The Redeemer

by Jo Nesbo

  'I want you to talk.'

  'Why?'

  'I don't know. I like listening to you. How can anyone like the selfimage of a loner?'

  Harry took a deep breath. Held the smoke in his lungs thinking how good it would be if you could blow smoke patterns to explain everything. Then he released the smoke in one long exhalation.

  'I think you have to find something about yourself that you like in order to survive. Some people say being alone is unsociable and selfish. But you're independent and you don't drag others down with you, if that's the way you're heading. Many people are afraid of being alone. But it made me feel free, strong and invulnerable.'

  'Strong from being alone?'

  'Yep. As Dr Stockman said: "The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."'

  'First Süskind and now Ibsen?'

  Harry grinned. 'That was a line my father used to quote.' He sighed and then added, 'Before my mother died.'

  'You said it made you invulnerable. Is that no longer the case?'

  Harry felt the ash fall from his cigarette onto his chest. He left it where it was.

  'I met Rakel and . . . well, Oleg. They attached themselves to me. It opened my eyes to the fact that there could be other people in my life. People who were friends and who cared about me. And that I needed them.' Harry blew on his cigarette making it glow. 'And, even worse, that they might need me.'

  'So you weren't free any longer?'

  'No. No, I wasn't free any longer.'

  They lay staring into the dark.

  Martine nestled her nose into his neck. 'You really like them, don't you?'

  'Yes.' Harry pulled her close. 'Yes, I do.'

  After she had fallen asleep, Harry slipped out of the bed and tucked the duvet in around her. He checked the time. Two o'clock on the dot. He walked into the hall, put on his boots and opened the door to the starry night. Heading for the outside toilet, he studied the footprints while trying to remember whether it had snowed since Saturday morning.

  The toilet was not lit, so he struck a match and orientated himself. As it was about to go out he spotted two letters carved into the wall under a fading picture of Princess Grace of Monaco. In the dark Harry mused that someone had been sitting here, as he was, diligently forming the simple declaration: R+M.

  Coming out of the toilet, he caught a quick movement by the corner of the barn. He stopped. There was a set of footprints going that way.

  Harry hesitated. There it was again. The feeling that something was about to happen, right now, something fated which he could not prevent. He put a hand inside the toilet door and found the spade he had seen standing there. Then he began to follow the prints to the barn.

  At the corner he paused and took a firm grip of the spade. His breathing thundered in his ears. He stopped breathing. Now. It was going to happen now. Harry plunged round the corner with the spade at the ready.

  Ahead of him, in the middle of the field shining so bewitchingly and so white in the moonlight that he was dazzled, he saw a fox running towards the woods.

  He slumped back against the barn door and inhaled trembling lungfuls of air.

  There was a knock at the door and he backed away out of instinct.

  Had he been seen? The person on the other side of the door must not come inside.

  He cursed his carelessness. Bobo would have scolded him for breaking cover in such an amateur way.

  The door was locked, but he still cast around for an object he could use in case whoever it was should manage to make their way in.

  A knife. Martine's bread knife that he had just been using. It was in the kitchen.

  There was another knock.

  And then there was his gun. Empty, it was true, but enough to scare off a sensible man. The problem was that he doubted if this one was.

  The person had arrived in a car and parked outside Martine's flat in Sorgenfrigata. He hadn't seen him until he chanced by the window and scanned the cars parked by the pavement. That was when he had seen the motionless silhouette inside one of them. On seeing it move, lean forwards to see better, he knew it was too late. He had been seen. He had come away from the window, waited for half an hour, then lowered the blinds and switched off all the lights in Martine's flat. She had said he could leave them on. The radiators all had thermostats and since 90 per cent of the energy of a light bulb is heat, the electricity you save by turning them off would be counterbalanced by the radiators compensating for the heat loss.

  'Simple physics,' she had explained. If only she had explained to him what this was instead. A demented suitor? A jealous ex-lover. It wasn't the police anyway because he had started up again: a desperate, pained howl that made his blood run cold.

  'Mar-tine! Mar-tine! Then a few tremulous words in Norwegian. And then almost a sob: 'Martine . . .'

  He had no idea how the guy had got in through the front door, but now he could hear one of the other doors opening and a voice. Among the snatches of foreign words there was one he recognised now: politi.

