The Redbreast hh-3

by Jo Nesbo

  'Is that Harry Hole?' It was a woman's voice. She sounded out of breath. Or terrified. 'That's me.'

  'This is Signe Juul. You have to help me, Inspector Hole. He's going to kill me.'

  Harry could hear barking in the background. 'Who's going to kill you, fru Juul?'

  'He's on his way here now. I know it's him. He… he…'

  'Try to stay calm, fru Juul. What are you talking about?'

  'He's distorted his voice, but this time I recognised it. He knew that I had stroked Olaf Lindvig's hair at the field hospital. That was when I knew. My God, what shall I do?'

  'Are you alone?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'I'm alone. I'm totally, totally alone. Do you understand?'

  The barking in the background had become frenzied now. 'Can't you run over to your neighbour's and wait for us there, fru Juul? Who -'

  'He'll find me! He finds me everywhere.'

  She was hysterical. Harry placed his hand over the receiver and asked Linda to call the central switchboard to tell them to send the closest patrol car available to fru Juul in Irisveien in Berg. Then he talked to Signe Juul and hoped she wouldn't notice his own agitation.

  'If you don't go out, then at least lock every door, fru Juul. Who -'

  'You don't understand,' she said. 'He… he…' Beep. The engaged signal. The line was broken.

  'Fuck! Sorry, Linda. Tell them the car is urgent. And they have to be careful. There may be an armed intruder.'

  Harry rang directory enquiries, got Juul's number and dialled it. Still engaged. Harry threw the phone over to Linda.

  'If Meirik asks after me, tell him I'm on my way to Even Juul's house.'

  78

  Irisveien. 11 May 2000.

  When Harry swung into Irisveien he immediately saw the police car outside Juul's house. The quiet street with the timber houses, the puddles of melted ice, the blue light slowly turning, two inquisitive children on bicycles-it was like a repetition of the scene outside Sverre Olsen's house. Harry prayed the similarities would stop there.

  He parked, got out of the Escort and walked slowly towards the house. As he closed the door behind him he heard someone come out on to the stairs.

  'Weber,' Harry said in surprise. 'Our paths cross again.'

  'Indeed they do.'

  'I didn't know you were on patrol duty too.'

  'You know bloody well I'm not. But Brandhaug lives nearby and we had only just got into the car when the message came through on the radio.'

  'What's going on?'

  'Your guess is as good as mine. There's no one at home. But the door was open.'

  'Have you had a look around?’

  ‘From cellar to loft.'

  'Strange. The dog isn't here, either, as far as I can see.'

  'Dogs and people, all gone. But it looks as if someone has been in the cellar because the window in the door there is smashed.'

  'Right,' Harry said, looking across Irisveien. He caught sight of a tennis court between the houses.

  'She may have gone to one of the neighbours,' Harry said. 'I asked her to.'

  Weber followed Harry into the hallway where a young police officer was standing looking at the mirror above the telephone table.

  'Well, Moen, can you see any signs of intelligent life?' Weber asked sarcastically.

  Moen turned and gave Harry a brief nod.

  'Well,' Moen said. 'I don't know if it's intelligent or merely weird.' He pointed to the mirror. The other two came closer. 'Well, I'll be blowed,' Weber said.

  The large red letters appeared to have been written with lipstick.

  GOD IS MY JUDGE.

  Harry's mouth felt like the inside of orange peel. The glass in the front door rattled as it was torn open. 'What are you doing here?' asked the silhouette standing in front of them with his back to the light. 'And where's Burre?' It was Even Juul.

  Harry sat at the kitchen table with a clearly very worried Even Juul. Moen did the rounds of the neighbours, searching for Signe Juul and asking if anyone had seen anything. Weber had pressing things to do on the Brandhaug case and had to go off in the patrol car, but Harry promised Moen a lift.

  'She usually told me when she was going out,' Even Juul said. 'Tells me, I mean.'

  'Is that her writing on the mirror in the hall?'

  'No,' he said. 'I don't think so, anyway'

  'Is it her lipstick?'

