The Redeemer

by Jo Nesbo

  'You should go down to our café in Urtegata,' Jon said. 'Warm up a bit and get some food and . . .'

  The rest was drowned in the roar of the traffic as the lights behind them changed to green.

  'No time,' the bundle replied. 'You wouldn't have a fifty note, would you?' Jon never ceased to be surprised by drug addicts' unwavering focus. He sighed and thrust a hundred-kroner note in the cup.

  'See if you can find some warm clothes at Fretex. If not, we've got some new winter jackets at the Lighthouse. You'll freeze to death in that thin denim jacket.'

  He was resigned to the fact that he was speaking to someone who already knew the gift would be used to buy dope, but so what? It was the same refrain, yet another of the irresolvable moral dilemmas that filled his days.

  Jon pressed the bell once again. He saw his reflection in the dirty shop window beside the doorway. Thea said he was a big man. He wasn't big at all. He was small. A small soldier. But when he was finished the little soldier would sprint down Møllerveien, across the river Akerselva, where East Oslo and Grünerløkka started, over Sofienberg Park to Gøteborggata 4, which the Army owned and rented out to its employees, unlock the door to entrance B, say hello to one of the other tenants he hoped would assume he was on his way to his flat on the third floor. However, he would take the lift to the fourth, go through the loft space to the A building, make sure the coast was clear, then head for Thea's door and tap out their prearranged signal. And she would open the door and her arms, into which he could creep and thawout.

  Something was trembling.

  At first he thought it was the ground, the city, the foundations. He put down the bag and delved into his pocket. His mobile phone was vibrating in his hand. The display showed Ragnhild's number. It was the third time today. He knew he could not put it off any longer; he would have to tell her. That he and Thea were getting engaged. When he had found the right words. He put the phone back in his pocket and avoided looking at his reflection. But he made up his mind. He would stop being a coward. He would be frank. Be a big soldier. For Thea in Gøteborggata. For his father in Thailand. For the Lord above.

  'Yes,' came the shout from the loudspeaker above the bells.

  'Oh, hi. This is Jon.'

  'Eh?'

  'Jon from the Salvation Army.'

  Jon waited.

  'What do you want?' the voice crackled.

  'I've got some food for you. I thought you might need—'

  'Got any cigarettes?'

  Jon swallowed and stamped his boots in the snow. 'No, I only had enough money for food this time.'

  'Shit.'

  It went quiet again.

  'Hello?' Jon shouted.

  'Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking.'

  'If you want, I'll come back later.'

  The mechanism buzzed and Jon quickly pushed open the door.

  Inside the stairwell there were newspapers, empty bottles and frozen yellow pools of urine. Thanks to the cold weather Jon did not have to inhale the pervasive, bitter-sweet stench that filled the hallway on milder days.

  He tried to walk without making much noise, but his footsteps reverberated on the stairs anyway. The woman standing in the doorway and waiting for him was ogling the bags. To avoid looking him in the eye, Jon thought. She had that same bloated, swollen face that came with many years of addiction, was overweight and wore a filthy white T-shirt under her dressing gown. A stale smell emanated from the door.

  Jon stopped on the landing and put down the bags. 'Is your husband in, too?'

  'Yes, he's in,' she said in mellifluous French.

  She was good-looking. High cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes. Narrow, bloodless lips. And well dressed. At any rate, the bit of her he could see through the crack in the door was well dressed.

  Instinctively, he adjusted his red neckerchief.

  The security lock between them was made of solid brass and attached to a heavy oak door without a nameplate. While standing outside the block in avenue Carnot waiting for the concierge to open the door, he had noticed that everything seemed new and expensive, the door furniture, the bells, the cylinder locks. And the fact that the pale yellow facade and the white shutters were covered in an unsightly, dirty layer of black pollution served to emphasise the established and solid nature of this district of Paris even more. Original oil paintings hung in the hallway.

  'What do you want?'

  The eyes and the intonation were neither friendly nor unfriendly, but contained perhaps a smidgeon of scepticism because of his terrible French pronunciation.

  'A message, madame.'

  She hesitated. But acted as expected in the end.

  'Alright. Could you wait here please, and I'll get him?'

  She shut the door and the lock fell into position with a well-oiled click. He stamped his feet. He ought to learn to speak better French. His mother had force-fed him English in the evenings, but she had never sorted out his French. He stared at the door. French knickers. French letter. Good-looking.

  He thought about Giorgi. Giorgi of the white smile was one year older than he was, so twenty-eight now. Was he still as good-looking? Blond and small and pretty like a girl? He had been in love with Giorgi, in the unprejudiced, unconditional way that only children can fall in love.

