by Jo Nesbo
Astrid nodded. 'She left you because of the harm you had done to them?'
Harry shook his head. 'Because of the harm I had not done to them. Yet.'
'Oh?'
'I said the case was closed, but she maintained I was obsessed, that it would never be closed as long as they were still out there.' Harry stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the bedside table. 'And if it wasn't them, I would find others. Other people who could hurt them. She said she could not take that responsibility.'
'Sounds like she's obsessed.'
'No.' Harry smiled. 'She's right.'
'Really? Would you care to amplify?'
Harry shrugged. 'Submarines…' he started, but was stopped by a violent coughing fit.
'What did you say about submarines?'
'She said that. That I was a submarine. Going down into the cold, murky depths where you can't breathe and coming up to the surface once every second month. She didn't want to keep me company down there. Reasonable enough.'
'Do you still love her?'
Harry was not sure he liked the direction this problem-sharing was taking. He took a deep breath. In his head he was playing the rest of the last conversation he'd had with Rakel.
His own voice, low, as it tends to be when he is angry or frightened: 'Submarine?'
Rakel: 'I know it's not a very good image, but you understand.. .'
Harry holds up his hands: 'Of course. Excellent image. And what is this… doctor? An aircraft carrier?'
She groans: 'He has nothing to do with this, Harry. It's about you and me. And Oleg.'
'Don't hide behind Oleg now.'
'Hide…'
'You're using him as a hostage, Rakel.'
'I'M using him as a hostage? Was it me who kidnapped Oleg and put a gun to his temple so that YOU could slake your thirst for revenge?'
The veins on her neck are standing out and she screams so loud her voice becomes ugly, someone else's, she hasn't the vocal cords to support such fury. Harry leaves and closes the door gently, almost without a sound, behind him.
He turned to the woman in his bed. 'Yes, I love her. Do you love your husband, the doctor?'
'Yes.'
'So why this?'
'He doesn't love me.'
'Mm. So now you're taking your revenge?'
She looked at him in surprise. 'No. I'm lonely. And I fancy you.
The same reasons as yours, I would think. Did you hope it was more complicated?'
Harry chuckled. 'No. That'll do fine.'
'Why did you kill him?'
'Who?'
'Are there more? The kidnapper, of course.'
'That's not important.'
'Maybe not, but I would like to hear you tell me…' she put her hand between his legs, cuddled up to him and whispered in his ear: '… the details.'
'I don't think so.'
'I think you're mistaken.'
'OK, but I don't like…'
'Oh, come on!' she hissed with irritation and gave his member a good, firm squeeze. Harry looked at her. Her eyes sparkled blue and hard in the dark. She put on a hasty smile and added in a sugary-sweet tone: 'Just for me.'
Outside the bedroom, the temperature continued to fall, making the roofs in Bislett creak and groan while Harry told her the details and felt her stiffen, then take her hand away and in the end whisper she had heard enough.
After she had left, Harry stood listening in his bedroom. To the creaking. And the ticking.
Then he bent over the jacket he had thrown to the floor, with all the other clothes, in their stampede through the front door into the bedroom. He found the source in his pocket. Bjarne Moller's leaving present. The watch glass glinted.
He put it in the bedside-table drawer, but the ticking followed him all the way into dreamland.
He wiped the superfluous oil off the gun parts with one of the hotel's white towels.
The traffic outside reached him as a regular rumble drowning the tiny TV in the corner with its mere three channels, a grainy picture and a language he assumed was Norwegian. The girl in reception had taken his jacket and promised that it would be cleaned by early the following morning. He lined up the parts of the gun on a newspaper. When they had all been dried, he assembled the gun, pointed it at the mirror and pulled the trigger. There was a smooth click and he felt the movement of the steel components travel along his hand and arm. The dry click. The mock execution.
That was how they had tried to crack Bobo.