  Juul looked at Harry without answering.

  'She was terrified when I talked to her on the phone,' Harry said. 'She kept saying someone was trying to kill her. Have you any idea who that could have been?'

  'Kill?'

  'That's what she said.'

  'But no one wants to kill Signe.'

  'No?'

  'Are you crazy, man?'

  'Well, in that case, I'm sure you'll understand that I have to ask you if your wife was unstable. Hysterical.'

  Harry wasn't sure that Juul had heard him when Juul shook his head.

  'Fine,' Harry said, getting up. 'You'll have to rack your brains for anything at all that might help us. And you should call all your friends and relatives to see if she has gone there for protection. I have started a search-Moen and I will check the immediate vicinity. For the time being, there's not a lot else we can do.'

  As Harry closed the door behind him, Moen came walking towards him. He was shaking his head.

  'No one even saw a car?' Harry asked.

  At this time of day there are only pensioners and mothers with small children at home.'

  'Pensioners are good at noticing things.'

  'Not this time, apparently. If there was anything remotely worth noticing, that is.'

  Worth noticing. Harry didn't know why, but there was something about Moen's phrasing that resonated at the back of his brain. The children on the bicycles had vanished. He sighed.

  'Let's be off.'

  79

  Police HQ. 11 May 2000.

  Halvorsen was on the telephone when Harry went into the office. He put a finger against his lips to show someone was talking. Harry guessed he was still trying to trace the woman at the Continental, and that could only mean he hadn't had any luck at the Foreign Office. Apart from a pile of case notes on Halvorsen's desk, the office was free of paper. Everything but the Marklin case had been cleared away.

  'No,' Halvorsen said. 'Let me know if you hear anything, OK?' He put down the receiver.

  'Did you get hold of Aune?' Harry asked, dropping down on to his chair.

  Halvorsen nodded and raised two fingers. Two o'clock. Harry consulted his watch. Aune would be there in twenty minutes.

  'Get me a picture of Edvard Mosken,' Harry said, picking up the receiver. He tapped in Sindre Fauke's number and they agreed to meet at three. Then he told Halvorsen about Signe Juul's disappearance.

  'Do you think it has anything to do with the Brandhaug case?' Halvorsen asked.

  'I don't know, but it makes it all the more important that we talk to Aune.'

  'Why's that?'

  'Because this is beginning to look more and more like the work of someone unhinged. So we need an expert.'

  Aune was a big man in many ways. Overweight, almost two metres tall, and he was considered to be the best psychologist in his field. This field was not abnormal psychology, but Aune was a clever man and he had helped Harry on other cases.

  He had a friendly, open face and it had often struck Harry that Aune was actually too human, too vulnerable, too alright to be able to operate on the battlefield of the human psyche without being damaged by it. When Harry asked him about this, Aune had replied that of course he was affected, but then who wasn't?

  Now he was listening attentively to Harry as he spoke. About the slitting of Hallgrim Dale's throat, the murder of Ellen Gjelten and the assassination of Bernt Brandhaug. Harry told him about Even Juul, who thought they should be looking for a soldier who had fought on the Russian Front, a theory which may have been strengthened by Brandhaug being killed after the report in Dagbladet.
Finally, he told him about Signe Juul's disappearance.

  Afterwards Aune sat deep in thought. He grunted as he alternated between nodding and shaking his head.

  'I regret to say that I am not sure I can help you much,' he said. 'The only thing I have to work on is the message on the mirror. It's reminiscent of a calling card and it is quite normal for serial killers, especially after several killings when they begin to feel secure enough to want to up the ante by provoking the police.'

  'Is he a sick man, Aune?'

  'Sick is a relative concept. We're all sick. The question is, what degree of functionality do we have with respect to the rules society sets for desirable behaviour? No actions are in themselves symptoms of sickness. You have to look at the context within which these actions are performed. Most people, for instance, are equipped with an impulse control in the midbrain which attempts to prevent us from killing our fellow creatures. This is just one of the evolutionary qualities with which we are equipped to protect our own species. But if you train long enough to overcome these inhibitions, the inhibition is weakened. As with soldiers, for example. If you or I suddenly began to kill, there is a good chance we would become sick. But that is not necessarily the case if you are a contract killer or a… policeman for that matter.'

