The Redbreast (Harry Hole)

by Jo Nesbo

  They sat down on a bench and looked down over Fagerborg church, the roofs in Pilestredet which led down towards the town and the blue Oslo fjord twinkling far away.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Fauke said. ‘So beautiful that it can sometimes seem worth dying for.’

  Harry tried to take it all in, to make it fit. But there was one minor detail missing.

  ‘Even began to study medicine in Germany before the war. Do you know where in Germany?’

  ‘No,’ Fauke said.

  ‘Do you know if he had any specialisation in mind?’

  ‘Yes, he told me that he dreamed of following in the footsteps of his famous foster father and his father.’

  ‘And they were?’

  ‘You don’t know about the Juul consultants? They were surgeons.’

  89

  Grønlandsleiret. 16 May 2000.

  BJARNE MØLLER, HALVORSEN AND HARRY WERE WALKING side by side down Motzfeldts gate. They were in deepest Little Karachi and the smells, the clothes and the people around them reminded them as little of Norway as the kebabs they were chewing on reminded them of Norwegian grilled sausages. A boy, dressed up for the festivities in a Pakistani style, but with a 17 May ribbon on his gilt jacket lapels, came skipping down the pavement towards them. He had a strange, snubbed nose and was holding a Norwegian flag in his hand. Harry had read in the papers that Muslim parents were arranging a 17 May party for children today so that they could concentrate on Eid tomorrow.

  ‘Hurrah!’

  The boy flashed them a white smile as he sped past.

  ‘Even Juul is not just anyone,’ Møller was saying. ‘He’s perhaps our greatest authority on war history. If this is right, there’ll be a hell of a fuss in the newspapers. It doesn’t bear thinking about, if we’re mistaken. If you are mistaken, Harry.’

  ‘All I’m asking for is permission to bring him in for questioning, with a psychologist present. And a search warrant for his house.’

  ‘And all I’m asking for is at least one piece of evidence or a witness,’ Møller said, gesticulating. ‘Juul is well-known, and no one has seen him anywhere near the crime scenes. Not once. What about the telephone call Brandhaug’s wife received from your local hostelry, for example?’

  ‘I showed the photo of Even Juul to the woman working at Schrøder’s,’ Halvorsen said.

  ‘Maja,’ Harry prompted.

  ‘She couldn’t remember seeing him,’ Halvorsen said.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Møller groaned, wiping the sauce from his mouth.

  ‘Yes, but I showed the photo to a couple of them sitting there,’ Halvorsen said, casting a quick glance at Harry. ‘There was an old guy in a coat who nodded and said we should arrest that one.’

  ‘Coat,’ Harry repeated. ‘That’s the Mohican, Konrad Åsnes, wartime seaman. He’s quite a character, but not a reliable witness any more, I’m afraid. Anyway, Juul has told us that he was at the Kaffebrenneri across the road. There are no pay phones over there. So if he was going to ring it would be natural to go over to Schrøder’s.’

  Møller pulled a face and looked sceptically at his kebab. He had only tagged along, somewhat unwillingly, to try the burek kebab which Harry had talked up as ‘Turkey meets Bosnia meets Pakistan meets Grønlandsleiret’.

  ‘And do you really believe all that split-personality stuff, Harry?’

  ‘I think it sounds just as incredible as you do, boss, but Aune reckons it’s a possibility. And he’s willing to help us.’

  ‘And so you think Aune can hypnotise Juul and can coax out this Daniel Gudeson inside him and get a confession?’

  ‘It’s not definite that Even Juul has any idea what Daniel Gudeson has done, so it’s absolutely essential that we speak to him,’ Harry said. ‘According to Aune, people suffering from MPDs are very susceptible to hypnosis, since that’s what they’re doing to themselves all the time – self-hypnosis.’

  ‘Great,’ said Møller, rolling his eyes.‘So what’s the idea with the search warrant?’

  ‘As you’ve said yourself, we have no evidence, no witnesses and we know you can never rely on the court buying all the psycho-stuff, but if we find the Märklin rifle, we’re home and dry. We don’t need any of the rest.’