In November 1991, after three months of non-stop siege and bombardment, Vukovar had finally capitulated. The rain had been pouring down as the Serbs marched into town. Along with the remnants of Bobo's unit, numbering around eighty weary and starving Croatian prisoners of war, he had been commanded to stand in line before the ruins of what had been the town's main street. The Serbs had told them not to move and had withdrawn into their heated tent. The rain had whipped down, making the mud froth. After two hours the first men began to fall. When Bobo's lieutenant left the line to help one of those who had collapsed in the mud, a young Serbian private – just a boy – came out of the tent and shot the lieutenant in the stomach. Thereafter no one stirred; they watched the rain obliterate the mountain ridges around them and hoped the lieutenant would soon stop screaming. He began to cry, but then he heard Bobo's voice behind him. 'Don't cry.' And he stopped.
Morning turned to afternoon and it was dusk when an open jeep arrived. The Serbs in the tent rushed out and saluted. He knew the man in the passenger seat had to be the commanding officer – 'the rock with the gentle voice' as he was called. At the back of the jeep sat a man in civilian clothing with a bowed head. The jeep halted right in front of their unit and since he was in the first row, he heard the commanding officer ask the civilian to look at the prisoners of war. He recognised the civilian at once when he reluctantly raised his head. He was from Vukovar, the father of a boy at his school. The father scanned the lines of men, reached him, but there was no sign of recognition and he moved on. The commander sighed, stood up in the jeep and yelled over the rain, not using the gentle voice: 'Which of you goes under the code name of the little redeemer?'
No one in the unit moved.
'Are you frightened to step forward, mali spasitelj? You who blew up twelve of our tanks and deprived our women of their husbands and made Serbian children fatherless?'
He waited.
'I thought so. Which of you is Bobo?'
Still no one moved.
The commander looked at the civilian, who pointed a trembling finger at Bobo in the second row.
'Come forward,' the commander shouted.
Bobo walked the few steps to the jeep and the driver, who had got out and was standing beside the vehicle. When Bobo stood to attention and saluted, the driver knocked his cap into the mud.
'We have been given to understand on the radio that the little redeemer is under your command,' the commander said. 'Please point him out to me.'
'I've never heard of any redeemer,' Bobo said.
The commander raised his gun and struck him. A red stream of blood issued from Bobo's nose.
'Quick. I'm getting wet and food is ready.'
'I am Bobo, a captain in the Croatian ar-'
The commander nodded to the driver, who snatched Bobo's hair and turned his face to the rain, washing the blood from his nose and mouth down into the red neckerchief.
'Idiot!' said the commander. 'There is no Croatian army here, just traitors! You can choose to be executed right now or save us time. We'll find him whatever happens.'
'And you'll execute us whatever happens,' Bobo groaned.
'Of course.'
'Why?'
The commander went through the motions of loading his gun. Raindrops fell from the gunstock. He placed the barrel against Bobo's temple. 'Because I'm a Serbian officer. And a man has to respect his work. Are you ready to die?'
Bobo shut his eyes; raindrops hung from his eyelashes.
'Where is the little r
edeemer? I'll count to three, then I'll shoot. One…'
'I am Bobo-'
'Two!'
'-captain in the Croatian army. I-'
'Three!'
Even in the pouring rain the dry click sounded like an explosion.
'Sorry, I must have forgotten to load the magazine,' the commander said.
The driver passed the commander a magazine. He thrust it into the handle, loaded and raised the pistol again.
'Last chance! One!'
'I… my… unit is-'
'Two!'
'-the first infantry battalion in… in-'
'Three!'
Another dry click. The father in the back seat sobbed.
'Goodness me! Empty magazine. Shall we try it with some of those nice shiny bullets in?'
Magazine out, new one in, load.
'Where is the little redeemer? One!'
Bobo mumbled the Lord's Prayer: 'Oce nas…'
'Two!'
