The Redeemer

12

Wednesday, 17 December. Hospital and Ashes.

In the shop window he saw the reflection of a police car pulling up in the street behind him. He kept walking, forcing himself not to run. As he had done a few minutes ago when he raced down the stairs from Jon Karlsen's flat, came out onto the pavement and almost knocked over a young woman with a mobile phone in her hand, sprinted across the park, westwards, to the busy streets where he was now.

The police car was moving at the same speed as he was. He saw a door, opened it and had the impression he had stepped into a film. An American film with Cadillacs, bootlace ties and young Elvises. The music on the speakers sounded like an old hillbilly record at three times the speed and the bartender's suit looked like it had been lifted from the LP cover.

He was looking around the surprisingly full but tiny bar area when he noticed the bartender had been talking to him.

'Sorry?'

'A drink, sir?'

'Why not? What have you got?'

'Well, a Slow Comfortable Screw, maybe. Though, you look as if you could do with a whisky from the Orkneys.'

'Thank you.'

A police siren rose and fell. The heat in the bar was causing the sweat to stream out of his pores now. He tore off his neckerchief and stuffed it in his coat pocket. He was glad of the tobacco smoke, which camouflaged the smell of the gun in his coat pocket.

He was given a drink and found a seat by the wall facing the window.

Who had the other person in the room been? A friend of Jon Karlsen? A relative? Or someone Karlsen shared the flat with? He took a sip of the whisky. It tasted of hospital and ashes. And why did he ask himself such stupid questions? Only a policeman could have reacted in the way he did. Only a policeman could have called for help with such speed. And now they knew who his target was. That would make his job much harder. He would have to consider retreat. He took another sip.

The policeman had seen his camel-hair coat.

He went to the toilet, moved the gun, neckerchief and passport into his jacket pockets and shoved the coat into the rubbish bin beneath the sink. On the pavement outside, rubbing his hands and shivering, he surveyed the street in both directions.

The final job. The most important. Everything depended on it.

Easy does it, he said to himself. They don't know who you are. Go back to the beginning. Think constructively.

Nevertheless, he couldn't repress the thought running through his mind: who was the man in the flat?

'We don't know,' Harry said. 'All we know is that he might have been the same man who killed Robert.'

He tucked in his legs so that the nurse could roll the empty bed past them down the narrow corridor.

'M-might have been?' Thea Nilsen stuttered. 'Are there several of them?' She sat slightly forward, holding the wooden seat of the chair tight as though afraid of falling off.

Beate Lonn leaned over and placed a comforting hand on Thea's knee. 'We don't know. The most important thing is that it went well. The doctor says he has concussion, that's all.'

'Which I gave him,' Harry said. 'Along with the edge of the kitchen unit, which made a small hole in his forehead. The bullet missed. We found it in the wall. The second bullet came to rest in the milk carton. Just imagine. Inside the milk carton. And the third in the kitchen cupboard between the currants and-'

Beate sent Harry a glance which he guessed was supposed to say that right now Thea would hardly be interested in ballistic idiosyncrasies.

'Anyway. Jon is fine, but he was out cold for a bit, so the doctors are keeping him under observation for the time being.'

'Alright. Can I go in and see him now?'

'Of course,' Beate said. 'We would like you to have a look at these pictures first though. And tell us if you have seen any of these men before.'

She took three photos out of a folder and gave them to Thea. The photos of Egertorget had been blown up so much that the faces seemed like mosaics of black-and-white dots.

Thea shook her head. 'That was difficult. I couldn't even see any differences between them.'

'Nor me,' Harry said. 'But Beate is a specialist in facial recognition, and she says they're two different people.'

'I think they are,' Beate corrected. 'In addition, I was almost knocked flying by him as he came running out of the block in Goteborggata. And to me he didn't look like either of these people in the pictures.'

Harry was taken aback. He had never heard Beate express doubt in this field before.

'Good God,' Thea whispered. 'How many do you think there really are?'

'Don't worry,' Harry said. 'We have a guard outside Jon's room.'

'What?' Thea stared at him wide-eyed, and Harry realised it had not even occurred to her that Jon could be in danger at Ulleval Hospital. Until now. Fantastic.

'Come on. Let's go and see how he is,' Beate suggested in a friendly tone.

Yes, thought Harry. And leave this idiot to sit and ponder the concept of 'people managment'.

He turned at the sound of running footsteps from the other end of the corridor.

