Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  In the lobby the bigger of the two suits frisked me, then he and the little one went to a corner where there was a small table with a red felt cloth and loads of old icons and crucifixes hanging all over the wall. They drew their guns from their shoulder holsters, put them on the red felt and placed a cross on each pistol. Then a door to a lounge opened.

  “Ataman,” he said, pointing the way to me.

  The old man must have been at least as old as the leather armchair he was sitting in. I stared. Gnarled fingers clutched a black cigarette.

  There was a lively crackle coming from the enormous fireplace, and I made sure to position myself near enough for the heat to reach my back. The light from the flames flickered over his white silk shirt and old-man face. He put down the cigarette and raised his hand as though he expected me to kiss the large blue stone he wore on his ring finger.

  “Burmese sapphire,” he said. “Six-point-six carat, four and a half thousand dollars per carat.”

  He had an accent. It wasn’t easy to hear, but it was there. Poland? Russia? Something to the east, anyway.

  “How much?” he said, resting his chin on the ring.

  It took me a couple of seconds to understand what he meant.

  “Just under thirty thousand,” I said.

  “How much under?”

  I paused. “Twenty-nine thousand, seven hundred is pretty close.”

  “The exchange rate for the dollar is five eighty-three.”

  “Around a hundred seventy thousand.”

  The old man nodded. “They said you were good.” His old-man eyes shone bluer than the fricking Burmese sapphire.

  “They’ve got brains,” I said.

  “I’ve seen you in action. You have a lot to learn, but I can tell you’re smarter than the other imbeciles. You see a customer and know what he’s willing to pay.”

  I shrugged. I wondered what he was willing to pay.

  “But they also said you steal.”

  “Only when it’s worth my while.”

  The old man laughed. At first I thought it was a halfhearted coughing fit, like from lung cancer. There was a kind of gurgling noise deep in his throat, like the nice old chug-chug of a motorboat. Then he fixed his cold, blue Jew-eyes on me and said in a tone like he was telling me about Newton’s Second Law: “You should be able to manage the next calculation as well. If you steal from me I will kill you.”

  The sweat was pouring down my back. I forced myself to meet his gaze. It was like staring into the fricking Antarctic. Nothing. Freezing-cold wasteland. But I knew what he wanted. Number one: money.

  “The biker gang will let you sell ten grams on your own for every fifty grams you sell for them. Seventeen percent. For me you sell only my stuff and you’re paid in cash. Fifteen percent. You have your own street corner. There are three of you. Money man, dope man and scout. Seven percent for the dope man, three percent for the scout. You settle up with Andrey at midnight.” He nodded toward the smaller choirboy.

  Street corner. Scout. The fricking Wire.

  “Deal,” I said. “Give me the shirt.”

  The old man smiled in a sort of reptilian way that tells you roughly where in the hierarchy you are. “Andrey will sort it out.”

  We continued to chat. He asked about my parents, friends, whether I had anywhere to live. I told him I lived with my foster sister and lied no more than was necessary, because I had the feeling he already knew the answers. Only once was I out of my depth, when he asked why I spoke a kind of outdated east Oslo dialect when I’d grown up in a well-educated family north of town, and I answered it was because of my father, the real one, who was from the East End. Fuck knows if that’s right, but it’s what I’ve always imagined, Dad—you walking around east Oslo, down on your luck, unemployed, hard-up, a freezing flat, not a good place to bring up a kid. Or maybe I talked the way I did to annoy Rolf and the posh neighbors’ kids. And then I discovered it gave me a kind of upper hand, like a tattoo; people got scared, shied away, gave me a wide berth. While I was droning on about my life the old man was studying my face and kept rapping the sapphire ring on the armrest, again and again, relentlessly, like some kind of countdown. When there was a break in the questioning and the only sound was the rapping, I felt like we would explode unless I broke the silence.

  “Cool pad,” I said.

  That sounded so lame I blushed.

  “It was the head of the Gestapo’s residence in Norway from 1942 to 1945. Hellmuth Reinhard.”

  “S’pose the neighbors don’t bother you.”

