The Redbreast (Harry Hole)

by Jo Nesbo

  46

  Drammen. 7 March 2000.

  HARRY HAD NEVER UNDERSTOOD EXACTLY WHY DRAMMEN came in for so much criticism. The town wasn’t a beauty, but was it so much uglier than most of the other overgrown villages in Norway? He considered stopping for a cup of coffee at Børsen, but a quick check of his watch revealed that he didn’t have enough time.

  Edvard Mosken lived in a red wooden house with a view of the trotting track. An oldish Mercedes estate was parked outside the garage. Mosken himself was standing at the front door. He examined Harry’s ID carefully before saying anything.

  ‘Born in 1965? You look older than that, Inspector Hole.’

  ‘Bad genes.’

  ‘Bad luck for you.’

  ‘Well, they let me into eighteen-certificate films when I was fourteen.’

  It was impossible to discern whether Edvard Mosken appreciated the joke or not. He motioned for Harry to go in.

  ‘You live alone?’ Harry asked as Mosken led the way to the sitting room. The flat was clean and well-kept; few personal ornaments and just as exaggeratedly neat as some men like to be when they are allowed to choose for themselves. It reminded Harry of his own flat.

  ‘Yes. My wife left me after the war.’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘Upped sticks. Cleared off. Went on her way.’

  ‘I see. Children?’

  ‘I had a son.’

  ‘Had?’

  Edvard Mosken stopped and turned round.

  ‘Am I not expressing myself clearly, Inspector Hole?’

  One white eyebrow was raised, forming a sharp angle on the high, open forehead.

  ‘No, it’s me,’ Harry said. ‘I have to be spoonfed.’

  ‘OK. I have a son.’

  ‘Thank you. What did you do before you retired?’

  ‘I owned a few lorries. Mosken Transport. Sold the business seven years ago.’

  ‘Did it go well?’

  ‘Well enough. The buyers kept the name.’

  They sat down, each on their own side of the coffee table. Harry knew that there would be no question of coffee. Edvard sat on the sofa, leaning forward with his arms crossed as if to say: Let’s get this over with.

  ‘Where were you on the night of 21 December?’

  Harry had decided on the way over to open with this question. By playing the only card he had before Mosken had a chance to sound out the terrain and deduce that they didn’t have anything, Harry could at least hope to flush out a reaction, which might tell him something. If Mosken had anything to hide, that was.

  ‘Am I under suspicion for anything?’ Mosken asked. His face betrayed no more than mild surprise.

  ‘It would be good if you could just answer the question, Mosken.’

  ‘As you wish. I was here.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t exactly have to think about it.’

  Mosken grimaced. It was the kind of grimace where the mouth makes a parody of a smile while the eyes look at you in despair.

  ‘When you get to be as old as I am, it’s the evenings when you didn’t sit on your own that you remember.’

  ‘Sindre Fauke has given me a list of the Norwegians who were together at the Sennheim training camp. Gudbrand Johansen, Hallgrim Dale, you and Fauke.’

  ‘You forgot Daniel Gudeson.’

  ‘Did I? Didn’t he die before the war was over?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘So, why do you mention his name?’

  ‘Because he was with us at Sennheim.’

  ‘My understanding from Fauke was that many Norwegians went through Sennheim, but that you four were the only ones to survive.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So why mention Gudeson in particular?’

  Edvard Mosken stared at Harry. Then he shifted his gaze into a void. ‘Because he was with us for such a long time. We thought he would survive. Well, we almost believed Daniel Gudeson was indestructible. He was no ordinary person.’

  ‘Do you know that Hallgrim Dale is dead?’

  Mosken shook his head. ‘You don’t seem very surprised.’

  ‘Why should I be? Nowadays I’m more surprised to hear who is still alive.’

  ‘What about if I tell you that he was murdered?’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s different. Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘What do you know about Hallgrim Dale?’

  ‘Nothing. The last time I saw him was in Leningrad. He was suffering from shell-shock.’

  ‘You didn’t travel back together?’

  ‘How Dale and the others got home I have no idea. I was wounded in winter 1944 as the result of a grenade thrown from a Russian fighter plane into the trench.’

  ‘A fighter plane? From a plane?’

  Mosken smiled laconically and nodded. ‘When I woke up in the field hospital the retreat was in full swing. Later that summer I ended up in the field hospital in Sinsen School, Oslo. Then came the capitulation.’

  ‘So you didn’t see any of the others after you were wounded?’

  ‘Just Sindre. Three years after the war.’

  ‘After you had served your time?’

  ‘Yes. We ran into each other in a restaurant.’

  ‘What do you think about him deserting?’

  Mosken shrugged. ‘He must have had his reasons. At least he took sides at a time when no one knew how the war would end. That’s more than you can say about most Norwegian men.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There was a saying during the war: Those who decide late will always decide right. At Christmas in 1943 we could see that our front was moving backwards, but we had no real idea how bad it was. Anyway, no one could accuse Sindre of changing like a weather-vane. Unlike those at home who sat on their backsides during the war and suddenly rushed to join the Resistance in the last months. We used to call them the “latter-day saints’’. A few of them today swell the ranks of those who make public statements about the Norwegians’ heroic efforts for the right side.’

  ‘Is there anyone in particular you’re thinking about?’

  ‘Of course you always think about the odd person who has been given the shining hero treatment afterwards. It’s not that important, though.’

  ‘What about Gudbrand Johansen? Do you remember him?’

  ‘Of course. He saved my life at the end there. He . . .’

  Mosken bit his lower lip. As if he had already said too much, Harry wondered.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Gudbrand? Damned if I know.The grenade ...Gudbrand, Hallgrim Dale and I were in the trench when it came bouncing across the ice and hit Dale on the helmet. I can only remember that Gudbrand was closest to it when it exploded. I came out of the coma later and no one could tell me what had happened to Gudbrand or Dale.’

  ‘What do you mean? Had they disappeared?’

  Mosken’s eyes searched for the window.

  ‘This happened the same day the Russians launched their full offensive. It was chaotic, to put it mildly. Our trenches had long since passed into Russian hands when I woke up and the regiment had been transferred. If Gudbrand survived, he would probably have ended up in the Nordland regiment field hospital, in the Northern Sector. The same would be true of Dale if he had been wounded. I suppose I must have been there too, but when I woke up I was somewhere else.’

  ‘Gudbrand Johansen’s name isn’t in the Civil Register.’

  Mosken shrugged. ‘So he must have been killed by the grenade. That was what I assumed.’

  ‘And you’ve never tried to trace him?’

  Mosken shook his head.

  Harry looked around for something, anything, that might suggest Mosken had coffee in the house – a coffee pot, a coffee cup. There was a photograph of a woman in a gold frame on the hearth.

  ‘Are you bitter about what happened to you and the other Eastern Front soldiers after the war?’

  ‘As far as
the punishment goes, no. I’m a realist. People had to be brought to justice because it was a political necessity. I had lost a war. I’m not complaining.’

  Edvard Mosken suddenly laughed – it sounded like a magpie’s cackle. Harry had no idea why he had laughed. Then Mosken became serious again.

  ‘What smarted was being labelled a traitor. But I console myself with the fact that we know that we defended our country with our lives.’

  ‘Your political views at that time . . .’

  ‘If they are the same today?’

  Harry nodded, and Mosken said with a dry smile, ‘That’s an easy question to answer, Inspector. No. I was wrong. Simple as that.’

  ‘You haven’t had any contact with neo-Nazis since?’

  ‘God forbid – no! There was a meeting in Hokksund a few years ago and one of the idiots rang me up to ask if I would go and talk about the war. I think they called themselves “Blood and Honour”. Something like that.’

  Mosken leaned across the coffee table. On one corner there was a pile of magazines, neatly stacked and aligned with the edge.

  ‘What is POT actually looking for? Are you trying to monitor the neo-Nazis? If that’s the case, you’ve come to the wrong place.’

  Harry was unsure how much to tell him at this point. His answer was honest enough though.

  ‘I don’t really know what we’re looking for.’

  ‘That sounds like the POT I know.’

  He laughed his magpie cackle again. It was an unpleasant, high-pitched sound.

  Harry later concluded it must have been the combination of the scornful laugh and the fact that he wasn’t offered any coffee that made him ask the next question in the way that he did.

  ‘How do you think it must have been for your son to grow up with an ex-Nazi as a father? Do you think that’s why Edvard Mosken Jr is doing time for a drugs offence?’

  Harry regretted it the second he saw the anger and pain in the old man’s eyes. He knew that he could have found out what he wanted without hitting beneath the belt.

  ‘The trial was a farce!’ Mosken fizzed. ‘The defence lawyer they gave my son is the grandson of the judge who sentenced me after the war. They’re punishing my child to hide their own shame at what they did during the war. I —’

  He stopped abruptly. Harry waited for him to go on, but nothing came. Without any prior warning, he suddenly felt the pack of hounds in the pit of his stomach tug at the chains. They hadn’t stirred for quite a while now. They needed a drink.

  ‘One of the “latter-day saints”?’ Harry asked.

  Mosken shrugged. Harry knew the topic was closed for now. Mosken angled his watch.

  ‘Planning to go somewhere?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Going on a walk to my chalet.’

  ‘Oh yes? Far away?’

  ‘Grenland. I need to be off before it gets dark.’

  Harry stood up. In the hall they stood searching for suitable parting words when Harry suddenly remembered something.

  ‘You said you were wounded in Leningrad during winter 1944 and were sent to Sinsen School later that summer. What did you do in the intervening period?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve just been reading one of Even Juul’s books. He’s a war historian.’

  ‘I’m quite aware who Even Juul is,’ Mosken said with an inscrutable smile.

  ‘He writes that the Norge regiment was dissolved in Krasnoje Selo in March 1944. Where were you from March to the time you arrived at Sinsen School?’

  Mosken held Harry’s gaze for a long while. Then he opened the front door and peered out.

  ‘Almost down to zero now,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to drive carefully.’

  Harry nodded. Mosken straightened up, shaded his eyes and squinted in the direction of the empty trotting stadium where the grey, oval, gravel track stood out against the dirty snow.

  ‘I was in places that once had names,’ Mosken said, ‘but were so transformed that no one could recognise them. Our maps only showed paths, water and minefields, no names. If I tell you I was in Pärnu in Estonia, that might be true. I don’t know and nor does anyone else. During the spring and summer of ’44 I was lying on a stretcher, listening to machine-gun fire and thinking about death. Not about where I was.’

  Harry drove slowly alongside the river and stopped at the red lights in front of the town bridge. The other bridge, which crossed the E18 motorway, ran like a dental brace through the countryside and obstructed a view of Drammen fjord. Well, OK, perhaps not everything had been a success in Drammen. Harry had actually decided he would stop for a coffee in Børsen on the way back, but he changed his mind. He remembered they served beer too.

  The lights changed to green. Harry accelerated.

  Edvard Mosken had reacted furiously to the question about his son. Harry made up his mind to find out more about who the judge in the Mosken trial had been. Then he took a last look at Drammen in the mirror. Of course there were worse towns.

  47

  Ellen’s Office. 7 March 2000.

  ELLEN HADN’T MANAGED TO COME UP WITH ANYTHING.

  Harry had wandered down to her office and sat in her creaky old office chair. They had recruited a new man, a young policeman from the station in Steinkjer, and he would be here in a month’s time.

  ‘I’m not clairvoyant,’ she said on seeing Harry’s disappointed face. ‘And I checked with the others at the morning meeting today, but no one had heard of the Prince.’

  ‘What about the Firearms Registry? They ought to have some idea about arms smugglers.’

