looked at each other in silence.
‘So that’s the first checkpoint?’ Uriah asked
finally. ‘After Salzburg?’ The conductor nodded.
‘Thank you,’ Uriah said.
The conductor cleared his throat: ‘I had a son
your age. He fell at the front, by Dnerp.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Well, sorry to have woken you, Fräulein. Mein
Herr.’
He saluted and was gone.
Helena made sure the door was completely
closed. Then she hid her face in her hands.
‘How could I have been so naive!’ she sobbed.
‘Don’t cry now,’ he said, putting his arm around
her shoulder. ‘I should have thought of the papers.
After all, I knew I couldn’t just move around
freely.’
‘But what if you tell them you’re on sick leave
and say you felt like going to Paris? That’s a part
of the Third Reich. It’s —’
‘Then they’ll ring the hospital and Brockhard will
say that I absconded.’
She leaned against him and sobbed in his lap. He
caressed her sleek brown hair.
‘Besides, I should have known that this was too
good to be true,’ he said. ‘I mean – me and
Schwester Helena in Paris?’
She could hear the smile in his voice.
‘No, I’ll wake up in my hospital bed soon,
thinking that was one hell of a dream. And look
forward to you bringing me my breakfast. Anyway,
you’re on night shift tomorrow. You haven’t
forgotten that, have you? Then I can tell you about
the time Daniel filched twenty rations from the
Swedish unit.’
She lifted a tear-stained face to him.
‘Kiss me, Uriah.’
28
Siljan, Telemark. 22 February 2000.
HARRY CHECKED HIS WATCH AGAIN AND
CAUTIOUSLY pressed his foot on the accelerator.
The appointment was for four o’clock. If he
arrived after dusk, the whole trip would be a waste
of time. What was left of the winter tyre tread
keyed into the ice with a scrunch. Even though he
had only driven forty kilometres on the winding,
icy forest path, it seemed several hours since he
had turned off the main road. The cheap sunglasses
he had bought at the petrol station hadn’t helped
much, and his eyes smarted from the bright light
reflecting off the snow.
At long last, he caught sight of the police car with
the Skien registration number at the edge of the
road. He braked warily, pulled over and took the
skis off his roof rack. They came from a
Trondheim ski manufacturer who had gone
bankrupt fifteen years ago. That must have been
roughly the same time as he put on the wax, which
was now a tough grey mass underneath the skis. He
found the track from the path up to the chalet as it
had been described. The skis stayed on the track as
if glued; he couldn’t have moved sideways if he
had wanted to. The sun hung low over the spruce
trees when he reached his destination. On the steps
of a black log chalet sat two men in anoraks and a
boy Harry, who didn’t know any teenagers,
guessed to be somewhere between twelve and
sixteen.
‘Ove Bertelsen?’ Harry enquired, resting on his
ski poles. He was out of breath.
‘That’s me,’ one of the men said, standing up to
shake hands. ‘And this is Officer Folldal.’
The second man gave a measured nod.
Harry supposed it must have been the boy who
found the cartridge shells.
‘Wonderful to get away from the Oslo air, I
imagine,’ Bertelsen said. Harry pulled out a pack
of cigarettes. ‘Even more wonderful to get away
from the Skien air, I would think.’ Folldal took off
his cap and straightened his back.
Bertelsen smiled: ‘Contrary to what people say,
the air in Skien is cleaner than in any other
Norwegian town.’
Harry cupped his hands round a match and lit his
cigarette. ‘Is that right? I’ll have to remember that.
Have you found anything?’
‘Over there.’
The other three put on their skis, and with Folldal
in the lead they trudged along a track to a clearing
in the forest. Folldal pointed with his pole to a
black rock protruding twenty centimetres above the
snow.
‘The boy found the shells in the snow by that
rock. I reckon it was a hunter out practising. You
can see the ski tracks nearby. It hasn’t snowed for
over a week, so they could well be his. Looks like
he was wearing those broad Telemark skis.’
Harry crouched down. He ran a finger along the
rock where it met the broad ski track.
‘Or old wooden skis.’
‘Oh yes?’
He held up a tiny splinter of wood.
‘Well, I never,’ Folldal said, looking across at
Bertelsen.
Harry turned to the boy. He was wearing a pair of