The Redeemer

19

Thursday, 18 December. The Container.

Four people were in the car driving through the darkness and the snow between the high drifts.

'Ostgard is up here to the left,' Jon said from the back seat where he had his arm around Thea's cowed figure.

Halvorsen turned off the main road. Harry observed the scattered farmhouses, lit up and flashing like lighthouses at the tops of hills or among clumps of trees.

As Harry had said that Robert's flat was no longer a safe hideout, Jon had himself suggested Ostgard. And insisted on Thea joining him.

Halvorsen swung onto the drive between a white farmhouse and a red barn.

'We'll have to ring the neighbour and ask him to clear away some snow with his tractor,' Jon said as they waded through the fresh snow towards the farmhouse.

'Nothing doing,' Harry said. 'No one must know you're here. Not even the police.'

Jon walked over to the house wall beside the steps, counted five boards and plunged his hand in the snow and under the boarding.

'Here,' he said, holding up a key.

It felt even colder indoors than outside, and the painted wooden walls seemed to have frozen into ice blocks, rendering their voices harsh. They stamped the snow off their footwear and entered a large kitchen with a solid table, kitchen cabinet, storage bench and Jotul woodburning stove in the corner.

'I'll get the fire going.' Jon's breath was icy and he rubbed his hands for warmth. 'There's probably some firewood inside the bench, but we'll need more from the woodshed.'

'I can get it,' Halvorsen said.

'You'll have to dig a pathway. There are two spades in the porch.'

'I'll join you,' Thea mumbled.

It had stopped snowing and the weather was clearing. Harry stood by the window smoking and watching Halvorsen and Thea shovelling the light, fresh snow in the white moonlight. The stove was crackling and Jon was on his haunches staring into the flames.

'How did your girlfriend take the Ragnhild Gilstrup business?' Harry asked.

'She's forgiven me,' he said. 'As I said, it was before her time.'

Harry watched his cigarette glow. 'Still no ideas about what she might have been doing in your flat?'

Jon shook his head.

'I don't know whether you noticed,' Harry said, 'but it looked as though the bottom drawer of your desk had been broken into. What did you keep there?'

Jon shrugged. 'Personal things. Letters for the most part.'

'Love letters? From Ragnhild, for example?'

Jon blushed. 'I… don't remember. I threw away most of them, but I may have kept the odd couple. I kept the drawer locked.'

'So that Thea wouldn't find them if she was alone in the flat?'

Jon gave a slow nod.

Harry went out to the steps overlooking the farmyard, took a few final drags on his cigarette, threw it into the snow and took out his mobile phone. Gunnar Hagen answered on the third ring.

'I've moved Jon Karlsen,' Harry said.

'Be specific.'

'Not necessary.'

'Pardon?'

'He's safer now than he was. Halvorsen will stay here tonight.'

'Where, Hole?'

'Here.'

Listening to the silence on the phone, Harry had an inkling of what was coming. Then Hagen's voice came through loud and clear.

'Hole, your commanding officer has just asked you a specific question. Refusing to answer is regarded as insubordination. Am I making myself clear?'

Harry often wished he had been wired in a different way and that he possessed a bit more of the social survival instinct most people have. But he didn't, and he never had done.

'Why is it important for you to know, Hagen?'

Hagen's voice shook with fury. 'I'll tell you when you can ask me questions, Hole. Have you got that?'

Harry waited. And waited. And then, hearing Hagen take a deep breath he said: 'Skansen Farm.'

'What did you say?'

'It's east of Strommen. The police training ground in Loren Forest.'

'I see,' Hagen said at length.

Harry rang off and punched in another number while watching Thea, who, illuminated by the moon, was standing and staring in the direction of the outside toilet. She had stopped shovelling snow and her body was frozen in a strange pose.

'Skarre here.'

'Harry. Anything new?'

'No.'

'No tip-offs?'

'Nothing serious.'

'But people are ringing in?'

'Christ, yes, they've twigged there's a reward on offer. Bad idea, if you ask me. Loads of extra work for us.'

'What do they say?'

'What don't they say! They describe faces they've seen that are similar. The funniest one was a guy who rang the duty officer claiming he had chained Stankic to his bed at home and asked if he was entitled to the reward.'

Harry waited until Skarre's peal of laughter died away. 'How did they establish that he hadn't?'

'They didn't need to. He put down the phone. Obviously confused. He claimed he had seen Stankic before. With a gun in the restaurant. What are you up to?'

'We- What did you say?'

'I asked if-'

'No, the bit about seeing Stankic with a gun.'

