The Woman in Cabin 10(90)

Finally, I could not run anymore. I let myself drop back to a kind of gasping, limping jog, and then as the lights of the village grew smaller in the distance, I slowed to a walk, a painful, stumbling walk, along a winding dark road that twisted into the darkness, climbing up the side of the fjord. Every few hundred yards I looked back over my shoulder, down into the valley, to the shrinking speckle of lights of the little portside town, and to the dark slick of the fjord waters, where the lights of the Aurora were coming closer. They were unmistakable now. I could see the ship clearly, and I could see, too, light beginning to tinge the sky above me.

Dawn must be coming already—God, what day did that make it? Monday?

But something seemed wrong, and after a few minutes I realized what it was. The lights were not to the east but to the north. What I could see was not dawn but the eerie green and gold streaks of the northern lights.

The realization made me laugh—a bitter, mirthless choke that sounded shockingly loud in the still night air. What was it Richard had said? Everyone should see the northern lights before they died. Well, now I had. But it just didn’t seem that important anymore.

I had stopped for a moment, watching the shifting glory of the aurora borealis, but now at the thought of Richard I began walking again. With each step, I remembered Carrie’s frantic exhortations to get running and get out—her hysterical assertions about the reach of Richard’s influence.

It didn’t seem so hysterical now.

If only I had believed her—I should never have shown Anne’s ID at the hotel, or trusted Erik with even the few details I’d given him. But I just hadn’t quite believed that anyone, however wealthy, could have the kind of reach Carrie believed. Now I realized I was wrong.

I groaned, at my own stupidity, at the cold that was striking through my thin, damp clothes. Most of all at the fact that I’d left the wallet on the desk. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That was five thousand wet, soggy, but still usable kroner, and I’d left them there for Richard as a little golden hello when he turned up at the hotel. What was I going to do? I had no ID, nowhere to sleep, no means of buying so much as a bar of chocolate, let alone a train ticket. My best hope was finding a police station, but how? Where? And did I dare tell them the truth when I got there?

I was just considering this when I heard the roar of an engine behind me and turned to see a car coming round the bend, frighteningly fast, clearly not expecting anyone to be out here at this time of night.

I scrambled for the verge, lost my footing, and fell, sliding down a length of scree that left me bloodied and scraped, my leggings in tatters, and came to a halt with a splash in a pebbly ditch that seemed to be some kind of stream or drainage channel down to the fjord below. The car itself had screeched to a halt on the road some five or six feet above me, the headlamps pointing out into the valley, and the smoke from the exhaust billowing red in the rear lights.

I heard the crunch of feet on the road above. Richard? One of his men? I had to get away.

I tried to stand on my ankle, felt it give, and then tried again, more carefully this time, but the pain made me give a sob.

At the sound, a figure, lit from behind so that I could see his shape only in silhouette, peered over the edge of the road, and a voice said something in Norwegian. I shook my head. My hands were trembling.

“I d-don’t speak Norwegian.” I tried to keep the sob out of my voice. “Do you sp-speak English?”

“Yes, I speak English,” the man said in a heavily accented voice. “Give me your hand. I will help you out.”

I hesitated, but there was no way I could get out of the ditch without help, and if the man really intended to hurt me he could just as easily climb down here and attack me in the shelter of the ditch. Better to get out, where I could at least run if I had to.

The lights of the car shone in my eyes, blinding me, and I put my hand up, shielding them against the glare, but all I could see was a dark shape, and a halo of blond hair beneath some kind of cap. It wasn’t Richard, at least, that I was sure of.

“Give me your hand,” the man said again, with a touch of impatience this time. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m n-not hurt,” I said. “At least, my ankle hurts, but I don’t think it’s broken.”

“Put the leg there.” He pointed at a rock about a foot out of the ditch, “and I will pull you up.”

I nodded, and with a feeling that I might be doing something very stupid, I set my good foot to the rock and leaned upward with my right hand.

I felt the man grab hold of my wrist, his grip immensely strong, and with a grunt he began to pull, bracing himself against a rock at the edge of the ditch. The muscles and sinews in my arm were screaming in protest, and when I tried to put my weight on my bad foot, I cried out, but at last, with a painful, scrambling rush, I was up and out of the ditch, and standing trembling on the edge of the verge.

“What are you doing out here?” the man said. I couldn’t see his face, but there was concern in his voice. “Are you lost? Have you had an accident? This road leads directly up the mountain, it’s no place for a tourist.”

I was trying to think of how to answer, when I realized two things.

The first was that he was carrying something in a holster at his hip, the shape of it silhouetted against the car lights. And the second was that the car itself was a police car. As I stood there, frozen, trying to think what to say, I heard the crackle of a radio pierce the night.