Phantom hh-9

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Maybe, but we should go back in,’ Mikael said, glancing at his watch.

  ‘Don’t look so stressed, big boy. I can handle a drink. See?’

  ‘I see, but you go in first, then it won’t look so…’

  ‘Mucky?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Truls heard her hard laughter and watched her even harder heels hitting the cement.

  She was gone and Mikael was left, leaning against the railing.

  Truls waited for a few seconds. Then he stepped forward.

  ‘Hi, Mikael.’

  His childhood pal turned. His eyes were glazed; his face was a little bloated. Truls presumed from the time it took him to react with a cheery smile that this was due to the booze.

  ‘There you are, Truls. I didn’t hear you come out here. Is there life inside?’

  ‘Shit, yes.’

  They looked at each other. And Truls asked himself exactly when and where they had forgotten how to talk to each other, what had happened to those carefree chats, the daydreaming they had done together, the days when it was OK to say anything and talk about everything. The days when the two of them had been as one. Like early in their careers when they had smacked around the guy who had tried it on with Ulla. Or the bloody poof who had worked in Kripos and made a move on Mikael, and whom they had taken to the boiler room in Bryn a few days later. The guy had blubbed and apologised, saying he had misinterpreted Mikael. They had avoided his face so that it wouldn’t be so obvious, but the bloody crybaby had made Truls so angry he had wielded the truncheon with more force than he had intended, and Mikael had only just been able to stop him. They weren’t what you might call good memories, but still, they were experiences that bound two people together.

  ‘Well, I’m standing here and admiring the terrace,’ Mikael said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘There was something that occurred to me, though. The night you poured the cement…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said, I think, that you were restless and couldn’t sleep. But it struck me that was the night we arrested Odin and raided Alnabru afterwards. And he disappeared — what was his name?’

  ‘Tutu.’

  ‘Tutu, yes. You were supposed to have been with us that night, but you were ill, you told me. And then you mixed concrete instead?’

  Truls smirked. Looked at Mikael. At last he managed to catch his eye, and to keep it.

  ‘Do you want to hear the truth?’

  Mikael seemed to hesitate before answering. ‘Love to.’

  ‘I was skiving.’

  The terrace went quiet for a couple of seconds; all that could be heard was the distant rumble from the town.

  ‘Skiving?’ Mikael laughed. Sceptical, but good-natured laughter. Truls liked his laugh. Everyone did, men and women alike. It was a laugh that said you’re funny and nice and probably clever and well worth a friendly chuckle.

  ‘ You skived? You who never skives and loves making an arrest?’

  ‘Yes,’ Truls said. ‘I couldn’t be bothered. I’d pulled.’

  Silence again.

  Then Mikael roared with laughter. He leaned back and laughed so much he was gasping for breath. Zero cavities. Bent forward again and smacked Truls on the shoulder. It was such happy, liberating laughter that for some seconds Truls simply couldn’t help himself. He joined in.

  ‘Screwing and building a terrace,’ Mikael Bellman gasped. ‘You’re quite a man, you are, Truls. Quite a man.’

  Truls could feel the praise making him grow back to his normal size. And for one moment it was almost like the old days. No, not almost, it was like the old days.

  ‘You know,’ he grunted, ‘now and then you have to do things all on your own. That’s the only way you get a decent job done.’

  ‘True,’ Mikael said, wrapping an arm round Truls’s shoulders and stamping both feet on the terrace. ‘But this, Truls, is a lot of cement for one man.’

  Yes, Truls thought, feeling exultant laughter bubble up in his chest. It is a lot of cement for one man.

  ‘I should have kept the Game Boy when you brought it,’ Oleg said.

  ‘You should,’ Harry said, leaning against the door frame. ‘Then you could have brushed up on your Tetris technique.’

  ‘And you should have taken the magazine out of this gun before you left it here.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Harry tried not to look at the Odessa pointing half at the floor, half at him.

  Oleg smiled wanly. ‘I suppose we’ve made a number of mistakes, both of us. No?’

