Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

He walked by a dirty yellow house front covered with graffiti. His eye was caught by one word painted there. 'Vestbredden'. The West Bank? A bit further up the street a man was standing bent double in front of an entrance. From a distance it looked like he was resting his head against a door. As he came closer he saw that the man was holding his finger on a bell.

He stopped and waited. This might be his salvation.

A voice crackled from the speaker above the bell and the stooped figure straightened up, swayed and started yelling furiously by way of answer. His reddened, booze-battered skin hung off his face like the folds of a Shar Pei dog. The man stopped and the echoes between the houses died away in the night-still town. There was a low electric buzz and, with some difficulty, he shifted his centre of gravity forwards, pushed open the door and staggered in.

The door began to close and his reactions were lightning fast. Too fast. His sole slipped on the blue ice and he just managed to slap down the palms of his hands on the burning cold surface before the rest of his body hit the pavement. He scrambled up again, saw that the door was on the point of snapping shut, charged forward, stuck out his foot and felt the weight of the door trap his ankle. He sneaked inside and stood listening. Shuffling feet. Which seemed to stop before being painfully resumed. Knocking. A door opened and a woman's voice screamed something in this weird sing-song language of theirs. Then it came to an abrupt end, as though someone had cut her throat. After a few seconds of silence he heard a low whine, the noise children make when they are getting over the shock of hurting themselves. Then the door upstairs banged again and it was quiet.

He let the door close behind him. Among the rubbish under the stairs were a couple of newspapers. In Vukovar they had put paper in their shoes as it insulated and absorbed moisture. His frosty breath was still visible, but for the time being he was safe.

Harry sat in the office behind the reception desk of the Hostel waiting with the receiver against his ear as he tried to visualise the flat he was ringing. He saw photos of friends stuck to the mirror above the telephone. Smiling, in party mood, maybe on a trip abroad. Girlfriends in the main. He saw a flat with simple furnishings but cosy. Words of wisdom on the fridge door. Che Guevara poster in the toilet. Did people still do that?

'Hello?' said a sleepy voice.

'It's me again.'

'Daddy?'

Daddy? Intake of breath and Harry felt himself blush. 'The policeman.'

'Ah yes.' Stifled laughter. Bright and deep at the same time.

'Sorry to wake you, but we-'

'That doesn't matter.'

There was one of those pauses Harry had wanted to avoid.

'I'm at the Hostel,' he said. 'We've been trying to arrest a suspect. The receptionist says you and Rikard Nilsen brought him here earlier this evening.'

'The poor man without any outdoor clothes?'

'Yes.'

'What's he done?'

'We suspect he killed Robert Karlsen.'

'My God!'

Harry noticed she pronounced these two words with equal stress.

'If it's alright by you, I'll send an officer over to talk to you. In the meantime perhaps you might try to remember what he said.'

'OK, but can't it…?'

Pause.

'Hello?' Harry said.

'He said nothing,' she said. 'Just like war refugees. You can see it in the way they move. Like sleepwalkers. As if they're on autopilot. As if they're already dead.'

'Mm. Did Rikard talk to him?'

'Maybe. Do you want his number?'

'Please.'

'One moment.'

She was gone. She was right. Harry thought about the man getting up from the snow. How it had fallen off him, the limp arms and the blank face, like the zombies rising from graves in Night of the Living Dead.

Harry heard a cough and spun round in his chair. In the office doorway stood Gunnar Hagen and David Eckhoff.

'Are we disturbing?' Hagen asked.

'Come in,' Harry said.

The two men came in and sat down on the other side of the desk.

'We'd like a report,' Hagen said.

Before Harry could ask who he meant by 'we', Martine's voice was back with the number. Harry jotted it down.

'Thank you,' he said. 'Goodnight.'

'I was wondering-'

'I've got to go,' Harry said.

'Uh-huh. Goodnight.'

He put down the receiver.

'We came as fast as we could,' Martine's father said. 'This is awful. What happened?'

Harry looked at Hagen.

'Tell us,' Hagen said.

Harry gave them the bare bones of the failed arrest, described the bullet hitting the car and the chase through the park.

'But if you were so close and had an MP5 with you, why didn't you shoot him?' Hagen asked.

Harry cleared his throat, but waited. He observed Eckhoff.

'Well?' Hagen said with incipient irritation in his voice.

'It was too dark,' Harry said.

Hagen contemplated his inspector before responding. 'So he was out walking at the time you were entering his room. Any idea why a gunman would be outdoors when it's twenty degrees below and the middle of the night?' The POB lowered his voice. 'I assume you have round-theclock protection for Jon Karlsen.'

'Jon?' said David Eckhoff. 'But he's at Ulleval Hospital.'

'I have an officer posted outside his room,' Harry said, hoping his voice gave an impression of the kind of control he wished he had. 'I was about to check everything was alright.'

The first four notes of 'London Calling' by the Clash reverberated around the bare walls of the corridor in the neurosurgical ward of Ulleval Hospital. A man with flat hair and a dressing gown, walking with a drip on a stand, sent the police guard a reproachful glance as he passed. He was answering his mobile phone, contrary to hospital regulations.

'Stranden.'

'Hole here. Anything to report?'

'Not much. There's an insomniac wandering the corridors. Dodgylooking, but seems harmless enough.'

The man with the drip continued on his rounds with a sniff.

'Anything earlier this evening?'

'Yep. Spurs got trounced by Arsenal at White Hart Lane. And there was a power cut.'

'And the patient?'

'Not a peep.'

'Have you checked everything is OK?'

'Apart from haemorrhoids, everything seemed fine.'

Stranden listened to the ominous silence. 'Just a joke. I'll go and check right away. Stay on the line.'

The room smelt of something sugary. Sweets, he assumed. The light from the corridor swept across the room and went as the door closed behind him, but he could make out a face on the pillow. He went closer. It was quiet in here. Too quiet. As though sound was missing. One sound.

'Karlsen?'

No reaction.

Stranden coughed and repeated the name a bit louder. 'Karlsen.'

It was so quiet that Harry's voice on the phone rang out loud and clear. 'What's up?'

Stranden put the phone to his ear. 'He's sleeping like a baby.'

'Sure?'

Stranden observed the face on the pillow. And realised that was what was bothering him. Karlsen was sleeping like a baby. Grown men tend to make more noise. He leaned over the face to listen to his breathing.

'Hello!' Harry Hole's shout on the mobile phone sounded distant. 'Hello!'

Thursday, 18 December. The Refugee.

The sun warmed him and the slight breeze across the sand dunes made the grass ripple and nod in appreciation. He must have been swimming because the towel beneath him was wet. 'Look,' said his mother, pointing. He shaded his eyes and scanned the gleaming, unbelievably blue Adriatic Sea. And there he saw a man wading towards land with a big smile. It was his father. Behind him, Bobo. And Giorgi. A small dog was swimming beside him with its tiny tail upright like a mast. While he was watching them many more rose from the sea. Some he knew very well. Like Giorgi's father. Others were familiar. A face in a doorway in Paris. The features were distorted beyond recognition, into grotesque masks grimacing at him. The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the temperature plummeted. The masks started shouting.