The Redbreast (Harry Hole)

by Jo Nesbo

  At night I dream of Helena. Only of Helena. I have to try to forget. And the Crown Prince did not say one word. It’s unbearable. I think . . .

  97

  Oslo. 17 May 2000.

  HARRY CHECKED HIS WATCH AGAIN. HE FLICKED THROUGH a few more sheets until his eyes fell on a familiar name.

  Schrøder’s. 23 September 1948.

  . . . a business with good prospects. But today what I had long feared happened.

  I was reading the newspaper when I noticed someone standing at my table observing me. I looked up and the blood in my veins froze to ice! He was somewhat run-down, I could see. His clothes were quite worn. He no longer had the erect, rigid bearing I remember. Something about him had gone. But I immediately recognised our old section leader, the man with the cyclops eye.

  ‘Gudbrand Johansen,’ said Edvard Mosken. ‘You’re supposed to have died. In Hamburg, rumour has it.’

  I didn’t know what to say or do. I only knew that the man who sat down in front of me could have me sentenced for treason, or even murder.

  My mouth was completely dry when I was finally able to talk. I said yes, I certainly was alive, and to gain time I told him I had ended up in the military hospital in Vienna with head injuries and a bad foot. What had happened to him? He said he had been repatriated and ended up in the hospital in Sinsen, funnily enough the same one I would have been sent to. Like most of the others he had been given a three-year sentence, and had been let out after serving two and a half.

  We talked a bit about this and that, and after a while I began to relax. I ordered him a beer and talked about the building-supplies business I ran. I told him my opinion: it was best for people like us to start up something on our own since most companies refused to employ ex-Eastern Front men (especially the companies who had co-operated with the Germans during the war).

  ‘What about you?’ he asked.

  I had explained that joining the ‘right side’ had not helped me much. I had still worn a German uniform.

  Mosken sat there the whole time with this half-smile playing on his lips, and in the end he could not hold it back any longer. He told me he had been trying to trace me for a long time, but all the tracks ended in Hamburg. He had almost given up when one day he spotted the name Sindre Fauke in a newspaper article about Resistance men. That had re-kindled his interest; he had found out where Fauke worked and rang. Someone had tipped him off that I was probably at Schrøder’s.

  I tensed up and thought, here it comes. But what he said was utterly different from what I had imagined.

  ‘I never thanked you properly for stopping Hallgrim Dale from shooting me that time. You saved my life, Johansen.’

  I played this down with a shrug and an open-mouthed stare. It was the best I could do.

  Mosken said I had shown myself to be a man of morals when I saved his life because I’d had good reason to wish him dead. If Sindre Fauke’s body had been found, Mosken could have testified that I was probably the murderer. I simply nodded. Then he looked at me and asked if I was frightened of him. I realised that I had nothing to lose by telling him the whole story exactly as it had happened.

  Mosken listened, focused his cyclops eye on me a couple of times to check if I was lying, and occasionally shook his head, but he knew well enough that most was true.

  When I had finished, I ordered two more beers and he told me about himself. His wife had found another man to look after her and the boy while he was in prison. He understood. Perhaps it was best for Edvard Junior too, not to grow up with a traitor as a father. Mosken seemed resigned. He said he wanted to work in transport, but hadn’t got any of the driving jobs he had applied for.

  ‘Buy your own truck,’ I said. ‘You should start up on your own, too.’

  ‘I haven’t got enough money to do that,’ he said, with a quick glance in my direction. I had a vague idea where the conversation was leading. ‘And the banks are not that keen on ex-Eastern Front men. They think we’re all crooks.’

  ‘I’ve saved up some money,’ I said. ‘You can borrow some from me.’

  He refused, but I said the matter was closed.

  ‘I’ll add interest, of course. That goes without saying,’ I said, and then he brightened up. But he was soon serious again and said it could be an expensive time until he really got going. So I assured him the rate of interest wouldn’t be very high, it would be more symbolic. Then I ordered another round of beer and when we had drunk up and were on our way out we shook hands. We had a deal.

