The Redeemer(4)

A doctor came into the corridor and waved him and his mother in. Approaching the bed, he had not dared to look at his father; he had just concentrated on the big brown hand clutching the mattress and trying, as it seemed, to tear it in two. It could have succeeded, for these were the strongest hands in the town. His father was a steel-bender – he was the person who went on building sites when the bricklayers were finished, put his large hands round the ends of the protruding steel used to reinforce the concrete, and with one quick, practised movement bent the ends of the steel poles and wove them into each other. He had seen his father working; it looked like he was wringing a cloth. No one had invented a machine that did the job better.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he heard his father scream out in pain and anguish: 'Take the lad out!'

'But he asked—'

'Out!'

The doctor's voice: 'The bleeding has stopped. Let's get cracking now!'

Someone grabbed him under the arms and lifted him. He tried to struggle, but he was so small, so light. And that was when he noticed the smell. Burnt flesh and blood.

The last thing he heard was the doctor's voice:

'Saw, please.'

The door slammed behind him and he sank down onto his knees and continued to pray where his mother had left off. Save him. Maim him, but save him. God had the power to do things like that. If it was His wish.

He felt someone watching him, opened his eyes and was back in the métro. On the seat opposite was a woman with taut jaw muscles and a weary, distant gaze that moved away when it met his. The second hand on his wristwatch jerked forward as he repeated the address to himself. He felt his pulse. Normal. His head was light, but not too light. He was neither hot nor cold, felt neither fear nor pleasure, neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction. The train was slowing down. Charles de Gaulle-Étoile. He sent the woman a final glance. She had been studying him, but if she should ever meet him again, maybe even tonight, she still would not recognise him.

He got to his feet and waited by the doors. The brakes gave a low lament. Urinal blocks and urine. And freedom. As impossible to imagine as a smell. The doors slid open.


Harry stepped onto the platform and stood inhaling the warm underground air as he read the address on the slip of paper. He heard the doors close and felt the draught of air on his back as the train set off again. Then he walked towards the exit. An advertising hoarding over the escalator told him there were ways of avoiding colds. 'Like hell there are,' he coughed, stuffing a hand down the deep pocket of his woollen coat and finding the pack of cigarettes under the hip flask and the tin of throat lozenges.

The cigarette bobbed up and down in his mouth as he walked through the glass exit door, leaving the raw, unnatural heat of Oslo's underground behind him, and ran up the steps to Oslo's ultra-natural December darkness and freezing temperatures. Harry instinctively shrank. Egertorget. This small, open square was an intersection between pedestrian streets in the heart of Oslo, if the city could be said to have a heart at this time of the year. Shops were open this Sunday as it was the penultimate weekend before Christmas, and the square was teeming with people hurrying to and fro in the yellow light that fell from the windows of the surrounding modest three-storey shops. Harry saw the bags of wrapped presents and made a mental note to buy something for Bjarne Møller whose last day it was at Police HQ tomorrow. Harry's boss and chief protector in the police force for all these years was at long last realising his plans to reduce his hours and from next week onwards would take over as a so-called senior special investigator at Bergen police station, which meant in reality that Bjarne Møller could do as he liked until he retired. Cushy number – but Bergen? Rain and dank mountains. Møller didn't even come from Bergen. Harry had always liked – but not always appreciated – Bjarne Møller.

A man dressed head to toe in Puffa jacket and trousers slowly waddled past like an astronaut, grinning and blowing frosted breath from round, pink cheeks. Stooped shoulders and closed winter faces. Harry spotted a pallid-faced woman wearing a thin, black leather jacket with holes in the elbows standing by the jeweller's, hopping from one foot to the other as her eyes searched in hope of finding her supplier soon. A beggar, long-haired and unshaven, but well covered in warm, fashionable, youthful clothing sat in a yoga position, leaning against a lamp post, his head bent forward as if in meditation, with a brown paper cup from a cappuccino bar in front of him. Harry had seen more and more beggars over the last year, and it had struck him that they all looked the same. Even the paper cups were identical, as though it were a secret code. Perhaps they were creatures from outer space quietly taking over his town, his streets. No worries. Feel free.