The Redbreast(39)

thousand from your newspaper . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘A few of them would do a bit of good, that’s for

sure.’

‘How many?’

‘Well, how many have you got?’

The old man sighed, looked around once more to

ensure there were no witnesses. Then he

unbuttoned his coat and reached inside.

Sverre Olsen crossed Youngstorget with large

strides, swinging a green plastic bag. Twenty

minutes ago he had been sitting flat broke, with

holes in his boots, at Herbert’s and now he was

walking in a shiny new pair of combat boots, high-

laced, twelve eyelets on each side, bought from

Top Secret in Henrik Ibsens gate. Plus he had an

envelope which still contained eight shiny new big

ones. And ten more in the offing. It was strange

how things could change from one minute to the

next. This autumn he had been on his way to three

years in the clink when his lawyer had realised that

the fat lady associate judge had taken her oath in

the wrong place.

Sverre was in such a good mood that he reckoned

he ought to invite Halle, Gregersen and Kvinset

over to his table. Buy them a round. See how they

reacted. Yes, he bloody would!

He crossed Pløens gate in front of a Paki woman

with a pram and smiled at her out of pure devilry.

On his way to the door of Herbert’s he thought to

himself that there wasn’t much point in carrying

around a plastic bag containing discarded boots.

He went through the archway, flicked up the lid of

one of the wheelie bins and threw in the plastic

bag. On his way out again his attention was caught

by two legs sticking out between two of the bins

further to the back. He looked around. No one in

the street. No one in the alley. What was it? A

dipso? A junkie? He went closer. Where the legs

protruded the bins had been shoved together. He

could feel his pulse racing. Junkies became very

upset if you disturbed them. Sverre stepped back

and kicked one of the containers to the side.

‘Ooh, fuck.’

It was odd that Sverre Olsen, who had almost

killed a man himself, should never have seen a

dead person before. And equally odd that it almost

made his legs give way. The man sitting against the

wall with one eye staring in each direction was as

dead as it was possible to be. The cause of death

was obvious. The smiling red wound in the neck

showed where his throat had been cut. Even though

the blood was only trickling now, it had clearly

pumped out at first because the man’s red Icelandic

sweater was soaked and sticky. The stench of

refuse and urine was overwhelming, and Sverre

caught the taste of bile before two beers and a

pizza came up. Afterwards, he stood leaning

against the bins, spitting on to the tarmac. The toes

of his new boots were yellow with vomit, but he

didn’t notice. He only had eyes for the little red

stream glistening in the dark as it sought the lowest

point in the back alley.

21

Leningrad. 17 January 1944.

A RUSSIAN YAK 1 FIGHTER PLANE THUNDERED

OVER Edvard Mosken’s head as he ran along the

trench, bent double.

Generally speaking, the fighter planes didn’t do a

lot of damage. The Russians seemed to have run

out of bombs. The latest thing he had heard was

that they had equipped pilots with hand-grenades,

which they were trying to lob into the trenches as

they flew over.

Edvard had been in the Northern Sector to collect

letters for the men and to catch up on the news. The

whole autumn had been one long series of

depressing reports of losses and retreats all along

the Eastern Front. The Russians had recaptured

Kiev in November, and in October the German

army had narrowly avoided becoming surrounded

north of the Black Sea. The situation was not made

any easier by Hitler redirecting forces to the

Western Front, but the most worrying thing was

what Edvard had heard today. Two days ago

Lieutenant General Gusev had launched a fierce

offensive from Oranienbaum on the southern side

of the Finnish Bay. Edvard remembered

Oranienbaum because it was a small bridgehead

they had passed on the march to Leningrad. They

had let the Russians keep it because it had no

strategic importance. Now the Ivans had managed

to assemble a whole army around the Kronstadt

fort in secret, and according to reports Katusha

cannons were tirelessly bombarding German

positions. The once dense spruce forests had been

reduced to firewood. It was true they had heard the

music from Stalin’s artillery in the distance for

several nights now, but no one had guessed that

things were so bad.

Edvard had taken the opportunity during the trip

to go to the field hospital to visit one of his men

who had lost a foot on a landmine in no man’s

land, but the nurse, a tiny Estonian woman with