Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'Room number?'

'Twenty-six. Up the stairs. At the end of the corridor.'

Harry had already set off. The uniformed policeman followed close behind with both hands on the machine gun.

'Stay in your room until this is over,' Halvorsen said to the boy as he pulled out his Smith amp; Wesson revolver, winked and patted him on the shoulder.

He unlocked the door and noted that reception was unmanned. Natural enough. As natural as a police car occupied by a policeman parked further up the street. After all, he had just discovered first-hand that this was a criminal area.

He trudged up the stairs, and as he rounded the corner of the corridor he heard a crackle he recognised from the bunkers in Vukovar – a walkie-talkie.

He glanced up. At the end of the corridor, by the door to his room, stood two men in plain clothes and one uniformed policeman holding a machine gun. Straight away he recognised one of the plain-clothes men with his hand on the door handle. The uniformed policeman raised the walkie-talkie and spoke quietly into it.

The other two were facing him. It was too late to retreat.

He nodded to them, stopped in front of room 22 and shook his head as if to show his despair at the increasing criminality in the neighbourhood while pretending to rummage through his pockets for his room key. From the corner of his eye he watched the policeman from the reception queue at Scandia Hotel push open the door to the room without a sound, closely followed by the other two.

As soon as they were out of sight he went back down the way he had come. Took the stairs in two strides. He had noted all the exits – as he always did – when he arrived in the white bus earlier in the evening. For an instant he wondered about the back door leading into the garden, but it was too obvious. Unless he was very much mistaken, they would have placed a policeman there. His best chance was the main entrance. He walked out and turned left, straight towards the police car. On that route there was only one of them. If he managed to slip past he could go down to the river and the darkness.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck!' Harry shouted, on finding the room empty.

'Perhaps he's gone out for a walk,' Halvorsen said.

They both turned to the driver. He hadn't said anything, but the walkie-talkie on his chest was speaking. 'It's the same guy I saw going in a moment ago. Now he's coming out again. He's coming towards me.'

Harry breathed in the air. There was a particular perfumed smell in the room which he vaguely recognised.

'That's him,' Harry said. 'He tricked us.'

'That's him,' the driver said into the microphone, running after Harry who was already out of the door.

'Fantastic. I've got him,' the radio crackled. 'Out.'

'No!' Harry shouted as they stormed down the corridor. 'Don't try to stop him. Wait for us!'

The driver repeated the order into the mike, but received a wordless hiss in response.

He saw the door of the police car open and a young uniformed officer step out under the street light with a gun.

'Halt!' shouted the man, standing with legs apart and the gun pointed at him. Inexperienced, he thought. There was almost fifty metres of darkened street between them, and unlike the young mugger under the bridge this policeman was not canny enough to wait until the victim's escape routes were cut off. For the second time that night he took out his Llama Minimax. And instead of making off he began to run straight towards the policeman.

'Halt!' repeated the police officer.

The distance had shrunk to thirty metres. Twenty metres.

He raised his gun and shot.

People tend to overestimate the chances of hitting another person at distances over ten metres. On the other hand, they often underestimate the psychological effect of the sound, of the explosion combined with the pinging of lead against something close by. When the bullet hit the car windscreen, which went white then collapsed, the same thing happened to the policeman. He went white and sank to his knees as his fingers tried to cling to the rather too heavy Jericho 941.

Harry and Halvorsen arrived in Heimdalsgata at the same time.

'There,' Halvorsen said.

The young policeman was still on his knees beside the car with his gun pointing to the sky. But further up the street they caught sight of the back of the blue coat they had seen in the corridor.

'He's running towards Eika,' Halvorsen said.

Harry turned to the driver who had joined them.

'Give me the MP5.'

The officer passed Harry the weapon. 'It isn't…'

But Harry had already started running. He heard Halvorsen behind him, but the rubber soles of his Doc Martens gave him a better purchase on the blue ice. The man in front of him had a long lead; he had already rounded the corner to Vahls gate, which skirted the park. Harry held the machine gun in one hand and concentrated on breathing while trying to run with a light efficiency of movement. He slowed down and got the gun into a shooting position before arriving at the corner. Tried not to think too much as he stuck out his head and looked to the right.

There was no one waiting for him.

No one to be seen in the street, either.

But a man like Stankic would hardly have been stupid enough to run into any of the backyards, which were rat traps with their locked gates. Harry peered into the park where the large white surface of snow reflected the lights of the surrounding buildings. Wasn't something moving over there? Sixty, seventy metres away, a figure making slow headway through the snow. Blue jacket. Harry sprinted across the road, took off and sailed over the snowdrift and plunged into it, sinking up to his waist in fresh snow.

'Fuck!'

He had dropped the machine gun. The figure ahead of him turned, then struggled forward. Harry's hand searched for the gun as he watched Stankic feverishly fighting his way through the loose snow, which wouldn't allow him to gain a foothold. His fingers met something hard. There. Harry pulled out the weapon and heaved himself up. Got one leg out, stretched it as far as he could, rolled over, pulled the other leg, stretched it out. After thirty metres the lactic acid was burning in his thigh muscles, but the distance had shrunk. The other man was almost on the footpath and out of the mass of snow. Harry gritted his teeth and managed to speed up. He put the distance at fifteen metres. Close enough. Harry dropped onto his stomach in the snow and set up the weapon. Blew the snow off the sights, released the safety catch, selected the lever for single-fire mode and waited until the man had reached the cone of light from the street lamp by the footpath.

'Police!' Harry didn't appreciate the comical side of the word until he had shouted it: 'Freeze!'

The man ahead continued to plough his way through. Harry squeezed the trigger.

'Halt or I'll shoot!'

The man was only five metres from the path now.

'I'm aiming at your head,' Harry shouted. 'And I won't miss.'

Stankic dived forward, grabbed the lamp post with both hands and pulled himself out of the snow. Harry had the blue jacket in his sights. Held his breath and did what he had been taught, to overrule the impulse in the cerebellum which, with the logic of evolution, says you should not kill anyone of your kind; he concentrated on technique, on not pushing or jerking the trigger. Harry felt the spring mechanism give and heard a metallic click, but there was no recoil against his shoulder. A malfunction? Harry fired again. Another click.

The man stood up with a flurry of snow around him, stepped onto the path and stamped his feet. He turned and watched Harry. Harry didn't move. The man stood with his arms hanging down by his sides. Like a sleepwalker, thought Harry. Stankic raised his hand. Harry saw the gun and knew he was helpless where he lay. Stankic's hand continued up to his forehead in an ironic salute. Then he pivoted and set off at a run up the path.