  Then the neighbour's door was slammed shut. He heard the person outside groaning in despair and fingers scratching at the door. Then footsteps finally dying away. He heaved a sigh of relief.

  It had been a long day. Martine had driven him down to the station in the morning and he had caught the local train to town. The first thing he had done was go to the travel agent at Oslo Central where he had bought a ticket for the last flight to Copenhagen the following evening. They hadn't reacted to the Norwegian-sounding surname he had given them. Halvorsen. He had paid with the cash in Halvorsen's wallet, thanked them and left. From Copenhagen he would call Zagreb and have Fred fly there with a new passport. If he was lucky, he would be back for Christmas Eve.

  He had been to three hairdressers, who had all shaken their heads and said they had no appointments left before the festivities. The fourth had nodded to a gum-chewing teenage girl sitting in a corner and looking lost – he guessed she was an apprentice. After several attempts at explaining what he wanted he had at length shown her the photograph. She had stopped chewing, looked up at him with eyes thick with mascara and asked in MTV English: 'You sure, man?'

  Afterwards he had taken a taxi to the address in Sorgenfrigata, unlocked the doors with the keys he had been given by Martine and begun the wait. The telephone had rung several times, but otherwise it had been peaceful. Until, that is, he had been stupid enough to go to the window of an illuminated room.

  He walked back to the living room.

  At that moment there was a bang. The air quivered, the ceiling lamp shook.

  'Mar-tine!'

  He heard the person take another run-up, sprint and charge the door, which seemed to bulge into the room.

  Her name was called out twice, followed by two bangs. Then he heard feet running down the stairs.

  He went to the living-room window and watched the person race out. As the guy paused to unlock the car and the street light fell on him, he recognised him.

  It was the young man who had helped him at the Hostel. Niclas, Rikard . . . something like that. The car started up with a roar and accelerated away into the winter night.

  An hour later he was asleep, dreaming about landscapes he had once known, and only woke up when he heard the patter of feet and the sound of newspapers landing on doorsteps in the stairwell.

  Harry woke up at eight. He opened his eyes and smelt the woollen blanket half covering his face. The smell reminded him of something. Then he threw it off. His sleep had been profound, without dreams, and he was in a curious mood. Exhilarated. Happy, no other word for it.

  He went into the kitchen, put on the coffee, washed his face in the sink and hummed Jim Stärk's 'Morning Song'. Over the low ridge to the east the sky was reddening like a young maiden; the last star blanching and fading. A new, mysterious, unsullied world lay outside the kitchen window and, white and optimistic, it was surging towards the horizon.

  He sliced some bread, found some cheese, poured water in
to a glass and steaming coffee into a clean cup, put it all on a tray and carried it into the bedroom.

  Her black, untidy hair spilt over the duvet and she made no sound. He placed the tray on the bedside table, sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

  The aroma of coffee slowly wafted through the room.

  Her breathing became irregular. She blinked. Caught sight of him, rubbed her face and stretched with exaggerated, embarrassed movements. It was like someone operating a dimmer switch, and the light shining out of her eyes grew stronger and stronger until the smile reached her lips.

  'Good morning,' he said.

  'Good morning.'

  'Breakfast?'

  'Mmm.' Her smile grew broader. 'Don't you want any?'

  'I'll wait. I'll make do with one of these if that's alright.' He produced a packet of cigarettes.

  'You smoke too much,' she said.

  'I always do after I've been boozing. Nicotine curbs the craving.'

  She tasted the coffee. 'Isn't that a paradox?'

  'What?'

  'You who were so frightened of losing your freedom becoming an alcoholic.'

  'True.' He opened the window, lit a cigarette and lay down beside her on the bed.

  'Is that what frightens you about me?' she asked, snuggling up to him. 'That I will deprive you of your freedom? Is that why . . . you don't want . . . to make love to me?'

  'No, Martine.' Harry took a drag of the cigarette, grimaced and eyed it with disapproval. 'It's because you are frightened.'

  He felt her stiffen.

  'Am I frightened?' she asked with surprise in her voice.

  'Yes. And I would have been, too, if I were you. I've never been able to understand how women have the courage to share roof and bed with those who are, physically, their complete masters.' He stubbed out his cigarette in the plate on the bedside table. 'Men would never dare.'

