The Redbreast(42)

Gudbrand reacted instinctively to Edvard’s

scream and curled into a ball, but as he lay there he

caught sight of the pin which was spinning round

and round a metre away from him. A lump of metal

was attached to one end. He felt his body freezing

into the ice as he realised what was about to

happen.

‘Move away!’ Edvard screamed behind him.

It was true, the Russian pilots really were

throwing hand-grenades from aeroplanes.

Gudbrand was on his back and tried to move away,

but his arms and legs slipped on the wet ice.

‘Gudbrand!’

The peculiar sound had been the hand-grenade

bouncing across the ice into the bottom of the

trench. It must have hit Dale right on the helmet!

‘Gudbrand!’

The grenade spun round and round, bounced and

danced again, and Gudbrand couldn’t take his eyes

off it. Four seconds from defusing to detonation,

wasn’t that what they had learned at Sennheim?

The Russians’ grenades might be different. Perhaps

it was six? Or eight? Round and round the grenade

whirled, like one of the big red spinning-tops his

father had made him in Brooklyn. Gudbrand would

spin it, and Sonny and his little brother stood

watching and counting how long it kept going.

‘Twenty-one, twenty-two . . .’ Mummy called from

the window on the second floor to say dinner was

ready. He was to go in; Daddy would be coming

home any minute. ‘Just a minute,’ he shouted up to

her, ‘the top’s spinning!’ But she didn’t hear; she

had already closed the window. Edvard wasn’t

shrieking any more, and all of a sudden it was

quiet.

22

Doctor Buer’s Surgery. 22 December

1999.

THE OLD MAN LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. HE HAD BEEN

SITTING in the waiting room for a quarter of an hour

now. He’d never had to wait in Konrad Buer’s

day. Konrad hadn’t taken on more patients than he

could manage in his schedule.

A man was sitting at the other end of the room.

Dark-skinned, African. He was flicking through a

weekly magazine, and the old man established that

even at this distance he could read every letter on

the front page. Something about the royal family.

Was that what this African was sitting reading? An

article about the Norwegian royal family? The idea

was absurd.

The African turned the page. He had the type of

moustache that went down at the ends, just like the

courier the old man had met the previous night. It

had been a brief meeting. The courier had arrived

at the container port in a Volvo, probably a rented

car. He had pulled up, the window had gone down

with a hum and he had said the password: Voice of

an Angel. He had had exactly the same kind of

moustache. And sorrowful eyes. He had

immediately said he didn’t have the gun with him

in the car for security reasons, but that they would

drive to a place to get it. The old man had

hesitated. Then he thought that if they had wanted

to rob him, they would have done so at the

container port. So he had got in and they had

driven to the Radisson SAS hotel, of all places, in

Holbergs plass. He had seen Betty Andresen

behind the counter as they went through reception,

but she had not looked in their direction.

The courier had counted the money in the suitcase

while mumbling numbers in German. Then the old

man had asked him. The courier had said that his

parents came from some place in Elsass, to which

the old man said, on a whim, that he had been

there, to Sennheim. An impulse.

After he had read so much about the Märklin rifle

on the Internet at the University Library, the

weapon itself had been something of an anticlimax.

It looked like a standard hunting rifle, only a little

bigger. The courier had shown him how to

assemble it and strip it; he called him ‘Herr

Uriah’. Then the old man put the dismantled rifle

into a large shoulder-bag and took the lift down to

reception. For a brief moment he had considered

going over to Betty Andresen and asking her to

order a taxi for him. Another impulse.

‘Hello!’

The old man looked up. ‘I think we’ll have to

give you a hearing test as well.’

Dr Buer stood in the doorway and made an

attempt at a jovial smile. He led him into the

surgery. The bags under the doctor’s eyes had

become even bigger.

‘I called your name three times.’

I forget my name, the old man reflected. I forget all my names.

The old man deduced from the doctor’s helping

hand that he had bad news.

‘Well, I’ve got the results of the samples we

took,’ he said, quickly, before he had settled into

his chair. To get the bad news over and done with

as fast as possible. ‘And I’m afraid it has spread.’