Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

Here? To him? Sverre opened his eyes again and stared irresolutely at himself in the mirror. No one came here. As far as he knew, no one even knew he lived here. His heart began to beat faster. Could it be that policeman with the Trondheim accent again?

He was walking towards his bedroom door when it slid open.

'Hello, Olsen.'

Because the spring sun was low and shone right in through the window on the landing he could only see a silhouette filling the doorway. But he knew perfectly well whose voice it was.

'Aren't you happy to see me?' the Prince said, closing the door behind him.

He scanned the walls inquisitively. 'Quite a place you have here.’

‘Why did she let you…?'

'I showed your mother this.' The Prince waved around a card with a Norwegian coat of arms in gold on a light blue background. It said politi on the other side.

'Oh fuck,' Sverre said with a gulp. 'Is that genuine?'

'Who knows? Relax, Olsen. Take a seat.'

The Prince pointed to the bed and sat the wrong way round on the desk chair.

'What are you doing here?' Sverre asked.

'What do you think?' He beamed a broad smile at Sverre, who was sitting on the very edge of the bed. 'The day of reckoning.’

‘The day of reckoning?'

Sverre still had not collected himself completely. How did the Prince know he lived here? And the police ID card. Looking at him now, it struck Sverre that the Prince could easily be a policeman-the well-groomed hair, the cold eyes, the solarium-brown face and the well-trained upper body, the short jacket in soft black leather and the blue jeans. Strange he hadn't noticed before.

'Yes,' the Prince said, still smiling. 'The day of reckoning has come.' He pulled out an envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to Sverre.

'About time,' Sverre said, flashing a fleeting nervous smile and sticking his fingers into the envelope. 'What's this?' he asked, pulling out a folded A4 sheet.

'It's a list of the eight people Crime Squad will soon be visiting, and almost certainly taking blood from, to send for DNA testing to find a match for the skin particles they found on your cap at the scene of the crime.'

'My cap? You said you'd found it in your car and burned it?'

Sverre stared in horror as the Prince shook his head in regret.

'It seems I went back to the scene of the crime. A young couple was waiting for the police, frightened out of their wits. I must have "lost" the cap in the snow a few metres from the body.'

Sverre ran both hands across his head several times.

'You seem baffled, Olsen?'

Sverre nodded and attempted a smile, but the corners of his mouth didn't seem to want to obey. 'Do you want me to explain?' Sverre nodded again.

'When a police officer is murdered the case has top priority until the murderer is caught, however long it takes. It isn't written in any instruction manual, but when the victim is one of our own, no questions are asked about resources. That's the problem with killing police officers-detectives simply won't give up until they have…' he pointed to Sverre,'… found the guilty party. It's just a question of time-so I took the liberty of giving the detectives a helping hand so the waiting time would not be too long.'

'But…'

'You might be wondering why I helped the police to find you when the odds are that you would report me in order to have your own sentence commuted?'

Sverre swallowed. He tried to think, but it was too much and everything was blocked.

'I can understand that this must be a hard nut to crack,' the Prince said, stroking a finger along the imitation Iron Cross hanging from a nail on the wall. 'Of course, I could have shot you right after the murder. But then the police would have known that you were in league with someone trying to cover their tracks and would have continued the hunt.'

He unhooked the chain from the nail and hung it round his neck, over his leather jacket.

'Another alternative was to "solve" the crime on my own, to shoot you while arresting you and make it look as if you had resisted arrest. The problem with that is that it might seem suspiciously clever for one person to solve a case on their own. People might start thinking, especially since I was the last person to see Ellen Gjelten alive.'

He paused and laughed.

'Don't look so scared, Olsen! I'm telling you these are alternatives I rejected. What I've done is to sit on the sidelines, keep myself informed about progress and watch them close in on you. The plan has always been to jump in when they get close, take over the baton and do the last lap myself. By the way, a piss artist working in POT tracked you down.'

'Are you… a policeman?'

'Does it suit me?' The Prince was pointing to the Iron Cross. 'No, to hell with that. I'm a soldier like you, Olsen. A ship has to have watertight bulkheads, otherwise the slightest leak will cause it to sink. Do you know what it would mean if I betrayed my identity to you?'

Sverre's mouth and throat were so dry he could no longer swallow. He was frightened. Frightened for his life.

'It would mean that I couldn't let you leave this room alive. Do you understand?'

'Yes.' Sverre's voice was hoarse. 'My m-money…'

The Prince put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol.

'Sit still.'

He walked over to the bed, sat beside Sverre and, holding the pistol in both hands, pointed it at the door.

'This is a Glock, the world's most reliable handgun. I was sent it from Germany yesterday. The manufacture number has been filed off. The street value is about eight thousand kroner. Look on it as the first instalment.'

Sverre jumped as it went off with a bang. He stared with large eyes at the little hole at the top of the door. The dust danced in the stripe of sunlight which ran like a laser beam from the hole through the room.

'Feel it,' the Prince said, dropping the gun in his lap. Then he stood up and went to the door. 'Hold it tight. Perfect balance, isn't it?'

Sverre reluctantly curled his fingers around the stock of the gun. He could feel he was sweating inside his T-shirt. There's a hole in the ceiling. That was all he could think. And that the bullet had made a new hole and they still hadn't got hold of a builder. Then what he had been expecting happened. He closed his eyes.

'Sverre!'

She sounds as if she's drowning. He gripped the gun. She always sounds as if she's drowning. Then he opened his eyes again and saw the Prince turn by the door, in slow motion. He swung up his arms; both hands were held round a shiny black Smith amp; Wesson revolver.

'Sverre!'

A yellow flame spat out of the muzzle of the gun. He could see her standing at the bottom of the stairs. Then the bullet hit him, bored through the top of his forehead, out through the back, taking the Heil from the Sieg Heil tattoo with it, into and through the wooden studwork in the wall, through the insulation before stopping behind the Eternit cladding panel on the outside wall. But by then Sverre Olsen was already dead.

Krokliveien. 2 May 2000.

Harry had scrounged a coffee off someone in the Crime Scene Unit with a thermos. He was standing in front of the ugly little house in Krokliveien in Bjerke, peering at a young officer up a ladder who was marking the hole in the roof where the bullet had exited. Curious onlookers had already begun to gather and for the sake of security the police had cordoned off the area around the house with yellow tape. The man on the ladder was bathed in the afternoon sunlight, but the house lay in a hollow in the ground and it was already cold where Harry stood.

'So you arrived immediately after it happened?' Harry heard a voice behind him ask. He turned round. It was Bjarne Moller. He had become an increasingly rare sight at crime scenes, but Harry had heard several people say he had been a good detective. Some even suggested that he should have been allowed to continue. Harry offered him the cup of coffee, but Moller shook his head.