  'What makes you think I'm frightened?'

  'I can sense it. You take the intiative and want to be in charge. But mostly because you're frightened what might happen if you let me take charge. And that's fine, but I don't want you to do it if you're frightened.'

  'But it's not up to you to decide whether I want it or not!' she burst out. 'Even if I am frightened.'

  Harry looked at her. Without warning she flung her arms around him and hid her face in his neck.

  'You must think I'm quite strange,' she said.

  'Not at all,' said Harry.

  She held him tight. Squeezed him.

  'What if I was always frightened?' she whispered. 'What if I never . . .' She paused.

  Harry waited.

  'Something happened,' she said. 'I don't know what.'

  And waited.

  'Yes, I know what,' she said. 'I was raped. Here on this farm many years ago. And I kind of went to pieces.'

  The cold scream of a crow in the woods rent the silence.

  'Do you want . . . ?'

  'No, I don't want to talk about it. There's not very much to talk about, anyway. It's a long time ago and I'm in one piece now. I'm just . . .' she snuggled up to him again, '. . . a tiny bit frightened.'

  'Did you report it?'

  'No. I wasn't up to it.'

  'I know it's tough, but you should have done.'

  She smiled. 'Yes, I've heard you should. Because another girl's next, isn't that right?'

  'This is no joke, Martine.'

  'Sorry, Daddy.'

  Harry shrugged. 'I don't know if crime pays, but I do know it repeats itself.'

  'Because it's in your genes, right?'

  'That I don't know.'

  'Have you read the research into adoption? It shows that children with criminal parents who grow up in a normal family with other children, unaware that they're adopted, have a much greater chance of turning out to be criminals than the other children in the family. So there has to be a criminal gene.'

  'Yes, I've read that,' Harry said. 'Behavioural patterns may be hereditary. But I prefer to believe that in our own way each of us is infamous.'

  'You think we're programmed creatures of habit?' She curled a finger and tickled Harry under the chin.

  'I think we throw everything into one great calculation, lust and fear and excitement and greed and all that kind of thing. And the brain is brilliant. It computes away and almost never makes a mistake; that's why it produces the same answers every time.'

  Martine propped herself up on one elbow and gazed down at Harry. 'And morality and free choice?'

  'They're in the great calculation, too.'

  'So you think a criminal will always—'

  'No, otherwise I couldn't do my job.'

  She ran a finger across his forehead. 'So people can still change?'

  'That's what I hope anyway. That people learn.'

  She rested her forehead on his. 'And what can you learn?'

  'You can learn . . .' he began and was interrupted by her lips touching his, '. . . not to be lonely. You can learn . . .' the tip of her tongue caressed the bottom of his lower lip. '. . . not to be frightened. And you can . . .'

  'Learn to kiss?'

  'Yes. But not if the girl has just woken up and has a disgusting white coating on her tongue which . . .'

  Her hand hit his cheek with a smack and her laughter tinkled like ice cubes in a glass. Then her hot tongue found his and she covered him with the duvet; she pulled up his sweater and T-shirt and the skin on her stomach glowed bed-warm and soft against his.

  Harry's hand wandered under her top and up her back, felt the shoulder blades that moved under the skin and the muscles that tensed and relaxed as she wriggled towards him.

  He unbuttoned her top and held her gaze as he moved his hand over her stomach, over her ribs until the soft skin of his thumb and forefinger was holding her stiff nipple. She panted hot air over him as her open mouth closed on him and they kissed. As she forced her hand down between their hips, he knew that this time he would not be able to stop. Nor did he want to.

  'It's ringing,' she said.

  'What?'

  'The phone in your trousers, it's vibrating.' She began to laugh. 'Feel . . .'

  'Sorry.' Harry dragged the silent phone up from his pocket, leaned over her and put it on the bedside table. But it was on its side and the throbbing display faced him. He tried to ignore it, but it was too late. He had seen that it was Beate.

  'Shit,' he breathed. 'Just a moment.'

  He sat up and studied Martine's face, which studied his as he listened to Beate. And her face was like a mirror; they seemed to be playing a mime game. Apart from seeing himself, Harry could see his fear, his pain and in the end his resignation reflected in her face.

  'What's up?' she asked after he rang off.

  'He's dead.'