Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

A deep voice rumbled behind them: 'How dare you come here, Even Juul.'

Gimle Cinema, Bygdoy Alle.

7 March 2000.

'So what do I do?' Harry asked Ellen, nudging her forward in the queue. 'I'm just sitting wondering whether I should go and ask one of the old moaners if they know anyone who might be entertaining assassination plans and has purchased a rifle priced way above the norm for this special occasion. And at that very instant one of them comes over to our table and says in a funereal voice: How dare you come here, Even Juul'

'So what did you do?' Ellen asked.

'Nothing. I just sit there and see Even Juul's face drop. He looks as if he's seen a ghost. It's obvious the two of them know each other. By the way, that was the second person I've met today who knows Juul. Edvard Mosken also said he knew him.'

'Is that so strange? Juul writes for the newspapers, he's on TV, he's high profile.'

'You're probably right. At any rate, Juul stands up and simply marches out. I have to run after him. Juul's face is ashen when I catch up with him in the street. But when I ask what happened, he claims he doesn't know the man. Afterwards I drive him home and he barely says goodbye before leaving. He looks totally stunned. Is row ten alright?'

Harry stooped at the box-office window to buy two tickets. 'I have my doubts about this film,' he said. 'Why?' Ellen asked. 'Because it was my choice?’

‘I heard a gum-chewing girl on the bus say to her friend that Todo sobre mi madre was nice. As in naaiice.’

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

'When girls say that a film is nice, I get this Fried Green Tomatoes feeling. When you girls are served up some schmalz with even less content than The Oprah Winfrey Show you think you've seen a warm, intelligent film. Popcorn?'

He nudged her forward in the popcorn queue.

'You're a damaged human being, Harry. A damaged human being. By the way, do you know what? Kim was jealous when I said I was going to the cinema with a colleague from work.'

'Congratulations.'

'Before I forget,' she said. 'I found the name of Edvard Mosken Jr's defence counsel you were asking about. And his grandfather who was working on the postwar trials.'

'Yes?'

Ellen smiled.

'Johan Krohn and Kristian Krohn.’

‘Bingo.'

'I talked to the Public Prosecutor in the trial against Mosken Jr. Mosken Snr went ballistic when the court found his son guilty and physically attacked Krohn. He screamed that Krohn and his grandfather were conspiring against the Mosken family.'

'Interesting.'

'I deserve a big bag of popcorn, don't you think?'

Todo sobre mi madre was a great deal better than Harry had feared. But in the middle of the scene where Rosa is buried he still had to pester a tear-streaked Ellen to ask where Grenland was. She answered that it was the area around Porsgrunn and Skien, and was then allowed to see the rest of the film in peace.

Oslo. 11 March 2000.

Harry could see the suit was too small. He could see it, but he couldn't understand it. He hadn't put on any weight since he was eighteen and the suit had fitted perfectly when he had bought it at Dressmann for the post-exams celebrations in 1990. Nevertheless, standing in front of the mirror in the lift, he saw that his socks were visible between the suit trousers and the black Dr Martens shoes. It was just one of those unsolvable mysteries.

The lift doors slid to the side and Harry could already hear the music, loud male chatter and female twittering emanating from the open doors in the canteen. He looked at his watch. It was 8.15. Eleven should do it and then he could go home.

He inhaled, stepped into the canteen and scanned the room. The canteen was the traditional Norwegian kind-a square room with a glass counter, at one end of which you ordered food, light-coloured furniture from some fjord in Sunnmore and a smoking ban. The party committee had done their best to camouflage the daily backdrop with balloons and red tablecloths. Even though men were in the majority, the male-female mix was much more evenly distributed than when Crime Squad threw a party. Most people seemed to have already imbibed quite a bit of alcohol. Linda had talked about various pre-party looseners, and Harry was glad that no one had invited him.

'You look so good in a suit, Harry.'

That was Linda. He hardly recognised the woman in the tight dress, which emphasised not only the extra kilos but also her womanly exuberance. She was carrying a tray of orange-coloured drinks which she held up in front of him.

'Er… no thanks, Linda.'

'Don't be so boring, Harry. This is a party!'

Prince was howling on the car stereo again.

Ellen bent forward in the driver's seat and turned down the volume. Tom Waaler gave her a sideways glance.

'A little too loud,' she said, thinking that it was only three weeks until the policeman from Steinkjer arrived, and she wouldn't have to work with Waaler any more.

It wasn't the music. He didn't bother her. And he definitely wasn't a bad policeman.

It was the telephone calls. Not that Ellen Gjelten didn't have some sympathy for a certain nurturing of your sex life, but half the times his mobile phone rang she gathered from the conversations that a woman had already been spurned, was being spurned or was about to be spurned. The latter conversations were the most unpleasant. They were the women he had not yet rejected, and he had a special voice for them which made Ellen want to scream out loud: Don't do it! He won't bring you any good! Run for it! Ellen Gjelten was a generous person who found it easy to forgive human weakness. She had not detected many human weaknesses in Tom Waaler, but not much humanity either. To put it bluntly, she didn't like him.

They drove past Toyen Park. Waaler had received a tip-off that someone had seen Ayub, the Pakistani gang leader they had been after since the assault in the Palace Gardens in December, in Aladdin, the Persian restaurant in Hausmanns gate. Ellen knew they were already too late; they would only be asking people if they knew where Ayub was. They wouldn't get an answer, but at least they would have put in an appearance, shown they weren't going to leave him in peace.

'Wait in the car, I'll go in and check,' Waaler said.

'OK.'

Waaler pulled down the zip of his leather jacket.

To show off the muscles he had acquired pumping iron in the gym at Police HQ, Ellen thought. Or enough of the shoulder holster for them to know that he was carrying a weapon. The police officers in Crime Squad were always entitled to carry weapons, but she knew that Waaler carried more than a service revolver. A large bore number; she didn't have it in her to ask what. Right after cars, Waaler's favourite topic of conversation was handguns, and she preferred cars. She didn't carry a weapon herself. Not unless she was forced to, as she was during the presidential visit in the autumn.

Something stirred, at the back of her brain. But it was soon interrupted by a digital bleep-bleep version of 'Napoleon with his Army'. It was Waaler's mobile telephone. Ellen opened the door to shout after him, but he was already on his way into the restaurant.

It had been a boring week. Ellen couldn't remember such a boring week since she had started in the police force. She feared it had something to do with her finally having a private life. Suddenly there was a point in getting home before it was late and Saturday shifts like this evening's had become a sacrifice. The mobile played 'Napoleon…' for the fourth time.

One of the spurned women? Or one who still had that to come? If Kim dumped her now… but he wouldn't do that. She just knew it.

'Napoleon with his Army' for the fifth time.