The Redbreast

by Jo Nesbo

  The sister stood there with her mouth open, unsure how she should continue her sentence. Harry helped her out of her quandary by asking if they should take off their shoes before entering.

  Fru Brandhaug didn’t seem as worn out as the sister would have had them believe. She was sitting on the sofa staring into thin air, but Harry noticed the knitting protruding from under a cushion. Not that there was anything wrong with knitting when your husband has just been murdered. On reflection, Harry thought it was even quite natural. Something familiar to cling to while the rest of the world crashed around your ears.

  ‘I’m leaving tonight,’ she said. ‘For my sister’s.’

  ‘I understand the police will be here standing guard until further notice,’ Harry said. ‘In case . . .’

  ‘In case they’re after me too,’ she said with a nod.

  ‘Do you think they are?’ Halvorsen asked. ‘And if so, who is “they”?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. Stared out of the window at the pale daylight coming into the room.

  ‘I know Kripos have been here and asked you about this,’ Harry said. ‘But I was wondering if you knew whether your husband was receiving any threats after the newspaper article in yesterday’s Dagbladet.’

  ‘No one rang here,’ she said. ‘But then you can only find my name in the telephone book. That was how Bernt wanted it. You’ll have to ask the Foreign Office if anyone rang.’

  ‘We have done,’ Halvorsen said, briefly exchanging glances with Harry. ‘We’re trying to trace the calls received by his office yesterday.’

  Halvorsen asked several questions about any possible enemies her husband might have had, but she didn’t have a lot to help them with.

  Harry sat down and listened for a while until he suddenly had an idea. He asked, ‘Were there absolutely no phone calls yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, there probably were,’ she said. ‘A couple, anyway.’

  ‘Who phoned?’

  ‘My sister. Bernt. And some opinion poll or other, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘What did they ask about?’

  ‘I don’t know. They asked to speak to Bernt. They’ve got lists of names, haven’t they. Along with your age and gender . . .’

  ‘They asked to speak to Bernt Brandhaug, did they?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘They don’t use names for opinion polls. Did you hear any noise in the background?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ ‘They usually work from those open plan offices with lots of other people.’

  ‘There was something,’ she said, ‘but . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Not the kind of noise you’re thinking of. It was . . . different.’

  ‘When did you receive this call?’

  ‘At about midday, I think. I said he was coming home in the afternoon. I had forgotten Bernt had to go to Larvik for a meal with the Exports Council.’

  ‘Since Bernt’s name is not in the telephone directory, did it occur to you that it might have been someone calling everyone called Brandhaug to find out where Bernt lived? And to find out when he was coming home?’

  ‘I don’t follow you . . .’

  ‘Opinion pollsters don’t phone a man of working age at home in the middle of the working day.’

  Harry turned to Halvorsen.

  ‘Check with Telenor to see if you can get hold of the number they rang from.’

  ‘Excuse me, fru Brandhaug,’ Halvorsen said. ‘I noticed that you have a new Ascom ISDN telephone out in the hallway. I’ve got the same setup myself. The last ten calls are stored in the memory with number and time. May I . . . ?’

  Harry sent Halvorsen an approving look before he got to his feet. Fru Brandhaug’s sister accompanied him into the hallway.

  ‘Bernt was old-fashioned in some ways,’ fru Brandhaug told Harry with a crooked smile. ‘But he liked buying modern things when they came out. Telephones and that sort of thing.’

  ‘How old-fashioned was he with regard to fidelity, fru Brandhaug?’

  Her head shot up.

  ‘I thought we could deal with this one while we were alone,’ Harry said. ‘Kripos checked out what you told them earlier today. Your husband wasn’t at any meeting with the Exports Council in Larvik yesterday. Did you know that the Foreign Office has a room at the Continental at its disposal?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My boss in the Secret Service tipped me off about it this morning. It turns out that your husband checked in there yesterday afternoon. We don’t know whether he was alone, but of course you begin to get certain ideas when a husband lies to his wife and goes to a hotel.’

