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  THE RED MITTEN

  Copyright © Stuart Montgomery 2015.

  The right of Stuart Montgomery to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  The cover photograph is by the author.

  This story is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. Espedalen is a real valley and it has four real hotels. However for the purposes of this story the author has altered the landscape slightly and has replaced the actual hotels with two fictional ones.

  PROLOGUE: MID-FEBRUARY 2015

  The skier made his way through the Norwegian night, his way lit by the rising moon. He watched his gaunt shadow move over the snow: poles swinging easily, skis advancing in long strides. It would have been true to say that he was on an undulating route over lightly-forested hills, but it would hardly have pinpointed his location. Where in Oppland County could you find a route that didn’t undulate, a hill that didn’t have trees?

  But he knew precisely where he was; had been ticking off the mental milestones etched by decades of experience.

  Almost fifty years ago, in the forest near the lake where he had started tonight, he had shot his first elk, a full-grown bull. The animal had still been alive when he got to it and he had stood transfixed, fascinated by the contrast between the gasping irregularity of its breathing and the rhythmic pumping of blood from its body. In the winter of that same year, on the moorland above the forest, he had taken a dozen hare in a single day, their white pelts betraying them when the snow failed to arrive on schedule. He had been just a youth, and Norway had been a different country - and a better one. And maybe he had been a better person. He recognised that thought and knew what had provoked it: another memory, this time of a long hot summer when, by a group of boulders near the cabin he was now heading for, he had made love to a blonde-haired girl.

  Tonight his rucksack felt light, even on the steeper climbs. All the hauling and carrying in the last few months had toughened him. But on the downhill sections - moonlight or no moonlight - he struggled to control his skis. New boots would have helped, he realised that, but he couldn’t get on with the modern design that all the shops peddled nowadays. He’d tried them once and the damn things had iced up before he could even clip into the ski bindings. And what will happen if this flimsy metal bar breaks? he had asked the salesman, a toothy brown-skinned fellow freshly arrived from a country where they only saw snow in picture-books. No problem, sir - just bring the boots back and we’ll replace them free of charge. So he had turned to the brown-skin and said, And what if I’m deep in the mountains and two days from a road when it breaks? There had been no answer. So he had told the dimwit to keep his two thousand kroner’s worth of crap.

  His increasing grumpiness confirmed it: he was getting old. Now as old as his father had been when he died. It was quite a thought. Gone were the days when he could ski from dusk till dawn in pursuit of some unfortunate victim. He had been good at wearing down his quarry, very good. Sometimes the animal would appear almost grateful when, finally, he raised his weapon to put an end to its exhaustion and terror, just as he had done with the first elk.

  To begin with he had hunted mainly for sport. But as he became better at it, he became better known. And then the special requests had started: for fox or wolverine or, now they were back in the area, wild reindeer. And there was always the top-dollar requirement for a bear or a wolf or a lynx. They were all for a Swedish stuffer, a man who paid cash and who wanted no questions asked.

  The world was full of folk who wanted no questions asked. Like these people he was working for tonight. Careful people who would stay for weeks and then disappear for months, who took precautions, used a remote meeting place. He admired that, even though their attempt at secrecy had been futile. He was a hunter, after all, and people were just as easy to track as animals.

  He pressed on, gradually gaining height. From the way his skis were running he guessed that the temperature was now only a little below freezing. But he felt cold. The air was damp.

  This would be his last trip. They had said that tonight’s batch would give them enough. He was pleased about that - it was getting harder to cover up his unofficial activities. And he was pleased that soon he would be able to spend the money he had earned. He would spend it slowly, so as not to attract attention, just as he had done when they paid him for the earlier work.

  He would probably add more to the secret bank account he had opened for his sister’s grandson, a lovely blonde-haired boy. It was his way of dealing with the guilt he still felt after abandoning his family all those years ago. We should forgive the young for their foolishness in getting into bad situations, he thought, and their clumsiness in getting out of them. It was a warm thought for a winter night. He put it out of his mind and pressed onward, out of the stunted birches and over the bare hillside.

  When he finally reached the isolated cabin, its white-framed windows as usual showing no light, he was pleased to see two pairs of skis against the wall. So his contact had kept his word. After all this time he would finally get to meet the boss. And finally get the chance to ask for a little bonus to be added to the amount they had agreed. Just to guarantee there would be no questions asked.

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Cally Douglas had lied and cheated her way on to the skiing trip. It was no big deal: the nineteen-year-old had lied and cheated her way through most of her life. Even so, when the Opplands Traffik bus went past the sign that said Vesterheim Mountain Hotel was just another five kilometres away, she felt a nervous flutter. No turning back now.

  She screwed up her face at the stupid thought. What a load of shite! This was hardly the point of no return. She had gone past that point months ago.

