Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'My name's Harry Hole.' He placed his passport on the table. 'If it comes out that I've been here without permission from the Croatian authorities there will be a diplomatic incident. And I'll be without a job.'

She produced a pair of glasses. 'So you're putting yourself forward as a hostage? Do you think that sounds credible, Mr…' She placed the glasses on her nose and read the passport: 'Harry Hole.'

'That's my stake in the deal.'

She nodded. 'I understand. And do you know what?' She took off her glasses. 'I might have been willing to do a deal, but what good is it if I can't call him back?'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't know where he is.'

Harry studied her. Saw the pain in her eyes. Heard the tremor in her voice.

'Well,' Harry said, 'you'll have to negotiate with what you have. Give me the name of the person who contracted the murder.'

'No.'

'If the policeman dies…' Harry said, taking a photograph from his pocket and placing it on the table between them, 'the chances are that your operative will be killed. It may well be made to look as if the policeman was forced to shoot in self-defence. That's the way it is. Unless I prevent it. Do you understand? Is this the person?'

'Threats don't work very well with me, Mr Hole.'

'I'm going back to Oslo early tomorrow morning. I'll write my telephone number on the back of the photo. Ring me if you change your mind.'

She took the photograph and put it in her bag.

Harry spoke in a hurried whisper. 'It's your son, isn't it?'

She stiffened. 'What makes you think that?'

'I have eyes in my head too. I can also see pain.'

She sat hunched over her bag. 'And what about you, Hole?' She raised her eyes and looked into his face. 'Is this policeman one you don't know? Since you can forgo revenge so easily?'

Harry's mouth was so dry that his breath burned inside. 'Yes,' he said. 'I don't know him.'

Harry thought he could hear a cock crowing as he watched her through the window walking on the opposite side of the road until she turned left and disappeared from view.

In his room he drained the rest of the miniatures, vomited again, drank beer, vomited, looked at himself in the mirror and took the lift down to the bar.

Friday Night, 19 December. The Dogs.

He sat in the dark container trying to think. the policeman's wallet contained 2,800 Norwegian kroner, and if he remembered the exchange rate correctly that meant he had enough for food, a new jacket and a plane ticket to Copenhagen.

The problem now was ammunition.

The shot in Goteborggata had been the seventh and the last. He had been down to Plata and enquired where he could buy nine-millimetre bullets, but had received blank looks in reply. If he kept on asking random faces, the odds of him bumping into an undercover cop were pretty high.

He smacked his empty Llama Minimax down on the floor.

A man smiled up at him from the ID card. Halvorsen. They were bound to have formed a protective cordon around Jon Karlsen now. There was just one possibility left. A Trojan Horse. And he knew who the horse would have to be. Harry Hole. Sofies gate 5 according to the woman at directory enquiries, who told him there was only one Harry Hole in Oslo. He checked his watch. And froze.

There was the sound of footsteps outside.

He jumped up, grabbed the chunk of glass with one hand and the gun with the other and stood beside the opening.

The door opened. He saw a silhouette against the lights of the town. Then the figure came in and sat down on the floor with crossed legs.

He held his breath.

Nothing happened.

Then there was the hiss of a match, and the corner and the face of the intruder were lit up. He was holding a teaspoon in the same hand as the match. With the other hand and his teeth he tore open a plastic bag. He recognised the boy in the light blue denim jacket.

As he breathed out with relief, the boy's swift, effective movements came to a sudden halt.

'Hello?' The boy peered into the dark while stashing away the bag in his pocket.

He cleared his throat and stepped into the outer circle of light from the match. 'Remember me?'

The boy stared at him in terror.

'I talked to you outside the railway station. I gave you money. Your name's Kristoffer, isn't it?'

Kristoffer gawped. 'Is that you? The foreigner who gave me five hundred kroner? Christ. Well, OK, I recognise your voice – Ow! 'Kristoffer dropped the match, which went out on the floor. His voice sounded closer in the pitch darkness: 'Alright if I share this place with you tonight, pal?'

'You can have it all to yourself. I was on my way out.'

Another match flickered into life. 'Better if you stay here. Warmer with two. I mean it, man.' He was holding a spoon and filling it with liquid from a small bottle.

'What's that?'

'Water and ascorbic acid.' Kristoffer opened the bag and poured the powder into the spoon without contaminating a single grain, then deftly moved the match into the other hand.

'You're good at that, Kristoffer.' He watched the junkie hold the flame under the teaspoon while flipping out another match and holding it ready.

'They call me Steadyhand in Plata.'

'I can see why. Listen, I've got to be off. Let's change jackets and you might survive the night.

Kristoffer looked first at his thin denim jacket and then at the other man's thick blue one. 'Wow. Do you mean that?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Shit, that's kind of you. Hang on until I've fixed this shot. Could you hold the match?'

'Wouldn't it be easier if I held the syringe?'

Kristoffer scowled at him. 'Hello, I may be green but I'm not falling for the oldest junkie trick in the world. Come on, hold the match.'

He took the match.

The powder dissolved in the water and became a clear, brown liquid, and Kristoffer put a piece of cotton wool in the spoon.

'To get rid of the crap,' he answered before the other asked, then sucked the liquid up into the syringe through the cotton wool and placed the tip against his arm. 'Can you see how wonderful my skin is? Scarcely a mark, can you see that? Wonderful, thick veins. Pure virgin territory, they say. But in a couple of years it will be yellow with inflamed scabs, like theirs. And no more Steadyhand, either. I know that and yet I still keep doing it. Crazy or what.'

While Kristoffer was talking he shook the syringe to cool the liquid. He had tightened the rubber strap around his upper arm, inserted the needle into the vein that wound like a blue snake under his skin. The metal slid through the skin. Then he injected the heroin into his bloodstream. His eyelids half closed and his mouth half opened. Then his head fell back and his eyes found the hovering dog's corpse.

He watched Kristoffer for a while. Then he threw away the burned match and unzipped the blue jacket.

When Beate Lonn did get through at last she could hardly hear Harry because of the disco version of 'Jingle Bells' reverberating in the background. But she heard enough to know that he was not sober. Not because his speech was slurred; quite the contrary, he was very articulate. She told him about Halvorsen.

'Cardiac tamponade?' Harry shouted.

'Internal bleeding that fills the area round the heart so that it can't beat properly. They had to drain a lot of blood. The situation has stabilised now, but he's still in a coma. We just have to wait. I'll ring you if there are any developments.'

'Thanks. Anything else I ought to know?'

'Hagen sent Jon Karlsen and Thea Nilsen back to Ostgard with two babysitters. And I've spoken to Sofia Miholjec's mother. She promised to take Sofia to a doctor today.'

'Mm. What about the Veterinary Institute report about the bits of meat in the vomit?'