Mia is working today as well. Thorleif smiles to her as he enters the hotel lobby.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hello, you.’
‘I was wondering if I could borrow your laptop for a little while. Just for a couple of minutes,’ he says, apologetically.
‘Of course you can.’
‘Thank you so much. There was just something I wanted to check.’
‘Take as long as you like. It’s fine.’
Mia smiles and lifts the bag with the laptop over the counter. He takes it.
‘Thank you. How is the book coming along?’
‘Not too bad. I’m working on an escape scene at the moment. It takes place in a hotel,’ she says with her most conspiratorial smile.
‘Oh, good,’ Thorleif says. He realises he would genuinely like to hear more about Mia’s other experiences as a budding writer but suppresses the urge. He can’t allow himself to get to know her or anyone else here. Instead, he sits down in the same seat as yesterday and throws his denim jacket on the adjacent chair. The hotel’s home page glows at him as he opens the screen. Thorleif straightens his cap, opens his newly created email account and waits with bated breath as it downloads. There is no reply from Iver Gundersen.
Thorleif slumps a little in the chair but decides he might as well check the newspapers as he is already online. He finds an article that informs him that the preliminary autopsy report on Tore Pulli provided no answers as to his cause of death. Apart from that, there are no interesting stories about Pulli.
Most newspapers have produced their own, near identical stories about Thorleif’s disappearance, but none of them is accompanied by a picture. This is one of the advantages of being behind the camera, he thinks. You’re practically invisible to the public.
‘Mia?’ he calls out.
‘Yes.’
‘Where is the gents, please?’
She leans over the counter and points to the right. ‘Go past the piano and you’ll find the lavatories on the other side.’
‘Okay. Thank you. Is it all right if I leave your laptop here while I’m gone?’
‘Yes, as there is no one else around-’
Mia smiles again. Thorleif gets up and walks past the fireplace. He passes a lobster tank by the entrance to the restaurant and turns the corner by the dark brown piano. After the smell of the old earth closet in Einar’s cabin, it is a treat to enter a fragrant room. There are grey tiles on the floor. The walls are white.
Thorleif relieves himself and spends a long time washing his hands in one of the two square sinks in front of the mirror before he dries them with a paper towel which instantly disintegrates and sticks to his fingers. He is about to return to the lobby‚ but stops at the sight of a man at the reception with his back to him. The man is wearing a black leather jacket. And he has a ponytail.
Orjan Mjones looks around as he gets off the train. A petrol station, a hotel, a shop and a kiosk. Is that all this place has to offer? he wonders. In that case it will be a brief visit. If I was Thorleif, he thinks, and I had got off the train here, where would I have gone? What would I have needed?
Mjones tries the shop by the petrol station first, but finds it closed. The kiosk, however, is open, but the woman behind the counter has never heard of Brenden. Mjones walks down the steps and out into the evening heat. The sky above him is turning as dark and gloomy as he feels.
The hotel, red and built in the eighties, looms large in the landscape. I might as well stay here for the night, he thinks. The last train back to Oslo left long ago.
He enters the lobby and smiles to a friendly girl behind the counter. He takes out the folded photo of Brenden and introduces himself as Detective Inspector Stian Henriksen. ‘I’m looking for this man,’ he says. ‘Have you seen him?’