Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'Yes.'

'Did you pay him first?'

'What?'

'Forget it.'

'You have to understand it wasn't only Pernille and I who suffered.

For Per every day was a prolongation of his suffering. My son was a dead person waiting for… for someone to stop his heart that would not stop beating. A… a…'

'Redeemer.'

'Yes, that's it. A redeemer.'

'But that's not your job, herr Holmen.'

'No, it's God's job.' Holmen bowed his head and mumbled something.

'What?' asked Harry.

Holmen raised his head, but his eyes were staring into empty space. 'If God doesn't do His job, though, someone else has to do it.'

On the street, a brown dusk had descended around the yellow lights. Even in the middle of the Oslo night the darkness was never total when snow had fallen. Noises were wrapped in cotton wool and the creaking of snow underfoot sounded like distant fireworks.

'Why don't we take him with us?' Halvorsen asked.

'He's not going anywhere. He has something to tell his wife. We'll send a car in a couple of hours.'

'Bit of an actor, isn't he?'

'Eh?'

'Well, wasn't he sobbing his guts out when you brought him the news of his son's death?'

Harry shook his head in resignation. 'You've got a lot to learn, Junior.'

Annoyed, Halvorsen kicked at the snow. 'Enlighten me, O Wise One.'

'Committing a murder is such an extreme act that many repress it. They can walk around with it like a kind of half-forgotten nightmare. I have seen that several times now. It's when others say it out loud that they realise it is not only something that exists in their head. It did happen.'

'Right. A cold fish, anyway.'

'Didn't you see the man was crushed? Pernille Holmen was probably right when she said that her husband was the loving one.'

'Loving? A murderer?' Halvorsen's voice quivered with indignation.

Harry laid a hand on the detective's shoulder. 'Think about it. Isn't it the ultimate act of love? Sacrificing your only son?'

'But…'

'I know what you're thinking, Halvorsen. But you'll just have to get used to the idea. This is the type of moral paradox that will fill your days.'

Halvorsen pulled at the unlocked car door, but it was frozen fast. In a sudden bout of fury he heaved and it came away from the rubber with a ripping noise.

They got in, and Harry watched as Halvorsen twisted the ignition key and pinched his forehead hard with the other hand. The engine roared into life.

'Halvorsen…' Harry started.

'Anyway, the case is solved and the POB is bound to be happy,' Halvorsen shouted, pulling out in front of a lorry with its horn blaring. He held up an outstretched finger to the mirror. 'So let's smile and celebrate a bit, shall we?' He lowered his hand and continued to pinch at his forehead.

'Halvorsen…'

'What's up?' he barked.

'Park the car.'

'What?'

'Now.'

Halvorsen pulled into the kerb, let go of the steering wheel and focused ahead through vacant eyes. In the time they had been with Holmen, the ice flowers had crept up the windscreen like a sudden attack of fungus. Halvorsen wheezed as his chest rose and fell.

'Some days this is a shit job,' Harry said. 'Don't let it get to you.'

'No,' Halvorsen said, breathing even harder.

'You are you, and they are them.'

'Yes.'

Harry placed a hand on Halvorsen's back and waited. After a while he felt his colleague's breathing calm down.

'Tough guy,' Harry said.

Neither of them spoke as the car crawled its way through the afternoon traffic towards Gronland.

Monday, 15 December. Anonymity.

He stood at the highest point of Oslo's busiest pedestrian street, named after the Swedish-Norwegian king, Karl Johan. He had memorised the map he had been given at the hotel and knew the building he saw in silhouette to the west was the Royal Palace and that Oslo Central Station was at the eastern end.

He shivered.

High up a house wall the sub-zero temperature shone out in red neon, and even the slightest current of air felt like an ice age penetrating his camel-hair coat which, until then, he had been very happy with; he had bought it in London for a song.

The clock beside the temperature gauge showed 19.00. He started walking east. The omens were good. It was dark, there were lots of people about and the only surveillance cameras he saw were outside banks and directed at their respective cash machines. He had already excluded the underground for his getaway because of the combination of too many cameras and too few people. Oslo was smaller than he had imagined.

He went into a clothes shop where he found a blue woollen hat for 49 kroner and a woollen jacket for 200, but changed his mind when he saw a thin raincoat for 120. While he was trying on the raincoat in a changing cubicle he discovered that the urinal blocks from Paris were still in his suit jacket pocket, crushed and ground into the material.

The restaurant was several hundred metres down the pedestrian zone, on the left-hand side. He registered at once that there was no cloakroom attendant. Good, that made things easier. He entered the dining area. Half full. Good sight lines; he could see all the tables from where he stood. A waiter came over and he reserved a window table for six o'clock the following day.

Before leaving, he checked the toilet. There were no windows. So the only other exit was through the kitchen. OK, nowhere was perfect, and it was very improbable that he would need an alternative way out.

He left the restaurant, looked at his watch and started to walk towards the station. People avoided eye contact. A small town, but it still had the cool aloofness of a capital city. Good.

He checked his watch again as he stood on the platform for the express train to the airport. Six minutes from the restaurant. Trains left every ten minutes and took nineteen. In other words, he could be on the train at 19.20 and in the airport by 19.40. The direct flight to Zagreb left at 21.10 and the ticket was in his pocket. Bought on special offer from SAS.

Satisfied, he walked out of the new rail terminal, down a staircase, under a glass roof which had obviously been the old departure hall, but where there were now shops, and out into the open square. Jernbanetorget, as it was called on the map. In the middle there was a tiger twice the size of life, frozen in mid-stride, between tram rails, cars and people. But he couldn't see a phone booth anywhere, as the receptionist had said. At the end of the square, by a shelter, there was a throng of people. He went closer. Several of them had stuck their hoody-clad heads together and were talking. Perhaps they came from the same place, or they were neighbours waiting for the same bus. It reminded him of something else, though. He spotted things changing hands, skinny men hurrying away with their backs bent into the freezing wind. And he knew what the things were. He had seen heroin deals taking place in Zagreb and other European towns, but nowhere as openly as here. Then he remembered what it reminded him of. The gatherings of people he himself had been part of after the Serbians had withdrawn. Refugees.

Then a bus did come. It was white and stopped just short of the shelter. The doors opened, but no one got on. Instead a girl came out, wearing a uniform he recognised at once. The Salvation Army. He slowed down.

The girl went over to one of the women and helped her onto the bus. Two men followed.

He stopped and looked up. A coincidence, he thought. That was all. He turned round. And there, on the wall of a small clock tower, he saw three telephones.

Five minutes later he had called Zagreb and told her everything was looking good.

'The final job,' he had repeated.

And Fred had told him that his blue lions, Dinamo Zagreb, were leading 1-0 against Rijeka at Maksimar stadium at half-time.