The Redeemer

by Jo Nesbo

  He walked along two lines of containers before finding one that was open. Entered the impenetrable darkness and instantly knew this was no good; he would freeze to death if he slept here. Closing the door behind him, he felt the air move, as though he was standing in a block of something that was being transported.

  There was a rustling sound as he stepped onto sheets of newspaper. He had to get warm.

  Outside, he again had the feeling he was being observed. He went over to the hut, grabbed hold of one of the boards and pulled. It came away with a bang. He thought he glimpsed something move and whirled round. But all he could see was the glimmer of lights from inviting-looking hotels around Oslo Central Station and the darkness in the doorway of his lodging for the night. After wrestling off two further boards, he walked back to the container. There were prints where the snow had drifted. Of paws. Big paws. A guard dog. Had they been there before? He broke chunks off the boards which he placed against the steel wall inside the entrance to the container. He left the door ajar in the hope that some of the smoke would filter out. The box of matches from the room in the Hostel was in the same pocket as his gun. He lit the newspaper, put it under the wood and held his hands over the heat. Small flames licked up the rustred wall.

  He thought about the waiter's terror-stricken eyes looking down the barrel of the gun as he had ransacked his pockets for change. That was all he had, he had explained. It had been enough for a burger and an underground ticket. Not enough for a place to hide, keep warm or sleep. Then the waiter had been stupid enough to say the police had been alerted and were on their way. And he had done what he had to do.

  The flames lit up the snow outside. He noticed more paw-prints outside the door. Odd that he hadn't seen them when he first went to the container. He listened to his own breathing and its echo in the iron box where he was sitting, as though there were two of them inside, while following the prints with his eyes. He stiffened. His prints crossed the animal's. And in the middle of his shoe print he saw a paw mark.

  He yanked the door to and the flames went out in the muffled thud. Only the edges of the newspaper glowed in the pitch dark. His breathing was heavy now. There was something out there, hunting him, it could smell him and recognise his smell. He held his breath. And that was when he knew: that the something hunting him was not outside. That it was not an echo of his breathing he could hear. It was inside. As he made a lunge for his gun in his pocket he caught himself thinking it was strange it hadn't growled, hadn't made a sound. Until now. And even that was no more than the soft scraping of claws on an iron floor as it launched itself. He just managed to raise his arm before the jaws snapped around his hand and the pain caused his mind to explode in a shower of fragments.

  Harry scrutinised the bed and what he assumed was Tore Bjørgen.

  Halvorsen came over and stood beside him: 'Sweet Jesus,' he whispered. 'What is going on here?'

  Without answering him, Harry unzipped the black face mask the man in front of him was wearing and pulled the flap to one side. The painted red lips and make-up around the eyes reminded him of Robert Smith, the singer with The Cure.

  'Is this the waiter you talked to in Biscuit?' Harry asked, looking round the room.

  'I think so. What on earth is this get-up?'

  'Latex,' Harry said, running the tips of his fingers over some metal shavings on the sheet. Then he picked up something beside a half-full glass of water on the bedside table. It was a pill. He studied it.

  Halvorsen groaned. 'This is just sick.'

  'A kind of fetishism,' Harry said. 'And actually no sicker than you enjoying the sight of women in miniskirts and suspenders or whatever gets you going.'

  'Uniforms,' Halvorsen said. 'All kinds. Nurses, parking wardens . . .'

  'Thank you,' Harry said.

  'What do you think?' Halvorsen asked. 'Suicide pills?'

  'Better ask him,' Harry said, picking up the glass of water and emptying the contents over the face below. Halvorsen stared at the inspector open-mouthed.

  'If you hadn't been so full of prejudice you would have heard him breathing,' Harry said. 'This is Stesolid. Not much worse than Valium.'

  The man on the bed was gasping for air. Then the face contracted and was seized with a fit of coughing.

  Harry sat on the edge and waited for a pair of terrified, though still tiny, pupils to succeed in focusing on him.

  'We're policemen, Bjørgen. Apologies for bursting in like this, but we were led to believe you had something we wanted. Which you no longer have, it seems.'

  The eyes in front of him blinked twice. 'What are you talking about?' a thick voice said. 'How did you get in?'

  'Door,' Harry said. 'You had another visitor earlier this evening.'

  The man shook his head.

  'That's what you told the police,' Harry said.

  'No one has been here. And I have not rung the police. My number is ex-directory. You can't trace it.'

  'Yes, we can. And I didn't say anything about you ringing. You said on the phone you had chained someone to the bed and I can see bits of metal from the bed rails here on the sheet. Looks like the mirror out there has had a pasting, too. Did he get away, Bjørgen?'

