Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

'He's going to live,' she said.

'I heard. Moller left a message on my answerphone.' His diction was surprisingly clear. 'He didn't say how badly injured he was. Plenty of nerves and stuff in the back, aren't there?'

He cocked his head, but Ellen didn't answer.

'Perhaps he'll only be paralysed?' Harry said, tapping his now-empty glass. 'Skal.'

'Your sick leave runs out tomorrow,' she said. 'Then we'll be expecting to see you back on the job.'

He raised his head. 'Am I on sick leave?'

Ellen pushed a little plastic folder across the table. The back of a pink piece of paper could be seen inside.

'I've been talking to Moller. And Dr Aune. Take this copy of the sick leave form. Moller said it was normal to have a few days off to recover after a shooting incident in the line of duty. Come in tomorrow.'

His gaze shifted to the window with its coloured, uneven glass. Presumably for reasons of discretion, so that people inside could not be seen from the outside. The exact opposite of Kaffebrenneri, Ellen thought.

'Well? Are you coming?'

'Well,' he looked at her with the same glazed eyes she remembered from the mornings after he returned from Bangkok, 'I wouldn't bet on it.'

'Come anyway. There are a couple of amusing surprises waiting for you.'

'Surprises?' Harry laughed softly. 'I wonder what that could be? Early retirement? Honourable dismissal? Will the President give me the Purple Heart?'

He raised his head enough for Ellen to see his bloodshot eyes. She sighed and turned towards the window. Behind the rough glass, shapeless cars slid by, as in a psychedelic film.

'Why do you do this to yourself, Harry? You know, I know, everyone knows it wasn't your fault! Even the Secret Service admits it was their fault we weren't informed. And that we-you-acted properly.'

Harry spoke in a low voice without looking at her: 'Do you think his family will see it like that when he comes home in a wheelchair?'

'My God, Harry!' Ellen had raised her voice and saw that the woman at the counter was watching them with increasing interest. She could probably smell a juicy quarrel brewing.

'There are always some unlucky ones, some who don't make it, Harry. That's the way it is. It's no one's fault. Did you know that every year 60 per cent of all hedge sparrows die? 60 per cent! If we were to down tools and ponder the meaning of it, before we knew what was going on, we would end up among the 60 per cent ourselves, Harry'

Harry didn't answer. He sat bobbing his head up and down over the checked tablecloth with black cigarette burns.

'I'm going to hate myself for saying this, Harry, but I would regard it as a personal favour if you would come tomorrow. Just turn up. I won't talk to you and you don't breathe on me, OK?'

Harry put his little finger through one of the holes in the cloth. Then he moved his glass so it covered one of the other holes. Ellen waited.

'Is that Waaler waiting in the car outside?' Harry asked.

Ellen nodded. She knew exactly how badly the two of them got on. She had an idea, wavered, then took the risk: 'He's got two hundred kroner on you not making an appearance.'

Harry laughed his soft laugh again. Then he supported his head on his hands and looked at her.

'You're a really bad liar, Ellen. But thank you for trying.'

'Fuck you.'

She drew in breath, was going to say something but changed her mind and observed Harry for a while. Then she breathed in again.

'OK, it's actually Moller who should tell you this, but now I'll tell you: they're going to make you an inspector in POT.'

Harry's laughter purred like the engine of a Cadillac Fleetwood. 'Alright, with a little practice, perhaps you won't be such a bad liar after all.'

'It's true!'

'It's impossible.' His gaze wandered out of the window again.

'Why? You're one of our best detectives. You've just proved you're a damned good policeman. You read law. You -'

'It's impossible, I'm telling you. Even if someone has come up with the crazy idea.'

'But why?'

'For a very simple reason. Wasn't it 60 per cent of those birds, you said?'

He pulled the tablecloth and the glass across the table. 'They're called hedge sparrows.'

'Right. And what do they die of?'

'What do you mean?'

'They don't just lie down and die, do they?'

'Of hunger. Predators. Cold. Exhaustion. Flying into windows perhaps. Anything and everything.'

'OK. I bet none of them is shot in the back by a Norwegian policeman without a firearms permit because he didn't pass the shooting test. A policeman who, as soon as this is discovered, will be prosecuted and probably sentenced to between one and three years in prison. A pretty dodgy basis for promotion to inspector, don't you think?'

He lifted his glass and slammed it down on the plastic folder.

'Which shooting test?' she asked.

He gave her a sharp look. She met his eyes with an expression of confidence.

'What do you mean?' he asked.

'I've no idea what you're talking about, Harry.'

'You know bloody well that -'

As far as I'm aware, you passed the shooting test this year. And Moller is of the same opinion. He even took a walk to the gun-licensing office this morning to check with the shooting instructor. They went through the files and, as far as they could see, you had scored more than enough points to pass. They don't make POT inspectors out of people who shoot at Secret Service agents without proper accreditation, you know.'

She flashed a broad smile to Harry, who now seemed more bewildered than drunk.

'But I haven't got a gun licence!'

'Yes, you have. You just lost it. You'll find it, Harry, you'll find it.'

'Now listen. I…'

He paused and stared down at the plastic folder in front of him on the table. Ellen stood up. 'See you at nine, Inspector.' All Harry could manage was a mute nod.

Radisson SAS, Holbergs Plass.

5 November 1999.

Betty Andresen had such blonde, curly, Dolly Parton hair it looked like a wig. It was not a wig, however, and all similarities with Dolly Parton finished with the hair. Betty Andresen was tall and thin, and when she smiled, as she was doing now, the crack in her mouth was small and barely revealed her teeth. This smile was directed at the old man on the other side of the desk in the reception area of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Holbergs plass. It wasn't a reception desk in the general understanding of the term, but one of several multi-functional 'islands' with computer monitors, which allowed them to serve a number of guests at the same time.

'Good morning,' Betty Andresen said. That was something she had picked up at the hotel management school in Stavanger, to distinguish between different times of the day when she greeted people. Thus in six hours' time she would say, 'Good afternoon,' and two hours later, 'Good evening.' Then she would go home to her two-room apartment in Torshov and wish there were someone to whom she could say, 'Good night.'

'I'd like to see a room as high up as possible.'

Betty Andresen stared at the dripping wet shoulders of the old man's coat. It was pouring outside. A quivering raindrop clung to the brim of his hat.

'You want to see a room?'

Betty Andresen's smile didn't flinch. She had been trained according to the principle, which she observed religiously, that everyone was to be treated as a guest until the opposite was proven irrefutably. But she knew equally well that what she had in front of her was an example of the genus: old-man-visiting-the-capital-who-woul d-like-to-see-the-view-from-the-SAS-hotel-without-paying. They were still coming here, particularly in the summer. And it wasn't only to see the view. Once a woman had asked to see the Palace Suite on the twenty-first floor so that she could describe it to her friends and tell them that she had stayed there. She had even offered Betty fifty kroner if she would enter her name in the guest book so that she could use it as proof.