He took the loose hard drive with him when he left the room.
He was wide awake.
The woman standing in the arrivals hall at Gardermoen was surprised at how wide awake she felt. It had been a long drive, and she had slept badly for a couple of nights. For the last few kilometres before she reached the airport she had been afraid of falling asleep at the wheel. But now it seemed as if the same anxiety that had kept her awake at night was back.
For the hundredth time she looked at her watch.
The plane had definitely been delayed, according to the arrivals board. Flight SK1442 from Copenhagen was due at 21.50, but hadn’t landed until forty minutes later. That was now more than three quarters of an hour ago.
She paced up and down in front of the entrance to customs control. The airport was quiet, almost deserted so late on a Saturday evening between Christmas and New Year. The chairs were empty outside the small cafeteria where she had bought a cup of coffee and a slice of inedible lukewarm pizza. But she couldn’t calm herself enough to sit down.
She usually liked airports. When she was younger, in the days when the largest Norwegian airport was actually in Denmark and little Fornebu was the biggest in the country, she sometimes drove out there on Sundays just to watch. The planes. The people. The groups of self-assured pilots and the smiling women who were still called air stewardesses and were stunningly beautiful; she could sit for hours drinking tea from her Thermos and making up stories about all the people coming and going. Airports gave her a feeling of curiosity, expectation and homesickness.
But now she was anxious, verging on irritated.
It was a long time since anyone had come through customs.
When she turned back to look at the arrivals board, she saw that it no longer said BAGS ON BELT after SK1442. She knew what that meant, but refused to accept it. Not yet.
Marianne would have let her know if anything had happened.
Sent a message. Called. She would have been in touch.
The journey from Sydney took over thirty hours, with landings in Tokyo and Copenhagen. Obviously something could have happened. In Tokyo. In Sydney, perhaps. Or in Copenhagen, for that matter.
Marianne would have let her know.
Fear sank its teeth into the back of her neck. She made a sudden decision and rushed over to the corridor leading from customs control. It probably wasn’t advisable to flout the rule forbidding anyone from going further down the corridor. For all she knew, the security measures adopted by the airline industry after 9/11 might mean the customs officers had orders to shoot to kill.
‘Hello?’ she called out, poking her head around the wall. ‘Is anyone there?’
No response.
‘Hello?’ she called again, a little louder this time.
A man wearing the uniform of the customs service came over from the opposite wall, five metres away.
‘You can’t go in that way!’
‘No, I know. I was just wondering… I’m waiting for someone on the flight from Copenhagen. The one that landed an hour ago. SK1442. But she hasn’t turned up. I just wondered if you could…? Could you possibly be kind enough to check if there are any passengers left in there?’
For a moment it looked as if he might say no. It wasn’t his job to run errands for the general public. Then he changed his mind for some reason, shrugged his shoulders and gave a little smile.
‘I don’t think there’s anyone there. Just a minute.’
He disappeared.
Maybe her mobile needed recharging. Of course, she thought, breathing a little more easily. God knows it could be difficult finding a payphone these days. And if you found one, you didn’t have any change. Most took cards, of course, but when she thought about it, there must be something wrong with Marianne’s mobile.
‘Empty. Silent as the grave.’ The customs officer had his hands in his pockets. ‘We’re waiting for two or three more flights tonight, but at the moment there’s no one there. And the luggage carousel for the Copenhagen flight is empty.’
He took his hands out of his pockets and made an apologetic gesture.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your help.’
She moved away and set off towards the escalator leading up to the departures hall. Took out her mobile. No messages. No missed calls. Once again she tried to ring Marianne, but it went straight to voice-mail. Her legs started to move of their own accord. The escalator was going too slowly, so she ran up it. At the top, she stopped dead.
She had never seen the departures hall so empty and quiet.
Only a few check-in desks were staffed, the operators looking bored. A couple of them were reading newspapers. At the southern end she could hear the hum of a cleaning machine gliding slowly across the floor, a dark-skinned man at the controls. Only one security post was open, and she couldn’t see anyone there. It was like a scene from a film, a Doomsday film. Gardermoen should be full of life, exhausting and unfriendly, teeming with countless travellers and employees who never did more than they absolutely had to.
Her heart was in her mouth as she headed resolutely for the Scandinavian Airlines desk on the other side of the hall. There was no one there either. She swallowed several times and wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.
A well-built woman emerged from the back room.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes, I’m here to meet…’
The woman sat down behind the barrier. She logged on to her computer without looking up.
‘I’ve come to pick up a friend who should have been on the plane from Copenhagen.’
‘Hasn’t he turned up?’
‘She. It’s a she. Marianne Kleive.’
The woman behind the desk looked up in some confusion before she managed to rearrange her expression and went back to concentrating on her keyboard.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Quite.’
‘But she didn’t turn up. She’s been in Australia, and the flight was supposed to land in Tokyo and Copenhagen en route. I wonder if you could check whether she was on board?’
‘I can’t, unfortunately. I’m not allowed to give out that kind of information.’
Perhaps it was the threatening emptiness of the gigantic hall. Perhaps it was the sleepless nights or the inexplicable unease that had haunted her all week. Or it could have been the fact that she knew, deep down inside, she had every reason to despair. Whatever the cause, the woman in the red anorak started to cry in public for the first time in her adult life.
Slowly, silently, the tears ran down her cheeks, through the dimples on either side of her mouth that were so deep they were visible even now, and continued over her pointed chin. Slowly the big fat drops landed on the pale wood of the desk.
‘Are you crying?’
The Scandinavian Airlines clerk suddenly looked more sympathetic.
The woman in the red anorak didn’t reply.
‘Listen,’ said the clerk, lowering her voice. ‘It’s late. You must be tired. There’s no one here and…’ She gave a quick sideways glance at the door leading to the back room. ‘Which flight did you say?’
The woman placed a folded piece of paper on the desk.
‘A copy of the itinerary,’ she whispered, wiping her face with the backs of her hands.
She couldn’t see the screen from where she was standing. Instead she fixed her gaze on the other woman’s eyes. They flicked up and down between the keys and the screen. Suddenly the furrow above her eyes became more pronounced.
‘She had a ticket,’ she said eventually. ‘But she wasn’t on the plane. She…’ The keys rattled beneath her dancing fingers. ‘Marianne Kleive had a ticket, but she never checked in.’
‘In Copenhagen?’
‘No. In Sydney.’