The Redbreast (38 page)
Authors: Jo Nesbø
Tags: #Scandinavia, #Mystery, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Norway
‘Are you . . . a policeman?’
‘Does it suit me?’ The Prince was pointing to the Iron Cross. ‘No, to hell with that. I’m a soldier like you, Olsen. A ship has to have water-tight bulkheads, otherwise the slightest leak will cause it to sink. Do you know what it would mean if I betrayed my identity to you?’
Sverre’s mouth and throat were so dry he could no longer swallow. He was frightened. Frightened for his life.
‘It would mean that I couldn’t let you leave this room alive. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ Sverre’s voice was hoarse. ‘My m-money . . .’
The Prince put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol.
‘Sit still.’
He walked over to the bed, sat beside Sverre and, holding the pistol in both hands, pointed it at the door.
‘This is a Glock, the world’s most reliable handgun. I was sent it from Germany yesterday. The manufacture number has been filed off. The street value is about eight thousand kroner. Look on it as the first instalment.’
Sverre jumped as it went off with a bang. He stared with large eyes at the little hole at the top of the door. The dust danced in the stripe of sunlight which ran like a laser beam from the hole through the room.
‘Feel it,’ the Prince said, dropping the gun in his lap. Then he stood up and went to the door. ‘Hold it tight. Perfect balance, isn’t it?’
Sverre reluctantly curled his fingers around the stock of the gun. He could feel he was sweating inside his T-shirt.
There’s a hole in the ceiling
. That was all he could think. And that the bullet had made a new hole and they still hadn’t got hold of a builder. Then what he had been expecting happened. He closed his eyes.
‘Sverre!’
She sounds as if she’s drowning
. He gripped the gun.
She always sounds as if she’s drowning
. Then he opened his eyes again and saw the Prince turn by the door, in slow motion. He swung up his arms; both hands were held round a shiny black Smith & Wesson revolver.
‘Sverre!’
A yellow flame spat out of the muzzle of the gun. He could see her standing at the bottom of the stairs. Then the bullet hit him, bored through the top of his forehead, out through the back, taking the
Heil
from the
Sieg Heil
tattoo with it, into and through the wooden studwork in the wall, through the insulation before stopping behind the Eternit cladding panel on the outside wall. But by then Sverre Olsen was already dead.
H
ARRY HAD SCROUNGED A COFFEE OFF SOMEONE IN THE
Crime Scene Unit with a thermos. He was standing in front of the ugly little house in Krokliveien in Bjerke, peering at a young officer up a ladder who was marking the hole in the roof where the bullet had exited. Curious onlookers had already begun to gather and for the sake of security the police had cordoned off the area around the house with yellow tape. The man on the ladder was bathed in the afternoon sunlight, but the house lay in a hollow in the ground and it was already cold where Harry stood.
‘So you arrived immediately after it happened?’ Harry heard a voice behind him ask. He turned round. It was Bjarne Møller. He had become an increasingly rare sight at crime scenes, but Harry had heard several people say he had been a good detective. Some even suggested that he should have been allowed to continue. Harry offered him the cup of coffee, but Møller shook his head.
‘Yes, I must have arrived about four to five minutes afterwards,’ Harry said. ‘Who told you?’
‘Central switchboard. They said you had rung and asked for reinforcements after Waaler reported the shooting.’
Harry motioned with his head towards the red sports car in front of the gateway.
‘When I arrived I saw Waaler’s Jap car. I knew he was coming here, so that was fine. But when I got out of my car I heard a terrible howling noise. At first I thought there was a dog somewhere in the neighbour-hood. As I walked up the gravel path, however, I knew it was coming from inside the house and that it wasn’t a dog. It was human. I didn’t take any chances and rang for assistance from Økern police district.’
‘It was the mother?’
Harry nodded. ‘She was completely hysterical. It took them almost half an hour before they had her in a calm enough state to say something sensible. Weber is still talking to her now, in the sitting room.’
‘Good old sensitive Weber?’
‘Weber’s fine. He’s a bit of an old sourpuss at work, but he’s pretty good with people in this kind of situation.’
‘I know. I was just joking. How’s Waaler taking it?’