'Ha ha, people have got fertile imaginations, haven't they.'

'Put me through to the duty officer you spoke to.'

'Well-'

'Now, Skarre.'

Harry was put through, spoke to the officer in charge and after three sentences asked him to stay on the line.

'Halvorsen!' Harry's shout rang around the farmyard.

'Yes?' Halvorsen appeared in the moonlight in front of the barn.

'What's the name of that waiter who saw a guy in the toilet with a gun covered in soap?'

'How am I supposed to remember that?'

'I don't care how, just do it.'

In the night stillness the echoes rang out between the walls of the house and the barn.

'Tore something or other. Maybe.'

'Bullseye! Tore's the name he gave on the phone. Good man. And now the surname, please.'

'Er… Bjorg? No. Bjorang? No…'

'Come on, Lev Yashin!'

'Bjorgen. That was it. Bjorgen.'

'Drop the spade. You have permission to drive like a maniac.'

A police car stood waiting for them as twenty-eight minutes later Halvorsen and Harry drove past Vestkanttorget and turned into Schives gate to Tore Bjorgen's address, which the duty officer had been given by the head waiter at Biscuit.

Halvorsen came to a halt next to the police car and rolled down the window.

'Second floor,' the policewoman in the driver's seat said, pointing up to an illuminated window in the grey-brick facade.

Harry leaned across Halvorsen. 'Halvorsen and I'll go up. One of you stay here in contact with the station, and one of you come with us to the backyard and keep an eye on the kitchen stairs. Have you got a gun in the boot I can borrow?'

'Yep,' the woman said.

Her male colleague bent forward. 'You're Harry Hole, aren't you?'

'That's right, Officer.'

'Someone at the station said you don't have a gun licence.'

'Didn't have, Officer.'

'Oh?'

Harry smiled. 'Overslept the first shooting test in the autumn. But you will be pleased to know that in the second I was the third best in the whole force. OK?'

The two officers exchanged glances.

'OK,' the man mumbled.

Harry jerked open the car door and the frozen rubber seal groaned. 'OK, let's check if there's anything in this tip-off.'

For the second time in two days Harry had an MP5 in his hands as he buzzed the intercom of someone called Sejerstedt and explained to a nervous lady's voice that they were from the police. She could go to the window and see the police car before she opened up. She did as he suggested. The female officer went into the backyard and took up position while Halvorsen and Harry went up the staircase.

The name Tore Bjorgen was written in black on a brass plate above a doorbell. Harry thought of Bjarne Moller, who the first time they had gone into action together had taught Harry the simplest and still the most effective method of finding out whether someone was at home. He pressed his ear against the glass in the door. There wasn't a sound from inside.

'Loaded and safety catch off?' Harry whispered.

Halvorsen had taken out his service revolver and was standing against the wall on the left of the door.

Harry rang.

Holding his breath, he listened.

Then he rang a second time.

'To break in or not to break in,' Harry whispered, 'that is the question.'

'In that case we should have phoned the public prosecutor first for a search-'

Halvorsen was interrupted by the tinkle of glass as Harry's MP5 struck the door. Harry thrust his hand in and opened up.

They slipped into the hall and Harry pointed to the doors Halvorsen should check. He went into the living room. Empty. But he noticed at once that the mirror over the telephone table had been hit by something hard. A round piece of glass in the middle had fallen out and, as though from a black sun, black lines radiated out to the gilt ornamental frame. Harry concentrated on the door at the end of the room that stood ajar.

'No one in the kitchen or bathroom,' Halvorsen whispered behind him.

'OK. Brace yourself.'

Harry moved towards the door. He could sense it now. If there was anything here they would find it inside. A defective exhaust silencer went off outside. The brakes of a tram squealed in the distance. Harry noticed that he had hunched up as if by instinct. To make himself the smallest target possible.

He pushed open the door with the muzzle of the machine gun and neatly stepped in and to the side so as not to be silhouetted. Hugged the wall keeping his finger on the trigger and waited for his eyes to get used to the dark.

In the light that came through the doorway he saw a large bed with brass rails. A pair of naked legs protruded from under the duvet. He strode forward, took the duvet by the end and whipped it off.

'Wow!' Halvorsen exclaimed. He was standing in the doorway and slowly lowered his revolver as he stared at the bed in amazement.

He took stock of the fence. Then he began his run-up and launched himself, using the worm-like movements on his way up that Bobo had taught him. The gun in his pocket hit him in the stomach as he swung himself over. In the light of the street lamp, on the ice-covered tarmac on the other side, he saw that there was a big tear in his blue jacket. White material billowed out.

