The Redbreast hh-3

by Jo Nesbo

  Nevertheless, it was her he was thinking about right now. He should have been there, with her. A warm, familiar body against his back, an arm round him. Yes, a little warmth after all that coldness.

  He looked at his watch again. He could say the supper had finished early and he had decided to drive home. Not only that, she would be happy. She absolutely hated being on her own at night in that big house.

  He lay there listening to the sounds coming from the neighbouring room.

  Then he got up and quickly began to dress.

  The old man is no longer old. And he is dancing. It is a slow waltz and she has rested her cheek against his neck. They have been dancing for a long time, they are sweaty and her skin is so hot it burns against his. He can feel her smiling. He wants to continue dancing like this, to go on simply holding her until the building burns down, until time stands still, until they can open their eyes and see that they have come to a different place.

  She whispers something, but the music is too loud.

  'What?' he says, bending his head. She places her lips against his ear.

  'You have to wake up,' she says.

  He thrust open his eyes. He blinked in the dark before seeing his breath hang rigid and white in front of him. He hadn't heard the car arrive. He turned over, gave a low groan and tried to pull his arms from underneath him. It was the noise of the garage door that had awoken him. He heard the car revving up and just caught the blue Volvo being swallowed up by the dark garage. His right arm had gone to sleep. In a few seconds the man would come out again, stand in the light, close the garage door and then… it would be too late.

  The old man fumbled desperately with the zip on the sleeping-bag and pulled out his left arm. The adrenaline was coursing through his veins, but sleep wouldn't let go, like a layer of cotton wool muffling all the sounds and preventing him from seeing clearly. He heard the sound of the car door being closed.

  Now he had both arms out of the sleeping-bag and fortunately the starlit sky gave him enough light quickly to locate the rifle and put it in position. Hurry, hurry! He rested his cheek against the cold rifle butt.

  He squinted through the sights. Blinked, couldn't see a thing. With trembling fingers he took off the cloth he had wrapped around the sights to keep the frost off the lens. That's it! Rested his cheek against the butt again. What now? The garage was out of focus, he must have moved the rangefinder. He heard the bang of the garage door as it was closed. He twisted the rangefinder and the man below came into focus. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a wool coat and standing with his back to him. The old man blinked twice. The dream still hung like a thin mist in front of his eyes.

  He wanted to wait until the man turned, until he could establish beyond all doubt that he was the right one. His finger curled around the trigger, pressed it carefully. It would have been easier with the weapon he had trained on for years, when the trigger pressure had been in his blood and all the movements had been automatic. He concentrated on his breathing. Killing someone is not difficult. Not if you have trained to do it. At the opening of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 two newly recruited companies had stood fifty metres apart and fired off round after round at each other without anyone being hit-not because they were bad marksmen, but because they had aimed above one another's heads. They simply had not been able to cross the threshold to killing another person. But when you have done it once…

  The man in front of the garage turned. He seemed to be looking directly at the old man. It was him, no doubt about it. His upper body almost filled the whole of the rifle sights. The mist in the old man's head was beginning to disperse. He held his breath and increased the pressure on the trigger slowly and calmly. The first shot had to hit because it was pitch-black away from the circle of light by the garage. Time froze. Bernt Brandhaug was a dead man. The old man's brain was utterly clear now.

  That was why the feeling that he had done something wrong came a thousandth of a second before he knew what it was. The trigger wouldn't move. The old man pressed harder, but the trigger wouldn't budge. The safety catch. The old man knew it was too late. He found the safety catch with his thumb, flicked it open. Then he stared through the sights at the empty cone of light. Brandhaug was gone, was walking towards the front door on the other side of the house, facing the road.

  The old man blinked. His heart was beating against the inside of his ribs like a hammer. He let the air out of his aching lungs. He had fallen asleep. He blinked again. His surroundings seemed to be swimming in a kind of haze now. He had failed. He punched the ground with his clenched fist. It wasn't until the first hot tear fell on to the back of his hand that he realised he was crying.

  73

  Klippan, Sweden. 10 May 2000.

  Harry woke up.

  It took a second before he knew where he was. After he had let himself into the flat the first thing that had occurred to him was that it would be impossible to sleep. There was only a thin wall and a single pane of glass separating the bedroom from the busy road outside. But as soon as the supermarket on the other side of the road had closed for the night, the place seemed to go dead. Hardly a car had passed and the local population seemed to have been swallowed up.

  In the supermarket Harry had bought a pizza grandiosa which he heated in the oven. He thought how odd it was to be sitting in Sweden, eating Italian food made in Norway. Afterwards, he switched on the dusty TV which was standing on a beer crate in the corner. There was obviously something wrong with the TV because all the people's faces had this strange green shimmer. He sat watching a documentary. A girl had put together a personal account of her brother, who had spent her entire childhood in the 1970s travelling the world and sending her letters. From the homeless milieu in Paris, a kibbutz in Israel, a train journey through India and the verge of despair in Copenhagen. It had been made very simply. A few film-clips, but mostly stills, a voiceover and a strangely melancholic, sad story. He must have dreamed about it because when he woke up the characters and places were still playing on his retina.

