The Redbreast (6 page)

‘Let’s go for that then,’ Møller said, putting down the phone and looking at Harry across a desk weighed down with documents, overflowing ashtrays and paper cups. On the desktop a photograph of two boys dressed as Red Indians marked a kind of logical centre amid the chaos.

‘There you are, Harry.’

‘Here I am, boss.’

‘I’ve been to a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in connection with the summit in November here in Oslo. The US President is coming . . . well, you read papers, don’t you. Coffee, Harry?’

Møller had stood up and a couple of seven-league strides had already taken him to a filing cabinet on which, balanced atop a pile of papers, a coffee machine was coughing up a viscous substance.

‘Thanks boss, but I —’

It was too late and Harry took the steaming cup.

‘I’m especially looking forward to a visit from the Secret Service, with whom I’m sure we will have a cordial relationship as we get to know each other better.’

Møller had never quite learned to handle irony. That was just one of the things Harry appreciated about his boss.

Møller drew in his knees until they supported the bottom of the table. Harry leaned back to get the crumpled pack of Camels from his trouser pocket and raised an enquiring eyebrow at Møller, who quickly took the hint and pushed the brimming ashtray towards him.

‘I’ll be responsible for security along the roads to and from Gardemoen. As well as the President, there will be Barak —’

‘Barak?’

‘Ehud Barak. Prime Minister of Israel.’

‘Jeez, so there’s another fantastic Oslo agreement on the way, then?’ Møller stared despondently at the blue column of smoke rising to the ceiling.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about it, Harry. Or I’ll be even more worried about you than I already am. It was on all the front pages last week.’

Harry shrugged.

‘Unreliable paper boy. Inflicting serious gaps in my general knowledge. A grave handicap to my social life.’ He took another cautious sip of coffee, but then gave up and pushed it away. ‘And my love life.’

‘Really?’ Møller eyed Harry with an expression suggesting he didn’t know whether to relish or dread what was coming next.

‘Of course. Who would find a man in his mid-thirties, who knows all the details about the lives of the people on
The Robinson Expedition
but can hardly name any head of state, or the Israeli President, sexy?’

‘Prime Minister.’

‘There you are. Now you know what I mean.’

Møller stifled a laugh. He had a tendency to laugh too easily. And a soft spot for the somewhat anguished officer with big ears that stuck out from the close-cropped cranium like two colourful butterfly wings. Even though Harry had caused Møller more trouble than was good for him. As a newly promoted PAS he had learned that the first commandment for a civil servant with career plans was to guard your back. When Møller cleared his throat to put the worrying questions he had made up his mind to ask, and dreaded asking, he first of all knitted his eyebrows to show Harry that his concern was of a professional and not an amicable nature.

‘I hear you’re still spending your time sitting in Schrøder’s, Harry.’

‘Less than ever, boss. There’s so much good stuff on TV.’

‘But you’re still sitting and drinking?’

‘They don’t like you to stand.’

‘Cut it out. Are you drinking again?’

‘Minimally.’

‘How minimally?’

‘They’ll throw me out if I drink any less.’

This time Møller couldn’t hold back his laughter. ‘I need three liaison officers to secure the road,’ he said. ‘Each will have ten men at their disposal from various police districts in Akershus, plus a couple of cadets from the final year at police college. I thought Tom Waaler . . .’

Waaler. Racist bastard and directly in line for the soon-to-be-announced inspector’s job. Harry had heard enough about Waaler’s professional activities to know that they confirmed all the prejudices the public might have about the police. Apart from one: unfortunately Waaler was not stupid. His successes as a detective were so impressive that even Harry had to concede he deserved the inevitable promotion.

‘And Weber . . .’

‘The old sourpuss?’

‘. . . and you, Harry.’

‘Say that again?’

‘You heard me.’

Harry pulled a face.

‘Have you any objections?’ Møller asked.

‘Of course I have.’

‘Why? This is an honourable mission, Harry. A feather in your cap.’

‘Is it?’ Harry stabbed out his cigarette furiously in the ashtray. ‘Or is it the next stage in the rehabilitation process?’

‘What do you mean?’ Bjarne Møller looked wounded.

‘I know that you defied good advice and had a run-in with a few people when you took me back into the fold after Bangkok. And I’m eternally grateful to you for that. But what is this?
Liaison Officer
? Sounds like an attempt to prove to the doubters that you were right, and they were wrong. That Hole is on his way up, that he can be given responsibility and all that.’

