The Redbreast

24

Bislett. New Year's Eve 1999.

It was midday when Harry Hole got off the tram at the Radisson SAS hotel in Holbergs gate and saw the low morning sun reflecting briefly on the residential block windows of the Rikshospital before disappearing back behind the clouds. He had been in his office for the last time. To clear up, to make sure he had collected everything, he had told himself. But the little that constituted his personal effects found enough room in the supermarket carrier bag he had taken from Kiwi the day before. Those who weren't on duty were at home, preparing for the last party of the millennium. A paper streamer lay across the back of his chair as a reminder of yesterday's little leaving party, under the direction of Ellen, of course. Bjarne Moller's sober words of farewell hadn't really been in keeping with her blue balloons and sponge cake decorated with candles, but the little speech had been nice enough anyway. Presumably the head of Crime Squad knew that Harry would never have forgiven him had he been verbose or sentimental. And Harry had to admit he had felt a tinge of pride when Moller congratulated him on being made an inspector and wished him luck in POT. Not even Tom Waaler's sardonic smile and light shake of the head from the spectators' ranks by the door at the back had destroyed the occasion.

The intention of the trip to the office had been to sit there one last time, in the creaking, broken office chair, in the room where he had spent almost seven years. Harry shivered. All this sentimentality, he wondered, wasn't that another sign he was getting on?

Harry walked up Holbergs gate and turned left into Sofies gate. Most of the properties in this narrow street were workers' flats dating back to the turn of the century and not in the best condition. But after the prices of flats had risen and young middle-class people who couldn't afford to live in Majorstuen had moved in, the area had received something of a face-lift. Now there was only one property which had not had its facade done up recently: number 8, Harry's. It didn't bother Harry in the least.

He let himself in and opened the postbox in the hallway. An offer on pizzas and an envelope from Oslo City Treasurer which he immediately assumed contained a reminder to pay his parking fine from last month. He swore as he went up the stairs. He had bought a fifteen-year-old Ford Escort at a bargain price from an uncle whom, strictly speaking, he didn't know. It was a bit rusty and the clutch was worn, it was true, but there was a neat sun roof. So far, however, there had been more parking fines and garage bills than hairs on your head. On top of that, the shit heap wouldn't start, so he had to remember to park at the top of a hill to push-start it.

He unlocked his front door. It was a spartanly equipped two-room flat. Clean and tidy, no carpets on the polished wooden floor. The only decorations on the walls were a photograph of his mother and Sis, and a poster of The Godfather he had pinched from Symra cinema when he was sixteen. There were no plants, no candles or cute knick-knacks. He had once hung up a notice-board he had thought he might use for postcards, photographs or any words of wisdom he might come across. In other people's homes he had seen boards like these. When he realised he never received postcards, and basically never took photos either, he cut out a quotation from Bjorneboe:

And this acceleration in the production of horsepower is again just one expression of acceleration in our understanding of the so-called laws of nature. This understanding = angst.

With a single glance Harry established that there were no messages on the answerphone (another unnecessary investment), unbuttoned his shirt, put it in the dirty-washing basket and took a clean one from the tidy pile in the cupboard.

Harry left the answering machine on (perhaps someone would call from the Norwegian Gallup organisation), locked the door and left again.

Without a trace of sentimentality he bought the last papers of the millennium from Ali's shop, then set off up Dovregata. In Waldemar Thranes gate people were hurrying home for the big night. Harry was shivering in his coat until he stepped into Schroder's and the moist warmth of humanity hit him in the face. It was fairly full, but he saw that his favourite table was about to become free and he steered towards it. The old man who had got up from the table put on his hat, gave Harry a quick once-over from under white bushy eyebrows, a taciturn nod, and left. The table was by the window and during the day it was one of the few in the dimly lit room to have enough light to read by. No sooner had he sat down than Maja was by his side.

'Hi, Harry.' She smacked the tablecloth with a grey duster. 'Today's special?'

'If the cook's sober.'

'He is. Drink?'

'Now we're talking.' He looked up. 'What are you recommending today?'

'Right.' She placed one hand on her hip and proclaimed in a loud, clear voice, 'Contrary to what people think, this city has in fact the purest drinking water in the country. And the least toxic pipes are to be found in the properties built around the turn of the century, such as this one.'

'And who told you that, Maja?'

'It was probably you, Harry.' Her laughter was husky and heartfelt. 'Being on the wagon suits you, by the way.' She said this under her breath, made a note of his order and was off.

The other newspapers were full of the millennium, so Harry tackled Dagsavisen. On page six his eyes fell on a large photograph of a wooden road sign with a sun cross painted on. Oslo 2,611 km, it said on one arm, Leningrad 5 km on the other.

The article beneath was credited to Even Juul, Professor of History. The subheading was concise: The conditions for fascism seen in the light of increasing unemployment in Western Europe.

