The Redbreast(76)

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘But I was also wondering

one thing, Aud Hilde.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If you’ve seen the hotel room we have at our

disposal here.’

Aud Hilde smiled again and said she hadn’t.

38

Focus Fitness Centre, Ila. 2 March

2000.

HARRY WAS PEDALLING AND SWEATING. THE

CARDIO-vascular room was equipped with eighteen

hyper-modern ergometric exercise bikes, all

occupied by ‘urban’, generally speaking, attractive

people staring at the mute TV monitor hanging from

the ceiling. Harry was watching Elisa in The

Robinson Expedition mouthing that she couldn’t

stand Poppe. Harry knew. It was a repeat.

That don’t impress me much! rang out from the

loudspeakers.

No, well, there’s a surprise, Harry thought, who

liked neither the loud music nor the rasping sounds

that could be heard coming from somewhere in his

lungs. He could have worked out for nothing in the

gym at Police HQ, but Ellen had persuaded him to

join the Focus centre. He had gone along with that,

but drew the line when she tried to get him to join

an aerobics class. Moving in time to canned music

with a troupe of people who all liked canned

music while an instructor with a rictus smile

encouraged greater exertion with such verbal wit

as ‘no pain, no gain’ was for Harry an

incomprehensible form of voluntary self-

abasement. The way he saw it, the biggest

advantage of Focus was that he could work out and

watch The Robinson Expedition without having to

be in the same room as Tom Waaler, who

appeared to spend most of his free time in the

police gym. Harry cast a quick glance around and

confirmed that tonight, as usual, he was the oldest

person there. Most people in the room were girls,

with Walkmans plugged into their ears, sneaking a

look in his direction at regular intervals. Not

because they were looking at him, but because

Norway’s most popular stand-up comic sat next to

him in a grey hoodie without a drop of sweat

beneath his jaunty forelock. A message flashed up

on Harry’s speedometer console: You’re training

well.

But dressing badly, Harry thought, looking down

at his limp, faded jogging bottoms, which he had to

keep hitching up because of the mobile phone

hanging on the waistband. And his tired Adidas

trainers were neither new enough to be modern or

old enough to be trendy again. The Joy Division T-

shirt which had once held some kind of street cred

just sent out the signal that he hadn’t been

following what was happening on the music scene

for a number of years. But Harry didn’t feel

completely – completely – in the cold until his

phone began to bleep and he noticed that seventeen

reproachful pairs of eyes, including the stand-up

comic’s, were directed at him. He unhooked the

tiny black devil’s machine from his waistband.

‘Hole.’

That don’t impress me much! again.

‘It’s Juul. Am I disturbing?’

‘No, it’s just music.’

‘You’re wheezing like a walrus. Ring me back

when it’s more convenient.’

‘It’s convenient now. I’m at the gym.’

‘Alright. I have good news. I’ve read your report

from Johannesburg. Why didn’t you say he’d been

to Sennheim?’

‘Uriah? Is that important? I wasn’t even sure I had

the name right. I looked for it on a map of Germany

but I couldn’t find any Sennheim.’

‘The answer to your question is yes, it is

important. If you’ve been in any doubt as to

whether he fought at the front, you can be reassured

now. It’s one hundred per cent certain. Sennheim is

a little place and the only Norwegians I’ve heard

of who have been there went during the war. To

the training camp before leaving for the Eastern

Front. The reason you didn’t find Sennheim on a

map of Germany is because it isn’t in Germany, but

in French Alsace.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘Alsace has alternated between being French and

German throughout its history, that’s why they

speak German there. The fact that our man has been

to Sennheim reduces the number of potential

candidates drastically. You see, only men from the

Nordland and Norge regiments received their training there. And even better – I can give you the

name of a person who was in Sennheim and would

almost certainly be willing to help.’

‘Really?’

‘A soldier from the Nordland regiment who

fought at the front. He joined us in the Resistance

as a volunteer in 1944.’

‘Wow.’

‘He grew up on a remote farm with his parents