The Redbreast

64

Krokliveien. 2 May 2000.

Harry had scrounged a coffee off someone in the Crime Scene Unit with a thermos. He was standing in front of the ugly little house in Krokliveien in Bjerke, peering at a young officer up a ladder who was marking the hole in the roof where the bullet had exited. Curious onlookers had already begun to gather and for the sake of security the police had cordoned off the area around the house with yellow tape. The man on the ladder was bathed in the afternoon sunlight, but the house lay in a hollow in the ground and it was already cold where Harry stood.

'So you arrived immediately after it happened?' Harry heard a voice behind him ask. He turned round. It was Bjarne Moller. He had become an increasingly rare sight at crime scenes, but Harry had heard several people say he had been a good detective. Some even suggested that he should have been allowed to continue. Harry offered him the cup of coffee, but Moller shook his head.

'Yes, I must have arrived about four to five minutes afterwards,' Harry said. 'Who told you?'

'Central switchboard. They said you had rung and asked for reinforcements after Waaler reported the shooting.'

Harry motioned with his head towards the red sports car in front of the gateway.

'When I arrived I saw Waaler's Jap car. I knew he was coming here, so that was fine. But when I got out of my car I heard a terrible howling noise. At first I thought there was a dog somewhere in the neighbourhood. As I walked up the gravel path, however, I knew it was coming from inside the house and that it wasn't a dog. It was human. I didn't take any chances and rang for assistance from 0kern police district.'

'It was the mother?'

Harry nodded. 'She was completely hysterical. It took them almost half an hour before they had her in a calm enough state to say something sensible. Weber is still talking to her now, in the sitting room.'

'Good old sensitive Weber?'

'Weber's fine. He's a bit of an old sourpuss at work, but he's pretty good with people in this kind of situation.'

'I know. I was just joking. How's Waaler taking it?' Harry shrugged his shoulders.

'I know,' Moller said. 'He's a cold fish. Fair enough. Shall we go in and take a dekko?’

‘I've been in.'

'Well, give me a guided tour then.'

They made their way up to the first floor as Moller mumbled greetings to colleagues he hadn't seen for ages.

The bedroom was full of specialists from the Crime Scene Unit and cameras were flashing. Black plastic, on which the outline of a body had been drawn, covered the bed.

Moller let his gaze wander round the walls. 'Jesus Christ,' he mumbled.

'Sverre Olsen didn't vote for the Socialists,' Harry said.

'Don't touch anything, Bjarne,' shouted an inspector Harry recognised from Forensics. 'You know what happened last time.'

Apparently Moller did; at any rate he laughed good-naturedly.

'Sverre Olsen was sitting on the bed when Waaler came in,' Harry said. According to Waaler, he was standing by the door and he asked Olsen about the night Ellen was killed. Olsen pretended he couldn't remember the date, so Waaler asked a few more questions and gradually it became obvious that Olsen did not have an alibi. According to Waaler, he asked Olsen to go to the station with him and give a statement, and that was when Olsen suddenly grabbed the revolver that he must have kept hidden under the pillow. He fired and the bullet passed above his shoulder and through the door-here's the hole-and through the ceiling in the hall. According to Waaler, he pulled out his service revolver and got Olsen before he could fire off any more shots.'

'Quick reactions. Good shot, too, I heard.'

'Smack in the forehead,' Harry said.

'Not so strange perhaps. Waaler got top results in the shooting test last autumn.'

'You're forgetting my results,' Harry said drily.

'How's it going, Ronald?' Moller shouted, turning to the inspector dressed in white.

'Plain sailing, I reckon.' The inspector stood up and straightened his back with a groan. 'We found the bullet that killed Olsen behind the Eternit panel here. The one that went through the door continued on up through the ceiling. We'll have to see if we can find that one as well so that the ballistics boys have something to play with tomorrow. The angles fit anyway.'

'Hm. Thanks.'

'Don't mention it. How's your wife by the way?'

Moller told him how his wife was, omitted to ask how the inspector's was, but for all Harry knew, he didn't have one. Last year four of the boys in Forensics had separated from their wives in the same month. They had joked in the canteen that it must have been the smell of corpses.

They saw Weber outside the house. He was standing on his own with a cup of coffee in his hand, watching the man on the ladder. 'Was it alright, Weber?' Moller asked.

Weber squinted at them as if he first had to check whether he could be bothered to answer them.

'She won't be a problem,' he said, peering up at the ladder man again. 'Of course she said she couldn't understand it because her son hated the sight of blood and so on, but we won't have any problems as far as the factual things that happened here are concerned.'

'Hm.' Moller placed a hand behind Harry's elbow. 'Let's take a little walk.'

They strolled down the road. It was an area with small houses, small gardens and blocks of flats at the end. Some children, their faces red with effort, pedalled past them on their way up to the police cars with the sweeping blue lights. Moller waited until they were well out of the others' hearing.

'You don't seem particularly happy that we've caught Ellen's killer,' he said.

'Well, depends what you mean by happy. First of all, we don't know if it is Sverre Olsen yet. The DNA tests -'

'The DNA tests will show it's him. What's up, Harry?'

'Nothing, boss.'

Moller stopped. 'Really?'

Moller inclined his head towards the house.

'Is it because you think Olsen got away too lightly with a quick bullet?'

'I'm telling you, it's nothing!' Harry said with a sudden vehemence. 'Spit it out!' Moller bellowed. 'I just think it's bloody funny.' Moller frowned. 'What's funny?'

An experienced policeman like Waaler…' Harry had lowered his voice. He spoke slowly, stressing every word.'… deciding to take off alone to talk to and possibly arrest a suspect. It breaks all the written and unwritten rules.'

'So what are you saying? That Tom Waaler provoked it? Do you think he made Olsen go for his gun so that he could avenge Ellen's killing? Is that it? Is that why you stood there saying according to Waaler this and according to Waaler that, precisely as if we in the police don't trust a colleague's words? While half the Crime Scene Unit is listening?'

They glared at each other. Moller was almost as tall as Harry.

'I'm just saying it's bloody funny,' Harry said, turning away. 'That's all.'

'That's enough, Harry! I don't know what made you come out here after Waaler or whether you suspected that something was going to happen, but I know that I don't want to hear any more about it. I don't want to hear another damned word insinuating anything. Understood?'

Harry's eyes lingered on the Olsen family's yellow house. It was smaller than the other houses and it didn't have the same high hedge around it as the rest in this quiet-afternoon residential street. The other hedges made this ugly, Eternit-cladded home seem unprotected. The neighbouring houses seemed to be cold-shouldering it. There was the acidic smell of bonfires, and the distant metallic voice of the commentator from Bjerke trotting track came and went with the wind.

Harry shrugged.

'Sorry. I… you know.'

Moller put his hand on his shoulder.

'She was the best. I know that, Harry.'