  Harry studied her face as it went through a metamorphosis from fury to despair to resignation to . . . laughter. It sounded like low weeping.

  ‘I really shouldn’t be surprised,’ she said. ‘If you absolutely have to know, he was . . . very modern in that area too. Though I fail to see what it has to do with the case.’

  ‘It might have given a jealous husband a motive for killing him,’ Harry said.

  ‘It gives me a motive too, herr Hole. Have you considered that? When we lived in Nigeria a contract killing cost two hundred Norwegian kroner.’ She laughed the same wounded laugh. ‘I thought you said the motive was the statement that appeared in Dagbladet.’

  ‘We’re covering all the options.’

  ‘As a rule they were women he met through work,’ she said. ‘Of course, I don’t know everything that went on, but I caught him red-handed once. And then I saw the pattern and how he had been doing it. But murder?’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t shoot anyone for that sort of thing nowadays, do you?’

  She looked at Harry, who didn’t know how to respond. Through the glass door to the entrance hall he could hear Halvorsen’s deep voice. Harry cleared his throat:

  ‘Do you know if he was conducting a relationship with any particular woman recently?’

  She shook her head. ‘Ask around in the Foreign Office. It’s a strange environment, you know. Bound to be someone there who would be more than willing to give you a pointer.’

  She said this without rancour, purely as a matter of information.

  They both looked up when Halvorsen came into the room.

  ‘Odd,’ he said. ‘You did receive a telephone call at 12.24, fru Brandhaug, but not yesterday. The day before.’

  ‘Oh dear, perhaps I mixed up the days,’ she said. ‘Yes, well, so it has nothing to do with the case, then.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Halvorsen said. ‘I checked the number with enquiries anyway. The call came from a pay phone. At Schrøder’s café.’

  ‘Café?’ she said. ‘Yes, that would probably explain the noises in the background. Do you think . . . ?’

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the murder of your husband,’ Harry said, getting up. ‘There are lots of strange people at Schrøder’s.’

  She accompanied them to the front steps. It was a grey afternoon outside with low-lying clouds sweeping across the hill behind them.

  Fru Brandhaug stood with her arms crossed, as if she were freezing cold.

  ‘It’s so dark here,’ she said. ‘Have you noticed that?’

  The Crime Scene Unit was still busy combing the area around the bivouac where they had found the cartridge when Harry and Halvorsen approached from across the heath.

  ‘Hey, you there!’ they heard a voice shout as they ducked under the yellow police tape.

  ‘Police,’ Harry answered.

  ‘Makes no difference!’ the same voice shouted back. ‘You’ll have to wait until we’ve finished.’

  It was Weber. He was wearing high rubber boots and a comical yellow raincoat. Harry and Halvorsen ducked back under the tape.

  ‘Hey, Weber,’ Harry shouted.

  ‘Got no time,’ he answered with a dismissive wave.

  ‘It’ll take one minute.’

  Weber went closer with long strides and an obviously irritated expression on his face.

 
; ‘What do you want?’ he yelled from a distance of twenty metres.

  ‘How long had he been waiting?’

  ‘The bloke up here? No idea.’

  ‘Come on Weber. A guess.’

  ‘Who’s working on this case? Kripos or you?’

  ‘Both. We haven’t co-ordinated yet.’

  ‘And are you trying to kid me you’re going to?’

  Harry smiled and took out a cigarette.

  ‘You’ve come up with some good guesses before, Weber.’

  ‘Cut out the flattery, Hole. Who’s the lad?’

  ‘Halvorsen,’ Harry said before Halvorsen had a chance to introduce himself.

  ‘Listen to me, Halvorsen,’ Weber said, regarding Harry with a disgust he made no attempt to disguise. ‘Smoking is a revolting habit and the ultimate proof that humans are here on earth for one thing only – enjoyment. The bloke who was here left eight dog-ends in a half-full pop bottle. Teddy cigarettes, no filter. And Teddy smokers are not content with two a day, so unless he ran out, by my reckoning he was here for twenty-four hours at most. He had cut sprigs of spruce down from the lowest branches which the rain couldn’t get at. But there were drops of rain on the spruce covering the bivouac. The last time it rained was three o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘So he was lying here from somewhere between eight a.m. and three p.m. yesterday?’ Halvorsen asked.

