Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  Rakel was his first call. He asked her to check Oleg’s inbox.

  “There’s something from Bellman,” she said. “Looks like a list of addresses.”

  “OK,” Harry said. “Forward it to Beate Lønn.” He gave her the email address.

  Then he texted Beate, said the lists had been sent, and finished his breakfast. He moved to Gjæstgiveri in Stortorvet, and he had just been given a cup of well-percolated coffee when Beate called.

  “I’ve compared the lists I copied directly from the patrol cars with the list you forwarded. What’s this list?”

  “It’s the list Bellman received and forwarded to me. I’d like to see if he’s been given a correct report or if it’s been doctored.”

  “I see. All the addresses I had from before are on the list you and Bellman received.”

  “Mm,” Harry said. “Wasn’t there one patrol car you didn’t get a list from?”

  “What’s this about, Harry?”

  “It’s about me trying to get the burner to help us.”

  “Help us to do what?”

  “To point out the house where Dubai lives.”

  Pause.

  “I’ll see if I can get hold of the last list,” Beate said.

  “Thanks. Talk to you later.”

  “Wait.”

  “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you interested in the rest of the DNA profile of the blood under Gusto’s nails?”

  It was summer, and I was the king of Oslo. I got half a kilo of violin in exchange for Irene and I’d sold half on the street. It was supposed to be the starting capital for something big, a new network that would sweep the old man off the court. First of all, though, we had to celebrate. I spent a tiny fraction of the money to buy myself a suit that matched the shoes Isabelle Skøyen had given me. I looked like a million bucks, and they didn’t raise an eyebrow when I went into the fricking Grand and asked for a suite. We stayed there. We were twenty-four-hour party people. Exactly who “we” were depended on the day, but it was summer in Oslo—women, boys, just like old times, but with slightly heavier medication. Even Oleg brightened up and was his old self for a while. It turned out I had more friends than I could remember, and the dope went faster than you would believe. We got kicked out of the Grand and went to the Christiania. Then to the Radisson, Holbergs Plass.

  Of course it couldn’t last forever, but what the fuck does?

  Once or twice I saw a black limo across the street as I came out of the hotel. It could have been anyone. But this one didn’t go anywhere.

  And then came the inevitable day when the money ran out, and I had to sell more dope. I’d made a stash in one of the broom closets on the floor below, inside the ceiling tiles, behind a bunch of electric cables. But either I shot my mouth off while I was high or else someone saw me going there. Because the stash was cleaned out. And I had nothing in reserve.

  We were back to square one. Except there was no “we” anymore. It was time to check out. And inject the day’s first fix, which had to be bought on the street. But when I tried to settle up for the room we’d had for more than two weeks I was fifteen thousand short.

  I took the only sensible course of action.

  I ran.

  Ran straight through the lobby onto the street, through the park toward the sea. No one followed me.

  Then I strolled down to Kvadraturen to do some shopping. There wasn’t an Arsenal player in sight, just hollow-eyed zonkers shuffling around on the lookout for a dealer. I talked to someone who wanted to sell me meth. He said there hadn’t been any violin for days; the supply had just dried up. But there were rumors circulating that dopeheads were selling their last quarters of violin for five thousand kroner a pop in Plata, so that they could buy a week’s supply of horse.

  I didn’t have five fucking thousand, of course, so I knew I was in trouble. Three alternatives: sell, con or steal.

  Sell first. But what did I actually have to sell, I, who had even sold my foster sister? I remembered. The Odessa. It was in the rehearsal room, and the Pakis in Kvadraturen would definitely fork out five thousand for a gun that fired fricking salvos. So I jogged north, past the Opera House and Oslo Central. But the place must have been burglarized because there was a new padlock on the door and the amps were gone. Only the drums were left. I searched for the Odessa, but they must have taken that, too. Fucking thieves.