It was Halvorsen slaloming between patients, visitors and nurses in clattering clogs. Breathless, he pulled up in front of Harry and handed him a sheet of paper with pale black writing on it and that shiny quality that told Harry it was from Crime Squad's fax machine.

'A page from the passenger lists. I tried to ring you-'

'Mobiles have to be switched off here,' Harry said. 'Anything interesting?'

'I got the passenger lists, no problem. And mailed them to Alex, who got on to them right away. A couple of the passengers have small blemishes on their records, but nothing that would raise suspicion. But there was one thing that was a bit odd…'

'Oh?'

'One of the passengers came to Oslo two days ago and had a return flight that should have left yesterday, but was postponed until today. Christo Stankic. He never showed up. That's odd because he had a cheap ticket and it isn't valid for other flights. On the list he is given as a Croatian national so I asked Alex to check the national register in Croatia. Now Croatia isn't a member of the EU either, but as they're dead keen to join, they're very cooperative as far as-'

'Come to the point, Halvorsen.'

'Christo Stankic doesn't exist.'

'Interesting.' Harry scratched his chin. 'Although Stankic may not have anything to do with our case.'

'Of course.'

Harry studied the name on the list. Christo Stankic. It was just a name. But a name that would have to be in the passport the airline would ask to see at check-in, as the name was on the passenger list. The same passport that hotels would ask to see.

'I want all the hotel guest lists in all of Oslo checked,' Harry said. 'Let's see if any of them have put up Christo Stankic over the last two days.'

'I'll be on to it right away.'

Harry straightened up and sent Halvorsen a nod he hoped contained what he wanted to say. That he was pleased with him.

'I'm off to my psychologist,' Harry said.

The psychologist, Stale Aune, had his office in the part of the street called Sporveisgata where there was no sporvei, tramline, but its pavements did showcase an interesting selection of walks: the confident, bouncy walk of the keep-fit housewives at the SATS fitness studio, the cautious walk of the guide-dog owners from the Institute for the Blind and the careless gait of the down-at-heel but undeterred clientele from the hospice for drug users.

'So this Robert Karlsen liked girls under the age of consent,' Aune said, having hung his tweed jacket over the back of the chair and forced his double chin down towards his bow tie. 'That can be caused by many things, of course, but I gather he grew up in a pietistic Salvation Army milieu. Is that correct?'

'Yes,' said Harry, looking up at the well-stocked but chaotic bookshelves of his personal professional adviser. 'But isn't it a myth that you become perverted from growing up in closed, strict, religious communities?'

'No,' Aune said. 'Christian sects are over-represented as far as the sexual assault you mention is concerned.'

'Why's that?'

Aune pressed his fingertips together and smacked his lips with glee. 'If one is punished or humiliated in one's childhood or adolescence by, for example, one's parents for exhibiting a natural sexuality, what happens is that one represses this part of one's personality. Normal sexual maturation comes to a grinding halt, and sexual preferences find a deviant outlet, so to speak. At an adult age many try to return to a period in their lives when they were allowed to be natural, to find a release for their sexuality.'

'Like wearing nappies.'

'Yes. Or playing with excrement. I remember a case in California about a senator who-'

Harry coughed.

'Or, at an adult age, they go back to what is known as a core-event,' Aune continued. 'Which is often the last time they were successful in their sexual endeavours, that is, the last time sex worked for them. And it might be a teenage infatuation, or sexual contact of some kind, that went undiscovered or unpunished.'

'Or a sexual assault?'

'Correct. A situation when they were in control and hence felt powerful, the very opposite of humiliation. And so they spend the rest of their lives seeking to recreate that situation.'

'It can't be that easy being a sexual molester then.'

'Indeed not. Many were beaten black and blue for being found with a pornographic magazine in their teens and showing a quite normal, healthy sexuality. But if you wish to maximise the chances of a person becoming a sexual abuser, give him a violent father, an invasive or sexually importunate mother and a milieu in which the truth is suppressed and the lusts of the flesh are rewarded with hellfire.'

Harry's mobile bleeped. He pulled it out and read the text from Halvorsen. A Christo Stankic had stayed at Scandia Hotel by Oslo Central Station the night before the murder.

'What's AA like?' Aune asked. 'Is it helping you to abstain?'

'Well,' Harry said, getting up, 'yes and no.'

A scream jolted him back into reality.

He turned and looked into a pair of saucer eyes and a black hole of an open mouth a few centimetres from his face. The child pressed its nose against the glass partition in Burger King's playroom before falling backwards onto the carpet of red, yellow and blue plastic balls with a whine of glee.

