The Redbreast

50

Oslo. 11 March 2000.

Harry could see the suit was too small. He could see it, but he couldn't understand it. He hadn't put on any weight since he was eighteen and the suit had fitted perfectly when he had bought it at Dressmann for the post-exams celebrations in 1990. Nevertheless, standing in front of the mirror in the lift, he saw that his socks were visible between the suit trousers and the black Dr Martens shoes. It was just one of those unsolvable mysteries.

The lift doors slid to the side and Harry could already hear the music, loud male chatter and female twittering emanating from the open doors in the canteen. He looked at his watch. It was 8.15. Eleven should do it and then he could go home.

He inhaled, stepped into the canteen and scanned the room. The canteen was the traditional Norwegian kind-a square room with a glass counter, at one end of which you ordered food, light-coloured furniture from some fjord in Sunnmore and a smoking ban. The party committee had done their best to camouflage the daily backdrop with balloons and red tablecloths. Even though men were in the majority, the male-female mix was much more evenly distributed than when Crime Squad threw a party. Most people seemed to have already imbibed quite a bit of alcohol. Linda had talked about various pre-party looseners, and Harry was glad that no one had invited him.

'You look so good in a suit, Harry.'

That was Linda. He hardly recognised the woman in the tight dress, which emphasised not only the extra kilos but also her womanly exuberance. She was carrying a tray of orange-coloured drinks which she held up in front of him.

'Er… no thanks, Linda.'

'Don't be so boring, Harry. This is a party!'

Prince was howling on the car stereo again.

Ellen bent forward in the driver's seat and turned down the volume. Tom Waaler gave her a sideways glance.

'A little too loud,' she said, thinking that it was only three weeks until the policeman from Steinkjer arrived, and she wouldn't have to work with Waaler any more.

It wasn't the music. He didn't bother her. And he definitely wasn't a bad policeman.

It was the telephone calls. Not that Ellen Gjelten didn't have some sympathy for a certain nurturing of your sex life, but half the times his mobile phone rang she gathered from the conversations that a woman had already been spurned, was being spurned or was about to be spurned. The latter conversations were the most unpleasant. They were the women he had not yet rejected, and he had a special voice for them which made Ellen want to scream out loud: Don't do it! He won't bring you any good! Run for it! Ellen Gjelten was a generous person who found it easy to forgive human weakness. She had not detected many human weaknesses in Tom Waaler, but not much humanity either. To put it bluntly, she didn't like him.

They drove past Toyen Park. Waaler had received a tip-off that someone had seen Ayub, the Pakistani gang leader they had been after since the assault in the Palace Gardens in December, in Aladdin, the Persian restaurant in Hausmanns gate. Ellen knew they were already too late; they would only be asking people if they knew where Ayub was. They wouldn't get an answer, but at least they would have put in an appearance, shown they weren't going to leave him in peace.

'Wait in the car, I'll go in and check,' Waaler said.

'OK.'

Waaler pulled down the zip of his leather jacket.

To show off the muscles he had acquired pumping iron in the gym at Police HQ, Ellen thought. Or enough of the shoulder holster for them to know that he was carrying a weapon. The police officers in Crime Squad were always entitled to carry weapons, but she knew that Waaler carried more than a service revolver. A large bore number; she didn't have it in her to ask what. Right after cars, Waaler's favourite topic of conversation was handguns, and she preferred cars. She didn't carry a weapon herself. Not unless she was forced to, as she was during the presidential visit in the autumn.

Something stirred, at the back of her brain. But it was soon interrupted by a digital bleep-bleep version of 'Napoleon with his Army'. It was Waaler's mobile telephone. Ellen opened the door to shout after him, but he was already on his way into the restaurant.

It had been a boring week. Ellen couldn't remember such a boring week since she had started in the police force. She feared it had something to do with her finally having a private life. Suddenly there was a point in getting home before it was late and Saturday shifts like this evening's had become a sacrifice. The mobile played 'Napoleon…' for the fourth time.

One of the spurned women? Or one who still had that to come? If Kim dumped her now… but he wouldn't do that. She just knew it.

'Napoleon with his Army' for the fifth time.

The shift would be over in a couple of hours and she would go home, take a shower and nip up to Kim's in Helgesens gate, five minutes in her charged sexual state. She giggled.

Six times! She grabbed the phone from under the handbrake.

'This is Tom Waaler's answerphone. Unfortunately herr Waaler is not here. Please leave a message.'

She meant it as a joke. Actually she had meant to say who she was afterwards, but for some reason she just sat listening to the heavy breathing at the other end. Perhaps for a thrill, perhaps she was just curious. At any rate, she suddenly twigged that the person at the other end thought he had reached the answerphone and was waiting for the bleep! She pressed one of the keys. Bleep.

