Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

Harry sighed. He had met her half an hour ago and he didn't even know her name. He must be going through the menopause prematurely.

Then he looked into the mirror and did a highly irregular U-turn. Vibes gate was close by.

Vibes Gate, Majorstuen. 3 March 2000.

A man stood at the door with a broad smile as Harry came puffing and panting up to the third floor.

'Sorry about the stairs,' the man said, stretching out his hand. 'Sindre Fauke.'

His eyes were still young, but otherwise his face looked as if it had been through two world wars. At least. What was left of his white hair was combed back and he was wearing a red lumberjack shirt under the open Norwegian cardigan. His handshake was warm and firm.

'I've just made some coffee,' he said. 'And I know what you're after.'

They went into the sitting room, which had been converted into a study with a bureau and a PC. Papers were strewn everywhere, and piles of books and journals covered the tables and the floor alongside the walls.

'I haven't quite got things in order yet,' he explained, making room for Harry on the sofa.

Harry studied the room. No pictures on the wall, only a supermarket calendar with pictures of Nordmarka.

'I'm working on a large project which I hope will become a book. A war book.'

'Hasn't someone already written that one?'

Fauke laughed out loud. 'Yes, you could certainly say that. They just haven't written it quite right yet. And this is about my war.’

‘Uh-huh. Why are you doing it?' Fauke shrugged.

'At the risk of sounding pretentious-those of us who were involved have a duty to record our experiences for posterity before we depart this life. At any rate, that's how I see it.'

Fauke went into the kitchen and shouted into the sitting room.

'It was Even Juul who rang and told me I would be receiving a visit. POT, I was led to understand.'

'Yes, but Juul told me you lived in Holmenkollen.'

'Even and I don't have that much contact, and I kept my telephone number as my move is only temporary. Until I finish this book.'

'Right. I went up there. I met your daughter and she gave me this address.'

'So she was at home? Well, she must be having time off.' From what? Harry was about to ask, but he decided it would be too obvious.

Fauke came back with a large steaming pot of coffee and two mugs.

'Black?' He put one of the mugs in front of Harry.

'Great.'

'Good. Because you have no choice.' Fauke laughed, almost spilling the coffee as he poured it out.

Harry thought it was remarkable how little Fauke reminded him of the daughter. He didn't have her cultivated way of speaking or conducting herself, or any of her features or dark complexion. Only the forehead was the same. High with a thick blue vein running across.

'You've got a big house up there,' he said instead.

'Endless maintenance and clearing snow,' Fauke answered, tasting the coffee and smacking his lips with approval. 'Dark, gloomy and too far away from everything. I can't stand Holmenkollen. On top of that, just snobs living there. Nothing for a migrant Gudbrandsdalen man like me.'

'So why don't you sell it?'

'I suppose my daughter likes it. She grew up there, of course. You wanted to talk about Sennheim, I understood.’

‘Your daughter lives there alone?'

Harry could have bitten off his tongue. Fauke took a swig from his mug. Rolled the coffee round in his mouth. For a long time. 'She lives with a boy. Oleg.'

His eyes were vacant and he wasn't smiling any longer.

Harry drew a couple of quick conclusions. Too quick perhaps, but if he was right Oleg must have been one of the reasons Sindre Fauke was living in Majorstuen. Anyway, that was that. She lived with someone, no point thinking about it any more. Just as well, actually.

'I can't tell you too much, herr Fauke. As I'm sure you understand, we're working…'

'I understand.'

'Good. I'd like to hear what you know about the Norwegians in Sennheim.'

'Ooh. There were lots of us, you know.’

‘Those still alive today' Fauke broke into a smile.

'I don't mean to be morbid, but that makes it considerably easier. Men dropped like flies at the front. On average 60 per cent of my company died every year.'

'Well I never. The death rate of the hedge sparrow is… erm.'

'Yes?'

'Sorry. Please continue.'

Harry, abashed, stared down into his coffee mug.

'The point was that the learning curve in war is steep,' Fauke said. 'Should you survive the first six months, the chances of survival become many times greater. You don't step on mines, you keep your head down in the trenches, you wake up when you hear the cocking of a Mosin-Nagant rifle. And you know that there is no room for heroes, and that fear is your best friend. Hence, after six months I was among a small group of Norwegians who realised we might survive the war. And most of us had been to Sennheim. Gradually, as the war went on, they moved the training camp to places deeper in Germany. Or the volunteers came directly from Norway. The ones who came without any training…' Fauke shook his head. 'They died?' Harry asked.

'We didn't even bother to learn their names when they arrived. What was the point? It's hard to understand, but as late as 1944 volunteers were still streaming to the Eastern Front, long after those of us who were there knew which way the war was going to go. They thought they were going to save Norway, the poor things.'

'I understood you were no longer there in 1944?'

'That's right. I deserted. New Year's Eve, 1942.1 betrayed my country twice.' Fauke smiled. 'And ended up in the wrong camp both times.'

'You fought for the Russians?'

'In a way. I was a prisoner of war. We were starving to death. One morning they asked in German if anyone knew anything about telecommunications. I had a rough idea, so I put up my hand. It turned out that all the communications people in one of the regiments had died. Every single one! The next day I was operating a field telephone as we attacked my former comrades in Estonia. That was near Narva…'

Fauke raised his coffee mug, with both hands wrapped round it.

'I lay on a hillock watching the Russians attack a German machine-gun post. They were just mown down by the Germans. One hundred and twenty men and four horses lay in heaps before the machine gun finally overheated. Then the remaining Russians killed them with bayonets to save ammunition. Half an hour, maximum, passed from the time the attack was launched until it finished. A hundred and twenty men dead. Then it was on to the next post. And the same procedure there.'

Harry could see the mug was shaking slightly.

I knew I was going to die. And for a cause I didn't believe in. I didn't believe in Stalin or Hitler.'

'Why did you go to the Eastern Front if you didn't believe in the cause?'

'I was eighteen years old. I had grown up on a farm way up in Gudbrandsdalen where as a rule we never saw anyone except our nearest neighbours. We didn't read papers, didn't have any books-I knew nothing. All I knew about politics was what my father told me. We were the only ones left in the family; the rest emigrated to the USA in the twenties. My parents and the neighbouring farms on both sides were sworn Quisling supporters and members of the NS. I had two older brothers who I looked up to in absolutely all matters. They were part of Hirden, the uniformed political activists and it had been their task to recruit young people to the party at home, otherwise they would have volunteered to go to the front as well. That was what they told me at least. I only discovered later that their job was to recruit informers. But then it was too late as I was already on my way to the front.’

‘So you were converted at the front?'