‘Well?’ Bjarne Møller had put his hands behind the long skull again.

‘Well?’ Harry aped. ‘Is that what’s behind it? Am I just a pawn again?’

Møller gave a sigh of despair.

‘We’re all pawns, Harry. There’s always a hidden agenda. This is no worse than anything else. Do a good job and it’ll be good for both of us. Is that so damned difficult?’

Harry sniffed, started to say something, caught himself, took a fresh run-up, then abandoned the idea. He flicked a new cigarette out of the pack.

‘It’s just that I feel like a bloody horse people bet on. And I loathe responsibility.’

Harry let the cigarette hang loosely from his lips without lighting it.

He owed Møller this favour, but what if he screwed up? Had Møller thought about that?
Liaison Officer
. He had been on the wagon for a while now, but he still had to be careful, take one day at a time. Hell, wasn’t that one of the reasons he became a detective? To avoid having people underneath him, and to have as few as possible above him? Harry bit into the cigarette filter.

They heard voices out in the corridor by the coffee machine. It sounded like Waaler. Then peals of laughter. The new office girl perhaps. He still had the smell of her perfume in his nostrils.

‘Fuck,’ Harry said.
Fu-uck
. With two syllables, which made his cigarette jump twice in his mouth.

Møller had closed his eyes during Harry’s moment of reflection and now he half-opened them. ‘Can I take that as a yes?’

Harry stood up and walked out without saying a word.

8
Toll Barrier at Alnabru. 1 November 1999.

T
HE GREY BIRD GLIDED INTO
H
ARRY’S FIELD OF VISION
and was on its way out again. He increased the pressure on the trigger of his .38 calibre Smith & Wesson while staring over the edge of his gun sights at the stationary back behind the glass. Someone had been talking about slow time on TV yesterday.

The car horn, Ellen. Press the damn horn. He has to be a Secret Service agent
.

Slow time, like on Christmas Eve before Father Christmas comes. The first motorcycle was level with the toll booth, and the robin was still a black dot on the outer margin of his vision. The time in the electric chair before the current . . .

Harry squeezed the trigger. One, two, three times.

And then time accelerated explosively. The coloured glass went white, spraying shards over the tarmac, and he caught sight of an arm disappearing under the line of the booth before the whisper of expensive American tyres was there – and gone.

He stared towards the booth. A couple of the yellow leaves swirled up by the motorcade were still floating through the air before settling on a dirty grey grass verge. He stared towards the booth. It was silent again, and for a moment all he could think was that he was standing at an ordinary Norwegian toll barrier on an ordinary Norwegian autumn day, with an ordinary Esso petrol station in the background. It even smelled of ordinary cold morning air: rotting leaves and car exhaust. And it struck him: perhaps none of this has really happened.

He was still staring towards the booth when the relentless lament of the Volvo car horn behind him sawed the day in two.

Part Two
GENESIS

9
1942.

T
HE FLARES LIT UP THE GREY NIGHT SKY, MAKING IT
resemble a filthy top canvas cast over the drab, bare landscape surrounding them on all sides. Perhaps the Russians had launched an offensive, perhaps it was a bluff; you never really knew until it was over. Gudbrand was lying on the edge of the trench with both legs drawn up beneath him, holding his gun with both hands and listening to the distant hollow booms as he watched the flares go down. He knew he shouldn’t watch the flares. You would become night-blind and unable to see the Russian snipers wriggling out in the snow in no man’s land. But he couldn’t see them anyway, had never seen a single one; he just shot on command. As he was doing now.

‘There he is!’

It was Daniel Gudeson, the only town boy in the unit. The others came from places with names ending in -dal. Some of the dales were broad and some were deep, deserted and dark, such as Gudbrand’s home ground. But not Daniel. Not Daniel of the pure, high forehead, the sparkling blue eyes and the white smile. He was like a recruitment-poster cut-out. He came from somewhere with horizons.

‘Two o’clock, left of the scrub,’ Daniel said.

Scrub? There can’t be any scrub in the shell-crater landscape here. Yes, there was because the others were shooting. Crack, bang, swish. Every fifth bullet went off in a parabola, like a firefly. Tracer fire. The bullet tore off into the dark, but it seemed suddenly to tire because its velocity decreased and then it sank somewhere out there. That was what it looked like at any rate. Gudbrand thought it impossible for such a slow bullet to kill anyone.