  Harry nodded.

  Oleg had got to his feet and was standing beside the stove. ‘But I didn’t only make mistakes, did I?’

  ‘Not at all. You did a lot right as well.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Like claiming you threw yourself at the gun of this fictional killer. Saying he wore a balaclava and didn’t say a word. He only used gestures. You left it to me to draw the obvious conclusions: that it explained the gunshot residue on your skin, and that the killer didn’t speak because he was afraid you would recognise his voice, so he had some connection with the drug trade or the police. My guess is you used the balaclava because you noticed the policeman with you at Alnabru had one. In your story you located him in the neighbouring office because it was stripped bare, and it was open so everyone could come and go from there to the river. You gave me the hints so that I could build my own convincing explanation of why you hadn’t killed Gusto. An explanation you knew my brain would manage. For our brains are always willing to let emotions make decisions. Always ready to find the consoling answers our hearts need.’

  Oleg nodded slowly. ‘But now you have all the other answers. The correct ones.’

  ‘Apart from one,’ Harry said. ‘Why?’

  Oleg didn’t reply. Harry held up his right hand while slowly putting his left in his trouser pocket and pulling out a crumpled pack and lighter.

  ‘Why, Oleg?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I thought for a while it was all about Irene. Jealousy. Or you knew he had sold her to someone. But if he was the only person who knew where she was, you couldn’t kill him until he had told you. So it must have been about something else. Something as strong as love for a woman. Because you’re no killer, are you.’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘You’re a man with a classic motive that has driven men, good men, to perform terrible deeds, myself included. The investigation has gone round in circles. Getting nowhere. I’m back where we started. With a love affair. The worst kind.’

  ‘What do you know about that?’

  ‘Because I’ve been in love with the same woman. Or her sister. She’s drop-dead gorgeous at night, and as ugly as sin when you wake next morning.’ Harry lit the black cigarette with the gold filter and the Russian imperial eagle. ‘But when night comes you’ve forgotten and you’re in love again. And nothing can compete with this love, not even Irene. Am I wrong?’

  Harry took a drag and watched Oleg.

  ‘What do you want me to say? You know everything anyway.’

  ‘I want to hear you say it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want you to hear yourself say it. So that you can hear how sick and meaningless it is.’

  ‘What? That it’s sick to shoot someone because they try to nick your dope? The dope you’ve slogged your guts out to scrape together?’

  ‘Can’t you hear how banal that sounds?’

  ‘Says you!’

  ‘Yes, says me. I lost the best woman in the world because I couldn’t resist. And you’ve killed your best friend, Oleg. Say his name.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Say his name.’

  ‘I’ve got the gun.’

  ‘Say his name.’

  Oleg grinned. ‘Gusto. What’s-’

  ‘Once more.’

  Oleg tilted his head and looked at Harry. ‘Gusto.’

  ‘Once more!’ Harry yelled.<
br />
  ‘Gusto!’ Oleg yelled back.

  ‘Once m-’

  ‘Gusto!’ Oleg took a deep breath. ‘Gusto! Gusto…’ His voice had begun to tremble. ‘Gusto!’ It burst at the seams. ‘Gusto. Gus…’ A sob intervened. ‘… to.’ Tears fell as he squeezed his eyes and whispered: ‘Gusto. Gusto Hanssen…’

  Harry took a step forward, but Oleg raised the gun.

  ‘You’re young, Oleg. You can still change.’

  ‘And what about you, Harry? Can’t you change?’

  ‘I wish I could, Oleg. I wish I had, then I would’ve taken better care of both of you. But it’s too late for me. I am the person I am.’

  ‘Which is? Alkie? Traitor?’

  ‘Policeman.’

  Oleg laughed. ‘Is that it? Policeman? Not a person or anything?’

  ‘Mostly a policeman.’

  ‘Mostly a policeman,’ Oleg repeated with a nod. ‘Isn’t that banal?’

  ‘Banal and dull,’ Harry said, taking the half-smoked cigarette and regarding it with disapproval, as if it wasn’t working as it should. ‘Because that means I have no choice, Oleg.’