  He heard steps coming from inside. A man's steps. Someone fiddling with the lock. A blue connecting line between work and freedom, from here to soap and urine. The snow would come soon. He prepared himself.

  * * *

  The man's face appeared in the doorway.

  'What the fuck do you want?'

  Jon lifted the plastic bags and ventured a smile. 'Fresh bread. Smells good, doesn't it.'

  Fredriksen laid a large brown hand on the woman's shoulder and pushed her away. 'All I can smell is Christian blood . . .' It was said with clear, sober diction, but the washed-out irises in the bearded face told a different story. The eyes tried to focus on the bags of shopping. He looked like a large, powerful man who had shrunk inside. His skeleton and even his cranium had become smaller inside the skin that drooped, three sizes too big, from the malevolent face. Fredriksen ran a grubby finger over the fresh cuts along the bridge of his nose.

  'You're not going to preach now, are you.'

  'No, actually I wanted—'

  'Oh, come on, soldier. You want something back for this, don't you. My soul, for example.'

  Jon shivered in his uniform. 'It's not me who deals with souls, Fredriksen. But I can arrange for food, so—'

  'Oh, you can manage a little sermon first.'

  'As I said—'

  'A sermon!'

  Jon stood looking at Fredriksen.

  'Give us a sermon with that wet little cunt-hole of yours!' Fredriksen yelled. 'A sermon so that we can eat with a good conscience, you condescending Christian bastard. Come on, get it over with. What's God's message today?'

  Jon opened his mouth and closed it again. Swallowed. Tried again and this time his vocal cords responded. 'The message is that He gave His only son, who died . . . for our sins.'

  'You're lying!'

  * * *

  'No, I'm afraid I'm not, 'Harry said, observing the terrified face of the man in the doorway in front of him. There was a smell of lunch and a rattle of cutlery in the background. A family man. A father. Until now. The man scratched his forearm and gazed at a spot above Harry's head as if someone were there. The scratching made an unpleasant rasping noise.

  The rattle of cutlery had stopped. The shuffle of feet came to a halt behind the man and a small hand was placed on his shoulder. A woman's face with large red eyes peeped out.

  'What is it, Birger?'

  'This policeman has something to tell us,' Birger said in a monotone.

  'What?' the woman said looking at Harry. 'Is it about our son? Is it about Per?'

  'Yes, fru Holmen,' Harry said and saw the fear steal into her eyes. He searched for the impossible words. 'We found him two hours ago. Your son is dead.'

 
He had to look away.

  'But he . . . he . . . where . . . ?' Her eyes jumped from Harry to the man who kept scratching his arm.

  Won't be long before he draws blood, Harry thought, and cleared his throat. 'In a container by the harbour. What we feared. He's been dead for a good while.'

  Birger Holmen seemed to lose his balance, staggered backwards into the lit hallway and grabbed a hatstand. The woman stepped forward and Harry saw the man fall to his knees behind her.

  Harry breathed in and shoved his hand inside his coat. The metal hip flask was ice-cold against his fingertips. He found what he was looking for and pulled out an envelope. He hadn't written the letter, but knew the contents all too well. The brief official notification of death, stripped of all the verbiage. The bureaucratic act of pronouncing death.

  'I'm sorry, but it's my job to give you this.'

  * * *

  'Your job to do what?' said the small, middle-aged man with the exaggerated mondaine French pronunciation uncharacteristic of the upper classes but of those who strive to belong. The visitor studied him. Everything matched the photograph in the envelope, even the mean-spirited tie-knot and the loose red smoking jacket.

  He didn't know what this man had done wrong. He doubted it had been physical because despite the irritation in his expression his body language was defensive, almost anxious, even in the door to his own home. Had he been stealing money, embezzling? He could be the type to work with figures. But not the big sums. His attractive wife notwithstanding, he looked more like the kind who helped himself to small change here and there. He might have been unfaithful, might have slept with the wife of the wrong man. No. As a rule, short men with above average assets and wives much more attractive than themselves are more concerned with her infidelity. The man annoyed him. He slipped his hand into his pocket.

  'This,' he said, resting the barrel of a Llama Minimax, which he had bought for just three hundred dollars, on the taut brass door chain, 'is my job.'

  He pointed the silencer. It was a plain metal tube, made by a gunsmith in Zagreb, and screwed to the barrel. The black gaffer tape lashed round where the two parts met was to make it airtight. Of course, he could have bought a so-called quality silencer for over a hundred euros, but why? No one could silence the sound of a bullet breaking the sound barrier, of the hot gas meeting the cold air and the mechanical metal parts striking each other. Pistols with silencers that sounded like popcorn under a lid were pure Hollywood.

