The Redeemer (11 page)

Morning turned to afternoon and it was dusk when an open jeep arrived. The Serbs in the tent rushed out and saluted. He knew the man in the passenger seat had to be the commanding officer – 'the rock with the gentle voice' as he was called. At the back of the jeep sat a man in civilian clothing with a bowed head. The jeep halted right in front of their unit and since he was in the first row, he heard the commanding officer ask the civilian to look at the prisoners of war. He recognised the civilian at once when he reluctantly raised his head. He was from Vukovar, the father of a boy at his school. The father scanned the lines of men, reached him, but there was no sign of recognition and he moved on. The commander sighed, stood up in the jeep and yelled over the rain, not using the gentle voice: 'Which of you goes under the code name of the little redeemer?'

No one in the unit moved.

'Are you frightened to step forward,
mali spasitelj
? You who blew up twelve of our tanks and deprived our women of their husbands and made Serbian children fatherless?'

He waited.

'I thought so. Which of you is Bobo?'

Still no one moved.

The commander looked at the civilian, who pointed a trembling finger at Bobo in the second row.

'Come forward,' the commander shouted.

Bobo walked the few steps to the jeep and the driver, who had got out and was standing beside the vehicle. When Bobo stood to attention and saluted, the driver knocked his cap into the mud.

'We have been given to understand on the radio that the little redeemer is under your command,' the commander said. 'Please point him out to me.'

'I've never heard of any redeemer,' Bobo said.

The commander raised his gun and struck him. A red stream of blood issued from Bobo's nose.

'Quick. I'm getting wet and food is ready.'

'I am Bobo, a captain in the Croatian ar—'

The commander nodded to the driver, who snatched Bobo's hair and turned his face to the rain, washing the blood from his nose and mouth down into the red neckerchief.

'Idiot!' said the commander. 'There is no Croatian army here, just traitors! You can choose to be executed right now or save us time. We'll find him whatever happens.'

'And you'll execute us whatever happens,' Bobo groaned.

'Of course.'

'Why?'

The commander went through the motions of loading his gun. Raindrops fell from the gunstock. He placed the barrel against Bobo's temple. 'Because I'm a Serbian officer. And a man has to respect his work. Are you ready to die?'

Bobo shut his eyes; raindrops hung from his eyelashes.

'Where is the little redeemer? I'll count to three, then I'll shoot. One . . .'

'I am Bobo—'

'Two!'

'—captain in the Croatian army. I—'

'Three!'

Even in the pouring rain the dry click sounded like an explosion.

'Sorry, I must have forgotten to load the magazine,' the commander said.

The driver passed the commander a magazine. He thrust it into the handle, loaded and raised the pistol again.

'Last chance! One!'

'I . . . my . . . unit is—'

'Two!'

'—the first infantry battalion in . . . in—'

'Three!'

Another dry click. The father in the back seat sobbed.

'Goodness me! Empty magazine. Shall we try it with some of those nice shiny bullets in?'

Magazine out, new one in, load.

'Where is the little redeemer? One!'

Bobo mumbled the Lord's Prayer: '
Oče naš
. . .'

'Two!'

The skies opened, the rain beat down with a roar as though in a desperate attempt to stop what they were doing. He couldn't stand it any more, the sight of Bobo; he opened his mouth to scream that he was the little redeemer, he was the one they wanted, not Bobo, just him, they could have his blood. But at that moment Bobo's gaze swept across and past him and he could see the wild, intense prayer in it, saw him shake his head. Then Bobo's body jerked as the bullet cut the connection between body and soul, and he saw his eyes snuff out and life drain away.

'You,' shouted the commander, pointing to one of the men in the first row. 'Your turn. Come here!'

The young Serbian officer who had shot the lieutenant ran over.

'There's some shooting up at the hospital,' he shouted.

The commander swore and waved to the driver. The next moment the engine started with a roar and the jeep vanished in the gloom. But not before he had told them there was no reason for the Serbs to worry. There were no Croats in the hospital in a position to shoot. They didn't have any weapons.

