The Redbreast hh-3

by Jo Nesbo

  The intention of the trip to the office had been to sit there one last time, in the creaking, broken office chair, in the room where he had spent almost seven years. Harry shivered. All this sentimentality, he wondered, wasn't that another sign he was getting on?

  Harry walked up Holbergs gate and turned left into Sofies gate. Most of the properties in this narrow street were workers' flats dating back to the turn of the century and not in the best condition. But after the prices of flats had risen and young middle-class people who couldn't afford to live in Majorstuen had moved in, the area had received something of a face-lift. Now there was only one property which had not had its facade done up recently: number 8, Harry's. It didn't bother Harry in the least.

  He let himself in and opened the postbox in the hallway. An offer on pizzas and an envelope from Oslo City Treasurer which he immediately assumed contained a reminder to pay his parking fine from last month. He swore as he went up the stairs. He had bought a fifteen-year-old Ford Escort at a bargain price from an uncle whom, strictly speaking, he didn't know. It was a bit rusty and the clutch was worn, it was true, but there was a neat sun roof. So far, however, there had been more parking fines and garage bills than hairs on your head. On top of that, the shit heap wouldn't start, so he had to remember to park at the top of a hill to push-start it.

  He unlocked his front door. It was a spartanly equipped two-room flat. Clean and tidy, no carpets on the polished wooden floor. The only decorations on the walls were a photograph of his mother and Sis, and a poster of The Godfather he had pinched from Symra cinema when he was sixteen. There were no plants, no candles or cute knick-knacks. He had once hung up a notice-board he had thought he might use for postcards, photographs or any words of wisdom he might come across. In other people's homes he had seen boards like these. When he realised he never received postcards, and basically never took photos either, he cut out a quotation from Bjorneboe:

  And this acceleration in the production of horsepower is again just one expression of acceleration in our understanding of the so-called laws of nature. This understanding = angst.

  With a single glance Harry established that there were no messages on the answerphone (another unnecessary investment), unbuttoned his shirt, put it in the dirty-washing basket and took a clean one from the tidy pile in the cupboard.

  Harry left the answering machine on (perhaps someone would call from the Norwegian Gallup organisation), locked the door and left again.

  Without a trace of sentimentality he bought the last papers of the millennium from Ali's shop, then set off up Dovregata. In Waldemar Thranes gate people were hurrying home for the big night. Harry was shivering in his coat until he stepped into Schroder's and the moist warmth of humanity hit him in the face. It was fairly full, but he saw that his favourite table was about to become free and he steered towards it. The old man who had got up from the table put on his hat, gave Harry a quick once-over from under white bushy eyebrows, a taciturn nod, and left. The table was by the window and during the day it was one of the few in the dimly lit room to have enough light to read by. No sooner had he sat down than Maja was by his side.

  'Hi, Harry.' She smacked the tablecloth with a grey duster. 'Today's special?'

  'If the cook's sober.'

  'He is. Drink?'

  'Now we're talking.' He looked up. 'What are you recommending today?'

  'Right.' She placed one hand on her hip and proclaimed in a loud, clear voice, 'Contrary to what people think, this city has in fact the purest drinking water in the country. And the least toxic pipes are to be found in the properties built around the turn of the century, such as this one.'

  'And who told you that, Maja?'

  'It was probably you, Harry.' Her laughter was husky and heartfelt. 'Being on the wagon suits you, by the way.' She said this under her breath, made a note of his order and was off.

  The other newspapers were full of the millennium, so Harry tackled Dagsavisen. On page six his eyes fell on a large photograph of a wooden road sign with a sun cross painted on. Oslo 2,611 km, it said on one arm, Leningrad 5 km on the other.

  The article beneath was credited to Even Juul, Professor of History. The subheading was concise: The conditions for fascism seen in the light of increasing unemployment in Western Europe.

