The Redbreast(117)

been drawn, covered the bed.

Møller let his gaze wander round the walls.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he mumbled.

‘Sverre Olsen didn’t vote for the Socialists,’

Harry said. ‘Don’t touch anything, Bjarne,’ shouted

an inspector Harry recognised from Forensics.

‘You know what happened last time.’

Apparently Møller did; at any rate he laughed

good-naturedly.

‘Sverre Olsen was sitting on the bed when

Waaler came in,’ Harry said. ‘According to

Waaler, he was standing by the door and he asked

Olsen about the night Ellen was killed. Olsen

pretended he couldn’t remember the date, so

Waaler asked a few more questions and gradually

it became obvious that Olsen did not have an alibi.

According to Waaler, he asked Olsen to go to the

station with him and give a statement, and that was

when Olsen suddenly grabbed the revolver that he

must have kept hidden under the pillow. He fired

and the bullet passed above his shoulder and

through the door – here’s the hole – and through the

ceiling in the hall. According to Waaler, he pulled

out his service revolver and got Olsen before he

could fire off any more shots.’

‘Quick reactions. Good shot, too, I heard.’

‘Smack in the forehead,’ Harry said.

‘Not so strange perhaps. Waaler got top results in

the shooting test last autumn.’

‘You’re forgetting my results,’ Harry said drily.

‘How’s it going, Ronald?’ Møller shouted,

turning to the inspector dressed in white.

‘Plain sailing, I reckon.’ The inspector stood up

and straightened his back with a groan. ‘We found

the bullet that killed Olsen behind the Eternit panel

here. The one that went through the door continued

on up through the ceiling. We’ll have to see if we

can find that one as well so that the ballistics boys

have something to play with tomorrow. The angles

fit anyway.’

‘Hm. Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. How’s your wife by the way?’

Møller told him how his wife was, omitted to ask

how the inspector’s was, but for all Harry knew,

he didn’t have one. Last year four of the boys in

Forensics had separated from their wives in the

same month. They had joked in the canteen that it

must have been the smell of corpses.

They saw Weber outside the house. He was

standing on his own with a cup of coffee in his

hand, watching the man on the ladder.

‘Was it alright, Weber?’ Møller asked.

Weber squinted at them as if he first had to check

whether he could be bothered to answer them.

‘She won’t be a problem,’ he said, peering up at

the ladder man again. ‘Of course she said she

couldn’t understand it because her son hated the

sight of blood and so on, but we won’t have any

problems as far as the factual things that happened

here are concerned.’

‘Hm.’ Møller placed a hand behind Harry’s

elbow. ‘Let’s take a little walk.’

They strolled down the road. It was an area with

small houses, small gardens and blocks of flats at

the end. Some children, their faces red with effort,

pedalled past them on their way up to the police

cars with the sweeping blue lights. Møller waited

until they were well out of the others’ hearing.

‘You don’t seem particularly happy that we’ve

caught Ellen’s killer,’ he said.

‘Well, depends what you mean by happy. First of

all, we don’t know if it is Sverre Olsen yet. The

DNA tests —’

‘The DNA tests will show it’s him. What’s up,

Harry?’

‘Nothing, boss.’

Møller stopped. ‘Really?’

Møller inclined his head towards the house. ‘Is it

because you think Olsen got away too lightly with

a quick bullet?’

‘I’m telling you, it’s nothing!’ Harry said with a

sudden vehemence. ‘Spit it out!’ Møller bellowed.

‘I just think it’s bloody funny.’

Møller frowned. ‘What’s funny?’

‘An experienced policeman like Waaler . . .’

Harry had lowered his voice. He spoke slowly,

stressing every word. ‘. . . deciding to take off

alone to talk to and possibly arrest a suspect. It

breaks all the written and unwritten rules.’

‘So what are you saying? That Tom Waaler

provoked it? Do you think he made Olsen go for

his gun so that he could avenge Ellen’s killing? Is

that it? Is that why you stood there saying

according to Waaler this and according to

Waaler that, precisely as if we in the police don’t trust a colleague’s words? While half the Crime