Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  Were you a thief, too, Dad? Because I’d always known I was going to be a millionaire. My motto was to steal only when it was worthwhile, so I’d been patient and waited. And waited. Waited so long that when the opportunity finally offered itself I thought I fucking deserved it.

  The plan was as simple as it was brilliant. While Odin’s biker gang was meeting the old man at McDonald’s, Oleg and I would steal part of their heroin store in Alnabru. First off, there would be no one in the clubhouse because Odin would take the muscle they had with them. Second, Odin would never find out that he’d been robbed because he was going to get arrested at McDonald’s. When he was sitting on the witness stand he would in fact thank Oleg and me for reducing the number of kilos the heavies had found in the raid. The only problem would be the cops and the old man. If the cops realized that someone had been a step ahead of them and nabbed the stash, and this made it to the old man’s ears, we would be fucked. The problem solved itself the way the old man had taught me: castling, a strategic alliance. I went straight to the apartment building in Manglerud, and this time Truls Berntsen was at home.

  He stared at me skeptically as I explained, but I didn’t care. Because I had seen it in his eyes. The greed. Another one of these people desperate for payback, who believed that money could buy them medicine for despair, loneliness and bitterness. That there’s not only something called justice, but that it’s a consumer product, sort of. I explained we needed his expertise to cover any clues we left for the police, and to burn anything they found. Maybe even direct suspicion on others, if necessary. I saw the glint in his eye when I said we would take five of the twenty kilos in the stash. Two for me and him, one for Oleg. I watched him doing the math, one point two mil times two, two point four for him.

  “And this Oleg is the only other person you’ve spoken to?” he asked.

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Do you have any weapons?”

  “An Odessa between us.”

  “Eh?”

  “The H-and-M version of a Stechkin.”

  “OK. It’s unlikely the detectives will give the number of kilos a thought if there are no signs of a break-in, but I guess you’re scared Odin will come after you.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t give a shit about Odin. It’s my boss who scares me. I have no idea how, but I just know he knows to the gram how much heroin they have stored there.”

  “I want half,” he said. “You and Boris can share the rest.”

  “Oleg.”

  “Be happy I’ve got a bad memory. And it works both ways. It’ll take me half a day to find you and nothing to destroy you.” He lovingly rolled the r in destroy.

  It was Oleg who figured out how we should camouflage the robbery. It was so simple and obvious I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it myself.

  “We swap what we steal with potato flour. The police will report how many kilos they confiscate, not the purity of its content, right?”

  The plan was, as I said, as brilliant as it was simple.

  The same night that Odin and the old man were having a birthday party at McDonald’s and discussing the price of violin in Drammen and Lillestrøm, Berntsen, Oleg and I were standing outside the fence around the bikers’ clubhouse in Alnabru. Berntsen was in charge, and we were wearing nylon stockings, black jackets and gloves. In our knapsacks we had guns, a drill, a screwdriver, a crowbar and six kilos’ worth of potato flour packed into plastic bags. Oleg and I had explained where Los Lobos had their surveillance cameras, and by climbing over the fence and running to the wall on the left we stayed in the blind spot the whole time. We knew we could make as much noise as we wanted because the heavy traffic on the E6 below would drown out everything, so Berntsen drilled through the wall while Oleg kept lookout and I hummed “Been Caught Stealing,” which was on the soundtrack of Stein’s Grand Theft Auto game, and he said it was by a band called Jane’s Addiction, and I remembered because it was a cool name, cooler than the songs, actually. Oleg and I were in familiar territory, and the layout of the clubhouse was simple: It was just one large lounge area. But because all the windows were covered with wooden shutters, the plan was to drill a peephole, then we would be sure there was no one in the clubhouse. Berntsen had insisted on this; he had refused to believe that Odin would leave twenty kilos of heroin, with a street value of twenty-five million, unguarded. We knew Odin better, but gave in. Safety first.

  “There we are,” Berntsen said, holding the drill, which died with a snarl.

