The Redeemer hh-6

by Jo Nesbo

  There were two small sores with scabs on. The skin around them was red and inflamed.

  'Turn your arm round,' Harry ordered.

  Holmen had a matching sore underneath.

  'They itch like hell, dog bites, don't they,' Harry said. 'Especially after ten to fourteen days when they begin to heal. A doctor down at A amp;E told me that I had to try and stop scratching. You should have done that too, herr Holmen.'

  Holmen gazed at his sores without seeing them. 'Should I?'

  'The skin is punctured in three places. We can prove that a particular dog down at the container terminal bit you – we have a model of its jaw. Hope you managed to defend yourself.'

  Holmen shook his head. 'I didn't want… I just wanted her to feel free.'

  The barking in the street came to a sudden end.

  'Are you going to confess?' Harry asked, signalling to Halvorsen, who thrust a hand into his inside pocket. Without finding pen or paper. Harry rolled his eyes and gave him his own notepad.

  'He said he was so low,' Holmen said, 'that he couldn't go on. That now he really wanted to give up. So I searched around and found him a room in the Salvation Army Hostel. A bed and three meals a day for twelve hundred kroner a month. And he was promised a place on the methadone project. There was just a couple of months to wait. But then I heard nothing from him, and when I rang the Hostel, they said he had absconded without paying the rent, and… well, then he turned up here again. With the gun.'

  'And you decided there and then?'

  'He was a goner. I had already lost my son. And I couldn't let him take her with him.'

  'How did you find him?'

  'Not in Plata. He was down in Eika and I said I would buy the gun off him. He was carrying it and showed it to me. Wanted the money on the spot. But I said I didn't have enough money. He should meet me at the gate at the back of the container terminal the next evening. You know, in fact I'm glad you have… I…'

  'How much?' Harry interrupted.

  'What?'

  'How much did you have to pay?'

  'Fifteen thousand kroner.'

  'And…'

  'He came. It turned out he didn't have any ammunition for the weapon. Never did have, he said.'

  'But you must have had an inkling that would be the case, and it's a standard calibre, so you bought some?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did you pay him first?'

  'What?'

  'Forget it.'

  'You have to understand it wasn't only Pernille and I who suffered.

  For Per every day was a prolongation of his suffering. My son was a dead person waiting for… for someone to stop his heart that would not stop beating. A… a…'

  'Redeemer.'

  'Yes, that's it. A redeemer.'

  'But that's not your job, herr Holmen.'

  'No, it's God's job.' Holmen bowed his head and mumbled something.

  'What?' asked Harry.

  Holmen raised his head, but his eyes were staring into empty space. 'If God doesn't do His job, though, someone else has to do it.'

  On the street, a brown dusk had descended around the yellow lights. Even in the middle of the Oslo night the darkness was never total when snow had fallen. Noises were wrapped in cotton wool and the creaking of snow underfoot sounded like distant fireworks.

  'Why don't we take him with us?' Halvorsen asked.

  'He's not going anywhere. He has something to tell his wife. We'll send a car in a couple of hours.'

  'Bit of an actor, isn't he?'

  'Eh?'

  'Well, wasn't he sobbing his guts out when you brought him the news of his son's death?'

  Harry shook his head in resignation. 'You've got a lot to learn, Junior.'

  Annoyed, Halvorsen kicked at the snow. 'Enlighten me, O Wise One.'

  'Committing a murder is such an extreme act that many repress it. They can walk around with it like a kind of half-forgotten nightmare. I have seen that several times now. It's when others say it out loud that they realise it is not only something that exists in their head. It did happen.'

  'Right. A cold fish, anyway.'

  'Didn't you see the man was crushed? Pernille Holmen was probably right when she said that her husband was the loving one.'

  'Loving? A murderer?' Halvorsen's voice quivered with indignation.

  Harry laid a hand on the detective's shoulder. 'Think about it. Isn't it the ultimate act of love? Sacrificing your only son?'

  'But…'

  'I know what you're thinking, Halvorsen. But you'll just have to get used to the idea. This is the type of moral paradox that will fill your days.'