They had left Bobo where he lay, face down in the black mud. And when it was so dark that the Serbs in the tent could no longer see them, he crept forward, bent over the dead captain, loosened the knot and took the red neckerchief.

8
Tuesday, 16 December. The Mealtime.

I
T WAS EIGHT O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, AND THE DAY THAT
would go down as the coldest 16 December in Oslo for twenty-four years was still as dark as night. Harry left the police station after signing out the key to Tom Waaler's flat with Gerd. He walked with upturned coat collar, and when he coughed the sound seemed to disappear into cotton wool, as though the cold had made the air heavy and dense.

People in the early-morning rush hurried along the pavements. They couldn't get indoors quickly enough whereas Harry took long, slow steps, bracing his knees in case the rubber soles of his Doc Martens didn't grip the packed ice.

When he let himself into Tom Waaler's centrally positioned bachelor flat the sky behind Ekeberg Ridge was growing lighter. The flat had been sealed off in the weeks following Waaler's death, but the inquiry had not thrown up any leads pointing to other potential arms smugglers. At least that was what the Chief Superintendent had said when he informed them that the case would be given a lower priority because of 'other pressing investigative tasks'.

Harry switched on the light in the living room and once again noticed that dead people's homes had a silence all of their own. On the wall in front of the gleaming, black leather furniture hung an enormous plasma TV with metre-high speakers on each side, part of the surround-sound system in the flat. There were a lot of pictures on the walls with blue cube-like patterns. Rakel called it ruler-and-compass art.

He went into the bedroom. Grey light filtered through the window. The room was tidy. On the desk there was a computer screen, but he couldn't see a tower anywhere. They must have taken it away to check it for evidence. However, he hadn't seen it among the evidence at HQ. Although, of course, he had been denied access to the case. The official explanation was that he was under investigation by SEFO, the independent police investigation authority, for the murder of Waaler. Yet he could not get the idea out of his head that someone was not happy about every stone being turned over.

Harry was about to leave the bedroom when he heard it.

The deceased's flat was no longer quiet.

A sound, a distant ticking made his skin tingle and the hairs stand up on his arm. It came from the wardrobe. He hesitated. Then he opened the wardrobe door. On the floor inside was an open cardboard box and he at once recognised the jacket Waaler had been wearing that night in Kampen. At the top, in the jacket, a wristwatch was ticking. The way it did after Tom Waaler had punched his arm through the window in the lift door, into the lift where they were, and the lift had started moving and had cut off his arm. Afterwards they had sat in the lift with his arm between them, wax-like and lifeless, a severed limb off a mannequin, with the bizarre difference that this one was wearing a watch. A watch that ticked, that refused to stop, but was alive, as in the story Harry's father had told him when he was small, the one where the sound of the dead man's beating heart would not stop and in the end drove the killer insane.

It was a distinct ticking sound, energetic, intense. The kind of sound you remember. It was a Rolex watch. Heavy and in all probability exorbitant.

Harry slammed the wardrobe door. Stamped his way to the front door, creating an echo against the walls. Rattled the keys loudly when he locked up and hummed in frenzied fashion until he was in the street and the blissful traffic noise drowned everything else.

At three o'clock shadows were already falling on Kommandør T. I. Øgrims plass no. 4, and lights had started to come on in the windows of the Salvation Army Headquarters. By five o'clock it was dark, and the mercury had dropped to minus fifteen. A few stray snowflakes fell on the roof of the funny little car Martine Eckhoff sat waiting in.

'Come on, Daddy,' she mumbled as she glanced anxiously at the battery gauge. She was not sure how the electric car – which the Army had been presented with by the royal family – would perform in the cold. She had remembered everything before locking the office: had entered information about upcoming and cancelled meetings of the various corps on the home page, revised the duty rosters for the soup bus and the boiling pot in Egertorget, and checked the letter to the Office of the Prime Minister about the annual Christmas performance at Oslo Concert Hall.

The car door opened, and in came the cold and a man with thick white hair beneath his uniform cap and the brightest blue eyes Martine had seen. At any rate, on anyone over sixty. With some difficulty he arranged his legs in the cramped footwell between seat and dashboard.

