next to Harry’s. ‘But anyone who stays in a Tourist Association cabin has to sign the guest book and state their destination. It’s compulsory because if anyone’s reported missing in the mountains, the search party will know where to concentrate their efforts. I’m hoping Adele and her companion gave a full name and address.’
Gunnar Hagen scratched his wreath of hair with both hands. ‘And none of this has anything to do with the other murders?’
Harry stuck out his bottom lip. ‘Not as far as I can see, boss. Can you?’
‘Hm. And why should I decimate the travel budget for such an extravagant trip?’
‘Because human trafficking is a priority,’ Kaja said. ‘Hence the Minister of Justice’s statement to the press earlier this week.’
‘Anyway,’ Harry said, stretching upwards and entwining his fingers behind his head, ‘it may well be that other things come to light in the process, things which might lead to us cracking other cases.’
Gunnar Hagen scrutinised his inspector thoughtfully.
‘Boss,’ Harry added.
30
Guest Book
A sign on an unassuming yellow station building announced that they were in Ustaoset. Kaja checked that they had arrived on schedule, 10.44. She looked out. The sun was shining on the snow-covered plains and porcelain-white mountains. Apart from a clump of houses and a two-storey hotel, Ustaoset was bare rock. To be fair, there were small cabins dotted around and the odd confused shrub, but it was still a wilderness. Beside the station building, almost on the platform itself, stood a lonely SUV with the engine idling. From the train it had seemed as if there wasn’t a breath of wind. But when Kaja alighted, the wind seemed to pierce right through her clothing: special thermal underwear, anorak, ski boots.
A figure jumped out of the SUV and came towards her. He had the low winter sun behind him. Kaja squinted. Light, confident walk, a brilliant smile and an outstretched hand. She stiffened. It was Even.
‘Aslak Krongli,’ the man said, giving her hand a firm squeeze. ‘County Officer.’
‘Kaja Solness.’
‘It’s cold, yes? Not like in the lowlands, eh?’
‘Exactly,’ Kaja said, returning the smile.
‘I can’t join you at the cabin today. There’s been an avalanche. A tunnel’s closed, and we have to redirect traffic.’ Without asking he took her skis, swung them over his shoulder and began to walk towards the SUV. ‘But I’ve got the man who keeps an eye on the mountain cabins to drive you there. Odd Utmo. Is that alright?’
‘Fine,’ said Kaja, who was only too pleased. It meant perhaps she could escape all the questions about why Oslo Police were suddenly interested in a missing persons case from Drammen.
Krongli drove her the five hundred metres or so to the hotel. There was a man sitting on a yellow snowmobile in the icy square in front of the entrance. He was wearing a red snowsuit, a leather hat with ear flaps, a scarf around his mouth and large goggles.
When he pushed up the goggles and mumbled his name, Kaja saw that one eye was a white, transparent membrane, as though there had been a milk spillage. The other eye studied her from top to toe without embarrassment. The man’s erect posture could have belonged to a youngster, but his face was old.
‘Kaja. Thanks for turning up at such short notice,’ she said.
‘I’m paid,’ Odd Utmo said, looked at his watch, pulled down the scarf and spat. Kaja saw the glint of an orthodontic brace between the snus-stained teeth. The gobbet of tobacco made a black star on the ice.
‘Hope you’ve had a bite to eat and a piss.’
Kaja laughed, but Utmo had already straddled the snowmobile and turned his back on her.
She looked at Krongli, who in the meantime had firmly stowed the skis and poles under the straps so they now spanned the length of the snowmobile, together with Utmo’s skis and a bundle of what looked like red sticks of dynamite plus a rifle with telescopic sights.
Krongli shrugged and flashed his boyish smile again. ‘Good luck, hope you find…’
The rest was drowned by the roar of the engine. Kaja quickly mounted. To her relief she saw handles she could hold on to, so that she wouldn’t have to cling to the white-eyed old man. The exhaust fumes surrounded them; then they started with a jerk.
Utmo stood with his knees like shock absorbers and used his body weight to balance the snowmobile, which he guided past the hotel, over a snowdrift into the soft snow and diagonally up the first gentle slope. On reaching the top with a view to the north, Kaja saw a boundless expanse of white spread out before them. Utmo turned with an enquiring nod. Kaja nodded back that everything was OK. Then he accelerated. Kaja watched the buildings disappear through the fountain of snow spraying off the drive belts.
Kaja had often heard people say that snowy plains made them think of deserts. It made her think of the days and nights with Even on his ocean racer.
The snowmobile sliced through the vast, empty landscape. The combination of snow and wind had erased, smoothed over, levelled the contours until they were one huge ocean in which the tall mountain, Hallingskarvet, towered like a menacing monster wave. There were no sudden movements; the weight of the snowmobile and the softness of the snow made all movements gentle, cushioned. Kaja rubbed her nose and cheeks carefully to ensure enough blood was circulating. She had seen what even relatively minor frostbite could do to faces. The engine’s monotonous roar and the terrain’s reassuring uniformity had lulled her into a drowsy state until the engine died and they came to a standstill. She woke up and looked at her watch. Her first thought was that the engine had cut out and they were at least a forty-five-minute drive from civilisation. How far was it on skis? Three hours? Five? She had no idea. Utmo had already jumped off and was loosening the skis from the scooter.
‘Is there something wrong…?’ she began, but stopped when Utmo stood up and pointed to the little valley in front of them.