  The man gawked from Harry to Halvorsen and back.

  'Did he threaten you?' Harry spoke in the same low monotone. 'Did he say he would be back if you said a word to us? Is that it? You're frightened?'

  The man's mouth opened. Perhaps it was the leather mask that made Harry think of a pilot who had strayed off course. Robert Smith adrift.

  'That's what they usually say,' Harry said. 'But do you know what? If he'd meant it, you'd be dead already.'

  The man stared at Harry.

  'Do you know where he went, Bjørgen? Did he take anything with him? Money? Clothes?'

  Silence.

  'Come on. This is important. He's hunting a person here in Oslo he wants to kill.'

  'I have no idea what you're talking about,' whispered Tore Bjørgen without taking his eyes off Harry. 'Would you please go now?'

  'Of course. But I ought to point out that you risk being charged for giving refuge to a murderer on the run. Which the court may, in a worst-case scenario, regard as being an accessory to murder.'

  'Based on what evidence? Alright, maybe I did ring. I was kidding. Wanted a bit of a laugh. So what?'

  Harry got up from the bed. 'As you like. We're going now. Pack a few clothes. I'll send a couple of guys to pick you up, Bjørgen.'

  'Pick me up?'

  'As in arrest.' Harry motioned to Halvorsen that they were going.

  'Arrest me?' Bjørgen's voice was thick no longer. 'Why? You haven't got a bloody thing on me.'

  Harry showed what he was holding between his thumb and first finger. 'Stesolid is a prescription drug like amphetamine and cocaine, Bjørgen. So unless you produce a prescription I'm afraid we'll have to arrest you for possession. Two years' custodial sentence.'

  'You're joking.' Bjørgen hauled himself up in bed and made a grab for the duvet on the floor. Only now did he seem to be aware of the outfit he was wearing.

  Harry walked to the door. 'I quite agree with you, Bjørgen. In my personal opinion, Norwegian legislation is much too harsh on soft drugs. For that reason, under different circumstances, I might have turned a blind eye. Goodnight.'

  'Wait!'

  Harry stopped. And waited.

  'His b-b-brothers . . .' Bjørgen stammered.

  'Brothers?'

  'He said he would send his brothers after me if anything happened to him in Oslo. If he was arrested or killed, however it happened, they would come for me. He said his brothers like to use acid.'

  'Hasn't got any brothers,' Harry said.

  Bjørgen raised his head, looked up at the policeman and asked with genuine surprise in his voice: 'Hasn't he?'

  Harry shook his head.

  Bjørgen wrung his hands. 'I . . . I took those pills because I was so upset. That's what they're for. Isn't it?'

  'Whe
re did he go?'

  'He didn't say.'

  'Did he take any money?'

  'Some change I had on me. Then he cleared off. And I . . . I just sat here and was so frightened . . .' A sudden sob interrupted the flow and he huddled under the duvet. 'I am so frightened.'

  Harry eyed the weeping man. 'If you like, you can sleep down at Police HQ tonight.'

  'I'll stay here,' Bjørgen sniffled.

  'OK. One of us will be round early tomorrow to have a further chat.'

  'Alright. Hang on! If you catch him . . .'

  'Yes?'

  'That reward's still on, isn't it?'

  He had the fire going well now. The flames glinted in a triangular piece of glass he had used from the broken window in the hut. He had collected more wood and felt his body beginning to thaw. It would be worse in the night but he was alive. He had cut strips off his shirt with the piece of glass and wound them round his bleeding fingers. The animal's jaws had closed around his hand holding the gun. And the gun.

  The shadow of a black Metzner hanging between roof and floor flickered on the container wall. The jaws were open and the body stretched out and frozen in one last silent attack. The rear legs were tied with wire which was threaded through a gap in one of the iron grooves in the roof. The blood trickling out of the mouth and the opening behind the ear where the bullet had exited dripped onto the floor with clock-like regularity. He would never know whether it was his forearm muscles or the dog's bite that squeezed the finger on the trigger, but he had the impression he could still feel the walls vibrating after the shot. The sixth since he had arrived in this accursed city. And now he had one bullet left in the gun.

  One was enough, but how would he find Jon Karlsen now? He needed someone to lead him in the right direction. The policeman came to mind. Harry Hole. It didn't sound like a common name. Perhaps he wouldn't be so difficult to find.

  Part Three

  CRUCIFIXION

  20

  Thursday, 18 December. The Citadel.

  THE NEON SIGN OUTSIDE VIKA ATRIUM SHOWED MINUS eighteen and the clock inside 9 p. m. as Harry and Halvorsen stood in the glass lift watching the tropical plants becoming smaller and smaller beneath them.

