Forty Days Without Shadow: An Arctic Thriller Page 8

She noticed and smiled again. “On vacation?”

  “Lena!” One of the three herders called out suddenly. “Beer!”

  Lena rolled her eyes and carried three beers over to the men. The one who had called out—the herder with the lasso—stared at her hard. Lena acted nonchalantly, avoiding his gaze. The Frenchman took it all in, watching impassively from the bar. No business of his.

  André Racagnal was in his late fifties, but knew he looked younger. He was still well built, with swept-back brown hair and the deeply lined face of a man who has spent his life out of doors. He wore the tundra uniform of hiking pants with thigh pockets, plus a fleece jacket and scarf. On his left wrist, a silver identity chain bore an inscription engraved in thick letters. On his right, he wore a large watch on a steel bracelet.

  Lena returned to her post behind the bar, smiling again for the Frenchman’s benefit. “So, are you on vacation?”

  “No.”

  Racagnal sipped his beer slowly. He took out a packet of cigarettes, shook one free and held it out to Lena.

  “You can’t smoke in here, but I can show you where,” she said, with a significant look. He narrowed his eyes, as if sizing her up. With an encouraging half smile, he held out his arm, inviting her to lead the way.

  “Lena!” Another urgent shout from the barroom behind them.

  Lena rolled her eyes again. Racagnal found the affectation annoying, but the young girl’s figure was mesmerizing, all the same. He did not turn around, but carried on slowly sipping his beer.

  Behind him, he heard one of the breeders raise his voice, thick with fatigue or drink. Apparently, the man disapproved of Lena’s simpering with the “stranger who thinks he’s so almighty superior.” He heard Lena whisper something back.

  “So what if he can speak Swedish? I don’t give a damn…”

  Slowly, the Frenchman got down from his bar stool, took a last sip from his glass, and placed his hands on the bar, fists clenched, in full view of the rest of the room. He stood motionless, still with his back turned to the trio of herders.

  The little man had left off moving back and forth between Berit’s table and the bar, and he had been sitting quietly for a time. He now began to show signs of agitation. He moved back to the bar and addressed the Frenchman, grimacing as he spoke, his words forming broken sentences, tumbling out.

  “So, so then I went in a car. I came back. In a car. You take me for a ride? Mine’s got four wheels. Four. And I’ve got four fingers. See?”

  He thrust his right hand in front of Racagnal’s face. There were indeed four digits: his thumb and three fingers. He ran them along the counter, making the noise of a car engine, veering wildly between the glasses. Then he burst out laughing, slapped his thighs, turned to Berit, lifted his arms, and applauded. He laughed loudly and clapped the Frenchman on the back. Racagnal didn’t flinch. Took another sip of his beer. Berit got calmly to her feet, took the little man by the hand and led him back to her table. He quieted down once more, still smiling broadly.

  “Lena, three beers and three akvavit,” grumbled the herder with the lasso, dragging out his words.

  Lena took the drinks over, then returned to the bar and addressed the Frenchman. “Follow me. I’ll show you where you can smoke.”

  She picked up her long, fur-collared coat and walked ahead of him between the tables, avoiding the dark looks from the breeder, who drank his chaser down in one.

  Racagnal followed, glass in hand. At the far end of the barroom, a narrow corridor led to a second room, further along on the right. It was empty apart from a pool table. The girl pushed a door on the left-hand side of the corridor. It opened onto a small covered space with a basic wooden roof, walled with panels that could be taken down in the summer. It was bitterly cold.

  Racagnal offered Lena a cigarette. He cradled her fleshy hands in his to light it, stroking them gently with one finger. Then he lit his own. Lena breathed out a cloud of smoke and smiled.

  “Admirer of yours, back there?” he asked.

  “Huh! He’s an old friend.”

  “A reindeer breeder?”

  Lena laughed. “Like everyone here. Or almost everyone. Or if you’re not, then your family are breeders, which comes to the same thing. He’s from one of the big families around here. The Finnman clan. They have thousands of reindeer out in the vidda.”

  “Were you born here, Lena?”