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t work for you any longer.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘With you, then. It’s just that it felt like I was working for you. Bully.’ Harry shoved himself off with his foot and span round on the swivel chair. Four complete turns. He had never managed more. Ellen rolled her eyes.

  ‘OK, so I rang the Firearms Registry too,’ she said. ‘They hadn’t heard of the Prince, either. Why don’t they give you an assistant up in POT?’

  ‘The case doesn’t have high priority. Meirik lets me get on with it, but actually he wants me to discover what the neo-Nazis are planning to do on Eid.’

  ‘One of the cues was “arms freaks”. I can hardly imagine bigger arms freaks than the neo-Nazis. Why not start there and kill two birds with one stone?’

  ‘I wondered about that myself.’

  48

  Café Ryktet, Grensen. 7 March 2000.

  EVEN JUUL WAS STANDING ON THE STEPS AS HARRY PULLED up in front of his house.

  Burre stood beside him, pulling at his lead.

  ‘That was quick,’ Juul said.

  ‘I got into the car as soon as I put down the phone,’ Harry said. ‘Is Burre coming too?’

  ‘I was just taking him for a little walk while I waited. Go inside, Burre.’ The dog looked up at Juul with pleading eyes. ‘Now!’

  Burre jumped backwards and scurried in. Harry also recoiled at the sudden command.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Juul said.

  Harry caught a glimpse of a face behind the kitchen curtains as they drove away.

  ‘It’s getting lighter,’ Harry said. ‘Is it?’

  ‘The days are, I mean. They’re longer now.’

  Juul nodded without answering.

  ‘There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about a bit,’ Harry said. ‘Sindre Fauke’s family, how did they die?’

  ‘I’ve told you already. He killed them.’

  ‘Yes, but how?’

  Even Juul stared at Harry before answering. ‘They were shot. Through the head.’

  ‘All four?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Eventually they found a car park in Grensen and from there they walked to the place Juul had insisted on showing Harry when they had talked on the telephone.

  ‘So, this is Ryktet then,’ Harry said on entering the poorly lit, almost empty café with only a few people sitti
ng round well-worn plastic tables. Harry and Juul got themselves a coffee and sat at one of the window tables. Two elderly men further back in the room stopped speaking and scowled at them.

  ‘Reminds me of a café I go to sometimes,’ Harry said, inclining his head towards the two old men.

  ‘The old incorrigibles,’ Juul said. ‘Old Nazis and Eastern Front types who still think they were right. Here they sit pouring out their bitterness against the great betrayal, the Nygaardsvold government and the general state of things in the world. Those of them who still have breath in their bodies, at least. The ranks are thinning, I can see.’

  ‘Still politically committed?’

  ‘Oh, yes, they’re still angry. At Third World aid, cuts in the defence budget, women priests, marriages for homosexuals, our new countrymen, all the things you would guess would upset these old boys. In their hearts they’re still fascists.’

  ‘And you think Uriah might frequent this place?’

  ‘If Uriah is on some kind of crusade of vengeance against society, he would certainly find like-minded people here. Naturally, there are other meeting places for the ex-Eastern Front comrades, yearly gatherings here in Oslo, for example, for comrades-in-arms and others from all over the country. But those meetings are of a completely different order from the ones at this watering hole – they are purely social events to commemorate the dead, and there is a ban on talking politics. No, if I were hunting for an Eastern Front man with revenge on his mind, this is the place I would start.’

  ‘Has your wife been to any of these, what did you call them . . . gatherings of comrades-in-arms?’

  Juul stared at Harry in surprise. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘Just an idea,’ Harry said. ‘Wondered if she might have anything to tell me?’

  ‘She hasn’t,’ Juul said curtly. ‘Fine. Is there any connection between those you call the “old incorrigibles” and the neo-Nazis?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’ve had a tip-off which suggests that Uriah used a middleman to get hold of the Märklin rifle, someone who moves in arms circles.’

  Juul shook his head.