  The sound that had woken him came from the coat he had left hanging over the kitchen chair. The high-pitched bleeps bounced off the walls of the bare room. He had switched on the electric panel radiator to full, but he was still freezing under the thin duvet. He placed his feet on the cold lino and took the mobile phone out of his inside coat pocket.

  'Hello?'

  No answer.

  'Hello?'

  All he could hear at the other end was breathing. 'Is that you, Sis?'

  She was the only person he could immediately think of who had his number and who might conceivably ring him in the middle of the night.

  'Is something the matter? With Helge?'

  He'd had doubts about giving the bird to Sis, but she had seemed so happy and had promised she would take good care of it. But it wasn't Sis. She didn't breathe like that. And she would have answered.

  'Who is it?'

  Still no answer.

  He was about to hang up when there was a little whimper. The breathing began to quiver; it sounded as if the person at the other end was going to cry. Harry sat down on the sofa bed. In the gap between the thin blue curtains he could see the neon sign of the ICA supermarket.

  Harry eased a cigarette out of the packet on the coffee table beside the sofa, lit it and lay back. He inhaled deeply as he heard the quivering breathing change into low sobbing.

  'Don't cry now,' he said.

  A car passed outside. Had to be a Volvo, Harry thought. Harry covered his legs with the duvet. Then he told the story about the girl and her elder brother, more or less as he remembered it. When he had finished she wasn't crying any more and right after he said goodnight, the line was cut.

  When the mobile phone rang again it was past 8.00 and light outside. Harry found it under the duvet, between his legs. It was Meirik. He sounded stressed.

  'Come back to Oslo immediately,' he said. 'Looks like that Marklin rifle of yours has been used.'


  Part Seven

  BLACK CLOAK

  74

  Rikshospital. 10 May 2000.

  Harry recognised Bernt Brandhaug at once. He had a broad smile on his face and was staring at Harry with wide-open eyes. 'Why's he smiling?' Harry asked.

  'Don't ask me,' Klemetsen said. 'The facial muscles go stiff and people have all sorts of weird expressions. Now and then we have parents here who can't recognise their own children because they've changed so much.'

  The autopsy table stood in the middle of the room. Klemetsen removed the sheet so they could see the remains of the body. Halvorsen did a swift about-turn. He had rejected Harry's offer of menthol cream before they went in. As the room temperature in Autopsy Room No. 4 in the forensics department at the Rikshospital was twelve degrees, the smell wasn't the worst thing. Halvorsen couldn't stop retching.

  'Agreed,' Knut Klemetsen said. 'He's not a pretty sight.'

  Harry nodded. Klemetsen was a good pathologist and a considerate man. He was aware that Halvorsen was new and didn't want to embarrass him. Brandhaug looked no worse than most bodies. In other words, he looked no worse than the twins who had lain in water for a week, the eighteen-year-old who had crashed at 200 kph escaping from the police or the junkie who had set fire to herself, sitting naked except for a quilted anorak. Harry had seen most things and as far as his top ten nasties were concerned, Bernt Brandhaug was well out of the running. But one thing was clear: for a bullet through the back Bernt Brandhaug looked horrific. The gaping exit wound in his chest was big enough for Harry to stick his fist in.

  'So the bullet entered through his back?' Harry said.

  'Right between his shoulder-blades, angled downwards. It smashed the vertebral column on entry and the sternum on its way out. As you can see, parts of the sternum are missing. They found traces of it on the car seat.'

  'On the car seat?'

  'Yes, he had just opened the garage door, probably on his way to work, and the bullet went through him at an angle, through the front and the rear windscreens, and lodged in the wall at the back of the garage, no less.'

  "What kind of bullet could it be?' asked Halvorsen, who seemed to have recovered.

  'The ballistics experts will have to answer that one,' Klemetsen said. 'But its performance was like a cross between a dumdum and a tunnel drill. The only place I have ever seen anything like this was when I was working on a UN assignment in Croatia in 1991.'

  A Singapore bullet,' Harry said. 'They found the remains embedded half a centimetre into the wall. The cartridge they found in the trees nearby was the same kind as the one I found in Siljan last winter. That was why they contacted me straight away. What else can you tell us, Knut?'

  There wasn't much. He said that the autopsy had already been carried out, with Kripos present as required by law. The cause of death was obvious and otherwise there were only two points he considered worthy of mention-there were traces of alcohol in Brandhaug's blood and vaginal secretions had been found under the nail of his right middle finger.

  'His wife's?' Halvorsen asked.

  'Forensics will establish that,' Klemetsen said, looking at the young policeman over his glasses. 'If they think it necessary. There may not be any need to ask her that sort of thing now, unless you consider it relevant for the investigation.' Harry shook his head.

  They drove up Sognsveien and then up Peder Ankers vei before arriving at Brandhaug's house.

  'Ugly house,' Halvorsen said.

  They rang the bell and some time passed before a heavily made-up woman in her fifties opened the door. 'Elsa Brandhaug?’

  ‘I'm her sister. What's it about?' Harry showed his ID.

  'More questions?' the sister asked with suppressed anger in her voice. Harry nodded and knew more or less what was about to come.