  Halvorsen pulled at the unlocked car door, but it was frozen fast. In a sudden bout of fury he heaved and it came away from the rubber with a ripping noise.

  They got in, and Harry watched as Halvorsen twisted the ignition key and pinched his forehead hard with the other hand. The engine roared into life.

  'Halvorsen…' Harry started.

  'Anyway, the case is solved and the POB is bound to be happy,' Halvorsen shouted, pulling out in front of a lorry with its horn blaring. He held up an outstretched finger to the mirror. 'So let's smile and celebrate a bit, shall we?' He lowered his hand and continued to pinch at his forehead.

  'Halvorsen…'

  'What's up?' he barked.

  'Park the car.'

  'What?'

  'Now.'

  Halvorsen pulled into the kerb, let go of the steering wheel and focused ahead through vacant eyes. In the time they had been with Holmen, the ice flowers had crept up the windscreen like a sudden attack of fungus. Halvorsen wheezed as his chest rose and fell.

  'Some days this is a shit job,' Harry said. 'Don't let it get to you.'

  'No,' Halvorsen said, breathing even harder.

  'You are you, and they are them.'

  'Yes.'

  Harry placed a hand on Halvorsen's back and waited. After a while he felt his colleague's breathing calm down.

  'Tough guy,' Harry said.

  Neither of them spoke as the car crawled its way through the afternoon traffic towards Gronland.

  7

  Monday, 15 December. Anonymity.

  He stood at the highest point of Oslo's busiest pedestrian street, named after the Swedish-Norwegian king, Karl Johan. He had memorised the map he had been given at the hotel and knew the building he saw in silhouette to the west was the Royal Palace and that Oslo Central Station was at the eastern end.

  He shivered.

  High up a house wall the sub-zero temperature shone out in red neon, and even the slightest current of air felt like an ice age penetrating his camel-hair coat which, until then, he had been very happy with; he had bought it in London for a song.

  The clock beside the temperature gauge showed 19.00. He started walking east. The omens were good. It was dark, there were lots of people about and the only surveillance cameras he saw were outside banks and directed at their respective cash machines. He had already excluded the underground for his getaway because of the combination of too many cameras and too few people. Oslo was smaller than he had imagined.

  He went into a clothes shop where he found a blue woollen hat for 49 kroner and a woollen jacket for 200, but changed his mind when he saw a thin raincoat for 120. While he was trying on the raincoat in a changing cubicle he discovered that the urinal blocks from Paris were still in his suit jacket pocket, crushed and ground into the material.

  The restaurant was several hundred metres down the pedestrian zone, on the left-hand side. He registered at once that there was no cloakroom attendant. Good, that made things easier. He entered the dining area. Half full. Good sight lines; he could see all the tables from where he stood. A waiter came over and he reserved a window table for six o'clock the following day.

  Before leaving, he checked the toilet. There were no windows. So the only other exit was through the kitchen. OK, nowhere was perfect, and it was very improbable that he would need an alternative way out.

&
nbsp; He left the restaurant, looked at his watch and started to walk towards the station. People avoided eye contact. A small town, but it still had the cool aloofness of a capital city. Good.

  He checked his watch again as he stood on the platform for the express train to the airport. Six minutes from the restaurant. Trains left every ten minutes and took nineteen. In other words, he could be on the train at 19.20 and in the airport by 19.40. The direct flight to Zagreb left at 21.10 and the ticket was in his pocket. Bought on special offer from SAS.

  Satisfied, he walked out of the new rail terminal, down a staircase, under a glass roof which had obviously been the old departure hall, but where there were now shops, and out into the open square. Jernbanetorget, as it was called on the map. In the middle there was a tiger twice the size of life, frozen in mid-stride, between tram rails, cars and people. But he couldn't see a phone booth anywhere, as the receptionist had said. At the end of the square, by a shelter, there was a throng of people. He went closer. Several of them had stuck their hoody-clad heads together and were talking. Perhaps they came from the same place, or they were neighbours waiting for the same bus. It reminded him of something else, though. He spotted things changing hands, skinny men hurrying away with their backs bent into the freezing wind. And he knew what the things were. He had seen heroin deals taking place in Zagreb and other European towns, but nowhere as openly as here. Then he remembered what it reminded him of. The gatherings of people he himself had been part of after the Serbians had withdrawn. Refugees.