Harry shrugged his shoulders. ‘I know,’ Møller said. ‘He’s a cold fish. Fair enough. Shall we go in and take a dekko?’
‘I’ve been in.’
‘Well, give me a guided tour then.’
They made their way up to the first floor as Møller mumbled greetings to colleagues he hadn’t seen for ages.
The bedroom was full of specialists from the Crime Scene Unit and cameras were flashing. Black plastic, on which the outline of a body had been drawn, covered the bed.
Møller let his gaze wander round the walls. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he mumbled.
‘Sverre Olsen didn’t vote for the Socialists,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t touch anything, Bjarne,’ shouted an inspector Harry recognised from Forensics. ‘You know what happened last time.’
Apparently Møller did; at any rate he laughed good-naturedly.
‘Sverre Olsen was sitting on the bed when Waaler came in,’ Harry said. ‘According to Waaler, he was standing by the door and he asked Olsen about the night Ellen was killed. Olsen pretended he couldn’t remember the date, so Waaler asked a few more questions and gradually it became obvious that Olsen did not have an alibi. According to Waaler, he asked Olsen to go to the station with him and give a statement, and that was when Olsen suddenly grabbed the revolver that he must have kept hidden under the pillow. He fired and the bullet passed above his shoulder and through the door – here’s the hole – and through the ceiling in the hall. According to Waaler, he pulled out his service revolver and got Olsen before he could fire off any more shots.’
‘Quick reactions. Good shot, too, I heard.’
‘Smack in the forehead,’ Harry said.
‘Not so strange perhaps. Waaler got top results in the shooting test last autumn.’
‘You’re forgetting my results,’ Harry said drily.
‘How’s it going, Ronald?’ Møller shouted, turning to the inspector dressed in white.
‘Plain sailing, I reckon.’ The inspector stood up and straightened his back with a groan. ‘We found the bullet that killed Olsen behind the Eternit panel here. The one that went through the door continued on up through the ceiling. We’ll have to see if we can find that one as well so that the ballistics boys have something to play with tomorrow. The angles fit anyway.’
‘Hm. Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it. How’s your wife by the way?’
Møller told him how his wife was, omitted to ask how the inspector’s was, but for all Harry knew, he didn’t have one. Last year four of the boys in Forensics had separated from their wives in the same month. They had joked in the canteen that it must have been the smell of corpses.
They saw Weber outside the house. He was standing on his own with a cup of coffee in his hand, watching the man on the ladder.
‘Was it alright, Weber?’ Møller asked.
Weber squinted at them as if he first had to check whether he could be bothered to answer them.
‘She won’t be a problem,’ he said, peering up at the ladder man again. ‘Of course she said she couldn’t understand it because her son hated the sight of blood and so on, but we won’t have any problems as far as the factual things that happened here are concerned.’
‘Hm.’ Møller placed a hand behind Harry’s elbow. ‘Let’s take a little walk.’
They strolled down the road. It was an area with small houses, small gardens and blocks of flats at the end. Some children, their faces red with effort, pedalled past them on their way up to the police cars with the sweeping blue lights. Møller waited until they were well out of the others’ hearing.
‘You don’t seem particularly happy that we’ve caught Ellen’s killer,’ he said.
‘Well, depends what you mean by happy. First of all, we don’t know if it
is
Sverre Olsen yet. The DNA tests —’
‘The DNA tests will show it’s him. What’s up, Harry?’
‘Nothing, boss.’
Møller stopped. ‘Really?’
Møller inclined his head towards the house. ‘Is it because you think Olsen got away too lightly with a quick bullet?’
‘I’m telling you, it’s nothing!’ Harry said with a sudden vehemence. ‘Spit it out!’ Møller bellowed. ‘I just think it’s bloody funny.’
Møller frowned. ‘What’s funny?’
‘An experienced policeman like Waaler . . .’ Harry had lowered his voice. He spoke slowly, stressing every word. ‘. . . deciding to take off alone to talk to and possibly arrest a suspect. It breaks all the written and unwritten rules.’
‘So what are you saying? That Tom Waaler provoked it? Do you think he made Olsen go for his gun so that he could avenge Ellen’s killing? Is that it? Is that why you stood there saying
according to Waaler
this and
according to Waaler
that, precisely as if we in the police don’t trust a colleague’s words? While half the Crime Scene Unit is listening?’