  “I own the house next door as well. Reinhard’s lieutenant lived there. Or vice versa.”

  “Vice versa?”

  “Not everything here is so easy to grasp,” the old man said. Grinned his lizard smile. The Komodo dragon.

  I knew I had to be careful, but couldn’t resist. “There’s one thing I don’t get. Odin pays me seventeen percent, and that’s pretty much standard. But you want a team of three people and you’re giving twenty-five percent total. Why?”

  The old man’s eyes stared intently at one side of my face. “Because three is safer than one, Gusto. My sellers’ risks are my risks. If you lose all the pawns it’s just a matter of time before you’re checkmate, Gusto.” He seemed to repeat my name just to enjoy the sound.

  “But the profit—”

  “Don’t concern yourself with that,” he said sharply. Then he smiled and his voice was soft again. “Our goods come straight from the source, Gusto. It’s six times purer than the so-called heroin that’s diluted first in Istanbul, next in Belgrade and then in Amsterdam. Yet we pay less per gram. Understand?”

  I nodded. “You can dilute it seven or eight times more than the other guys.”

  “We dilute it, but less than the others. We sell something that can be accurately called heroin. You already know that, and it was why you were so quick to say yes to a lower percentage.” The light from the flames glistened on his white teeth. “Because you know you’re going to sell the best product in town, you’re going to turn over three to four times as much as you do of Odin’s flour. You know that because you see it every day: buyers walking straight past the line of pushers to find the one wearing—”

  “The Arsenal shirt.”

  “The customers will know your goods are the best on day one, Gusto.”

  Then he walked me out.

  Because he’d been sitting with a blanket over his knees, I’d assumed he was a cripple or something, but he was surprisingly light on his feet. He stopped in the doorway, clearly not wanting to show his face outside. Put a hand on my arm, above the elbow. Gently squeezed my triceps.

  “See you soon, Gusto.”

  I nodded. I knew there was something else he wanted. I’ve seen you in action. From inside a limo with tinted windows, studying me like I was a fricking Rembrandt. That was how I knew I would get what I wanted.

  “The scout has to be my foster sister. And the dope man a guy named Oleg.”

  “That’s fine. Anything else?”

  “I want number twenty-three on my shirt.”

  “Arshavin,” the tall choirboy mumbled with contentment. “Russian.” Obviously he had never heard of Michael Jordan.

  “We’ll see,” chuckled the old man. He looked up at the sky. “Now Andrey will show you something and you can get started.” His hand kept patting my arm and his smile was frozen on his damned face. I was scared. And excited. Scared and excited like a Komodo dragon hunter.

  The choirboys drove down to the deserted marina on Frognerkilen Bay. They had keys to a gate, and we drove between the small boats laid up for the winter. At the tip of one wharf we came to a halt and got out. I stood staring down into the calm, black water while Andrey opened the trunk.

  “Come here, Arshavin.”

  I went over and peered into the trunk.

  He was still wearing the studded dog collar and his Arsenal shirt. Bisken had always been ugly, but the sight of him almost made me throw up. There were large
black holes of congealed blood across his pimply face, one ear was torn in half and one eye socket didn’t have an eye but something that looked like rice pudding. After finally managing to tear myself away from the mush I saw there was also a little hole in the shirt above the M of EMIRATES. As in bullet hole.

  “What happened?” I stuttered.

  “He talked to the cop in the beret.”

  I knew who he meant. There was an undercover—or so he thought—skulking around Kvadraturen.

  Andrey waited, let me have a good look, before asking, “Got the message?”

  I nodded. I couldn’t stop staring at the wasted eye. What the fuck had they done to him?

  “Peter,” Andrey said. Together, they lifted him out of the trunk, removed the Arsenal shirt and chucked him off the edge of the jetty. The black water swallowed him without a sound and closed its jaws. Gone.

  Andrey slung the shirt over to me. “This is yours now.”

  I poked my finger through the bullet hole. Turned the shirt and looked at the back.

  Fifty-two. Bendtner.

