Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

'Helena Mayer lives in Lazarettegasse,' Fritz informed him when Harry was back in the car again. He hooted at a car switching lanes without signalling.

'She's a widow and has two grown-up children. She worked as a teacher after the war until she retired.'

'Have you spoken to her?'

'No, but I've read her file.'

The address in Lazarettegasse was a property that must have been elegant at one time. But now the paint was peeling from the walls in the spacious stairwell, and the echoes of their shuffling steps mingled with the sound of dripping water.

Helena Mayer stood smiling by the entrance to her flat on the third floor. She had lively brown eyes and apologised for the stairs.

The flat was slightly over-furnished and full of all the knick-knacks people collect over the course of their lives.

'Please sit down,' she said. 'I only speak German, but you may talk to me in English. I can understand well enough,' she said, turning to Harry.

She brought in a tray with coffee and cakes. 'Strudel,' she explained, pointing to the cake dish.

'Yum,' Fritz said and helped himself.

'So you knew Gudbrand Johansen,' Harry said.

'Yes, I did. That is, we called him Uriah. He insisted on that. At first we thought he wasn't all there. Because of his injuries.'

"What sort of injuries?'

'Head injuries. And his leg, of course. Dr Brockhard was on the point of amputating it.'

'But he recovered and was sent to Oslo in the summer of 1944, wasn't he?'

'Yes, that was the idea.’

‘What do you mean by that?'

'Well, he disappeared, didn't he? And I don't suppose he turned up in Oslo, did he?'

'Not as far as I know, no. Tell me, how well did you know Gudbrand Johansen?'

'Very well. He was extrovert and a good storyteller. I think all the nurses, one after the other, fell in love with him.’

‘You too?'

She laughed a bright, trill laugh. 'Me too. But he didn't want me.'

'No?'

'Oh, I was good-looking, I can tell you-it wasn't that. Uriah wanted someone else.’

‘Really?'

'Yes, her name was Helena too.'

'Which Helena is that?'

The old lady furrowed her brow.

'Helena Lang, it must have been. Their love for each other was what caused the tragedy’

‘What tragedy?'

She stared at Harry and Fritz in surprise and then looked back at Harry again.

'Isn't that why you're here?' she said. 'Because of the murder?'

Palace Gardens. 14 May 2000.

It was Sunday. People were walking more slowly than usual and the old man kept up with them as he walked through the Palace Gardens. He stopped by the guardhouse. The trees were light green, the colour he liked best of all. All except for one tree, that is. The tall oak tree in the middle of the gardens would never be any greener than it was now. You could already see the difference. After the tree had awoken from its winter slumber, the life-giving sap had begun to circulate and spread the poison around the network of veins. Now it had reached every single leaf and promoted a luxuriant growth, which in a week or two would cause the leaves to wither, go brown and fall, and finally the tree would die.

But they didn't know that yet. They obviously didn't know anything. Bernt Brandhaug had not been part of the original plan, and the old man realised that the killing had confused the police. Brandhaug's comments in Dagbladet were just one of those weird coincidences and he had laughed out loud when he read them. My God, he had even agreed with Brandhaug. The defeated should swing, that is the law of war.

But what about all the other clues he had given them? They hadn't even managed to connect the great betrayal with the execution at Akershus Fortress. Perhaps it would dawn on them the next time the cannons were fired on the ramparts.

He looked around for a bench. The pains were coming closer and closer together now. He didn't need to go to Buer to find out that the cancer was spreading through his whole body; he knew that himself. It wouldn't be long now.

He leaned against a tree. A royal birch, the symbol of occupation. Government and King flee to England. German bombers are overhead, a line from a poem written by Nordahl Grieg, made him feel nauseous. It presented the King's betrayal as an honourable retreat, as if leaving his people in their hour of need were a moral act. And in the safety of London the King had just been yet another of these exiled majesties who held moving speeches for sympathetic upper-class women over entertaining dinners as they clung to the hope that their little kingdom would one day want them back. And when the whole thing was over, there was the reception as the boat carrying the Crown Prince moored on the quayside and all those who had turned out screamed themselves hoarse to drown out the shame, both their own and the King's. The old man turned towards the sun and closed his eyes.

Shouted commands, boots and AG3 guns smacked into the gravel. Handover. Changing of the guard.

Vienna. 14 May 2000.

'So you didn't know?' Helena Mayer said.

She shook her head and Fritz was already on the phone to get someone to search through old filed murder cases.

'I'm sure we'll find it,' he whispered. Of that Harry had no doubt.

'So the police were positive that Gudbrand Johansen killed his own doctor?' Harry asked, turning to the old lady.

'Yes, indeed. Christopher Brockhard lived alone in one of the flats at the hospital. The police said that Johansen smashed the glass in the outside door and killed him as he was sleeping in his own bed.'

'How…?'

Frau Mayer flashed a dramatic finger across her throat. I saw him myself afterwards,' she said. 'You could almost have believed the doctor had done it himself, the cut was so neat.’

‘Hm. And why were the police so sure it was Johansen?' She laughed.

'Yes, I can tell you that-because Johansen had asked the guard which flat Brockhard lived in and the guard had seen him park outside and go in through the main entrance. Afterwards he had come running out, started his car and driven off at full speed towards Vienna. The next day he was gone and no one knew where, only that according to his orders he was supposed to be in Oslo three days later. The Norwegian police waited for him but he never turned up.'

'Apart from the guard's testimony, can you remember if the police had any other evidence?'

'If I can remember? We talked about that murder for years! The blood on the glass door matched his blood type. And the police found the same fingerprints in Brockhard's bedroom as on Uriah's bedside table and bed in the hospital. Furthermore, he had the motive…'

'Really?'

'Yes, they loved each other, Gudbrand and Helena. But she was to be Christopher's.’

‘They were engaged?'

'No, no. But Christopher was crazy about Helena. Everyone knew that. Helena was from a rich family that had been ruined after her father had ended up in prison, and a marriage into the Brockhard family was her and her mother's way of getting back on their feet. And you know how it is-a young woman has certain obligations to her family. At least, she did, at that time.'

'Do you know where Helena Lang is today?'

'But you haven't touched the strudel, my dear,' the widow exclaimed.

Harry took a big bite, chewed and nodded in approval to Frau Mayer.

'No,' she said. 'That I don't know. When it became known that she had been with Johansen on the night of the murder, she was investigated, but they didn't find anything. She stopped working at the Rudolf II Hospital and moved to Vienna. She started up her own sewing business. Yes, she was a strong, enterprising woman. I occasionally saw her walking in the streets here. But in the mid-fifties she sold up and after that I didn't hear any more. Someone said she had gone abroad. But I know who you can ask-if she's alive, mind you. Beatrice Hoffmann, she worked as the house help for the Lang family. After the murder the family could no longer afford her and she worked for a time at the Rudolf II.'