Harry had seen Juul's name in newspapers before; he was a kind of eminence grise as far as the occupation of Norway and the Nasjonal Samling were concerned. He leafed through the rest of the paper but didn't find anything of interest. Then he flicked back to Juul's article. It was a commentary on an earlier report about the strong position held by neo-Nazism in Sweden. Juul described how neo-Nazism, which had seen a dramatic decline in the years of the economic upturn in the nineties, was now coming back with renewed vigour. He also wrote that a hallmark of the new wave was its firm ideological base. While neo-Nazism in the eighties had mostly been about fashion and group identification, a uniform code of dress, shaven heads and archaic slogans such as 'Sieg Heil', the new wave was better organised. There was a financial support network and it was not based to the same degree on wealthy leaders and sponsors. In addition, Juul wrote, the new movement was not merely a reaction to factors in the current social situation, such as unemployment and immigration; it wanted to set up an alternative to social democracy. The catchword was rearmament-moral, military and racial. The decline of Christianity was used as an example of moral decay, as well as HIV and the increase in drug abuse. And the image of the enemy was also to some extent new: champions of the EU who broke down national and racial boundaries; NATO people who held out a hand to Russian and Slav Untermenschen; and the new Asian capital barons who had taken on the Jews' role as world bankers.

Maja arrived with the lunch.

'Dumplings?' Harry asked, staring down at the grey lumps on a bed of Chinese cabbage sprinkled with thousand island dressing.

'Schroder style,' Maja said. 'Leftovers from yesterday. Happy New Year.' Harry held up the newspaper so that he could eat, and he had just taken the first bite of the cellulose dumpling when he heard a voice from behind the paper. 'It's dreadful, I say.'

Harry peeked beyond the newspaper. The Mohican was sitting at the neighbouring table, looking straight at him. Perhaps he had been sitting there the whole time, but Harry certainly hadn't noticed him come in. Presumably they called him the Mohican because he was the last of his kind. He had been a seaman during the war, was torpedoed twice, and all his pals were long since dead. Maja had told Harry that. His long, unkempt beard hung into his beer glass and he sat there with his coat on, as he always did, summer and winter alike. His face, so gaunt that it showed the contours of his skull, had a network of veins like crimson lightning on a background of bleached white. The red, Watery eyes stared at Harry from behind a layer of limp skin folds.

'Dreadful!'

Harry had heard enough drunken babblings in his life not to take any particular notice of what regulars at Schroder's had to say, but this was different. In all the years he had been going there, these were the first comprehensible words he had heard the Mohican speak. Even after the night last winter, when Harry had found the Mohican sleeping against a house wall in Dovregata and had most probably saved the old boy from freezing to death, the Mohican had not even offered him so much as a nod on the occasions they met. And now it seemed that the Mohican had said his piece for the time being, as his lips were tightly pressed together and he was concentrating on his glass again. Harry looked around him before leaning over to the Mohican's table.

'Do you remember me, Konrad Asnes?'

The old man grunted and stared into space without answering. 'I found you asleep in a snowdrift in the street last year. The temperature was minus eighteen.' The Mohican rolled his eyes.

'There were no street lights, so I could easily have missed you. You could have croaked, Asnes.'

The Mohican screwed up one red eye and gave Harry a furious look before raising his glass.

'Yes, I'd like to thank you for that.'

He drank carefully. Then he slowly put his glass down on the table, placed it as if it were important that the glass should stand in a particular spot on the table.

'Those gangsters should be shot,' he said.

'Really? Who?'

The Mohican directed a crooked finger towards Harry's paper. Harry turned it over. The front page was emblazoned with a large photograph of a shaven-headed Swedish neo-Nazi.

'Up against the wall with them!' The Mohican smacked the palm of his hand down on the table, and a few faces turned towards him. Harry gestured with his hand to calm him down.

'They're just young men, Asnes. Try and enjoy yourself now. It's New Year's Eve.'

'Young men? What do you think we were? That didn't stop the Germans. Kjell was nineteen. Oscar was twenty-two. Shoot them before it spreads, I say. It's an illness; you have to catch it early on.'

He pointed a trembling forefinger at Harry.

'One of them was sitting where you're sitting now. They don't bloody die out! You're a policeman, you go out and catch them!'

'How do you know I'm a policeman?' Harry asked in surprise.

'I read the newspapers. You shot someone in some country down south. That was good, but what about shooting a couple here too?'

'You're very talkative today, Asnes.'

The Mohican clammed up and gave Harry a last surly glance before turning to the wall and studying the painting of Youngstorget. Harry, understanding that the conversation was over, waved to Maja for a cup of coffee and consulted his watch. A new millennium was just around the corner. Schroder's would close at four o'clock because of a 'Private New Year's Eve Party", as the poster hanging on the entrance door said. Harry surveyed the familiar faces in the room. As far as he could see, all the guests had arrived.