The Redbreast (3 page)

He paused to gaze around him. There was a stony silence in the room; only one person in the audience, on the benches behind him, clapped tentatively. When he continued, fired up now, the red light under the microphone lit up ominously, indicating that the recording signal was distorted.

‘There is little to separate even us from oblivious affluence and the day we have to rely on ourselves and the community around us. A war, an economic or ecological disaster, and the entire network of laws and rules which turns us all too quickly into passive social clients is suddenly no longer there. The previous great betrayal took place on 9 April 1940, when our so-called national leaders fled from the enemy to save their own skins, and took the gold reserves with them to finance a life of luxury in London. Now the enemy is here again. And those who are supposed to protect our interests have let us down once more. They let the enemy build mosques in our midst, let them rob our old folk and mingle blood with our women. It is no more than our duty as Norwegians to protect our race and to eliminate those who fail us.’

He turned the page, but a cough from the podium in front of him made him stop and look up.

‘Thank you, I think we’ve heard enough,’ the judge said, peering over his glasses. ‘Has the prosecution counsel any more questions for the accused?’

The sun shone across courtroom 17 in Oslo Crown Court, giving the hairless man an illusory halo. He was wearing a white shirt and a slim tie, presumably on advice from his defending counsel, Johan Krohn Jr., who right now was leaning backwards in his chair, flicking a pen between middle and forefinger. Krohn disliked most things about this situation. He disliked the direction the prosecutor’s questions had taken, the way his client, Sverre Olsen, had openly declared his programme, and the fact that Olsen had deemed it appropriate to roll up his shirt-sleeves to display to the judge and colleagues on the panel the spider-web tattoos on both elbows and the row of swastikas on his left forearm. On his right forearm was tattooed a chain of Norse symbols and
VALKYRIA
, a neo-Nazi gang, in black gothic letters.

But there was something else about the whole procedure that rankled with him. He just couldn’t put his finger on what.

The Public Prosecutor, a little man by the name of Herman Groth, pushed the microphone away with his little finger, which was decorated with a ring bearing the symbol of the lawyers’ union.

‘Just a couple of questions to finish, Your Honour.’ The voice was gentle and subdued. The light under the microphone showed green.

‘So when, at nine o’ clock on 3 January, you went into Dennis Kebab in Dronningens gate, it was with the clear intention of performing the duty of protecting our race which you were just talking about?’

Johan Krohn launched himself at the microphone.

‘My client has already answered that a row developed between himself and the Vietnamese owner.’ Red light. ‘He was provoked,’ Krohn said. ‘There’s absolutely no reason to suggest premeditation.’

Groth closed his eyes.

‘If what your defending counsel says is correct, herr Olsen, it was therefore quite by chance that you were carrying a baseball bat at the time?’

‘For self-defence,’ Krohn interrupted and threw his arms up in despair. ‘Your Honour, my client has already answered these questions.’

The judge rubbed his chin as he surveyed the counsel for the defence. Everyone knew that Johan Krohn Jr. was a defence constellation in the ascendancy – particularly Johan Krohn himself – and that was presumably what finally made the judge accede with some irritation: ‘I agree with the defending counsel. Unless the prosecutor has anything new to add, may I suggest we move on?’

Groth opened his eyes so that a narrow white stripe could be seen above and beneath the iris. He inclined his head. With a fatigued movement, he raised a newspaper aloft.

‘This is
Dagbladet
from 25 January. In an interview on page eight one of the accused’s co-idealogues —’

‘I object . . .’ Krohn began.

Groth sighed. ‘Let me change that to a man who expresses racist views.’

The judge nodded, but sent Krohn an admonitory glare at the same time. Groth continued.

‘This man, commenting on the attack at Dennis Kebab, says we need more racists like Sverre Olsen to regain control of Norway. In the interview the word “racist” is used as a term of respect. Does the accused consider himself a “racist”?’

‘Yes, I am a racist,’ said Olsen before Krohn managed to interpose. ‘In the sense that I use the word.’

‘And what might that be?’ Groth smiled.