  Then a bus did come. It was white and stopped just short of the shelter. The doors opened, but no one got on. Instead a girl came out, wearing a uniform he recognised at once. The Salvation Army. He slowed down.

  The girl went over to one of the women and helped her onto the bus. Two men followed.

  He stopped and looked up. A coincidence, he thought. That was all. He turned round. And there, on the wall of a small clock tower, he saw three telephones.

  Five minutes later he had called Zagreb and told her everything was looking good.

  'The final job,' he had repeated.

  And Fred had told him that his blue lions, Dinamo Zagreb, were leading 1-0 against Rijeka at Maksimar stadium at half-time.

  The conversation had cost him five kroner. The clocks on the tower showed 19.25. The countdown had started.

  The group met in the hall belonging to Vestre Aker church.

  The snowdrifts were high on both sides of the gravel path leading to the small brick building on the slope beside the cemetery. Fourteen people were seated in a bare meeting hall with plastic chairs piled up against the walls and a long table in the middle. If you had stumbled into the room, you might have guessed it was a general assembly of some cooperative, but nothing about the faces, age, sex or clothes revealed what kind of community this was. The harsh light was reflected in the windowpanes and the lino floor. There was a low mumbling and fidgeting with paper cups. A bottle of Farris mineral water hissed as it was opened.

  At seven o'clock on the dot the chattering stopped as a hand at the end of the table was raised and a little bell rang. Eyes turned to a woman in her mid-thirties. She met them with a direct, fearless gaze. She had narrow, severe lips softened with lipstick, long, thick, blonde hair held in place with a clip and large hands that, at this moment, were resting on the table, exuding calm and confidence. She was elegant, meaning she had attractive features but not the grace that would qualify her for what Norwegians termed sweet. Her body language betokened control and strength, which was underlined by the firm voice that filled the chilly room the next minute.

  'Hi, my name is Astrid and I'm an alcoholic.'

  'Hi, Astrid!' the gathering answered in unison.

  Astrid bent the spine of the book in front of her and began to read.

  'The sole requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking alcohol.'

  She went on, and round the table the lips of those who knew the Twelve Traditions moved by rote. In the breaks, when she paused for breath, you could hear the church choir practising on the floor above.

  'Today the theme is the First Step,' Astrid said, 'which runs thus: We admit we are powerless over alcohol, and that our lives have become unmanageable. I can begin, and I will be brief since I consider myself finished with the First Step.'

  She drew breath and gave a laconic smile.

  'I've been dry for seven years, and the first thing I do when I wake up is to tell myself I'm an alcoholic. My children don't know this. They think Mummy used to get very drunk and stopped drinking because she got so angry when she drank. My life requires an appropriate measure of truth and an appropriate measure of lies to find its equilibrium. I may be going to pieces, but I take one day at a time, avoid the first drink and at present I'm working on the Eleventh Step. Thank you.'

  'Thank you, Astrid,' came the response from the assembled members, followed by clapping as the choir sang its praises from the first floor.

  She nodded to her left, to a tall man with cropped blond hair.

  'Hi, my name is Harry,' said the man in a gravelly voice. The fine network of red veins on his large nose bore witness to a long life out of the ranks of the sober. 'I am an alcoholic.'

  'Hi, Harry.'

  'I'm new here. This is my sixth meeting. Or seventh. And I haven't finished the First Step. In other words, I know I'm an alcoholic, but I think I can contain my alcoholism. So there is a kind of contradiction in my sitting here. But I came here because of a promise I made to a psychologist, a friend, who has my best interests at heart. He claimed that if I could stand all the chat about God and the spiritual stuff for the first weeks, I would find out it works. Well, I don't know if anonymous alcoholics can help themselves, but I am willing to try. Why not?'

