Chapter 64
Erik was standing in the doorway of the cabin, arms loose at his sides, jaw clenched. His orange wool hat was pushed back on his head, the ends of his dark hair curling from beneath it. “What are you doing?”
Helena lurched away from his backpack, raising her hands.
Erik took a step further into the cabin. The door swung shut behind him, and he stayed there, blocking their exit.
Maggie was staring at her, silently asking: What did you see?
Helena wanted to pull her to one side—tell her what she’d discovered in Erik’s pack—but there was no time.
“I asked, what are you doing?” Erik demanded.
“Sorry, I was just . . . looking . . .” Helena stalled to a halt.
Erik strode across the cabin in two steps, snatched up his backpack, and pulled it to him. He looked into the main pocket, then turned to Helena. “You saw them?”
She shook her head. “No! I didn’t see anything!”
Only she had.
It wasn’t cocaine that Helena had found in his backpack. It was a bundle of letters—dozens of them—all with one handwritten name on the front.
Karin.
Erik glared at her, eyes dark. He shook his head once, sadly, like he was disappointed that she was lying to him. Then he reached into his backpack and pulled out the stack of envelopes, tied together with an elastic band. A ball of tension moved at his jaw. She saw the swallow of his Adam’s apple.
“I write to Karin,” he said eventually.
Helena glanced at Maggie, whose brow was furrowed as she stared at the clutch of letters.
Erik moved his thumb slowly across Karin’s name on the top envelope. “It’s hard . . . ,” he began, voice quiet, “to let go when there are no answers.”
Helena said nothing.
“So I write.”
“Why did you bring them up here?” Maggie asked, her voice gentle.
“To burn them. Here. In the cabin. On the anniversary.” He looked at them both.
“But we were here,” Helena said, realizing why he’d looked so affronted to discover them in the cabin last night. He would have imagined that the cabin would be empty at this time of year.
Maggie, weight resting on her good leg, asked gently, “What do the letters say?”
Erik shrugged. “The things I can’t tell her.”
Helena thought she understood. In the early weeks after losing her mother, she would call her and leave an answerphone message, which she knew would never be played.
But she needed that connection—somewhere to put her thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” Helena said eventually. “For going through your things. It was wrong.”
He returned the letters to his backpack. “What were you looking for?”
She glanced at Maggie, who lifted her shoulders as if to say, What choice do we have?
Helena said, “Cocaine.”
Erik blinked. “Cocaine? Why?”
Helena was watching him closely. “Yesterday we stumbled across something we shouldn’t have. Several kilos of cocaine.”
His eyes widened. “What? Out here?”
She nodded. “We were camping on the beach, and when the storm came, we sheltered in the cave. That’s where we saw it. Hidden in lobster pots.”
“Wait,” he said, brow furrowing. “The same cave where you found Karin’s bracelet?”
Maggie nodded.
Erik ran a hand across the back of his skull, adjusting his orange beanie. “Why did you think the cocaine belonged to me?”
Warily, Maggie answered, “We thought, maybe, that you were on the trail to collect the cocaine. It’s just, when I saw you in the woods, your pack looked half-empty. And then, last night . . . you turned up with a full pack.”
“When I saw you, I’d already set up camp for the night. Left my bivouac and sleeping bag set up before trying to help you back to your friends.”
“Oh, I see,” Maggie said, cheeks pinkening.
Erik’s brow was creased as he asked, “Who left the cocaine there? Did you see anyone?”
Helena answered, “We saw a fishing boat leaving the bay—but we didn’t get a look at anyone on board.”
“What did the boat look like?”
She thought back to that early evening when they’d arrived at the beach. “It was red.”
“With a white wheelhouse,” Maggie added, pushing her hair behind her ears.
Erik’s expression darkened. “It’s Bj?rn’s boat. Karin’s father.”
Helena thought of the slim man she’d seen in the lodge, holding tight to his wife, his face a mask of sadness. “You think Bj?rn’s smuggling drugs?”
“No. Bj?rn ran that boat for twenty years. Supplied all the local fish and lobster in the village. But his back got bad. He needed help with the pots. He was hoping to take someone on, an apprentice. But a local man in the village—Austin—offered to buy the boat outright, take over.”
“Austin?” Maggie said. “Isn’t that the guy you . . . ?” she began, turning to Helena.
Helena nodded. She thought of Austin walking into the bar, the faint smell of something briny about him. Then later, legs wrapped around him, his rough, calloused hands on her breasts. The expensive watch on his wrist. The way he’d stared after her when she’d left.
“We met him at the lodge,” Helena said to Erik. “White-blond hair shaved close?”
“That’s him,” Erik confirmed. “Karin thought there was something suspect about him buying the boat. Her father never brought in much money, yet Austin paid more for it than it was worth. He barely seemed to take it out—yet was never short of money.”
Erik removed Karin’s bracelet from his pocket. It looked so delicate in his large palm.
“We saw someone going into the cave yesterday,” Maggie said, “but we were too far away to see clearly.”
“You think they saw you?”
She shook her head. “No—but they’ll have realized someone had been in there. Joni took a bag of the cocaine.”
“Shit,” Erik said.
“Because of the landslide,” Maggie said, explaining what had happened to their tents, “our only route back to the lodge is over Blafjell. Whoever went into that cave will know that.”
“You think they’re trailing you?”
Helena lifted her shoulders. “We don’t know.”
Erik looked again at Karin’s bracelet. After a moment he said, “Everyone assumed Karin hiked out the way I had. Down Blafjell, through the forest, back toward the lodge. But what if she didn’t? What if she walked in the opposite direction—to the beach?”
He crossed the cabin, moving to the window.
“What if she saw Austin unloading the pots? Maybe she followed him into the cave.”
“You think Karin discovered the cocaine?” Helena asked.
After a moment, Erik nodded.
The cabin felt airless and warm. “I have never believed that Karin just disappeared. She knew these mountains as well as anybody. She was experienced, smart.”
Erik dragged his gaze away from the window and turned to face them.
“You met the locals. It’s clear they all think I killed Karin.”
Helena took in his defeated posture, eyes full of sorrow.
“They’re right in a way: someone did kill Karin. But if it wasn’t me, then who?”