Chapter 39
While the manager tries to track down Paul Lehto, Hanna and Daniel have gone up to the Silver Suite.
It’s like a world of its own in here, he thinks. The rust-colored wooden walls create a cozy, cave-like atmosphere. Warm light spills from the wall lamps; the sound of footsteps is silenced by a graphite-gray carpet.
The perpetrator left a bloody shoeprint in the hallway, but the traces ended after only about three feet. It has been impossible to establish which way he went.
Hanna is frowning. She adjusts her ponytail, then slowly runs her fingers down the smooth wooden wall while she ponders.
“He fled after the murder. But where did he go?”
Daniel joins her, and they go through the fire door and continue along the walkway.
He looks around carefully when they stop.
On the right is the staircase leading down to reception, at the other end, to the south, a wall of glass.
He can just see crisscrossing wooden bridges between the rectangular buildings.
There are plenty of comfortable chairs and tables of different heights so that guests can chat or work.
From up here they have an excellent view, with the communal areas on the ground floor at their feet.
Hanna points to the guest elevator about twenty yards away—a stainless steel construction that breaks up the row of identical doors. Ten yards farther along is the staff elevator that Espen showed them earlier. You have to have a special key card to use it.
“I can’t imagine him taking the elevator,” she says.
“If he’d used the staff elevator, we’d be able to trace him through the card, and he would have known that.
We also know that he must have been covered in blood.
No one in that state is going to simply step into an elevator that can stop to pick people up on any floor. ”
“He can hardly have walked down the main staircase either,” Daniel points out.
He looks around again. To the left of the fire door is a plum-colored velvet sofa, then another door with no number on it. It blends into the wall so well that he’s only just noticed it. “Have you seen that?”
They go over to the discreet door. A red fire extinguisher hangs next to the frame. Maybe that’s what confused them before.
Daniel suddenly realizes something. They are standing on the other side of the tall copper wall in the airy foyer. No one can see them, not from reception or the other walkways. They are well hidden from curious eyes.
“I wonder if it’s locked?” Hanna says.
Daniel reaches out and opens the door to discover narrow stairs that appear to go all the way down to the ground floor. His expression is grim.
“How about this for a possible escape route?”