  Con next. I hailed a taxi, directed it west, up to Blindern. The driver nagged me for money from the moment I got in, so he knew what was up. I told him to pull in where the road ends by the railway lines, jumped out and dodged the driver by running over the footbridge. I ran up through Forskningsparken, ran even though no one was chasing me. Ran because I was in a hurry. Why, I didn’t know.

  I opened the gate, ran up the gravel path to the garage. Peered through the crack at the side of the iron shutter. The limo was there. I knocked on the front door.

  Andrey opened. The old man wasn’t at home, he said. I pointed to the house next door, said he had to be there, then; the limo was in the garage. He repeated that the ataman was not at home. I said I needed money. He said he couldn’t help me and that I should never come here again. I said I needed violin, just this once. He said there was no violin at the moment; Ibsen was short of some ingredient, and I would have to wait a couple of weeks. I said I would be dead by then. I had to have either money or violin.

  Andrey was about to close the door, but I stuck out a foot.

  I said that if I didn’t get it I would tell people where he lived.

  Andrey looked at me.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he said with that comical accent. “Remember Bisken?”

  I stuck out my hand. Said the cops would pay well to find out where Dubai and his flunkies lived. Plus a little more to find out what happened to Bisken. And they would fork out the most if I told them about the dead undercover guy on the basement floor.

  Andrey slowly shook his head.

  So I told the Cossack bastard to passhol v’chorte, which I think is Russian for “Go to hell,” and left.

  Felt his eyes on my back all the way to the gate.

  I had no idea why the old man had let me get away with stealing the dope, but I knew I wouldn’t get away with this. I didn’t give a shit, though. I was at the end of my rope, and all I heard were the hungry screams of my blood vessels.

  I walked up to the path behind Vestre Aker Church. Stood there watching some old ladies coming and going. Widows on the way to graves, their husbands’ and their own, carrying handbags groaning with cash. But I didn’t have it in me. I, the Thief, stood stock-still, sweating like a pig, scared shitless by brittle-boned eighty-year-old women. It was enough to make you weep.

  It was Saturday, and I went through the list of friends who might be willing to lend me money. Didn’t take long. None.

  Then it hit me who would lend me money. If he knew what was good for him.

  I sneaked onto the bus, traveled eastward, back to the nicer side of the river, and got off at Manglerud.

  This time Truls Berntsen was at home.

  He was standing in the doorway on the sixth floor of his building and heard me give him roughly the same ultimatum I had given on Blindernveien. If he didn’t dig deep for five big ones, I would tell that he had killed Tutu and buried his body.

  But Berntsen was cool. Asked me to come inside. He was sure we could come to some agreement, he said.

  But there was something all wrong about his eyes.

  So I didn’t budge and said there was nothing to discuss—either he coughed up or else I would squeal on him for money. He said the police didn’t pay people to squeal on officers. Five thousand was fine, though, he said; we went way back, we were almost pals. Said he didn’t have much cash at home, so we would have to drive to an ATM; the car was down in the garage.

  I chewed on that one. Alarm bells were ringing, but the craving was a fucking nightmare; it shut out all sensible thoughts. So, even though I knew
this wasn’t good, I nodded.

  • • •

  “SO, YOU’VE GOT the final result?” Harry said, scanning the crowd in the café. No suspicious types. Or, to be more accurate, loads of suspicious types, but no one who could be presumed to be police.

  “Yes,” Beate said.

  Harry shifted his grip on the phone. “I think I already know who scratched Gusto.”

  “Oh?” There was surprise in Beate’s voice.

  “Yep. A man in a DNA database is usually a suspect or a convicted criminal or a policeman who might have contaminated a crime scene. In this case it’s the last. His name’s Truls Berntsen and he’s an officer with Orgkrim.”

  “How do you know it’s him?”

  “Well, the sum of things that have happened, you could say.”

  “Fine,” Beate said. “I don’t doubt your reasoning is solid.”

  “Thank you,” Harry said.

  “And yet you’re wrong,” Beate said.

  “What?”

  “The blood under Gusto’s nails doesn’t come from anyone named Berntsen.”