  'So, if we're talking about a soldier-someone who has been fighting for either side during a war-the threshold for killing is much lower than with someone else, assuming both are of sound mind?'

  'Yes and no. A soldier is trained to kill in a war situation, and in order for the inhibitions not to kick in, he has to feel that the action of killing is taking place in the same context.'

  'So he must feel he is still fighting a war?'

  'Put simply, yes. But supposing that is the situation, he can continue killing without being sick in a medical sense. No sicker than any normal soldier, at any rate. Then it is just a matter of a divergent sense of reality, and now we're all skating on thin ice.'

  'Why's that?' Halvorsen asked.

  'Who is to say what is true or real, moral or immoral? Psychologists? Courts of law? Politicians?'

  'Right,' said Harry. 'But there are those who do.'

  'Exactly,' Aune said. 'But if you feel that those who have been invested with authority judge you high-handedly or unjustly, in your eyes they lose their moral authority. For instance, if anyone is imprisoned for being a member of a wholly legal party, you look for another judge. You appeal against the sentence to a higher authority, so to speak.'

  '"God is my judge",' Harry said.

  Aune nodded.

  'What do you think that means, Aune?'

  'It might mean that he wants to explain his actions. Despite everything, he feels a need to be understood. Most people do, you know.'

  Harry dropped in at Schroder's on his way to meet Fauke. It wasn't a busy morning and Maja was sitting at the table under the TV with a cigarette and the newspaper. Harry showed her the picture of Edvard Mosken which Halvorsen had managed to produce in an impressively short time, probably via the authority which had issued an international driver's licence to Mosken two years before.

  'I think I've seen that prune face before, yes,' she said. 'But how can I remember where or when? He must have been here a few times since I recognise him. He's not a regular though.'

  'Could anyone else have spoken to him?'

  'Now you're asking me tricky stuff, Harry'

  'Somebody rang from the pay phone here at 12.30 last Monday. I'm not expecting you to remember, but could it have been this person?' Maja shrugged.

  'Of course it could. But it could have been Father Christmas too. You know what it's like, Harry'

  On his way to Vibes gate Harry rang Halvorsen and asked him to get hold of Edvard Mosken.

  'Should I arrest him?'

  'No, no. Check his alibis for the Brandhaug murder and Signe Juul's disappearance today'

  Sindre Fauke's face was grey when he opened the door to Harry.

  'A friend turned up with a bottle of whisky yesterday,' he explained and pulled a face. My body can't take that sort of thing any more. No, if only I were sixty again…'

  He laughed and went to take the whistling coffee pot off the stove.

  'I read about the murder of this man from the Foreign Office,' he shouted from the kitchen. 'It said in the paper that the police are not ruling out the possibility of a link with what he said about Norwegians at the front. Verdens Gang reckons neo-Nazis were behind it. Do you really believe that?'

  'VG might believe that. We don't believe anything and we don't rule out anything either. How's it going with the book?'

  'It's going a bit slowly at this minute. But if I finish it, it will open a few people's eyes. That's what I tell myself, anyway, to get myself motivated on days like today.'

  Fauke put the coffee on the table between them and sank back into the armchair. He had tied a cold cloth round the pot-an old trick he had learned at the front, he explained with a knowing smile. He was obviously hoping Harry would ask him how the trick worked, but Harry didn't have the time.

  'Even Juul's wife has disappeared,' he said.

  'Jesus. Run off?'

  'Don't think so. Do you know her?'

  'I've never met her, but I know a lot about the controversy when Juul was about to get married. She was a nurse at the front and so on. What happened?'

  Harry told him about the telephone call and her disappearance.

  'We don't know any more than that. I was hoping that you knew her and could give me a lead.'

  'Sorry, but…' Fauke stopped to take a sip from his cup of coffee. He seemed to be thinking about something. 'What did you say was written on the mirror?'