  Harry had seen Juul's name in newspapers before; he was a kind of eminence grise as far as the occupation of Norway and the Nasjonal Samling were concerned. He leafed through the rest of the paper but didn't find anything of interest. Then he flicked back to Juul's article. It was a commentary on an earlier report about the strong position held by neo-Nazism in Sweden. Juul described how neo-Nazism, which had seen a dramatic decline in the years of the economic upturn in the nineties, was now coming back with renewed vigour. He also wrote that a hallmark of the new wave was its firm ideological base. While neo-Nazism in the eighties had mostly been about fashion and group identification, a uniform code of dress, shaven heads and archaic slogans such as 'Sieg Heil', the new wave was better organised. There was a financial support network and it was not based to the same degree on wealthy leaders and sponsors. In addition, Juul wrote, the new movement was not merely a reaction to factors in the current social situation, such as unemployment and immigration; it wanted to set up an alternative to social democracy. The catchword was rearmament-moral, military and racial. The decline of Christianity was used as an example of moral decay, as well as HIV and the increase in drug abuse. And the image of the enemy was also to some extent new: champions of the EU who broke down national and racial boundaries; NATO people who held out a hand to Russian and Slav Untermenschen; and the new Asian capital barons who had taken on the Jews' role as world bankers.

  Maja arrived with the lunch.

  'Dumplings?' Harry asked, staring down at the grey lumps on a bed of Chinese cabbage sprinkled with thousand island dressing.

  'Schroder style,' Maja said. 'Leftovers from yesterday. Happy New Year.' Harry held up the newspaper so that he could eat, and he had just taken the first bite of the cellulose dumpling when he heard a voice from behind the paper. 'It's dreadful, I say.'

  Harry peeked beyond the newspaper. The Mohican was sitting at the neighbouring table, looking straight at him. Perhaps he had been sitting there the whole time, but Harry certainly hadn't noticed him come in. Presumably they called him the Mohican because he was the last of his kind. He had been a seaman during the war, was torpedoed twice, and all his pals were long since dead. Maja had told Harry that. His long, unkempt beard hung into his beer glass and he sat there with his coat on, as he always did, summer and winter alike. His face, so gaunt that it showed the contours of his skull, had a network of veins like crimson lightning on a background of bleached white. The red, Watery eyes stared at Harry from behind a layer of limp skin folds.

  'Dreadful!'

  Harry had heard enough drunken babblings in his life not to take any particular notice of what regulars at Schroder's had to say, but this was different. In all the years he had been going there, these were the first comprehensible words he had heard the Mohican speak. Even after the night last winter, when Harry had found the Mohican sleeping against a house wall in Dovregata and had most probably saved the old boy from freezing to death, the Mohican had not even offered him so much as a nod on the occasions they met. And now it seemed that the Mohican had said his piece for the time being, as his lips were tightly pressed together and he was concentrating on his glass again. Harry looked around him before leaning over to the Mohican's table.

  'Do you remember me, Konrad Asnes?'

  The old man grunted and stared into space without answering. 'I found you asleep in a snowdrift in the street last year. The temperature was minus eighteen.' The Mohican rolled his eyes.

  'There were no street lights, so I could easily have missed you. You could have croaked, Asnes.'

  The Mohican screwed up one red eye and gave Harry a furious look before raising his glass.

  'Yes, I'd like to thank you for
that.'

  He drank carefully. Then he slowly put his glass down on the table, placed it as if it were important that the glass should stand in a particular spot on the table.

  'Those gangsters should be shot,' he said.

  'Really? Who?'

  The Mohican directed a crooked finger towards Harry's paper. Harry turned it over. The front page was emblazoned with a large photograph of a shaven-headed Swedish neo-Nazi.

  'Up against the wall with them!' The Mohican smacked the palm of his hand down on the table, and a few faces turned towards him. Harry gestured with his hand to calm him down.

  'They're just young men, Asnes. Try and enjoy yourself now. It's New Year's Eve.'

