The Redbreast

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘No.’

  Meirik looked at his watch, a lumpen, inelegant steel job Harry guessed he had been given for long and faithful service.

  ‘Then I suggest you do. This is a case for them. Right now I have more pressing —’

  ‘Do you know what a Märklin rifle is, Meirik?’

  Harry watched the POT boss’s eyebrows jump up and down and wondered if it was already too late. He could feel the swish of the windmills.

  ‘Not my business, either, by the way, Hole. You’d better take this up with . . .’

  Kurt Meirik suddenly seemed to realise that he was Hole’s only line manager.

  ‘A Märklin rifle,’ Harry said, ‘is a German semi-automatic hunting rifle which uses 16 mm bullets, bigger than those of any other rifle. It is intended for use on big game hunts, such as for water buffalo or elephants. The first rifle was made in 1970, but only three hundred were made before the German authorities banned the sale of the weapon in 1973. The reason was that the rifle is, with a couple of simple adjustments and Märklin telescopic sights, the ultimate professional murder weapon, and it had already become the world’s most sought after assassination weapon by 1973. Of the three hundred rifles at least one hundred fell into the hands of contract killers and terrorist organisations like Baader Meinhof and the Red Brigade.’

  ‘Hm. Did you say one hundred?’ Meirik passed the print-out back to Harry. ‘That means that two out of three use the gun for what it was intended. Hunting.’

  ‘This is not a weapon for hunting elk or any other kind of hunting common in Norway.’

  ‘Really? Why not?’

  Harry wondered what it was that held Meirik back. Why didn’t he ask him to finish his cigarette and go? And why was he himself so keen to provoke such a reaction? Perhaps it was nothing, perhaps he was just getting old and grumpy. Whatever it was, Meirik was behaving like a well-paid childminder who didn’t dare touch the brat. Harry observed the long column of ash bending towards the floor.

  ‘First of all, hunting is not a millionaire’s sport in Norway. A Märklin rifle with telescopic sights costs around 150,000 Deutschmarks – in other words, the same as a new Mercedes. And every cartridge costs 90 Deutschmarks. Secondly, an elk hit by a 16 mm bullet looks as if it has been in a collision with a train. A pretty messy business.’

  ‘Heh, heh.’ Meirik had obviously decided to change tactics. Now he was leaning back with his hands behind his shiny pate, as a sign that he wouldn’t mind Hole entertaining him for a while yet. Harry stood up, took the ashtray down from the top shelf and returned to his seat.

  ‘Of course the cartridges may belong to some fanatical arms collector who has tested out his new rifle and now keeps it hanging in a glass showcase in a big house somewhere in Norway, never to be used again. But dare we assume that?’ Harry shook his head. ‘I suggest I take a trip up to Skien and have a peep at this place. Besides, I doubt that it was a pro up there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Pros clean up after themselves. Leaving empty cartridges is like leaving a business card. But if it’s an amateur with a Märklin rifle, that doesn’t make me feel any more reassured.’

  Meirik uttered a few hmm-sounds. Then he nodded. ‘Fine. And keep me posted if you find out anything about the Independence Day plans of our neo-Nazis.’

  Harry stubbed out his cigarette. Venice, Italy, it said on the side of the gondola-shaped ashtray.

  27

  Linz. 9 June 1944.

  THE FAMILY OF FIVE GOT OFF THE TRAIN, AND THEY HAD the compartment to themselves. When they slowly moved off again, Helena had already taken her seat by the window, although she couldn’t see a great deal in the dark, only the contours of buildings adjacent to the train. He sat opposite and studied her with a little smile playing on his lips.

  ‘You Austrians are good at observing the blackout,’ he said. ‘I can’t see a single light.’

  She sighed, ‘We’re good at doing what we’re told.’

  She looked at her watch. It was almost two o’clock. ‘The next town is Salzburg,’ she said. ‘It’s close to the German border. And then . . .’

  ‘Munich, Zürich, Basle, France and Paris. You’ve said that three times already.’

  He leaned forward and squeezed her hand.

  ‘It’ll be fine, just you see. Sit over here.’

