The Redbreast

63

Krokliveien, Bjerke. 2 May 2000.

Sverre Olsen turned up the radio. He flicked slowly through his mother's latest women's magazine while listening to the newsreader talk about the threatening letters trade-union leaders had received. The gutter directly above the sitting-room window was still dripping. He laughed. The threats sounded like one of Roy Kvinset's numbers. Hopefully there wouldn't be so many spelling mistakes this time.

He glanced at his watch. This afternoon the tables at Herbert's would be buzzing. He was flat broke, but he had repaired the old Wilfa vacuum cleaner this week, so perhaps Mum wouldn't mind lending him a hundred. Fuck the Prince! It was now two weeks since he last promised that Sverre would get his money 'in a couple of days'. In the meantime, a couple of the guys he owed money to were beginning to use an unpleasantly menacing tone. And worst of all, his table at Herbert's Pizza had been commandeered by someone else. It would soon be a long time since the raid on Dennis Kebab.

The last time he was at Herbert's he had felt an irresistible desire to stand up and yell that he was the one who had killed the police bitch in Grunerlokka. Blood had spurted out like a geyser following his final lunge. She had died screaming. He wouldn't have considered it neces- sary to add that he hadn't known she was a policewoman. Or that the sight of the blood had almost made him throw up.

Fuck the Prince! He had known the whole time she was a cop.

Sverre had earned the money. No one could tell him any different, but what could he do? After what had happened, the Prince had forbidden him to phone. As a precaution, until the worst of the furore had quietened down.

The gate hinges outside screeched. Sverre got to his feet, switched off the radio and hurried into the hall. On the way up the stairs he heard his mother's footsteps on the gravel. Then he was in his own room and he heard her keys jangling in the lock. As she rummaged around downstairs, he stood in the middle of his room and studied himself in the mirror. He ran a hand across his scalp and felt the millimetre high prickles rub against his fingers like a brush. He had made up his mind. Even with the forty grand he would get himself a job. He was pissed off with staying at home and, to tell the truth, he was pissed off with 'the comrades' at Herbert's too. Sick of tagging along with people who were going nowhere. He had taken the Heavy Current course at technical college and he was good at repairing electrical things. Lots of electricians needed apprentices and assistants. In a few weeks his hair would have grown over the Sieg Heil tattoo at the back of his head.

His hair, yes. He suddenly remembered the telephone call he had received during the night, the policeman with the Trondheim accent who had asked him about red hair! When Sverre woke up in the morning he had imagined it was a dream, until his mother had asked him over breakfast what kind of person would ring at four in the morning.

Sverre shifted his focus of attention from the mirror to the walls. The picture of the Fuhrer, the posters of Burzum gigs, the flag with the swastika on, the Iron Cross and the Blood amp; Honour poster which was a copy of Joseph Goebbels' old propaganda poster. For the first time it struck him that his room was like a boy's room. If you replaced the Swedish White Aryan Resistance banner with a Manchester United scarf and the picture of Heinrich Himmler with one of David Beckham you would have thought it was a teenager's room.

'Sverre!' It was Mum.

He closed his eyes.

'Sverre!'

It wouldn't go away. It would never go away.

'Yes!' he screamed out so loud that the scream filled his head.

'There's someone here who wants to talk to you.'

Here? To him? Sverre opened his eyes again and stared irresolutely at himself in the mirror. No one came here. As far as he knew, no one even knew he lived here. His heart began to beat faster. Could it be that policeman with the Trondheim accent again?

He was walking towards his bedroom door when it slid open.

'Hello, Olsen.'

Because the spring sun was low and shone right in through the window on the landing he could only see a silhouette filling the doorway. But he knew perfectly well whose voice it was.

'Aren't you happy to see me?' the Prince said, closing the door behind him.

He scanned the walls inquisitively. 'Quite a place you have here.’

‘Why did she let you…?'

'I showed your mother this.' The Prince waved around a card with a Norwegian coat of arms in gold on a light blue background. It said politi on the other side.

'Oh fuck,' Sverre said with a gulp. 'Is that genuine?'

'Who knows? Relax, Olsen. Take a seat.'

The Prince pointed to the bed and sat the wrong way round on the desk chair.

'What are you doing here?' Sverre asked.

'What do you think?' He beamed a broad smile at Sverre, who was sitting on the very edge of the bed. 'The day of reckoning.’

‘The day of reckoning?'

Sverre still had not collected himself completely. How did the Prince know he lived here? And the police ID card. Looking at him now, it struck Sverre that the Prince could easily be a policeman-the well-groomed hair, the cold eyes, the solarium-brown face and the well-trained upper body, the short jacket in soft black leather and the blue jeans. Strange he hadn't noticed before.