  He turned to the left to signal that he had finished. But before the clapping could get under way, it was interrupted by Astrid.

  'I suppose this must be the first time you've said anything at our meetings, Harry. So that's nice. But perhaps you'd like to tell us a bit more while you're at it.'

  Harry looked at her. The others did, too, as pressurising anyone in the group was a clear breach of the method. Her eyes held his. He had felt them on him in the earlier meetings, but had returned her gaze only once. However, then he had given her the full treatment, a searching look from top to toe and back again. Actually, he had liked what he saw, but what he liked best was when he returned to the top and her face was a great deal redder. And at the next meeting he had been invisible.

  'No, I wouldn't, thank you,' Harry said.

  Tentative applause.

  Harry observed her out of the corner of his eye while his neighbour was talking. After the meeting she asked him where he lived and offered him a lift. Harry hesitated while the choir on the floor above rose in pitch in their eulogy of the Lord.

  An hour and a half later they were each smoking a cigarette in silence and watching the smoke add a blue tinge to the bedroom darkness. The damp sheets on Harry's narrow bed were still warm, but the cold in the room had made Astrid pull the thin white duvet right up to her chin.

  'That was wonderful,' she said.

  Harry didn't answer. He was thinking it probably wasn't a question.

  'I came,' she said. 'The first time together. That's not-'

  'So your husband's a doctor?' Harry said.

  'That's the second time you've asked, and the answer is still yes.'

  Harry nodded. 'Can you hear that sound?'

  'Which sound?'

  'The ticking. Is it your watch?'

  'I haven't got a watch. It must be yours.'

  'Digital. Doesn't tick.'

  She placed a hand on his hip. Harry slipped out of bed. The freezing cold lino burned the soles of his feet. 'Would you like a glass of water?'

  'Mmm.'

  Harry went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror as he ran the water. What was it she had said? She could see loneliness in his eyes? He leaned forward, but all he cou
ld see was a blue iris around small pupils and deltas of veins in the whites. When Halvorsen found out he had split up with Rakel, he said Harry should find solace in other women. Or, as he so poetically put it, screw the melancholy out of his soul. However, Harry had neither the energy nor the will. Because he knew that any woman he touched would turn into Rakel. And that was what he needed to forget, to get her out of his blood, not some sexual methadone treatment.

  But he might have been wrong and Halvorsen might have been right. Because it had felt good. It had been wonderful. And instead of the empty feeling you got from trying to quench one desire by satisfying another, he felt his batteries recharged. And relaxed at the same time. She had taken what she needed. And he liked the way she had done it. Perhaps it could be as easy as this for him too?

  He moved back a step and studied his body in the mirror. He had become leaner in the last year. There was less fat on him, but fewer muscles. He had begun to resemble his father. As one would expect.

  He went back to bed with a large half-litre glass, which they shared. Afterwards she snuggled up to him. Her skin was clammy and cold at first, but she soon began to warm him up.

  'Now you can tell me,' she said.

  'Tell you what?' Harry watched the smoke coil into a letter.

  'What's her name? Because it is a she, isn't it?'

  The letter dissolved.

  'She's the reason you came to us.'

  'Might be.'

  Harry observed the glow eat away at the cigarette as he talked. A little at first. The woman beside him was a stranger, it was dark and the words rose and melted away, and he thought this is what it must be like to sit in a confessional. To unburden yourself. Or to share problems with others, as AA called it. So he continued. He told her about Rakel, who had thrown him out of the house over a year ago because she thought he was obsessed with the hunt for a mole in the police force, the Prince. And about Oleg, her son, who had been snatched from his bedroom and used as a hostage when Harry finally got within shooting distance of the Prince. Oleg had coped well, considering the circumstances of the kidnapping and the fact that he had witnessed Harry killing the kidnapper in a lift in Kampen. It was worse for Rakel. Two weeks later, when she was au fait with all the details, she had told him she could not have him in her life. Or, to be more precise, Oleg's life.