Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

He strolled into the square outside the station. A numbing wind swept the open area as, with chattering teeth, he kept an eye on the public telephones. A man was leaning against the white hot-dog vehicle in the middle. He was wearing a quilted down jacket and trousers and resembled an astronaut. Was he imagining it or was the man keeping the phones under surveillance? Could they have traced his calls and were they waiting for him to return? No, impossible. He hesitated. If they were tapping the phones, there was a chance he might give her away. He made up his mind. The call could wait. What he needed now was a room with a bed and a heater. They would want cash at the kind of place he was looking for now, and he had spent his last money on the hamburger.

Inside the high concourse, between the shops and the platforms, he found a cash machine. He took out his Visa card, read the English instructions telling him to keep the magnetic strip to the right, and went to put the card in the slot. His hand stopped. The card was made out in the name of Christo Stankic, too. It would be registered and somewhere an alarm would go off. He hesitated. Then he returned the card to his wallet. He sauntered through the concourse. The shops were closing. He didn't even have enough money to buy a warm jacket. A security guard was giving him the once-over. He stumbled into Jernbanetorget again. A northerly wind was sweeping through the square. The man by the hotdog stand was gone. But there was another by the tiger sculpture.

'I need some money for a place to sleep tonight.'

He didn't need to know any Norwegian to understand what the man was asking him for. It was the same young junkie he had given money to earlier in the day. Money he was in dire need of now. He shook his head and cast a glance at the shivering collection of junkies by what he had at first taken to be a bus stop. The white bus had arrived.

Harry's chest and lungs ached. The good ache. His thighs burned. The good burn.

When he was stuck on a case he sometimes did what he was doing now – he went down to the basement fitness room at Police HQ and cycled. Not because it made him think better, but because it made him stop thinking.

'They said you were here.' Gunnar Hagen mounted the ergometer bike beside him. The tight yellow T-shirt and the cycling shorts emphasised rather than covered the muscles in the POB's lean, almost ravaged body. 'What program are you on?'

'Number nine,' Harry panted.

Hagen regulated the height of the saddle while standing on the pedals and then punched in the necessary settings on the cycle computer. 'I gather you've had quite a dramatic day today.'

Harry nodded.

'I'll understand if you want to apply for sick leave,' Hagen said. 'After all, this is peacetime.'

'Thank you, but I'm feeling pretty fresh, boss.'

'Good. I've just spoken to Torleif.'

'The Chief Super?'

'We need to know how the case is going. There have been phone calls. The Salvation Army is popular, and influential people in town would like to know whether we'll clear the case up before Christmas. Peace and Yuletide goodwill and all that stuff.'

'The politicians coped fine with six fatal OD cases in their Yuletide last year.'

'I was asking for an update on the case, Hole.'

Harry could feel the sweat stinging his nipples.

'Well, no witnesses have come forward despite the photos in Dagbladet today. And Beate Lonn says that the photos suggest we are not dealing with one killer, but at least two. And I share her opinion. The man at Jon Karlsen's flat was wearing a camel-hair coat and a neckerchief, and the clothes match those of the man in Egertorget the evening before the murder.'

'Only the clothes?'

'I couldn't see his face very well. And Jon Karlsen can't remember a great deal. One of the residents has admitted she let an Englishman in to leave a Christmas present outside Jon Karlsen's door.'

'Right,' said Hagen. 'But we'll keep the theory about several killers to ourselves. Go on.'

'There's not much more to say.'

'Nothing?'

Harry checked the speedometer as with calm determination he stepped up the pace to thirty-five kilometres an hour.

'Well, we have a false passport belonging to a Croat, a Christo Stankic, who was not on the Zagreb plane today and should have been. We found out he had been staying at Scandia Hotel. Lonn examined his room for DNA. They don't have so many guests staying so we hoped the receptionist would recognise the man from our photos.'

'And?'

'Afraid not.'

'What is our basis for thinking this is our man then?'

'The false passport,' Harry said, stealing a glimpse at Hagen's speedometer. Forty kilometres an hour.

'And how will you find him?'

'Well, names leave traces in the information age and we have alerted all our standard contacts. If anyone bearing the name of Christo Stankic sets foot in a hotel, buys a plane ticket or uses a credit card, we will know at once. According to the receptionist he had enquired after a telephone booth, and she directed him to Jernbanetorget. Telenor is going to send us a list of outgoing calls over the last two days from the public phones there.'

'So all you have is a Croat with a false passport who didn't turn up for his flight,' Hagen said. 'You're stuck, aren't you.'

Harry didn't answer.

'Try thinking laterally,' Hagen said.

'Right, boss,' Harry drawled.

'There are always alternatives,' Hagen said. 'Have I told you about the Japanese platoon and the cholera outbreak?'

'Don't think I've had the pleasure, boss.'

'They were in the jungle north of Rangoon and kept bringing up everything they ate and drank. They were dehydrating, but the leader refused to lie down and die, so he ordered them to empty their morphine syringes and use them to inject themselves with the water from their canteens.'

Hagen increased his tempo and Harry listened in vain for any signs of breathlessness.

'It worked. But after a few days the only water they had left was a barrel teeming with mosquito larvae. Then the second in command suggested sticking the syringes in the flesh of the fruit growing around them and injecting it into the bloodstream. In theory, fruit juice is 90 per cent water anyway, and what did they have to lose? It saved the platoon, Hole. Imagination and courage.'

'Imagination and courage,' wheezed Hole. 'Thanks, boss.'

He pedalled for all he was worth and could hear the crackle of his own breathing, like fire through an open stove door. The speedometer showed 42. He glanced over at the POB's. 47. Breathing? Even.

Harry was reminded of a sentence from a thousand-year-old book he had been given by a bank robber, The Art of War. 'Choose your battles.' And he knew this was one battle he should withdraw from. Because he would lose, whatever he did.

Harry slowed down. The speedometer showed 35. To his surprise, he didn't feel frustration, just weary resignation. Perhaps he was growing up, perhaps he was finished with being the idiot who lowered his horns and attacked anyone waving a red rag? Harry snatched a sidelong glance. Hagen's legs were going like pistons now, and the smooth layer of sweat on his face glistened in the white light from the lamp.

Harry dried his sweat. Took two deep breaths. Then went for it again. The wonderful pain returned in seconds.

Wednesday, 17 December. The Ticking.

Every so often Martine thought that the square in Plata had to be the basement staircase to hell. Nevertheless, she was terrified by rumours going around that in spring the town hall's welfare committee was going to abandon the scheme for the open trading of drugs. The overt argument put forward by opponents of Plata was that the area attracted young people to drugs. Martine's opinion was that anyone who thought that the life you saw played out in Plata could be attractive either had to be crazy or had never set foot there.