  It was 6:30 a.m., a quarter of an hour before sunrise, according to the back page of Aftenposten. Tord Schultz folded the newspaper and left it on the seat beside him. Glanced across the deserted atrium toward the exit again.

  “He’s usually here early,” said the Securitas guard behind the reception desk.

  Tord Schultz had caught a dawn train into Oslo and watched the town awaken as he walked from Central Station eastward along Grønlandsleiret. He had passed a garbage truck. The men treated the cans with a roughness that Tord thought said more about attitude than efficiency. Like F-16 pilots. A Pakistani greengrocer had carried boxes of vegetables to the front of his shop, stopped, wiped his hands on his apron and smiled a good-morning to him. Hercules pilot. After Grønland Church he had turned left. An enormous glass façade, built and designed in the 1970s, towered up above him. Police HQ.

  At 6:37 the door opened. The guard coughed, and Tord raised his head. He received a confirmatory nod and got to his feet. The man coming toward him was smaller than he was.

  He walked with a fast springy step and had longer hair than Tord would have expected of a man responsible for the largest narcotics unit in Norway. As he came closer Tord noticed the pink and white stripes on the almost girlishly attractive, suntanned face. He remembered a stewardess who had had a pigment defect, a white patch spreading down from her solarium-scorched neck, between her breasts to her shaved sex. It had made the rest of her skin look like a tight-fitting nylon stocking.

  “Mikael Bellman?”

  “Yes, how can I help you?” The man smiled without slowing down.

  “A private chat.”

  “I’m afraid I have to prepare for a morning meeting, but if you call—”

  “I have to talk to you now,” Tord said, surprised at the insistent tone in his voice.

  “Is that so?” The head of Orgkrim had already swiped his ID card at the gate, but stopped to scrutinize him.

  Tord Schultz approached. Lowered his voice, although the guard was still the only other person in the atrium. “My name’s Tord Schultz, I’m a pilot for Scandinavia’s biggest airline and I have information about drug smuggling into Norway via Gardermoen.”

  “I see. How much are we talking about?”

  “Eight kilos a week.”

  Tord could feel the man’s eyes examining him physically. Knew that the man’s brain was gathering and processing all available data: body language, clothes, posture, facial expression, the wedding ring he for some reason was still wearing on his finger, the ring he didn’t have in his ear, the polished shoes, the vocabulary, the firmness of gaze.

  “Perhaps we’d better get you registered,” Bellman said, nodding to the guard.

  Tord Schultz slowly shook his head. “I’d rather this meeting remain confidential.”

  “Rules state that everyone should be registered, but I can reassure you that the information stays here at Police HQ.” Bellman signaled to the guard.

  In the elevator on the way up, Schultz stroked his finger over the name on the sticker the guard had printed and told him to wear on his lapel.

  “Anything wrong?” Bellman asked.

  “Not at all,” Tord said. But he continued rubbing, hoping he could erase his name.

  Bellman’s office was surprisingly small.

  “Size doesn’t matter,” Bellman said in a tone suggesting he was used to the reaction. “Great things have been accomplished from here.” He pointed to a picture on the wall. “Lars Axelsen, head of what was the Robberies Unit. Smashed the Tveita gang in the nineties.”

  He motioned Tord to sit down. Took out a notebook, met Tord’s glare and put it away again.

  “Well?” he said.

  Tord inhaled. And talked. He started with the divorce. He needed that. Needed to start with the why. Then he moved on to the when and where. Then to who and how. And in the end he talked about the burner.

  Throughout the narration Bellman sat leaning forward, following carefully. Only when Tord talked about the burner did his face lose its concentrated, though professional, expression. After the initial surprise a red hue suffused the white pigment stains. It was a strange sight, as though a flame had been lit on the inside. He lost eye contact with Bellman, who was staring bitterly at the wall behind him, perhaps at the picture of Lars Axelsen.

  After Tord had finished, Bellman sighed and raised his head.

  Tord noticed there was a new look to his eyes. Hard and defiant.

  “I apologize,” the section head said. “On behalf of myself, my profession and the police force. I apologize for not having disposed of the bedbug.”

