Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  Isabelle Skøyen started to laugh. “Harry, don’t look so crestfallen.”

  He could have been sitting on a plane to Bangkok. To another life.

  He was already on his way out.

  “Wait, Harry.”

  He turned. She was leaning against the cubicle door and had pulled up her skirt. So high that he could see stocking tops and garters. A lock of blond hair fell over her brow.

  “Now that we have the toilets all to ourselves …”

  Harry met her eyes. They were misty. Not with alcohol, not with desire—there was something else. Was she crying? Tough, lonely, self-despising Isabelle Skøyen? And? She was yet another bitter person willing to ruin others’ lives to get what she thought was her birthright: to be loved.

  The door continued to swing both ways after Harry had left, chafed against the rubber seal, faster and faster, like an accelerating and final round of applause.

  HARRY WALKED BACK over the covered bridge to Oslo Central and down the steps to Plata. There was a twenty-four-hour pharmacy at the other end, but the line was always so long, and he knew that over-the-counter pills did not have the muscle to kill the pain. He continued past Heroin Park. It had started raining, and the light from the street lamps shimmered on the wet tramlines up Prinsens Gate. He considered the case as he walked. Nybakk’s shotgun in Oppsal was the easier option. Furthermore, a shotgun gave him more room to maneuver. To retrieve the rifle from behind the wardrobe in Room 301, he would have to enter Hotel Leon unobserved, and he couldn’t even be sure they hadn’t already found it. But the rifle was more final.

  The lock on the gate behind Hotel Leon was smashed. It had been broken recently. Harry presumed that was how the two suits had got in the night they came visiting.

  Harry went in and, sure enough, the lock on the back door was damaged as well.

  Harry climbed the narrow stairs that doubled as an emergency exit. Not a soul in the corridor on the third floor. Harry knocked on 310 to ask Cato if the police had been there. Or anyone else. But there was no answer. He put his ear against the door. Silence.

  No attempt had been made to repair the door to his room, so a key was, in this respect, superfluous. He pushed at the door and it opened. Noticed the blood that had seeped into the bare cement where he had removed the doorsill.

  Nothing had been done about the window, either.

  Harry didn’t switch on the light, entered regardless, fumbled behind the wardrobe and verified that they had not found the rifle. Nor the box of cartridges, which was still next to the Bible in the bedside-table drawer. And Harry realized the police had not been there; the hotel occupants and neighbors had not deemed it necessary to involve the law on account of a few miserable rounds from a shotgun, at least as long as there were no bodies. He opened the wardrobe. Even his clothes and suitcase were there, as though nothing had happened.

  Harry caught sight of the woman in the room opposite.

  She was sitting in front of a mirror with her back to him. Combing her hair, from what he could see. She was wearing a dress that looked strangely old-fashioned. Not old, just old-fashioned, like a costume from another era. Without understanding why, Harry shouted through the smashed window. A short yell. The woman didn’t react.

  Back on street level, Harry knew he wasn’t going to cope. His neck felt as if it were on fire, and the heat was making his pores pump out sweat. He was drenched and felt the first bouts of the shivers.

  The music in the bar had changed. From the open door came Van Morrison’s “And It Stoned Me.”

  Painkilling.

  Harry walked into the road, heard a shrill desperate ring, and in the next instant a blue-and-white wall filled his field of vision. For four seconds he stood quite motionless in the middle of the street. Then the tram passed and the open bar door was back.

  The barman gave a start as he looked up from his newspaper and caught sight of Harry.

  “Jim Beam,” Harry said.

  The barman blinked twice without moving. The newspaper slid to the floor.

  Harry pulled euros from his wallet and laid them on the counter. “Give me the whole bottle.”

  The barman’s jaw had dropped. The EAT tattoo had a roll of fat above the T.

  “Now,” Harry said. “And I’ll be off.”

  The barman glanced down at the money. Looked up at Harry. Reached for the bottle of Jim Beam, keeping his eyes fixed on him.

  Seeing the bottle was less than half full, Harry sighed. He slipped it into his coat pocket, looked around, tried to think of some memorable words for a parting shot, gave up, nodded and left.

