Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

Maja arrived with the lunch.

'Dumplings?' Harry asked, staring down at the grey lumps on a bed of Chinese cabbage sprinkled with thousand island dressing.

'Schroder style,' Maja said. 'Leftovers from yesterday. Happy New Year.' Harry held up the newspaper so that he could eat, and he had just taken the first bite of the cellulose dumpling when he heard a voice from behind the paper. 'It's dreadful, I say.'

Harry peeked beyond the newspaper. The Mohican was sitting at the neighbouring table, looking straight at him. Perhaps he had been sitting there the whole time, but Harry certainly hadn't noticed him come in. Presumably they called him the Mohican because he was the last of his kind. He had been a seaman during the war, was torpedoed twice, and all his pals were long since dead. Maja had told Harry that. His long, unkempt beard hung into his beer glass and he sat there with his coat on, as he always did, summer and winter alike. His face, so gaunt that it showed the contours of his skull, had a network of veins like crimson lightning on a background of bleached white. The red, Watery eyes stared at Harry from behind a layer of limp skin folds.

'Dreadful!'

Harry had heard enough drunken babblings in his life not to take any particular notice of what regulars at Schroder's had to say, but this was different. In all the years he had been going there, these were the first comprehensible words he had heard the Mohican speak. Even after the night last winter, when Harry had found the Mohican sleeping against a house wall in Dovregata and had most probably saved the old boy from freezing to death, the Mohican had not even offered him so much as a nod on the occasions they met. And now it seemed that the Mohican had said his piece for the time being, as his lips were tightly pressed together and he was concentrating on his glass again. Harry looked around him before leaning over to the Mohican's table.

'Do you remember me, Konrad Asnes?'

The old man grunted and stared into space without answering. 'I found you asleep in a snowdrift in the street last year. The temperature was minus eighteen.' The Mohican rolled his eyes.

'There were no street lights, so I could easily have missed you. You could have croaked, Asnes.'

The Mohican screwed up one red eye and gave Harry a furious look before raising his glass.

'Yes, I'd like to thank you for that.'

He drank carefully. Then he slowly put his glass down on the table, placed it as if it were important that the glass should stand in a particular spot on the table.

'Those gangsters should be shot,' he said.

'Really? Who?'

The Mohican directed a crooked finger towards Harry's paper. Harry turned it over. The front page was emblazoned with a large photograph of a shaven-headed Swedish neo-Nazi.

'Up against the wall with them!' The Mohican smacked the palm of his hand down on the table, and a few faces turned towards him. Harry gestured with his hand to calm him down.

'They're just young men, Asnes. Try and enjoy yourself now. It's New Year's Eve.'

'Young men? What do you think we were? That didn't stop the Germans. Kjell was nineteen. Oscar was twenty-two. Shoot them before it spreads, I say. It's an illness; you have to catch it early on.'

He pointed a trembling forefinger at Harry.

'One of them was sitting where you're sitting now. They don't bloody die out! You're a policeman, you go out and catch them!'

'How do you know I'm a policeman?' Harry asked in surprise.

'I read the newspapers. You shot someone in some country down south. That was good, but what about shooting a couple here too?'

'You're very talkative today, Asnes.'

The Mohican clammed up and gave Harry a last surly glance before turning to the wall and studying the painting of Youngstorget. Harry, understanding that the conversation was over, waved to Maja for a cup of coffee and consulted his watch. A new millennium was just around the corner. Schroder's would close at four o'clock because of a 'Private New Year's Eve Party", as the poster hanging on the entrance door said. Harry surveyed the familiar faces in the room. As far as he could see, all the guests had arrived.

Rudolf II Hospital, Vienna. 8 June 1944.

Ward 4 was filled with the sounds of sleeping. Tonight it was quieter than usual, no one moaning in pain or waking from a nightmare with a scream. Helena hadn't heard an air-raid warning in Vienna either. If they didn't bomb tonight, she hoped it would make everything easier. She had crept into the dormitory, stood at the foot of his bed and watched him. There, in the cone of light from his table lamp, he sat, so immersed in the book he was reading that he didn't heed anything else. And she stood outside the glow, in the dark. With all the knowledge of the dark.

As he was about to turn the page he noticed her. He smiled and immediately put down his book.

'Good evening, Helena. I didn't think you were on duty tonight.'

She placed her forefinger over her lips and went closer.

'What do you know about the night shifts?' she whispered.

He smiled. 'I don't know anything about the others. I only know when you're on duty.'

'Is that right?'

'Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, then Monday and Tuesday. Then Wednesday, Friday and Sunday again. Don't be frightened, it's a compliment. There's not much else to use your brain on here. I also know when Hadler gets his enema.' She laughed softly.

'But you don't know you've been declared fit for action, do you?' He stared at her in surprise.

'You've been posted to Hungary,' she whispered. 'To the 3rd Panzer Division.'

'The Panzer Division? But that's the Wehrmacht. They can't enlist me. I'm a Norwegian.’

‘I know.'

'And what am I supposed to be doing in Hungary? I -’

‘Shhh, you'll wake the others. Uriah, I've read the orders. I'm afraid there's not much we can do about it.’

‘But there has to be a mistake. It's…'

He accidentally knocked the book onto the floor and it landed with a bang. Helena bent down and picked it up. On the cover, under the title The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there was a drawing of a boy in rags on a timber raft. Uriah was clearly angry.

'This isn't my war,' he said through pursed lips.

'I know that too,' she whispered, putting the book in his bag under the chair.

'What are you doing?' he whispered.

'You have to listen to me, Uriah. Time is short.'

'Time?'

'The duty nurse will be doing her rounds in half an hour. You have to have your mind made up before then.'

He pulled the shade of the lamp down to see her better in the dark. 'What's going on, Helena?' She swallowed.

'And why aren't you wearing your uniform today?' he asked.

This was what she had been dreading most. Not lying to her mother and saying she was going to her sister's in Salzburg for a couple of days. Not persuading the forester's son-who was now waiting in the road outside the gate-to drive her to the hospital. Not even saying goodbye to her possessions, the church and her secure life in the Viennese woods. But telling him everything: that she loved him and that she would willingly risk her life and future for him. Because she might be mistaken. Not about what he felt for her-of that she was certain-but about his character. Would he have the courage and the drive to do what she would suggest? At least he was clear it wasn't his war they were fighting against the Red Army in the south.

'We should have had time to get to know each other better,' she said, placing her hand over his. He grasped it and held it tight.

'But we don't have that luxury,' she said, squeezing his hand. 'There's a train for Paris leaving in an hour. I've bought two tickets. My teacher lives there.'

'Your teacher?'