Jo Nesbo - The Redbreast

Fritz was already on the telephone again.

A fly buzzed desperately around the window. It was following its own microscopic logic and kept banging into the glass without understanding quite why. Harry stood up.

'Strudel…?'

'Next time, Frau Mayer. Right now we don't have the time.'

'Why's that?' she asked. 'This happened more than half a century ago. It isn't going anywhere.'

'Well…' Harry said, watching the black fly under the lace curtains in the sun.

Fritz received a call on his mobile on the way to the police station and did a highly improper U-turn which made the motorists behind them jump on their horns.

'Beatrice Hoffmann is alive,' he said accelerating through the lights. 'She's at an old people's home in MauerbachstraBe. That's up in the Vienna Woods.'

The BMW turbo squealed with glee. The blocks of flats gave way to half-timbered houses, vineyards and finally the green deciduous forest, with the afternoon sun playing on the leaves and creating a magical atmosphere as they sped along avenues lined with beech and chestnut trees.

A nurse led them out into the large garden.

Beatrice was sitting on a bench in the shade of an enormous, gnarled oak tree. A straw hat dominated the tiny, wrinkled face. Fritz spoke with her in German and explained why they had come. The old woman inclined her head with a smile.

'I'm ninety years old,' she said in a shaky voice. 'And tears still come to my eyes when I think about Fraulein Helena.'

'Is she still alive?' Harry asked in his schoolboy German. 'Do you know where she is?'

'What's that he says?' she asked with her hand behind her ear. Fritz explained.

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, I know where Helena is. She's sitting up there.' She pointed up into the treetops.

There you go, Harry thought. Senile. But the old lady hadn't finished speaking.

'With St Peter. Good Catholics, the Langs, but Helena was the angel in the family. As I said, it always brings tears to my eyes thinking about it.'

'Do you remember Gudbrand Johansen?' Harry asked.

'Uriah,' Beatrice said. 'I only met him once. A handsome, charming young man, but sick unfortunately. Who would have believed that such a nice, polite boy would have been able to kill? Their emotions ran away with them, yes, with Helena too. She never got over him, the poor thing. The police never found him and although Helena was never accused of anything, Andr6 Brockhard saw to it that she was thrown out of the hospital. She moved into town and did voluntary work for the Archbishop until the family was in such dire financial straits that she was forced to find paid work. So she started a sewing business. Within two years she had fourteen women sewing for her full-time. Her father was released but couldn't find work after the Jewish banker scandal. Frau Lang took the family's fall from grace worst. She died after a long illness in 1953 and Herr Lang the same autumn in a car accident. Helena sold the business in 1955 and left the country without any explanation to anyone. I can remember the day. It was 15 May, Austria's liberation day'

Fritz saw Harry's curious expression and explained.

Austria is a little unusual. Here we don't celebrate the day Hitler capitulated, but the day the Allies left the country.'

Beatrice spoke about how she had received news of Helena's death.

'We hadn't heard from her for more than twenty years when one day I received a letter postmarked Paris. She was there on holiday with her husband and daughter, she wrote. It was a kind of final journey, I realised. She didn't say where she had settled down, whom she had married or what illness she had. Only that she hadn't long to live and she wanted me to light a candle for her in Stephansdom. She was an unusual person, Helena was. She was seven years old when she came to me in the kitchen and turned these grave eyes on me. "Humans were created by God to love," she said.'

A tear ran down the old lady's lined cheek.

Til never forget it. Seven years old. I think she decided then and there how she was going to live her life. And even though it definitely wasn't as she had imagined and her trials were many and sore, I'm convinced she believed it to the bottom of her heart all her life-that humans were created by God to love. That's how she was.'

'Do you still have the letter?' Harry asked.

She wiped away her tears and nodded.

'I have it in my room. Let me sit here and reminisce a little. We can go there afterwards. By the way, this will be the first hot night of the year.'

They sat in silence, listening to the rustle of the branches and the small birds singing as the sun went down behind Sophienalpe, as each of them thought of those gone before. Insects jumped and danced in the pillars of light under the trees. Harry thought about Ellen. He spotted a bird he could have sworn was the flycatcher he had seen pictures of in the bird book.

'Let's go,' said Beatrice.

Her room was small and plain, but light and snug. A bed stood against the back wall, which was covered with pictures of all sizes. Beatrice rummaged through some papers in a large dressing-table drawer.

'I have a system, so I'll find it,' she said. Naturally, Harry thought.

At that moment his eyes fell on a photograph in a silver frame.

'Here's the letter,' Beatrice said.

Harry didn't answer. He stared at the photograph and didn't react until he heard her voice right behind him.

'That photograph was taken while Helena was working at the hospital. She was beautiful, wasn't she?'

'Yes, she was,' Harry said. 'There's something oddly familiar about her.'

'Nothing odd about her,' Beatrice said. 'They've been painting her on icons for almost two thousand years.'

It was a hot night. Hot and sultry. Harry tossed and turned in the four-poster, threw the blanket on the floor and pulled the sheet off the bed as he tried to shut out all his thoughts and sleep. For a moment he had considered the minibar, but then he remembered he had taken the minibar key off the ring and handed it in to reception. He heard voices in the corridor outside. Someone grabbed the handle of his door and he shot up in bed, but no one came in. Then the voices were inside, their breath hot against his skin, the ripping sound of clothes being shredded, but when he opened his eyes he saw flashes of light and he knew it was lightning.

A rumble of thunder, sounding like distant explosions, came first from one part of town, then another. He went to sleep again and kissed her, took off her white nightdress. Her skin was white and cold and uneven from sweating, from the terror; he held her for a long, long time until she was warm, until she came back to life in his arms, like a flower filmed over a whole spring and then played back at breakneck speed.

He continued to kiss her, on the neck, on the inside of her arms, on the stomach, not with insistence, not even teasingly, but half to comfort her, half comatose, as if he could vanish at any moment. And when she followed, waveringly, because she thought it was safe where they were going, he continued to lead her until they arrived in a landscape not even he recognised, and when he turned it was too late and she threw herself into his embrace, cursing him, begging him and tearing at him with her strong hands until his skin bled.

He was awoken by his own panting and had to turn over in bed to make sure he was still alone. Afterwards, everything merged in a maelstrom of thunder, sleep and dreams. He awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of beating rain; he went over to the window and stared down at the street where water was streaming over the edges of the pavement and an ownerless hat drifted along with it.

When Harry was awoken by his early-morning alarm call it was light outside and the streets were dry.