Krohn clenched his fists under the table and looked up at the podium, at the two associate judges flanking the judge. These three would decide the fate of his client for the next few years, and his own status in the Tostrupkjeller bar for the next few months. Two ordinary citizens representing the people, representing common-sense justice. They used to call them ‘lay judges’, but perhaps they had realised that it was too reminiscent of ‘play judges’. To the right of the judge was a young man wearing a cheap, sensible suit, who hardly dared raise his eyes. The young, slightly plump woman to the left seemed to be pretending to follow the proceedings, while extending her neck so that the incipient double chin could not be seen from the floor. Average Norwegians. What did they know about people like Sverre Olsen? What did they want to know?

Eight witnesses had seen Sverre Olsen go into the burger bar with a baseball bat under his arm and, after a brief exchange of expletives, hit the owner, Ho Dai – a forty-year-old Vietnamese, who came to Norway with the boat people in 1978 – on the head. So hard that Ho Dai would never be able to walk again. When Olsen started to speak, Johan Krohn Jr. was already mentally shaping the appeal he would lodge with the High Court.

‘
Rac-ism
,’ Olsen read, having found the definition in his papers, ‘is an eternal struggle against hereditary illness, degeneration and annihilation, as well as a dream of and a desire for a healthier society with a better quality of life. Racial mixture is a kind of bilateral genocide. In a world where there are plans to establish gene banks to preserve the smallest beetle, it is generally accepted that you can mix and destroy human races that have taken millennia to develop. In an article in the respected journal
American Psychologist
in 1972, fifty American and European scientists warned about the dangers of suppressing inheritance theory arguments.’

Olsen stopped, encompassed courtroom 17 in one sweeping glare and raised his right index finger. He had turned towards the prosecutor and Krohn could see the pale
Sieg Heil
tattoo on the shaven roll of fat between the back of his head and his neck – a mute shriek and a strangely grotesque contrast to the cool rhetoric of the court. In the ensuing silence Krohn could hear from the noise in the corridor that courtroom 18 had adjourned for lunch. Seconds passed. Krohn remembered something he had read about Adolf Hitler: that at mass rallies he would pause for effect for up to three minutes. When Olsen continued he beat the rhythm with his finger, as if to drum every word and sentence into the listeners’ brains.

‘Those of you who are trying to pretend that there is not a racial struggle going on here are either blind or traitors.’

He drank water from the glass the court usher had placed in front of him.

The prosecutor broke in: ‘And in this racial struggle you and your supporters, of whom there are a number in this court today, are the only ones who have the right to attack?’

Boos from the skinheads in the public gallery.

‘We don’t attack, we defend ourselves,’ Olsen said. ‘It’s the right and duty of every race.’

A shout from the benches, which Olsen caught and passed on with a smile: ‘In fact, even among people from other races there is race-conscious National Socialism.’

Laughter and scattered applause from the gallery. The judge asked for silence before looking enquiringly at the prosecutor.

‘That was all,’ Groth said.

‘Does the defence counsel have any more questions?’

Krohn shook his head.

‘Then I would like the first witness for the prosecution to be brought in.’

The prosecutor nodded to the usher, who opened the door at the back of the room. There was a scraping of chairs outside, the door opened wide and a large man strolled in. Krohn noted that the man was wearing a suit jacket which was slightly too small, black jeans and large Dr Martens boots. The close-shaven head and the slim athletic body suggested an age somewhere around the early thirties – although the bloodshot eyes with bags underneath and the pale complexion with thin capillaries bursting sporadically into small red deltas pointed more in the region of fifty.

‘Police Officer Harry Hole?’ the judge asked when the man had taken a seat in the witness box.

‘Yes.’

‘No home address given, I see?’

‘Private.’ Hole pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. ‘They tried to break into my place.’

More boos.

‘Have you ever made an affirmation, Police Officer Hole? Taken the oath, in other words?’

‘Yes.’

Krohn’s head wobbled like the nodding dogs some motorists like to keep on their parcel shelf. He began feverishly to flick through the documents.

‘You investigate murders for Crime Squad, don’t you?’ Groth said. ‘Why were you given this case?’

‘Because we wrongly assessed the case.’

‘Oh?’

