Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

He poured coffee into two large mugs and put them on the kitchen table. Harry ran the tips of his fingers along the rough surface of the dark, heavy oak table.

'From Provence,' Fauke said without any prompting. 'My wife liked French peasant furniture.'

'Wonderful table. Your wife had good taste.'

Fauke smiled.

'Are you married? No? Never been married? You shouldn't wait too long, you know. You become difficult, on your own all the time.' He laughed.

'I know what I'm talking about. I was past thirty when I got married. That was late for the time. May 1955.'

He pointed to one of the photographs hanging on the wall over the kitchen table.

'Is that really your wife?' Harry asked. 'I thought it was Rakel.'

'Oh yes, of course,' after first looking at Harry in surprise. I forgot that you and Rakel knew each other from POT.'

They went into the sitting room, where the piles of paper had grown since his last visit and occupied all the chairs except the one at the desk. Fauke cleared a place for them to sit by the overflowing coffee table.

'Did you find out anything about the names I gave you?' he asked.

Harry summarised what he had discovered.

'However, there are a few new elements,' he said. 'A policewoman has been murdered.'

'I read something about it in the paper.'

'That case has been solved. We're waiting for the results of a DNA test. Do you believe in coincidences, herr Fauke?’

‘Not really.'

'Neither do I. That's why I ask myself questions when the same people keep cropping up in cases which are apparently unrelated. On the same evening Ellen Gjelten was murdered, she left a message on my answerphone saying "We've got him now". She was helping me to search for the person who had ordered the Marklin gun from Johannesburg. Of course, there doesn't have to be any connection between this person and the killer, but they are adjacent thoughts. Especially since she was clearly very concerned to get hold of me. This was a case I had been dealing with for weeks, yet she tried to contact me several times that night. And she sounded very agitated. That may suggest that she felt threatened.'

Harry placed his forefinger on the coffee table.

'One of the people on your list, Hallgrim Dale, was murdered last autumn. In the alley where he was found there were also, among other things, the remains of vomit. A link was not made immediately since the blood group didn't match that of the victim, and the image of an extremely cold-blooded professional murderer didn't square with someone who throws up at the scene of a crime. Kripos, however, did not exclude the possibility that the vomit belonged to the murderer and sent off a saliva sample for DNA testing. Earlier today one of my colleagues compared these results with the tests done on the cap we found by the murdered policewoman. They are identical.'

Harry paused and looked at the other man.

'I see,' Fauke said. 'You think the perpetrators could be one and the same.'

'No, I don't think so. I just think there may be a connection between the murders and it is no chance that Sverre Olsen was close by both times.'

'Why couldn't he have killed both of them?'

'He might have done that, of course, but there is a crucial difference between the kind of violence Sverre Olsen used and the murder of Hallgrim Dale. Have you ever seen the physical damage that a baseball bat can do? The soft wood smashes bones and causes internal organs like the liver and kidneys to burst. The skin's often as not unscathed and the victim generally dies of internal bleeding. In the case of Hallgrim Dale the carotid artery was severed. As a result of this kind of killing, blood gushes out. Do you understand?'

'Yes, but I don't see where you're going.'

'Sverre Olsen's mother told one of the officers that Sverre couldn't stand the sight of blood.'

Fauke's cup of coffee stopped on its way to his mouth. He put it down again.

'Yes, but…'

'I know what you're thinking-that he could still have done it and the fact that he couldn't stand the sight of blood may explain why he threw up. But the point is that the killer wasn't using a knife for the first time. According to the pathologist's report, it was a perfect surgical cut, which only someone who knew what he was doing could have carried out.'

Fauke nodded slowly.

'I understand what you mean,' he said.

'You look pensive,' Harry said.

'I think I know why you're here. You're wondering if one of the soldiers from Sennheim was capable of executing such a killing.’

‘Right. Was there anyone?'

'Yes, there was.' Fauke grasped his mug with both hands and his eyes wandered into the distance. 'The one you didn't find. Gudbrand Johansen. I told you we called him the redbreast, didn't I?'

'Can you tell me any more about him?'

'Yes, but we'll have to have more coffee first.'

Irisveien. 8 May 2000.

'Who's that?' came a shout from inside the door. The voice was small and frightened. Harry could see her outline through the frosted glass.

'Harry Hole. We spoke on the phone.'

The door was opened a fraction.

'Sorry, I…'

'That's alright.'

Signe Juul opened the door wide and Harry walked into the hallway. 'Even's out,' she said with an apologetic smile. 'Yes, you said on the phone,' Harry said. 'It was actually you I wanted to talk to.’

‘Me?'

'If that's OK, fru Juul?'

The elderly lady led the way in. Her hair, thick and steely grey, was twisted into a knot and held in place with an old-fashioned hairslide. And her round, swaying body was the kind that made you think of a soft embrace and good food.

Burre raised his head when they came into the sitting room.

'So, your husband has gone for a walk on his own?' Harry asked.

'Yes, he can't take Burre into the cafe,' she said. 'Please, do sit down.'

'The cafe?'

'Something he's started doing recently,' she smiled. 'To read the papers. He says he thinks better when he's not sitting at home.’

‘There's probably something in that.’

‘Absolutely. And you can daydream too, I suppose.’

‘What kind of daydreams, do you think?'

'Well, I've no idea. You can perhaps imagine you're young again, drinking coffee at a pavement cafe in Paris or Vienna.' Again that same quick, apologetic smile. 'Enough of that. Coffee?'

'Yes, please.'

Harry studied the walls while Signe Juul went into the kitchen. Above the fireplace was a portrait of a young man wearing a black cloak. Harry hadn't noticed the picture when he had been here previously. The cloak-clad man was standing in a dramatic pose, apparently scanning distant horizons beyond the painter's view. Harry walked over to the picture. A little framed copper plaque read: Overlege Kornelius Juul, 1885-1969. Medical consultant.

'That's Even's grandfather,' Signe Juul said, arriving with a tray of coffee things.

'Right. You have a lot of portraits here.'

'Yes,' she said, putting down the tray. 'The picture beside it is Even's maternal grandfather, Dr Werner Schumann. He was one of the founders of Ulleval Hospital in 1885.'

'And this?'

'Jonas Schumann. Consultant at the Rikshospital.’

‘And your relatives?'

She looked at him in bewilderment. 'What do you mean?'

'Where are your relatives?'

'They… are elsewhere. Cream in your coffee?'

'No, thank you.'

Harry sat down. 'I wanted to talk to you about the war,' he said. 'Oh no,' she burst out.

'I understand, but this is important. Is it alright to ask?’

‘We'll see,' she said, pouring herself coffee.

'You were a nurse during the war…'

'At the Eastern Front, yes. A traitor.'

Harry looked up. Her eyes watched him calmly.

'There were around four hundred of us. We were all sentenced to imprisonment afterwards. Despite the fact that the international Red Cross sent in an appeal to the Norwegian authorities to stop all criminal proceedings. The Norwegian Red Cross didn't apologise until 1990. Even's father, in the picture over there, had connections and managed to get my sentence commuted… partly because I had helped two injured Resistance men in the spring of 1945. And because I was never a member of the Nasjonal Samling. Is there anything else you would like to know?'