  ‘Hm.’ Møller came to a halt on the pavement. ‘Motive?’

  Harry probed Møller’s face.

  ‘My experience is that even confused people usually have a motive in their madness. And I can’t see Juul’s.’

  ‘Not Juul’s, boss,’ Harry said. ‘Daniel Gudeson’s. Signe Juul’s sort of going over to the enemy might have given Gudeson the motive for revenge. What he wrote on the mirror – God is my judge – may suggest that he views the murders as a one-man crusade, that his is a just cause, despite the condemnation of others.’

  ‘What about the other murders? Bernt Brandhaug and – if you’re right that it is the same murderer – Hallgrim Dale?’

  ‘I have no idea what the motives are, but we know that Brandhaug was shot with the Märklin rifle and Dale knew Daniel Gudeson. And according to the autopsy report Dale was cut up as if a surgeon had done the job. OK, Juul was beginning to study medicine and dreamed of becoming a surgeon. Perhaps Dale had to die because he had discovered that Juul was acting like Daniel Gudeson.’

  Halvorsen cleared his throat.

  ‘What?’ Harry asked sourly. He had known Halvorsen long enough to anticipate that an objection was on its way. And very probably a well-founded one.

  ‘From what you’ve told us about MPDs, it must have been Even Juul who killed Hallgrim Dale. Daniel Gudeson wasn’t a surgeon.’

  Harry swallowed the last bite of kebab, wiped his face with the serviette and looked around for a litter bin.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I could have said that we should wait until we have the answers to all our questions before we do anything. And I am aware that the Public Prosecutor will consider the evidence pretty thin. But none of us can ignore the fact that we have a suspect who might kill again. You’re frightened of the media circus, boss, if we charge Even Juul, but imagine the row that would break out if he committed any more murders. And then it came out that we had suspected him all along without doing anything to stop him . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I know all that,’ Møller said. ‘So you think he’ll kill again?’

  ‘There are a lot of things in this case I’m unsure about,’ Harry said. ‘But if there’s one thing I’m absolutely certain of it’s that he hasn’t completed his project yet.’

  ‘And what makes you so sure about that?’

  Harry tapped his stomach and pulled a sardonic grin.

  ‘There’s someone in here, morsing it up to me, boss. There’s a reason why he bought the most expensive and best assassination rifle in the world. One of the reasons Daniel Gudeson became a legend was that he was a fantastic marksman. And something down here is telling me that he’s decided to take this crusade to its logical conclusion. It’s going to be the crowning glory, something to immortalise the legend of Daniel Gudeson.’

  The summer heat vanished for a second as a last wintry gust swept up Moztfeldtsgate, swirling the dust and the litter. Møller closed his eyes, pulled his coat tighter around himself and shuddered. Bergen, he thought. Bergen.

  ‘I’ll see what I can manage,’ he said. ‘Make sure you’re ready.’

  90

  Police HQ. 16 May 2000.

  HARRY AND HALVORSEN WERE READY. SO READY THAT WHEN Hole’s telephone rang, they both jumped up. Harry seized the receiver: ‘Hole speaking!’

  ‘You don’t need to shout,’ Rakel said. ‘That’s why the phone was invented. What was it you said about the seventeenth the other day?’

  ‘What?’ It took Harry a few seconds to connect. ‘That I’m on duty?’

  ‘The other thing,’ Rakel said. ‘That you would move heaven and earth . . .’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ Harry felt a strange, warm feeling in his stomach. ‘You would like to be with me if I get
someone to do my shift?’

  Rakel laughed.

  ‘Now you sound nice. I should point out that you weren’t my first choice, but since father has decided that he wants to be on his own this year, the answer is yes, we would like to be with you.’

  ‘What does Oleg say to that?’

  ‘It was his suggestion.’

  ‘Yes? He’s a clever lad, that Oleg.’

  Harry was happy. So happy that it was difficult to speak with his normal voice. And he didn’t give a damn that Halvorsen was sitting across the desk from him with a grin spread from ear to ear.

  ‘Have we got a deal?’ Rakel’s voice tickled his ear.