  Oslo. 3 August 1950.

  . . . a letter postmarked Vienna in the letterbox. I placed it on the kitchen table in front of me and stared at it. Her name and address were written on the back of the envelope. I had sent a letter to the Rudolf II Hospital in May in the hope that someone might know where Helena was in the world and send it on. In case prying eyes should happen to open the letter I hadn’t written anything that could be dangerous for either of us and, of course, I hadn’t written my real name. And I definitely hadn’t dared hope for an answer. Well, I don’t even know if, deep down, I wanted an answer, not if the answer was the one you might expect. Married and mother of a child. No, I didn’t want that. Even though that was what I had wished her, what I had given my consent to.

  My God, we had been so young. She had only been nineteen. And now, as I held her letter in my hand, it was all suddenly so unreal, as if the neat handwriting on the envelope couldn’t have anything to do with the Helena I had been dreaming of for six years. I opened the letter with trembling fingers, forcing myself to expect the worst. It was a long letter and it is only a few hours now since I read it for the first time, but already I know it by heart.

  Dear Uriah,

  I love you. It is easy to know that I will love you for the rest of my life, but the strange thing is it feels as if I have already loved you for all of my life too. When I received your letter I wept with happiness. It . . .

  Harry went to the kitchen with the manuscript in his hands, found the coffee in the cupboard over the sink and put on the coffee pot while continuing to read. About the happy, though also difficult and painful, reunion at a hotel in Paris. They get engaged the next day.

  From here on, Gudbrand writes less and less about Daniel, and finally it seems as if he has completely disappeared.

  Instead he writes about a couple very much in love who, because of the murder of Christopher Brockhard, still feel their pursuers’ breath down their necks. They have secret trysts in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Helena knows Gudbrand’s new identity, but does she know the whole truth about the murder at the Eastern Front, about the executions at the Fauke farm? It didn’t seem so.

  They get engaged after the Allies have left Austria and in 1955 she leaves the country she is sure will be taken over again by ‘war criminals, anti-Semites and fanaticists who haven’t learned from their mistakes’. They settle in Oslo, where Gudbrand, still using Sindre Fauke’s name, continues to run his small business. The same year they are married by a Catholic priest at a private ceremony in the garden inHolmenkollveien where they have just bought a large, detached house with the money Helena received from selling her sewing business in Vienna. They are happy, Gudbrand writes.

  Harry heard a hiss and to his surprise saw that the pot had boiled over.

  98

  Oslo. 17 May 2000.

  Rikshospital. 1956.

  Helena lost so much blood that her life was in the balance for a while, but fortunately they acted promptly. We lost the child. Naturally, Helena was inconsolable even though I kept repeating that she was young and we would have many more opportunities. The doctor was not so optimistic, however. He said the uterus . . .

  Rikshospital. 12 March 1967.

  A daughter. She is going to be called Rakel. I cried and cried, and Helena stroked my cheek and said God’s ways were . . .

  Harry was back in the sitting room. He placed his hand over his eyes. Why hadn’t he made the connection as soon as he saw the picture
of Helena in Beatrice’s room? Mother and daughter. His mind must have been elsewhere. Probably that was exactly it – his mind was elsewhere. He saw Rakel everywhere: on the street in passing women’s faces, on ten TV channels when he was zapping around, behind the counter in a café. So why would he pay any particular attention to seeing her face in a photograph of a beautiful woman on a wall?

  Should he ring Mosken for confirmation of what Gudbrand Johansen, alias Sindre Fauke, had written? Did he need to? Not now.

  He flicked through the manuscript until he arrived at the entry for 5 October 1999. There were only a few pages left. Harry could feel his palms were sweaty. He felt a trace of the same thing that Rakel’s father had described when he received Helena’s letter – a reluctance to be confronted finally with the inevitable.

  Oslo. 5 October 1999.