  I put my eye to the hole. Couldn’t see fuck. Either someone had switched off the light or else we hadn’t drilled right through. I turned to Berntsen, who was wiping the drill. “What kind of shitty insulation is this?” he said, holding up a finger. It looked like egg yolk and fricking hair.

  We walked a couple of yards farther down and bored a new hole. I peered through. And there was the good old clubhouse. With the same old leather chairs, the same bar and the same picture of Karen McDougal, Playmate of the Year, posing on some customized motorbike. I never found out what gave them the bigger hard-on: women or bikes.

  “All clear,” I said.

  The back door was festooned with hinges and locks.

  “I thought you said there was one lock!” Berntsen said.

  “There was,” I said. “Odin’s obviously getting paranoid.”

  The plan had been to drill the lock off and screw it back on before leaving, so that there wouldn’t be any signs of a break-in. That was still possible but not in the time we had figured. We got down to work.

  After twenty minutes Oleg checked his watch and said we had to hurry. We didn’t know exactly when the raid was due, only that it would happen at some point after the arrests, and the arrests would have to take place pretty quickly because Odin wouldn’t want to hang around once he figured out the old man wasn’t coming.

  We spent half an hour cleaning up the crap, three times as much as calculated. We took out our guns, pulled the stockings down over our faces and went in, Berntsen first. We had hardly got inside the door when he fell onto one knee and held the gun in front of him with both hands like a member of a fricking SWAT team.

  A guy was sitting on a chair by the west wall. Odin had left Tutu as a watchdog. In his lap he had a sawn-off shotgun. But the watchdog was sitting with his eyes closed, mouth open and head against the wall. Rumors were circulating that Tutu stammered even when he snored, but he was sleeping as sweetly as a baby now.

  Berntsen got to his feet again and tiptoed toward Tutu, gun first. Oleg and I followed, also on tiptoe.

  “There’s only one hole,” Oleg whispered to me.

  “What?” I whispered back.

  But then I realized.

  I could see the last drill hole. And worked out where the first must have been.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered, even though I realized there was no longer any reason to whisper.

  Berntsen had reached Tutu. He gave him a nudge. Tutu rolled sideways off the chair and fell to the floor. He lay facedown on the concrete, and we could see the circular entry into the back of his head.

  “Drill went right through,” Berntsen said. He poked his finger into the hole in the wall.

  “Fuck,” I whispered to Oleg. “What are the chances of that happening, eh?”

  But he didn’t answer. He was staring at the body as though he didn’t know whether to vomit or cry.

  “Gusto,” he said finally, “what have we done?”

  I don’t know what got into me, but I started laughing. It was impossible to hold back. The übercool hip gyration from the cop with the massive underbite, the despair on Oleg’s face, flattened behind the stocking, and Tutu, who turned out to have a brain after all, with his mouth hanging open. I laughed so much I howled. Until I got slapped and saw sparks in front of my eyes.

  “Shape up unless you want another,” Berntsen said, rubbing his palm.

  “Thank you,” I said and meant it. “Let’s find the dope.”

  “Fi
rst we have to figure out what to do with Drillo here,” Berntsen said.

  “It’s too late,” I said. “Now they’ll find out there’s been a break-in anyway.”

  “Not if we get Tutu into the car and screw the locks on again,” Oleg whined in a reedy, tear-filled voice. “If they discover some of the dope’s gone they’ll think he ran off with it.”

  Berntsen looked at Oleg and nodded. “Bright partner you’ve got there, Wussto. Let’s get going.”

  “Dope first,” I said.

  “Drillo first,” Berntsen said.

  “Dope,” I repeated.

  “Drillo.”

  “I intend to become a millionaire this evening, you pelican.”

  Berntsen raised a hand. “Drillo.”

  “Shut up!” It was Oleg. We stared at him.

  “It’s simple logic. If Tutu isn’t in the car before the police come we lose both the dope and our freedom. If Tutu is in the car, but not the dope, we lose only the money.”

  Berntsen turned to me. “Sounds like Boris agrees with me, Wussto. Two against one.”