  ‘If I can make it, yes. I’ll ring you later.’

  ‘OK, or you could come over for something to eat this evening. If you had the time, that is. Or the inclination.’

  The words came across as so exaggeratedly offhand that Harry knew she had been practising them before she rang. His laughter was bubbling inside him, his head as light as if he had taken a narcotic substance, and he was about to say yes when he remembered something she had said in the restaurant: I know it won’t stop with the one time. It wasn’t something to eat she was offering him.

  If you had the time, that is. Or the inclination.

  If he was going to panic, now was the time.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the telephone flashing.

  ‘I’ve got a call on the other line which I have to take. Rakel, can you hang on for a second.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Harry pressed the square key. It was Møller.

  ‘The arrest warrant is ready. The search warrant’s on its way. Tom Waaler is all set with two cars and four armed men. I hope to Christ that the morse-code guy in your guts has a steady hand, Harry.’

  ‘He fucks up the odd letter, but never a whole message,’ Harry said, signalling to Halvorsen that he should put on his jacket. ‘See you.’ Harry slammed down the phone.

  They were standing in the lift on their way down when it occurred to Harry that Rakel was still on the other line, waiting for an answer. He didn’t have the mental energy to work out what that meant.

  91

  Irisveien, Oslo. 16 May 2000.

  THE FIRST SUMMER’S DAY OF THE YEAR HAD BEGUN TO COOL as the police car rolled into the quiet residential area of detached houses. Harry was ill at ease. Not only because he was sweating under the bullet-proof vest, but because it was too quiet. He stared at the curtains behind the meticulously trimmed hedges, but nothing stirred. It felt like a Western and he was riding into an ambush.

  At first, Harry had refused to put on a bulletproof vest, but Tom Waaler, who was in charge of the operation, had given him a simple ultimatum: either put on the vest or stay at home. The argument that a bullet from a Märklin rifle would cut through the vest like the proverbial knife through butter had occasioned only a bored shrug with Waaler.

  They went in two police cars. The second, in which Waaler sat, had gone up Sognsveien, into Ullevål Hageby, to enter Irisveien from the opposite direction, from the west. He could hear Waaler’s voice crackle over the walkie-talkie. Calm and confident. Asked for position, went through the procedure again and the emergency procedure, asked every single officer to repeat their assignment.

  ‘If he’s a pro, he might have connected an alarm to the gate, so we’ll go over not through.’

  He was efficient, even Harry had to concede that, and it was clear that the others in the car respected Waaler.

  Harry pointed to the red timber house.

  ‘There it is.’

  ‘Alpha,’ the policewoman in the front seat said into the walkie-talkie. ‘We can’t see you.’

  Waaler: ‘We’re right round the corner. Keep out of sight from the house until you can see us. Over.’

  ‘Too late. We’re there now. Over.’

  ‘OK, but stay in the car until we come to you. Over and out.’

  The next moment they saw the nose of the second police car coming round the bend. They drove the last fifty metres to the house and parked the car to block the exit from the garage. The second car stopped in front of the garden gate.

  As they got out of the cars, Harry heard the dull echo of a tennis ball being struck by a not too tautly strung tennis racquet. The sun was moving towards Ullernåsen and he caught the smell of frying pork chops coming from one window.

  Then the show was on. Two police officers jumped over the fence with MP-5 machine guns at the ready and sprinted round the outside of the house, one to the right and one to the left.

  The policewoman in Harry’s car stayed where she was; her job was to maintain radio contact with the central switchboard and to keep potential spectators away. Waaler and the last officer waited until the other two were in position, secured their walkie-talkies in their breast pockets and jumped over the gate with service pistols raised. Harry and Halvorsen stood behind the police car, watching the whole show.

  ‘Cigarette?’ Harry asked the policewoman.

  ‘No thanks,’ she smiled.

  ‘I was wondering if you had any.’

  She stopped smiling. Typical non-smoker, Harry thought.

  Waaler and the officer were standing on the step, having taken up positions on either side of the door, when Harry’s mobile phone rang.