  I’m going to die. After all the things I have been through it was curious to find out I was to be given the coup de grâce, as most people are, by a common illness. How will I tell Rakel and Oleg? I walked up Karl Johans gate and felt how dear this life, which I have experienced as worthless ever since Helena’s death, had suddenly become to me. Not because I don’t yearn to be with you again, Helena, but because I have neglected my purpose on earth for so long and now there isn’t much time left. I walked up the same gravel path I did on 13 May 1945. The Crown Prince still hasn’t come out on the balcony to say he understands. He just understands all the others in need. I don’t think he will come. I think he has betrayed us.

  Afterwards I fell asleep against a tree and dreamed a long, strange dream, like a revelation. And when I awoke, my old companion was awake too. Daniel is back. And I know what he wants to do.

  The Ford Escort groaned as Harry brutally forced the gearstick into reverse, first and second gears in succession. And it roared like a wounded beast when he pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor and held it there. A man wearing a festive Østerdal outfit, on his way over the zebra crossing at the intersection between Vibes gate and Bogstadveien, jumped and thus narrowly avoided an almost perfectly treadless rubber-tyre mark on his stockinged leg. In Hedgehaugsveien there was a queue of traffic for the city centre, so Harry drove down the left-hand side of the road with his hand on the horn, hoping oncoming cars would have the sense to swerve out of the way. He had just manoeuvred his way around the verge outside Lorry Kafé when a wall of light blue suddenly filled his entire field of vision. The tram!

  It was too late to stop, so Harry jerked the steering wheel round hard, gave the brake pedal a little squeeze to straighten the back up and bumped across the cobblestones until he crashed into the tram, left side on left side. There was a sharp bang when the wing mirror disappeared, but the sound of the door handle being dragged along the side of the tram was long and piercing.

  ‘Fuck. Fuck!’

  Then he was freed and the wheels spun themselves out of the tram rails and found a grip on the tarmac, propelling him towards the next traffic lights.

  Green, green, amber.

  He drove off at full throttle, still with one hand pressed against the centre of the steering wheel in a vain hope that one paltry car horn would be able to attract attention at 10.15 on 17 May in the centre of Oslo. Then he shrieked, jumped on the brakes and, as the Escort desperately tried to cling to mother earth, empty cassette cases, packets of cigarettes and Harry Hole flew forwards. He hit his head on the wind-screen as the car came to rest. A cheering crowd of children waving flags had streamed out onto the zebra crossing in front of him. Harry rubbed his forehead. The Palace Gardens were right in front of him and the path up to the Palace was black with people. From the open cabriolet in the queue next to him he heard the radio and the familiar live broadcast which was the same every year.

  ‘And now the royal family is waving from the balcony to the procession of children and the crowds which have gathered here in the Palace Square. People are cheering, especially for the popular Crown Prince, who has returned home from the USA. He is of course . . .’

  Harry let the clutch out, accelerated and headed for the kerb in front of the gravel path.

  99

  Oslo. 16 October 1999.

  I HAVE STARTED LAUGHING AGAIN. IT IS DANIEL LAUGHING, of course. I didn’t say that one of the first things he did when he woke up was to call Signe. We used the pay phone at Schrøder’s. And it was so heart-rendingly funny that the tears flowed.

  More planning tonight. The problem is still how to get hold of the weapon I need.

  100

  Oslo. 15 November 1999.

  . . . THE PROBLEM FINALLY SEEMED TO BE SOLVED. HE TURNED up: Hallgrim Dale. Not surprisingly, he had gone to the dogs. I hoped at least he wouldn’t recognise me. He had obviously heard the rumours that I had been killed during the bombing of Hamburg because he thought I was a ghost. He suspected some jiggery-pokery and wanted money to keep his mouth shut. But the Dale I know wouldn’t have been able to keep a secret for all the money in the world. So I saw to it that I was the last person he would talk to. It gave me no pleasure, but I have to confess I felt a certain satisfaction at observing that my old skills were not quite forgotten.

  101

  Oslo. 17 May 2000.

  Oslo. 8 February 2000.

