The Redeemer

'I counted up yesterday. We've now got twice as many volunteers doing a stretch as we have people who have turned to Jesus.'

Jon smiled. 'Untilled fields for missionaries. Just a question of getting started.'

Robert called one of the boys, who threw him a pack of cigarettes. Robert put a coffin nail between his lips, no filter.

'Take it out,' Jon said. 'Soldier's vows. You could be dismissed.'

'I wasn't thinking of lighting it, bruv. What do you want?'

Jon shrugged. 'A chat.'

'What about?'

Jon chuckled. 'It's quite normal for brothers to have a chat now and then.'

Robert nodded and picked flakes of tobacco off his tongue. 'When you say chat, you usually mean you're going to tell me how to lead my life.'

'Come on.'

'What is it then?'

'Nothing! I was wondering how you were.'

Robert took out the cigarette and spat in the snow. Then he peered up into the high, white cloud cover.

'I'm bloody sick of this job. I'm bloody sick of the flat. I'm bloody sick of the shrivelled-up, hypocritical sergeant major running the show here. If she weren't so ugly I would…' Robert grinned, '… fuck the old prune face stupid.'

'I'm freezing,' Jon said. 'Can we go in?'

Robert walked ahead into the tiny office and sat on a chair squeezed between a cluttered desk, a narrow window with a view of the backyard and a red-and-yellow flag with the Salvation Army's motto and emblem 'Fire and Blood'. Jon lifted a heap of papers, some yellowing with age, off a wooden chair he knew Robert had pinched from the Majorstuen Corps' room next door.

'She says you're a malingerer,' Jon said.

'Who?'

'Sergeant Major Rue.' Jon grimaced. 'Prune face.'

'So she rang you. Is that how it is?' Robert poked around in the desk with his pocket knife, then burst out: 'Oh, yes, I forgot. You're the new admin boss, the boss of the whole shebang.'

'No decision has been made yet. It might well be Rikard.'

'Whatever.' Robert carved two semicircles in the desk to form a heart. 'You've said what you came to say. Before you bugger off, can I have the five hundred for your shift tomorrow?'

Jon took the money from his wallet and laid it on the desk in front of his brother. Robert stroked the blade of the knife against his chin. The black bristles rasped. 'And I'll remind you of one more thing.'

Jon knew what was coming and swallowed. 'And what's that?'

Over Robert's shoulder he could see it had begun to snow, but the rising heat from the houses around the backyard made the flimsy white flakes stand still in the air outside the window, as though listening.

Robert placed the point of the knife in the centre of the heart. 'If I find you even once in the vicinity of you know who…' He put his hand around the shaft of the knife and leaned forward. His body weight forced the blade into the dry wood with a crunch. 'I'll destroy you, Jon. I swear I will.'

'Am I disturbing?' came a voice from the door.

'Not at all, fru Rue,' Robert said, as sweet as pie. 'My brother was just about to leave.'

The Chief Superintendent and the new POB, Gunnar Hagen, stopped talking when Bjarne Moller came into his office. Which of course was no longer his.

'Well, do you like the view?' Moller asked in what he hoped was a cheery tone. And added: 'Gunnar.' The name felt strange on his tongue.

'Mm, Oslo is always a sad sight in December,' Gunnar Hagen said. 'But we'll have to see whether we can sort that out, too.'

Moller felt an urge to ask what he meant by 'too', but stopped when he saw the Chief Superintendent give a nod of approval.

'I was giving Gunnar the low-down on the people around here. In all confidence, you understand.'

'Ah, yes, you two know each other from before.'

'Yes indeed,' said the Chief Superintendent. 'Gunnar and I have known each other ever since we were cadets at what used to be called Police School.'

'It said in the memo that you do the Birkebeiner race every year,' Moller said, turning to Gunnar Hagen. 'Did you know that the Chief Superintendent does, too?'

'Oh, yes, indeed.' Hagen looked over at the Chief Superintendent with a smile. 'Sometimes Torleif and I go together. And try to outdo each other in the final spurt.'

'Well, I never,' Moller said, amused. 'So if the Chief had been on the appointment board, he could have been accused of cronyism.'

The Chief Superintendent gave a dry chuckle and Bjarne Moller an admonitory glance.

'I was telling Gunnar about the man you so generously presented with a watch.'

'Harry Hole?'

'Yes,' Gunnar Hagen said. 'I know he's the man who killed an inspector in connection with that tedious smuggling business. Tore the man's arm off in a lift, I heard. And now he's also under suspicion of leaking the case to the press. Not good.'

'First of all, the "tedious smuggling business" was a gang of pros, with offshoots in the police, who flooded Oslo with cheap handguns for years,' Bjarne Moller said, trying in vain to keep the irritation out of his voice. 'A case which Hole, despite the resistance here in HQ, solved unaided thanks to many years of painstaking police work. Secondly, he killed Waaler in self-defence and it was the lift that tore off his arm. And, thirdly, we have no evidence whatsoever regarding who leaked what.'

Gunnar Hagen and the Chief Superintendent exchanged glances.

'Be that as it may,' the Chief Superintendent said, 'he's someone you'll have to keep an eye on, Gunnar. From what I gather his girlfriend left him of late. And we know that men with Harry's bad habits are extra susceptible to relapses. Which, of course, we cannot accept, however many cases he's solved in this unit.'

'I'll keep him in line,' Hagen said.

'He's an inspector,' Moller said, closing his eyes. 'Not rank and file. Not very keen on being kept in line, either.'

Gunnar Hagen nodded slowly as his hand went up through his thick wreath of hair.

'When is it you begin in Bergen…' Hagen lowered his hand, 'Bjarne?'

Moller guessed his name sounded just as strange on the other man's tongue.

Harry wandered down Urtegata and could see by the footwear of the people he met that he was getting close to the Lighthouse. The guys in the Narco Unit used to say that no one did more for the identification of addicts than the Army amp; Navy surplus stores. Because sooner or later military footwear ended up on junkies' feet via the Salvation Army. In the summer it was blue trainers; in the winter, like now, the junkie's uniform was black military boots together with a green plastic bag containing a Salvation Army packed lunch.

Harry swung through the door with a nod to the guard wearing the Salvation Army hoody.

'Anything?' the guard asked.

Harry patted his pockets. 'Nothing.'

A sign on the wall said all alcohol had to be handed in at the door and taken away when leaving. Harry knew they had given up on drugs and the equipment. No junkie would hand that in.

Harry entered, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat on the bench by the wall. Fyrlyset, the Lighthouse, was the Army's cafe, the new millennium's version of the soup kitchen where the needy were given free snacks and coffee. A cosy, well-lit room where the only difference between this and the usual cappuccino bar was the clientele. Ninety per cent of drug users were male. They ate slices of white bread with Norwegian brown or white cheese, read the newspapers and had quiet conversations round the tables. It was a free zone, a chance to thaw out and have a breather from the search for the day's fix. Although undercover police dropped by now and again, there was a tacit agreement that no arrests would be made inside.

A man sitting next to Harry had frozen into a deep bow. His head hung down over the table and in front of him black fingers held a cigarette paper. There were a few emptied dog-ends scattered around.