  Bellman must have been saying that to himself, Tord thought, and not to him, a pilot who had been smuggling eight kilos of heroin a week.

  “I appreciate that you’re concerned,” Bellman said. “I wish I could say you have nothing to fear. But bitter experience tells me that when this kind of corruption is exposed it goes down a lot farther than one individual.”

  “I understand.”

  “Have you told anyone else about this?”

  “No.”

  “Does anyone know you are here and talking to me?”

  “No, no one.”

  “No one at all?”

  Tord looked at him. Smiled wryly without saying what he was thinking: Who was there to tell?

  “OK,” Bellman said. “This is an important, serious and extremely delicate matter you’ve brought to my attention. I’ll have to proceed very warily so as not to warn those who must not be warned. That means I’ll have to take the matter higher. You know, I ought to put you in custody for what you have told me, but imprisonment now could expose both you and us. So until the situation has been clarified you should go home and stay there. Do you understand? Don’t tell anyone about this meeting, don’t go outdoors, don’t open the door to strangers, don’t answer phone calls from unfamiliar numbers.”

  Tord nodded slowly. “How long will it take?”

  “Three days, max.”

  “Roger that.”

  Bellman appeared to be about to say something, but stopped and hesitated before finally deciding.

  “This is something I’ve never been able to understand,” he said. “That some people are willing to destroy the lives of others for money. Well, perhaps if you’re a poor Afghan peasant … But a Norwegian with the salary of a chief pilot …”

  Tord Schultz met his eyes. He had prepared himself for this; it almost felt like relief when it came.

  “Nevertheless, coming here of your own free will and laying your cards on the table is brave. I know what you’re risking. Life won’t be easy from now on, Schultz.”

  With that, the head of Orgkrim stood up and proffered his hand. And the same thought went through Tord’s mind as when he had seen him approaching in reception: Mikael Bellman was the perfect height for a fighter pilot.

  AS TORD SCHULTZ was leaving Police HQ, Harry Hole was ring
ing Rakel’s doorbell. She opened up, wearing a bathrobe, her eyes narrow slits. She yawned.

  “I’ll look better later in the day,” she said.

  “Nice that one of us will,” Harry said, stepping inside.

  “Good luck,” she said, standing in front of the living-room table piled with documents. “It’s all there. Case reports. Photos. Newspaper clippings. Witness statements. He’s thorough. I have to go to work.”

  By the time the door had slammed behind her Harry had brewed his first cup of coffee and made a start.

  After reading for three hours he had to take a break to fight the despondency stealing over him. He took the cup and stood by the kitchen window. Told himself he was here to question guilt, not to confirm innocence. Doubt was enough. And yet. The evidence was unambiguous. And all his years of experience as a murder investigator worked against him: Things were surprisingly often exactly as they looked.

  After three more hours the conclusion was the same. There was nothing in the documents that hinted at a different explanation. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one, but it wasn’t here, he told himself.

  He left before Rakel came home, telling himself he had jet lag, he had to sleep. But he knew he just couldn’t bring himself to say that, from what he had read, it was harder to cling to a doubt, the doubt that was the way, the truth, the life and the only hope of redemption.

  So he grabbed his coat and left. Walked all the way from Holmenkollen, past Ris, over Sogn and Ullevål and Bolteløkka to Schrøder’s. Considered going in but decided against it. Headed east instead, over the river to Tøyen.

  And when he pushed open the door to the Watchtower, daylight had already started to fade. Everything was as he remembered. Pale walls, pale café decor, large windows that let in the maximum amount of light. And in this light the afternoon clientele sat around the tables with coffee and sandwiches. Some customers hung their heads over plates as if they had just reached the finish line after a fifty-kilometer race, some carried on staccato conversations in impenetrable junkie-speak, others you wouldn’t have been surprised to see drinking an espresso among the bourgeois stroller armada at United Bakeries.

  Some had been provided with new secondhand clothes they either kept in plastic bags or were wearing. Others looked like insurance agents or provincial schoolmistresses.