The Redbreast(108)

else, are we?’ Møller rolled back his shoulders.

‘Maybe not.’

‘But Ellen was good at other things. I often

thought what a waste of human resources it was

having her work for the police. Catching naughty

boys and girls. That’s enough for the likes of us,

but not for her. Do you know what I mean?’

Møller went over to the window and stood

beside Harry.

‘It’ll be better when we get into May,’ he said.

‘Mm,’ Harry said.

The clock on Grønland church struck two.

‘I’ll see if I can have Halvorsen put on to the

case,’ Møller said.

60

Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 27 April

2000.

BERNT BRANDHAUG’S LONG AND VARIED

EXPERIENCE WITH women had taught him that on the

rare occasions he decided that there was a woman

he not only wanted but had to have, it was for one

of the following four reasons: she was more

beautiful than all the others; she satisfied him

sexually more than any others; she made him feel

more of a man than any others; or, more crucially,

she wanted someone else.

Brandhaug had realised that Rakel Fauke was that

type of woman.

He had rung her one January day under the pretext

of needing an assessment of the new military

attaché at the Russian embassy in Oslo. She had

told him that she could send a memo, but he had

insisted on a face-to-face report. Since it was

Friday afternoon, he had suggested meeting over a

glass of beer at the bar in the Continental. That was

how he had found out that she was a single parent.

In fact, she had turned down the invitation, saying

she had to pick up her son from the nursery, and he

had brightly asked, ‘I assume a woman of your

generation has a man to take care of such things?’

Although she didn’t give a direct answer he had

intuited from her response that there was not a man

on the scene.

When he rang off he was generally pleased with

his gains, even though he was mildly irritated that

he had said your generation and thus emphasised

the age difference between them.

The next thing he did was to ring Kurt Meirik and

discreetly pump him for information about Ms

Fauke. The fact that he was less than discreet and

Meirik smelled a rat didn’t bother him in the

slightest.

Meirik was his usual, well-informed self. Rakel

had worked as an interpreter in Brandhaug’s own

department for two years at the Norwegian

embassy in Moscow. She had married a Russian, a

young professor of gene technology who had taken

her by storm and had immediately converted theory

into practice by making her pregnant. However, the

professor had been born with a gene that

predisposed him to alcoholism, combined with a

predilection for physical discussion, and so their

wedded bliss was brief. Rakel Fauke had not

repeated the mistake of many in her sisterhood: she

didn’t wait, forgive or try to understand; she

marched right out of the door with Oleg in her arms

the second the first blow fell. Her husband and his

relatively influential family had appealed for

custody of Oleg, and had it not been for her

diplomatic immunity she would not have

succeeded in leaving Russia with her son.

As Meirik was telling him that the husband had

taken out a lawsuit against her, Brandhaug vaguely

recalled a summons issued by a Russian court

passing through his in-tray. But she had only been

an interpreter at that time and he had delegated the

whole business, without making a mental note of

her name. When Meirik mentioned that the custody

suit was still being chewed over by the Russian

and Norwegian authorities, Brandhaug abruptly

broke off the conversation and rang down to the

legal department.

The next call, to Rakel, was an invitation to dinner,

no pretext this time, and upon her friendly but firm

refusal he dictated a letter addressed to her, signed

by the head of the legal department. The letter, in

brief outline, told her that the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, since the business had dragged on, was

now attempting to reach a compromise solution

with the Russian authorities on custody ‘out of

humane consideration for Oleg’s Russian family’.

That would require Rakel and Oleg to appear

before a Russian court and comply with the court’s

ruling.

Four days later Rakel phoned Brandhaug and

asked to meet him concerning a private matter. He

answered that he was busy, which was true, and

asked if the meeting could be postponed for a

couple of weeks. When, with a hint of shrillness

behind her courteous professional tones, she

begged him for a meeting as soon as possible, he

discovered, after lengthy reflection, that Friday at

six at the bar in the Continental was the only