“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.
“I—” I managed.
The policeman took a step forward, tipping his cap so that he could see me more clearly, and frowned.
“What is your name, Miss?”
“I—” I said, and then stopped.
There was another crackle from his radio and he held up a finger.
“One moment, please.” He put his hand to his hip, and I saw that what I had taken for a gun was actually a police radio in a holster, hanging next to a pair of handcuffs. He spoke briefly into the receiver and then climbed into the driver’s side of the car and began a longer conversation on the car radio.
“Ja,” I heard, and then a burst of conversation I didn’t understand. Then he looked up at me through the windscreen, and his eyes met mine, his gaze puzzled. “Ja,” he said again, “det er riktig. Laura Blacklock.”
Everything seemed to slow down, and I knew with a cold certainty that it was now, or not at all. If I ran now, I might be making a mistake. But if I didn’t, I might not live to find out, and I could not afford to take that risk.
I hesitated for just one second more, and then I saw the policeman replace the radio receiver and reach for something in his glove compartment.
I had no idea what to do. But I had not believed Carrie before, and it had nearly cost me everything.
Screwing my courage for the pain I knew was coming, I began to run—not up the road as before but down, cross-country, scrambling headlong down the vertiginous side of the fjord.
- CHAPTER 35 -
It was growing light when I realized that I could go no farther, that my muscles, exhausted beyond endurance, just simply would not obey me. I was no longer walking, I was stumbling as if I were drunk, my knees buckling when I tried to climb over a fallen tree stump.
I had to stop. If I didn’t, I would fall where I stood, so deep in the Norwegian countryside that my body might never be found.
I needed shelter, but I had left the road a long time back, and there were no houses to be seen. I had no phone. No money. I didn’t even know what time it was, although it must be close to dawn.
A sob rose in my dry throat, but just at that moment, I saw something loom from between the sparse trees—a long, low shape. Not a house—but some kind of barn, perhaps?
The sight gave my legs a last shot of energy, and I staggered out from between the trees, across a dirt track, through a gate in a wire fence. It was a barn—although the name seemed almost too grand for the shack that lay in front of me, with its rickety wooden walls and corrugated iron roof.
Two shaggy little horses turned their heads curiously as I trudged past, and then one of them returned to drinking from what I saw, with a leap of my heart, was a trough of water, its surface pink and gold in the soft dawn light.
I staggered to the trough, falling on my knees in the short grass beside it, and cupping the water in my hands I drank great gulps of it down. It was rainwater, and it tasted of mud and dirt and rust from the metal trough, but I didn’t care. I was too thirsty to think about anything except slaking my parched throat.
When I’d drunk as much as I could, I straightened up and looked around me. The shed door was shut, but as I put my hand to the latch, it swung open and I went cautiously through, shutting the door behind me.
Inside there was hay—bales and bales of it—some tubs that I thought might be feed or supplements, and, hanging on the wall on pegs,