I was in a hurry to get back. I wanted to see Sunde. Mrs Kielland was alone in the sitting-room. She put her knitting down as she rose to greet us. ‘Well, has Albert shown you everything?’ She took hold of Jill’s hand. ‘You poor dear. I think you are very brave. The smell is something you have to get used to. But did you see the meat?’ Jill nodded. I think she was quite exhausted with whale. ‘What did you think? Is it good? Is it like your ox beef, eh?’
‘Yes. Very.’ Jill folded up quietly into a chair.
‘Where’s the diver?’ I asked.
Mrs Kielland turned. ‘Mr Sunde? That is very strange. I have not seen him since middag.’
‘Probably he has gone to Bovaagen to help his partner with that equipment,’ Kielland said.
‘Ah yes,’ his wife agreed. ‘That is it. I’m sure that is what he will have done. Why? Did you wish to speak with him?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I–I wanted to know more about his diving methods. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just take a stroll round and see if he’s about.’ I nodded to Curtis and he followed me out.
‘He wouldn’t have gone to Bovaagen surely,’ he said as we closed the door. ‘Not with Lovaas there.’
‘He might have gone first and Lovaas followed,’ I answered. ‘We’ll just see if he’s on the station.’
Curtis, who knew quite a bit of Norwegian from his service in the country, questioned everyone we met. But the only person who seemed to have seen anything of Sunde since the midday meal was the steward. He’d seen him going down behind the station towards the cutting where the sea swept in. We walked down to it across the bare rock. The sun was slanting behind the iron chimneys of the station and the rock was a warm, golden colour. We reached the cutting. It was narrow and the sea ran out through it fast as the tide fell. We crossed a bridge and continued on. Men’s boots had blazed a trail through the years that led like a white path to the crest of a jagged shoulder of rock. From the top we could see the white spire of Bovaagen church standing like a bright spearhead against the pale, burnished blue of the sky. And in a little backwater to our left a rowing boat lay tied to a rock. It was the sort of boat you find everywhere in Norway — a development of the coracle, pinched out to a point at bow and stern, a miniature Viking’s craft that had survived down the ages even to its fixed wooden rowlocks. From a neighbouring rock, a length of rope trailed in the greasy water.
‘Perhaps there was another boat there,’ Curtis suggested. ‘He may have rowed down to Bovaagen.’
‘Possible,’ I said.
‘Or he may have walked,’ Curtis added, gazing towards the little wooden church on the distant hill. ‘It can’t be so very far if the men walk it every day.’
‘Far enough,’ I said. ‘Anyway, their houses are probably this side of the village. Come on. We’ll take Diviner down there.’
We turned back then and walked towards the sun. As we crossed the wooden bridge that spanned the cutting, we met some of the men starting home. They were a small, dark lot with dirty clothes and almost every one of them carried a dripping hunk of red meat. They smiled at us in a quiet, friendly way and said, ‘God dag,’ as they passed. Curtis spoke with one or two. Most of them had houses much nearer than Bovaagen. ‘Bovaagen they said, was over an hour’s hard walking.
We got back to the Kiellands’ in time for tea and a drink. Immediately afterwards we excused ourselves and went down to the ship. As we walked through the almost deserted station, Jill said to me, ‘If we don’t find Mr Sunde at Bovaagen, we might try Nordhanger.’
‘Einar Sandven’s cottage?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘There’s a road to Nordhanger from Bovaagen.’
As we passed through the dark cavern of the packing sheds, a ship’s siren reverberated through the low island hills. I stopped, listening to the sound of it dying away. Then it came again, a deep, hollow sound. Curtis, who was ahead, ran out on to the quay. Then he turned and called to us. ‘It’s Lovaas,’ he shouted. ‘He’s coming in.’
The slanting sunlight sprawled the shadow of Hval To across the quay. Curtis was pointing across the catcher’s bow with its deadly harpoon gun. Through the gap between the islands steamed another catcher. Its siren-puff of steam still hung like a white wreath astern of it. Across the still water came the sound of the engine-room telegraph. The catcher began to swing as it manoeuvred in to the quay. The golden sunlight caught the side of the bridge. HVAL 10. ‘Come on,’ I said to the others. ‘We mustn’t appear too interested.’
We went on along the quay, past the pile of fifty-kilo cases of whale meat awaiting dispatch, past Hval 2, whose men were all on deck watching Lovaas come in, until we came to Diviner. Her deck was deserted. The varnish of her bare masts shone warm in the slanting sun. We climbed aboard and went below. Dahler was sitting alone in the saloon. ‘Where’s Carter and Wilson?’ I asked him.
