Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

The conversation had cost him five kroner. The clocks on the tower showed 19.25. The countdown had started.

The group met in the hall belonging to Vestre Aker church.

The snowdrifts were high on both sides of the gravel path leading to the small brick building on the slope beside the cemetery. Fourteen people were seated in a bare meeting hall with plastic chairs piled up against the walls and a long table in the middle. If you had stumbled into the room, you might have guessed it was a general assembly of some cooperative, but nothing about the faces, age, sex or clothes revealed what kind of community this was. The harsh light was reflected in the windowpanes and the lino floor. There was a low mumbling and fidgeting with paper cups. A bottle of Farris mineral water hissed as it was opened.

At seven o'clock on the dot the chattering stopped as a hand at the end of the table was raised and a little bell rang. Eyes turned to a woman in her mid-thirties. She met them with a direct, fearless gaze. She had narrow, severe lips softened with lipstick, long, thick, blonde hair held in place with a clip and large hands that, at this moment, were resting on the table, exuding calm and confidence. She was elegant, meaning she had attractive features but not the grace that would qualify her for what Norwegians termed sweet. Her body language betokened control and strength, which was underlined by the firm voice that filled the chilly room the next minute.

'Hi, my name is Astrid and I'm an alcoholic.'

'Hi, Astrid!' the gathering answered in unison.

Astrid bent the spine of the book in front of her and began to read.

'The sole requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking alcohol.'

She went on, and round the table the lips of those who knew the Twelve Traditions moved by rote. In the breaks, when she paused for breath, you could hear the church choir practising on the floor above.

'Today the theme is the First Step,' Astrid said, 'which runs thus: We admit we are powerless over alcohol, and that our lives have become unmanageable. I can begin, and I will be brief since I consider myself finished with the First Step.'

She drew breath and gave a laconic smile.

'I've been dry for seven years, and the first thing I do when I wake up is to tell myself I'm an alcoholic. My children don't know this. They think Mummy used to get very drunk and stopped drinking because she got so angry when she drank. My life requires an appropriate measure of truth and an appropriate measure of lies to find its equilibrium. I may be going to pieces, but I take one day at a time, avoid the first drink and at present I'm working on the Eleventh Step. Thank you.'

'Thank you, Astrid,' came the response from the assembled members, followed by clapping as the choir sang its praises from the first floor.

She nodded to her left, to a tall man with cropped blond hair.

'Hi, my name is Harry,' said the man in a gravelly voice. The fine network of red veins on his large nose bore witness to a long life out of the ranks of the sober. 'I am an alcoholic.'

'Hi, Harry.'

'I'm new here. This is my sixth meeting. Or seventh. And I haven't finished the First Step. In other words, I know I'm an alcoholic, but I think I can contain my alcoholism. So there is a kind of contradiction in my sitting here. But I came here because of a promise I made to a psychologist, a friend, who has my best interests at heart. He claimed that if I could stand all the chat about God and the spiritual stuff for the first weeks, I would find out it works. Well, I don't know if anonymous alcoholics can help themselves, but I am willing to try. Why not?'

He turned to the left to signal that he had finished. But before the clapping could get under way, it was interrupted by Astrid.

'I suppose this must be the first time you've said anything at our meetings, Harry. So that's nice. But perhaps you'd like to tell us a bit more while you're at it.'

Harry looked at her. The others did, too, as pressurising anyone in the group was a clear breach of the method. Her eyes held his. He had felt them on him in the earlier meetings, but had returned her gaze only once. However, then he had given her the full treatment, a searching look from top to toe and back again. Actually, he had liked what he saw, but what he liked best was when he returned to the top and her face was a great deal redder. And at the next meeting he had been invisible.

'No, I wouldn't, thank you,' Harry said.

Tentative applause.

Harry observed her out of the corner of his eye while his neighbour was talking. After the meeting she asked him where he lived and offered him a lift. Harry hesitated while the choir on the floor above rose in pitch in their eulogy of the Lord.

An hour and a half later they were each smoking a cigarette in silence and watching the smoke add a blue tinge to the bedroom darkness. The damp sheets on Harry's narrow bed were still warm, but the cold in the room had made Astrid pull the thin white duvet right up to her chin.

'That was wonderful,' she said.

Harry didn't answer. He was thinking it probably wasn't a question.

'I came,' she said. 'The first time together. That's not-'

'So your husband's a doctor?' Harry said.

'That's the second time you've asked, and the answer is still yes.'

Harry nodded. 'Can you hear that sound?'

'Which sound?'

'The ticking. Is it your watch?'

'I haven't got a watch. It must be yours.'

'Digital. Doesn't tick.'

She placed a hand on his hip. Harry slipped out of bed. The freezing cold lino burned the soles of his feet. 'Would you like a glass of water?'

'Mmm.'

Harry went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror as he ran the water. What was it she had said? She could see loneliness in his eyes? He leaned forward, but all he could see was a blue iris around small pupils and deltas of veins in the whites. When Halvorsen found out he had split up with Rakel, he said Harry should find solace in other women. Or, as he so poetically put it, screw the melancholy out of his soul. However, Harry had neither the energy nor the will. Because he knew that any woman he touched would turn into Rakel. And that was what he needed to forget, to get her out of his blood, not some sexual methadone treatment.

But he might have been wrong and Halvorsen might have been right. Because it had felt good. It had been wonderful. And instead of the empty feeling you got from trying to quench one desire by satisfying another, he felt his batteries recharged. And relaxed at the same time. She had taken what she needed. And he liked the way she had done it. Perhaps it could be as easy as this for him too?

He moved back a step and studied his body in the mirror. He had become leaner in the last year. There was less fat on him, but fewer muscles. He had begun to resemble his father. As one would expect.

He went back to bed with a large half-litre glass, which they shared. Afterwards she snuggled up to him. Her skin was clammy and cold at first, but she soon began to warm him up.

'Now you can tell me,' she said.

'Tell you what?' Harry watched the smoke coil into a letter.

'What's her name? Because it is a she, isn't it?'

The letter dissolved.

'She's the reason you came to us.'

'Might be.'

Harry observed the glow eat away at the cigarette as he talked. A little at first. The woman beside him was a stranger, it was dark and the words rose and melted away, and he thought this is what it must be like to sit in a confessional. To unburden yourself. Or to share problems with others, as AA called it. So he continued. He told her about Rakel, who had thrown him out of the house over a year ago because she thought he was obsessed with the hunt for a mole in the police force, the Prince. And about Oleg, her son, who had been snatched from his bedroom and used as a hostage when Harry finally got within shooting distance of the Prince. Oleg had coped well, considering the circumstances of the kidnapping and the fact that he had witnessed Harry killing the kidnapper in a lift in Kampen. It was worse for Rakel. Two weeks later, when she was au fait with all the details, she had told him she could not have him in her life. Or, to be more precise, Oleg's life.