‘We didn’t think that Ho Dai would survive. You usually don’t with a smashed skull and parts of the insides on the outside.’

Krohn saw the faces of the associate judges wince involuntarily. But it didn’t matter now. He had found the document with their names. And there it was: the mistake.

3
Karl Johans Gate. 5 October 1999.

YOU’RE GOING TO DIE, OLD CHAP.

The words were still ringing in the old man’s ears when he walked down the steps to leave and stood still, blinded by the fierce autumn sun. As his pupils slowly shrank, he held on tight to the handrail and breathed in, slow and deep. He listened to the cacophony of cars, trams, the beeping sounds telling pedestrians they could cross. And voices – the excited, happy voices which hastened by to the accompaniment of the clatter of shoes. And music. Had he ever heard so much music? Nothing managed to drown the sound of the words though:
You’re going to die, old chap.

How many times had he stood here on the steps outside Dr Buer’s surgery? Twice a year for forty years, that would make eighty times. Eighty normal days just like today, but never, not before today, had he noticed how much life there was in the streets, how much exhilaration, what voracious lust for life. It was October, but it felt like a day in May. The day peace broke out. Was he exaggerating? He could hear her voice, see her silhouette come running out of the sun, the outline of a face disappearing in a halo of white light.

You’re going to die, old chap.

The whiteness took on colour and became Karl Johans gate. He arrived at the bottom step, stopped, looked to the right and then to the left as if he couldn’t make up his mind which direction to take, and fell into a reverie. He gave a start as if someone had woken him and began to walk towards the Palace. His gait was hesitant, his eyes downcast and his gaunt figure stooped in the slightly oversized woollen coat.

‘The cancer has spread,’ Dr Buer had said.

‘Right,’ he had answered, looking at the doctor and wondering if that was something they learned at medical school, to take off their glasses when serious issues had to be talked about, or if it was something shortsighted doctors did to avoid looking patients in the eye. Dr Konrad Buer had begun to resemble his father as his hairline receded, and the bags under his eyes gave him a little of his father’s aura of concern.

‘In a nutshell?’ the old man had asked in the voice of someone he had not heard in more than fifty years. They had been the hollow, rough, guttural sounds of a man with mortal dread quivering in his vocal cords.

‘Yes, there is in fact a question about —’

‘Please, doctor. I’ve looked death in the eye before.’

He had raised his voice, chosen words which forced it to stay firm, the way he wanted Dr Buer to hear them. The way he himself wanted to hear them.

The doctor’s gaze had flitted across the table top, across the worn parquet floor and out of the dirty window. It had taken refuge out there for a while before returning and meeting his own. His hands had found a cloth to clean his glasses again and again.

‘I know how you —’

‘You know nothing, doctor.’ The old man had heard himself utter a short, dry laugh. ‘Don’t take offence, Dr Buer, but I can guarantee you one thing: you know nothing.’

He had observed the doctor’s discomfort and at the same time heard the tap dripping into the sink at the far end of the room. It was a new sound, and all of a sudden and incomprehensibly he seemed to have the hearing of a twenty-year-old.

Then Dr Buer had put his glasses back on, lifted a piece of paper as though the words he was going to say were written on it, cleared his throat and said: ‘You’re going to die, old chap.’

The old man would have preferred a little less familiarity.

He stopped by a gathering of people, where he heard a guitar being strummed and a voice singing a song that must have sounded old to everyone except him. He had heard it before, probably a quarter of a century ago, but to him it could have been yesterday. Everything was like that now – the further back in time it was, the closer and the clearer it seemed. He could remember things he hadn’t thought of for years. Now he could close his eyes and see things projected on his retina that he had previously read about in his war diaries.

‘You should have a year left, at any rate.’

One spring and one summer. He would be able to see every single yellowing leaf on the deciduous trees in Studenterlunden as if he were wearing new, stronger glasses. The same trees had stood there in 1945, or had they? They hadn’t been very clear on that day, nothing had. The smiling faces, the furious faces, the shouts he barely heard, the car door being slammed shut and he might have had tears in his eyes because when he recalled the flags people were waving as they ran along the pavements, they were red and blurred. Their shouts:
The Crown Prince is back!