The skies opened, the rain beat down with a roar as though in a desperate attempt to stop what they were doing. He couldn't stand it any more, the sight of Bobo; he opened his mouth to scream that he was the little redeemer, he was the one they wanted, not Bobo, just him, they could have his blood. But at that moment Bobo's gaze swept across and past him and he could see the wild, intense prayer in it, saw him shake his head. Then Bobo's body jerked as the bullet cut the connection between body and soul, and he saw his eyes snuff out and life drain away.
'You,' shouted the commander, pointing to one of the men in the first row. 'Your turn. Come here!'
The young Serbian officer who had shot the lieutenant ran over.
'There's some shooting up at the hospital,' he shouted.
The commander swore and waved to the driver. The next moment the engine started with a roar and the jeep vanished in the gloom. But not before he had told them there was no reason for the Serbs to worry. There were no Croats in the hospital in a position to shoot. They didn't have any weapons.
They had left Bobo where he lay, face down in the black mud. And when it was so dark that the Serbs in the tent could no longer see them, he crept forward, bent over the dead captain, loosened the knot and took the red neckerchief.
8
Tuesday, 16 December. The Mealtime.
It was eight o'clock in the morning, and the day that would go down as the coldest 16 December in Oslo for twenty-four years was still as dark as night. Harry left the police station after signing out the key to Tom Waaler's flat with Gerd. He walked with upturned coat collar, and when he coughed the sound seemed to disappear into cotton wool, as though the cold had made the air heavy and dense.
People in the early-morning rush hurried along the pavements. They couldn't get indoors quickly enough whereas Harry took long, slow steps, bracing his knees in case the rubber soles of his Doc Martens didn't grip the packed ice.
When he let himself into Tom Waaler's centrally positioned bachelor flat the sky behind Ekeberg Ridge was growing lighter. The flat had been sealed off in the weeks following Waaler's death, but the inquiry had not thrown up any leads pointing to other potential arms smugglers. At least that was what the Chief Superintendent had said when he informed them that the case would be given a lower priority because of 'other pressing investigative tasks'.
Harry switched on the light in the living room and once again noticed that dead people's homes had a silence all of their own. On the wall in front of the gleaming, black leather furniture hung an enormous plasma TV with metre-high speakers on each side, part of the surround-sound system in the flat. There were a lot of pictures on the walls with blue cube-like patterns. Rakel called it ruler-and-compass art.
He went into the bedroom. Grey light filtered through the window. The room was tidy. On the desk there was a computer screen, but he couldn't see a tower anywhere. They must have taken it away to check it for evidence. However, he hadn't seen it among the evidence at HQ. Although, of course, he had been denied access to the case. The official explanation was that he was under investigation by SEFO, the independent police investigation authority, for the murder of Waaler. Yet he could not get the idea out of his head that someone was not happy about every stone being turned over.
Harry was about to leave the bedroom when he heard it.
The deceased's flat was no longer quiet.
A sound, a distant ticking made his skin tingle and the hairs stand up on his arm. It came from the wardrobe. He hesitated. Then he opened the wardrobe door. On the floor inside was an open cardboard box and he at once recognised the jacket Waaler had been wearing that night in Kampen. At the top, in the jacket, a wristwatch was ticking. The way it did after Tom Waaler had punched his arm through the window in the lift door, into the lift where they were, and the lift had started moving and had cut off his arm. Afterwards they had sat in the lift with his arm between them, wax-like and lifeless, a severed limb off a mannequin, with the bizarre difference that this one was wearing a watch. A watch that ticked, that refused to stop, but was alive, as in the story Harry's father had told him when he was small, the one where the sound of the dead man's beating heart would not stop and in the end drove the killer insane.
It was a distinct ticking sound, energetic, intense. The kind of sound you remember. It was a Rolex watch. Heavy and in all probability exorbitant.
Harry slammed the wardrobe door. Stamped his way to the front door, creating an echo against the walls. Rattled the keys loudly when he locked up and hummed in frenzied fashion until he was in the street and the blissful traffic noise drowned everything else.
