The Redeemer

by Jo Nesbo

  Jon stared, uncomprehending.

  Harry cleared his throat. 'Let's start with money. Did Robert have any financial problems?'

  Jon shrugged. 'No. And yes. He didn't exactly live in style so I can't imagine he had incurred huge debts, if that's what you mean. By and large he borrowed from me, if he needed money, I think. By borrowing I mean . . .' Jon's smile was wistful.

  'What sort of sums are we talking about?'

  'Not big ones. Apart from this autumn.'

  'How much?'

  'Er . . . thirty thousand.'

  'For what purpose?'

  Jon scratched his head. 'He had a project, but wouldn't expand on it. Just said he would need to travel abroad. I would find out, he said. Yes, I thought it was quite a lot of money, but I live cheaply and I don't have a car. And for once he seemed so enthusiastic. I was curious about what it was, but then . . . well, then this happened.'

  Harry took notes. 'Mm. What about Robert's darker sides, as a person?'

  He waited. Studied the coffee table and let Jon sit and think while the vacuum of silence took effect, the vacuum that sooner or later always elicited something: a lie, a despairing digression or, in the best-case scenario, the truth.

  'When Robert was young he was . . .' Jon ventured, then stopped.

  Harry, motionless, said nothing.

  'He lacked . . . inhibition.'

  Harry nodded, without looking up. Gave encouragement, without disturbing the vacuum.

  'I used to dread what he might get up to. He was so violent. There seemed to be two people inside him. One was the cold, controlled investigative type who was curious about . . . what shall I say? Reactions. Feelings. Suffering, too, perhaps. That sort of thing.'

  'Can you give me any examples?' Harry asked.

  Jon swallowed. 'Once when I came home he said he had something to show me in the laundry room in the cellar. He had put our cat in a small empty aquarium, where Dad had kept guppies, and stuffed the hosepipe in under a wooden lid on the top. Then he turned the tap on full. Things moved so fast that the aquarium was almost full before I managed to remove the lid and rescue the cat. Robert said he wanted to see how the cat would react, but now and then I have wondered whether it was in fact me he was observing.'

  'Mm. If he was like that it's strange no one mentioned it.'

  'Not many people knew that side of Robert. I suppose it was partly my own fault. From the time we were small I had to promise Dad I would keep an eye on Robert so that he didn't get into any real trouble. I did what I could. Robert's behaviour was, as I said, not out of control. He could be hot and cold at the same time, if you understand. So only those closest to him had a sense of Robert's . . . other sides. Well, and the odd frog.' Jon smiled. 'He launched them into the air in helium balloons. When Dad caught him, Robert said it was so sad to be a frog and never be able to get a bird's-eye view. And I . . .' Jon stared into space and Harry could see his eyes becoming moist. 'I started to laugh. Dad was furious, but I couldn't help myself. Robert could make me laugh like that.'

  'Mm. Did he grow out of this?'

  Jon shrugged. 'To be honest, I don't know everything Robert has been doing in recent years. Since Mum and Dad moved to Thailand Robert and I have not been so close.'

  'Why's that?'

  'That sort of thing often happens between brothers. There doesn't have to be any reason.'

  Harry didn't answer, just waited. A door slammed in the hallway.

  'There were a few incidents with girls,' Jon said.

  The distant sound of ambulance sirens. A lift with a metallic hum. Jon breathed out with a sigh. 'Young girls.'

  'How young?'

  'I don't know. Unless Robert was lying, they must have been very young.'

  'Why would he lie?'

  'As I said, I think he liked to see how I would react.'

  Harry stood up and went over to the window. A man was ambling across Sofienberg Park along a track that looked like an uneven brown line drawn by a child on a white piece of paper. To the north of the church was a small enclosed cemetery for the Mosaic community. Ståle Aune, the psychologist, had once told him that hundreds of years ago the whole of the park had been a cemetery.

  'Was he violent to any of these girls?' Harry asked.

  'No!' Jon's exclamation echoed between the bare walls. Harry said nothing. The man had left the park and was crossing Helgesens gate towards their building.

  'Not as far as I know,' Jon said. 'And if he had told me he had been, I wouldn't have believed him.'

  'Do you know any of the girls he met?'

  'No. He never stayed with them for long. As a matter of fact there was just one girl I know he was serious about.'

  'Oh?'

  'Thea Nilsen. He was obsessed with her when we were young boys.'

  'Your girlfriend?'