They glared at each other. Møller was almost as tall as Harry.
‘I’m just saying it’s bloody funny,’ Harry said, turning away. ‘That’s all.’
‘That’s enough, Harry! I don’t know what made you come out here after Waaler or whether you suspected that something was going to happen, but I know that I don’t want to hear any more about it. I don’t want to hear another damned word insinuating anything. Understood?’
Harry’s eyes lingered on the Olsen family’s yellow house. It was smaller than the other houses and it didn’t have the same high hedge around it as the rest in this quiet-afternoon residential street. The other hedges made this ugly, Eternit-cladded home seem unprotected. The neighbouring houses seemed to be cold-shouldering it. There was the acidic smell of bonfires, and the distant metallic voice of the commentator from Bjerke trotting track came and went with the wind.
Harry shrugged. ‘Sorry. I . . . you know.’
Møller put his hand on his shoulder.
‘She was the best. I know that, Harry.’
T
HE OLD MAN WAS READING
A
FTENPOSTEN
. H
E WAS DEEPLY
engrossed, studying the form for the trotting races when his attention was caught by the waitress standing by his table.
‘Hello,’ she said, putting the large glass in front of him. As usual, he didn’t answer, merely observed her as she counted his change. Her age was indefinable, but he guessed somewhere between thirty-five and forty. And she looked as if the years had been as hard to her as to the clientele she served. But she had a nice smile. Could knock back a drink or two. She left and he downed the first swig of his beer as his eyes wandered round the room.
He looked at his watch. Then he got up, went over to the coin-operated phones at the back of the room, deposited three one-krone coins, punched in the number and waited. After three rings the phone was picked up.
‘Juul.’
‘Signe?’
‘Yes.’
He could hear from her voice that she was already frightened, she knew who was ringing. This was the sixth time, so perhaps she had worked out the pattern and knew he would ring today.
‘This is Daniel,’ he said.
‘Who is that? What do you want?’ Her breath came in quick, successive pants.
‘I just told you, it’s Daniel. I only want you to repeat what you said years ago. Do you remember?’
‘Please stop this. Daniel is dead.’
‘Until death us do part, Signe. Until
death
us do part.’
‘I’ll phone the police.’
He put down the receiver. Then he donned his hat and coat and walked slowly out into the sunshine. In Sankthanshaugen Park the first buds had appeared. It wouldn’t be long now.
R
AKEL
’
S LAUGHTER PENETRATED THE CONSTANT BUZZ OF
voices, cutlery and busy waiters in the packed restaurant.
‘. . . and I was almost scared when I saw that there was a message on the answerphone,’ Harry said. ‘You know that small flashing eye. And then your voice of authority.’
He lowered his voice into a deep key.
‘
This is Rakel. Dinner at eight on Friday. Don’t forget, nice suit and wallet
. Helge was scared out of his wits. I had to give him two millet cobs before he calmed down.’
‘I
didn’t
say that!’ she protested between bursts of laughter. ‘It was similar.’
‘No, it wasn’t! And it was your fault. It was the message you’ve got on your answerphone.’
She tried to find the same deep key:
‘This is Hole. Speak to me
. That is just so . . . so . . .’
‘Harry-like?’
‘Exactly.’
It had been a perfect dinner, a perfect evening, and now it was time to ruin it, Harry thought.
‘Meirik has given me my orders. I have to go to Sweden on an undercover assignment,’ he said, fidgeting with his glass of Farris water. ‘Six months. I’m leaving after the weekend.’
‘Oh.’
He was surprised when he didn’t see a reaction register on her face.
‘I rang Sis and my father and told them earlier today,’ he went on. ‘My father spoke. He even wished me good luck.’
‘That’s nice.’ She gave him a fleeting smile and busied herself with the dessert menu.
‘Oleg will miss you,’ she said in a low voice.
He looked at her, but couldn’t catch her eye.
‘And what about you?’ he asked.
A wry smile flitted across her face.
‘They’ve got Banana Split à la Szechuan,’ she said.
‘Order two.’
‘I’ll miss you too,’ she said and her eyes found the next page of the menu.