The Redbreast

Short answer: behind the murders is Rakel's father, the old man Harry knows as «Sindre Fauke». His real name is Gudbrand Johansen. This Norwegian volunteer, who fought on the Eastern Front, has been living on the papers of a dead comrade. «The Redbreast» is not a brand of weapon but the nickname Gudbrand was given at the front. In the finale he prepares to assassinate Norway's Prince during the 17 May celebrations.

At the end of 1942, on the Leningrad front, Daniel Gudeson is shot. Gudbrand takes his body off the ammunition crates and buries it in the front line, then cuts the throat of his comrade Sindre Fauke and lays the body on those crates, so that Fauke's body is taken for Daniel's. He takes Fauke's identity papers. Wounded, he ends up in Vienna, where he falls in love with the nurse Helena Lang. To save her family, Helena was expected to marry the doctor Christopher Brockhard. In the summer of 1944 Gudbrand kills Brockhard, and after the bombing of Hamburg he returns to Norway under the name Sindre Fauke. The resistance man Even Juul believes his story.

After the war Gudbrand feels betrayed. Daniel Gudeson's fiancée, Signe Alsaker, has married Even Juul, and the country sent men like him to the front and then called them «traitors». In 1955 he marries Helena in Oslo, and in 1967 their daughter Rakel is born. In October 1999 he learns that he is gravely ill, and in his notebook he writes of «Daniel» coming back inside him, always presenting his deeds as Daniel's will. When Hallgrim Dale recognises him and asks for money, Dale's throat is cut. Signe Juul is frightened by phone calls every Tuesday in «Daniel»'s name and is shot on 12 May at Akershus Fortress in a manner recalling wartime executions. Bernt Brandhaug, an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, had pressured Rakel into intimacy in return for «settling» the custody case over Oleg; Gudbrand shoots him on 10 May outside his garage with the Märklin rifle (his first attempt on 9 May failed because of the safety catch).

The police follow a false trail for a long time. Ellen Gjelten, Harry's colleague and close friend, had been beaten to death with a baseball bat by the neo-Nazi Sverre Olsen, and Olsen was later killed by police in his home. According to the DNA result Olsen was also present where Dale was killed, but Harry doesn't think he was the one who cut Dale's throat. «Fauke» tells Harry a story that points to Even Juul, to buy time. Relying on Aune's «split personality» idea, Harry goes to arrest Even Juul and finds him hanging from the ceiling; it later becomes clear that Even's suicide was a scene staged by Gudbrand. In Vienna Harry learns that Gudbrand fell in love with Helena Lang and killed Brockhard; Helena's photograph looks familiar to him, but he realises she is Rakel's mother only on the morning of 17 May, when he sees the same photograph at Rakel's house.

On the morning of 17 May, Harry finds the notebook «The Great Betrayal: A Soldier's Memoirs» in Fauke's emptied flat. From the 21st floor of the Radisson SAS hotel, through a window facing the Palace Gardens, Gudbrand has the Prince on the balcony in his sights from four hundred metres. Harry finds him in the Royal Suite. Gudbrand demands the password. The rifle is now aimed at Harry. Harry says «Oleg», and Gudbrand lowers the weapon. The assassination has not yet taken place. Harry gets his promise: the names will never be made public, and Rakel and Oleg will not suffer. Gudbrand dies in hospital on 19 May. Rakel doesn't know what her father did. Moller says the assassination attempt will be covered up. Harry and Halvorsen are given two months to work on Ellen's case and the 200,000 kroner paid for the rifle. Harry begins to make summer plans with Rakel.