  But while I was standing in front of Truls Berntsen’s door—he had just gone to get the car keys—I looked down. At my shoes. Fucking fantastic shoes. Then I began to think about Isabelle Skøyen.

  She wasn’t dangerous like Berntsen was. And she was crazy about me. Wasn’t she? Maybe?

  Crazy and a half.

  So before Berntsen got back I leaped down seven steps at a time and pressed the elevator button on each floor.

  I jumped on the Metro for Oslo Central. At first I thought I should call her, but changed my mind. She could always snub me on the phone, but never if I turned up in wonderful, drop-dead-gorgeous person. Saturday also meant her stable boy was off. Which meant—since horses and pigs are pretty bad at getting food from the fridge—she was at home. So at Oslo Central I got into the season-ticket car on the Østfold line, since the journey to Rygge cost over a hundred kroner, which I still didn’t have. I walked from the station to the farm. It’s a ways. Especially in the rain. It had started to rain.

  As I came into the yard I saw her car, one of those 4×4’s people drive to barge their way through downtown streets. I knocked at the farmhouse door. But no one opened it. I shouted, the echo bouncing around the walls, but no one answered. She could, of course, have taken a horse out for a ride. Fine—I knew where she kept her cash, and out in the country people still didn’t lock their doors. So I pressed the handle, and, yes, it was wide open.

  I was on my way up to the bedroom when suddenly there she was. Big, standing legs apart on the stairs, wearing a bathrobe.

  “What are you doing here, Gusto?”

  “I wanted to see you,” I said, turning on the smile. Turned it right up.

  “You need a dentist,” she said coldly.

  I knew what she meant—I had some brown stuff on my teeth. They looked a little rotten, but it was nothing a good toothbrush couldn’t fix.

  “What are you doing here?” she repeated. “Money?”

  That was the thing with Isabelle and me—we were the same, didn’t need to pretend.

  “Five big ones?” I said.

  “That won’t work, Gusto. We’re done with that. Should I drive you back to the station?”

  “Come on, Isabelle. What about a fuck?”

  “Shhh!”

  It took me a second to catch on. A little slow on the uptake, I was. Have to blame the fricking craving. There she stood, middle of the day, in a bathrobe but fully made up.

  “You expecting someone?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “New fuck buddy?”

  “That’s what happens when you go missing, Gusto.”

  “I’m hot on comebacks,” I said and was so quick she lost her balance as I grabbed her wrist and pulled her to me.

  “You’re wet,” she said and struggled, but no more than she had when she wanted it hard.

  “It’s raining,” I said, biting her earlobe. “What’s your excuse?” I already had a hand up under her bathrobe.

  “And you stink. Let me go!”

  My hand stroked her shaven pussy, found the crack. She was wet. Dripping wet. I could get two fingers up at once. Too wet. I felt something sticky. Pulled my hand away. Held it up. My fingers were covered with something white and slimy. I looked up at her in surprise. Saw the triumphant grin as she leaned over to me and whispered: “As I said. If you go missing …”

  I lost it, raised my hand to slap her, but she grabbed it and stopped me. Strong bitch, that Skøyen.

  “Go now, Gusto.”

  I felt something in my eyes. If I hadn’t known better I would have said it was tears.

  “Five thousand,” I whispered in a thick voice.

  “No,” she said. “Then you’ll come back. And we can’t have that.”

  “You cunt!” I shouted. “You’re forgetting a few important things. Cough up or I’ll go to the papers with your whole setup. And by that I’m not referring to our fucking, but the fact that the whole clean-up-Oslo shit was engineered by you and the old man. Fricking pseudo-socialists. Dope money and politics in the same bed. How much do you think Verdens Gang will pay?”

  I heard the bedroom door open.

  “If I were you I’d make a run for it now,” Isabelle said.

  I heard the creak of the floorboards in the blackness behind her.

  I wanted to run—I really did. But I didn’t move.

  It came closer.

  I imagined I could see the stripes on his face light in the dark. Fuck buddy. Tiger boy.

