Along with ‘Tony C. Leike, Entrepreneur’. Harry slowly raised his gaze and looked at Bellman.

‘Leike’s alive.’

‘What?’

‘At least his phone is. He tried to ring me while we were in Havass.’

Bellman returned Harry’s gaze without blinking. Snowflakes settled on his long eyelashes and the white stains seemed to be glowing. His voice was low, almost a whisper. ‘Visibility’s good, don’t you think, Harry? And there’s no snow in the air.’

‘Exceptional visibility,’ Harry said. ‘Not a bloody flake to be seen.’

He quickly jumped back on.

They stuttered through the snowscape, a hundred metres at a time. Located the snowmobile’s probable route, swept the tracks with a broom, took bearings, surged forward. The gouge in the left runner, probably caused by an accident, meant they could be sure they were following the right scooter tracks. In a few places, in tiny hollows or on wind-blown hillcrests, the trail was clear and they could make fast progress. But not too fast. Harry had already shouted warnings about precipices twice and they had had some very close shaves. It was getting on for four now. Bellman flicked the headlights on and off, depending on how much snow was drifting in their faces. Harry studied the map. He had no clear idea of where they were, just that they were straying further and further from Ustaoset. And that daylight was dwindling. A third of Harry was slowly beginning to worry about the trip back. Which just meant that the two-third majority couldn’t care less.

At half past four they lost the trail.

The drifting snow was so thick now they could hardly see.

‘This is madness,’ Harry shouted above the roar of the motor. ‘Why don’t we wait until tomorrow?’

Bellman turned to him and answered with a smile.

At five they picked up the trail again.

They stopped and dismounted.

‘Leads that way,’ Bellman said, trudging back to the snowmobile. ‘Come on!’

‘Wait,’ Harry said.

‘Why? Come on, it’ll soon be dark.’

‘When you shouted just now, didn’t you hear the echo?’

‘Now you mention it.’ Bellman stopped. ‘Rock face?’

‘There are no rock faces on the map,’ Harry said, turning in the direction the tracks indicated.

‘Ravine!’ he yelled. And received an answer. A very swift answer. He turned back to Bellman.

‘I think the snowmobile making these tracks is in serious trouble.’

‘What do I know about Bellman?’ Roger Gjendem repeated to gain some time. ‘He’s reputed to be very competent and extremely professional.’ What was Nordbo, the legendary editor, really after? ‘He does all the right things,’ Gjendem went on. ‘Learns quickly, can handle us press types now. Sort of a whizz-kid. Er, that is if you know…’

‘I am somewhat conversant with the term, yes,’ said Bent Nordbo with an acidic smile, his right thumb and forefinger furiously rubbing the handkerchief on his glasses. ‘However, basically, I am more interested in if there any rumours doing the rounds.’

‘Rumours?’ Gjendem said, failing to notice a relapse into his old habit of leaving his mouth open after speaking.

‘I am truly hopeful you understand the concept, Gjendem. Since that is what you and your employer live off. Well?’

Gjendem hesitated. ‘There are all sorts of rumours.’

Nordbo rolled his eyes. ‘Speculation. Fabrication. Direct lies. I’m not bothered with the niceties here, Gjendem. Turn the sack of gossip inside out, reveal the malevolence.’

‘N-negative things then?’

Nordbo released a pondorous sigh. ‘Gjendem, my dear man, do you often hear rumours about people’s sobriety, financial generosity, fidelity to partners and non-psychopathic leadership styles? Could that be because the function of rumours is to please the rest of us by putting us in a better light?’ Nordbo was finished with one lens and engaged on the cleansing operation of the second.

‘It’s a very, very idle rumour,’ Gjendem said and added with alacrity: ‘And I know for certain of others with the selfsame reputation who categorically are not.’

‘As an ex-editor I would recommend you delete either for certain or categorically, it’s a tautology,’ Nordbo said. ‘Categorically are not what?’

‘Erm. Jealous.’

‘Aren’t we all jealous?’

‘Violently jealous.’

‘Has he beaten up his wife?’

‘No, I don’t think he’s laid a hand on her. Or had reason to. However, those who have given her a second look…’

61

The Drop

Harry and Bellman lay on their stomachs at the edge where the snowmobile tracks stopped. They stared down. Steep, black rock faces sliced inwards to the ground and disappeared in the thickening swirl of snow.

‘Can you see anything?’ Bellman asked.

‘Snow,’ Harry answered, passing him the binoculars.

‘The snowmobile’s there.’ Bellman got up and walked back to their vehicle. ‘We’re climbing down.’

‘We?’

‘You.’

‘Me? Thought you were the mountaineer here, Bellman.’

‘Correct,’ said Bellman who had already started strapping on the harness. ‘That’s why it’s logical for me to operate the ropes and rope brake. The rope’s seventy metres long. I’ll lower it as far as it can go. Alright?’

Six minutes later Harry stood on the edge with his back to the chasm, binoculars around his neck and a cigarette smoking from his mouth.

‘Nervous?’ Bellman smiled.

‘Nope,’ Harry said. ‘Scared shitless.’

Bellman checked the rope ran through the brake without a hitch, round the narrow tree trunk behind them and to Harry’s harness.

Harry closed his eyes, breathed in and concentrated on leaning backwards, overriding the body’s evolution-conditioned protest, formed from millions of years of experience that the species cannot survive if it steps off cliffs.

The brain won over the body by the smallest possible margin.

For the first few metres he could support his legs against the rock face, but as it jutted in he was left hanging in the air. The rope was released in fits and starts, but its elasticity softened the tightening of the harness against his back and thighs. Then the rope came more evenly, and after a while he had lost sight of the top and was alone, hovering between the white snowflakes and the black cliff faces.

He leaned to the side and peered down. And there, twenty metres below, he glimpsed sharp black rocks protruding from the snow. Steep scree. And in the midst of all the black and white, something yellow.

‘I can see the snowmobile!’ Harry shouted and the echo ricocheted between the rock walls. It was upside down with the skis in the air. Since he and the rope were unaffected by the wind, he could judge that the vehicle lay about three metres further along. More than seventy metres down. The snowmobile must therefore have been travelling at an unusually slow speed before it took off.

The rope went taut.

‘More!’ Harry shouted.

The resonant answer from above sounded as if it had come from a pulpit. ‘There is no more rope.’

Harry stared down at the snowmobile. Something was sticking out from under it to the left. A bare arm. Black, bloated, like a sausage that had been on the grill for too long. A white hand against a black rock. He tried to focus, to force his eyes to see better. Open palm, the right hand. Fingers. Distorted, crooked. Harry’s brain rewound. What had Tony Leike said about his illness? Not contagious, just hereditary. Arthritis.

Harry glanced at his watch. Detective’s reflex. The dead man was found at 17.54. Darkness covered the walls down in the scree.

‘Up!’ Harry shouted.

Nothing happened.

‘Bellman?’

No answer.

A gust of wind twirled Harry round on the rope. Black rocks. Twenty metres. And all of a sudden, without warning, he felt his heart pound and he automatically grabbed the rope with both hands to make sure it was still there. Kaja. Bellman knew.