As he rang off Jon looked at him with a question on his lips, but Halvorsen said nothing, just quickly punched in a number.
'What was that?' Jon asked.
'It was a confession,' Halvorsen snapped.
'And what are you doing now?'
'I'm reporting to Harry.'
Halvorsen looked up and saw Jon's distorted face: his eyes had grown big and black and seemed to be staring through him, past him.
'Is something the matter?' he asked.
Harry walked through customs and into Pleso's modest terminal building; he put his Visa card in a cash machine, which gave him a thousand kroner's worth of kune without a word of protest. He put half in a brown envelope before walking outside and climbing into a Mercedes with a blue taxi sign.
'Hotel International.'
The taxi driver put the car in gear and drove off without a word.
Rain fell from low cloud cover above brown fields with patches of grey snow along the motorway that cut north-west through the rolling landscape towards Zagreb.
After a quarter of an hour he could see Zagreb taking shape: concrete blocks and church towers outlined against the horizon. They passed a quiet, dark river that Harry reckoned had to be the Sava. Their entrance into the town was along a broad avenue that seemed out of all proportion to the low level of traffic; they passed the train station and a vast, open, deserted park with a large glass pavilion. Bare trees spread out their winter-black fingers.
'Hotel International,' the taxi driver said, pulling up in front of an impressive grey-brick colossus of the type communist countries used to build for their itinerant leader caste.
Harry paid. One of the hotel doormen, dressed as an admiral, had already opened the car door and stood ready with an umbrella and a broad smile. 'Welcome, sir. This way, sir.'
Harry stepped onto the pavement at the same moment as two hotel guests came through the swing doors and got into a Mercedes that had just driven up. A crystal chandelier sparkled behind the swing doors. Harry didn't move. 'Refugees?'
'Sorry, sir?'
'Refugees,' Harry repeated. 'Vukovar.'
Harry felt raindrops on his head as the umbrella and the broad smile were snatched away and the admiral's begloved index finger pointed to a door some way down the hotel's facade.
The first thing that struck Harry as he entered a large, bare lobby with a vaulted ceiling was that it smelt like a hospital. And that the forty to fifty people sitting or standing by the two long tables placed in the middle, or standing in the soup queue by the reception desk, reminded him of patients. It may have been something about their clothes; shapeless tracksuits, threadbare sweaters and tattered slippers suggested some indifference to appearance. Or it may have been the heads bowed over soup bowls and the sleep-deprived, dejected looks that did not take in his existence.
Harry's eyes swept across the room and stopped at the bar. It looked more like a hot-dog stand and for the moment was not serving customers; there was only a barman who was doing three things at once: cleaning a glass, making loud comments to the men at the nearest table about the football match on the TV suspended from the ceiling and watching Harry's every move.
Harry had a feeling he was in the right place and went over to the counter. The barman ran a hand through his greasy, swept-back hair.
'Da?'
Harry tried to ignore the bottles on the shelf at the back of the hotdog stand. But he had already spotted his old friend and foe Jim Beam. The barman followed Harry's gaze and with raised eyebrows pointed to the four-sided bottle with the brown contents.
Harry shook his head. And breathed in. There was no reason to make this complicated.
'Mali spasitelj.' He said it low enough for the barman to hear amid the racket from the TV. 'I'm looking for the little redeemer.'
The barman studied Harry before answering in English with a hard German accent. 'I don't know any redeemers.'
'I've been told by a friend from Vukovar that mali spasitelj can help me.' Harry produced the brown envelope from his jacket pocket and placed it on the counter.
The barman looked down at the envelope without touching it. 'You're a policeman,' he said.
Harry shook his head.
'You're lying,' the barman said. 'I saw it the minute you walked in.'
'What you saw was someone who was with the police for twelve years, but is not any more. I stopped two years ago.' Harry met the barman's scrutiny. And wondered to himself what the man had been inside for. The size of his muscles and tattoos suggested he had been given a long sentence.
'No one calling themselves a redeemer lives here. And I know everyone.'
The barman was about to turn away when Harry leaned over the counter and grabbed his upper arm. The barman looked down at Harry's hand, and Harry could feel the man's biceps swelling. Harry let go. 'My son was shot by a dealer standing outside his school selling shit. Because he told him he would report him to the head teacher if he continued.'