  ‘I think Halvorsen could go far,’ Weber said laconically, with his eyes still on Harry. ‘Especially considering the competition he’ll have in the force. It’s getting bloody worse and worse. Have you seen what they’re recruiting at the police college now? Even the teacher training colleges are getting geniuses in comparison with the rubbish we get.’

  All of a sudden it seemed that Weber wasn’t in a hurry after all and he set off on a long diatribe about the gloomy prospects for the police force.

  ‘Did anyone living nearby see anything?’ Harry quickly asked as Weber paused to draw breath.

  ‘We’ve got four men doing house to house now, but most of the people won’t be back till later. They won’t dig up anything.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t think he showed himself round here. Earlier today we had a dog following his footsteps for about a kilometre into the forest, to one of the paths. But we lost him there. I would guess he took the same route here and back, following the network of paths between Sognsvann and Lake Maridal. He could have parked a car in at least a dozen car parks for walkers in this area. And there are thousands of them using the paths every day, at least half of them with a rucksack. You see?’

  ‘We see.’

  ‘And now you’re probably going to ask me if there are any fingerprints.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘What about the bottle of pop?’

  Weber shook his head.

  ‘No prints. Nothing. Considering how long he was here, he has left surprisingly few traces. We’ll keep searching, but I’m pretty positive that the shoe print and a few fibres from his clothing are all we’ll find.’

  ‘Plus the cartridge.’

  ‘He left that on purpose. Everything else has been removed a little too thoroughly.’

  ‘Hm. As a warning perhaps. What do you think?’

  ‘What do I think? I thought it was only you young blokes who had been blessed with a bit of brainpower. That’s the impression they’re trying to promote in the force nowadays.’

  ‘Right. Thanks for your help, Weber.’

  ‘And pack the fags in, Hole.’

  ‘Bit of a stickler,’ Halvorsen said in the car on the way down to the city centre.

  ‘Weber can be hard to take sometimes,’ Harry conceded. ‘But he knows his job.’

  Halvorsen drummed the beat to a soundless song on the dashboard. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘Continental.’

  Kripos had phoned the Continental fifteen minutes after they had washed and changed the bedding in Brandhaug’s room. No one had noticed Brandhaug had had a visitor, only that he had checked out at around midnight.

  Harry stood in reception, pulling at his last cigarette while the duty head receptionist from the previous night wrung his hands and looked unhappy.

  ‘We didn’t know that herr Brandhaug had been shot until late morning,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have touched his room.’

  Harry gave a sign of acknowledgement and took a drag of his cigarette. The hotel room was not the scene of any crime; it would simply have been interesting to know if there was any blonde hair on the pillow and to contact whoever may have been the last person to talk to Brandhaug.

  ‘Well, if that’s everything then,’ the man said with a smile and a faint suggestion he was going to cry.

  Harry didn’t respond. He had noticed that the head receptionist had become more and more nervous the less he and Halvorsen said. So he said nothing; he waited and watched the glow of his cigarette.

  ‘Er . . .’ said the receptionist, running a hand along the lapel of his jacket.

  Harry waited. Halvorsen studied the floor. The head receptionist held out for barely fifteen seconds before cracking.

  ‘Of course, he did occasionally have visitors up there,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ Harry said without taking his eyes off the glow of his cigarette.

  ‘Women and men . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t know. It’s none of our business who the Under Secretary of State chooses to spend his time with.’

  ‘Really?’

  Silence.

  ‘Of course, if a woman comes here who is obviously not a guest, we do take note which floor she takes the lift to.’

  ‘Would you recognise her?’

  ‘Yes.’ The answer came like a shot, no hesitation. ‘She was very attractive. And very drunk.’