  '"God is my judge",' Harry said.

  'Hm.'

  'What are you thinking about?'

  'To be frank, I'm not sure myself,' Fauke said, rubbing his unshaven chin.

  'Come on, say it.'

  'You said that he might want to explain himself, to be understood.’

  ‘Yes?'

  Fauke walked over to the bookcase, pulled out a thick book and began to leaf through.

  'Exactly,' he said. 'Just what I thought.'

  He passed the book to Harry. It was a Bible dictionary.

  'Look under Daniel.'

  Harry's eyes ran down the page until he found the name. '"Daniel. Hebrew. God (El) is my judge".'

  He looked up at Fauke, who had lifted the pot to pour coffee. 'You're looking for a ghost, Inspector Hole.'

  80

  Parkveien, Uranienborg. 11 May 2000.

  Johan Krohn received Harry in his office. The book shelves behind him were crammed with volumes of legal publications, bound in brown leather. They contrasted oddly with the lawyer's childlike face.

  'We meet again,' Krohn said, motioning Harry to take a seat. 'You have a good memory,' Harry said.

  'There's nothing wrong with my memory. Sverre Olsen. You had a strong case there. Shame the court didn't manage to keep to the rule book.'

  'That's not why I've come,' Harry said. 'I've got a favour to ask.'

  'Asking costs nothing,' Krohn said, pressing the tips of his fingers together. He reminded Harry of a child actor playing an adult.

  'I'm looking for a weapon which was imported illegally and I have reason to believe that Sverre Olsen might have been involved in some capacity or other. As your client is dead you are no longer prevented by client confidentiality from providing us with information. It may help us to clear up the murder of Bernt Brandhaug, whom we are fairly positive was shot with precisely this weapon.'

  Krohn gave a sour smile.

  'I would rather you let me decide the boundaries of client confidentiality, officer. There is no automatic assumption that it ceases upon death. And you clearly have not considered the fact that I may regard your coming here to ask for information as somewhat brazen, bearing in mind that the police shot my client?'

  'I'm trying to forget emotions and behave professionally,' Harry said.

&
nbsp; 'Then try a little harder, officer!' Krohn's voice merely became even squeakier when he raised it. 'This is not very professional. In the same way as killing a man in his own home was not very professional.'

  'That was self defence,' Harry said.

  A technicality,' Krohn said. 'He is an experienced policeman. He should have known that Olsen was unstable and he should not have burst in as he did. The policeman should obviously have been prosecuted.'

  Harry couldn't let that go. • 'I agree with you that it's always sad when a criminal goes free on account of a technicality'

  Krohn blinked twice before he realised what Harry meant.

  'Legal technicalities are a different kettle of fish, officer,' he said. 'Taking an oath in court may seem to be a detail, but without legal safeguards -'

  'My rank is inspector.'

  Harry concentrated on speaking softly and slowly:

  'The legal safeguard you're talking about cost my colleague her life. Ellen Gjelten. Tell that to that memory you're so damn proud of. Ellen Gjelten. Twenty-eight years old. The best investigative talent in the Oslo police force. A smashed skull. A very bloody death.'

  Harry stood up and leaned across Krohn's desk, all one metre ninety of him. He could see the Adam's apple in Krohn's scrawny vulture neck bobbing up and down, and for two long seconds Harry allowed himself the luxury of relishing the fear in the young lawyer's eyes. Then Harry dropped his business card on the desk.

  'Ring me when you've decided the extent of your client confidentiality,' he said.

  Harry was half out of the door when Krohn's voice brought him to a halt.

  'He called me just before he died.' Harry turned. Krohn sighed.

  'He was terrified of someone. Sverre Olsen was always frightened. Lonely and very frightened.'

  'Who isn't?' Harry mumbled. Then, 'Did he say who he was frightened of?'

  'The Prince. That was what he called him. The Prince.’

  ‘Did Olsen say why he was frightened?'

  'No, he just said that this Prince was a kind of superior and had ordered him to commit a crime. So he wanted to know how far following orders was a punishable offence. Poor idiot.'