Jo Nesbo - Phantom

‘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 ring-’

‘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 scrutinise him.

Tord Schultz approached. Lowered his voice although the Securitas 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 remained confidential.’

‘Rules state that everyone should be registered, but I can reassure you that the information stays here at Police HQ.’ Bellman signalled to the Securitas guard.

In the lift 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 apologise,’ the section head said. ‘On behalf of myself, my profession and the police force. I apologise 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 further 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 on remand 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 ringing Rakel’s doorbell. She opened up, wearing a dressing gown and narrow slits for eyes. 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 cuttings. Witness statements. He’s thorough. I have to go to work.’

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

After reading for three hours he had to have 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 why. He 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 Ulleval and Boltelokka to Schroder’s. Considered going in but decided against it. Headed east instead, over the river to Toyen.

And when he pushed open the door to the Watchtower, daylight had already started to fade. Everything was as he remembered. Pale walls, pale cafe 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 finishing line after a fifty-kilometre 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 pram armada at United Bakeries.

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