  ‘Prostitute?’

  ‘If so, then a high-class one. And they tend to be sober. Well, not that I know much about them. This hotel is no —’

  ‘Thank you,’ Harry said.

  A southerly wind brought in warm weather and, as Harry left the police HQ after the meeting with Meirik and the Chief Constable, he instinctively knew that something had finished. A new season was on its way.

  The Chief Constable and Meirik had both known Brandhaug. Only professionally, they both found it necessary to stress. It was clear that the two had discussed the matter in private. Meirik opened the meeting by definitively drawing a line under the undercover job in Klippan. He almost seemed relieved, Harry noted. The Chief Constable then put forward her proposal, and Harry realised that his dashing exploits in Sydney and Bangkok had even left a mark on the upper echelons of the police force.

  ‘Typical sweeper,’ the Chief Constable had called Harry. And then she explained the role they were now going to play him in.

  A new season. The warm Föhn wind made Harry feel light-headed and he permitted himself a taxi since he was still dragging around a heavy bag. The first thing he did on walking into his flat in Sofies gate was to check the answerphone. The red eye was lit. No blinking. No messages.

  He had asked Linda to copy the case file and he spent the rest of the evening going through everything they had on the murders of Hallgrim Dale and Ellen Gjelten. Not that he was expecting to find anything new, but it might stimulate his imagination. He glanced over from time to time at the telephone, wondering how long he would manage to wait before he called her. The Brandhaug case was the main item on the TV news. At midnight he went to bed. At one o’clock he got up, pulled out the telephone jack and put the phone in the fridge. At three o’clock he fell asleep.

  75

  Møller’s Office. 11 May 2000.

  ‘WELL?’ MØLLER SAID, AFTER HARRY AND HALVORSEN HAD taken their first sip of coffee and Harry, with a grimace, had told him what he thought of it.

  ‘I think the connection between the newspaper article and the killing is a dead duck.’

  ‘W
hy?’ Møller stretched back in his chair.

  ‘In Weber’s opinion, the killer had been hiding in the forest since early in the day, so at most a few hours after Dagbladet had hit the stands. This was not a spontaneous action; it was a well-planned attack. The killer had known he was going to shoot Brandhaug for some days. He had been out to recce the area; he knew about Brandhaug’s comings and goings; he had found the best place to fire from, with the least risk of being seen; he knew how he was going to get in and out, hundreds of tiny details.’

  ‘So you think this is the murder he bought the Märklin rifle for?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘Thanks. That got us a long way,’ Møller said acidly.

  ‘I only mean that it is a possibility. On the other hand, it’s all completely out of proportion. It seems slightly over the top to smuggle in the world’s most expensive assassination rifle to kill a high-ranking though relatively nondescript bureaucrat without a bodyguard or any security staff. Any hitman could literally ring the doorbell and shoot him with a handgun at close range. This is a little like . . . like . . .’

  Harry made circle movements with his hands.

  ‘Shooting sparrows with a cannon,’ Halvorsen said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Harry said.

  ‘Hm.’ Møller closed his eyes. ‘And what kind of role do you see for yourself in the continuing investigation, Harry?’

  ‘As a kind of sweeper,’ Harry smiled. ‘I’m the guy from POT who does his own thing, but can request assistance from all other departments whenever necessary. Who reports to Meirik, but has access to all the documents in the case. Who asks questions, but can’t be questioned. That sort of thing.’

  ‘What about a licence to kill as well?’ Møller said. ‘And a very fast car?’

  ‘In fact, this is not my idea,’ Harry said. ‘Meirik has just been talking to the Chief Constable.’

  ‘The Chief Constable?’

  ‘Yup. I suppose you’ll get an email about it during the course of the day. The Brandhaug case has top priority from this minute and the Chief Constable does not want to leave any stone unturned. This is one of those FBI deals where investigation teams have to some degree overlapping duties in order to avoid the standardisation of ideas you get on big cases. You must have read about it.’