Death in Oslo (21 page)

‘When the crime is discovered,’ he said curtly.

‘And?’

‘In the period immediately after,’ he said, uncertainly. ‘Before the area is cordoned off and all the tasks are allocated. When everything is just . . . chaos.’ He swallowed.

‘Exactly,’ Johanne replied in a quiet voice.

‘Shit,’ said Adam.

‘The President may not have disappeared during the night. She may have been taken later. Just after seven o’clock, when everybody already thought she was gone.’

‘But . . . she wasn’t there! The room was empty and there was a note from the kidnappers . . .’

‘Wencke Bencke knew about that too. Now the whole of Norway knows about it. What do you think the function of that note was?’

‘To tell—’

‘A message like that fools the brain into drawing conclusions,’ Johanne interrupted him. She was talking faster now. ‘It makes us believe that something has already happened. My guess is that the Secret Service guys looked very quickly around the room when they read it. It’s a big suite, Adam. They probably checked the bathroom, and maybe they opened a couple of cupboards. But the note . . . well, the purpose of that was to get them out of there. As quickly as possible. And if things are chaotic at an ordinary crime scene, I can only imagine what it was like at the Hotel Opera yesterday morning. With two national authorities and . . .’

They were both silent.

At last he could hear Ragnhild. Someone was talking to her and she was laughing. He couldn’t make out the words and it was difficult to determine the gender of the voice. It sounded coarse and husky, but didn’t necessarily sound like a man.

‘Adam?’

‘I’m still here.’

‘You have to get them to watch the tapes from the hour after the alarm was raised. I think it would probably be about fifteen or twenty minutes later.’

He didn’t answer.

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’ll phone you again this evening. I promise.’

Then she hung up.

Adam stood stock still for a few seconds, staring at the phone. Even his hunger wasn’t bothering him any more; he didn’t feel anything.

F
ayed Muffasa was four years older than his brother. He had shorter hair and was better dressed than Al Muffet, who was wearing jeans and a checked flannel hunting shirt, but they were otherwise remarkably similar. Al was about to get into the car to drive his youngest daughter to school when Fayed arrived and climbed out of the hired car with a broad smile.

He’s so like me, Al thought as he held out his hand. I always forget how alike we are.

‘Welcome,’ he said, in a serious voice. ‘You’re earlier than I’d expected.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Fayed said, as if it was he who had been inconvenienced. ‘I’ll just wait here until you get back. Hi, Louise!’ He bent down towards the passenger-side window and looked in.

‘My, you’ve grown!’ he shouted and signed to her to wind down the window. ‘It is Louise, isn’t it?’

She opened the door instead and got out.

‘Hi,’ she said, shyly.

‘How pretty you are!’ Fayed exclaimed and opened his arms. ‘And what a wonderful place you’ve got here. Great air!’ He took a deep breath, then grinned.

‘We’re happy here,’ Al said. ‘Just make . . .’

His keys rattled as he walked back towards the house. He unlocked the door and left it open.

‘Sit yourself down,’ he said and pointed towards the kitchen.
‘Just help yourself to something to eat if you’re hungry. There’s still coffee in the thermos.’

‘Great.’ Fayed smiled. ‘I’ve got some reading stuff with me. I’ll just find a comfy chair and relax. When will you be back?’

Al glanced at his watch and thought a moment.

‘Just under an hour. I’m going to drop Louise off and then I’ve got something to do quickly in town. About three quarters of an hour, I should think.’

‘See you later then,’ Fayed said and went in. The netting door slammed shut behind him.

Louise had already got back into the car. Al Muffet drove slowly down the gravel track and then swung out on to the highway.

‘He seems nice,’ Louise said.

‘Sure.’

The road was bad. No one had filled the holes after the long winter’s wear. It didn’t make any difference to Al Muffet. The uneven surface forced people to lower their speed when they passed. He went over a small hill just a few hundred metres from the house and then stopped.

‘Where are you going, Dad?’