At three o'clock shadows were already falling on Kommandor T. I. Ogrims plass no. 4, and lights had started to come on in the windows of the Salvation Army Headquarters. By five o'clock it was dark, and the mercury had dropped to minus fifteen. A few stray snowflakes fell on the roof of the funny little car Martine Eckhoff sat waiting in.
'Come on, Daddy,' she mumbled as she glanced anxiously at the battery gauge. She was not sure how the electric car – which the Army had been presented with by the royal family – would perform in the cold. She had remembered everything before locking the office: had entered information about upcoming and cancelled meetings of the various corps on the home page, revised the duty rosters for the soup bus and the boiling pot in Egertorget, and checked the letter to the Office of the Prime Minister about the annual Christmas performance at Oslo Concert Hall.
The car door opened, and in came the cold and a man with thick white hair beneath his uniform cap and the brightest blue eyes Martine had seen. At any rate, on anyone over sixty. With some difficulty he arranged his legs in the cramped footwell between seat and dashboard.
'Let's go then,' he said, brushing snow off the flash that told everyone he was the highest-ranking Salvation Army officer in Norway. He spoke with the cheeriness and effortless authority that is natural to people who are used to their commands being obeyed.
'You're late,' she said.
'And you're an angel.' He stroked her cheek with the outside of his hand and his blue eyes were bright with energy and amusement. 'Let's hurry now.'
'Daddy…'
'One moment.' He rolled down the car window. 'Rikard!'
A young man was standing in front of the entrance to the Citadel, which was beside, and under the same roof as, Headquarters. He was startled and rushed over to them at once, knock-kneed with his arms pressed into his sides. He slipped, almost fell, but flapped his arms and regained balance. On reaching the car, he was already out of breath.
'Yes, Commander.'
'Call me David, like everyone else, Rikard.'
'Alright, David.'
'But not every sentence, please.'
Rikard's eyes jumped from Commander David Eckhoff to his daughter Martine and back again. He ran two fingers across his perspiring top lip. Martine had often wondered how it was that someone could sweat so much in one particular area regardless of weather and wind conditions, but especially when he sat next to her duri
ng a church service, or anywhere else, and whispered something that was supposed to be funny and might have been just that, had it not been for the poorly disguised nervousness, the rather too intense nearness – and, well, the sweaty top lip. Now and then, when Rikard was sitting close to her and all was quiet, she heard a rasping sound as he ran his fingers across his mouth. Because, in addition to producing sweat, Rikard Nilsen also produced stubble, an unusual abundance of stubble. He could arrive at Headquarters in the morning with a face like a baby's bottom, but by lunch his white skin would have taken on a blue shimmer, and she had often noticed that when he came to meetings in the evening he had shaved again.
'I'm teasing you, Rikard,' David Eckhoff smiled.
Martine knew there was no bad intention behind them, these games of her father's, but sometimes he seemed unable to see that he was bullying people.
'Oh, right,' Rikard said, forcing a laugh. He stooped. 'Hello, Martine.'
'Hello, Rikard,' Martine said, pretending to be concentrating on the battery gauge.
'I wonder whether you could do me a favour,' the commander said. 'There is so much ice on the roads now and the tyres on my car don't have studs. I should have changed them, but I have to go to the Lighthouse-'
'I know,' Rikard said with zeal. 'You have a lunch meeting with the Minister for Social Affairs. We're hoping for lots of press coverage. I was talking to the head of PR.'
David Eckhoff sent him a patronising smile. 'Good to hear you keep up, Rikard. The point is that my car is here in the garage and I would have liked to see studded tyres mounted by the time I return. You know-'
'Are the tyres in the boot?'
'Yes. But only if you have nothing more pressing on. I was on the point of ringing Jon. He said he could-'
'No, no,' Rikard said, shaking his head with vigour. 'I'll fix them right away. Trust me, er… David.'
'Are you sure?'
Rikard looked at the commander, bewildered. 'That you can trust me?'