  Harry saw the police officer’s eyes roll. Typical amateur, she was probably thinking.

  Harry was about to switch off his mobile – he just checked it wasn’t Rakel’s number on the display first. The number was familiar, but it wasn’t Rakel’s. Waaler had already raised his hand to give the signal when Harry realised who was ringing. He took the walkie-talkie from the open-mouthed police officer.

  ‘Alpha! Stop. The suspect is ringing me right now. Can you hear me?’

  Harry looked over to the step where Waaler was nodding his head. Harry pressed the button on his mobile and pressed it to his ear.

  ‘Hole speaking.’

  ‘Hello.’ To Harry’s surprise, it wasn’t Even Juul. ‘This is Sindre Fauke. My apologies for disturbing you, but I am standing in Even Juul’s house and I think you should come here.’

  ‘Why? And what are you doing there?’

  ‘I think I might have done something stupid. He rang me an hour ago and told me to come over immediately, his life was in danger. I drove up and found the door open, but no Even. And now I’m afraid he’s locked himself in his bedroom.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘The bedroom door is locked and when I tried to peep through the keyhole, the key was on the inside.’

  ‘OK,’ Harry said, walking round the car and through the gate. ‘Listen carefully. Stay exactly where you are. If you are holding anything in your hands put it down and keep your hands where we can see them. We’ll be there in two seconds.’

  Harry walked towards the doorstep, with Waaler and the other policeman following his movements with amazement. He pressed down the door handle and went in.

  Fauke was standing in the hall with the telephone receiver in his hand, gaping at them in amazement.

  ‘My God,’ was all he could say when he spotted Waaler with the revolver in his hand. ‘That was quick . . .’

  ‘Where’s the bedroom?’ Harry asked.

  Fauke pointed mutely towards the stairs.

  ‘Show us,’ Harry said.

  Fauke led the way for the three officers.

  ‘Here.’

  Harry felt the door; quite right, it was locked. There was a key in the lock which he tried to turn, but it wouldn’t move.

  ‘I didn’t manage to tell you. I was trying to open the door with one of the keys from the other bedroom,’ Fauke said. ‘Sometimes they fit.’

  Harry took out the key and put his eye to the keyhole. Inside he could see a bed and a bedside table. There was what seemed to be a lightshade lying on the bed. Waaler was talking in a low voice on the walkie-talkie. Harry could feel the sweat beginning to filter down the inside of his vest again. He didn�
��t like the look of the lightshade.

  ‘I thought you said there was a key on the inside too?’

  ‘There was,’ Fauke said. ‘Until I knocked it out trying to get the other key in.’

  ‘So how will we get in?’ Harry asked.

  ‘It’s on the way,’ Waaler said, and at that moment they heard heavy boots running up the stairs. It was one of the officers who had taken up a position behind the house and he was carrying a red crowbar.

  ‘This way,’ Waaler said, pointing.

  Splinters flew. The door sprang open.

  Harry strode in and heard Waaler telling Fauke to wait outside.

  The first thing Harry noticed was the dog lead. Even Juul had hung himself with it. He had died wearing a white shirt, open at the neck, black trousers and checked socks. A toppled chair lay behind him in front of the wardrobe. His shoes were neatly placed under the chair. Harry looked up at the ceiling. The lead had been tied to a ceiling hook. Harry tried to refrain, but couldn’t stop himself from examining Even Juul’s face. One eye stared out into the room while the other was fixed on Harry. Independently. Like a two-headed troll with an eye in each head, Harry thought. He walked over to the window facing east and watched the children cycling along Irisveien, drawn by the rumours of police cars which always spread with inexplicable speed in areas like this.

  Harry closed his eyes and reflected. The first impression is important. The first thought that came into your mind at the scene is often the most accurate. Ellen had taught him that. His own trainee had taught him to concentrate on the first thing he felt when he came to the scene of the crime. That was why Harry didn’t need to turn to know that the key was on the floor behind him. He knew they wouldn’t find any fingerprints in the room and that no one had broken into the house. Quite simply because both the murderer and the victim were hanging from the ceiling. The two-headed troll had split.