The pain in her hand was almost unbearable. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious.
Mia Krüger opened her eyes and staggered to her feet; she instinctively held her left arm close to her chest and tried to work out where she was. The cold. The frosty ground. Her body protested, but she forced herself upright nevertheless. Stood swaying with her head bowed while reality slowly came back to her.
Miriam.
Mia had followed Jim Fuglesang’s cryptic references. The photographs. The four white stones. The red boat. Found the derelict house. And she had not realized what she had stumbled across until it was too late. Jacob Marstrander. And Miriam had been there? No mobile coverage. Too irritated by that to be careful. He had attacked from behind. Invisible blows to her head. Thank God she had managed to raise her arm.
Damn.
Mia took a step forwards but quickly learned that she was not in control. Her head tried to tell her something, but her body refused to listen. She tripped, landed on the frozen heather and felt fresh pain shoot through her. He had broken her hand. She was unable to move her arm. And her eye – she could not see out of her left eye because of the blood. She could taste blood.
Amateur.
Slowly, she got to her feet again and stood dazed and confused on the barren ground in an attempt to pull herself together.
Her gun?
Mia was on the verge of blacking out, but she was starting to remember now. The blows to her head. She had managed to protect her head with her left hand, which was why it no longer worked.
She took a few faltering steps, not knowing in which direction to move. The Glock? Had he taken her gun?
Miriam.
He had abducted her. The feather-clad young man.
What the …?
She tripped again, fell face first into the heather, but managed yet again to get back on her feet. She stuffed her left hand inside her jacket. All her fingers broken. It had shielded her against the blows. It was the reason she was still alive. How long had she been unconscious?
Mia slipped her right hand inside the lining of her trousers and pressed her eyes shut in an attempt to clear the blood. Left, no. But her right one, yes, she could see now. She knew where she was. Her Glock 17. He had taken it, he must have done, because she could not see it anywhere – but then her mood improved when she felt the metal of a barrel tucked into the waistband of her trousers.
The small one. Her Glock 26. She had been in the middle of nowhere before, she had felt vulnerable then and there was no way on earth she had been going to allow that to happen again, so she had brought two weapons this time. Mia pulled out the gun, and finally got a vague sense of where she was. The house. The car. A path leading further into the forest.
Jacob Marstrander.
Mia tucked her left hand further inside the leather jacket, suppressing the pain, and started walking in the direction she guessed they would have taken.
What the hell was Miriam doing out here?
The grey, derelict house.
The door was now wide open.
So, not inside.
The path leading to the lake.
Back to Fuglesang’s house.
No.
The path.
Mia flicked off the safety catch on the Glock and gripped the gun hard, as her legs finally obeyed her brain and allowed her to walk towards the forest clearing behind the house, where the two of them were likely to have headed.
How long had she been unconscious?
A few hundred metres further on she resisted a sudden urge to throw up. Everything inside her wanted out. She had to lean against a tree.
The right way, Mia.
Just do it.
She managed to hold it in and staggered on, getting steadier with each step. They had to still be there, somewhere in the forest, his body covered in feathers, Miriam blindfolded and with her hands tied. Mia was holding the Glock in front of her, forcing her feet to carry her forward when, suddenly, she spotted them.
The clearing in between the trees.
Miriam kneeling.
In front of something …?
Mia could not see clearly, and yet she knew what it was.
A place of sacrifice.
Candles in a pentagram. Feathers on the ground.
No.
Mia quickly looked about her, realizing she could go no further. He would see her if she continued straight on. She made a quick decision, veered from the path and stayed close to the trees on the edge of the clearing.
An open space.
He was doing something.
She had no clothes on.
There was something around her neck.
Miriam was kneeling in the clearing, naked, with her hands tied.
Mia moved carefully between the trees to get a better look. She raised her Glock, but her hand was trembling. The barrel was pointing just as much at Miriam as at the animal in the feathers.
Shit.
What was he doing now?
She crept a little closer.
The clearing was not large. Mia looked around, finally got her brain to work enough to give her the full picture. There was the path on which she had arrived. A semicircle of trees behind which she was now hiding. On the horizon behind Miriam – Mia had to blink in order to make the perspective work –
A sheer drop.
He had built a place of sacrifice in a clearing, right on the edge of a precipice.
No.
Mia crept softly between the trees. At last, her body seemed to respond fully to her brain. Her left eye was glued shut with what she took to be blood from her head wound, but it made no difference now, because she was able to move again. Her body and her brain were working together. She made her way through the heather, each step taking her closer, as the feather-clad young man stood up, walked behind Miriam and grabbed hold of something.
Shit.
He had put a rope around her neck.
Strangled and posed in a pentagram of candles.
Mia edged her way closer. It was now or never; he would kill Miriam unless she did something. She raised the Glock up to her eye again but was still unable to see what she was aiming at.
Then, suddenly, there was a noise from the sky. The young man instinctively looked up at the clouds, a stunned expression on his face.
A chopping sound.
A helicopter.
So they had got her message after all.
They had found her.
But then.
Mia Krüger would play this movie back in her head every night in the weeks that followed.
Sweat on her pillow.
Waking with a scream.
Slow motion.
The feather-clad young man gazing in wonder at the sky, at the noise that drowned out the quiet forest. Distracted, his hands fell to his sides.
Miriam kneeling there.
Naked.
A helicopter.
The sound of rescue.
The sound of freedom.
And then she started running.
Mia raised her Glock and leapt out into the clearing.
No, no.
‘Miriam!’
The man startled at the sudden change – the helicopter in the sky, Mia charging at him, her gun suddenly appearing in his hands, the Glock he had taken from her – trying to take it all in.
‘Miriam!’
The film continued.
Hands tied, naked legs running, towards the sound of freedom, towards the edge of the precipice.
No, Miriam, no!
She could see the helicopter now. The young man aimed the gun at Mia, but she took no notice of the bullets slamming around her feet. She discovered a strength she did not know she possessed.
‘Miriam!’
Mia raised the gun up to her right eye as she ran into the clearing. She heard the sound of the rotor blades as the mechanical animal hovered at the edge of the void.
And then she was gone.
Miriam did not even feel it.
Over the edge.
The feather-clad young man. Eyes that did not understand what was happening, as Mia finally found him in her sights and emptied the magazine into him.
‘Miriam!’
White fingers letting go of the gun he was holding as he slumped to his knees on to the cold ground.
She could not see Munch’s eyes, but she could sense them, the white in them, as he watched his naked daughter fall through the air.
Mia saw her last three shots find their target.
An expression in his eyes she could not quite place.
Skin behind quivering feathers.
And then he was gone.
She was barely conscious when she reached the edge of the precipice and saw the twisted, white, naked body at the bottom.
Miriam.
Mia sank to her knees, about to pass out. The gun slipped from her hands.
No.
Please.
The sound of the helicopter faded away.
And then.
Miriam.
She was no longer there.