'Let's go then,' he said, brushing snow off the flash that told everyone he was the highest-ranking Salvation Army officer in Norway. He spoke with the cheeriness and effortless authority that is natural to people who are used to their commands being obeyed.

'You're late,' she said.

'And you're an angel.' He stroked her cheek with the outside of his hand and his blue eyes were bright with energy and amusement. 'Let's hurry now.'

'Daddy . . .'

'One moment.' He rolled down the car window. 'Rikard!'

A young man was standing in front of the entrance to the Citadel, which was beside, and under the same roof as, Headquarters. He was startled and rushed over to them at once, knock-kneed with his arms pressed into his sides. He slipped, almost fell, but flapped his arms and regained balance. On reaching the car, he was already out of breath.

'Yes, Commander.'

'Call me David, like everyone else, Rikard.'

'Alright, David.'

'But not every sentence, please.'

Rikard's eyes jumped from Commander David Eckhoff to his daughter Martine and back again. He ran two fingers across his perspiring top lip. Martine had often wondered how it was that someone could sweat so much in one particular area regardless of weather and wind conditions, but especially when he sat next to her during a church service, or anywhere else, and whispered something that was supposed to be funny and might have been just that, had it not been for the poorly disguised nervousness, the rather too intense nearness – and, well, the sweaty top lip. Now and then, when Rikard was sitting close to her and all was quiet, she heard a rasping sound as he ran his fingers across his mouth. Because, in addition to producing sweat, Rikard Nilsen also produced stubble, an unusual abundance of stubble. He could arrive at Headquarters in the morning with a face like a baby's bottom, but by lunch his white skin would have taken on a blue shimmer, and she had often noticed that when he came to meetings in the evening he had shaved again.

'I'm teasing you, Rikard,' David Eckhoff smiled.

Martine knew there was no bad intention behind them, these games of her father's, but sometimes he seemed unable to see that he was bullying people.

'Oh, right,' Rikard said, forcing a laugh. He stooped. 'Hello, Martine.'

'Hello, Rikard,' Martine said, pretending to be concentrating on the battery gauge.

'I wonder whether you could do me a favour,' the commander said. 'There is so much ice on the roads now and the tyres on my car don't have studs. I should have changed them, but I have to go to the Lighthouse—'

'I know,' Rikard said with zeal. 'You have a lunch meeting with the Minister for Social Affairs. We're hoping for lots of press coverage. I was talking to the head of PR.'

David Eckhoff sent him a patronising smile. 'Good to hear you keep up, Rikard. The point is that my car is here in the garage and I would have liked to see studded tyres mounted by the time I return. You know—'

'Are the tyres in the boot?'

'Yes. But only if you have nothing more pressing on. I was on the point of ringing Jon. He said he could—'

'No, no,' Rikard said, shaking his head with vigour. 'I'll fix them right away. Trust me, er . . . David.'

'Are you sure?'

Rikard looked at the commander, bewildered. 'That you can trust me?'

'That you haven't got anything more pressing on?'

'Of course, this is a nice job. I like working on cars and . . . and . . .'

'Changing tyres?'

Rikard swallowed and nodded as the commander beamed.

As he wound up the window and they turned out of the square, Martine said that she thought it was wrong of him to exploit Rikard's obliging nature.

'Subservience, I suppose you mean,' her father answered. 'Relax, my dear, it's a test, nothing more.'

'A test? Of selflessness or fear of authority?'

'The latter,' the commander said with a chortle. 'I was talking to Rikard's sister, Thea, and she happened to tell me that Rikard is struggling to finish the budget for tomorrow's deadline. If so, he should prioritise that and leave this to Jon.'

'And then? Perhaps Rikard is being kind?'

'Yes, he is kind, and clever. Hard-working and serious. I want to be sure he has the backbone and the courage that an important post in management requires.'

'Everyone says Jon will get the post.'

David Eckhoff looked down at his hands with an imperceptible smile. 'Do they? By the way, I appreciate your standing up for Rikard.'

Martine did not take her eyes off the road, but felt her father's eyes on her as he continued: 'Our families have been friends for many years, you know. They're good people. With a solid foundation in the Army.'