Chapter 22
The sunlight is dazzling when Hanna takes off her sunglasses to wipe away a few tears caused by the high speed of their descent. She and Henry have just stopped on a sunny ledge after an unusually long and intense downhill run.
Just like before, the helicopter set them down on a high peak so that they could enjoy virgin terrain.
Yesterday they landed on a massif called Bossos?ohkka, and today they are on a mountain known as Drakryggen.
After a couple of hours’ skiing, it is time for an outdoor lunch, which their ski guide is currently producing as if by magic from his well-filled rucksack.
“Good snow,” Henry puffs, sitting down next to Hanna on a reindeer skin. “Excellent.”
Once again she is impressed by his physique and fitness. They have really pushed themselves; they have hardly stopped to rest since leaving the hotel. There is nothing to suggest that he is approaching sixty.
Henry has taken good care of himself, and he is probably better at it than she is.
He is much more aware of the importance of food and sleep.
He avoids red meat and processed foods as far as possible, while Hanna often wolfs down a hot dog or burger, as most police officers do when they are working.
“Fantastic,” she agrees with a smile as she continues to admire the view.
She can’t get enough of it.
They are enjoying a fairy-tale landscape where human beings are only temporary guests.
They are surrounded by snow-covered formations that look like billowing waves.
The Norwegian peaks are visible on the horizon, and even farther away, invisible to the eye, are the cold, rolling depths of the North Atlantic.
Hanna has often skied in the Alps, but the sight before her bears no resemblance to either Switzerland or Austria, where the mountains are sharp and pointed, reaching up to the sky in jagged ranks.
Here everything is . . . rounder. More inviting and friendly. The mountains, which are sometimes called sleeping giants, simply go on and on into the distance. Far away she can just see a few fluffy clouds in the dips, but otherwise the sky is completely clear.
And there are no hordes of tourists like in the Alps. They are completely alone among the powerful peaks.
Even the reindeer don’t come this high up in the winter.
Hanna knows that the world is round, yet it feels as if the world below them is a plateau of ice, snow, and ancient mountains.
It is like sitting on a throne at the top of the universe.
“Top of the world,” Henry says, as if he has read her mind.
“It’s amazing. So beautiful. Thank you for bringing me here.”
Henry leans back on his elbows and smiles, completely relaxed. Hanna admires his ability to lose himself in the moment, to focus wholeheartedly on what is going on right now.
She is still brooding over what he said last night.
His suggestion that they should move in together.
It was the last thing she had expected him to come out with. In her confusion she tried to brush it off with a joke—she hasn’t yet given him a proper answer.
Move in with Henry?
That would mean taking their relationship to a whole new level.
She hasn’t even told her family and friends about him, and now he wants them to live together.
They would officially become a couple. And where would they live?
In Stockholm, in an inner-city apartment?
Or in J?mtland, where she has worked so hard to build a new life for herself?
Her job and her cat are in ?re.
And so is Daniel.
Once again she has that strange sense of disloyalty, the feeling that she is betraying him by being with Henry.
She leans forward and loosens the straps on her ski suit in order to increase her circulation.
They are only colleagues, she tells herself as so many times before.
Even though she has cared about Daniel for a long time in a way that definitely oversteps how you should feel about a coworker, she has taken great care to hide her emotions.
There is no chance that he suspects anything; she is absolutely sure of it.
While he was with Ida, it was of course unthinkable to give any hint of her inner turmoil. Hanna herself has been the victim of infidelity. It hit her hard, much harder than she could have imagined, when she found out that Christian had been cheating on her for months.
It didn’t exactly help when he dumped her the same day she was fired from her job with the City Police in Stockholm.
The fact that he chose to stay with the other woman, Valérie, left a bitter taste that still lingers. After that ordeal she would never contemplate subjecting another woman to the same thing.
Much later, when it became clear that Daniel and Ida had decided to split up, she still couldn’t bring herself to tell him how she felt. Especially as he was in the middle of a painful separation.
It was around that time when Henry started courting her, in a way that Hanna had never experienced before. So she made up her mind to stop pining for the unattainable and to be with someone who actually wanted her.
She glances at Henry, who is enjoying the sunshine with his eyes closed. He has made such an effort to celebrate her birthday—she must stop thinking about Daniel.
Their guide comes over with two steaming mugs containing something red.
“There you go,” he says with a smile. “Hot lingonberry juice flavored with cinnamon. The food is almost ready.”
When Hanna turns her head, she notices that he has lit a small spirit stove in the snow. A pan is bubbling away, giving out a seductive aroma of sautéed reindeer. In another pan she can see fluffy mashed potatoes.
She suddenly realizes how hungry she is. She leans over and gives Henry a kiss on the cheek.
“Can’t we just stay here forever?”
Then out of sheer habit she reaches into her pocket to check her phone. The letters on the screen seem to scream at her.
Another murder in ?re!