Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

Astrid nodded. 'She left you because of the harm you had done to them?'

Harry shook his head. 'Because of the harm I had not done to them. Yet.'

'Oh?'

'I said the case was closed, but she maintained I was obsessed, that it would never be closed as long as they were still out there.' Harry stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the bedside table. 'And if it wasn't them, I would find others. Other people who could hurt them. She said she could not take that responsibility.'

'Sounds like she's obsessed.'

'No.' Harry smiled. 'She's right.'

'Really? Would you care to amplify?'

Harry shrugged. 'Submarines…' he started, but was stopped by a violent coughing fit.

'What did you say about submarines?'

'She said that. That I was a submarine. Going down into the cold, murky depths where you can't breathe and coming up to the surface once every second month. She didn't want to keep me company down there. Reasonable enough.'

'Do you still love her?'

Harry was not sure he liked the direction this problem-sharing was taking. He took a deep breath. In his head he was playing the rest of the last conversation he'd had with Rakel.

His own voice, low, as it tends to be when he is angry or frightened: 'Submarine?'

Rakel: 'I know it's not a very good image, but you understand.. .'

Harry holds up his hands: 'Of course. Excellent image. And what is this… doctor? An aircraft carrier?'

She groans: 'He has nothing to do with this, Harry. It's about you and me. And Oleg.'

'Don't hide behind Oleg now.'

'Hide…'

'You're using him as a hostage, Rakel.'

'I'M using him as a hostage? Was it me who kidnapped Oleg and put a gun to his temple so that YOU could slake your thirst for revenge?'

The veins on her neck are standing out and she screams so loud her voice becomes ugly, someone else's, she hasn't the vocal cords to support such fury. Harry leaves and closes the door gently, almost without a sound, behind him.

He turned to the woman in his bed. 'Yes, I love her. Do you love your husband, the doctor?'

'Yes.'

'So why this?'

'He doesn't love me.'

'Mm. So now you're taking your revenge?'

She looked at him in surprise. 'No. I'm lonely. And I fancy you.

The same reasons as yours, I would think. Did you hope it was more complicated?'

Harry chuckled. 'No. That'll do fine.'

'Why did you kill him?'

'Who?'

'Are there more? The kidnapper, of course.'

'That's not important.'

'Maybe not, but I would like to hear you tell me…' she put her hand between his legs, cuddled up to him and whispered in his ear: '… the details.'

'I don't think so.'

'I think you're mistaken.'

'OK, but I don't like…'

'Oh, come on!' she hissed with irritation and gave his member a good, firm squeeze. Harry looked at her. Her eyes sparkled blue and hard in the dark. She put on a hasty smile and added in a sugary-sweet tone: 'Just for me.'

Outside the bedroom, the temperature continued to fall, making the roofs in Bislett creak and groan while Harry told her the details and felt her stiffen, then take her hand away and in the end whisper she had heard enough.

After she had left, Harry stood listening in his bedroom. To the creaking. And the ticking.

Then he bent over the jacket he had thrown to the floor, with all the other clothes, in their stampede through the front door into the bedroom. He found the source in his pocket. Bjarne Moller's leaving present. The watch glass glinted.

He put it in the bedside-table drawer, but the ticking followed him all the way into dreamland.

He wiped the superfluous oil off the gun parts with one of the hotel's white towels.

The traffic outside reached him as a regular rumble drowning the tiny TV in the corner with its mere three channels, a grainy picture and a language he assumed was Norwegian. The girl in reception had taken his jacket and promised that it would be cleaned by early the following morning. He lined up the parts of the gun on a newspaper. When they had all been dried, he assembled the gun, pointed it at the mirror and pulled the trigger. There was a smooth click and he felt the movement of the steel components travel along his hand and arm. The dry click. The mock execution.

That was how they had tried to crack Bobo.

In November 1991, after three months of non-stop siege and bombardment, Vukovar had finally capitulated. The rain had been pouring down as the Serbs marched into town. Along with the remnants of Bobo's unit, numbering around eighty weary and starving Croatian prisoners of war, he had been commanded to stand in line before the ruins of what had been the town's main street. The Serbs had told them not to move and had withdrawn into their heated tent. The rain had whipped down, making the mud froth. After two hours the first men began to fall. When Bobo's lieutenant left the line to help one of those who had collapsed in the mud, a young Serbian private – just a boy – came out of the tent and shot the lieutenant in the stomach. Thereafter no one stirred; they watched the rain obliterate the mountain ridges around them and hoped the lieutenant would soon stop screaming. He began to cry, but then he heard Bobo's voice behind him. 'Don't cry.' And he stopped.

Morning turned to afternoon and it was dusk when an open jeep arrived. The Serbs in the tent rushed out and saluted. He knew the man in the passenger seat had to be the commanding officer – 'the rock with the gentle voice' as he was called. At the back of the jeep sat a man in civilian clothing with a bowed head. The jeep halted right in front of their unit and since he was in the first row, he heard the commanding officer ask the civilian to look at the prisoners of war. He recognised the civilian at once when he reluctantly raised his head. He was from Vukovar, the father of a boy at his school. The father scanned the lines of men, reached him, but there was no sign of recognition and he moved on. The commander sighed, stood up in the jeep and yelled over the rain, not using the gentle voice: 'Which of you goes under the code name of the little redeemer?'

No one in the unit moved.

'Are you frightened to step forward, mali spasitelj? You who blew up twelve of our tanks and deprived our women of their husbands and made Serbian children fatherless?'

He waited.

'I thought so. Which of you is Bobo?'

Still no one moved.

The commander looked at the civilian, who pointed a trembling finger at Bobo in the second row.

'Come forward,' the commander shouted.

Bobo walked the few steps to the jeep and the driver, who had got out and was standing beside the vehicle. When Bobo stood to attention and saluted, the driver knocked his cap into the mud.

'We have been given to understand on the radio that the little redeemer is under your command,' the commander said. 'Please point him out to me.'

'I've never heard of any redeemer,' Bobo said.

The commander raised his gun and struck him. A red stream of blood issued from Bobo's nose.

'Quick. I'm getting wet and food is ready.'

'I am Bobo, a captain in the Croatian ar-'

The commander nodded to the driver, who snatched Bobo's hair and turned his face to the rain, washing the blood from his nose and mouth down into the red neckerchief.

'Idiot!' said the commander. 'There is no Croatian army here, just traitors! You can choose to be executed right now or save us time. We'll find him whatever happens.'

'And you'll execute us whatever happens,' Bobo groaned.

'Of course.'

'Why?'

The commander went through the motions of loading his gun. Raindrops fell from the gunstock. He placed the barrel against Bobo's temple. 'Because I'm a Serbian officer. And a man has to respect his work. Are you ready to die?'