  “Yes. What about you—were you born in Paris?”

  Racagnal was from Rouen, but he didn’t want to disappoint. “Yes, Paris. Ever been to Paris, Lena?”

  “Oh! No. But I will go there one day.”

  “How old are you, Lena?”

  “I turned eighteen a few months ago. I started working in the pub the week after my birthday. You’re not allowed to before that. What’s your name?”

  “André.”

  Racagnal was beginning to feel the cold and wondered how he could cut short their exchange of small talk.

  He wanted to screw her, that was all.

  He looked at her thin lips. A shame, that. He preferred a full mouth. Memories of Africa. But the rest—what he had seen of her at the bar—was perfect. She looked older and more experienced than her eighteen years, but the local girls wore plenty of makeup from a young age—he had discovered that—making them look more grown-up than they were.

  He was lifting a hand to the girl’s face when the door to the smoking area was flung open. The Finnman boy stood swaying in the frame, his chapka askew, eyes glazed over. He was clearly drunk, and Racagnal knew he would have to proceed with care. He would have no trouble overpowering the boy, given the state he was in, but there were two others back in the bar. And though they were all small in stature, they had muscles of iron.

  Finnman stood right in front of the Frenchman. Racagnal was a good head taller. The boy raised a hand to Lena, who cried out, but Racagnal blocked the gesture. Finnman took a swipe at his opponent with his free fist, but his thick snowsuit slowed him down. Racagnal easily avoided the blow and pushed the breeder away, hard. He fell back against the other two, who had appeared just at that moment, and all three collapsed to the floor. Lena began shouting at Finnman, but he was already back on his feet. He threw himself at Racagnal a second time, while Lena slipped away quickly through the door. This time, Finnman fell heavily into the powdery snow beyond the wooden terrace floor. He wiped it from his face and lunged forward clumsily, a third time. The Frenchman avoided him without difficulty, but the Sami came at him again.

  The slow-motion brawl continued. Ducking and dodging the breeder’s attacks, Racagnal dropped his guard and Finnman caught him on the chin. Another of the trio threw himself into the fray, delivering a sharp kick to the Frenchman’s shin so that he stumbled forward in pain. The third breeder charged at him, tipping him backward into the snow, softening his fall. Racagnal sprang to his feet and started punching back now. The little man from the barroom appeared in the doorway, gesticulating and shouting incoherently. He was pushed aside by a man whose voice filled the covered terrace.

  “Mikkel, Jonne, Ailo! That’s enough!”

  To André Racagnal’s surprise, the three breeders straightened up and calmed down immediately.

  “Wait for me in the bar.”

  The three men left without a word.

  The man introduced himself as Deputy Superintendent Rolf Brattsen. He seemed intrigued by Racagnal’s presence in town. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. People have a short fuse around here.”

  “You’re not local, I can see that. The Lapps are more hot-blooded than the Scandinavians. Or so they like to think. But they’re not bad boys, really. Follow me back to the station, it’s just nearby, and I’ll take a statement.”

  “Oh, I won’t file a complaint over that.”

  “Perhaps, but I need a statement all the same.”

  Racagnal had no intention of telling the policeman what he was doing in Kautokeino, but couldn’t afford to arouse police suspicion, either. Th
e cop looked like an uncompromising character, but he’d get him off the scent quickly enough. Crossing the barroom, he noticed the three breeders, standing and waiting in silence.

  “Proud of yourselves? Get off home and sober up.” The policeman spoke as if he was addressing a bunch of kids. “I’ll see you all later.”

  André Racagnal left the pub, looking intently in Lena’s direction. The girl lifted one hand in a discreet wave. He immediately wished she hadn’t. Brattsen had taken it all in.

  They stepped out into the cold, crossed the road, passed in front of the supermarket, and entered the police station, which was empty at this time of day. Brattsen showed the Frenchman into his office and settled himself behind his computer screen.

  “Who were those three?” asked Racagnal.