  She moved without letting go of his hand and rested her head gently against his shoulder. He looked so different now he was in uniform.

  ‘So this Brockhard has sent in another medical certificate, valid for a week?’

  ‘Yes, he said he would send it by post yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Why such a short extension?’

  ‘Well, so that he had the situation – and me – better under control. I would have had to give him a good reason to extend your sick leave each time. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said and she saw his jaw muscles tensing.

  ‘Let’s not talk about Brockhard any more now,’ she said. ‘Tell me a story.’

  She stroked his cheek and he gave a heavy sigh. ‘Which one would you like to hear?’

  ‘Whichever you like.’

  The stories. That was how he had caught her attention at the Rudolf II Hospital. They were so different from the stories other soldiers told. Uriah’s stories were about courage, comradeship and hope. Like the time he had come off duty and discovered a polecat on his best friend’s chest ready to rip open his throat as he slept. The distance had been almost ten metres and the bunker with its black earthen walls almost pitch dark. But he had had no choice. He had put his gun to his cheek and kept firing until the magazine was empty. They had eaten the polecat for dinner the next day.

  There were several stories like that one. Helena couldn’t remember them all, but she remembered that she had started listening. His stories were lively and amusing; she wasn’t sure if she could believe some of them. She wanted to, though, because they were an antidote to the other stories, stories about irredeemable fates and senseless deaths.

  As the unlit train shook and juddered its way through the night on newly repaired rails, Uriah told about the time he had shot a Russian sniper in no man’s land and had ventured out to give the atheistic Bolshevik a Christian burial, with psalms and everything.

  ‘So beautifully did I sing that night,’ Uriah said, ‘I could hear them applauding from the Russian side.’

  ‘Really?’ she laughed.

  ‘It was more beautiful than any singing you’ve heard in the Staatsoper.’

  ‘Liar.’

  Uriah pulled her over to him and sang softly into her ear:

  Join the circle of men round the fire, gaze at torches so golden and bright,

  Urging soldiers to aim ever higher, pledge their beings to stand up and fight.

  In the flickering glistening flashes, see our Norway in years of yore,

  See its people emerging from ashes, see your kinsfolk at peace and at war.

  See your fathers in action for freedom, suffer losses both woman and man,

  See the thousands arise to defeat them, giving all in their fight for our land.

  See the men out in snow every hour, proud and glad of the struggle and toil,

  Hearts aflame with the will and the power, standing firm on our forefathers’ soil.

  See the names of the Norsemen appear, live in sagas of glittering words,

  Who though centuries dead are still here, still remembered from fells to fjords.

  But the man who has hoisted the penant, red and yellow the flag of the great,

  We salute you our fiery lieutenant: Quisling, ruler of soldier and state.

  Uriah was silent afterwards and stared blindly out of the window. Helena knew that his thoughts were far away, and let him remain with them. She put her arm around his chest.

  Ra-ta-ta-tat – ra-ta-ta-tat – ra-ta-ta-tat.

  It sounded as if someone was running beneath them, somebody was trying to catch them.

  She was fr
ightened. Not so much about the unknown territory that lay before them, but about the unknown man she was snuggling up to. Now that he was so close, everything she had seen and become used to from a distance seemed to disappear.

  She listened for his heartbeat, but the rattle of the train on the rails was too loud, so she had to take it on trust that there was a heart in there. She smiled to herself and waves of pleasure washed over her. What a wonderful, wonderful insanity! She knew absolutely nothing about him; he had told her so little about himself, he had told her only these stories.

  His uniform smelled of mildew, and for a second it struck her that it was probably the smell a soldier’s uniform had when he had been lying dead on the battlefield for a while. Or had been buried. But where did these ideas come from? She had been so tense for so long that only now did she realise how tired she was.

  ‘Sleep,’ he said in response to her thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She vaguely recalled hearing an air-raid siren in the distance as the world around her shrank.

  ‘What?’

  She heard her own voice, felt Uriah shaking her and she jumped. The first thing that came into her head when she saw the uniformed man in the doorway was that they had been caught.

  ‘Tickets, please.’

  ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed. She tried to pull herself together and felt the ticket conductor’s probing eyes on her as she rummaged feverishly in her bag. Finally she found the yellow cardboard tickets she had bought in Vienna and passed them to the conductor. He studied the tickets while rocking on his heels in rhythm with the train. It took longer than was comfortable for Helena.

  ‘You’re going to Paris?’ he asked. ‘Together?’

  ‘Ganz genau,’ Uriah said.

  The conductor was an older man. He looked at them.

  ‘You’re not from Austria, I can hear.’

  ‘No. I’m Norwegian.’

  ‘Oh, Norway. I’ve heard it’s beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, thank you. You could say that.’

  ‘So you voluntarily enlisted to fight for Hitler then?’

  ‘I did. I’ve been on the Eastern Front. In the north.’

  ‘Really? Where in the north?’

  ‘Up by Leningrad.’

  ‘Hm. And now you’re going to Paris. Together with your . . . ?’

  ‘Girlfriend.’

  ‘Girlfriend, exactly. On leave?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The conductor punched their tickets. ‘From Vienna?’ he asked Helena, handing them back. She nodded. ‘I can see you’re Catholic,’ he said, pointing to the crucifix she wore on a chain over her blouse. ‘My wife is too.’

  He leaned back and scanned the corridor. And then, turning to Uriah, he asked, ‘Has your girlfriend shown you Stephansdom in Vienna?’

  ‘No, I’ve been laid up in the hospital, so unfortunately I haven’t had much of a chance to see the city.’

  ‘Right. A Catholic hospital by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, the Rudo—’

  ‘Yes,’ Helena interrupted. ‘A Catholic hospital.’

  ‘Hm.’

  Why doesn’t he go away? Helena wondered.

  The conductor cleared his throat again.

  ‘Yes?’ Uriah said finally.

  ‘It’s none of my business, but I hope you’ve remembered your papers as proof that you’re on leave.’

  Papers? Helena thought. She had been to France twice before with her father, and it had never even occurred to her they might need anything other than a passport.

  ‘Yes, it’s not a problem for you, Fräulein, but for your uniformed friend here it’s essential that he carries papers documenting where he’s stationed and where he’s going.’

  ‘Of course we have papers,’ she burst out. ‘Surely you don’t imagine that we would travel without them.’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ the conductor responded hastily.‘I just wanted to remind you. A couple of days ago . . .’ He shifted his attention to the Norwegian. ‘. . . they arrested a young man who clearly had no orders to go where he was going, and he was consequently treated as a deserter. They took him on to the platform and shot him.’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do. I don’t mean to frighten you, but war is war. And since you have official papers, you shouldn’t have any problems when we get to the border immediately after leaving Salzburg.’

  The carriage lurched and the conductor had to grab hold of the door frame. The three people looked at each other in silence.

  ‘So that’s the first checkpoint?’ Uriah asked finally. ‘After Salzburg?’ The conductor nodded. ‘Thank you,’ Uriah said.

  The conductor cleared his throat: ‘I had a son your age. He fell at the front, by Dnerp.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Well, sorry to have woken you, Fräulein. Mein Herr.’

  He saluted and was gone.

  Helena made sure the door was completely closed. Then she hid her face in her hands.

  ‘How could I have been so naive!’ she sobbed.

  ‘Don’t cry now,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘I should have thought of the papers. After all, I knew I couldn’t just move around freely.’

  ‘But what if you tell them you’re on sick leave and say you felt like going to Paris? That’s a part of the Third Reich. It’s —’

  ‘Then they’ll ring the hospital and Brockhard will say that I absconded.’

  She leaned against him and sobbed in his lap. He caressed her sleek brown hair.

  ‘Besides, I should have known that this was too good to be true,’ he said. ‘I mean – me and Schwester Helena in Paris?’

  She could hear the smile in his voice.

  ‘No, I’ll wake up in my hospital bed soon, thinking that was one hell of a dream. And look forward to you bringing me my breakfast. Anyway, you’re on night shift tomorrow. You haven’t forgotten that, have you? Then I can tell you about the time Daniel filched twenty rations from the Swedish unit.’