'Yes,' the Prince said, still smiling. 'The day of reckoning has come.' He pulled out an envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to Sverre.

'About time,' Sverre said, flashing a fleeting nervous smile and sticking his fingers into the envelope. 'What's this?' he asked, pulling out a folded A4 sheet.

'It's a list of the eight people Crime Squad will soon be visiting, and almost certainly taking blood from, to send for DNA testing to find a match for the skin particles they found on your cap at the scene of the crime.'

'My cap? You said you'd found it in your car and burned it?'

Sverre stared in horror as the Prince shook his head in regret.

'It seems I went back to the scene of the crime. A young couple was waiting for the police, frightened out of their wits. I must have "lost" the cap in the snow a few metres from the body.'

Sverre ran both hands across his head several times.

'You seem baffled, Olsen?'

Sverre nodded and attempted a smile, but the corners of his mouth didn't seem to want to obey. 'Do you want me to explain?' Sverre nodded again.

'When a police officer is murdered the case has top priority until the murderer is caught, however long it takes. It isn't written in any instruction manual, but when the victim is one of our own, no questions are asked about resources. That's the problem with killing police officers-detectives simply won't give up until they have…' he pointed to Sverre,'… found the guilty party. It's just a question of time-so I took the liberty of giving the detectives a helping hand so the waiting time would not be too long.'

'But…'

'You might be wondering why I helped the police to find you when the odds are that you would report me in order to have your own sentence commuted?'

Sverre swallowed. He tried to think, but it was too much and everything was blocked.

'I can understand that this must be a hard nut to crack,' the Prince said, stroking a finger along the imitation Iron Cross hanging from a nail on the wall. 'Of course, I could have shot you right after the murder. But then the police would have known that you were in league with someone trying to cover their tracks and would have continued the hunt.'

He unhooked the chain from the nail and hung it round his neck, over his leather jacket.

'Another alternative was to "solve" the crime on my own, to shoot you while arresting you and make it look as if you had resisted arrest. The problem with that is that it might seem suspiciously clever for one person to solve a case on their own. People might start thinking, especially since I was the last person to see Ellen Gjelten alive.'

He paused and laughed.

'Don't look so scared, Olsen! I'm telling you these are alternatives I rejected. What I've done is to sit on the sidelines, keep myself informed about progress and watch them close in on you. The plan has always been to jump in when they get close, take over the baton and do the last lap myself. By the way, a piss artist working in POT tracked you down.'

'Are you… a policeman?'

'Does it suit me?' The Prince was pointing to the Iron Cross. 'No, to hell with that. I'm a soldier like you, Olsen. A ship has to have watertight bulkheads, otherwise the slightest leak will cause it to sink. Do you know what it would mean if I betrayed my identity to you?'

Sverre's mouth and throat were so dry he could no longer swallow. He was frightened. Frightened for his life.

'It would mean that I couldn't let you leave this room alive. Do you understand?'

'Yes.' Sverre's voice was hoarse. 'My m-money…'

The Prince put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol.

'Sit still.'

He walked over to the bed, sat beside Sverre and, holding the pistol in both hands, pointed it at the door.

'This is a Glock, the world's most reliable handgun. I was sent it from Germany yesterday. The manufacture number has been filed off. The street value is about eight thousand kroner. Look on it as the first instalment.'

Sverre jumped as it went off with a bang. He stared with large eyes at the little hole at the top of the door. The dust danced in the stripe of sunlight which ran like a laser beam from the hole through the room.

'Feel it,' the Prince said, dropping the gun in his lap. Then he stood up and went to the door. 'Hold it tight. Perfect balance, isn't it?'

Sverre reluctantly curled his fingers around the stock of the gun. He could feel he was sweating inside his T-shirt. There's a hole in the ceiling. That was all he could think. And that the bullet had made a new hole and they still hadn't got hold of a builder. Then what he had been expecting happened. He closed his eyes.

'Sverre!'

She sounds as if she's drowning. He gripped the gun. She always sounds as if she's drowning. Then he opened his eyes again and saw the Prince turn by the door, in slow motion. He swung up his arms; both hands were held round a shiny black Smith amp; Wesson revolver.

'Sverre!'

A yellow flame spat out of the muzzle of the gun. He could see her standing at the bottom of the stairs. Then the bullet hit him, bored through the top of his forehead, out through the back, taking the Heil from the Sieg Heil tattoo with it, into and through the wooden studwork in the wall, through the insulation before stopping behind the Eternit cladding panel on the outside wall. But by then Sverre Olsen was already dead.