  'Honestly! She's completely worn out and it won't get her husband back, all your -'

  'I apologise, but we're not thinking about her husband,' Harry interrupted politely. 'He's dead. We're thinking about the next victim. We're hoping no one else will have to go through what she is experiencing now.'

  The sister stood there with her mouth open, unsure how she should continue her sentence. Harry helped her out of her quandary by asking if they should take off their shoes before entering.

  Fru Brandhaug didn't seem as worn out as the sister would have had them believe. She was sitting on the sofa staring into thin air, but Harry noticed the knitting protruding from under a cushion. Not that there was anything wrong with knitting when your husband has just been murdered. On reflection, Harry thought it was even quite natural. Something familiar to cling to while the rest of the world crashed around your ears.

  'I'm leaving tonight,' she said. 'For my sister's.’

  ‘I understand the police will be here standing guard until further notice,' Harry said. 'In case…'

  'In case they're after me too,' she said with a nod.

  'Do you think they are?' Halvorsen asked. 'And if so, who is "they"?'

  She shrugged her shoulders. Stared out of the window at the pale daylight coming into the room.

  I know Kripos have been here and asked you about this,' Harry said. 'But I was wondering if you knew whether your husband was receiving any threats after the newspaper article in yesterday's Dagbladet!

  'No one rang here,' she said. 'But then you can only find my name in the telephone book. That was how Bernt wanted it. You'll have to ask the Foreign Office if anyone rang.'

  'We have done,' Halvorsen said, briefly exchanging glances with Harry. 'We're trying to trace the calls received by his office yesterday.'

  Halvorsen asked several questions about any possible enemies her husband might have had, but she didn't have a lot to help them with.

  Harry sat down and listened for a while until he suddenly had an idea. He asked, 'Were there absolutely no phone calls yesterday?'

  'Yes, there probably were,' she said. 'A couple, anyway.'

  'Who phoned?'

  'My sister. Bernt. And some opinion poll or other, if I remember correctly.'

  'What did they ask about?'

  'I don't know. They asked to speak to Bernt. They've got lists of names, haven't they. Along with your age and gender…’

  ‘They asked to speak to Bernt Brandhaug, did they?’

  ‘Yes…'

  'They don't use names for opinion polls. Did you hear any noise in the background?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'They usually work from those open plan offices with lots of other people.'

  'There was something,' she said, 'but…’

  ‘But?'

  'Not the kind of noise you're thinking of. It was… different.’

  ‘When did you receive this call?'

  'At about midday, I think. I said he was coming home in the afternoon. I had forgotten Bernt had to go to Larvik for a meal with the Exports Council.'

  'Since Bernt's name is not in the telephone directory, did it occur to you that it might have been someone calling everyone called Brandhaug to find out where Bernt lived? And to find out when he was coming home?'

  'I don't follow you…'

  'Opinion pollsters don't phone a man of working age at home in the middle of the working day' Harry turned to Halvorsen.

  'Check with Telenor to see if you can get hold of the number they rang from.'

  'Excuse me, fru Brandhaug,' Halvorsen said. 'I noticed that you have a new Ascom ISDN telephone out in the hallway. I've got the same setup myself. The last ten calls are stored in the memory with number and time. May I…?'

  Harry sent Halvorsen an approving look before he got to his feet. Fru Brandhaug's sister accompanied him into the hallway.

  'Bernt was old-fashioned in some ways,' fru Brandhaug told Harry with a crooked smile. 'But he liked buying modern things when they came out. Telephones and that sort of thing.'

  'How old-fashioned was he with regard to fidelity, fru Brandhaug?'

  Her head shot up.

  'I thought we coul
d deal with this one while we were alone,' Harry said. 'Kripos checked out what you told them earlier today. Your husband wasn't at any meeting with the Exports Council in Larvik yesterday. Did you know that the Foreign Office has a room at the Continental at its disposal?'

  'No.'

  'My boss in the Secret Service tipped me off about it this morning. It turns out that your husband checked in there yesterday afternoon. We don't know whether he was alone, but of course you begin to get certain ideas when a husband lies to his wife and goes to a hotel.'

  Harry studied her face as it went through a metamorphosis from fury to despair to resignation to… laughter. It sounded like low weeping.

  'I really shouldn't be surprised,' she said. 'If you absolutely have to know, he was… very modern in that area too. Though I fail to see what it has to do with the case.'

  'It might have given a jealous husband a motive for killing him,' Harry said.

  'It gives me a motive too, herr Hole. Have you considered that? When we lived in Nigeria a contract killing cost two hundred Norwegian kroner.' She laughed the same wounded laugh. 'I thought you said the motive was the statement that appeared in Dagbladet!

  'We're covering all the options.'

  'As a rule they were women he met through work,' she said. 'Of course, I don't know everything that went on, but I caught him red-handed once. And then I saw the pattern and how he had been doing it. But murder?' She shook her head. 'You don't shoot anyone for that sort of thing nowadays, do you?'

  She looked at Harry, who didn't know how to respond. Through the glass door to the entrance hall he could hear Halvorsen's deep voice. Harry cleared his throat: