Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

He pushed the tip of the key into the jagged aperture. It wouldn’t go in. Shit.

  Harry turned. Let his eyes glide along the bulky iron cabinets. Stopped, went back one locker. That was another Abus padlock. And there was a circle etched into the green paint. An O.

  The first objects Harry saw when he opened it up were Oleg’s racing skates. The long, slim blades had a kind of red rash along the edge.

  On the inside of the locker door, stuck to the ventilation grill, were two photographs. Two family photographs. One showed five faces. Two of the children and what he assumed were the parents were unfamiliar. But he recognized the third child. Because he had seen him in other photographs. Crime-scene photographs.

  It was the good looks. Gusto Hanssen.

  Harry wondered whether it was the good looks that did it, the immediate impression that Gusto Hanssen did not belong in the photograph. Or, to be precise, that he didn’t belong to the family.

  The same, strangely enough, could be said about the tall blond man sitting behind the dark-haired woman and her son in the second photograph. It had been taken one autumn day some years ago. They had gone for a walk in Holmenkollen, waded through the orange-colored foliage, and Rakel had placed her camera on a rock and pressed the timer.

  Was that really him? Harry could not remember having such gentle features.

  Rakel’s eyes gleamed, and he imagined he could hear her laughter, the laughter he loved and tried to remember—he never tired of it. She laughed with others, too, but with him and Oleg it had a different tone, one reserved for them alone.

  Harry searched the rest of the locker.

  There was a white sweater with a light-blue border. Not Oleg’s style—he wore short jackets and black T-shirts emblazoned with Slayer and Slipknot. Harry smelled the sweater. Faint perfume, feminine. There was a plastic bag on the hat shelf. He opened it. Quick intake of breath. It was a junkie’s kit: two syringes, a spoon, a rubber band, a lighter and some cotton gauze. All that was missing was dope. Harry was about to replace the bag when he spotted a shirt at the very back. It was red and white. He took it. It was a soccer shirt with an imperative on the chest: FLY EMIRATES. Arsenal.

  He looked up at the photograph, at Oleg. Even he was smiling. Smiling as though he believes, at least then, that there are three people sitting here who agree that this is wonderful, everything will be fine, this is how we want things to be. So why would it go off-course? Why would the man with his hands on the wheel drive off-course?

  “The way you lie that you’ll always be there for us.”

  Harry removed the photos from the locker door and slipped them into his inside pocket.

  When he emerged, the sun was on its way down behind Ullernåsen.

  Can you see me bleeding, Dad? I’m bleeding your bad blood. And your blood, Oleg. The church bells should be tolling for you. I curse you, curse the day I met you. You were at a gig at the Spectrum, Judas Priest. I was hanging around and joined the crowd of people coming out of the venue.

  “Wow, cool T-shirt,” I said. “Where’d you get it?”

  You gave me a strange look. “Amsterdam.”

  “You saw Judas Priest in Amsterdam?”

  “Why not?”

  I knew nothing about Judas Priest, but at least I had done my homework and found out it was a band, not a guy, and that the lead singer’s name was Rob something or other.

  “Cool. Priest rules.”

  You stiffened for a second and looked at me. Concentrated, like an animal that had caught a scent. Danger, or prey. Or—in your case—a possible soul mate. Because you carried your loneliness like a wet, heavy raincoat, Oleg, you walked with a bent back and shuffled your feet. I had picked you out precisely because of your loneliness. I said I’d buy you a Coke if you told me about the Amsterdam gig.

  So you talked about Judas Priest, the concert at Heineken Music Hall two years ago, about the two teenage friends who shot themselves after listening to a Priest record with a hidden message that said, “Do it.” Except one of them survived. Priest was heavy metal, had been into speed metal. And twenty minutes later you’d said so much about goths and death that it was time to bring up meth.

  “Let’s hit the high spots, Oleg. Celebrate this meeting of minds. How about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know some fun people who are going to do some smoking in the park.”

  “Really?” Skeptical.

  “No heavy stuff, just ice.”

  “I don’t do that, sorry.”

  “Hell, I don’t do it, either. We can smoke a pipe. You and me. Real ice, not the powder shit. Like Rob.”

  Oleg stopped in mid-gulp. “Rob?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rob Halford?”

  “Sure. His roadie bought from the same guy I’m going to buy from now. Got any cash?”

  I said it in such a casual way, such a casual and matter-of-fact way, that there wasn’t a shadow of suspicion in his serious eyes. “Rob Halford smokes ice?”

  He forked over the five hundred kroner I asked for. I told him to wait, got up and left. Down the road to Vaterland Bridge. When I was out of sight, to the right, I got across the street and down the three hundred yards to Oslo Central Station in minutes. Thinking that would be the last I saw of Oleg fricking Fauke.

  It was only when I was sitting in the tunnel under the platforms with a pipe in my mouth that I realized we weren’t finished with each other yet. Not even close. He stood above me without saying a word. He leaned against the wall and slid down next to me. Stuck out his hand. I gave him the pipe. He inhaled. Coughed. And stuck out his other hand. “The change.”

  And so the team of Gusto and Oleg was set. Every day, after he finished at Clas Ohlson, where he had a summer job in the warehouse, we went downtown, swam in the filthy water in Middelalderparken, and watched them building a new part of town around the Opera House.

  We told each other about all the things we were going to do and become, about the places we would go, smoking and snorting everything we could buy with his summer job money.

  I told him about my foster father, how he had kicked me out because my foster mother hit on me. And you, Oleg, talked about a guy your mother had been with, a cop named Harry you claimed was “cool.” Someone you could trust. But something had gone sour. First, between him and your mother. Then you got dragged into a murder case he was working on. And that was when you and your mother moved to Amsterdam. I said the guy probably was “cool,” but it was a pretty lame expression. And you said “fricking” was even lamer. Had anyone ever told me the word was “frigging”? Even that was childish. And why did I speak such exaggerated cockney Norwegian? I wasn’t even from the East End of Oslo. I said exaggerating was a principle I had—it emphasized a point—and “fricking” was so wrong it was right. And the sun shone, and I thought that was the best thing anyone had said about me.

  We panhandled on Karl Johans Gate for fun. I stole a skateboard from Rådhusplassen and swapped it for speed on Jernbanetorget half an hour later. We took the boat to Hovedøya, swam and bummed beers. Some girls wanted us to join them on Daddy’s yacht and you dived from the mast, only just clearing the deck. We caught the tram to Ekeberg to see the sunset and there was the Norway Cup, and a sad soccer coach from Trøndelag was staring at me, and I said I would give him a blow job for a thousand kroner. He paid up and I waited until his trousers were around his ankles before I ran. And you told me afterward he looked “totally lost” and turned to you, as if asking you to take over. Man, that cracked us up!

  It felt like summer would never end. Then it did, after all. We spent your last paycheck on spliffs, which we blew into the pale, empty night sky. You said you were going to go back to school, get good grades and study law, like your mother. And that afterward you would do fricking police college! We laughed so much we had tears in our eyes.

  But when school began I saw less of you. Then even less. You lived up on Holmenkollen Ridge with your mother while I crashed on a
mattress in the rehearsal room of a band who said I was fine there as long as I kept an eye on their shit and stayed away when they were practicing. So I gave up on you, thinking you were comfortable back in your conventional little life. And that was about the time I started dealing.

  It happened by accident. I had milked a woman I was staying with, then I went to Oslo Central and asked Tutu if he had any ice. Tutu had a slight stammer and was slave to Odin, the boss of Los Lobos in Alnabru. He’d gotten his nickname from the time Odin, needing to launder a suitcase of drug money, sent Tutu to a bookie in Italy to put a bet on a match that Odin knew was fixed. The home team was supposed to win 2–0. Tutu had orders to say “two nothing,” but then came the turning point. Tutu was so nervous and stammered so much as he placed the bet that the bookie only heard “Tu-Tu.” Ten minutes before the end, the home team was of course leading 2–0, and everything was peace and light. Except for Tutu, who had just seen on the betting slip that he’d put the money on “tu-tu”: 2–2. He knew that Odin would kneecap him. He has a thing about kneecapping people. But then came turning-point number two. On the away bench was a new forward from Poland whose Italian was as bad as Tutu’s English, so he hadn’t picked up that the game was a fix. When the manager sent him onto the field, he played as well as he thought they had paid him to do: He scored. Twice. Tutu was saved. But when Tutu landed in Oslo that night and went straight to Odin to tell him about his stroke of good fortune, his luck evened out. He started by giving the news that he had put the cash on the wrong result. And he was so worked up and stammered so much that Odin lost patience, grabbed a revolver from a drawer and—turning-point number three—shot Tutu in the knee long before he came to the part about the Pole.

  Anyway, that day at Oslo Central Tutu told me there was no more ice to be h-h-had, I would have to make do with p-p-powder. It was cheaper and both parts are methamphetamine, but I can’t stand it. Ice is lovely white bits of crystal that blow your head off whereas the stinking yellow shit you get in Oslo is mixed with baking powder, refined sugar, aspirin, vitamin B12 and the devil and his mother. Or, for connoisseurs, chopped-up painkillers that taste like speed. But I bought what he had with a tiny bulk discount and had enough money left for some A. And since amphetamines are health food compared to meth, just a bit slower to work, I snorted some speed, diluted the meth with more baking powder and sold it at Plata at a fantastic markup.

  The next day I went back to Tutu and repeated the biz, plus a bit more. Snorted some, diluted it and sold the rest. Ditto the day after. I said I could take more if he put it on the tab, but he laughed. When I returned on the fourth day Tutu said his boss thought we should do this on a more es-s-stablished basis. They had seen me selling, and liked what they saw. If I sold two batches a day that meant five thousand straight, no questions asked. And so I became a street pusher for Odin and Los Lobos. I got the goods from Tutu in the morning and delivered the day’s take with any leftovers to him by five. Day shift. There were never any leftovers.

  It went well for about three weeks. One Wednesday on Vippetangen quay, I’d sold two batches, my pockets were full of cash, my nose was full of speed, when I suddenly saw no reason to meet Tutu at the station. Instead I texted him to say I was going out of town and jumped on the ferry to Denmark. That’s the type of blackout you have to deal with when you take bumblebees for too long.

  When I got back I heard a rumor that Odin was on the lookout for me. And it freaked me out, especially because I knew how Tutu got his nickname. So I kept my head down, hung out around Grünerløkka. And waited for Judgment Day. But Odin had bigger things on his mind than a pusher who owed him a few thousand. Competition had come to town. “The man from Dubai.” Not in the bumblebee market, but in heroin, which was more important than anything else for Los Lobos. Some said they were White Russians, some said they were Lithuanians, and others Norwegian Pakistanis. But everyone agreed it was a professional organization—they feared no one and it was better to know too much than too little.

  It was a crappy autumn.

  I’d been broke for a while; I no longer had a job and was forced to keep a low profile. I’d found a buyer for the band’s equipment on Bispegata. He’d come to see it, and I’d convinced him it was mine—after all, I did live there! It was just a question of agreeing on a time to collect it. Then—like a rescuing angel—Irene appeared. Nice, freckled Irene. It was an October morning, and I was busy with some guys in Sofienberg Park when there she was, almost in tears with happiness. I asked if she had any money, and she waved a Visa card. Her father’s, Rolf’s. We went to the nearest ATM and emptied his account. At first, Irene didn’t want to, but when I explained that my life depended on it, she knew it had to be done. We went to Olympen and ate and drank, bought a few grams of speed and returned home to Bispegata. She said she’d had a fight with her mom. She stayed the night. The next day I took her with me to the station. Tutu was sitting on his motorbike wearing a leather jacket with a wolf’s head on the back. Tutu with a goatee, pirate’s scarf around his head and tattoos sticking out from his collar, but still looking like a fricking lackey. He was about to jump off and run after me when he realized I was heading toward him. I gave him the twenty thousand I owed, plus five in interest. Thank you for lending me the travel money. Hope we can turn over a new leaf. Tutu called Odin while looking at Irene. I could see what he wanted. And looked at Irene again. Poor, beautiful, pale Irene.

