The Redbreast

73

Klippan, Sweden. 10 May 2000.

Harry woke up.

It took a second before he knew where he was. After he had let himself into the flat the first thing that had occurred to him was that it would be impossible to sleep. There was only a thin wall and a single pane of glass separating the bedroom from the busy road outside. But as soon as the supermarket on the other side of the road had closed for the night, the place seemed to go dead. Hardly a car had passed and the local population seemed to have been swallowed up.

In the supermarket Harry had bought a pizza grandiosa which he heated in the oven. He thought how odd it was to be sitting in Sweden, eating Italian food made in Norway. Afterwards, he switched on the dusty TV which was standing on a beer crate in the corner. There was obviously something wrong with the TV because all the people's faces had this strange green shimmer. He sat watching a documentary. A girl had put together a personal account of her brother, who had spent her entire childhood in the 1970s travelling the world and sending her letters. From the homeless milieu in Paris, a kibbutz in Israel, a train journey through India and the verge of despair in Copenhagen. It had been made very simply. A few film-clips, but mostly stills, a voiceover and a strangely melancholic, sad story. He must have dreamed about it because when he woke up the characters and places were still playing on his retina.

The sound that had woken him came from the coat he had left hanging over the kitchen chair. The high-pitched bleeps bounced off the walls of the bare room. He had switched on the electric panel radiator to full, but he was still freezing under the thin duvet. He placed his feet on the cold lino and took the mobile phone out of his inside coat pocket.

'Hello?'

No answer.

'Hello?'

All he could hear at the other end was breathing. 'Is that you, Sis?'

She was the only person he could immediately think of who had his number and who might conceivably ring him in the middle of the night.

'Is something the matter? With Helge?'

He'd had doubts about giving the bird to Sis, but she had seemed so happy and had promised she would take good care of it. But it wasn't Sis. She didn't breathe like that. And she would have answered.

'Who is it?'

Still no answer.

He was about to hang up when there was a little whimper. The breathing began to quiver; it sounded as if the person at the other end was going to cry. Harry sat down on the sofa bed. In the gap between the thin blue curtains he could see the neon sign of the ICA supermarket.

Harry eased a cigarette out of the packet on the coffee table beside the sofa, lit it and lay back. He inhaled deeply as he heard the quivering breathing change into low sobbing.

'Don't cry now,' he said.

A car passed outside. Had to be a Volvo, Harry thought. Harry covered his legs with the duvet. Then he told the story about the girl and her elder brother, more or less as he remembered it. When he had finished she wasn't crying any more and right after he said goodnight, the line was cut.

When the mobile phone rang again it was past 8.00 and light outside. Harry found it under the duvet, between his legs. It was Meirik. He sounded stressed.

'Come back to Oslo immediately,' he said. 'Looks like that Marklin rifle of yours has been used.'