  “Ailo Finnman, the guy with the lasso, is the son of one of the big families around here. A breeder. Worth about two thousand head of reindeer. The other two, Mikkel and Jonne, are herders who work for him, when there’s work to do. The rest of the time, they work for local farmers, or do odd jobs. They’ve been out all day watching the herd. Been a few problems around here lately. Nothing serious.”

  The Frenchman didn’t invite any further information. Brattsen seemed disappointed.

  “So, tell me everything. Briefly. Why you’re here, and the rest.”

  Racagnal told him he was a geologist, working for a French company prospecting in the area. He was staying at the Villmarkssenter, despite the fact that the new hotels were more luxurious. He was planning to spend a few weeks in town, he explained.

  “We don’t get many prospectors at this time of year,” said Brattsen. “Mostly, they come in the summer when they can see the rocks. What can you do when everything is under snow?” He looked skeptical.

  Racagnal didn’t give a damn, but he would have to reassure him. “I worked around here a lot, a long time ago. For several years. I know the region pretty well. In winter, the freeze gives us access to marshy areas that are inaccessible in summer. That’s what I’m interested in now. And the interior of the vidda is dry—there’s not so much snow, as you know. No, believe me, a good prospector can get plenty of very useful work done in winter.”

  Racagnal could see Brattsen wasn’t convinced, but he wasn’t about to deliver a geology lecture. The man would never understand, in any case.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Oh, the usual.” The geologist gave a fixed smile, indicating that the policeman was trespassing onto private territory. “Same as everyone else, I imagine. I just hope I’ve got a better nose for it than my colleagues.”

  “So, what, then?”

  Damned cop. Racagnal straightened up. “Listen, I’m not obliged to tell you anything, under the law. I’ve registered my application for an exploration permit with the council. All in order. I’m prospecting. If I find anything, you’ll know all about it soon enough.”

  Racagnal hoped that would shut him up, but Brattsen clearly didn’t appreciate the crash course in Norwegian law from a foreigner.

  “Where were you during the day on Tuesday?” he asked suddenly, staring intently at Racagnal.

  11

  Thursday, January 13

  8 p.m., Central Sápmi

  The afterglow of daylight had long since faded when Klemet and Nina reached the Reindeer Police hut. The cabin was cozier than the trailers used by the breeders. The police had others, too, scattered in the four corners of the region covered by the patrols. Some were proper little mountain chalets. This one was plain in the extreme, Nina noted. There were two compartments, one of which served as a kitchen. Klemet was taking charge of the latter, with a proprietorial air. They had unloaded the storage boxes and bags from the scooters and piled everything up in the small entrance area. She was new to the brigade, but experience had already taught her that any arrival at a new bivouac followed a predefined ritual. Beginning with heating the hut and preparing food.

  She went back outside to fetch some dry firewood, stored under a shelter. This was important. The police took dry firewood on every mission out in the tundra, to maintain the permanent stocks at the shelters. A matter of life or death for yourself and others, if a patrol had to stop over in an emergency.

  Nina had adjusted quickly to the essential rules in such a harsh environment. She came from the maritime south, but she had been raised in a village at the back of a deep fjord, where the isolation was almost as extreme. She tore some strips of bark from the surrounding birch trees to use as kindling and took them back indoors. The flames caught quickly. Nina filled a large cooking pot with snow and placed it on the heat.

  In the hut’s living quarters, two sets of convertible bunk beds stood against opposite walls, separated by a long table. Nina propped one of the upper bunks back into position and threw her bag onto the bed below. She lit two candles on the table. She felt at ease now and, for the first time since they had been on patrol together, she found Klemet more accessible, too. Her partner was mostly reserved. Not the talkative type. She regretted that; the people in Kiruna had told her Klemet was the most experienced Reindeer Policeman they had. And the only Sami on the force, surprisingly—something he had complained about to her before, and she could understand why. Knowing the language had to be an asset when dealing with reindeer breeders, who tended to talk business among themselves in their own tongue.

  She watched Klemet busying himself in the kitchen. He seemed relaxed. She decided to seize the moment.

  “Klemet,” she ventured, “why does Brattsen call you Chubby? You’re really not overweight. For someone your age, I mean.”

