They went through the archway next to Herbert's Pizza, where a row of large, grey, plastic wheelie bins overflowing with rubbish blocked the view from the street.
'You haven't already mentioned to anyone you've seen me, have you?'
'Are you mad? I thought I was seeing things at first. A ghost in broad daylight. At Herbert's!' He burst into a peal of laughter, but it quickly developed into a wet, gurgling cough. He bent forward and supported himself on the wall until the cough subsided. Then he stood up and dried the slime from the corners of his mouth. 'No, fortunately, otherwise they would have locked me up.'
'What do you think would be a fitting price for your silence?'
'Ah, a fitting price, hm, yes. I saw the ape take a thousand from your newspaper…'
'Yes?'
A few of them would do a bit of good, that's for sure.’
‘How many?'
'Well, how many have you got?'
The old man sighed, looked around once more to ensure there were no witnesses. Then he unbuttoned his coat and reached inside.
Sverre Olsen crossed Youngstorget with large strides, swinging a green plastic bag. Twenty minutes ago he had been sitting flat broke, with holes in his boots, at Herbert's and now he was walking in a shiny new pair of combat boots, high-laced, twelve eyelets on each side, bought from Top Secret in Henrik Ibsens gate. Plus he had an envelope which still contained eight shiny new big ones. And ten more in the offing. It was strange how things could change from one minute to the next. This autumn he had been on his way to three years in the clink when his lawyer had realised that the fat lady associate judge had taken her oath in the wrong place.
Sverre was in such a good mood that he reckoned he ought to invite Halle, Gregersen and Kvinset over to his table. Buy them a round. See how they reacted. Yes, he bloody would!
He crossed Ploens gate in front of a Paid woman with a pram and smiled at her out of pure devilry. On his way to the door of Herbert's he thought to himself that there wasn't much point in carrying around a plastic bag containing discarded boots. He went through the archway, flicked up the lid of one of the wheelie bins and threw in the plastic bag. On his way out again his attention was caught by two legs sticking out between two of the bins further to the back. He looked around. No one in the street. No one in the alley. What was it? A dipso? A junkie? He went closer. Where the legs protruded the bins had been shoved together. He could feel his pulse racing. Junkies became very upset if you disturbed them. Sverre stepped back and kicked one of the containers to the side.
'Ooh, fuck.'
It was odd that Sverre Olsen, who had almost killed a man himself, should never have seen a dead person before. And equally odd that it almost made his legs give way. The man sitting against the wall with one eye staring in each direction was as dead as it was possible to be. The cause of death was obvious. The smiling red wound in the neck showed where his throat had been cut. Even though the blood was only trickling now, it had clearly pumped out at first because the man's red Icelandic sweater was soaked and sticky. The stench of refuse and urine was overwhelming, and Sverre caught the taste of bile before two beers and a pizza came up. Afterwards, he stood leaning against the bins, spitting on to the tarmac. The toes of his new boots were yellow with vomit, but he didn't notice. He only had eyes for the little red stream glistening in the dark as it sought the lowest point in the back alley.
21
Leningrad. 17 January 1944.
A Russian YAK 1 fighter plane thundered over Edvard Mosken's head as he ran along the trench, bent double.
Generally speaking, the fighter planes didn't do a lot of damage. The Russians seemed to have run out of bombs. The latest thing he had heard was that they had equipped pilots with hand-grenades, which they were trying to lob into the trenches as they flew over.
Edvard had been in the Northern Sector to collect letters for the men and to catch up on the news. The whole autumn had been one long series of depressing reports of losses and retreats all along the Eastern Front. The Russians had recaptured Kiev in November, and in October the German army had narrowly avoided becoming surrounded north of the Black Sea. The situation was not made any easier by Hitler redirecting forces to the Western Front, but the most worrying thing was what Edvard had heard today. Two days ago Lieutenant General Gusev had launched a fierce offensive from Oranienbaum on the southern side of the Finnish Bay. Edvard remembered Oranienbaum because it was a small bridgehead they had passed on the march to Leningrad. They had let the Russians keep it because it had no strategic importance. Now the Ivans had managed to assemble a whole army around the Kronstadt fort in secret, and according to reports Katusha cannons were tirelessly bombarding German positions. The once dense spruce forests had been reduced to firewood. It was true they had heard the music from Stalin's artillery in the distance for several nights now, but no one had guessed that things were so bad.
Edvard had taken the opportunity during the trip to go to the field hospital to visit one of his men who had lost a foot on a landmine in no man's land, but the nurse, a tiny Estonian woman with pained eyes in such dark blue sockets that she seemed to be wearing a mask, had only shaken her head and said the German word she had presumably practised most: 'Tot!
Edvard must have looked very sorry for himself, because she had tried to cheer him up by pointing to a bed where apparently there was another Norwegian.
'Leben' she had said with a smile. But her eyes were still pained.
Edvard didn't know the man sleeping in the bed, but when he caught sight of the shiny white leather jacket hanging over the chair, he knew who it was: it was the company commander, Lindvig himself, from Regiment Norge. A legend. And now here he was. He decided he would spare the men this item of news.
Another fighter plane roared over their heads. Where were all these planes suddenly coming from? Last year the Ivans didn't appear to have any left.
He rounded a corner and saw a stooped Hallgrim Dale standing with his back to him. 'Dale!'
Dale didn't move. After a shell had knocked him unconscious last November, Dale didn't hear so well any more. He didn't talk much either, and he had the glazed, introverted eyes that men with shell-shock often had. Dale had complained of headaches at first, but the medical orderly who had attended to him said there wasn't a great deal they could do; they could only wait and see if he recovered. The shortage of fighting men was bad enough without sending healthy ones to the field hospital, he had said.
Edvard put an arm round Dale's shoulder. Dale swivelled round so suddenly and with such force that Edvard lost his footing on the ice which had become wet and slippery in the sun. At least it's a mild winter, Edvard thought, and he had to laugh as he lay there on his back, but the laughter died as he looked up into the barrel of Dale's rifle.
'Passwort!' Dale shouted. Over the rifle sights Edvard saw one wide-open eye.
'Hey, it's me, Dale.'
'Passwort!'
'Move that gun away! It's me, Edvard, for Christ's sake!'
'Passwort!'
'Gluthaufen'.
Edvard felt panic rising as he saw Dale's finger curling around the trigger. Couldn't he hear?
'Gluthaufen!' he shouted with all the power in his lungs. 'For Christ's sake, Gluthaufen'.
'Falsch! Ich schiebe!'
My God, the man was insane! In a flash Edvard realised they had changed the password that morning. After he had gone to the Northern Sector. Dale's finger applied pressure to the trigger, but it wouldn't go any further. He had a strange wrinkle above his eye. Then he released the safety catch and cocked the gun again. Was this how it was going to end? After all he had survived, was he going to die from a bullet fired by a shell-shocked compatriot. Edvard stared into the black muzzle and waited for the jet of flame. Would he actually see it? Jesus Christ. He
