Marianne would have let her know.
Fear sank its teeth into the back of her neck. She made a sudden decision and rushed over to the corridor leading from customs control. It probably wasn’t advisable to flout the rule forbidding anyone from going further down the corridor. For all she knew, the security measures adopted by the airline industry after 9/11 might mean the customs officers had orders to shoot to kill.
‘Hello?’ she called out, poking her head around the wall. ‘Is anyone there?’
No response.
‘Hello?’ she called again, a little louder this time.
A man wearing the uniform of the customs service came over from the opposite wall, five metres away.
‘You can’t go in that way!’
‘No, I know. I was just wondering… I’m waiting for someone on the flight from Copenhagen. The one that landed an hour ago. SK1442. But she hasn’t turned up. I just wondered if you could…? Could you possibly be kind enough to check if there are any passengers left in there?’
For a moment it looked as if he might say no. It wasn’t his job to run errands for the general public. Then he changed his mind for some reason, shrugged his shoulders and gave a little smile.
‘I don’t think there’s anyone there. Just a minute.’
He disappeared.
Maybe her mobile needed recharging. Of course, she thought, breathing a little more easily. God knows it could be difficult finding a payphone these days. And if you found one, you didn’t have any change. Most took cards, of course, but when she thought about it, there must be something wrong with Marianne’s mobile.
‘Empty. Silent as the grave.’ The customs officer had his hands in his pockets. ‘We’re waiting for two or three more flights tonight, but at the moment there’s no one there. And the luggage carousel for the Copenhagen flight is empty.’
He took his hands out of his pockets and made an apologetic gesture.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your help.’
She moved away and set off towards the escalator leading up to the departures hall. Took out her mobile. No messages. No missed calls. Once again she tried to ring Marianne, but it went straight to voice-mail. Her legs started to move of their own accord. The escalator was going too slowly, so she ran up it. At the top, she stopped dead.
She had never seen the departures hall so empty and quiet.
Only a few check-in desks were staffed, the operators looking bored. A couple of them were reading newspapers. At the southern end she could hear the hum of a cleaning machine gliding slowly across the floor, a dark-skinned man at the controls. Only one security post was open, and she couldn’t see anyone there. It was like a scene from a film, a Doomsday film. Gardermoen should be full of life, exhausting and unfriendly, teeming with countless travellers and employees who never did more than they absolutely had to.
Her heart was in her mouth as she headed resolutely for the Scandinavian Airlines desk on the other side of the hall. There was no one there either. She swallowed several times and wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.
A well-built woman emerged from the back room.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes, I’m here to meet…’
The woman sat down behind the barrier. She logged on to her computer without looking up.
‘I’ve come to pick up a friend who should have been on the plane from Copenhagen.’
‘Hasn’t he turned up?’
‘She. It’s a she. Marianne Kleive.’
The woman behind the desk looked up in some confusion before she managed to rearrange her expression and went back to concentrating on her keyboard.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Quite.’
‘But she didn’t turn up. She’s been in Australia, and the flight was supposed to land in Tokyo and Copenhagen en route. I wonder if you could check whether she was on board?’
‘I can’t, unfortunately. I’m not allowed to give out that kind of information.’
Perhaps it was the threatening emptiness of the gigantic hall. Perhaps it was the sleepless nights or the inexplicable unease that had haunted her all week. Or it could have been the fact that she knew, deep down inside, she had every reason to despair. Whatever the cause, the woman in the red anorak started to cry in public for the first time in her adult life.
Slowly, silently, the tears ran down her cheeks, through the dimples on either side of her mouth that were so deep they were visible even now, and continued over her pointed chin. Slowly the big fat drops landed on the pale wood of the desk.
‘Are you crying?’
The Scandinavian Airlines clerk suddenly looked more sympathetic.
The woman in the red anorak didn’t reply.
‘Listen,’ said the clerk, lowering her voice. ‘It’s late. You must be tired. There’s no one here and…’ She gave a quick sideways glance at the door leading to the back room. ‘Which flight did you say?’
The woman placed a folded piece of paper on the desk.
‘A copy of the itinerary,’ she whispered, wiping her face with the backs of her hands.
She couldn’t see the screen from where she was standing. Instead she fixed her gaze on the other woman’s eyes. They flicked up and down between the keys and the screen. Suddenly the furrow above her eyes became more pronounced.
‘She had a ticket,’ she said eventually. ‘But she wasn’t on the plane. She…’ The keys rattled beneath her dancing fingers. ‘Marianne Kleive had a ticket, but she never checked in.’
‘In Copenhagen?’
‘No. In Sydney.’
It didn’t make sense. It was impossible. Marianne would never, ever have failed to get in touch if something had prevented her from coming home. It was more than thirty hours since the plane had left Australian soil, and in that time Marianne would definitely have found a phone. A computer with Internet access. Something, and none of this made any sense at all.
‘Just a moment,’ said the clerk, picking up the copy of the itinerary again.
The woman in the anorak was forty-three years old and her name was Synnove. The name suited her perfectly. Her blonde hair was braided, her face completely free of make-up, and she could easily be taken for ten years younger. She had been 140 metres from the top of Mount Everest when she was forced to turn back, and she had sailed around the world. She had encountered pirates off the Canary Islands and had been a hair’s breadth from drowning in a diving accident in Stord. Synnove Hessel was a woman who could think quickly and constructively, and who had saved both her own life and the lives of others on several occasions with her quick thinking.
Now everything stood still. Utterly, utterly still.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman behind the desk whispered. ‘Marianne Kleive had a ticket to Sydney last Sunday. But this shows…’
The other woman’s expression stabbed her like a knife.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said anyway. ‘She didn’t actually travel. Marianne Kleive never used her ticket. At least not for the return journey to Sydney. Of course, she could have gone somewhere else. With a different ticket, I mean.’
Without saying thank you for the kind and highly irregular service, without saying anything at all, without even picking up the copy of the itinerary which had not been followed, Synnove Hessel turned away from the information desk and began to run through the deserted departure hall.
She had no idea where she was going.
The Beloved Son