A sound made him move away from the light, into the shadow of the containers that were lined up on top of each other in the huge port area. He listened and watched. The wind whistled through the broken windows of a dark, derelict wooden hut.

He didn't know why, but he felt he was being observed. No, not observed, he had been discovered, caught. Someone knew he was there, but they may not have seen him. His eyes searched the illuminated fence for possible alarms. Nothing.

He walked along two lines of containers before finding one that was open. Entered the impenetrable darkness and instantly knew this was no good; he would freeze to death if he slept here. Closing the door behind him, he felt the air move, as though he was standing in a block of something that was being transported.

There was a rustling sound as he stepped onto sheets of newspaper. He had to get warm.

Outside, he again had the feeling he was being observed. He went over to the hut, grabbed hold of one of the boards and pulled. It came away with a bang. He thought he glimpsed something move and whirled round. But all he could see was the glimmer of lights from inviting-looking hotels around Oslo Central Station and the darkness in the doorway of his lodging for the night. After wrestling off two further boards, he walked back to the container. There were prints where the snow had drifted. Of paws. Big paws. A guard dog. Had they been there before? He broke chunks off the boards which he placed against the steel wall inside the entrance to the container. He left the door ajar in the hope that some of the smoke would filter out. The box of matches from the room in the Hostel was in the same pocket as his gun. He lit the newspaper, put it under the wood and held his hands over the heat. Small flames licked up the rustred wall.

He thought about the waiter's terror-stricken eyes looking down the barrel of the gun as he had ransacked his pockets for change. That was all he had, he had explained. It had been enough for a burger and an underground ticket. Not enough for a place to hide, keep warm or sleep. Then the waiter had been stupid enough to say the police had been alerted and were on their way. And he had done what he had to do.

The flames lit up the snow outside. He noticed more paw-prints outside the door. Odd that he hadn't seen them when he first went to the container. He listened to his own breathing and its echo in the iron box where he was sitting, as though there were two of them inside, while following the prints with his eyes. He stiffened. His prints crossed the animal's. And in the middle of his shoe print he saw a paw mark.

He yanked the door to and the flames went out in the muffled thud. Only the edges of the newspaper glowed in the pitch dark. His breathing was heavy now. There was something out there, hunting him, it could smell him and recognise his smell. He held his breath. And that was when he knew: that the something hunting him was not outside. That it was not an echo of his breathing he could hear. It was inside. As he made a lunge for his gun in his pocket he caught himself thinking it was strange it hadn't growled, hadn't made a sound. Until now. And even that was no more than the soft scraping of claws on an iron floor as it launched itself. He just managed to raise his arm before the jaws snapped around his hand and the pain caused his mind to explode in a shower of fragments.

Harry scrutinised the bed and what he assumed was Tore Bjorgen.

Halvorsen came over and stood beside him: 'Sweet Jesus,' he whispered. 'What is going on here?'

Without answering him, Harry unzipped the black face mask the man in front of him was wearing and pulled the flap to one side. The painted red lips and make-up around the eyes reminded him of Robert Smith, the singer with The Cure.

'Is this the waiter you talked to in Biscuit?' Harry asked, looking round the room.

'I think so. What on earth is this get-up?'

'Latex,' Harry said, running the tips of his fingers over some metal shavings on the sheet. Then he picked up something beside a half-full glass of water on the bedside table. It was a pill. He studied it.

Halvorsen groaned. 'This is just sick.'

'A kind of fetishism,' Harry said. 'And actually no sicker than you enjoying the sight of women in miniskirts and suspenders or whatever gets you going.'

'Uniforms,' Halvorsen said. 'All kinds. Nurses, parking wardens. ..'

'Thank you,' Harry said.

'What do you think?' Halvorsen asked. 'Suicide pills?'

'Better ask him,' Harry said, picking up the glass of water and emptying the contents over the face below. Halvorsen stared at the inspector open-mouthed.

'If you hadn't been so full of prejudice you would have heard him breathing,' Harry said. 'This is Stesolid. Not much worse than Valium.'

The man on the bed was gasping for air. Then the face contracted and was seized with a fit of coughing.

Harry sat on the edge and waited for a pair of terrified, though still tiny, pupils to succeed in focusing on him.

'We're policemen, Bjorgen. Apologies for bursting in like this, but we were led to believe you had something we wanted. Which you no longer have, it seems.'

The eyes in front of him blinked twice. 'What are you talking about?' a thick voice said. 'How did you get in?'

'Door,' Harry said. 'You had another visitor earlier this evening.'