  He coughed.

  Then he stepped into the light.

  He was so drop-dead gorgeous that, sick as I was, I could feel it again. The desire to place my hand on his chest. Feel the sun-warmed, sweaty skin under my fingertips. Feel the muscles that would automatically tense in shock at whatever goddamn liberties I took.

  “WHO DID YOU say?” Harry said.

  Beate coughed and repeated it: “Mikael Bellman.”

  “Bellman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gusto had Mikael Bellman’s blood under his nails when he died?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Harry leaned back. This changed everything. Or did it? It didn’t need to have anything to do with the murder. But it had something to do with something. Something that Bellman had not wanted to talk about.

  • • •

  “Get out,” Bellman said with the kind of voice that isn’t loud because it doesn’t need to be.

  “So it’s you?” I said. “I thought it was Truls Berntsen she hired. Smart to go higher, Isabelle. What’s the setup? Is Berntsen just along as your slave, Mikael?”

  I caressed his name when I said it. After all, that was how we’d introduced ourselves that day, Gusto and Mikael. Like two boys, two playmates. I saw how it lit something in his eyes, made them flare up. Bellman was completely naked; maybe that was why I didn’t think he’d attack. He was too quick for me. He was on me and had me in a headlock.

  “Let go!”

  He pulled me to the top of the stairs. My nose was squeezed between his chest and armpit and I could smell both of them. And a thought stuck in my brain: If he wanted me to get out, why haul me up the stairs? I couldn’t punch my way free, so I dug my nails into his chest and dragged my hands like claws toward me, felt one nail catch on his nipple. He swore and loosened his grip. I slipped out and jumped. Landed halfway down the stairs, but managed to stay on my feet. Charged down the hall, grabbed her car keys and ran into the yard. ’Course, the car wasn’t locked, either. The wheels churned up the gravel as I released the clutch. In the mirror I saw Mikael Bellman come running out the door. Saw something glint in his hand. Then the wheels bit, I was thrown back against the seat and the car shot across the yard and onto the road.

  “IT WAS BELLMAN who took Truls Berntsen along to Orgkrim,” Harry said. “Is it conceivable that Berntsen is doing the burner jobs under Bellman’s instructions?�
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  “You’re aware of what we’re moving into here, Harry?”

  “Yes,” Harry said. “And from now on you don’t have anything to do with it, Beate.”

  “Try fucking stopping me!” The phone crackled. Harry couldn’t remember Beate Lønn ever swearing before. “This is my police force, Harry. I don’t want people like Berntsen dragging it down into the dirt.”

  “OK,” Harry said. “But let’s not draw any hasty conclusions. The only evidence we have is that Bellman met Gusto. We don’t even have anything concrete on Truls Berntsen yet.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to start somewhere else. And if it’s what I hope it is, the pieces will topple against each other like dominoes. The problem is staying free long enough to launch the plan.”

  “Do you mean to say you have a plan?”

  “Of course I have a plan.”

  “A good plan?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But a plan?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’re lying, aren’t you?”

  “Not half.”

  I was racing into Oslo on the E18 when I realized what deep shit I was in.

  Bellman had tried to drag me upstairs. To the bedroom. Where he had the pistol he chased me with. He was willing to fricking liquidate me to keep my mouth shut. Which could only mean he was up to his knees in shit. So what would he do now? Get me busted, of course. For stealing a car, dealing drugs, not paying the hotel bill—take your pick. Put me behind bars before I could blab to anyone. And as soon as I was imprisoned, there was little doubt about what would happen: They would make it look either like suicide or like another inmate had popped me. So the stupidest thing I could do would be to drive around in this car that they probably already had on their radar. So I put my foot down. The place I was going was on the east side of town, and I could avoid going through downtown. I drove up the hill, headed for the quiet residential areas. Parked some distance away and started walking.

  The sun had appeared again, and people were out and about, pushing strollers, with picnic baskets hanging from the handles. Grinning at the sun as if it were happiness itself.