  'Young men? What do you think we were? That didn't stop the Germans. Kjell was nineteen. Oscar was twenty-two. Shoot them before it spreads, I say. It's an illness; you have to catch it early on.'

  He pointed a trembling forefinger at Harry.

  'One of them was sitting where you're sitting now. They don't bloody die out! You're a policeman, you go out and catch them!'

  'How do you know I'm a policeman?' Harry asked in surprise.

  'I read the newspapers. You shot someone in some country down south. That was good, but what about shooting a couple here too?'

  'You're very talkative today, Asnes.'

  The Mohican clammed up and gave Harry a last surly glance before turning to the wall and studying the painting of Youngstorget. Harry, understanding that the conversation was over, waved to Maja for a cup of coffee and consulted his watch. A new millennium was just around the corner. Schroder's would close at four o'clock because of a 'Private New Year's Eve Party", as the poster hanging on the entrance door said. Harry surveyed the familiar faces in the room. As far as he could see, all the guests had arrived.

  25

  Rudolf II Hospital, Vienna. 8 June 1944.

  Ward 4 was filled with the sounds of sleeping. Tonight it was quieter than usual, no one moaning in pain or waking from a nightmare with a scream. Helena hadn't heard an air-raid warning in Vienna either. If they didn't bomb tonight, she hoped it would make everything easier. She had crept into the dormitory, stood at the foot of his bed and watched him. There, in the cone of light from his table lamp, he sat, so immersed in the book he was reading that he didn't heed anything else. And she stood outside the glow, in the dark. With all the knowledge of the dark.

  As he was about to turn the page he noticed her. He smiled and immediately put down his book.

  'Good evening, Helena. I didn't think you were on duty tonight.'

  She placed her forefinger over her lips and went closer.

  'What do you know about the night shifts?' she whispered.

  He smiled. 'I don't know anything about the others. I only know when you're on duty.'

  'Is that right?'

  'Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, then Monday and Tuesday. Then Wednesday, Friday and Sunday again. Don't be frightened, it's a compliment. There's not much else to use your brain on here. I also know when Hadler gets his enema.' She laughed softly.

  'But you don't know you've been declared fit for action, do you?' He stared at her in surprise.

  'You've been posted to Hungary,' she whispered. 'To the 3rd Panzer Division.'

  'The Panzer Division? But that's the Wehrmacht. They can't enlist me. I'm a Norwegian.’

  ‘I know.'

  'And what am I supposed to be doing in Hungary? I -’

  ‘Shhh, you'll wake the others. Uriah, I've read the orders. I'm afraid there's not much we can do about it.’

  ‘But there has to be a mistake. It's…'

  He accidentally knocked the book onto the floor and it landed with a bang. Helena bent down and picked it up. On the cover, under the title The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there was a drawing of a boy in rags on a timber raft. Uriah was clearly angry.

  'This isn't my war,' he said through pursed lips.

  'I know that too,' she whispered, putting the book in his bag under the chair.

  'What are you doing?' he whispered.

  'You have to listen to me, Uriah. Time is short.'

  'Time?'

  'The duty nurse will be doing her rounds in half an hour. You have to have your mind made up before then.'

  He pulled the shade of the lamp down to see her better in the dark. 'What's going on, Helena?' She swallowed.

  'And why aren't you wearing your uniform today?' he asked.

  This was what she had been dreading most. Not lying to her mother and saying she was going to her sister's in Salzburg for a couple of days. Not persuading the forester's son-who was now waiting in the road outside the gate-to drive her to the hospital. Not even saying goodbye to her possessions, the church and her secure life in the Viennese woods. But telling him everything: that she loved him and that she would willingly risk her life and future for him. Because she might be mistaken. Not about what he felt for her-of that she was certain-but about his character. Would he have the courage and the drive to do what she would suggest? At least he was clear it wasn't his war they were fighting against the Red Army in the south.

  'We should have had time to get to know each other better,' she said, placing her hand over his. He grasped it and held it tight.