The man shook his head.

'That's what you told the police,' Harry said.

'No one has been here. And I have not rung the police. My number is ex-directory. You can't trace it.'

'Yes, we can. And I didn't say anything about you ringing. You said on the phone you had chained someone to the bed and I can see bits of metal from the bed rails here on the sheet. Looks like the mirror out there has had a pasting, too. Did he get away, Bjorgen?'

The man gawked from Harry to Halvorsen and back.

'Did he threaten you?' Harry spoke in the same low monotone. 'Did he say he would be back if you said a word to us? Is that it? You're frightened?'

The man's mouth opened. Perhaps it was the leather mask that made Harry think of a pilot who had strayed off course. Robert Smith adrift.

'That's what they usually say,' Harry said. 'But do you know what? If he'd meant it, you'd be dead already.'

The man stared at Harry.

'Do you know where he went, Bjorgen? Did he take anything with him? Money? Clothes?'

Silence.

'Come on. This is important. He's hunting a person here in Oslo he wants to kill.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about,' whispered Tore Bjorgen without taking his eyes off Harry. 'Would you please go now?'

'Of course. But I ought to point out that you risk being charged for giving refuge to a murderer on the run. Which the court may, in a worst-case scenario, regard as being an accessory to murder.'

'Based on what evidence? Alright, maybe I did ring. I was kidding. Wanted a bit of a laugh. So what?'

Harry got up from the bed. 'As you like. We're going now. Pack a few clothes. I'll send a couple of guys to pick you up, Bjorgen.'

'Pick me up?'

'As in arrest.' Harry motioned to Halvorsen that they were going.

'Arrest me?' Bjorgen's voice was thick no longer. 'Why? You haven't got a bloody thing on me.'

Harry showed what he was holding between his thumb and first finger. 'Stesolid is a prescription drug like amphetamine and cocaine, Bjorgen. So unless you produce a prescription I'm afraid we'll have to arrest you for possession. Two years' custodial sentence.'

'You're joking.' Bjorgen hauled himself up in bed and made a grab for the duvet on the floor. Only now did he seem to be aware of the outfit he was wearing.

Harry walked to the door. 'I quite agree with you, Bjorgen. In my personal opinion, Norwegian legislation is much too harsh on soft drugs. For that reason, under different circumstances, I might have turned a blind eye. Goodnight.'

'Wait!'

Harry stopped. And waited.

'His b-b-brothers…' Bjorgen stammered.

'Brothers?'

'He said he would send his brothers after me if anything happened to him in Oslo. If he was arrested or killed, however it happened, they would come for me. He said his brothers like to use acid.'

'Hasn't got any brothers,' Harry said.

Bjorgen raised his head, looked up at the policeman and asked with genuine surprise in his voice: 'Hasn't he?'

Harry shook his head.

Bjorgen wrung his hands. 'I… I took those pills because I was so upset. That's what they're for. Isn't it?'

'Where did he go?'

'He didn't say.'

'Did he take any money?'

'Some change I had on me. Then he cleared off. And I… I just sat here and was so frightened…' A sudden sob interrupted the flow and he huddled under the duvet. 'I am so frightened.'

Harry eyed the weeping man. 'If you like, you can sleep down at Police HQ tonight.'

'I'll stay here,' Bjorgen sniffled.

'OK. One of us will be round early tomorrow to have a further chat.'

'Alright. Hang on! If you catch him…'

'Yes?'

'That reward's still on, isn't it?'

He had the fire going well now. The flames glinted in a triangular piece of glass he had used from the broken window in the hut. He had collected more wood and felt his body beginning to thaw. It would be worse in the night but he was alive. He had cut strips off his shirt with the piece of glass and wound them round his bleeding fingers. The animal's jaws had closed around his hand holding the gun. And the gun.

The shadow of a black Metzner hanging between roof and floor flickered on the container wall. The jaws were open and the body stretched out and frozen in one last silent attack. The rear legs were tied with wire which was threaded through a gap in one of the iron grooves in the roof. The blood trickling out of the mouth and the opening behind the ear where the bullet had exited dripped onto the floor with clock-like regularity. He would never know whether it was his forearm muscles or the dog's bite that squeezed the finger on the trigger, but he had the impression he could still feel the walls vibrating after the shot. The sixth since he had arrived in this accursed city. And now he had one bullet left in the gun.

One was enough, but how would he find Jon Karlsen now? He needed someone to lead him in the right direction. The policeman came to mind. Harry Hole. It didn't sound like a common name. Perhaps he wouldn't be so difficult to find.