  Jon gazed thoughtfully into his coffee cup. 'You would think I could keep away from the one girl my brother had made his mind up he would have, wouldn't you? And God knows I have wondered why.'

  'And?'

  'All I know is that Thea is the most fantastic person I've ever met.'

  The hum of the lift came to a sudden stop.

  'Did your brother know about you and Thea?'

  'He found out that we had met a couple of times. He had his suspicions, but Thea and I have been trying to keep it a secret.'

  There was a knock at the door.

  'That'll be Beate, my colleague,' Harry said. 'I'll get it.'

  He turned over his notepad, placed his pen parallel to it and walked the few steps to the front door. He struggled for a few seconds until he realised it opened inwards. The face he met was as surprised as his own, and for a moment they stood looking at each other. Harry noticed a sweet, perfumed smell, as if the other person used a strong aromatic deodorant.

  'Jon?' the man asked tentatively.

  'Of course,' Harry said. 'Sorry, we were expecting someone else. One moment.'

  Harry went back to the sofa. 'It's for you.'

  The instant he flopped down into the soft cushion, it struck Harry that something had happened, right now in the last few seconds. He checked his pen was still parallel with the pad. Untouched. But there was something, his brain had detected something he couldn't place.

  'Good evening?' he heard Jon say behind him. Polite, reserved form of address. Rising intonation. The way you greet someone you don't know. Or when you don't know what they want. There it was again. Something happened, something grated. There was something about him. He had used Jon's first name when he asked after him, but it was obvious Jon didn't know him.

  'What message?' Jon said.

  Then it clicked into place. The neck. The man was wearing something around his neck. A neckerchief. The cravat knot. Harry put both hands on the coffee table to lever himself up, and the cups went flying as he screamed: 'Shut the door!'

  But Jon stood staring through the doorway, as if hypnotised. He stooped to listen.

  Harry stepped back one pace, jumped over the sofa and sprinted for the door.

  'Don't—' Jon said.

  Harry aimed and launched himself. Then everything seemed to stop. Harry had experienced it before, when the adrenalin kicks in and changes your perception of time. It was like moving in water. And he knew it was too late. His right shoulder hit the door, his left Jon's hip and his eardrum received the sound waves of the exploding gunpowder and a bullet leaving a gun.

  Then came the bang. The bullet. The door slamming into the frame and locking. Jon hitting the cupboard and the kitchen unit. Harry swivelled onto his side and looked up. The door handle was being pressed down.

  'Fuck,' Harry whispered, getting to his knees.

  The door was shaken hard, twice.

  Harry grabbed Jon's belt and dragged him, lifeless, over the parquet floor to the bedroom.

  There was a scratching sound outside the door. Then another bang. Splinters flew from the middle of the door, one of the cushions on the sofa jerked, a column of grey
ish-black down rose to the ceiling and the carton of semi-skimmed milk began to gurgle. A jet of milk described a weak, white arc onto the table.

  The damage a nine-millimetre projectile can do is underrated, thought Harry, turning Jon onto his back. One drop of blood ran from a hole in his forehead.

  Another bang. The tinkle of glass.

  Harry flipped his mobile out of his pocket and punched in Beate's number.

  'OK, OK, don't hassle me, I'm coming,' Beate answered after the first ring. 'I'm outsi—'

  'Listen,' Harry interrupted. 'Radio all patrol cars to get here now. With their sirens blaring. Someone is outside the flat peppering us with lead. And you keep away. Received?'

  'Received. Stay on the line.'

  Harry put the mobile on the floor in front of him. Scraping sound against the wall. Could he hear them? Harry sat motionless. The scraping came nearer. What kind of walls were they? A bullet that could go through an insulated front door would have no problems with a stud wall of plasterboard and fibreglass. Even nearer. It stopped. Harry held his breath. And that was when he heard. Jon was breathing.

  Then a sound rose from the general rumble of city noise and it was music to Harry's ears. A police siren. Two police sirens.

  Harry listened for scraping. Nothing. Make a run for it, he prayed. Beat it. And was heard. The sound of footsteps down the corridor and the stairs.

  Harry lay back on the cold parquet floor and stared at the ceiling. There was a draught coming from under the door. He closed his eyes. Nineteen years. Christ. Nineteen years until he could go into retirement.

  12

  Wednesday, 17 December.

  Hospital and Ashes.

  IN THE SHOP WINDOW HE SAW THE REFLECTION OF A POLICE car pulling up in the street behind him. He kept walking, forcing himself not to run. As he had done a few minutes ago when he raced down the stairs from Jon Karlsen's flat, came out onto the pavement and almost knocked over a young woman with a mobile phone in her hand, sprinted across the park, westwards, to the busy streets where he was now.

