Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

Uriah was silent afterwards and stared blindly out of the window. Helena knew that his thoughts were far away, and let him remain with them. She put her arm around his chest.

Ra-ta-ta-tat-ra-ta-ta-tat-ra-ta-ta-tat.

It sounded as if someone was running beneath them, somebody was trying to catch them.

She was frightened. Not so much about the unknown territory that lay before them, but about the unknown man she was snuggling up to. Now that he was so close, everything she had seen and become used to from a distance seemed to disappear.

She listened for his heartbeat, but the rattle of the train on the rails was too loud, so she had to take it on trust that there was a heart in there. She smiled to herself and waves of pleasure washed over her. What a wonderful, wonderful insanity! She knew absolutely nothing about him; he had told her so little about himself, he had told her only these stories.

His uniform smelled of mildew, and for a second it struck her that it was probably the smell a soldier's uniform had when he had been lying dead on the battlefield for a while. Or had been buried. But where did these ideas come from? She had been so tense for so long that only now did she realise how tired she was.

'Sleep,' he said in response to her thoughts.

'Yes,' she said. She vaguely recalled hearing an air-raid siren in the distance as the world around her shrank.

'What?'

She heard her own voice, felt Uriah shaking her and she jumped. The first thing that came into her head when she saw the uniformed man in the doorway was that they had been caught.

'Tickets, please.'

'Oh,' she exclaimed. She tried to pull herself together and felt the ticket conductor's probing eyes on her as she rummaged feverishly in her bag. Finally she found the yellow cardboard tickets she had bought in Vienna and passed them to the conductor. He studied the tickets while rocking on his heels in rhythm with the train. It took longer than was comfortable for Helena.

'You're going to Paris?' he asked. 'Together?'

'Ganz genau', Uriah said.

The conductor was an older man. He looked at them.

'You're not from Austria, I can hear.'

'No. I'm Norwegian.'

'Oh, Norway. I've heard it's beautiful.'

'Yes, thank you. You could say that.'

'So you voluntarily enlisted to fight for Hitler then?'

'I did. I've been on the Eastern Front. In the north.'

'Really? Where in the north?'

'Up by Leningrad.'

'Hm. And now you're going to Paris. Together with your…?'

'Girlfriend.'

'Girlfriend, exactly. On leave?'

'Yes.'

The conductor punched their tickets.

'From Vienna?' he asked Helena, handing them back. She nodded.

I can see you're Catholic,' he said, pointing to the crucifix she wore on a chain over her blouse. 'My wife is too.'

He leaned back and scanned the corridor. And then, turning to Uriah, he asked, 'Has your girlfriend shown you Stephansdom in Vienna?'

'No, I've been laid up in the hospital, so unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to see the city.'

'Right. A Catholic hospital by any chance?'

'Yes, the Rudo-'

'Yes,' Helena interrupted. 'A Catholic hospital.'

'Hm.'

Why doesn't he go away? Helena wondered. The conductor cleared his throat again. 'Yes?' Uriah said finally.

'It's none of my business, but I hope you've remembered your papers as proof that you're on leave.'

Papers? Helena thought. She had been to France twice before with her father, and it had never even occurred to her they might need anything other than a passport.

'Yes, it's not a problem for you, Fraulein, but for your uniformed friend here it's essential that he carries papers documenting where he's stationed and where he's going.'

'Of course we have papers,' she burst out. 'Surely you don't imagine that we would travel without them.'

'No, no, of course not,' the conductor responded hastily. 'I just wanted to remind you. A couple of days ago…' He shifted his attention to the Norwegian.'… they arrested a young man who clearly had no orders to go where he was going, and he was consequently treated as a deserter. They took him on to the platform and shot him.'

'You don't mean that.'

'I'm afraid I do. I don't mean to frighten you, but war is war. And since you have official papers, you shouldn't have any problems when we get to the border immediately after leaving Salzburg.'

The carriage lurched and the conductor had to grab hold of the door frame. The three people looked at each other in silence.

'So that's the first checkpoint?' Uriah asked finally. After Salzburg?'

The conductor nodded.

'Thank you,' Uriah said.

The conductor cleared his throat: 'I had a son your age. He fell at the front, by Dnerp.’

‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

'Well, sorry to have woken you, Fraulein. Mein Herri He saluted and was gone.

Helena made sure the door was completely closed. Then she hid her face in her hands.

'How could I have been so naive!' she sobbed.

'Don't cry now,' he said, putting his arm around her shoulder. 'I should have thought of the papers. After all, I knew I couldn't just move around freely.'

'But what if you tell them you're on sick leave and say you felt like going to Paris? That's a part of the Third Reich. It's -'

'Then they'll ring the hospital and Brockhard will say that I absconded.'

She leaned against him and sobbed in his lap. He caressed her sleek brown hair.

'Besides, I should have known that this was too good to be true,' he said. I mean-me and Schwester Helena in Paris?' She could hear the smile in his voice.

'No, I'll wake up in my hospital bed soon, thinking that was one hell of a dream. And look forward to you bringing me my breakfast. Anyway, you're on night shift tomorrow. You haven't forgotten that, have you? Then I can tell you about the time Daniel filched twenty rations from the Swedish unit.'

She lifted a tear-stained face to him.

'Kiss me, Uriah.'

Siljan, Telemark. 22 February 2000.

Harry checked his watch again and cautiously pressed his foot on the accelerator. The appointment was for four o'clock. If he arrived after dusk, the whole trip would be a waste of time. What was left of the winter tyre tread keyed into the ice with a scrunch. Even though he had only driven forty kilometres on the winding, icy forest path, it seemed several hours since he had turned off the main road. The cheap sunglasses he had bought at the petrol station hadn't helped much, and his eyes smarted from the bright light reflecting off the snow.

At long last, he caught sight of the police car with the Skien registration number at the edge of the road. He braked warily, pulled over and took the skis off his roof rack. They came from a Trondheim ski manufacturer who had gone bankrupt fifteen years ago. That must have been roughly the same time as he put on the wax, which was now a tough grey mass underneath the skis. He found the track from the path up to the chalet as it had been described. The skis stayed on the track as if glued; he couldn't have moved sideways if he had wanted to. The sun hung low over the spruce trees when he reached his destination. On the steps of a black log chalet sat two men in anoraks and a boy Harry, who didn't know any teenagers, guessed to be somewhere between twelve and sixteen.

'Ove Bertelsen?' Harry enquired, resting on his ski poles. He was out of breath.

'That's me,' one of the men said, standing up to shake hands. 'And this is Officer Folldal.'

The second man gave a measured nod.

Harry supposed it must have been the boy who found the cartridge shells.

'Wonderful to get away from the Oslo air, I imagine,' Bertelsen said. Harry pulled out a pack of cigarettes.