  She bit her lip, cursing her thoughtless slip, but compensated with her best, radiant smile. Klemet stopped stirring the potatoes and looked over at her. She kept up the smile, showing she meant no harm. He stirred the pan again, then looked back at her, saying nothing. Finally, he put her out of her misery.

  “Don’t worry about it, Nina, I don’t mind. Plenty of puppy fat when I was a kid. Hence the name. It only bothers me now when a character like Brattsen uses it to wind me up.”

  Nina smiled, but was happy to change the subject. She sat down. “And why did Johann Henrik refer to Olaf as ‘the Spaniard’?”

  Klemet laughed. “Couldn’t you tell?”

  “Why? Because he has brown hair and eyes?”

  “No, many Sami have brown hair and eyes. Notice anything else?”

  She couldn’t say.

  “People call him the Spaniard because of the way he holds himself. All proud and upright, back arched, bum sticking out like a matador.”

  Nina smiled at her mental picture of the protester and his seductive smile. She felt lost in this new world, still, so far from all that was familiar. Everyone here seemed to have known everyone else forever. Graduating from the police academy in Oslo just a few months before, she had had no choice in where she was sent, like every grant-assisted student. The government paid for their studies, but they had to accept the first posting they were offered, and no complaints. Villages in the Arctic north were hardly at the top of everyone’s list. So she had ended up here. Nina had never set foot in the region before. Like so many southern Scandinavians, she knew nothing about the thinly populated semiwilderness of the Arctic.

  “And his time in jail?”

  “Olaf is Swedish. Passports and borders don’t count for a whole lot up here, except if you’re trying to get into Russia. People roam free. Everyone is of mixed blood. Well, most people. I’m Swedish, too, on my mother’s side. Olaf lives in Kiruna most of the time. He’s a member of Sámediggi—the Swedish Sami parliament. But as with a lot of breeders, his reindeer have pasture on both sides of the border. And in between Kautokeino and Kiruna there’s a bit of Finland, too. Olaf was suspected of planting explosives on a minehead there in 1995, I think. They kept in him the cells for a bit, but they couldn’t prove anything. Except that imprisoning a Sami militant always causes a bit of a stir. He was released after a few days. Made the most of it a
fterward, of course. It helped him get elected. And he lets everyone know about it even now.”

  “What about the IRA?”

  “When all the protests were going on about the Alta dam, in the late 1970s, there were some IRA militants nosing around up here. The police boarded a boat in a small port up by the Russian border. It was loaded with explosives and arms. Two guys were arrested. But the story was suppressed. We found out later that the two guys were IRA mules, and Olaf was their local contact. The IRA had offered to help blow up the dam, can you believe it? But like I said, it was all hushed up, and Olaf was left in peace.”

  “Tell me about the dam.”

  “Well, I was a young police recruit. They wanted to build a hydroelectric dam between here and Alta. But it meant drowning a valley, a valley used by the Sami for their reindeer. There were protests. The ecowarriors got involved. They didn’t give a damn about the Sami, though. They were all from Oslo. They wanted to protect Mother Nature. Well, everyone joined forces on the barricades.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me? Like I said, I was a young police recruit. It was just before I left for Stockholm. And I did what a young police recruit must.”

  “But the dam project was unjust, wasn’t it?”

  Klemet hesitated, watching her cautiously. He knew they were both perfectly entitled to express an opinion, even as officers of the law. Still, this could get awkward. His colleague seemed sincere, though.

  “To be honest, I could see the protesters’ point of view. It was an attack on their way of life, and on the landscape. I would probably have stood with them, yes. But what could I do? I was a policeman.”

  The big wood-burning stove was radiating heat now. Klemet began frying the meat, turning the potatoes in the pan from to time. Nina could feel her cheeks reddening. After almost an entire day out in the cold, they seemed to be radiating intense heat, too. She remembered Berit’s friendly warning, but she felt entirely comfortable in her colleague’s presence.

  “Do you know all the breeders?” she asked.

  “I know most of them, yes,” said Klemet after a moment’s silence. “I should hope so, after ten years in the Reindeer Police.”