The Redbreast

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘No.’

  ‘The point is that even if you have to duplicate a few of the jobs, and even if the same investigative work is carried out several times by different teams, this is more than outweighed by the advantages of different approaches and different lines of investigation.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Møller said. ‘What has this got to do with me? Why are you sitting here now?’

  ‘Because, as I said, I can request assistance from all other —’

  ‘. . . departments if necessary. I heard that. Spit it out, Harry.’ Harry angled his head towards Halvorsen, who was smiling somewhat sheepishly at Møller. Møller groaned.

  ‘Please, Harry! You know we’re down to the bare bones in Crime Squad.’

  ‘I promise you’ll get him back in good condition.’

  ‘I said no!’

  Harry said nothing. He waited, entwining his fingers and studying the cheap reproduction of Kittelsen’s Soria Maria Castle hanging on the wall over the book shelves.

  ‘When will I get him back?’ Møller asked. ‘As soon as the case is over.’

  ‘As soon . . . That’s how a section head answers an inspector, Harry. Not the other way around.’

  Harry shrugged.

  ‘Sorry, boss.’

  76

  Irisveien. 11 May 2000.

  HER HEART WAS ALREADY BEATING LIKE A SEWING MACHINE gone wild when she picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hi, Signe,’ the voice said. ‘It’s me.’

  She felt the tears coming immediately.

  ‘Stop this,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

  ‘Until death us do part. That’s what you said, Signe.’

  ‘I’m getting my husband.’

  The voice gave a chuckle. ‘But he’s not there, is he.’

  She was squeezing the telephone so tight that her hand hurt. How could he know that Even wasn’t at home? And how come he only called when Even was out?

  The next thought made her throat constrict; she couldn’t breathe and she began to feel faint. Was he calling from a place where he could see the house, where he could see when Even went out? No, no, no. With an effort of will, she pulled herself together and concentrated on breathing. Not too quickly, deep breaths. Calm, she told herself, as she had told the injured soldiers who were brought in to them from the trenches; crying, panic-stricken and hyperventilating. She had her terror under control. And she could hear from the sounds in the background that he was calling from somewhere with a lot of people. Her house was in a residential area.

  ‘You were so beautiful in your nurse’s uniform, Signe,’ the voice said. ‘So shining white and pure. White, exactly like Olaf Lindvig in his white leather tunic. Do you remember him? You were so pure that I thought you could never betray us, that you didn’t have it in your heart. I thought you were like Olaf Lindvig. I saw you touch him, his hair, Signe. One moonlit night. You and he, you looked like angels, as if you were sent from heaven. But I was mistaken. There are, by the way, angels which are not heaven-sent, Signe. Did you know that?’

  She didn’t answer. Her thoughts churned around her head in a maelstrom. Something he said had set them in motion. The voice. She could hear it now. He was distorting his voice.

  ‘No,’ she forced herself to answer.

  ‘No? You should do. I am such an angel.’

  ‘Daniel’s dead,’ she said.

  The other end went quiet. Only his breath wheezing against the membrane. Then the voice again.

  ‘I have come to pass judgment. On the living and the dead.’

  Then he rang off.

  Signe closed her eyes. She got up and went into the bedroom. She stood behind the drawn blinds and saw herself reflected in the window. She was shaking as if she had a high temperature.

  77

  Harry’s Old Office. 11 May 2000.

  IT TOOK HARRY TWENTY MINUTES TO MOVE BACK INTO HIS old office. Everything he needed found space in a bag from the 7-Eleven. The first thing he did was to cut out a picture of Bernt Brandhaug from Dagbladet. Then he pinned it on to the notice-board, beside the archive pictures of Ellen, Sverre Olsen and Hallgrim Dale. Four clues. He had sent Halvorsen up to the Department of Foreign Affairs to make enquiries and see if he could find out who the woman at the Continental was. Four people. Four lives. Four stories. He sat down in the wrecked chair and studied them, but they just stared past him, vacantly.

  He rang Sis. She really wanted to keep Helge, at least for a while. They had become such good friends, she said. Harry said that was fine as long as she remembered to feed him.

  ‘It’s a her,’ Sis said.

  ‘Oh, yes. How do you know that?’

  ‘Henrik and I checked.’

  He was going to ask how they had checked, but decided he preferred not to know.

  ‘Have you talked to Dad?’

  She had. She asked Harry if he was going to meet the girl again.

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘The one you said you’d been for a walk with, I suppose. The one with a little boy.’

  ‘Oh, her. No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Very stupid.’

  ‘Stupid? You’ve never met her, Sis.’

  ‘I think it’s stupid because you’re in love with her.’

  Now and then Sis was capable of saying things Harry had no idea how to answer. They agreed to go to the cinema one day. Harry wondered if that meant Henrik would be joining them. Sis said it did. That was the way it was when you had a partner.

  They rang off and Harry sat deep in thought. He and Rakel had never met in the corridors yet, but he knew where her office was. He made up his mind and got up – he had to talk to her now, he couldn’t wait any longer.

  Linda flashed him a smile as he came in the door to POT.

  ‘Back already, handsome?’

  ‘I was just going to nip in to see Rakel.’

  ‘Just, was it, Harry? I saw you two at the office party, you know.

  ’ To his irritation, Harry could feel her mischievous smile making his ears burn and could hear that his attempt at a dry laugh didn’t quite come off.

  ‘But you can save yourself the walk, Harry. Rakel is at home today. Off sick. One moment, Harry . . .’ She picked up the telephone. ‘POT. Can I help you?’

  Harry was on his way out of the door when Linda called after him.

  ‘It’s for you. Do you want to take it here?’ She passed him the telephone.

  ‘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 carefu
l. 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 Märklin 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 Schrøder’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.