  To give her head something better to do, she looked at her watch. Half past four. Not bad, only ten hours since leaving the unit in Aberdeen. But it had been a busy day. One taxi, two flights, one train, one bus. And two benzos: one before Neep arrived in the taxi, the other after he fell asleep during the second flight. The pills, as usual, had brought her to a comfy state of dwam. With a third she would have been relaxed enough to go walkabout on the aircraft wing.

  Everyone’s expectation that she would be okay in planes had been spot-on. Cramped and crowded, they were bound to suit her fine. In any case the day’s tight logistics would have left little room for drama: an efficient plane-change at Stavanger, a short walk from carousel to station platform at Oslo airport and an even shorter one from train to bus in Lillehammer.

  And now the bus was about to deliver them almost to the door of the hotel.

  As the vehicle started to slow down, Cally leaned across to the seat opposite and shook her companion awake. “Neep! We’re there.”

  The driver would have been within his rights to drop them at the bus stop. But instead, maybe because they were his only passengers and he was grateful to them for keeping him in a job, he turned off the road, gentled his vehicle through a long parking area that had a scattering of snow-covered cars, and came to a stop under a sort of archway that linked the main hotel building to a smaller annexe.

  Moving stiffly after the two-hour bus journey, the two Scots stepped cautiously on to the hard-packed snow. They opened the big luggage compartment and hauled out their rucksacks. Then they waved goodbye to the driver and Neep took a few pictures of the bus as it eased slowly forward through the archway and then re-joined the road.

  As Cal
ly watched it go she thought the driver would deserve a long break when he got to the terminus. These icy roads must be tricky enough at the best of times, but today he had also had to put up with frequent tortuous diversions around construction sites, where fleets of big yellow bulldozers buzzed around, shifting the spoil blasted from massive rock walls. Norway obviously did its road-building on a grand scale.

  “Cally! Neep! I’m over here – behind you!”

  The voice came from a smiling face in an open doorway in the annexe. A sign by the doorway said Ski Stall. Richard Slater wiped his hands with a rag and said, “Give me a minute to get cleaned up and I’ll be right with you.”

  The door closed and then immediately opened again. “And don’t worry, Cally. I’ll take your bag.”

  Cally suppressed a sigh. It was a pity the group wasn’t bigger. But she knew there was no point in arguing with Richard. It wouldn’t help the cause. And he did mean well. So she left her stuff on the ground and moved into the sunshine.

  It was a pleasant enough spot to wait. And now that Neep had finally blinked the sleep from his eyes he was showing no hurry to go indoors.

  “What a mahoosive place!” he said, looking at the long building whose four storeys reared above them. His camera was sucking in the newness: the skis on a rack by the hotel entrance, the sign that said they were 880 metres above sea-level, the big painting of a mountain scene on the archway. Then he whirled away down the car park, as spoiled for choice as a dog in a butcher’s, and aimed his lense at a wooden sledge with long metal runners, at a fat snowman with a carrot nose, at a big multi-coloured thermometer whose arrow pointed at minus six.

  When Richard Slater came out from the ski room he still had the broad grin. He strode up to Cally, extended both hands and tapped her twice on her shoulders in the routine that she recognised as his current version of a hug. She imagined he’d learned it on a course at his church. How to communicate affection in the post-Jimmy Savile age.

  He said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t waiting here to help you off your bus, but I wasn’t expecting it to be on time. Yesterday it was almost dark when I got here, because my own bus kept getting held up by road works. We would just get going again and then another man with a red flag would jump out and make us wait until they finished blasting.”

  “The bus journey was fine”, Cally said. “Neep worked on his novel for a while.” She stifled a laugh when Richard rolled his eyes. “And then he fell asleep and I just enjoyed the scenery. I took some photos for his slideshow. He’s on a mission to put together something fabulous for the club.”

  Richard said, “I can help with that. My first day has been brilliant and I can give him lots of pictures of fantastic scenery, including a lovely stave-church in a forest and even a place called Hell. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  He lowered his voice and gave her a searching sort of look. “And the journey was okay?”

  “It was no problem.” She tried to avoid breaking into a smile; didn’t want to make him think it was that important. But then she changed her mind and treated him to the full keyboard. “It was no problem at all.”

  He did the shoulder-tappy thing again.

  Neep Newton had a talent for walking into silences that were turning awkward, and he seemed to recognise his cue. ”Nice place you’ve got, Vicar. Got room at the inn for two small ones?”

  “Small? You look like you’ve been training for a sumo wrestling match rather than a ski tour.”

  “Just fortifying myself against the rigours of the Scandiwegian winter.”

  Cally stood back and left them to it. Over the years she had watched their friendship develop and she knew they would want a catch-up.

  She had always regarded it as a case of opposites attracting. The other Crombie residents had nick-named them Chalk and Cheese when they first turned up: Richard hard-faced but soft-voiced and obviously God-squad; Neep big and loud and full of daft talk. On that first Crombie visit Neep had said, “Look, Cally, it couldn’t be less complexical. You land on that square and you go to jail. Right? It’s not rocket surgery.” She had liked him immediately, albeit in a guarded sort of way. She had expected him to do what all the other student volunteers did, stay just long enough to establish proof of a well-rounded personality and then move on to some other location, to focus on some other aspect of his CV.