  Halvorsen pursed his lips, then changed his mind. Pursed them again.

  'Glass lifts are fine,' Harry interrupted. 'No problem with heights.'

  'Uh-huh.'

  'I want you to do the introductions and ask the questions. I'll join in after a while. OK?'

  Halvorsen nodded.

  They had just sat down in the car after the visit to Tore Bjørgen when Gunnar Hagen had called and asked them to go down to Vika Atrium where Albert and Mads Gilstrup, father and son, were waiting for them in order to make a statement. Harry had pointed out that it was not normal practice to ring the police to make a statement and he had asked that Skarre deal with the matter.

  'Albert is an old acquaintance of the Chief 's,' Hagen had explained. 'He phoned to say they had decided they didn't want to make a statement to anyone except the officer leading the inquiry. On the positive side, there won't be a solicitor present.'

  'Well—'

  'Great. I appreciate that.'

  So, no command this time.

  A little man in a blue blazer was waiting for them outside the lift.

  'Albert Gilstrup,' he said with minimal movement from a lipless mouth as he proffered a fleeting but firm handshake. Gilstrup had white hair and a furrowed, weather-beaten face but young, alert eyes, which studied Harry as he led him towards a door with a sign declaring that this was where Gilstrup Invest was housed.

  'I would like you to be aware that my son has been hit hard by this,' Albert Gilstrup said. 'The body was in a terrible state, and I am afraid to say Mads has a somewhat sensitive nature.'

  Harry concluded from the way Albert Gilstrup expressed himself that he was either a practical man who knew there was little to be done for the dead, or that his daughter-in-law had not occupied a special place in his heart.

  In the small but exclusively furnished reception area hung wellknown Norwegian pictures with national–romantic motifs that Harry had seen countless times before. A man with a cat in the farmyard. Soria Maria Palace. The difference was that this time Harry was not so sure he was looking at reproductions.

  Mads Gilstrup was sitting and staring through the glass wall facing the atrium as they came into the meeting room. The father coughed and the son slowly turned as if he had been disturbed in the middle of a dream he didn't want to relinquish. The first thing that struck Harry was that the son did not look like his father. His face was narrow, but the round, gentle features and the curly hair made Mads Gilstrup look younger than the thirty-something years Harry assumed he must have been. Or perhaps it was his expression, the childlike helplessness in those brown eyes that finally focused on them when he stood up.

  'I'm grateful that you were able to come,' Mads Gilstrup whispered in a thick voice, squeezing Harry's hand with an intensity that made Harry wonder whether the son might have thought the priest had arrived and not the police.

  'Not at all,' Harry said. 'We had wanted to talk to you anyway.'

  Albert Gilstrup coughed and his mouth barely opened, like a crack in a wooden face. 'Mads means that he is grateful for your coming here at our request. We thought you might prefer the police station.'

  'And I thought you might have preferred to meet us at home as it's so late,' Harry said, addressing the son.

  Mads looked at his father, irresolute, and on receiving a faint nod, answered: 'I can't bear to be there now. It's so . . . empty. I'll sleep at home tonight.'

  'With us,' the father added by way of explanation and sent him a look that Harry thought should have been sympathy. But it resembled contempt.

  They sat down and father and son pushed their business cards across the table to Harry and Halvorsen. Halvorsen responded with two of his own. Gilstrup senior looked at Harry in anticipation.

  'Mine haven't been printed yet,' Harry said. Which was true, as far as it went, and always had been. 'But Halvorsen and I work as a team, so all you have to do is ring him.'

  Halvorsen cleared his throat. 'We have a few questions.'

  Halvorsen's questions sought to establish Ragnhild's movements earlier that day, what she was doing in Jon Karlsen's flat and possible enemies. Each one was met with a shake of the head.

  Harry searched for milk for his coffee. He had started taking it. Probably a sign that he was getting old. Some weeks ago he had put on the Beatles' indisputable masterpiece Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band and was disappointed. It had got old, too.

  Halvorsen was reading questions from his notepad and jotting down notes without making eye contact. He asked Mads Gilstrup to account for where he had been between nine and ten o'clock this morning, which was the doctor's estimate of the time of death.

  'He was here,' Albert Gilstrup said. 'We've been working here all day, both of us. We're trying to turn around the firm.' He addressed Harry. 'We expected you to ask that question. I've read that the husband is always the first person the police suspect in murder inquiries.'

  'With good reason,' Harry said. 'From a statistical point of view.'

  'Fine,' Albert Gilstrup nodded. 'But this isn't statistics, my dear man. This is reality.'