He wiped the remains of ketchup from his mouth, emptied his tray into the bin and rushed out into Karl Johans gate. Tried to huddle up into the thin suit jacket, but the cold was merciless. He decided to buy a new coat as soon as he had got himself a decent room in Scandia Hotel.

Six minutes later he walked through the doors of the hotel lobby and queued up behind a couple who were obviously checking in. The female receptionist cast a fleeting glance at him without any sign of recognition. Then she bent over the new guests' papers while speaking in Norwegian. The woman turned to him. A blonde. Attractive, he noticed. Even if in a plain kind of way. He smiled back. That was as much as he managed. Because he had seen her before. Just a few hours ago. Outside the building in Goteborggata.

Without moving from the spot he inclined his head and put his hands in his jacket pockets. The grip on the gun was firm and reassuring. Taking great care, he raised his head, spotted the mirror behind the receptionist and stared. But the image blurred, became double. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again. The tall man gradually came into focus. The shorn skull, the pale skin with the red nose, the hard, pronounced features that were at variance with the sensitive mouth. It was him. The second man in the flat. The policeman. He took stock of the reception area. They were the only people around. And, as though to remove the last shadow of doubt, he heard two familiar words amid all the Norwegian. Christo Stankic. He forced himself to remain calm. How they had managed to trace him he had no idea, but the consequences were beginning to dawn on him.

The blonde woman was given a key by the receptionist, grabbed what looked like a tool case and walked towards the lift. The tall man said something to the receptionist and she made a note. Then the policeman turned round and their eyes met for an instant before he headed for the exit.

The receptionist smiled, articulated a rehearsed, friendly Norwegian phrase and sent him an enquiring look. He asked her if she had a nonsmoking room on the top floor.

'Let me see, sir.' She tapped away on the keyboard.

'Excuse me. The man you were talking with, wasn't he the policeman whose photo has been in the newspapers?'

'I don't know.' She smiled.

'Think it was, he's famous, what's his name again…?'

She glanced down at her notebook. 'Harry Hole. Is he famous?'

'Harry Hole?'

'Yes.'

'Wrong name. I must have made a mistake.'

'I have one free room. If you want it, you'll have to fill in this card and show your passport. How would you like to pay?'

'How much is it?'

She checked the price.

'Sorry,' he smiled. 'Too expensive.'

He left the hotel and went into the railway station, headed for the toilet and locked himself in a cubicle. There he sat, trying to organise his thoughts. They had the name. So he had to find some accommodation where he would not have to show his passport. And Christo Stankic could forget about booking a plane, boat, train or even crossing a national border. What was he going to do? He would have to ring Zagreb and talk to her.

He strolled into the square outside the station. A numbing wind swept the open area as, with chattering teeth, he kept an eye on the public telephones. A man was leaning against the white hot-dog vehicle in the middle. He was wearing a quilted down jacket and trousers and resembled an astronaut. Was he imagining it or was the man keeping the phones under surveillance? Could they have traced his calls and were they waiting for him to return? No, impossible. He hesitated. If they were tapping the phones, there was a chance he might give her away. He made up his mind. The call could wait. What he needed now was a room with a bed and a heater. They would want cash at the kind of place he was looking for now, and he had spent his last money on the hamburger.

Inside the high concourse, between the shops and the platforms, he found a cash machine. He took out his Visa card, read the English instructions telling him to keep the magnetic strip to the right, and went to put the card in the slot. His hand stopped. The card was made out in the name of Christo Stankic, too. It would be registered and somewhere an alarm would go off. He hesitated. Then he returned the card to his wallet. He sauntered through the concourse. The shops were closing. He didn't even have enough money to buy a warm jacket. A security guard was giving him the once-over. He stumbled into Jernbanetorget again. A northerly wind was sweeping through the square. The man by the hotdog stand was gone. But there was another by the tiger sculpture.

'I need some money for a place to sleep tonight.'

He didn't need to know any Norwegian to understand what the man was asking him for. It was the same young junkie he had given money to earlier in the day. Money he was in dire need of now. He shook his head and cast a glance at the shivering collection of junkies by what he had at first taken to be a bus stop. The white bus had arrived.

Harry's chest and lungs ached. The good ache. His thighs burned. The good burn.

When he was stuck on a case he sometimes did what he was doing now – he went down to the basement fitness room at Police HQ and cycled. Not because it made him think better, but because it made him stop thinking.

