No one in the unit moved.
'Are you frightened to step forward, mali spasitelj? You who blew up twelve of our tanks and deprived our women of their husbands and made Serbian children fatherless?'
He waited.
'I thought so. Which of you is Bobo?'
Still no one moved.
The commander looked at the civilian, who pointed a trembling finger at Bobo in the second row.
'Come forward,' the commander shouted.
Bobo walked the few steps to the jeep and the driver, who had got out and was standing beside the vehicle. When Bobo stood to attention and saluted, the driver knocked his cap into the mud.
'We have been given to understand on the radio that the little redeemer is under your command,' the commander said. 'Please point him out to me.'
'I've never heard of any redeemer,' Bobo said.
The commander raised his gun and struck him. A red stream of blood issued from Bobo's nose.
'Quick. I'm getting wet and food is ready.'
'I am Bobo, a captain in the Croatian ar-'
The commander nodded to the driver, who snatched Bobo's hair and turned his face to the rain, washing the blood from his nose and mouth down into the red neckerchief.
'Idiot!' said the commander. 'There is no Croatian army here, just traitors! You can choose to be executed right now or save us time. We'll find him whatever happens.'
'And you'll execute us whatever happens,' Bobo groaned.
'Of course.'
'Why?'
The commander went through the motions of loading his gun. Raindrops fell from the gunstock. He placed the barrel against Bobo's temple. 'Because I'm a Serbian officer. And a man has to respect his work. Are you ready to die?'
Bobo shut his eyes; raindrops hung from his eyelashes.
'Where is the little redeemer? I'll count to three, then I'll shoot. One…'
'I am Bobo-'
'Two!'
'-captain in the Croatian army. I-'
'Three!'
Even in the pouring rain the dry click sounded like an explosion.
'Sorry, I must have forgotten to load the magazine,' the commander said.
The driver passed the commander a magazine. He thrust it into the handle, loaded and raised the pistol again.
'Last chance! One!'
'I… my… unit is-'
'Two!'
'-the first infantry battalion in… in-'
'Three!'
Another dry click. The father in the back seat sobbed.
'Goodness me! Empty magazine. Shall we try it with some of those nice shiny bullets in?'
Magazine out, new one in, load.
'Where is the little redeemer? One!'
Bobo mumbled the Lord's Prayer: 'Oce nas…'
'Two!'
The skies opened, the rain beat down with a roar as though in a desperate attempt to stop what they were doing. He couldn't stand it any more, the sight of Bobo; he opened his mouth to scream that he was the little redeemer, he was the one they wanted, not Bobo, just him, they could have his blood. But at that moment Bobo's gaze swept across and past him and he could see the wild, intense prayer in it, saw him shake his head. Then Bobo's body jerked as the bullet cut the connection between body and soul, and he saw his eyes snuff out and life drain away.
'You,' shouted the commander, pointing to one of the men in the first row. 'Your turn. Come here!'
The young Serbian officer who had shot the lieutenant ran over.
'There's some shooting up at the hospital,' he shouted.
The commander swore and waved to the driver. The next moment the engine started with a roar and the jeep vanished in the gloom. But not before he had told them there was no reason for the Serbs to worry. There were no Croats in the hospital in a position to shoot. They didn't have any weapons.
They had left Bobo where he lay, face down in the black mud. And when it was so dark that the Serbs in the tent could no longer see them, he crept forward, bent over the dead captain, loosened the knot and took the red neckerchief.
8
Tuesday, 16 December. The Mealtime.
It was eight o'clock in the morning, and the day that would go down as the coldest 16 December in Oslo for twenty-four years was still as dark as night. Harry left the police station after signing out the key to Tom Waaler's flat with Gerd. He walked with upturned coat collar, and when he coughed the sound seemed to disappear into cotton wool, as though the cold had made the air heavy and dense.
People in the early-morning rush hurried along the pavements. They couldn't get indoors quickly enough whereas Harry took long, slow steps, bracing his knees in case the rubber soles of his Doc Martens didn't grip the packed ice.
When he let himself into Tom Waaler's centrally positioned bachelor flat the sky behind Ekeberg Ridge was growing lighter. The flat had been sealed off in the weeks following Waaler's death, but the inquiry had not thrown up any leads pointing to other potential arms smugglers. At least that was what the Chief Superintendent had said when he informed them that the case would be given a lower priority because of 'other pressing investigative tasks'.
Harry switched on the light in the living room and once again noticed that dead people's homes had a silence all of their own. On the wall in front of the gleaming, black leather furniture hung an enormous plasma TV with metre-high speakers on each side, part of the surround-sound system in the flat. There were a lot of pictures on the walls with blue cube-like patterns. Rakel called it ruler-and-compass art.
He went into the bedroom. Grey light filtered through the window. The room was tidy. On the desk there was a computer screen, but he couldn't see a tower anywhere. They must have taken it away to check it for evidence. However, he hadn't seen it among the evidence at HQ. Although, of course, he had been denied access to the case. The official explanation was that he was under investigation by SEFO, the independent police investigation authority, for the murder of Waaler. Yet he could not get the idea out of his head that someone was not happy about every stone being turned over.
Harry was about to leave the bedroom when he heard it.
The deceased's flat was no longer quiet.
A sound, a distant ticking made his skin tingle and the hairs stand up on his arm. It came from the wardrobe. He hesitated. Then he opened the wardrobe door. On the floor inside was an open cardboard box and he at once recognised the jacket Waaler had been wearing that night in Kampen. At the top, in the jacket, a wristwatch was ticking. The way it did after Tom Waaler had punched his arm through the window in the lift door, into the lift where they were, and the lift had started moving and had cut off his arm. Afterwards they had sat in the lift with his arm between them, wax-like and lifeless, a severed limb off a mannequin, with the bizarre difference that this one was wearing a watch. A watch that ticked, that refused to stop, but was alive, as in the story Harry's father had told him when he was small, the one where the sound of the dead man's beating heart would not stop and in the end drove the killer insane.
It was a distinct ticking sound, energetic, intense. The kind of sound you remember. It was a Rolex watch. Heavy and in all probability exorbitant.
Harry slammed the wardrobe door. Stamped his way to the front door, creating an echo against the walls. Rattled the keys loudly when he locked up and hummed in frenzied fashion until he was in the street and the blissful traffic noise drowned everything else.
At three o'clock shadows were already falling on Kommandor T. I. Ogrims plass no. 4, and lights had started to come on in the windows of the Salvation Army Headquarters. By five o'clock it was dark, and the mercury had dropped to minus fifteen. A few stray snowflakes fell on the roof of the funny little car Martine Eckhoff sat waiting in.