Jo Nesbo - Phantom

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

Street corner. Scout. The fricking Wire.

‘Deal,’ I said. ‘Sling me the shirt.’

The old boy smiled, the sort of reptilian smile that serves to tell 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, for 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 Only once was I out of my depth, when he asked why I spoke a kind of outdated Oslo East dialect when I had grown up in a well-educated family north of town, and I answered it was because of my father, the real one, he was from the East End of town. Fuck knows if that’s right, but it’s what I’ve always imagined, Dad, you walking around Oslo East, down on your luck, unemployed, hard up, a freezing flat, not a good place to bring up a kid. Or perhaps I talked the way I did to annoy Rolf and the posh neighbours’ kids. And then I discovered it gave me a kind of upper hand, a bit like a tattoo; people got scared, shied away, gave me a wide berth. While I was droning on about my life the old boy was studying my face and kept rapping the sapphire ring on the armrest, again and again, relentlessly, as if it were some kind of countdown. When there was a break in the questioning and the only sound was the rapping, I felt as if we were going to explode unless I broke the silence.

‘Cool shack,’ I said.

That sounded so blonde I blushed.

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

‘S’pose the neighbours 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 boy said. Grinned his lizard smile. The Komodo dragon.

I knew I had to be careful, but could not resist. ‘There’s one thing I don’t understand. Odin pays me seventeen per cent, and that’s pretty much standard with the others as well. But you want a team of three people and you’re giving twenty-five per cent in total. Why?’

The old boy’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 question of time before you’re checkmate, Gusto.’ He seemed to repeat my name to revel in the sound.

‘But the profit-’

‘Don’t concern yourself with that,’ he retorted 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 others.’

‘We dilute it, but less than the others. We sell something that can be 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 heroin pushers to find the one wearing…’

‘… the Arsenal shirt.’

‘The customers will know your goods are the best on day one, Gusto.’

Then he accompanied me out.

As he had been sitting with a woollen blanket over his knees, I had assumed he was a cripple or something, but he was surprisingly light on his feet. He stopped in the doorway, clearly not wishing to show his face outside. Placed 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 the inside of a limousine with smoked windows, studying me as if 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 called Oleg.’

‘Sounds alright. Anything else?’

‘I want number 23 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 boy. 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 like a permanent bloody fixture. I was scared. And excited. Scared and excited like a Komodo dragon hunter.

The choirboys drove down to the deserted marina in Frognerkilen. 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 boot.

‘Come here, Arshavin.’

I went over and peered into the boot.

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 no longer had an eye but something resembling 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 cop — or so he thought at any rate — skulking round 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 boot, 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.

52. 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 towards 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 eastwards along Gronlandsleiret. He had passed a dustcart. The men treated the rubbish bins with a roughness that Tord thought said more about attitude than efficiency. 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 Gronland Church he had turned left. An enormous glass facade, 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 towards 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 in 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.