The Redeemer(34)

If the shot had coincided with the bang on the snare drum, the music might have drowned it, but, as it was, the explosion made many turn round and look at the man in the raincoat. At his gun. And they saw the Salvation Army soldier, who now had a hole in the peak right under the A of his cap, fall backwards as his arms swung forwards like a puppet's.


Harry jerked in his chair. He had fallen asleep. The room was still. What had woken him? He listened, but all he could hear was the low, reassuringly even rumble. No, there was another sound there, too. He strained to hear. There it was. The sound was almost inaudible, but now that he had identified it, it rose in magnitude and became clearer. It was a low ticking sound.

Harry remained in his chair with closed eyes.

Then a sudden fury surged through him, and without thinking, he had marched into the bedroom, opened the bedside-table drawer, snatched Møller's wristwatch, opened the window and hurled it into the dark with as much force as he could muster. He heard the watch hit first the wall of the adjacent block and then the icy tarmac in the street. He slammed the window shut, fastened the catches, went back to the sitting room and turned up the volume. So loud that the speaker membranes vibrated in front of his eyes, the treble was wonderfully bright in his ears and the bass filled his mouth.


The crowd had turned away from the band and looked at the man lying in the snow. His cap had rolled away and come to a halt in front of the singer's mike stand while the musicians, who still had not realised what had happened, continued to play.

The two girls standing closest to the man in the snow retreated. One of them started to scream.

The vocalist, who had been singing with her eyes shut, opened them and discovered she no longer had the audience's attention. She turned and caught sight of the man in the snow. Her eyes sought a guard, an organiser, a gig manager, anyone who could deal with the situation, but this was just an ordinary street concert. Everyone was waiting for everyone else and the musicians kept playing.

Then there was a movement in the crowd and people cleared a path for the woman elbowing her way through.

'Robert!'

The voice was rough and hoarse. She was pale and wore a thin, black leather jacket with holes in the sleeves. She staggered through to the lifeless body and fell on her knees beside him.

'Robert?'

She placed a skinny hand against his throat. Then she turned to the musicians.

'Stop playing, for Christ's sake.'

One after another, the members of the band stopped playing.

'The man's dying. Get hold of a doctor. Quick!'

She put her hand back on his neck. Still no pulse. She had experienced this many times before. Sometimes it was fine. As a rule it wasn't. She was confused. This couldn't be an overdose; a Salvation Army soldier wouldn't be on the needle, would he? It had started to snow and the snowflakes were melting on his cheeks, the closed eyes and the half-open mouth. He was a good-looking young man. And she thought now – with his face relaxed – he looked like her own boy when he was asleep. Then she discovered the single red stripe going down from the tiny black hole in his head, across the forehead and temple and into his ear.

A pair of arms grabbed her and lifted her away while someone else bent over the young man. She caught a last glimpse of his face, then the hole, and it occurred to her with a sudden painful certainty that this fate was awaiting her boy, too.


He walked at a fast pace. Not too fast; he wasn't fleeing. Looked at the backs in front of him, spotted someone hurrying and followed in his wake. No one had tried to stop him. Of course they hadn't. The report of a gun makes people stand back. The sight of it makes them run away. And in this case most had not even absorbed what was going on.

The final job.

He could hear the band was still playing.

It had started to snow. Great. That would make people look down to protect their eyes.

A few hundred metres down the street he saw the yellow station building. He experienced a feeling that he had from time to time, that everything was floating, that nothing could happen to him, that a Serbian T-55 tank was no more than a slow-moving iron monster, blind and deaf, and that his town would be standing when he returned home.

Someone was standing where he was going to drop the gun.

The clothes looked new and fashionable, apart from the blue trainers. But the face was lacerated and scorched, like a blacksmith's. And the man, or the boy, or whatever he was, looked as if he was there to stay. He had stuffed the whole of his right arm in the opening of the green litter bin.

Without slowing down, he checked his watch. Two minutes since he had fired the shot and eleven minutes to the departure of the train. And he still had the weapon on him. He walked past the bin and continued towards the restaurant.