  HARRY STOPPED AT the corner of Prinsens and Dronningens Gate. First he called directory assistance. Then he opened the bottle. The smell of bourbon made his stomach knot. But he knew he would not be able to perform what he had to do without an anesthetic. It had been three years since the last time. Perhaps things had improved. He put the bottle to his mouth. Leaned back and tipped it. Three years of sobriety. The poison hit his system like a napalm bomb. Things had not improved; they were worse than ever.

  Harry bent forward, stuck out an arm and supported himself on a wall, so that he would not spatter his trousers or shoes.

  He heard high heels on the pavement behind him. “Hey, mister. Me beautiful?”

  “Sure,” Harry managed to utter before his throat was filled. The yellow jet hit the pavement with impressive power and radius, and he heard the high heels castanet into the distance. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried again. Head back. Whiskey and gall ran down. And were regurgitated.

  The third time it stayed put. For the time being.

  The fourth hit the mark.

  The fifth was heaven.

  Harry hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address.

  TRULS BERNTSEN HURRIED through the murk. Crossed the parking lot in front of the apartment building illuminated by lights from good, safe homes, where they were bringing out the snacks and pots of coffee, and maybe even a beer, and switching on the TV, now that the news was over and it was more fun to watch. Truls had called Police HQ and said he was ill. They hadn’t asked him what was wrong, had just asked if he was going to be away for the full three days you could take without a doctor’s note. Truls had answered how the hell could he know if he was going to be ill for precisely three days? What a country of lazy shits, with fucking hypocritical politicians claiming that people actually wanted to work if they could. Norwegians voted for the Socialist Party because they made it a human right to shirk their jobs, and who the hell wouldn’t vote for a party that gave you three days off without a doctor’s note, gave you carte blanche to sit at home and jerk off or go skiing or recover from a hangover? The Socialist Party knew, of course, what a perk this was, but still tried to appear responsible, preened themselves with their “trust in most people” and declared the right to malinger as some kind of social reform. The Progress Party was even more fucking infuriating, buying itself votes with tax cuts and hardly bothering to conceal the fact.

  He had been sitting and thinking about this the whole day while he went over his weapons, loading, checking, keeping an eye on the locked door, scrutinizing all the vehicles that came into the parking lot through the sights of the Märklin, the enormous assassination rifle from a case years ago, which the officer in charge of confiscated arms probably still thought was at Police HQ. Truls had known that sooner or later he would have to go out for food, but had waited until it was dark and there were not many people around. At a little before eleven o’clock, closing time at Rimi supermarket, he had taken his Steyr, sneaked out and jogged over there. Walked along the aisles with one eye on the food and the other on the customers. Bought a week’s worth of Fjordland rissoles. Small, transparent bags of peeled potatoes, rissoles, creamed peas and gravy. Chuck them in a pan of boiling water for a few minutes, cut open the bags and squeeze the contents onto the plate, and if you closed your eyes, damned if it didn’t remind you of real food.

  Tr
uls Berntsen was at the entrance to the apartment building, inserting the key in the lock, when he heard hurried steps behind him in the darkness. He whirled around, frantic, and his hand was already on the pistol butt inside his jacket as he stared into the terrified face of Vigdis A.

  “D-did I frighten you?” she stammered.

  “No,” Truls said curtly and went in without holding the door open for her, but heard her manage to squeeze her fat through anyway before it closed.

  He pressed the elevator button. Frightened? ’Course he was fucking frightened. He had Siberian Cossacks on his tail. Was there anything about that which was not frightening?

  Vigdis A. panted behind him. She was as overweight as most of them had become. Not that he would have said no, but why didn’t anyone come straight out with it? Norwegian women had got so fat they were not only going to drop dead from one of a whole range of illnesses, but they would also stop the race from reproducing; they were going to depopulate the country. Because in the end no man could be asked to wade through so much fat. Apart from his own, of course.

  The elevator came, they went in and the wires screamed in pain.

  He had read that men were putting on at least as much weight, but that it wasn’t visible in the same way. They had smaller asses, and just looked bigger and stronger. As he did. He looked a damn sight better than he had twenty pounds ago. But women got this rippling, quivering flab that made him want to kick them, see his foot disappear in all the pudge. Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the dieting hysteria and applauded the “real” woman’s body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible model. Be happy with the body you’ve got, sort of thing. Much better for hundreds to die of heart disease than for one person to die of an eating disorder. And now even Martine looked that way. She was pregnant—he knew that—but he couldn’t get it out of his head that she had become one of them.

  “You look cold.” Vigdis A. smiled.

  Truls didn’t know what the A stood for, but that was what was written by her doorbell, VIGDIS A. He felt like punching her, a right hook, with all his strength—he didn’t need to worry about his knuckles with those fucking hamster cheeks—or fucking her. Or both.

  Truls knew why he was so angry. It was the cell phone.

  When they had finally got Telenor to track down Hole’s phone they had seen it was located downtown, around Oslo Central Station, to be precise. There is probably nowhere in Oslo so jam-packed with people day and night. Then a dozen police officers had trawled the crowds searching for Hole. They had kept at it for hours. Nada. In the end a fresh-faced cop had come up with the banal idea of synchronizing their watches, spreading around the area and then one of them would call Hole’s number every fifteen minutes. And if anyone heard a phone ring at that moment, or saw anyone taking out a phone, they had to pounce, it had to be here somewhere. No sooner said than done. And they had found the phone. In the pocket of a junkie sitting half asleep on the steps at Jernbanetorget. He said he had been “given” the phone by a guy at the Watchtower.

  The elevator stopped. “Good night,” Truls mumbled and got out.

  He heard the door close behind him and the elevator start again.

  Rissoles and a DVD now. The first The Fast and the Furious, maybe. Shit film, of course, but it had one or two scenes. Or Transformers, Megan Fox and a good, long jerk-off.

  He heard her breathing. She had got out of the elevator with him. Some pussy. Truls Berntsen was going to get laid tonight. He smiled and turned his head. It met something. Something hard. And cold. Truls Berntsen strained his eyeballs. A gun barrel.

  “Thank you very much,” said a familiar voice. “I’d love to come in.”

  TRULS BERNTSEN SAT in the armchair staring down the muzzle of his own pistol.

  He had found him. And vice versa.

  “We can’t keep meeting like this,” Harry Hole said. He had positioned the cigarette in the corner of his mouth so that he would not get smoke in his eyes.

  Truls didn’t reply.

  “Do you know why I’d rather use your gun?” he said, patting the hunting rifle he had placed in his lap.

  Truls continued to keep his mouth shut.

  “Because I’d prefer the bullets they find in you to be traced back to your weapon.”

  Truls shrugged.

  Harry Hole leaned forward. And Truls could smell it now: the alcoholic breath. Hell, the guy was drunk. He had heard stories about what the man did in a sober state, and now he’d been boozing.

  “You’re a burner, Truls Berntsen. And here’s the proof.”

  He held up the ID card from the wallet he had taken from him along with the gun. “Thomas Lunder? Isn’t that the man who collected the dope from Gardermoen?”

  “What is it you want?” Truls said, closing his eyes and settling back in the chair. Rissoles and a DVD.

  “I want to know what the link is between you, Dubai, Isabelle Skøyen and Mikael Bellman.”

  Truls recoiled in the chair. Mikael? What the fuck did Mikael have to do with this? And Isabelle Skøyen? Wasn’t she the politician?

  “I have no idea …”

  He watched Harry cock the pistol.

  “Careful, Hole! The trigger’s more sensitive than you think. It’s—”

  The hammer of the gun rose farther.

  “Wait! Wait, for Christ’s sake!” Truls Berntsen’s tongue circled his mouth in search of lubricating saliva. “I know nothing about Bellman or Skøyen, but Dubai—”

  “Yes?”

  “I can tell you about him …”

  “What can you tell me?”

