Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  “And you are from?”

  “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Harry said, checking his watch.

  The man automatically shifted his eyes from Harry to look for the obligatory second man in the team.

  “My name’s Harry and I come from Hong Kong. Where is she?”

  The man arched an eyebrow. “The Harry?”

  “Since it has been one of Norway’s least trendy names for the last fifty years, we can probably assume it is.”

  The man studied Harry now, with a nod and a half-smile on his lips as though his brain were playing back the information it had received about the character in front of him. But with no suggestion that he was going to move from the doorway or answer any of Harry’s questions.

  “Well?” Harry said, shifting weight from one leg.

  “I’ll tell her you were here.”

  Harry’s foot was swift. Out of instinct he flipped the sole upward so that the door hit it instead of the shoe upper. That was the kind of trick his new occupation had taught him. The man looked down at Harry’s foot and then at him. The condescending amusement was gone. He was about to say something. A withering remark that would re-establish order. But Harry knew he would change his mind. When he saw the look on Harry’s face that made people change their minds.

  “You’d better …” the man said. Stopped. Blinked once. Harry waited. For the confusion. The hesitation. The retreat. Blink number two. The man coughed. “She’s out.”

  Harry stood stock-still. Let the silence ring out. Two seconds. Three seconds.

  “I … er, don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  Not a muscle stirred in Harry’s countenance while the man’s face leaped from one expression to another, as if searching for one to hide behind. And ended up where it had started: with the friendly one.

  “My name’s Hans Christian. I … apologize for having to be so negative. But a lot of bizarre inquiries regarding the case have come in, and it’s essential that Rakel has some peace now. I’m her lawyer.”

  “Hers?”

  “Theirs. Hers and Oleg’s. Would you like to come in?”

  Harry nodded.

  On the living-room table there were piles of papers. Case documents. Reports. The height of the pile suggested they had not stinted on their search.

  “Dare I ask what has brought you here?” Hans Christian asked.

  Harry flicked through the papers. DNA tests. Witness statements. “Well, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Why are you here? Don’t you have an office where you can prepare the defense?”

  “Rakel wants to be involved. She is a lawyer herself. Listen, Hole. I know very well who you are and I know you’ve been close to Rakel and Oleg, but—”

  “And how close are you, exactly?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, it sounds as if you’ve assumed responsibility for their all-around care.”

  Harry heard his own overtone and knew that he had revealed himself, knew the man was watching him in amazement. And knew he had lost the upper hand.

  “Rakel and I are old friends,” Hans Christian said. “I grew up close to here, we studied law together, and … well. When you spend the best years of your life together there are bonds, of course.”

  Harry nodded. Knew that he should keep his mouth shut. Knew that everything he said now would make things worse.

  “Mm. With bonds of that kind it’s strange I never saw or heard about you when Rakel and I were together.”

  Hans Christian was unable to answer. The door opened. And there she was.

  Harry felt a claw close around his heart and wrench it around.

  Her figure was the same: slim, erect. The face was the same: heart-shaped with dark-brown eyes and the broad mouth that liked to laugh so much. The hair was almost the same: long, though the color was perhaps a tad lighter. But the eyes were changed. They were the eyes of a hunted animal, widened, wild. But when they fell on Harry it was as if something returned. Something of the person she had been. Of what they had been.

  “Harry,” she said. And at the sound of her voice, the rest, everything, came back.

  He took two long strides and held her in his arms. The scent of her hair. Her fingers on his spine. She was the first to let go. He retreated a step and looked at her.

  “You look good,” he said.

  “You, too.”

  “Liar.”

  She smiled quickly. Tears had already formed in her eyes.

  They stayed standing like that. Harry let her study him, let her absorb his older face with its new scar. “Harry,” she repeated, tilted her head and laughed. The first tear trembled on her eyelashes and fell. A stripe ran down her soft skin.

  Somewhere in the room a man with a polo player on his shirt coughed and said something about having to go to a meeting.

  Then they were alone.

  WHILE RAKEL WAS making coffee he saw her gaze fix on his metal finger, but neither of them made a comment. There was an unspoken agreement that they would never mention the Snowman. So Harry sat at the kitchen table and instead talked about his life in Hong Kong. Told her what he was able to tell. What he wanted to tell. That the job as “debt consultant” for Herman Kluit’s outstanding accounts consisted of meeting customers with payments that had fallen behind and jogging their memories in a friendly way. In brief, the consultation involved advising them to pay as soon as was practical and feasible. Harry said his major and basically sole qualification was that he measured six feet four in his stocking feet, had broad shoulders, bloodshot eyes and a newly acquired scar.

  “Friendly, professional. Suit, tie, multinationals in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shanghai. Hotels with room service. Elegant office buildings. Civilized, Swiss-style private banks with a Chinese twist. Western handshakes and courtesy phrases. And Asian smiles. By and large they pay the next day. Herman Kluit is content. We understand each other.”

  She poured coffee for both of them and sat down. Took a deep breath.

  “I got a job with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, with offices in Amsterdam. I thought that if we left this house behind us, this town, all the attention …”

  Me, Harry thought.

  “… the memories, everything would be all right. And for a while it was. But then it started. At first, the senseless bouts of temper. As a boy Oleg never raised his voice. He was grumpy, yes, but never … like that. Said I’d ruined his life by taking him away from Oslo. He said that because he knew I had no defense. And when I started to cry, he started to cry. Asked me why I’d pushed you out. You’d saved us from … from …”

  He nodded so that she didn’t have to say the name.

  “He began to come home late. Said he was meeting friends, but they were friends I had never met. One day he admitted he’d been to a coffee shop in Leidseplein and smoked hash.”

  “The Bulldog Palace, with all the tourists?”

  “Right. That was part of the Amsterdam experience, I thought. But I was afraid at the same time. His father … well, you know.”

  Harry nodded. Oleg’s aristocratic Russian genes from his father. Highs, furies and lows. Dostoevsky land.

  “He sat in his room a lot, listening to music. Heavy, gloomy stuff. Well, you know these bands …”

  Harry nodded again.

  “But your records, too. Frank Zappa. Miles Davis. Supergrass. Neil Young. Supersilent.”

  The names came so quickly and naturally that Harry suspected she had been eavesdropping.

  “Then, one day I was vacuuming his room and I found two pills with smiley faces on them.”

  “Ecstasy?”

  She nodded. “Two months later I applied for and got a job at the Office of the Attorney General and moved back here.”

  “To safe, old innocent Oslo.”

  She shrugged. “He needed a change of scene. A new start. And it worked. He’s not the type to have lots of friends, as you know, but he met a couple of old pals and did well at school until
…” Her voice fell apart at the seams.

  Harry waited. He took a swig of coffee. Braced himself.

  “He was away for several days in a row. I didn’t know what to do. He did as he wanted. I called the police, psychologists, sociologists. He wasn’t legally an adult, yet there was nothing anyone could do unless there was evidence of drugs or crime. I felt so helpless. Me! Who always thought it was the parents who were at fault, who always had a solution at hand when other parents’ children went off the rails. Don’t be apathetic, don’t repress. Action!”

  Harry looked at her hand beside his on the coffee table. The delicate fingers. The fine veins on the pale hand that was normally still tanned so early in the autumn. But he didn’t obey his impulse to cover her hand with his. Something was in the way. Oleg was in the way.

  She sighed.

  “So I went downtown and searched for him. Night after night. Until I found him. He was standing on a corner of Tollbugata and was pleased to see me. Said he was happy. He had a job and was sharing a flat with some friends. He needed his freedom. I shouldn’t ask so many questions. He was ‘traveling.’ This was his version of a gap year, sailing around the world, like all the other kids on Holmenkollen Ridge. Sailing around the world of downtown Oslo.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “He said he would be home again soon. And would finish his studies at school. So we agreed he would come back and have Sunday lunch with me.”

  “And did he?”

  “Yes. And when he’d left I saw that he had been in my bedroom and stolen my jewelry box.” She took a long, quivering breath. “The ring you bought me in Vestkanttorget was in the box.”

  “Vestkanttorget?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  Harry’s brain rewound at top speed. There were a few black holes, some white ones he had repressed and large, blank expanses alcohol had consumed. But also areas with color and texture. Like the day they were walking around the Vestkanttorget flea market. Was Oleg with them? Yes, he was. Of course. The photograph. The timer. The autumn leaves. Or was that another day? They had ambled from stall to stall. Old toys, crockery, rusty cigar boxes, vinyl records with and without sleeves, lighters. And a gold ring.

  It had looked so lonely there. So Harry had bought it and put it on her finger. To give it a new home, he had said. Or some such thing. Something flippant he knew she would perceive as shyness, as a disguised declaration of love. And perhaps it was—at any rate they had both laughed. About the act, about the ring, about their both knowing the other knew. And about all of that being fine. For everything they wanted and yet did not want lay in this cheap, tatty ring. A vow to love each other as passionately and for as long as they could, and to part when there was no love left. When she had parted, it had been for other reasons, of course. Better reasons. But, Harry established, she had taken care of their tawdry ring, kept it in the box with the jewelry she had inherited from her Austrian mother.

  “Shall we go out while there’s still some sun?” Rakel asked.

  “Yes,” Harry said, returning her smile. “Let’s do that.”

  THEY WALKED UP the road that coiled to the top of the ridge. The deciduous trees in the east were so red they looked as if they were on fire. The light played on the fjord, making it resemble molten metal. But it was, as usual, the man-made features of the town below that fascinated Harry. The anthill perspective. The houses, parks, roads, cranes, boats in the harbor, lights that had begun to come on. The cars and trains hurrying here and there. The sum of our activities. And the question only the person with the time to stop and look down at the busy ants can allow himself to ask: Why?

  “I dream of peace and quiet,” Rakel said. “No more than that. What about you? What do you dream about?”

