Free Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel) by Anne Holt

scarcely pick up his scent, if he did not move.
    It was not an animal, though. He saw that now. He stood up straight and caught sight of a man, or at least a person, not standing on the edge, but a short distance across the surface of the ice. The being crouched down. Some action was undertaken.
    He strained to listen. His hearing was not quite what it had been and he could make out only his own pulse and a rhythmic rippling of the water in the stream. The person over there finally moved across to the edge of the forest, silently, sometimes staggering, as if creeping back in its own footprints. Soon it had disappeared in an easterly direction.
    The old man hesitated, unable to understand why he had not called out. He had felt uneasy, he was taken aback to admit, and had withdrawn into the darkness to avoid being seen, without really being able to explain why. Once again he strained his hearing, inclining his head and placing his ice-cold, bare hand behind one ear.
    All was silent.
    He was alert now. Slightly afraid, but also keen to find out what had happened, what the shadow had been doing here, at a tarn in Nordmarka on a December night. An old curiosity was awakened, a long-suppressed feeling, forgotten and packed away, since it was something that had only ever led him into trouble.
    It would take just a few minutes to cross the ice, maybe half an hour to walk around it. He cast his mind back to the mild weather that had come and gone since October and set off over the ground.
    He gasped for breath when he reached the spot, asthma squeezing his windpipe. Carefully he followed the other person’s footprints. They were almost black outlines on the blue-white snowy ground. Since the ice had supported the weight of the other person, it would probably hold him too. Anyway, he did not have to walk out far.
    A hole.
    Not large, but wide enough to draw up fish. Someone had been ice-fishing, in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold.
    He chuckled softly, and shook his head at the stupidity of city folk.

SATURDAY DECEMBER 21
    H anne Wilhelmsen lay staring at the ceiling. The heat in the room thickened the air with depleted night, and she licked her lips to moisten her dry mouth. Fortunately she had kicked off her quilt during the night. All the same, her skin was coated with sticky perspiration. Stiffly, she sat up in bed and punched her pillow, before lying down again.
    “You really might have told me about the party on Christmas Eve,” she said softly.
    Yawning, Nefis turned to face her.
    “My dear Hanna, if I’d told you about this party, it would never have come to pass! You would have said No, no, no; and then we’d have been left on our own. You and me and Mary.”
    “That’s the way I would have liked it, though.”
    Nefis groaned, smacking herself on the forehead. Her black hair was spread out in sweaty clumps and she smiled broadly.
    “Sweetheart. You are odd. Above all, you want it to be just the three of us all the time. All the time! I want to have a real Christmas! When I’ve been stuck in a wintry country with all these joyful traditions for Christmas Eve, then I want all of it! Lots of decorations and lights, and very, very much people around the table.”
    “Much,” Hanne said, wanting to get up. “It should really be ‘many’, when you’re talking about people. And you could have asked. Anyway, I didn’t know that you felt stuck .”
    “Hanna, honestly.”
    Nefis tried to grab her, but Hanne was too quick as she set off for the bathroom.
    She let the water cascade down her back while she leaned her forehead on the tiled wall. She gradually reduced the temperature of the water. Colder. She felt her skin contract and raised her head.
    Nefis was right. Nefis was always right. The odd family in Kruses gate would have lived like hermits, if Hanne had had her way.
    The thought induced a smile.
    “Hanna, you’re smiling!”
    Nefis sat down on the mahogany toilet seat cover with its inlaid