  “OK,” I said. “You carry the body and I’ll search for the dope.”

  “Wrong,” Berntsen said. “We carry the body and you clean up the mess.” He pointed to the sink on the wall beside the bar.

  I poured water into a bucket while Oleg and Berntsen grabbed a leg each and dragged Tutu toward the door, leaving a thin trail of blood. Under Karen McDougal’s provocative gaze I scrubbed brain and blood off the wall and then the floor. I had just finished and was about to start searching for dope when I heard a sound from the door that opened onto the E6. A sound I tried to persuade myself was going somewhere else. The fact that the sound was getting louder and louder could be a figment of my imagination. Police sirens.

  I checked the bar, the office and the toilet. It was a simple room, no second story, no cellar, not many places to hide twenty kilos of horse. Then my eyes fell on the toolbox. On the padlock. Which had not been there before.

  Oleg shouted something from the door.

  “Give me the crowbar,” I shouted back.

  “We’ve got to get out now! They’re down the road!”

  “Crowbar!”

  “Now, Gusto!”

  I knew it was in there. Twenty-five million kroner, right in front of me, in a shitty wooden box. I started kicking the lock.

  “I’ll shoot, Gusto!”

  I turned to Oleg. He was pointing the goddamn Odessa at me. Not that I thought he would hit me from that range—it was well over thirty feet—but just the idea that he would train a weapon on me …

  “If they catch you, they’ll catch us!” he shouted with tears in his throat.

  “Come on!”

  I battered away at the lock again. The sirens were getting louder and louder. The thing about sirens, though, is that they always sound closer than they are.

  I heard a crack like a whip above me on the wall. I looked back at the door, and my blood ran cold. It was Berntsen. He was standing there with a smoking gun in his hand.

  “Next one won’t miss,” he said calmly.

  I gave the box one last kick. Then I ran.

  We had hardly clambered over the fence and removed the stockings when we found ourselves looking into the headlights of the police cars. We walked casually toward them.

  Then they sped past us and turned in front of the clubhouse.

  We continued up the hill to where Berntsen had parked his car. Got in and drove off. As we passed the clubhouse I turned and looked at Oleg in the backseat. Blue light swept across his face, inflamed from the tears and the tight stocking. He looked completely drained, staring into the darkness like he was ready to die.

  Neither of us said anything until Berntsen pulled in at a bus stop in Sinsen.

  “You screwed up, Wussto,” he said.

  “I couldn’t know about the locks,” I said.

  “It’s called preparation,” Berntsen said. “Casing the joint. Sound familiar? We’re going to find an open door with a lock that’s been unscrewed.”

  I realized that by “we” he meant the cops. Weirdo.

  “I took the lock and the hinges,” Oleg sniffled. “It’s going to look like Tutu ran like hell when he heard the sirens, didn’t even have time to lock up. And the screw marks could be after a break-in at any point over the last year, right?”

  Berntsen looked at Oleg in the mirror. “Learn from your pal, Wussto. Actually, don’t. Oslo doesn’t need any more smart thieves.”

  “Right,” I said. “But maybe it’s not such a fucking smart idea to park on double yellow lines at a bus stop with a body in the back, either.”

  “Agreed,” Berntsen said. “Get out.”

  “The body …”

  “I’ll sort Drillo out.”

  “Where …?”

  “None of your business. Out!”

  We got out and watched Berntsen’s Saab spin off.

  “From now on, we’ve got to stay away from that guy,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “He killed a man, Oleg. He has to get rid of all the physical evidence. First he’ll have to find a place to hide the body. But after that …”

  “He’ll have to get rid of the witnesses.”

  I nodded. Felt as depressed as fuck. Then I ventured an optimistic thought: “Sounded like he had a great place to stash Tutu, didn’t it?”

  “I was going to spend the money on moving to Bergen with Irene,” Oleg said.

  I looked at him.

  “I’m planning to study law at the university there. Irene’s in Trondheim with Stein. I was thinking of going up there and persuading her to join me.”

