Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

She looked at Harry, who didn't know how to respond. Through the glass door to the entrance hall he could hear Halvorsen's deep voice. Harry cleared his throat:

'Do you know if he was conducting a relationship with any particular woman recently?'

She shook her head. 'Ask around in the Foreign Office. It's a strange environment, you know. Bound to be someone there who would be more than willing to give you a pointer.'

She said this without rancour, purely as a matter of information.

They both looked up when Halvorsen came into the room.

'Odd,' he said. 'You did receive a telephone call at 12.24, fru Brandhaug, but not yesterday. The day before.'

'Oh dear, perhaps I mixed up the days,' she said. Yes, well, so it has nothing to do with the case, then.'

'Maybe not,' Halvorsen said. I checked the number with enquiries anyway. The call came from a pay phone. At Schroder's cafe.'

'Cafe?' she said. 'Yes, that would probably explain the noises in the background. Do you think…?'

'It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the murder of your husband,' Harry said, getting up. 'There are lots of strange people at Schroder's.'

She accompanied them to the front steps. It was a grey afternoon outside with low-lying clouds sweeping across the hill behind them.

Fru Brandhaug stood with her arms crossed, as if she were freezing cold.

'It's so dark here,' she said. 'Have you noticed that?'

The Crime Scene Unit was still busy combing the area around the bivouac where they had found the cartridge when Harry and Halvorsen approached from across the heath.

'Hey, you there!' they heard a voice shout as they ducked under the yellow police tape.

'Police,' Harry answered.

'Makes no difference!' the same voice shouted back. 'You'll have to wait until we've finished.'

It was Weber. He was wearing high rubber boots and a comical yellow raincoat. Harry and Halvorsen ducked back under the tape.

'Hey, Weber,' Harry shouted.

'Got no time,' he answered with a dismissive wave.

'It'll take one minute.'

Weber went closer with long strides and an obviously irritated expression on his face.

'What do you want?' he yelled from a distance of twenty metres.

'How long had he been waiting?'

'The bloke up here? No idea.'

'Come on Weber. A guess.'

'Who's working on this case? Kripos or you?'

'Both. We haven't co-ordinated yet.'

'And are you trying to kid me you're going to?'

Harry smiled and took out a cigarette.

'You've come up with some good guesses before, Weber.'

'Cut out the flattery, Hole. Who's the lad?'

'Halvorsen,' Harry said before Halvorsen had a chance to introduce himself.

'Listen to me, Halvorsen,' Weber said, regarding Harry with a disgust he made no attempt to disguise. 'Smoking is a revolting habit and the ultimate proof that humans are here on earth for one thing only -enjoyment. The bloke who was here left eight dog-ends in a half-full pop bottle. Teddy cigarettes, no filter. And Teddy smokers are not content with two a day, so unless he ran out, by my reckoning he was here for twenty-four hours at most. He had cut sprigs of spruce down from the lowest branches which the rain couldn't get at. But there were drops of rain on the spruce covering the bivouac. The last time it rained was three o'clock yesterday afternoon.'

'So he was lying here from somewhere between eight a.m. and three p.m. yesterday?' Halvorsen asked.

'I think Halvorsen could go far,' Weber said laconically, with his eyes still on Harry. 'Especially considering the competition he'll have in the force. It's getting bloody worse and worse. Have you seen what they're recruiting at the police college now? Even the teacher training colleges are getting geniuses in comparison with the rubbish we get.'

All of a sudden it seemed that Weber wasn't in a hurry after all and he set off on a long diatribe about the gloomy prospects for the police force.

'Did anyone living nearby see anything?' Harry quickly asked as Weber paused to draw breath.

'We've got four men doing house to house now, but most of the people won't be back till later. They won't dig up anything.'

'Why not?'

'I don't think he showed himself round here. Earlier today we had a dog following his footsteps for about a kilometre into the forest, to one of the paths. But we lost him there. I would guess he took the same route here and back, following the network of paths between Sognsvann and Lake Maridal. He could have parked a car in at least a dozen car parks for walkers in this area. And there are thousands of them using the paths every day, at least half of them with a rucksack. You see?’

‘We see.'

'And now you're probably going to ask me if there are any fingerprints.’

‘Well…’

‘Come on.'

'What about the bottle of pop?' Weber shook his head.

'No prints. Nothing. Considering how long he was here, he has left surprisingly few traces. We'll keep searching, but I'm pretty positive that the shoe print and a few fibres from his clothing are all we'll find.'

'Plus the cartridge.'

'He left that on purpose. Everything else has been removed a little too thoroughly.'

'Hm. As a warning perhaps. What do you think?'

'What do I think? I thought it was only you young blokes who had been blessed with a bit of brainpower. That's the impression they're trying to promote in the force nowadays.'

'Right. Thanks for your help, Weber.'

'And pack the fags in, Hole.'

'Bit of a stickler,' Halvorsen said in the car on the way down to the city centre.

'Weber can be hard to take sometimes,' Harry conceded. 'But he knows his job.'

Halvorsen drummed the beat to a soundless song on the dashboard. 'What now?' he asked. 'Continental.'

Kripos had phoned the Continental fifteen minutes after they had washed and changed the bedding in Brandhaug's room. No one had noticed Brandhaug had had a visitor, only that he had checked out at around midnight.

Harry stood in reception, pulling at his last cigarette while the duty head receptionist from the previous night wrung his hands and looked unhappy.

'We didn't know that herr Brandhaug had been shot until late morning,' he said. 'Otherwise we wouldn't have touched his room.'

Harry gave a sign of acknowledgement and took a drag of his cigarette. The hotel room was not the scene of any crime; it would simply have been interesting to know if there was any blonde hair on the pillow and to contact whoever may have been the last person to talk to Brandhaug.

'Well, if that's everything then,' the man said with a smile and a faint suggestion he was going to cry.

Harry didn't respond. He had noticed that the head receptionist had become more and more nervous the less he and Halvorsen said. So he said nothing; he waited and watched the glow of his cigarette.

'Er…' said the receptionist, running a hand along the lapel of his jacket.

Harry waited. Halvorsen studied the floor. The head receptionist held out for barely fifteen seconds before cracking.

'Of course, he did occasionally have visitors up there,' he said.

'Who?' Harry said without taking his eyes off the glow of his cigarette.

'Women and men…'

'Who?'

'As a matter of fact, I don't know. It's none of our business who the Under Secretary of State chooses to spend his time with.’

‘Really?' Silence.

'Of course, if a woman comes here who is obviously not a guest, we do take note which floor she takes the lift to.’

‘Would you recognise her?'

'Yes.' The answer came like a shot, no hesitation. 'She was very attractive. And very drunk.’

‘Prostitute?'

'If so, then a high-class one. And they tend to be sober. Well, not that I know much about them. This hotel is no -’