  'But we don't have that luxury,' she said, squeezing his hand. 'There's a train for Paris leaving in an hour. I've bought two tickets. My teacher lives there.'

  'Your teacher?'

  'It's a long, complicated story, but he'll receive us.’

  ‘What do you mean, receive us?'

  'We can stay with him. He lives alone. And, as far as I know, he doesn't have a circle of friends. Have you got a passport?’

  ‘What? Yes..?

  He seemed lost for words, as if he was wondering whether he had fallen asleep while reading the book about the boy in rags and all this was just a dream.

  'Yes, I've got a passport.'

  'Good. The trip takes two days. We've got seats and I've brought lots of food.'

  He took a deep breath. 'Why Paris?'

  'It's a big city, a city you can disappear in. Listen, I've got some of my father's clothes in the car-you can change into civvies there. His shoe size -'

  'No.' He held up his hand and her low, intense stream of words stopped momentarily. She held her breath and concentrated on his pensive face.

  'No,' he repeated in a whisper. 'That's silly.'

  'But…' She seemed to have a block of ice in her stomach.

  'It's better to travel in uniform,' he said. 'A young man in civvies will only arouse suspicion.'

  She was so happy she could hardly get the words out and squeezed his hand even harder. Her heart sang with such joy that she had to tell it to be quiet.

  'And one more thing,' he said, swinging his legs out of bed.

  'Yes?'

  'Do you love me?'

  'Yes.'

  'Good.'

  He already had his jacket on.

  26

  POT, Police HQ. 21 February 2000.

  Harry cast his eyes around. At the tidy, well-organised shelves of ring-binders neatly displayed in chronological order. At the walls where diplomas and distinctions from a career in smooth ascent hung. A black and white photograph of a younger, uniformed Kurt Meirik, with the rank of major, greeting King Olav hung behind the desk and caught the eye of everyone who came in. This was the picture Harry sat studying when the door opened behind him.

  'I apologise for keeping you waiting, Hole. Stay seated.'

  It was Meirik. Harry hadn't made a move to stand up.

  'Well,' said Meirik, taking a seat behind his desk. 'How has your first week with us been?'

  Meirik sat upright in his chair and revealed a row of large yellow teeth, in a way which made you suspect he had overdone the smile training in his life.

  'Fairly dull,' Harry said.

  'Heh, heh. It hasn't been that bad, has it?' Meirik seemed surprised. 'Well, you've got better coffee than we have downstairs.’

 
; ‘Crime Squad have, you mean?'

  'Sorry,' Harry said. 'It takes time to get used to it. To "we" being POT now.'

  'Yes, we'll just have to be a bit patient. That's true for a number of things. Isn't it, Hole, eh?'

  Harry nodded assent. No point running at windmills. Not in the first month, anyway. As expected, he had been given an office at the end of a long corridor, which meant that he didn't see more of the others working there than was absolutely necessary. His job consisted of reading reports from regional POT offices and quite simply evaluating whether they were case files which should be passed up higher into the system. Meirik's instructions had been absolutely clear: unless it was rubbish, everything should be passed on. In other words, Harry's job was to filter out the dross. Last week, three reports had come in. He had tried to read them slowly, but there were limits to how long he could drag it out. One of the reports was from Trondheim and dealt with the new electronic monitoring equipment no one knew how to operate, as their monitoring expert had left. Harry passed it on. The second one concerned a German businessman in Bergen whom they now declared 'not suspicious' because he had delivered the consignment of curtain rails he said he was there to deliver. Harry passed that one on. The third was from the Ostland region, from the police station in Skien. They had received some complaints from chalet owners in Siljan who had heard shooting the previous weekend. Since they weren't in the hunting season, an officer had gone up to investigate and had found empty cartridges of an unknown make in the woods. They had sent the cartridges to the forensics department within Kripos, the Norwegian CID, who had reported back that the ammunition was probably for a Marklin rifle, a very unusual weapon.