  Harry shrugged. “Finding myself in a narrow corridor and an avalanche coming and burying me.”

  “Wow.”

  “Well, you know me and my claustrophobia.”

  “We often dream about what we fear and desire. Disappearing, being buried. In a way it offers security, doesn’t it?”

  Harry thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. “I was buried under an avalanche three years ago. Let’s say it’s as simple as that.”

  “So you didn’t escape your ghosts even though you went all the way to Hong Kong?”

  “Oh, yes, I did,” Harry said. “The trip thinned the ranks.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they are. Ghosts. Lifeless, powerless ghosts.”

  “So,” Rakel said in a tone that made him realize she didn’t like the topic of conversation, “any women in your life?” The question came easily, so easily that he didn’t believe it.

  “Well.”

  “Tell me.”

  She had donned her sunglasses. It was hard to assess how much she wanted to hear. Harry decided on a swap. If he wanted to hear.

  “She was Chinese.”

  “Was? Is she dead?” She sent him a playful smile. He thought she looked as if she could take the heat. But he would have preferred it if she had been a bit more sensitive.

  “A businesswoman in Shanghai. She nurses her guanxi, her network of useful connections. Plus her affluent, ancient Chinese husband. And—when it suits her—me.”

  “In other words, you exploit her caring nature.”

  “I wish I could say that.”

  “Oh?”

  “She makes fairly specific demands on where and when. And how. She likes—”

  “Enough!” Rakel said.

  Harry smiled wryly. “As you know, I’ve always had a weakness for women who know what they want.”

  “Enough, I said.”

  “Message received.”

  They continued to walk in silence. Until Harry finally said the words hovering around them in bold.

  “What about this Hans Christian guy?”

  “Hans Christian Simonsen? He’s Oleg’s lawyer.”

  “I never heard of a Hans Christian Simonsen while I was doing murder cases.”

  “He’s from this area. We were in the same year at law school. He came and offered his services.”

  “Mm. Right.”

  Rakel laughed. “I seem to remember he invited me out once or twice when we were students. And that he wanted us to do a jazz-dance course together.”

  “God forbid.”

  Rakel laughed again. Christ, how he had longed for that laughter.

  She nudged him. “As you know, I’ve always had a weakness for men who know what they want.”

  “Uh-huh,” Harry said. “And what have they ever done for you?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Instead she furrowed her broad, black eyebrows; he had stroked this place whenever he noticed her doing that. “Sometimes it’s more important to have a lawyer who is dedicated rather than one who is so experienced he knows the outcome in advance.”

  “Mm. You mean someone who knows it’s a lost cause.”

  “You mean I should have used one of the tired old plodders?”

  “Well, the best are in fact pretty dedicated.”

  “This is a petty drug murder, Harry. The best are busy with prestige cases.”

  “So, what has Oleg told his dedicated lawyer about what happened?”

  Rakel sighed. “That he can’t remember anything. Beyond that, he doesn’t want to say anything about anything at all.”

  “And that’s what you’re basing your defense on?”

  “Listen—Hans Christian’s a brilliant lawyer in his field. He knows what’s involved. He’s taking advice from the best. And he’s working day and night, he really is.”

  “You’re exploiting his caring nature, in other words?”

  This time Rakel did not laugh. “I’m a mother. It’s simple. I’m willing to do w
hatever it takes.”

  They stopped where the forest began and sat on separate spruce trunks. The sun sank to the treetops in the west like a weary Independence Day balloon.

  “I know why you’ve come, of course,” Rakel said. “But what exactly are you planning to do?”

  “Find out if Oleg’s guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.”

  “Because?”

  Harry shrugged. “Because I’m a detective. Because this is the way we’ve organized this anthill. No one can be convicted until we’re sure.”

  “And you’re not sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure.”

  “And that’s the only reason you’re here?”

  The shadows from the spruce trees crept over them. Harry shivered in his linen suit; his thermostat had evidently not adjusted to 59.9 degrees north yet.

  “It’s strange,” he said, “but I have trouble remembering anything except fragmented moments of all the time we were together. When I look at a photograph that’s how I remember it. The way we were in the photo. Even if I know it’s not true.”

  He looked at her. She was sitting with her chin in one hand. The sun glittered on her narrowed eyes.

  “But perhaps that’s why we take photos,” Harry continued. “To provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren’t happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness. But Oleg could never smile unless he meant it, could not lie; he didn’t have the gift.” Harry turned back to the sun, caught the last rays, extended like yellow fingers between the highest branches on the crest of the ridge. “I found a photo of the three of us on his locker door in Valle Hovin. And do you know what, Rakel? He was smiling in that photo.”

  Harry focused on the spruce trees. The little color remaining was quickly sucked out of them, and now they stood like ranks of black-uniformed silhouette-guardsmen. Then he heard her come over, felt her hand under his arm, her head against his shoulder, her hot cheek through his linen suit, and breathed in the perfume of her hair. “I don’t need any photograph to remember how happy we were, Harry.”