‘To have a pee,’ he said with a fleeting smile, and got out.

He stepped over the ditch by the side of the road and headed back towards the thicket on the brow of the hill. Slowly he made his way through the undergrowth, making sure the whole time that he was in the shadow of the great maple trees by the boulder that balanced on the edge of a small cliff.

Fayed had come back out. He was standing on the path midway between the house and the road, looking around. He dithered before sauntering down to the gate. The flag on the postbox was down, as the postman hadn’t been yet. Fayed studied the postbox, which Louise had been allowed to paint the year before. It was bright red, with a picture of a blue galloping horse on both sides.

Fayed straightened up and started to walk back towards the house. He was more focused now and picked up speed. He stopped by the hire car, got in and sat there without starting the engine. He might have been talking on a mobile phone, but it was difficult to say from that distance.

‘Dad, are you coming?’

Al was loath to go back.

‘Coming,’ he mumbled and pushed his way back through the undergrowth. ‘I’m just coming.’

He brushed the leaves and twigs off before getting back into the car.

‘I’m going to be really late,’ Louise complained. ‘It’s the second time this month and it’s all your fault!’

‘Yes, yes,’ Al Muffet mumbled absently, and put the car in gear.

His brother might just have wanted to stretch his legs. Maybe he wasn’t hungry. It was only natural that he might want some fresh air after the long journey. Why then did he get back into the car? Why had he come in the first place, and why on earth had he, for the first time that Al could remember, been so friendly?

‘Watch where you’re going!’

He turned the wheel sharply to the right and just managed to avoid driving off the road. The car skidded in the opposite direction and he instinctively slammed on the brakes. The back wheel got stuck in the deep ditch. He released the brakes and the car shot forwards, and then came to a stop diagonally across the highway.

‘What are you doing?’ Louise screamed.

Just a slight paranoia attack, Al Muffet thought to himself. As he tried to start the car again, he said: ‘It’ll be fine, honey. Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.’

T
he American president had no idea what time or day it was any more.

She had tried to focus on the time.

They had taken her watch off and pulled a hood over her head as soon as they got in the car. She hadn’t resisted at all, as it had taken her by surprise. It was only when the engine started that she managed to pull herself together and estimated the journey to be just under half an hour. The men didn’t say a word in the course of that time, so she had at least been able to count without being distracted. They had tied her hands together in front, not behind her back. So, sitting on her own in the back seat, she could use her fingers to count. Every time she reached sixty, she grabbed hold of the next finger. When ten minutes had passed and she had no fingers left, she scratched herself on the back of her hand with a longish manicured nail. The pain helped her to remember. Three scratches. Thirty minutes. About half an hour.

Oslo was not big. A million inhabitants? More?

The weak red light on the wall by the locked door was the only thing that made it at all possible to see. She kept her eyes fixed on the red light and breathed deeply.

She must have been here for some time now. Had she fallen asleep? She had gone to the toilet in the corner of the room. It wasn’t easy to get her trousers down with tied hands, but she had managed. It was worse pulling them up. How many times had she been over to the cardboard box full of newspapers?
She tried to remember, to calculate, to get an idea of time.

She must have fallen asleep.

Oslo wasn’t big.

Not that big. Not even a million inhabitants.

Sweden was the largest. Stockholm was biggest.

Concentrate. Breathe. Think. You can do it. You know
.

Oslo was small.

Half a million? Half a million.

She didn’t think she had slept in the car. But afterwards?

Her body felt leaden. It was painful to move. She had been sitting for too long in the same position. She tried carefully to ease her thighs apart. She was astonished to discover that she had soiled herself. The smell wasn’t a problem, she couldn’t smell anything.

Breathe. Calm. You’ve been asleep. Concentrate
.

She remembered the plane landing.

The town crept up the surrounding hillsides. The fjord forced its way into the heart of the city.

Helen Lardahl Bentley closed her eyes to ward off the red darkness. She tried to recapture her impressions from Air Force One on approach to the airport, just south of Oslo.