'They said you were here.' Gunnar Hagen mounted the ergometer bike beside him. The tight yellow T-shirt and the cycling shorts emphasised rather than covered the muscles in the POB's lean, almost ravaged body. 'What program are you on?'

'Number nine,' Harry panted.

Hagen regulated the height of the saddle while standing on the pedals and then punched in the necessary settings on the cycle computer. 'I gather you've had quite a dramatic day today.'

Harry nodded.

'I'll understand if you want to apply for sick leave,' Hagen said. 'After all, this is peacetime.'

'Thank you, but I'm feeling pretty fresh, boss.'

'Good. I've just spoken to Torleif.'

'The Chief Super?'

'We need to know how the case is going. There have been phone calls. The Salvation Army is popular, and influential people in town would like to know whether we'll clear the case up before Christmas. Peace and Yuletide goodwill and all that stuff.'

'The politicians coped fine with six fatal OD cases in their Yuletide last year.'

'I was asking for an update on the case, Hole.'

Harry could feel the sweat stinging his nipples.

'Well, no witnesses have come forward despite the photos in Dagbladet today. And Beate Lonn says that the photos suggest we are not dealing with one killer, but at least two. And I share her opinion. The man at Jon Karlsen's flat was wearing a camel-hair coat and a neckerchief, and the clothes match those of the man in Egertorget the evening before the murder.'

'Only the clothes?'

'I couldn't see his face very well. And Jon Karlsen can't remember a great deal. One of the residents has admitted she let an Englishman in to leave a Christmas present outside Jon Karlsen's door.'

'Right,' said Hagen. 'But we'll keep the theory about several killers to ourselves. Go on.'

'There's not much more to say.'

'Nothing?'

Harry checked the speedometer as with calm determination he stepped up the pace to thirty-five kilometres an hour.

'Well, we have a false passport belonging to a Croat, a Christo Stankic, who was not on the Zagreb plane today and should have been. We found out he had been staying at Scandia Hotel. Lonn examined his room for DNA. They don't have so many guests staying so we hoped the receptionist would recognise the man from our photos.'

'And?'

'Afraid not.'

'What is our basis for thinking this is our man then?'

'The false passport,' Harry said, stealing a glimpse at Hagen's speedometer. Forty kilometres an hour.

'And how will you find him?'

'Well, names leave traces in the information age and we have alerted all our standard contacts. If anyone bearing the name of Christo Stankic sets foot in a hotel, buys a plane ticket or uses a credit card, we will know at once. According to the receptionist he had enquired after a telephone booth, and she directed him to Jernbanetorget. Telenor is going to send us a list of outgoing calls over the last two days from the public phones there.'

'So all you have is a Croat with a false passport who didn't turn up for his flight,' Hagen said. 'You're stuck, aren't you.'

Harry didn't answer.

'Try thinking laterally,' Hagen said.

'Right, boss,' Harry drawled.

'There are always alternatives,' Hagen said. 'Have I told you about the Japanese platoon and the cholera outbreak?'

'Don't think I've had the pleasure, boss.'

'They were in the jungle north of Rangoon and kept bringing up everything they ate and drank. They were dehydrating, but the leader refused to lie down and die, so he ordered them to empty their morphine syringes and use them to inject themselves with the water from their canteens.'

Hagen increased his tempo and Harry listened in vain for any signs of breathlessness.

'It worked. But after a few days the only water they had left was a barrel teeming with mosquito larvae. Then the second in command suggested sticking the syringes in the flesh of the fruit growing around them and injecting it into the bloodstream. In theory, fruit juice is 90 per cent water anyway, and what did they have to lose? It saved the platoon, Hole. Imagination and courage.'

'Imagination and courage,' wheezed Hole. 'Thanks, boss.'

He pedalled for all he was worth and could hear the crackle of his own breathing, like fire through an open stove door. The speedometer showed 42. He glanced over at the POB's. 47. Breathing? Even.

Harry was reminded of a sentence from a thousand-year-old book he had been given by a bank robber, The Art of War. 'Choose your battles.' And he knew this was one battle he should withdraw from. Because he would lose, whatever he did.

Harry slowed down. The speedometer showed 35. To his surprise, he didn't feel frustration, just weary resignation. Perhaps he was growing up, perhaps he was finished with being the idiot who lowered his horns and attacked anyone waving a red rag? Harry snatched a sidelong glance. Hagen's legs were going like pistons now, and the smooth layer of sweat on his face glistened in the white light from the lamp.

Harry dried his sweat. Took two deep breaths. Then went for it again. The wonderful pain returned in seconds.