The Redeemer(18)

A man sitting next to Harry had frozen into a deep bow. His head hung down over the table and in front of him black fingers held a cigarette paper. There were a few emptied dog-ends scattered around.

Harry noticed the uniformed back of a mini-woman changing burnt-down candles on a table with four picture frames. Inside three of them were individual photographs; inside the fourth a cross and a name on a white background. Harry stood up and walked over.

'What are they?' he asked.

Perhaps it was the slim neck or the grace of the movement, or the smooth, raven-black, almost unnatural, shiny hair that made Harry think of a cat even before she had turned round. The impression was reinforced by the small face with the disproportionately broad mouth and the pertest of noses possible, like those the characters in Harry's Japanese comics had. But, more than anything else, it was the eyes. He couldn't put his finger on why, but something about them was not right.

'November,' she answered.

She had a calm, deep, gentle alto voice that made Harry wonder if it was natural or a way of speaking she had acquired. He had known women who did that, who changed their voices the way they changed clothes. One voice for home use; one for first impressions and social occasions; and one for night-time intimacies.

'What do you mean?' Harry asked.

'Our November crop of deaths.'

Harry looked at the photos and he realised what she meant.

'Four?' he said in a low voice. In front of the pictures was a letter written with an unsteady hand in pencilled capitals.

'On average one customer dies a week. Four is not out of the ordinary. Our remembrance day is on the first Wednesday of every month. Is there anyone you . . . ?'

Harry shook his head. 'My dearest Geir,' the letter began. No flowers.

'Is there anything I can help you with?' she asked.

It struck Harry that she may not have had any other voices in her repertoire, just this deep, warm tone.

'Per Holmen . . .' Harry started, not knowing quite how to finish.

'Poor Per, yes. We'll have a remembrance day for him in January.

Harry nodded. 'First Wednesday.'

'That's it. And you're very welcome to come, brother.'

This 'brother' was enunciated with such unforced ease, like an underplayed and hence almost unarticulated appendix to the sentence. For a moment Harry almost believed her.

'I'm a detective,' Harry said.

The difference in height between them was so great that she had to crane her neck to see him clearly.

'I've seen you before, I think, but it must be years ago.'

Harry nodded. 'Maybe. I've been here once or twice, but I haven't seen you.'

'I'm part-time here. Otherwise I'm at the Salvation Army headquarters. And you work in the drugs division?'

Harry shook his head. 'Murder investigations.'

'Murder. But Per wasn't murdered . . . ?'

'Can we sit down for a moment?'

She hesitated and looked round.

'Busy?' Harry asked.

'Not at all, it's unusually quiet. On a normal day we serve 1,800 slices of bread. But today's dole day.'

She called one of the boys behind the counter, who agreed to take over. Harry caught her name at the same time. Martine. The head of the man with the empty cigarette paper had been ratcheted down a few more notches.

'There are a couple of things that don't check out,' Harry said after sitting down. 'What sort of person was he?'

'Hard to say,' she said. Harry's quizzical expression produced a sigh. 'When you've been on drugs for so many years, like Per, the brain is so destroyed that it's hard to see a personality. The urge to get high is all-pervasive.'

'I know that, but I mean . . . to people who knew him well . . .'

'Can't help, I'm afraid. You can ask Per's father how much of his son's personality was left. He came down here a couple of times to collect him. In the end, he gave up. He said Per had started to threaten them at home, because they locked away all their valuables when he was around. He asked me to keep an eye on the boy. I said we would do our best, but we couldn't promise miracles. And we didn't of course . . .'

Harry observed her. Her face expressed nothing more than the usual social worker's resignation.

'It must be hell,' Harry said, scratching his leg.

'Yes, you have to be an addict yourself to understand it.'

'To be a parent, I was thinking.'

Martine didn't answer. A man in a torn quilted jacket had come to the neighbouring table. He opened a transparent plastic bag and emptied out a pile of dry tobacco that must have come from hundreds of fag ends. It covered the cigarette paper and the black fingers of the man sitting there.

'Happy Christmas,' the man mumbled and departed with the junkie's old-man gait.

'What doesn't check out?' Martine asked.

'The blood specimen shows almost no toxins,' Harry said.

'So?'

Harry looked at the man next to him. He was desperately trying to roll a cigarette, but his fingers would not obey. A tear ran down his brown cheek.