‘He’s getting away!’ yelled an embittered, hate-filled voice. It was Sindre Fauke. His face almost merged with his camouflage uniform and the small, close-set eyes stared out into the dark. He came from a remote farm high up in the Gudbrandsdalen region, probably some narrow enclave where the sun didn’t shine since he was so pale. Gudbrand didn’t know why Sindre had volunteered to fight on the Eastern Front, but he had heard that his parents and both brothers had joined the fascist
Nasjonal Samling
Party, and that they went around wearing bands on their arms and reporting fellow villagers they suspected of being partisans. Daniel said that one day the informers and all those who exploited the war for their own advantage would get a taste of the whip.

‘No, he’s not,’ Daniel said in a low voice, his chin against his gun. ‘No bloody Bolshevik gets away.’

‘He knows we’ve seen him,’ Sindre said. ‘He’ll get into that hollow down there.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Daniel said and took aim.

Gudbrand stared out into the grey-white dark. White snow, white camouflage uniforms, white fire. The skies are lit up again. All sorts of shadows flit across the crust of the snow. Gudbrand stared up again. Yellow and red flashes on the horizon, followed by several distant rumbles. It was as unreal as being at the cinema, except that it was thirty degrees below and there was no one to put your arm around. Perhaps it really was an offensive this time?

‘You’re too slow, Gudeson. He’s gone.’ Sindre spat in the snow.

‘No, he hasn’t,’ Daniel said even quieter and took aim, and then again. Almost no frost smoke was coming out of his mouth any longer.

Then, a high-pitched, screaming whistle, a warning scream, and Gudbrand threw himself into the ice-covered bottom of the trench, with both hands over his head. The ground shook. It rained frozen brown clumps of earth; one hit Gudbrand’s helmet and he watched it slide off in front of him. He waited until he was sure there was no more to come, then shoved his helmet back on. It had gone quiet and a fine white veil of snow particles stuck to his face. They say you never hear the shell that hits you, but Gudbrand had seen the result of enough whistling shells to know this wasn’t true. A flare lit up the trench; he saw the others’ white faces and their shadows as they scrambled towards him, keeping to the side of the trench and their heads well down, as the light gradually faded. But where was Daniel? Daniel!

‘Daniel!’

‘Got ’im,’ Daniel said, still lying on the edge of the trench. Gudbrand couldn’t believe his own ears.

‘What did you say?’

Daniel slid down into the trench and shook off the snow and earth. He had a broad grin on his face.

‘No Russian arsehole will be able to shoot at our watch tonight. Tormod is avenged.’ He dug his heels into the edge of the trench so he didn’t slip on the ice.

‘Is he fuck!’ That was Sindre. ‘You didn’t fucking hit him, Gudeson. I saw the Russian disappear down into the hollow.’

His small eyes jumped from one man to the next, as if to ask whether any of them believed Daniel’s boast.

‘Correct,’ Daniel said. ‘But it’ll be light in two hours and he knew he’d have to be out before then.’

‘That’s right, and so he tried it a bit too soon,’ Gudbrand added smartly. ‘He popped up on the other side. Isn’t that right, Daniel?’

‘Too soon or not,’ Daniel smiled, ‘I would have got him anyway.’ Sindre hissed: ‘Just shut that big gob of yours, Gudeson.’

Daniel shrugged, checked the chamber and cocked his gun. Then he turned, hung the gun over his shoulder, kicked a boot into the frozen side of the trench and swung himself up over the top.

‘Give me your spade, will you, Gudbrand.’

Daniel took the spade and straightened up to his full height. In his white winter uniform he was outlined against the black sky and the flare, which hung like an aura of light over his head.

He looks like an angel,
Gudbrand thought. ‘What the fuck are you doing, man!’ That was Edvard Mosken, the leader of their section, shouting. The calm soldier from Mjøndøl seldom raised his voice with veterans like Daniel, Sindre and Gudbrand in the unit. It was usually the new arrivals who received a bawling out when they made mistakes. The earful they got saved many of their lives. Now Edvard Mosken was staring up at Daniel with the one wide-open eye that he never closed. Not even when he slept. Gudbrand had seen that for himself.