  The police car was moving at the same speed as he was. He saw a door, opened it and had the impression he had stepped into a film. An American film with Cadillacs, bootlace ties and young Elvises. The music on the speakers sounded like an old hillbilly record at three times the speed and the bartender's suit looked like it had been lifted from the LP cover.

  He was looking around the surprisingly full but tiny bar area when he noticed the bartender had been talking to him.

  'Sorry?'

  'A drink, sir?'

  'Why not? What have you got?'

  'Well, a Slow Comfortable Screw, maybe. Though, you look as if you could do with a whisky from the Orkneys.'

  'Thank you.'

  A police siren rose and fell. The heat in the bar was causing the sweat to stream out of his pores now. He tore off his neckerchief and stuffed it in his coat pocket. He was glad of the tobacco smoke, which camouflaged the smell of the gun in his coat pocket.

  He was given a drink and found a seat by the wall facing the window.

  Who had the other person in the room been? A friend of Jon Karlsen? A relative? Or someone Karlsen shared the flat with? He took a sip of the whisky. It tasted of hospital and ashes. And why did he ask himself such stupid questions? Only a policeman could have reacted in the way he did. Only a policeman could have called for help with such speed. And now they knew who his target was. That would make his job much harder. He would have to consider retreat. He took another sip.

  The policeman had seen his camel-hair coat.

  He went to the toilet, moved the gun, neckerchief and passport into his jacket pockets and shoved the coat into the rubbish bin beneath the sink. On the pavement outside, rubbing his hands and shivering, he surveyed the street in both directions.

  The final job. The most important. Everything depended on it.

  Easy does it, he said to himself. They don't know who you are. Go back to the beginning. Think constructively.

  Nevertheless, he couldn't repress the thought running through his mind: who was the man in the flat?

  'We don't know,' Harry said. 'All we know is that he might have been the same man who killed Robert.'

  He tucked in his legs so that the nurse could roll the empty bed past them down the narrow corridor.

  'M-might have been?' Thea Nilsen stuttered. 'Are there several of them?' She sat slightly forward, holding the wooden seat of the chair tight as though afraid of falling off.

  Beate Lønn leaned over and placed a comforting hand on Thea's knee. 'We don't know. The most important thing is that it went well. The doctor says he has concussion, that's all.'

  'Which I gave him,' Harry said. 'Along with the edge of the kitchen unit, which made a small hole in his forehead. The bullet missed. We found it in the wall. The second bullet came to rest in the milk carton. Just imagine. Inside the milk carton. And the third in the kitchen cupboard between the currants and—'

  Beate sent Harry a glance which he guessed was supposed to say that right now Thea would hardly be interested in ballistic idiosyncrasies.

  'Anyway. Jon is fine, but he was out cold for a bit, so the doctors are keeping him under observation for the time being.'

  'Alright. Can I go in and see him now?'

  'Of course,' Beate said. 'We would like you to have a look at these pictures first though. And tell us if you have seen any of these men before.'

  She took three photos out of a folder and gave them to Thea. The photos of Egertorget had been blown up so much that the faces seemed like mosaics of black-and-white dots.

  Thea shook her head. 'That was difficult. I couldn't even see any differences between them.'

  'Nor me,' Harry said. 'But Beate is a specialist in facial recognition, and she says they're two different people.'

  'I think they are,' Beate corrected. 'In addition, I was almost knocked flying by him as he came running out of the block in Gøteborggata. And to me he didn't look like either of these people in the pictures.'

  Harry was taken aback. He had never heard Beate express doubt in this field before.

  'Good God,' Thea whispered. 'How many do you think there really are?'

  'Don't worry,' Harry said. 'We have a guard outside Jon's room.'

  'What?' Thea stared at him wide-eyed, and Harry realised it had not even occurred to her that Jon could be in danger at Ullevål Hospital. Until now. Fantastic.

  'Come on. Let's go and see how he is,' Beate suggested in a friendly tone.

  Yes, thought Harry. And leave this idiot to sit and ponder the concept of 'people managment'.

  He turned at the sound of running footsteps from the other end of the corridor.

  It was Halvorsen slaloming between patients, visitors and nurses in clattering clogs. Breathless, he pulled up in front of Harry and handed him a sheet of paper with pale black writing on it and that shiny quality that told Harry it was from Crime Squad's fax machine.