  She lifted a tear-stained face to him.

  ‘Kiss me, Uriah.’

  28

  Siljan, Telemark. 22 February 2000.

  HARRY CHECKED HIS WATCH AGAIN AND CAUTIOUSLY pressed his foot on the accelerator. The appointment was for four o’clock. If he arrived after dusk, the whole trip would be a waste of time. What was left of the winter tyre tread keyed into the ice with a scrunch. Even though he had only driven forty kilometres on the winding, icy forest path, it seemed several hours since he had turned off the main road. The cheap sunglasses he had bought at the petrol station hadn’t helped much, and his eyes smarted from the bright light reflecting off the snow.

  At long last, he caught sight of the police car with the Skien registration number at the edge of the road. He braked warily, pulled over and took the skis off his roof rack. They came from a Trondheim ski manufacturer who had gone bankrupt fifteen years ago. That must have been roughly the same time as he put on the wax, which was now a tough grey mass underneath the skis. He found the track from the path up to the chalet as it had been described. The skis stayed on the track as if glued; he couldn’t have moved sideways if he had wanted to. The sun hung low over the spruce trees when he reached his destination. On the steps of a black log chalet sat two men in anoraks and a boy Harry, who didn’t know any teenagers, guessed to be somewhere between twelve and sixteen.

  ‘Ove Bertelsen?’ Harry enquired, resting on his ski poles. He was out of breath.

  ‘That’s me,’ one of the men said, standing up to shake hands. ‘And this is Officer Folldal.’

  The second man gave a measured nod.

  Harry supposed it must have been the boy who found the cartridge shells.

  ‘Wonderful to get away from the Oslo air, I imagine,’ Bertelsen said. Harry pulled out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Even more wonderful to get away from the Skien air, I would think.’ Folldal took off his cap and straightened his back.

  Bertelsen smiled:
‘Contrary to what people say, the air in Skien is cleaner than in any other Norwegian town.’

  Harry cupped his hands round a match and lit his cigarette. ‘Is that right? I’ll have to remember that. Have you found anything?’

  ‘Over there.’

  The other three put on their skis, and with Folldal in the lead they trudged along a track to a clearing in the forest. Folldal pointed with his pole to a black rock protruding twenty centimetres above the snow.

  ‘The boy found the shells in the snow by that rock. I reckon it was a hunter out practising. You can see the ski tracks nearby. It hasn’t snowed for over a week, so they could well be his. Looks like he was wearing those broad Telemark skis.’

  Harry crouched down. He ran a finger along the rock where it met the broad ski track.

  ‘Or old wooden skis.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  He held up a tiny splinter of wood.

  ‘Well, I never,’ Folldal said, looking across at Bertelsen.

  Harry turned to the boy. He was wearing a pair of baggy hunting trousers with pockets everywhere and a woollen cap pulled down well over his head.

  ‘Which side of the rock did you find the cartridges?’

  The boy pointed. Harry took off his skis, walked round the rock and lay on his back in the snow. The sky was light blue now, as it is on clear winter days just before the sun goes down. Then he rolled on to his side and peered over the rock. He followed the clearing in the forest where they had come in. There were four tree stumps in the clearing.

  ‘Did you find any bullets or signs of shooting?’

  Folldal scratched the back of his neck. ‘Do you mean, have we examined every tree trunk within a half-kilometre radius?’

  Bertelsen discreetly placed a gloved hand over Folldal’s mouth. Harry flicked his ash and studied the glowing end of his cigarette.

  ‘No, I mean, did you check the tree stumps over there?’

  ‘And why should we have examined those particular stumps?’ Folldal asked.

  ‘Because Märklin make the world’s heaviest rifle. A gun weighing fifteen kilos is not an attractive option for a standing shot, so it would be natural to assume that he rested it on this rock to take aim. Märklin rifles eject bullet casings to the right. Since the spent shells were found on the right of the stone, he must have been shooting in the direction we have come from. So it would not be unreasonable to assume that he positioned something on one of the tree stumps to aim at, would it?’