had laughed. Then Mosken became serious again.
‘What smarted was being labelled a traitor. But I
console myself with the fact that we know that we
defended our country with our lives.’
‘Your political views at that time . . .’
‘If they are the same today?’
Harry nodded, and Mosken said with a dry smile,
‘That’s an easy question to answer, Inspector. No.
I was wrong. Simple as that.’
‘You haven’t had any contact with neo-Nazis
since?’
‘God forbid – no! There was a meeting in
Hokksund a few years ago and one of the idiots
rang me up to ask if I would go and talk about the
war. I think they called themselves “Blood and
Honour”. Something like that.’
Mosken leaned across the coffee table. On one
corner there was a pile of magazines, neatly
stacked and aligned with the edge.
‘What is POT actually looking for? Are you
trying to monitor the neo-Nazis? If that’s the case,
you’ve come to the wrong place.’
Harry was unsure how much to tell him at this
point. His answer was honest enough though.
‘I don’t really know what we’re looking for.’
‘That sounds like the POT I know.’
He laughed his magpie cackle again. It was an
unpleasant, high-pitched sound.
Harry later concluded it must have been the
combination of the scornful laugh and the fact that
he wasn’t offered any coffee that made him ask the
next question in the way that he did.
‘How do you think it must have been for your son
to grow up with an ex-Nazi as a father? Do you
think that’s why Edvard Mosken Jr is doing time
for a drugs offence?’
Harry regretted it the second he saw the anger and
pain in the old man’s eyes. He knew that he could
have found out what he wanted without hitting
beneath the belt.
‘The trial was a farce!’ Mosken fizzed. ‘The
defence lawyer they gave my son is the grandson of
the judge who sentenced me after the war. They’re
punishing my child to hide their own shame at what
they did during the war. I —’
He stopped abruptly. Harry waited for him to go
on, but nothing came. Without any prior warning,
he suddenly felt the pack of hounds in the pit of his
stomach tug at the chains. They hadn’t stirred for
quite a while now. They needed a drink.
‘One of the “latter-day saints”?’ Harry asked.
Mosken shrugged. Harry knew the topic was
closed for now. Mosken angled his watch.
‘Planning to go somewhere?’ Harry asked.
‘Going on a walk to my chalet.’
‘Oh yes? Far away?’
‘Grenland. I need to be off before it gets dark.’
Harry stood up. In the hall they stood searching
for suitable parting words when Harry suddenly
remembered something.
‘You said you were wounded in Leningrad during
winter 1944 and were sent to Sinsen School later
that summer. What did you do in the intervening
period?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve just been reading one of Even Juul’s books.
He’s a war historian.’
‘I’m quite aware who Even Juul is,’ Mosken said
with an inscrutable smile.
‘He writes that the Norge regiment was dissolved
in Krasnoje Selo in March 1944. Where were you
from March to the time you arrived at Sinsen
School?’
Mosken held Harry’s gaze for a long while. Then
he opened the front door and peered out.
‘Almost down to zero now,’ he said. ‘You’ll
have to drive carefully.’
Harry nodded. Mosken straightened up, shaded
his eyes and squinted in the direction of the empty
trotting stadium where the grey, oval, gravel track
stood out against the dirty snow.
‘I was in places that once had names,’ Mosken
said, ‘but were so transformed that no one could
recognise them. Our maps only showed paths,
water and minefields, no names. If I tell you I was
in Pärnu in Estonia, that might be true. I don’t know
and nor does anyone else. During the spring and
summer of ’44 I was lying on a stretcher, listening
to machine-gun fire and thinking about death. Not
about where I was.’
Harry drove slowly alongside the river and
stopped at the red lights in front of the town bridge.
The other bridge, which crossed the E18
motorway, ran like a dental brace through the
countryside and obstructed a view of Drammen
fjord. Well, OK, perhaps not everything had been a
success in Drammen. Harry had actually decided
he would stop for a coffee in Børsen on the way
back, but he changed his mind. He remembered
they served beer too.
The lights changed to green. Harry accelerated.