  But she had been wrong. And even more wrong about Richard. She had given him a week, tops.

  She inhaled deeply. The fresh air was good, after all the travel. And the sight of so much new snow was very good, after last week’s reports of mild weather.

  The whole country was plastered with snow. At Oslo airport it had still been falling when they landed, and from the terminal they had watched a fleet of vehicles clearing the runway. Then as the train carried them northward, the skies had cleared and Cally had looked out on white fields that sloped up toward red-painted farmhouses whose roofs were hung with icicles. For a while the train had gone alongside a frozen lake criss-crossed with the tracks of ice-fishers, a beautiful picture-postcard scene.

  Now up here in the mountains everything was living up to the high expectations Cally had been building during the last few months.

  So the weather had done its duty. Now she had to do hers, to control the controllables and to keep all the devious stuff out of sight.

  And to enjoy the ski tour. If possible.

  Finally the men came to the end of their male-bonding thing. Richard picked up Cally’s rucksack, making it look lighter than it actually was, and led them into the hotel.

  In the reception area, at the edge of a large lounge, a fair-haired woman was behind the desk, talking into a phone. She waved a greeting, then put her hand over the mouthpiece and said she would be with them in a couple of minutes.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Richard said. “I’ve picked out some hire skis for you both and I’m in the middle of waxing them. I’ll finish them now and catch you again before dinner.”

  When he had gone, Cally looked round the lounge. She recognised some things from the hotel’s website: the traditionally painted chairs, the old wooden skis on the wall. And the big copper chimney that hung down from the centre of the ceiling. She was glad it wasn’t her job to write the safety report about the fire burning unguarded below it. Or to write the risk assessment about the pillars that were sited round the edge of the semi-circular room. One person walking into one pillar, while carrying one hot drink, would be enough to set off a stampede of ambulance-chasing lawyers.

  Maybe the hotelier had realised there was a problem, for several pillars were painted in bright colours and had been fitted with cork notice-boards. It was a nice solution, Cally thought. You could reasonably argue that people should notice a notice-board.

  Leaving Neep to explore the little kiosk beside the reception desk, she went over to a pillar that had a printout of the weather forecast pinned to it. Above the temperature graph someone had written Fantastic skiing conditions today!!!!! The outlook for tomorrow looked good, too: sunshine all day and a mid-day temperature of minus five.

  On a table beside the pillar there was a hardback A4 notebook, and on its cover were stickers in different languages. The one in English said it was the Route Book and that, before setting out in the morning, guests should enter their planned itinerary for the day, along with the time when they expected to get back. Cally glanced through it. The last few days had been busy, with lots of early starts and late finishes and lots of smiley faces drawn beside the entries. Most guests had been doing day-trips, but a group of Italian skiers had started from Vesterheim just this morning on the same five-day tour that she and the men would begin tomorrow, along the far side of the Espedalen valley.

  She hoped they would catch up with the Italians. It would give them some company in the cabins and rescue them from the Harry, Ron and Hermione scenario that the other club members had joked about.

  She flicked over to the next day’s page and saw that Richard had alrea
dy entered their proposed route. Clearly he was making an early bid for the Hermione role. He had written, From Vesterheim via Slangenseter to Storhøliseter. Overnight in DNT cabin at Storhøliseter.

  Cally moved to the next pillar, where there was a poster that said “Missing Person” in English as well as Norwegian. It showed a picture of a craggy-faced man described as “Mr Håkon Skaugen, aged 63, a keen outdoorsman who has lived in Espedalen all his life”. The text went on to say that he was unmarried and that the alarm had been raised when he failed to turn up for work with the road construction crew.

  “We call him Hawkeye Håkon,” said a voice at her shoulder. It was the fair-haired woman from the reception desk. Cally thought she looked tired. She spoke long-vowelled English, like a TV news-reader, and with only the slightest foreign accent. “Usually when no-one sees him for a few days it’s because he has been hunting animals that he is not supposed to be hunting. He’ll turn up sooner or later, though most of the landowners would be happy if he didn’t.”

  She held out her hand. “I’m Elin Olsen, the hotel proprietor. Sorry to have kept you waiting. Welcome to Vesterheim.”

  She led Cally across to the desk, then beckoned Neep out from the kiosk and said, “Mr Newton, it’s nice to see the face behind the emails. And it’s very nice to welcome Aberdeen Cross-Country Ski Club - or some of you, at least. When so many people cancelled I was worried that I had said something to offend you.”

  Her friendly expression took any sting out of her words but Neep clearly felt compelled to apologise.

  “I’m really embarrassed about this, Elin. When I first emailed you I had twenty people who said they were definite. But many of our members have oil-related jobs, and when the oil price started to fall they got nervous – with good reason, because some of them have now been made redundant. So our numbers gradually dropped down to five. And then we had the two cancellations because of illness. . .”