'Hi, this is Sverre Olsen.'

'Hi, Harry, this is…'

Harry turned, but the rest of Kurt Meirik's sentence was swallowed up in the bass as the self-elected DJ cranked up the volume of the music blasting out of the loudspeaker directly behind Harry.

That don't impress me much… Harry had been at the party for barely twenty minutes, had already checked his watch twice and managed to ask himself the following questions four times: Did the murder of Dale have anything to do with the Marklin rifle deal? Who would be capable of cutting someone's throat so quickly and efficiently that he could do it in broad daylight in a back alley in the centre of Oslo? Who is the Prince? Could the sentencing of Mosken's son have anything to do with this case? What had happened to the fifth Norwegian soldier at the front, Gudbrand Johansen? And why hadn't Mosken made an effort to find him after the war if, as he maintained, Johansen had saved his life?

He was standing in the corner now beside one of the loudspeakers, with a Munkholm-in a glass to avoid questions about why he drank non-alcoholic beer-while watching a couple of the youngest POT employees dancing.

'Sorry, I didn't catch that,' Harry said.

Kurt Meirik was twirling the stem of an orange-coloured drink between his fingers. He seemed more erect than ever, standing there in his blue striped suit. Fitted perfectly, as far as Harry could see. Harry pulled his jacket sleeves down, aware that his shirt was sticking out way beyond his cuff links. Meirik leaned in closer.

'I'm trying to tell you this is the head of our foreign department, Inspector…'

Harry noticed the woman by his side. Slim figure. Plain red dress. He experienced a faint premonition.

So she had the looks, but did she have the touch?

Brown eyes. High cheekbones. Dark complexion. Short, dark hair framing a narrow face. Her smile was already in her eyes. He remembered she was good-looking, but not so… ravishing. It was the only word that occurred to him to cover the meaning: ravishing. He knew the fact that she was standing opposite him now ought to have rendered him speechless with astonishment, but there was somehow a kind of logic about it, something that made him inwardly acknowledge the whole situation with a nod.

'… Rakel Fauke,' Meirik said.

'We've already met,' Harry said.

'Oh?' Kurt Meirik exclaimed in surprise.

Rakel and Harry looked at each other.

'We have,' she said, 'but I don't think we got as far as exchanging names.'

She extended her hand with a slightly angled wrist, which once again made him think of piano and ballet lessons. 'Harry Hole,' he said.

'Aha,' she said. 'Of course you are. From Crime Squad, isn't that right?’

‘Right.'

'I didn't realise you were the new inspector in POT when we met. Had you said that then…’

‘Then what?' Harry asked. She cocked her head to one side.

'Yes, then what?' She laughed. Her laughter forced the idiotic word to pop up into Harry's brain again: ravishing.

'Then at least I would have told you that we work in the same place,' she said. 'I don't usually tell people what I do for a living. You get so many strange questions. I'm sure it's the same for you.'

'Yes, of course.'

She laughed again. Harry wondered what it would take to make her laugh like that all the time.

'How is it I haven't seen you in POT before?' she asked.

'Harry's office is down at the end of the corridor,' Kurt Meirik said.

'Aha.' She nodded as if she understood, still with the sparkling smile in her eyes. 'The office right at the end, really?'

Harry inclined his head gloomily.

'Yes, well,' Meirik said. 'So now you've been introduced. We were on our way to the bar, Harry.'

Harry waited for the invitation. It didn't come. 'Talk to you later,' Meirik said.

Understandable, Harry thought. The head of POT and the inspector probably had lots of collegial boss-to-subordinate backslaps to give tonight. He leaned against the loudspeaker, but cast a furtive glance after them. She had recognised him. She had remembered that they hadn't exchanged names. He downed his beer in one draught. It tasted of nothing.

Waaler slammed the door after him.

'No one has seen, talked to or ever heard of Ayub,' he said. 'Drive.’

‘Right,' Ellen said, checked the mirror and swung out from the kerb. 'You've begun to like Prince, too, I hear.’

‘Have I?'

'You turned up the volume while I was away, anyway.’

‘Oh.' She had to ring Harry. 'Is something the matter?'

Ellen stared rigidly ahead of her, at the wet black tarmac glistening in the light from the street lamps.

'The matter? What could be the matter?'

'I don't know. You look as if something has happened to you.'

'Nothing has happened, Tom.'

'Did anyone ring? Hey!' Tom stiffened in his seat and placed both palms firmly on the dashboard. 'Didn't you see that car or what?'

'Sorry.'

'Shall I take over?’

‘Driving? Why?'

'Because you're driving like a…’

‘Like a what?'

'Forget it. I asked if anyone had rung.'

'No one rang, Tom. If anyone had rung, I would have said, wouldn't