Free Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø Page B

still did a thorough job of searching me. I guessed Hoffmann had the sense to get the young lad to help Brynhildsen without arming him. Maybe he had a knife or something hidden away. Pistols were confirmation gifts.
    “Hoffmann says you can live if we can have his wife,” Brynhildsen said.
    That was a lie, but I’d have said the samething myself. I considered my options. The street was empty of traffic and people. Apart from the wrong people. And it was so quiet that I could hear the spring in the trigger mechanism complain gently as it stretched.
    “Fine,” Brynhildsen said. “We can find her without you, you know.”
    He was right, he wasn’t bluffing.
    “Okay,” I said. “I only took her to have something to bargain with. I had no idea the guy was a Hoffmann.”
    “I don’t know anything about that. We just want the wife.”
    “We’d better go and get her, then,” I said.

CHAPTER 13
    “W e
have
to take the underground,” I explained. “Look, she thinks I’m protecting her. And I am. Unless I can use her in a deal like this. So I told her that if I wasn’t home in half an hour, something serious must have happened and she should take off. And it’ll take at least three-quarters of an hour by car to get to my flat through the Christmas traffic.”
    Brynhildsen stared at me. “So call her and say you’re going to be a bit late.”
    “I haven’t got a phone.”
    “Really? So how come the pizza was waiting for you when you arrived, Johansen?”
    I looked down at the big red cardboard box. Brynhildsen was no idiot. “Phone box.”
    Brynhildsen ran his finger and thumb over either side of his moustache, as if he were trying to stretch the hairs. Then looked up and down the street. Presumably estimating the traffic. And wondering what Hoffmann would say if she got away.
    “CP Special.” This from the young lad. He was grinning broadly as he nodded towards the box. “Best pizza in the city, eh?”
    “Shut up,” Brynhildsen said, now finished with his moustache-stroking, having made up his mind.
    “We’ll take the underground. And we’ll call Pine from your phone box and get him to pick us up out there.”
    —
    We walked the five minutes it took to get to the underground station by the National Theatre. Brynhildsen pulled the sleeve of his coat down to cover the pistol.
    “You’ll have to get your own ticket,
I’m
not paying for it,” he said as we stood at the ticket booth.
    “The one I got when I came in is valid for an hour,” I lied.
    “That’s true,” Brynhildsen said with a grin.
    I could always hope for a ticket inspection, and that they’d take me to some nice, safe police station.
    The underground was as crowded as I had hoped. Weary commuters, gum-chewing teenagers, men and women wrapped up against the cold, with Christmas presents sticking out of plastic bags. So we had to stand. We positioned ourselves in the middle of the carriage, each of us with a hand on the shiny steel pole. The doors closed and the passengers’ breath began to build up on the windows again. The train pulled away.
    “Hovseter. I wouldn’t have had you down as living out west, Johansen.”
    “You shouldn’t believe everything you believe, Brynhildsen.”
    “Really? You mean like the fact that I’d havethought you could get pizza out in Hovseter rather than having to come all the way into the city?”
    “It’s a CP Special,” the young lad said respectfully, staring at the red box that was taking up a ridiculous amount of space in the overfull carriage. “You can’t get—”
    “Shut up. So you like cold pizza, Johansen?”
    “We reheat it.”
    “
We?
You and Hoffmann’s wife?” Brynhildsen laughed his one-snort laugh—it sounded like an axe falling. “You’re right, Johansen. We really shouldn’t believe everything we believe.”
    No, I thought. You, for instance, shouldn’t believe that a guy like me would seriously believe that a man like Hoffmann was going to let him live. And,