North. It was north of the city, she eventually remembered.

It helped to keep her eyes closed.

The forests surrounding the capital were far less wild and frightening than they were made out to be in the family stories that she heard on her grandma’s lap. The elderly woman had never been to the old country, but the picture that she painted for her children and grandchildren was vivid enough: Norway was beautiful and frightening, with rugged mountains everywhere.

It wasn’t true.

From the window of Air Force One, Helen Bentley had seen a different landscape. It was friendly, with rolling hills and mountains with snow on their north-facing slopes. The
trees were starting to parade that luminous green colour that belonged to the time of year.

How big was Oslo?

They couldn’t have gone that far.

As far as she had understood, the hotel was in the centre of town. They couldn’t have taken her that far in half an hour.

They had turned quite a lot of corners. Maybe they were necessary manoeuvres, but it might just as easily have been to confuse her. She might still be in the centre.

But she might also be wrong. She might have counted wrong. Had she actually fallen asleep?

She had not slept in the car. She had kept a clear head and counted the seconds. When she twisted her hands, she could feel the three scratches with her fingertip. Three scratches meant thirty minutes.

The hood they had pulled over her head was clammy and smelt strange.

Had she fallen asleep?

Her eyes filled with tears. She opened them wide. Mustn’t cry. A tear fell from the corner of her eye and trickled down her nose towards her mouth.

Don’t cry.

Think. Open your eyes and think
.

‘You are the president of America,’ she whispered through gritted teeth. ‘You are the president of the USA, goddammit!’

It was hard to focus on one thought. Everything was fuzzy. It was as if her brain had got caught in a loop that made no sense, with arbitrary images in an increasingly confusing collage.

Responsibility, she thought, and bit her tongue until it bled. I have responsibility. I have to pull myself together. Fear is an old friend. I am used to fear. I have gone as far as a person can go and I’ve often been afraid. I have never shown it to anyone, but my enemies have frightened me. Enemies who
have threatened me and everything I stand for. I have never let myself be broken. Fear only sharpened my senses. Fear made me clear-sighted and wise.

The blood tasted sweet, like warm iron.

Helen Bentley had plenty of practice in managing fear.

But not panic.

It floored her. Not even the familiar iron claw, which was now clamped round the back of her head, could jolt her from the confused state of paralysed fear that had gripped her since she was taken from the hotel suite. The adrenalin had not made her sharp and clear-sighted, as it normally did in conflict situations or important TV programmes. Quite the opposite. When the man by the side of her bed had whispered his short message, the world stood still and the pain was so overwhelming that he had to help her to her feet.

She had only once before experienced anything like it.

And that was a long time ago, and should have been forgotten.

It should have been forgotten. I should have forgotten it by now
.

She was crying now, sobbing silently. Her tears were salty and mixed with the blood from her bitten tongue. The light by the door seemed to be getting brighter and there were threatening shadows everywhere. Even when she squeezed her eyes shut, she felt the red, dangerous dark closing in on her.

I must think. I have to think clearly.

Had she fallen asleep?

The experience of losing count of time confused her more than she might have imagined. For a moment she felt like she had been away for days, but then she reined in her rambling thoughts and made another attempt to reason.

Listen. Listen for sounds
.

She opened her ears and senses. Nothing. It was silent.

At the late supper last night, the Norwegian prime minister had told her that the national-day celebrations would be loud. That the whole city would be out.

‘This is the children’s day,’ he had told her.

Trying to reconstruct an actual event was something solid. Something to focus her thoughts on, so that they didn’t detach and swirl around like leaves in the wind. She wanted to remember. She opened her eyes and stared straight at the red lamp.

The Prime Minister had stammered, and used bullet points.

‘We don’t parade our military forces,’ he said with a thick accent, ‘as other nations do. We show the world our children.’

She hadn’t heard any happy children’s shouts since she came to this empty bunker with the horrible red light. No brass bands. Nothing other than complete silence.