Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'It won't help, Astrid.' He put a hand on her shoulder. 'I'll ring for a taxi to take you home.'

His hand was knocked away with surprising force. 'Home?' she screeched. 'I'm not fucking going home, you bloody impotent lecher.'

She swivelled round and started to stagger down the stairs.

'Astrid…'

'Get out of my sight! Screw your other tart.'

Harry watched her until she was gone, heard her fighting with the door, her curses, the creaking door hinges and then the silence.

When he turned Martine was right behind him in the hall slowly doing up her coat.

'I…' he began.

'It's late.' She flashed a fleeting smile. 'I was a bit tired anyway.'

It was three o'clock in the morning and Harry was still sitting in the wing chair. Tom Waits was singing in a low voice about Alice as the brushes swished on the snare drum.

'It's dreamy weather we're on. You wave your crooked wand along an icy pond.'

His mind ran unchecked. All the bars were closed now. He hadn't refilled his hip flask after emptying it down the dog's gullet in the container terminal. But he could phone Oystein. He drove a taxi almost every night and always kept a bottle of gin under the seat.

'It won't help.'

Unless you believed in ghosts, of course. Believed in those encircling his chair and staring down at him with dark, hollow eye sockets. In Birgitta who had come up from the sea with the anchor still around her neck; in Ellen who was laughing with the baseball bat protruding from her head; in William who hung like a galleon figurehead from the rotary dryer and Tom who had come to get his watch back waving a bloody stump of an arm.

The booze couldn't free him; it could only give temporary relief. And right now he was willing to pay a lot for that.

He lifted the telephone and tapped in a number. It was answered on the second ring.

'How is it, Halvorsen?'

'Cold. Jon and Thea are asleep. I'm sitting in the room with a view of the road. I'll have to have a nap tomorrow.'

'Mm.'

'We have to drive back to Thea's flat tomorrow to get more insulin. She's a diabetic.'

'OK, but take Jon with you. I don't want him left on his own.'

'I could get someone to come here.'

'No!' Harry said sharply. 'I don't want anyone else involved for the time being.'

'Right.'

Harry sighed. 'Listen, I know babysitting isn't in the job description. You'll have to say if there's anything I can do in return.'

'Well…'

'Come on.'

'I promised to take Beate out one evening before Christmas to let her try lutefisk. She's never tasted it before, poor thing.'

'That's a promise.'

'Thanks.'

'And, Halvorsen?'

'Yes?'

'You're…' Harry took a deep breath. '… OK.'

'Thanks, boss.'

Harry rang off. Waits was singing that the skates on the icy pond spelt Alice.

Friday, 19 December. Zagreb.

He sat shaking with cold on a bit of cardboard on the pavement by Sofienberg Park. It was rush hour and people were racing by. Some still had time to drop a few kroner in the paper cup in front of him. It would soon be Christmas. His lungs ached because he had been on his back breathing in smoke all night. He raised his eyes and looked up Goteborggata.

That was all he could do now.

He thought about the Danube flowing past Vukovar. Patient, unstoppable. As he would have to be. Patient, waiting for the tank to come, for the dragon to stick its head out of the cave. For Jon Karlsen to come home. He looked at a pair of knees that had stopped right in front of him.

He peered up at a man with a red beard and a paper cup in his hand. The beard said something. Loud and angry.

'Excuse me?'

The man answered in English. Something about turf.

He could feel the gun in his pocket. One bullet. Instead he took out the large, sharp chunk of glass he kept in his other pocket. The beggar glowered at him but slunk off.

He dismissed the idea that Karlsen might not come. He had to come. And in the meantime he would be the Danube. Patient and unstoppable.

'Come in,' ordered the happy, buxom woman in the Salvation Army flat in Jacob Aalls gate. She pronounced the 'n'with the tip of her tongue against her teeth, as is often the case when adults learn Norwegian later in life.

'Hope we're not disturbing,' Harry said as he and Beate Lonn entered the hall. The floor was covered with shoes, big and small.

The woman shook her head while they started to take off their footwear.

'Cold,' she said. 'Hungry?'

'I've just had breakfast, thank you,' Beate said.

Harry shook his head with a friendly smile.

She led them into the sitting room. Around the table sat what Harry assumed was the Miholjec family: two men, a boy of Oleg's age, a small girl and a teenage girl Harry guessed would have to be Sofia. She hid her eyes behind a curtain of black hair and held a baby on her lap.

'Zdravo,' the older man said. He was lean with thick, greying hair and black eyes that Harry recognised, the angry, frightened eyes of an outcast.

'This is my husband,' the woman said. 'He understands Norwegian, but doesn't speak much. This is Uncle Josip. He's visiting us for Christmas. My children.'

'All four of them?' Beate asked.

'Yes,' she laughed. 'The last was a gift from God.'

'A real sweetie,' Beate said, pulling a face at the baby who gurgled back with delight. And, as Harry had already suspected, she couldn't resist the temptation to tweak the chubby, red cheeks. He gave Beate and Halvorsen one, maximum two years, before they produced one like it.

The man said something and the wife replied. Then she turned to Harry. 'He wants me to say that you only like Norwegians working in Norway. He's tried to find work, but can't get any.'

Harry met the man's eyes and sent him a nod, which went unanswered.

'Here,' the wife said, pointing to two vacant chairs.

They sat down. Harry saw that Beate had taken out her notepad before he started speaking.

'We've come here to ask about-'

'Robert Karlsen,' the wife said, looking at her husband, who was nodding assent.

'That's right. What can you tell us about him?'

'Not much. In fact, we've only just met him.'

'Just met him.' The wife's glance happened to catch Sofia, who was sitting with her nose buried in the baby's rumpled hair. 'Jon asked Robert to help us when we moved from the little flat in A Block this summer. Jon is a good person. He saw to it that we got a bigger flat when we had him there, you know.' She laughed at the baby. 'But Robert stood around chatting to Sofia most. And… well, she's fifteen.'

Harry noticed the young girl's face change colour. 'Mm. We'd also like to talk to Sofia.'

'Talk away,' the mother said.

'Alone,' Harry said.

The mother's and father's eyes met. The duel lasted two seconds, but Harry managed to read quite a bit into it. Perhaps once he had been the one who took the decisions, but in the new reality, in the new country, where she had turned out to be more adaptable, she was the decision-maker. She nodded to Harry.

'Sit in the kitchen. We won't disturb you.'

'Thank you,' Beate said.

'No need for thanks,' the wife said gravely. 'We want you to catch the man who did it. Do you know anything about him?'

'We believe he is a hired killer and lives in Zagreb,' Harry said. 'At least he phoned a hotel there from Oslo.'

'Which one?'

Startled, Harry looked at the father who had spoken in Norwegian.

'Hotel International,' he said, and watched the father exchange glances with the uncle. 'Do you know anything?'

The father shook his head.

'If so, I would be very grateful,' Harry said. 'The man is after Jon now. He peppered Jon's flat with bullets the day before yesterday.'