  Truls Berntsen took a deep breath, held it. Then let it out with a groan. “Everything.”

  Three eyes stared back at Truls Berntsen. Two with light-blue, booze-rinsed irises. And a round, black one, which was the muzzle of his own Steyr. The man holding the gun was lying rather than sitting in the armchair, and his long legs stretched out on the carpet. He said in a hoarse voice: “Tell me, Berntsen. Tell me about Dubai.”

  Truls coughed twice. Fucking dry throat.

  “There was a ring at the door one night. I lifted the intercom handset, and a voice said he wanted to have a few words with me. I didn’t want to let him in at first, but then he mentioned a name and … well …”

  Truls Berntsen held his jaw between thumb and middle finger.

  The other man waited.

  “There was an unfortunate business I thought no one else knew about.”

  “Which was?”

  “A detainee. He needed to be taught some manners. I didn’t think anyone knew I was the one who had … taught him.”

  “Any damage?”

  “Parents wanted to sue, but the boy couldn’t point me out in the lineup. I must have damaged his optic nerve. Blessing in disguise, eh?” Truls laughed his nervous grunted laughter, then shut up quickly. “And now this man was standing outside my door and he knew. Said I had a certain talent for sailing under the radar, and he was willing to pay a lot for a man like me. He spoke Norwegian, but with a bit of an accent. Sounded pretty decent. I let him in.”

  “You met Dubai?”

  “I did. He was alone. An old man in an elegant but old-fashioned suit. Waistcoat. Hat and gloves. He told me what he wanted me to do. And what he would pay. He was a careful guy. Said we wouldn’t meet face-to-face again, no phone calls, no emails, nothing that could be traced. And that was fine by me.”

  “So how did you organize the work?”

  “The jobs were written on a gravestone. He explained to me where it was.”

  “Where?”

  “Gamlebyen Cemetery. That was where I got the money as well.”

  “Tell me about Dubai. Who is he?”

  Truls Berntsen stared into the distance. Tried to get a sense of the equation’s pluses and minuses. Of the consequences.

  “What are you waiting for, Berntsen? You said you could tell me everything about Dubai.”
r />   “Are you aware what I’m risking by tell—”

  “Last time I saw you, two of Dubai’s guys were trying to fill you with lead. So even without this gun pointing at you you’re already in the doghouse, Berntsen. Spit it out. Who is he?”

  Harry Hole’s eyes bored into him. Saw straight through him, Truls thought. And now the hammer on the gun was moving and his equation was becoming simpler.

  “All right, all right,” Berntsen said, holding up his palms. “His name’s not Dubai. They call him that because his pushers wear football shirts advertising an airline that flies to the countries around there. Arabia.”

  “You’ve got ten seconds to tell me something I haven’t worked out for myself.”

  “Hang on, hang on, it’s coming! His name’s Rudolf Asayev. He’s Russian, his parents were intellectual dissidents and political refugees—at least that’s what he said at the trial. He’s lived in lots of countries and speaks something like seven languages. Came to Norway in the seventies and was one of the hash-trafficking pioneers, you could say. He kept a low profile, but was turned in by one of his own people in 1980. That was when selling and importing drugs carried the same sentence as treason. So he did a long stint. After being released he moved to Sweden and switched to heroin.”

  “About the same sentence as hash but a lot better mark-up.”

  “Sure. He built up a network in Gothenburg, but after an undercover policeman was killed, he had to go underground. He came back to Oslo about two years ago.”

  “And he told you all this?”

  “No, no, I found this out on my own.”

  “Really? How? I thought the man was a phantom no one knew anything about.”

  Truls Berntsen looked down at his hands. Looked up again at Harry Hole. Had to smile, almost. For this was something he had often wanted to tell someone. How he had tricked Dubai himself. But there had been no one to tell. Truls licked his lips. “He was sitting in the chair where you are now, with his arms on the rests.”

  “And?”

  “His shirtsleeve slipped back and a gap opened between his gloves and jacket sleeve. He had some white scars. You know, the kind you have when you remove a tattoo. And when I saw that on his wrist I thought—”