Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'Yes and no,' Harry replied.

'The press are on my back. Would be good if we had something to give them.'

'Ah, yes, I almost forgot to say, boss. I tipped them off that we were looking for this man.' Harry took one of the printouts from the pile and pointed to the man with the neckerchief.

'You did what?' Hagen said.

'I tipped off the press. To be exact, Dagbladet.'

'Without going through me?'

'Routine number, boss. We call them constructive leaks. We say the information is from an anonymous source in the police so that the newspaper can pretend they have been doing serious investigative journalism. They like that, so they give it more column space than if we had asked them to publish pictures. Now we can get some help from the general public to identify the man. And everyone is happy.'

'I'm not, Hole.'

'I'm genuinely sorry to hear that then, boss,' Harry said, and underlined the genuineness with a concerned expression.

Hagen glared at him with his upper and lower jaw moving sideways in opposite directions, in a kneading motion that reminded Harry of a ruminant.

'And what is so special about this man?' Hagen said, snatching the printout from Harry.

'We're not quite sure. Maybe there are many of them. Beate Lonn thinks they… well, tie the neckerchief in a particular way.'

'That's a cravat knot.' Hagen took another look. 'What about it?'

'What did you say it was, boss?'

'A cravat knot.'

'Do you mean a tie knot?'

'A Croat knot, man.'

'What?'

'Isn't this basic history?'

'I'd be grateful if you would enlighten me, boss.'

Hagen placed his hands behind his back. 'What do you know about the Thirty Years War?'

'Not enough, I suppose.'

'During the Thirty Years War, before he marched into Germany, Gustav Adolf, the Swedish King, supplemented his disciplined but small army with what were reckoned to be the best soldiers in Europe. They were the best because they were considered totally fearless. He hired Croat mercenaries. Did you know that the Norwegian word krabat comes from Swedish and its original meaning was Croat, in other words a fearless maniac?'

Harry shook his head.

'Although the Croats were fighting in a foreign country and had to wear King Gustav Adolf 's uniform, they were allowed to retain a marker to distinguish them from the others: the cavalry neckerchief. It was a neckerchief the Croats tied in a special way. The item of clothing was adopted and developed further by the French, but they kept the name, which became cravate.'

'Cravate. Cravat.'

'Exactly.'

'Thank you, boss.' Harry took the last printout of the pictures off the paper tray and studied the man with the scarf Beate had ringed. 'You may just have given us a clue.'

'We don't need to thank each other for doing our jobs, Hole.' Hagen took the rest of the printouts and marched out.

Halvorsen peered up as Harry raced into the office.

'Got a lead,' Harry said. Halvorsen sighed. This phrase tended to mean loads of work and nothing to show for it.

'I'm going to ring Alex in Europol,' Harry said.

Halvorsen knew Europol was Interpol's little sister in The Hague, set up by the EU after the terrorist actions in Madrid in 1998 to focus specifically on international terror and organised crime. What he didn't know was why this Alex was often willing to help Harry when Norway was not in the EU.

'Alex? Harry, from Oslo. Could you check something out for me, please?'

Halvorsen listened to Harry asking Alex in his jerky but effective English to search the database for offences committed by suspected international criminals in Europe over the last ten years. Search words: 'contract killing' and 'Croat'.

'I'll wait,' Harry said, and waited. Then, in surprise, 'That many?' He scratched his chin, then asked Alex to add 'gun' and 'nine millimetre' to the search.

'Twenty-three hits, Alex? Twenty-three murders with a Croat as the suspect? Jesus! Well, I know that wars create professional hit men, but nevertheless. Try "Scandinavia". Nothing? OK, have you got any names, Alex? None? Hang on a sec.'

Harry looked at Halvorsen as though hoping for a few timely words, but Halvorsen just shrugged.

'OK, Alex,' Harry said. 'One last attempt.'

He asked him to add 'red neckerchief ' or 'scarf ' to the search.

Halvorsen could hear Alex laughing on the line.

'Thanks, Alex. Talk to you soon.'

Harry put down the receiver.

'Well?' said Halvorsen. 'Lead gone up in smoke?'

Harry nodded. He had slumped a few notches lower in his chair, but then straightened up with a start. 'We have to think along new lines. What have we got? Nothing? Great, I love blank sheets of paper.'

Halvorsen remembered Harry had once said that what separates a good detective from a mediocre one is the ability to forget. A good detective forgets all the times his gut instinct lets him down, forgets all the leads he has believed in that led nowhere. And pitches in, naive and forgetful again, with undiminished enthusiasm.

The telephone rang. Harry snatched at the receiver. 'Harr-' But the voice at the other end was already in full flow.

Harry got up from behind the desk and Halvorsen could see the knuckles on his hand around the receiver going white.

'Wait, Alex. I'll ask Halvorsen to take notes.'

Harry held his hand over the receiver and called to Halvorsen: 'He tried one last time for fun. Dropped Croat, nine millimetre and the other things, and searched under red scarf. Found Zagreb in 2000 and 2001. Munich in 2002 and Paris in 2003.'

Harry went back to the phone. 'This is our man, Alex. No, I'm not sure, but my gut feeling is. And my head says that two murders in Croatia are not a coincidence. Have you any further details Halvorsen can jot down?'

Halvorsen watched Harry gape in astonishment.

'What do you mean no description? If they remember the scarf, they must have noticed other things. What? Normal height? Is that all?'

Harry shook his head as he listened.

'What's he saying?' Halvorsen whispered.

'Wide discrepancies between statements,' Harry whispered back.

Halvorsen noted down 'discrepancies'.

'Yes, great, email me the details. Well, thanks for now, Alex. If you find anything else, such as a suspected haunt or something like that, give me a buzz, OK? What? Ha ha. Right, I'll send you a copy of me and my wife.'

Harry rang off and noticed Halvorsen's quizzical stare.

'Old joke,' Harry said. 'Alex thinks all Scandinavian couples make private porno films.'

Harry dialled another number, discovered while he was waiting for an answer that Halvorsen was still looking at him and sighed. 'I've never even been married, Halvorsen.'

Magnus Skarre had to shout to be heard over the coffee machine, which appeared to be suffering from a serious lung condition. 'Perhaps there are a number of hit men from a hitherto unknown gang who wear red scarves as a kind of uniform.'

'Rubbish,' drawled Toril Li, taking her place in the coffee queue behind Skarre. She was holding an empty mug with the slogan 'The World's Best Mum'.

Ola Li gave a little chuckle. He took a seat by the table inside the kitchenette which functioned as a canteen for the Crime and Vice Squads.

'Rubbish?' said Skarre. 'It could be terrorism, couldn't it? Holy war against the Christians? Muslims. Then all hell would be let loose. Or perhaps it's los dagos. They wear red scarves, don't they?'

'They prefer to be called Spaniards,' said Toril Li.

'Basques,' said Halvorsen, sitting at the table across from Ola Li.

'Eh?'

'Bull running. San Fermin in Pamplona. The Basque country.'

'ETA!' shouted Skarre. 'Shit, why didn't we think of them before?!'

'You should write film scripts, you should,' Toril Li said. Ola Li was laughing out loud now, but said nothing, as usual.