  FOR MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS EDVARD AND I HAVE BEEN meeting six times a year at Schrøder’s. The first Tuesday of every second month, in the morning. We still call it the staff meeting, as we used to do when Schrøder’s was in Youngstorget. I have often wondered what it was that bound Edvard and me together, being as different as we are. Perhaps it is simply a shared fate. We are marked by the same events. We were both at the Eastern Front, we have both lost our wives and our children are grown. I don’t know. The most important thing for me is that I have Edvard’s total loyalty. Naturally, he never forgets that I helped him after the war, but I have also given him a helping hand in later years. Such as at the end of the 1960s, when his drinking and betting on horses got out of control, and when he would have almost lost his entire truck business, had I not paid off his gambling debts.

  No, there is not a lot left of the fine soldier I remember from Leningrad, but in recent years Edvard has at least come to terms with the fact that life is not quite as he had imagined, and he is trying to make the best of it. He concentrates on his horse, and he no longer drinks or smokes; he contents himself with passing on racing tips to me.

  And, speaking of tips, it was him who tipped me off about Even Juul asking whether Daniel could still be alive. The same evening I rang Even and asked him if he had gone senile. But Even told me that a few days ago he had lifted the receiver of an extra telephone they kept in the bedroom and had overheard a man claiming to be Daniel scaring the wits out of his wife. The man on the telephone had said she would hear from him on one of the following Tuesdays. Even had recognised the sounds of a café, and now he had decided to trawl the cafés in Oslo every Tuesday until he found the telephone pest. He knew the police wouldn’t be bothered with such a trivial matter, and he had not said anything to Signe in case she tried to stop him. I had to bite the back of my hand to stop myself from laughing out loud and wished him luck, the old idiot.

  After moving into the flat in Majorstuen I haven’t seen much of Rakel, but we have talked on the telephone. We both seem to have tired of waging war now. I have given up explaining to her what she did to me and her mother when she married that Russian from the old family of Bolsheviks.

  ‘I know you think it was betrayal,’ she says. ‘But it’s a long time ago now. Let’s not talk about it any more.’

  It is not a long time ago. Nothing is a long time ago any more.

  Oleg has asked after me. He is a fine boy, Oleg. I only hope he doesn’t become obstinate and wilful like his mother. She has that from Helena. They are so similar that tears have come into my eyes as I’m writing this.

  I have borrowed Edvard’s chalet for next week. I’ll test out the rifle then. Daniel will be happy.

  Harry hit the kerb with the front wh
eels and the impact recoiled through the car. The Escort leaped inelegantly through the air and suddenly it was on the grass. There were too many people on the path, so Harry drove over the lawn. He lurched between the lake and four young people who had decided to have their breakfast on a blanket in the park. In the mirror he saw the blue flashing light. The crowds were already packed around the guardhouse, so Harry stopped, jumped out of the car and ran towards the barriers around the Palace Square.

  ‘Police!’ Harry shouted as he ploughed his way through the crowds. Those at the front had got up at the crack of dawn to ensure they had a good view of the band and were reluctant to move. As he jumped over the barrier a guardsman tried to stop him, but Harry put his hand to his side, flashed his ID card and staggered on to the open square. The gravel under his feet crunched. He turned his back on the children’s procession, Slemdal kindergarten and Vålerenga youth band, which was at that moment filing under the Palace balcony, with the royal family waving above them, to a terribly out of tune rendition of ‘I’m Just a Gigolo’. He stared at a wall of shiny, smiling faces and red, white and blue flags. His eyes scanned the lines of people: pensioners, photo-snapping uncles, fathers with toddlers on their shoulders, but no Sindre Fauke. No Gudbrand Johansen. No Daniel Gudeson.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck!’

  He shouted more in panic than anything else.

  But there, in front of the barriers, he at least saw a face he knew. Working in civilian clothes, with a walkie-talkie and reflector sunglasses. So he had followed Harry’s advice about giving the Scotsman a miss and supporting the fathers in the police force.