  ‘Choice?’

  ‘I have to make sure you take your punishment.’

  ‘You don’t work for the police any more, Harry. You’re unarmed. And no one else knows that you know or that you’re here. Think of Mum. Think about me! For once, think about us, all three of us.’ His eyes were full of tears, and there was a shrill, metallic tone of desperation in his voice. ‘Why can’t you just go away now, and then we’ll forget everything, then we’ll say this hasn’t happened?’

  ‘I wish I could,’ Harry said. ‘But you’ve got me cornered. I know what happened, and I have to stop you.’

  ‘So why did you let me take the gun?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘I can’t arrest you. You have to give yourself up. It’s your race.’

  ‘Give myself up? Why should I? I’ve just been released!’

  ‘If I arrest you I’ll lose both your mother and you. And without you I am nothing. I can’t live without you. Do you understand, Oleg? I’m a rat that’s been locked out and there’s only one way in. And it goes through you.’

  ‘So let me go! Let’s forget the whole business and start afresh!’

  Harry shook his head. ‘Premeditated murder, Oleg. I can’t. You’re the one with the gun, you have the key now. You have to think about all three of us. If we go to Hans Christian he can sort things out and the punishment will be substantially reduced.’

  ‘But it’ll be long enough for me to lose Irene. No one would wait that long.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you’ve lost her already.’

  ‘You’re lying! You always lie!’ Harry watched Oleg blinking the tears from his eyes. ‘What will you do if I refuse to give myself up?’

  ‘Then I’ll have to arrest you now.’

  A groan escaped Oleg’s lips, a sound halfway between a gasp and disbelieving laughter.

  ‘You’re mad, Harry.’

  ‘It’s the way I’m made, Oleg. I do what I have to do. As you have to do what you have to do.’

  ‘ Have to? You make it sound like a bloody curse.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘Break the curse then, Oleg. Because you don’t really want to kill again, do you.’

  ‘Get out!’ Oleg screamed. The gun shook in his hand. ‘Go on! You’re not in the police any more!’

  ‘Correct,’ Harry said. ‘But I am, as I said…’ He clenched his lips around the black cigarette and inhaled deeply. Closed his eyes, and for two seconds he stood there looking as if he was relishing it. Then he let air and smoke wheeze out from his lungs. ‘… a policeman.’ He dropped the cigarette on the floor in front of him. Trod on it as he moved towards Oleg. Lifted his head. Oleg was almost as tall as he was. Harry met the boy’s eyes behind the sights of the raised gun. Saw him cock the gun. Already knew the outcome. He was in the way, the boy had no choice either; they were two unknowns in an equation without a solution, two heavenly bodies on course for an inevitable collision, a game of Tetris only one of them could win. Only one of them wanted to win. He hoped Oleg would have the gumption to get rid of the gun afterwards, that he would catch the plane to Bangkok, that he would never breathe a word to Rakel, that he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night screaming with the room full of ghosts from the past and that he would succeed in making himself a life worth living. For his own was not. Not any longer. He steeled himself and kept walking, felt the weight of his body, saw the black eye of the muzzle grow. One autumn day, Oleg, ten years old, his hair ruffled by the wind, Rakel, Harry, orange foliage, staring into the pocket camera, waiting for the click of the self-timer. Pictorial proof that they had made it, been there, reached the peak of happiness. Oleg’s index finger, white at the knuckle as it curled tighter round the trigger. There was no way back. There had never been time to catch the plane. There had never been any plane, no Hong Kong, just a notion of a life none of them had been in a position to live. Harry felt no fear. Only sorrow. The brief salvo sounded like a single shot and made the windows vibrate. He felt the physical pressure from the bullets hitting him in the middle of the chest. The recoil made the barrel jump and the third bullet hit him in the head. He fell. Beneath him, darkness. And he plunged into it. Until it swallowed him up and swept him into a cooling, painless nothing. At last, he thought. And that was Harry Hole’s final thought. That at long, long last he was free.

