Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'What's that?' Jon asked.

'Blood,' Harry said. 'Check the door's locked.'

Harry already knew. He was standing on the threshold to the room he hated and yet still never managed to keep away from. He removed the plastic lid in the middle of the machine. Loosened the yellow dust bag and lifted it out while thinking that this was in fact the house of pain. The place where he was always forced to use his ability to empathise with evil. An ability which more and more often he thought he had overdeveloped.

'What are you doing?' Jon asked.

The bag was so full it bulged. Harry grabbed the soft, thick paper and ripped it open. The bag split and a fine cloud of black dust rose like a spirit from a lamp. It ascended weightlessly towards the ceiling as Jon and Harry examined the contents on the parquet floor.

'Mercy,' Jon whispered.

Thursday, 18 December. The Chute.

'My God,' Jon groaned, groping for a chair. 'What's happened here? That's an… that's an…'

'Yes,' Harry said, crouching beside the vacuum cleaner and concentrating on maintaining even breathing. 'It's an eye.'

The eyeball looked like a blood-streaked, stranded jellyfish. Dust was stuck to the white surface. On the blood-soaked reverse Harry could make out the base of muscles and the thicker, wormlike peg that was the optical nerve. 'What I'm wondering is how it got through the filter unscathed and into the bag. If it was sucked in that is.'

'I took out the filter,' Jon said in a tremulous voice. 'It sucks better.'

Harry produced a pen from his jacket pocket and used it to turn the eye with great care. The consistency felt soft, but there was a hard centre. He shifted position so that the light from the lamp in the ceiling fell on the pupil, which was large, black, with blurred edges now that the eye muscles no longer kept it round. The light, almost turquoise iris encircling the pupil shone like the centre of a matt marble. Harry heard Jon's quick breaths behind him.

'Unusually light blue iris,' Harry said. 'Anyone you know?'

'No, I… I don't know.'

'Listen, Jon,' Harry said, without turning round. 'I don't know how much practice you've had at lying, but you're not very good at it. I can't force you to tell me spicy details about your brother, but with this…' Harry pointed to the bloodstained eyeball. '… I can force you to tell me who it is.'

He swung round. Jon was sitting on one of the two kitchen chairs with his head bowed.

'I… she…' His voice was thick with emotion.

'A she then,' Harry helped.

Jon gave a firm nod of his bowed head. 'Her name's Ragnhild Gilstrup. No one else has eyes like her.'

'And how did her eye end up here?'

'I have no idea. She… we… used to meet here. She had a key. What have I done, Harry? Why has this happened?'

'I don't know, Jon. But I have a job to do here, and we have to find you a place to go first.'

'I can go back to Gorbitz gate.'

'No!' Harry shouted. 'Have you got keys to Thea's flat?'

Jon nodded.

'OK, go there. Keep the door locked and don't open up for anyone except me.'

Jon walked towards the front door, then paused. 'Harry?'

'Yes?'

'Does it have to come out, about Ragnhild and me? I stopped meeting her when Thea and I got together.'

'Then it's not a problem.'

'You don't understand,' Jon said. 'Ragnhild Gilstrup was married.'

Harry inclined his head in acknowledgement. 'The eighth commandment?'

'The tenth,' Jon said.

'I can't keep that under wraps, Jon.'

Jon regarded Harry with surprise in his eyes. Then he slowly shook his head from side to side.

'What is it?'

'I can't believe I just said that,' Jon said. 'Ragnhild's dead and all I can think about is saving my own skin.'

There were tears in Jon's eyes. And for one vulnerable moment Harry felt nothing but sympathy. Not the sympathy he could feel for the victim or for the next of kin, but for the person who for one heart-rending moment sees his own pathetic humanity.

There were times when Sverre Hasvold regretted giving up his life as a merchant seaman to be a caretaker in the brand-new block of flats at Goteborggata 4. Especially on freezing cold days like this one when they rang to complain that the refuse chute was blocked again. On average it happened once a month and the reason was obvious: the openings on every floor were the same circumference as the shaft itself. The old blocks of flats were better. Even in the thirties, when the first refuse chutes appeared, the architects had had enough sense to make the diameter of the openings narrower so that people would not force in things which would get stuck further down the shaft. Nowadays all they had on their minds was style and lighting.

Hasvold opened the chute door on the second floor, put his head in and switched on his torch. The light reflected off the white plastic bags and he established that, as usual, the problem lay between the ground floor and the first floor, where the shaft narrowed.

He unlocked the refuse room in the basement and switched on the light. The cold was so raw that his glasses misted up. He shivered and grabbed the almost three-metre-long iron rod he kept along the wall for exactly this purpose. There was even a plastic ball on the end so that he wouldn't puncture the bags when he prodded it up the chute. Drops were falling from the opening with a drip, drip, on to the plastic bags in the refuse container. The house rules made it very clear that the chute was to be used for dry matter inside sealed bags, but no one – not even the so-called Christians living in the building – took any notice of that kind of thing.

The eggshells and milk cartons crunched under his feet in the container as he moved towards the round opening in the ceiling. He peered up the hole but all he could see was blackness. He poked the rod up. Waited until he hit the usual soft bulk of bags, but instead the rod met something solid. He poked harder. It wouldn't budge; something was wedged good and proper.

He took the torch hanging from his belt and shone the light up the shaft. A drop fell on his glasses. Blinded and cursing, he tore off his glasses and wiped the lenses on his blue coat while holding the torch under his arm. He shifted to the side and took a short-sighted squint up. He was alarmed. Pointed the torch upwards, his imagination beginning to work overtime. His heart was slowing as he stared. In disbelief, he put his glasses back on. Then his heart stopped beating.

The iron rod slid and scraped down the wall until it hit the floor with a clang. Sverre Hasvold found himself sitting in the refuse container. The torch must have slipped down between the bags somewhere. Another drop dripped onto the plastic bag between his thighs. He jerked backwards as though it were caustic acid. Then he got to his feet and sprinted out.

He had to have fresh air. He had seen things at sea, but nothing like this. This was… not normal. It had to be sick. He pushed open the front door and staggered out onto the pavement without noticing the two tall men standing there or the cold air that met him. Dizzy and breathless, he leaned against the wall and took out his mobile phone. Stared at it, helpless. They had changed the emergency numbers some years ago, made them easier to remember, but the old ones were the ones that occurred to him, of course. He caught sight of the two men. One of them was talking on his mobile; the other he recognised as one of the residents.

'Sorry, but do you know how to ring the police?' Hasvold asked and could hear that he had become hoarse as though from a long bout of screaming.

The resident glanced at the man beside him, who studied the caretaker for a moment before saying: 'Hang on, we may not need Ivan and the tracker dogs after all.' The man lowered his mobile and turned to Sverre Hasvold. 'I'm Inspector Hole, Oslo Police. Let me guess.. .'