  “Odin says he wants f-f-five more,” Tutu said. “If not I’ve got orders to give you a b-b-b-bea-bea-bea …” He took a deep breath.

  “Beating,” I said.

  “Right now,” Tutu said.

  “Fine—I’ll sell two batches for you today.”

  “You’ll have to p-p-pay for them.”

  “Come on—I can sell them in two hours.”

  Tutu eyed me. Nodded to Irene, who was standing at the bottom of the Jernbanetorget steps, waiting. “What about h-h-her?”

  “She’ll help me.”

  “Girls are good at s-s-selling. Is she on drugs?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Th-thief,” Tutu said, grinning his toothless grin.

  I counted my money. My last. It was always my last. My blood’s flowing out of me.

  A week later, by Elm Street Rock Café, a boy stopped in front of Irene and me.

  “Irene, this is Oleg,” I said and jumped down from the wall. “Say hello to my sister, Oleg.”

  Then I hugged him. I could feel he hadn’t lowered his head; he was looking over my shoulder. At Irene. And through his denim jacket I could feel his heart accelerating.

  OFFICER BERNTSEN SAT with his feet on the desk and the telephone receiver to his ear. He had called the police station in Lillestrøm, Romerike Police District, and introduced himself as Thomas Lunder, a laboratory assistant for Kripos. The officer he was speaking to had just confirmed they had received the bag of what they assumed was heroin from Gardermoen. The standard procedure was that all confiscated drugs in the country were sent for testing to the Kripos laboratory in Bryn, Oslo. Once a week a Kripos vehicle went around collecting from all the police districts in Østland. Other districts sent the material via their own couriers.

  “Good,” Berntsen said, fidgeting with the false ID card, which displayed a photo and the signature of “Thomas Lunder, Kripos,” underneath. “I’ll be in Lillestrøm anyway, so I’ll pick up the bag for Bryn. We’d like such a large seizure to be tested at once. OK—see you early tomorrow.”

  He hung up and looked out the window at the new area around Bjørvika rising toward the sky. Thought of all the small details: the sizes of screws, the thread on nuts, the quality of mortar, the flexibility of glass, everything that had to be right for the whole to function. And felt a profound satisfaction. Because it did. This town did function.

  The long, slim, feminine legs of the pine trees rose into the skirt of green that cast hazy afternoon shadows across the gravel in front of the house. Harry stood at the top of the driv
e, drying his sweat after mounting the steep hills from Holmendammen and observing the dark house. The black-stained, heavy timber expressed solidity, security, a bulwark against trolls and nature. It hadn’t been enough. The neighboring houses were large, inelegant detached houses undergoing continuous improvement and extension. Øystein, called Ø in Harry’s phone contacts list, had said that cog-jointed timbers were a statement of the bourgeoisie’s longing for nature, simplicity and health. What Harry saw was sick, perverted: a family under siege from a serial killer. Nonetheless, she had chosen to keep the house.

  Harry walked to the door and pressed the bell.

  Heavy footsteps sounded from inside. And Harry realized that he should have phoned first.

  The door opened.

  The man standing before him had blond bangs, the type that had been full in their prime and had undoubtedly brought him advantages, and which therefore he’d taken into later life hoping that the somewhat more straggly version would still work. The man was wearing an ironed light-blue shirt of the kind Harry guessed he had also worn in his youth.

  “Yes?” the man said. Open, friendly features. Eyes looking as if they had not met anything other than friendliness. A small polo player sewn onto the breast pocket.

  Harry felt his throat go dry. He cast a glance at the nameplate under the doorbell.

  RAKEL FAUKE.

  Yet the man with the attractive, weak face was standing there and holding the door open as though it were his. Harry knew he had several options for a great opening gambit, but the one he chose was: “Who are you?”

  The man in front of him produced the facial expression Harry had never been able to achieve. He frowned and smiled at the same time. The superior person’s condescending amusement at the inferior person’s impudence.

  “Since you are on the outside and I am on the inside it would seem more natural that you should say who you are. And what you want.”

  “As you wish,” Harry said with a loud yawn. Of course, he could blame that on jet lag. “I’m here to speak to the lady whose name is by the doorbell.”