  The mother rat listened. The screams of her young were even clearer now that the church bells had chimed ten and fallen silent and the police siren that had been approaching had faded into the distance again. Only the faint heartbeats were left. Somewhere in rat memory was stored the smell of gunpowder and another, younger human body lying here and bleeding on the same kitchen floor. But that had been in the summer, long before the young had been born. And the body had not blocked the way to the nest.

  She had discovered that the man’s stomach was harder to get through than she thought and she had to find another option. So she returned to where she had started.

  Bit once into the leather shoe.

  Licked the metal again, the salty metal that protruded between two of the fingers on the right hand.

  Scrabbled up the suit jacket that smelt of sweat, blood and food, so many types of food that the linen material must have been in a rubbish tip.

  And there it was again, molecules of the unusually strong smell of smoke that had not been completely washed out. And even the few molecules stung her eyes, caused them to water and made it hard to breathe.

  She ran up the arm, across the shoulder, found a bloodstained bandage around the neck, which distracted her for a moment. Then she heard the squeals of her young again and scuttled up the chest. There was still a strong smell coming from the two round holes in the suit jacket. Sulphur, gunpowder. One was right by the heart; at any rate the rat could sense the barely perceptible vibrations as it beat. It was still beating. She continued up to the forehead, licked the blood running in a single thin stream from the blond hair. Went down to the lips, nostrils, eyelids. There was a scar along the cheek. The rat brain worked as rat brains do in maze experiments, with astonishing rationality and efficiency. The cheek. The inside of the mouth. The neck directly below the head. Then it would be at the back. A rat’s life was hard and simple. You do what you have to do.

  PART FIVE

  44

  The moonlight glistened on the River Akerselva, making the filthy little stream run through the town like a gold chain. There were not many women who chose to walk along the deserted paths by the water, but Martine did. It had been a long day at the Watchtower, and she was tired. But in a good way. It had been a good, long day. A boy approached her from the shadows, saw her face in the torch beam, mumbled a low ‘hi’ and retreated.

  Rikard had asked, a couple of times, if she shouldn’t, now that she was pregnant as well, take a different way home, but she had responded
it was the shortest way to Grunerlokka. And she refused to let anyone take her town from her. Besides, she knew so many of the people who lived under the bridges that she felt safer there than in some hip bar in Oslo West. She had walked past A amp;E, Schous plass and was heading for Bla when she heard the tarmac resound with the short, hard smack of shoes. A tall young man came running towards her. Glided through the darkness, shining a light along the path. She caught a glimpse of his face before he passed, and heard his panting breath fade into the distance behind her. It was a familiar face, one she had seen at the Watchtower. But there were so many, and sometimes she thought she had seen people whom colleagues told her the next day had been dead for months, years even. But for some reason the face made her think of Harry again. She never spoke about him with anyone, least of all Rikard, of course, but he had created a tiny little space inside her, a small room where she could occasionally go and visit him. Could that have been Oleg? Was that what had reminded her of Harry now? She turned. Saw the back of the boy who was running. As though he had the devil on his tail, as though he were trying to run away from something. But she couldn’t see anyone chasing him. He was getting smaller. And soon he was lost in the darkness.

  Irene looked at her watch. Five past eleven. She leaned back in her seat and stared at the monitor above the desk. In a few minutes they would be allowing passengers to board the plane. Dad had texted that he would meet them at Frankfurt Airport. She was sweating and her body ached. It was not going to be easy. But it would be alright.

  Stein squeezed her hand.

  ‘How’s it going, pumpkin?’

  Irene smiled. Squeezed back.

  It would be alright.

  ‘Do we know her?’ Irene whispered.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The dark-haired one sitting over there on her own.’

  She had been sitting there when they arrived as well, on a seat by the gate opposite them. She was reading a Lonely Planet book about Thailand. She was good-looking, the type of good looks that age never fades. And she radiated something, a kind of quiet happiness, as though she was laughing inside even if she was on her own.