  We caught the bus to town. I couldn’t stand Oleg’s blank stare anymore; it had to be filled with something.

  “Come on,” I said.

  While I fixed him a shot in the rehearsal room I saw him sending me impatient glances, like he wanted to take over, like he thought I was clumsy. And when he rolled up his sleeve I knew why. The boy had needle marks all over his forearm.

  “Just until Irene comes back,” he said.

  “Do you have your own stash?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It got stolen.”

  That was the night I taught him where and how to make a good stash.

  TRULS BERNTSEN HAD been waiting for more than an hour at the parking garage when a vehicle finally turned into the vacant spot with a sign showing it was reserved for the law firm of Bach & Simonsen. He had decided this was the right place; only two cars had come to this part of the parking lot in the hour he had been here, and there were no surveillance cameras. Truls checked that the license plate was the same as he had found in the police database. Hans Christian Simonsen slept late. Or maybe he wasn’t asleep; maybe he had some woman or other. The man getting out had blond, boyish bangs, the kind west Oslo brats used to have when he was growing up.

  Truls Berntsen put on his sunglasses, stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and squeezed the grip of the gun, a Steyr, Austrian, semiautomatic. He had left behind the standard police revolver so that the lawyer wouldn’t have any unnecessary leads. He walked quickly to cut off Simonsen while he was still standing between the cars. A threat works best if it’s fast and aggressive. If the victim has no time to mobilize any other thoughts than fear for life and limb, you will get what you want right away.

  It was as if he had fizz powder in his blood—there was a hiss and a pounding in his ears, groin and throat. He visualized what was going to happen. The gun in Simonsen’s face, so close that the barrel would be all he remembered. “Where’s Oleg Fauke? Answer me, quick and precise, or else I’ll kill you right now.” The reply. Then: “If you warn anyone or say this conversation has taken place we’ll be back to kill you. Got that?” Yes. Or numb nods. Maybe involuntary urination. Truls smiled at the thought. Increased his pace. The pounding had spread to his stomach. “Simonsen!”

  The lawyer looked up. And his face brightened. “Oh, hi there! Berntsen. Trul
s Berntsen, isn’t it?”

  Truls’s right hand froze in his coat pocket. And he must have worn a crestfallen expression because Simonsen gave a hearty laugh. “I’ve got a good memory for faces, Berntsen. You and your boss, Mikael Bellman, investigated the embezzlement business at the Heide Museum. I was the defense counsel. You won the case, I’m sorry to say.”

  Simonsen laughed again. Jovial, naïve west Oslo laughter. The laughter of people who have grown up with everyone wishing everyone else well, in a place with the wealth necessary for them to be able to do that. Truls hated all the Simonsens in this world.

  “Anything I can help you with, Berntsen?”

  “I …” Truls Berntsen fumbled for words. But this was not his strong suit, deciding what to do when face-to-face with … with what? People who were verbally quicker on their feet than he was? It had been fine that time in Alnabru—it had been two boys and he had taken command. But Simonsen had a suit, an education, a different way of speaking, superiority, he … oh, shit!

  “I just wanted to say hello.”

  “Hello?” Simonsen said with a question mark in his intonation and face.

  “Hello,” Berntsen said, forcing a smile. “Shame about the case. You’ll beat us next time.”

  Then he headed for the exit with an accelerated step. Feeling Simonsen’s eyes on his back. Digging muck, eating shit. Fuck all of them.

  Try the defense counsel. And if that doesn’t work there’s a man named Chris Reddy.

  Adidas. The speed dealer. Truls hoped he would have a pretext for violence during the arrest.

  HARRY SWAM TOWARD the light, toward the surface. The light became stronger and stronger. Then he broke through. Opened his eyes. And stared straight up at the sky. He was lying on his back. Something came into his field of vision. A horse’s head. And another.

  He shaded his eyes. Someone was sitting on a horse, but he was dazzled by the light.

  The voice came from far away.

  “I thought you said you’d ridden before, Harry.”