The Redeemer

Harry shrugged. 'David Eckhoff and the Salvation Army were spared an embarrassing scandal that could have damaged their reputation and their work. Albert Gilstrup lost his only son, a daughter-in-law and had a contract cancelled that might have saved the family fortune. Sofia Miholjec and her family are going back to Vukovar. They have received support from a newly established local benefactor to build a house down there. Martine Eckhoff is going out with a man called Rikard Nilsen. In short, life goes on.'

'What about you? Are you seeing Rakel?'

'Now and then I do.'

'What about the doctor guy?'

'I don't ask. They have their own problems to deal with.'

'Does she want you back, is that it?'

'I think she wishes I was the kind of person who could live the sort of life he does.' Harry turned up his collar and peered down at what it was claimed was the town beneath. 'And for that matter I wish that, too, sometimes.'

They fell silent.

'I took Tom Waaler's watch to a jeweller's and had it checked over by a young man who understands that kind of thing. Do you remember I once told you I was having nightmares about the Rolex watch that kept ticking on Waaler's severed arm?'

Moller nodded.

'Now I have the explanation,' Harry said. 'The world's most expensive watches have a Tourbillon system with a frequency of twenty-eight thousand vibrations an hour. This has the effect of making the second hand look as if it's flying around in one movement. And with a mechanical escapement the ticking sound is more intense than in other watches.'

'Wonderful watches, Rolex.'

'The Rolex brand was added by a watchmaker to disguise what kind of watch it really is. It's a Lange 1 Tourbillon. One of a hundred and fifty specimens. In the same series as the one I got from you. The last time a Lange 1 Tourbillon was sold at an auction the price was a little under three million kroner.'

Moller nodded with a tiny smile playing on his lips.

'Was that how you paid yourselves?' Harry asked. 'With watches costing three million?'

Moller buttoned up his coat and turned up the collar. 'Their value is more stable and they're less conspicuous than cars. Less flamboyant than expensive art, easier to smuggle than cash and they don't need to be laundered.'

'And watches are something you give as a present.'

'That's it.'

'What happened?'

'It's a long story, Harry. And like many tragedies it started with the best intentions. We were a small group of people who wanted to play our part. Put things right that a society governed by law was not able to do unaided.'

Moller put on a pair of black gloves.

'Some say the reason so many criminals go free is that the legal system is a net with a large mesh. But that gives a completely false picture. It's a thin, fine-meshed net which catches the small fry, but tears when the big fish crash into it. We wanted to be the net behind the net, the one that could bring the sharks up short. There weren't only people from the police in the group, but also lawyers, politicians and bureaucrats who could see that the structure of our society, legislation and the legal system were not ready for the international organised crime that invaded our country when the borders went down. The police did not have the authority to play by the same rules as the lawbreakers. Until legislation had caught up. Therefore, we had to operate in a covert fashion.'

Moller, staring into the mist, shook his head.

'But in those places that are closed and secret and cannot be ventilated the rot sets in. A culture of microorganisms grew in the police, who first declared we would have to smuggle in weapons to match those our adversaries had at their disposal. Then we would have to sell them so as to finance our work. It was a bizarre paradox, but those who opposed this soon found out that the microorganisms had taken over. And then came the gifts. Trivialities to start with. Encouragement to spur you on, as they said. Thereby signalling that not accepting a gift would be seen as not showing solidarity. But in fact it was just the next stage in the rotting process, in the corruption that assimilated you almost without your noticing until you were sitting in crap up to your neck. And there was no way out. They had too much on you. The worst thing was that you didn't know who "they" were. We had organised ourselves into small cells which communicated with each other via a contact person who was pledged to secrecy. I didn't know that Tom Waaler was one of us, that he was the one organising the arms smuggling or that a person with the code name Prince even existed. Not until you and Ellen Gjelten discovered it. And then I also knew that we had lost sight of our real goal. That it was a long time since we had had any other goal except lining our own pockets. That I was corrupt. And that I was an accessory in…' Moller took a deep breath: '… the murder of police officers like Ellen Gjelten.'

Wisps and wafers of cloud whirled up past them as though Floien were flying.

'One day I couldn't take it any more. I tried to get out. They gave me alternatives. Which were simple. But I'm not afraid for myself. The only thing I'm afraid of is that they will hurt my family.'

'Is that why you fled?'

Bjarne Moller nodded.

Harry sighed. 'And so you gave me this watch to put an end to it.'

'It had to be you, Harry. It couldn't be anyone else.'

Harry nodded. He felt a lump growing in his throat. He was reminded of something Moller had said the previous time they had stood here at the top of the mountain. It was funny to think that six minutes on the cable car from the centre of the second biggest town in Norway there were people who got lost and died. And to imagine you are at the heart of what you think is justice and then suddenly lose all sense of direction and become the very thing you oppose. He thought of all the mental calculations he had gone through, all the major and minor decisions that had led to the last minutes in Gardemoen Airport.

'And what about if I am not so different from you, boss? What about if I said I could be standing where you are now?'

Moller shrugged. 'It's chance and nuances that separate the hero from the villain. That's how it's always been. Righteousness is the virtue of the lazy and the visionless. Without lawbreakers and disobedience we would still have been living in a feudal society. I lost, Harry; it's as simple as that. I believed in something, but I was blinded, and by the time I regained my sight I had been corrupted. It happens all the time.'

Harry shivered in the wind and searched for words. When he finally found some his voice sounded alien and tormented. 'Sorry, boss. I can't arrest you.'

'That's fine, Harry. I'll sort out the rest myself from here.' Moller's voice sounded calm, almost consoling. 'I just wanted you to see everything. And understand. And perhaps learn. There was no more to it than that.'

Harry stared into the impenetrable mist and tried in vain to do as his boss and friend had asked him to do: 'to see everything'. Harry kept his eyes open until the tears came. When he turned round, Bjarne Moller had gone. He called his name in the mist even though he knew that Moller was right: there was no more to it than that. But he thought someone ought to call his name anyway.