Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'And the artistes are too bourgeois and boring.'

'I didn't say that.'

'No, I said it. And when I said we had a spare ticket I actually meant I had one.'

'I see.'

'It's a chance to see me in a dress. And I look good in it. All I'm missing is a tall, older guy. Think about it.'

Harry laughed. 'Thanks, I promise I will.'

'Not at all.'

Beate didn't say a word after he rang off, didn't comment on his grin that refused to go away, just mentioned that the snowploughs were going to be busy, according to the weather forecasts. Now and then Harry wondered if Halvorsen appreciated the coup he had pulled off in getting together with Beate.

Jon Karlsen had not made an appearance yet. Stiff, he got up from the pavement by Sofienberg Park. The cold felt as though it came from the inside of the earth and had spread around his body. The blood in his legs began to circulate as he walked and he welcomed the pain. He hadn't counted the hours he had been sitting cross-legged with the paper cup in front of him while following the comings and goings in the building in Goteborggata, but daylight was fading. He put his hand in his pocket.

His takings for the day would be enough for a coffee, a bite to eat and, he hoped, a packet of cigarettes.

He hurried towards the crossroads and the cafe where he had got the paper cup. He had seen a telephone on the wall, but dismissed the idea. In front of the cafe he paused, pulled back the blue hood and saw his reflection in the glass. No wonder people took him for a poor destitute soul. His beard was growing fast and there were sooty stripes over his face from the fire in the container.

In the reflection he saw the lights change to red and a car stopped beside him. He glanced inside as he held the door to the cafe. And froze. The dragon. The Serbian tank. Jon Karlsen. In the passenger seat. Two metres away from him.

He entered the cafe, hurried to the window and watched the car. He thought he had seen the driver before, but couldn't remember where. At the Hostel. Yes, he was one of the policemen who had been with Harry Hole. A woman was sitting at the back.

The lights changed. He charged out and saw the white smoke from the exhaust pipe as the car accelerated along the road by the park. Then he began to run. Further ahead he saw the car turn into Goteborggata.

He fumbled in his pockets. Felt the piece of glass from the hut window with almost numb fingers. His legs wouldn't obey him, they were dead prostheses, one false step and they would break like icicles, he feared.

The park with the trees and the nursery and the headstones flickered in front of his eyes like a moving screen. His hand found the gun. He must have cut himself on the glass because the handle felt sticky.

Halvorsen parked outside Goteborggata 4, and he and Jon got out of the car to stretch their legs while Thea went in to pick up her insulin.

Halvorsen checked the deserted street from top to bottom. Jon seemed uneasy too as he walked around in the cold. Through the car window Halvorsen could see the centre console with the holster containing his service revolver – he had taken it off because it was digging into his ribs while he was driving. If anything happened he would be able to grab it within two seconds. He switched on his mobile and saw he had received a message on the journey. He tapped and a familiar voice repeated that he had a message. Then came the peep and an unfamiliar voice began to speak. Halvorsen listened with increasing amazement. He saw that Jon had become aware of the voice on the phone and had come closer. Halvorsen's amazement passed into incredulity.

As he rang off Jon looked at him with a question on his lips, but Halvorsen said nothing, just quickly punched in a number.

'What was that?' Jon asked.

'It was a confession,' Halvorsen snapped.

'And what are you doing now?'

'I'm reporting to Harry.'

Halvorsen looked up and saw Jon's distorted face: his eyes had grown big and black and seemed to be staring through him, past him.

'Is something the matter?' he asked.

Harry walked through customs and into Pleso's modest terminal building; he put his Visa card in a cash machine, which gave him a thousand kroner's worth of kune without a word of protest. He put half in a brown envelope before walking outside and climbing into a Mercedes with a blue taxi sign.

'Hotel International.'

The taxi driver put the car in gear and drove off without a word.

Rain fell from low cloud cover above brown fields with patches of grey snow along the motorway that cut north-west through the rolling landscape towards Zagreb.

After a quarter of an hour he could see Zagreb taking shape: concrete blocks and church towers outlined against the horizon. They passed a quiet, dark river that Harry reckoned had to be the Sava. Their entrance into the town was along a broad avenue that seemed out of all proportion to the low level of traffic; they passed the train station and a vast, open, deserted park with a large glass pavilion. Bare trees spread out their winter-black fingers.

'Hotel International,' the taxi driver said, pulling up in front of an impressive grey-brick colossus of the type communist countries used to build for their itinerant leader caste.

Harry paid. One of the hotel doormen, dressed as an admiral, had already opened the car door and stood ready with an umbrella and a broad smile. 'Welcome, sir. This way, sir.'

Harry stepped onto the pavement at the same moment as two hotel guests came through the swing doors and got into a Mercedes that had just driven up. A crystal chandelier sparkled behind the swing doors. Harry didn't move. 'Refugees?'

'Sorry, sir?'

'Refugees,' Harry repeated. 'Vukovar.'

Harry felt raindrops on his head as the umbrella and the broad smile were snatched away and the admiral's begloved index finger pointed to a door some way down the hotel's facade.

The first thing that struck Harry as he entered a large, bare lobby with a vaulted ceiling was that it smelt like a hospital. And that the forty to fifty people sitting or standing by the two long tables placed in the middle, or standing in the soup queue by the reception desk, reminded him of patients. It may have been something about their clothes; shapeless tracksuits, threadbare sweaters and tattered slippers suggested some indifference to appearance. Or it may have been the heads bowed over soup bowls and the sleep-deprived, dejected looks that did not take in his existence.

Harry's eyes swept across the room and stopped at the bar. It looked more like a hot-dog stand and for the moment was not serving customers; there was only a barman who was doing three things at once: cleaning a glass, making loud comments to the men at the nearest table about the football match on the TV suspended from the ceiling and watching Harry's every move.

Harry had a feeling he was in the right place and went over to the counter. The barman ran a hand through his greasy, swept-back hair.

'Da?'

Harry tried to ignore the bottles on the shelf at the back of the hotdog stand. But he had already spotted his old friend and foe Jim Beam. The barman followed Harry's gaze and with raised eyebrows pointed to the four-sided bottle with the brown contents.

Harry shook his head. And breathed in. There was no reason to make this complicated.

'Mali spasitelj.' He said it low enough for the barman to hear amid the racket from the TV. 'I'm looking for the little redeemer.'

The barman studied Harry before answering in English with a hard German accent. 'I don't know any redeemers.'

'I've been told by a friend from Vukovar that mali spasitelj can help me.' Harry produced the brown envelope from his jacket pocket and placed it on the counter.

The barman looked down at the envelope without touching it. 'You're a policeman,' he said.