The Redeemer

'Hasn't got any brothers,' Harry said.

Bjorgen raised his head, looked up at the policeman and asked with genuine surprise in his voice: 'Hasn't he?'

Harry shook his head.

Bjorgen wrung his hands. 'I… I took those pills because I was so upset. That's what they're for. Isn't it?'

'Where did he go?'

'He didn't say.'

'Did he take any money?'

'Some change I had on me. Then he cleared off. And I… I just sat here and was so frightened…' A sudden sob interrupted the flow and he huddled under the duvet. 'I am so frightened.'

Harry eyed the weeping man. 'If you like, you can sleep down at Police HQ tonight.'

'I'll stay here,' Bjorgen sniffled.

'OK. One of us will be round early tomorrow to have a further chat.'

'Alright. Hang on! If you catch him…'

'Yes?'

'That reward's still on, isn't it?'

He had the fire going well now. The flames glinted in a triangular piece of glass he had used from the broken window in the hut. He had collected more wood and felt his body beginning to thaw. It would be worse in the night but he was alive. He had cut strips off his shirt with the piece of glass and wound them round his bleeding fingers. The animal's jaws had closed around his hand holding the gun. And the gun.

The shadow of a black Metzner hanging between roof and floor flickered on the container wall. The jaws were open and the body stretched out and frozen in one last silent attack. The rear legs were tied with wire which was threaded through a gap in one of the iron grooves in the roof. The blood trickling out of the mouth and the opening behind the ear where the bullet had exited dripped onto the floor with clock-like regularity. He would never know whether it was his forearm muscles or the dog's bite that squeezed the finger on the trigger, but he had the impression he could still feel the walls vibrating after the shot. The sixth since he had arrived in this accursed city. And now he had one bullet left in the gun.

One was enough, but how would he find Jon Karlsen now? He needed someone to lead him in the right direction. The policeman came to mind. Harry Hole. It didn't sound like a common name. Perhaps he wouldn't be so difficult to find.

Part Three CRUCIFIXION 20

Thursday, 18 December. The Citadel.

The neon sign outside Vika Atrium showed minus eighteen and the clock inside 9 p. m. as Harry and Halvorsen stood in the glass lift watching the tropical plants becoming smaller and smaller beneath them.

Halvorsen pursed his lips, then changed his mind. Pursed them again.

'Glass lifts are fine,' Harry interrupted. 'No problem with heights.'

'Uh-huh.'

'I want you to do the introductions and ask the questions. I'll join in after a while. OK?'

Halvorsen nodded.

They had just sat down in the car after the visit to Tore Bjorgen when Gunnar Hagen had called and asked them to go down to Vika Atrium where Albert and Mads Gilstrup, father and son, were waiting for them in order to make a statement. Harry had pointed out that it was not normal practice to ring the police to make a statement and he had asked that Skarre deal with the matter.

'Albert is an old acquaintance of the Chief 's,' Hagen had explained. 'He phoned to say they had decided they didn't want to make a statement to anyone except the officer leading the inquiry. On the positive side, there won't be a solicitor present.'

'Well-'

'Great. I appreciate that.'

So, no command this time.

A little man in a blue blazer was waiting for them outside the lift.

'Albert Gilstrup,' he said with minimal movement from a lipless mouth as he proffered a fleeting but firm handshake. Gilstrup had white hair and a furrowed, weather-beaten face but young, alert eyes, which studied Harry as he led him towards a door with a sign declaring that this was where Gilstrup Invest was housed.

'I would like you to be aware that my son has been hit hard by this,' Albert Gilstrup said. 'The body was in a terrible state, and I am afraid to say Mads has a somewhat sensitive nature.'

Harry concluded from the way Albert Gilstrup expressed himself that he was either a practical man who knew there was little to be done for the dead, or that his daughter-in-law had not occupied a special place in his heart.

In the small but exclusively furnished reception area hung wellknown Norwegian pictures with national-romantic motifs that Harry had seen countless times before. A man with a cat in the farmyard. Soria Maria Palace. The difference was that this time Harry was not so sure he was looking at reproductions.

Mads Gilstrup was sitting and staring through the glass wall facing the atrium as they came into the meeting room. The father coughed and the son slowly turned as if he had been disturbed in the middle of a dream he didn't want to relinquish. The first thing that struck Harry was that the son did not look like his father. His face was narrow, but the round, gentle features and the curly hair made Mads Gilstrup look younger than the thirty-something years Harry assumed he must have been. Or perhaps it was his expression, the childlike helplessness in those brown eyes that finally focused on them when he stood up.

'I'm grateful that you were able to come,' Mads Gilstrup whispered in a thick voice, squeezing Harry's hand with an intensity that made Harry wonder whether the son might have thought the priest had arrived and not the police.

'Not at all,' Harry said. 'We had wanted to talk to you anyway.'

Albert Gilstrup coughed and his mouth barely opened, like a crack in a wooden face. 'Mads means that he is grateful for your coming here at our request. We thought you might prefer the police station.'

'And I thought you might have preferred to meet us at home as it's so late,' Harry said, addressing the son.

Mads looked at his father, irresolute, and on receiving a faint nod, answered: 'I can't bear to be there now. It's so… empty. I'll sleep at home tonight.'

'With us,' the father added by way of explanation and sent him a look that Harry thought should have been sympathy. But it resembled contempt.

They sat down and father and son pushed their business cards across the table to Harry and Halvorsen. Halvorsen responded with two of his own. Gilstrup senior looked at Harry in anticipation.

'Mine haven't been printed yet,' Harry said. Which was true, as far as it went, and always had been. 'But Halvorsen and I work as a team, so all you have to do is ring him.'

Halvorsen cleared his throat. 'We have a few questions.'

Halvorsen's questions sought to establish Ragnhild's movements earlier that day, what she was doing in Jon Karlsen's flat and possible enemies. Each one was met with a shake of the head.

Harry searched for milk for his coffee. He had started taking it. Probably a sign that he was getting old. Some weeks ago he had put on the Beatles' indisputable masterpiece Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band and was disappointed. It had got old, too.

Halvorsen was reading questions from his notepad and jotting down notes without making eye contact. He asked Mads Gilstrup to account for where he had been between nine and ten o'clock this morning, which was the doctor's estimate of the time of death.

'He was here,' Albert Gilstrup said. 'We've been working here all day, both of us. We're trying to turn around the firm.' He addressed Harry. 'We expected you to ask that question. I've read that the husband is always the first person the police suspect in murder inquiries.'

'With good reason,' Harry said. 'From a statistical point of view.'

'Fine,' Albert Gilstrup nodded. 'But this isn't statistics, my dear man. This is reality.'