  The explosion was like the crack of a whip. He pressed his face against the narrow opening.

  The man in the photo was gone; he had fallen backwards without a sound. The hall was dark, but in the wall mirror he saw the sliver of light from the door and his magnified eye framed in gold. The dead man lay on a thick burgundy carpet. Persian? Perhaps he had had money after all?

  Now he had a little hole in his forehead.

  He looked up and met the eyes of the wife. If it was his wife. She was standing in the doorway of another room. Behind her, a large, yellow oriental lamp. She had her hand in front of her mouth and was staring at him. He gave a brief nod. Then he carefully closed the door, put the gun back in his shoulder holster and began to walk down the stairs. He never used the lift when he was making his getaway. Or rented cars or motorbikes or anything else that could malfunction. And he didn't run. He didn't talk or shout; the voice could be identified.

  The getaway was the most critical part of the job, but also the part he loved best. It was like flying, a dreamless nothing.

  The concierge, a woman, had come out of her flat on the ground floor and watched him in bewilderment. He whispered an Au revoir, madame, but she glared back in silence. When she was questioned by the police in an hour's time, they would ask her for a description. And she would oblige. A man, normal appearance, medium height. Twenty years old. Or thirty perhaps. Not forty anyway, she thought.

  He emerged into the street. The low rumble of Paris, like thunder that never came any closer, but never stopped either. He discarded his Llama Minimax in a skip he had chosen for the purpose beforehand. Two new, unfired guns from the same manufacturer awaited his return in Zagreb. He had been given a bulk-purchase discount.

  When the airport bus passed Porte de la Chapelle half an hour later, on the motorway between Paris and Charles de Gaulle, the air was full of snowflakes. They settled on the scattered strands of pale yellow straw pointing stiffly upwards to the grey sky.

  After checking in for his flight and going through security control, he went straight to the men's toilets. He stood at the end of the line of white bowls, unbuttoned and sprayed the white urinal blocks at the bottom of the bowl. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sweet smell of paradichlorobenzene and the lemon fragrance enhancer from J & J Chemicals. The connecting line to freedom had one stop left. He rolled the name on his tongue. Os-lo.

  3

  Sunday, 14 December. The Bite.

  IN THE RED ZONE ON THE SIXTH FLOOR OF POLICE HQ, THE concrete and glass colossus with the largest concentration of police in Norway, Harry sat back in his chair in room 605. This was the office that Halvorsen – the young policeman Harry shared the ten square metres with – liked to call the Clearing House. And that Harry, when Halvorsen had to be taken down a peg or two, called In-House Training.

  But at this moment Harry was on his own, staring at the wall where the window might have been if the Clearing House had such a thing.

  It was Sunday; he had written the report and could go home. So why didn't he? Through the imaginary window he saw the fenced-off harbour in Bjørvika where fresh snow lay like confetti on the green, red and blue containers. The case was solved. Per Holmen, a young heroin addict, had had enough of life and had taken his final shot inside a container. From a gun. No external signs of violence; the gun down by his side. As far as the undercover boys knew, Per Holmen did not owe any money. When dealers execute junkies with debts, they don't usually try to camouflage it as something else. Quite the contrary. A cut-and-dried case of suicide then. So why waste the evening ferreting round a grim, wind-blown container terminal where all he would find was more sorrow and grief?

  Harry looked at his woollen coat hanging on the hatstand. The small hip flask in the inside pocket was full. And untouched since he went to the vinmonopol in October, bought a bottle of his worst enemy, Jim Beam, and filled his flask before emptying the rest down the sink. Since then he had carried the poison on him, a bit like the way Nazis kept cyanide pills in the soles of their shoes. Why bother with such a stupid idea? He didn't know. He didn't have to know. It worked.

  Harry looked at the clock. Soon be eleven. At home he had a much used espresso machine and a DVD he had put by for just such an evening as this. All About Eve, Mankiewicz's 1950 masterpiece with Bette Davis and George Sanders.

  He took an internal reading. And knew it was going to be the harbour.

  Harry had turned up the lapels of his coat and stood with his back to the north wind that blew right through the tall fence in front of him and formed snowdrifts around the containers on the inside. The harbour area and the large, empty expanses looked like a desert at night.

  The enclosed container terminal was illuminated, but the lamp posts swayed in the gusting wind and the metal boxes piled up in twos or threes cast shadows over the streets. The particular one Harry had his eye on was red and something of a colour clash with the orange police tape. But it was a great refuge on a December night in Oslo, with almost identical measurements and the same level of comfort as the security cells in the custody block at Police HQ.