Harry Hole Oslo Sequence 10 - Police

and noticed that he felt more at ease inside. Picked up the two pieces of the plastic knob from the floor, tried placing them around the spindle and turning, but it was no use.
    He looked at his watch. Soon be midnight. He wanted to finish the round of golf in Augusta before going to bed. Wondered whether to phone the chairman. All he had to do was give this spindle a half-turn!
    His head shot up instinctively and his heart stopped beating.
    It had happened so quickly he was unsure whether he had seen it or not. Whatever it was, it was not an elk. Stian keyed in the name of the chairman, but his fingers were trembling so much he made several mistakes before getting it right.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘The emergency pole’s gone. I can’t turn the lift off.’
    ‘The fuse cupboard . . .’
    ‘Locked and the key’s gone.’
    He heard the chairman cursing under his breath. Then a sigh of resignation. ‘Stay there. I’m on my way.’
    ‘Bring a wrench or something.’
    ‘Wrench or something,’ the chairman repeated, making no attempt to conceal his contempt.
    Stian had long known the chairman’s respect was measured in terms of your ranking in skiing championships. He put his mobile in his pocket. Stared out into the darkness. And it struck him that everyone could see him with the light on and he couldn’t see anyone. He got up, closed what was left of the door and switched off the light. Waited. The empty T-bars coming down from the slopes above his head seemed to accelerate as they swung round the end of the lift before starting the ascent again.
    Stian blinked.
    Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
    He turned all the knobs on the console. And as the floodlights came on over the slope Jay-Z’s ‘Empire State of Mind’ rang out from the loudspeakers and filled the valley. That’s the way, now it was a bit more homely.
    He drummed his fingers and looked at the spindle again. There was a hole at the top. He got up, grabbed the string from beside the fuse cupboard, doubled it and threaded it through the hole. Wrapped it round the spindle once and pulled carefully. This could actually work. He pulled a little harder. The string was holding. Even harder. The spindle moved. He yanked it.
    The sound of the lift machinery died with a long-drawn-out groan culminating in a squeal.
    ‘Take that, you motherfucker!’ Stian shouted.
    He leaned over the phone to ring the chairman and inform him the job was done. Remembered the chairman would hardly approve of rap being played at full blast over the speakers at night and switched it off.
    Listened to the phone ringing. That was all he could hear now; suddenly it was very quiet. Come on, answer! And then there it was again. The feeling. The feeling that someone was there. Someone was watching him.
    Stian Barelli slowly raised his head.
    And felt the chill spread from an area at the back of his head, as though he were turning to stone, as though it were Medusa’s face he was staring at. But it wasn’t hers. It was a man dressed in a long, black leather coat. He had a lunatic’s staring eyes and a vampire’s open mouth with blood dripping from both corners. And he seemed to be floating above the ground.
    ‘Yes? Hello? Stian? Are you there? Stian?’
    But Stian didn’t answer. He had stood up, knocked the chair over, edged backwards and clung to the wall, tearing Miss December off the nail and sending her to the floor.
    He had found the emergency stop pole. It was protruding from the mouth of the man attached to one of the T-bars.
    ‘Then he was sent round and round on the ski lift?’ Gunnar Hagen asked, angling his head and studying the body hanging in front of them. There was something wrong about the shape, like a wax figure melting and being stretched out towards the ground.
    ‘That’s what the young man told us,’ said Beate Lønn, stamping her feet on the snow and looking up the illuminated tramway where her white-clad colleague had almost merged with the snow.
    ‘Found anything?’ Hagen asked in a tone that suggested he already knew the answer.
    ‘Loads,’ Beate said. ‘The trail of blood carries on four hundred metres to the top of the lift and four hundred metres back again.’
    ‘I meant anything apart from the obvious.’
    ‘Footprints in the snow from the car park, down the short cut and straight here,’ Beate said. ‘The pattern matches the victim’s shoes.’
    ‘He came here in shoes ?’
    ‘Yes. And he came alone. There were no prints other