Jo Nesbo - Phantom

‘ Nin hao.’

‘Excuse me?’

Harry saw the name on the visitor’s pass. Yuki Nakazawa.

‘Oh, Japanese.’ Harry laughed and patted the little man several times on the shoulder, as if he were an old friend. Yuki Nakazawa returned a tentative smile.

‘Nice day,’ Harry said, still with his hand on the man’s shoulder.

‘Yes,’ Yuki said. ‘Which company are you?’

‘TeliaSonera,’ Harry said.

‘Very, very good.’

They passed the Telenor employee and from the corner of his eye Harry could see him coming towards them and knew roughly what he would say. And he was right.

‘Sorry, sir. I can’t let you in without a name badge.’

Yuki Nakazawa looked at the man in surprise.

Torkildsen had been given a new office. After walking a kilometre through an open-plan office Harry finally saw a familiar large physique in a glass cage.

Harry went straight in.

The man was sitting with his back to him, a telephone pressed to his ear. Harry could see the shower of spittle stand out against the window. ‘Now you get the bloody SW2 server up and running!’

Harry coughed.

The chair swivelled round. Klaus Torkildsen was even fatter. A surprisingly elegant, tailored suit succeeded in partially hiding the rolls of flab, but nothing could hide the expression of sheer fear that spread across his extraordinary face. What was so extraordinary about it was that with such an expanse at their disposal, the eyes, nose and mouth had deemed it appropriate to assemble on a small island amid an ocean of face. His eyes descended to Harry’s lapel.

‘Yuki… Nakazawa?’

‘Klaus.’ Harry beamed and stretched out his arms for a hug.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Torkildsen whispered.

Harry dropped his arms. ‘I’m happy to see you too.’

He perched on the edge of the desk. Same place he had always sat. Invade and find higher ground. Simple and effective way to rule. Torkildsen gulped, and Harry saw large, shiny beads of sweat forming on his brow.

‘The mobile network in Trondheim,’ Torkildsen grumbled, indicating the phone. ‘Should have had the server up and running last week. Can’t trust anyone any bloody more. I’m pushed for time. What do you want?’

‘The list of calls to and from Gusto Hanssen’s mobile since May.’ Harry grabbed a pen and wrote the name on a yellow Post-it.

‘I’m management now. I don’t work on the floor.’

‘No, but you can still get me the numbers.’

‘Have you got any authorisation?’

‘If I had I would’ve gone straight to a police contact instead of you.’

‘So why wouldn’t your police solicitor authorise this?’

The old Torkildsen would not have dared to ask this. He had become tougher. Had more confidence. Was it the new promotion? Or something else? Harry saw the back of a photo frame on the desk. The kind of personal photo used to remind yourself you had someone. So, unless it was a dog, it was a woman. Perhaps even with a child. Who would have thought it? The old flasher had got himself a woman.

‘I no longer work for the police,’ Harry said.

Torkildsen smirked. ‘Yet you still want info on conversations?’

‘I don’t need much, just this mobile.’

‘Why should I? If anyone found out I’d passed this kind of info on I’d get the boot. And it wouldn’t be hard to see if I’d been in the system.’

Harry didn’t answer.

Torkildsen gave a bitter laugh. ‘I understand. It’s the same old cowardly blackmail number. If I don’t give you info, contrary to regulations, you’ll make sure my colleagues get to hear about my conviction.’

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘No, I won’t talk. I’m simply asking you for a favour, Klaus. It’s personal. My ex-girlfriend’s boy risks life imprisonment for something he didn’t do.’

Harry saw Torkildsen’s double chin jerk and create a wave of flesh that rippled down his neck until it was absorbed into the greater body mass and was gone. Harry had never addressed Klaus Torkildsen by his Christian name before today. Torkildsen looked at him. Blinked. Concentrated. The beads of sweat glinted, and Harry could see the cerebral calculator adding, subtracting and — at length — reaching a result. Torkildsen threw up his arms and leaned back in the chair, which creaked under the weight.

‘Sorry, Harry, I would have liked to help you. But right now I can’t afford that sort of sympathy. Hope you understand.’

‘Of course,’ Harry said, rubbing his chin. ‘It’s completely understandable.’

‘Thank you,’ Torkildsen said, clearly relieved and beginning to struggle up from his chair, so as to escort Harry out of the glass cage and his life.

‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘If you don’t get me the numbers it won’t just be your colleagues who find out about your flashing but your wife as well. Any kids? Yes? One, two?’

Torkildsen slumped back in the chair. Staring at Harry in disbelief. The old, trembling Klaus Torkildsen. ‘You… you said you wouldn’t…’

Harry shrugged. ‘Sorry. But right now I can’t afford that sort of sympathy.’

It was ten minutes past ten at night and Schroder’s was half full.

‘I wouldn’t have wanted you to come to my workplace,’ Beate said. ‘Heimen rang me and said you’d been asking about a list of phone calls, and he’d heard you’d been to see me. He warned me not to get mixed up in the Gusto case.’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘it’s good you could come here.’ He established eye contact with Rita who was serving beer at the other end of the room. He held up two fingers. She nodded. It was three years since he had been here, but she still understood the sign language of her ex-regular: a beer for the companion, a coffee for the alcoholic.

‘Was your friend any help with the list?’

‘Lots of help.’

‘So what did you find out?’

‘Gusto must have been broke at the end; his account had been blocked several times. He didn’t use his phone much, but he and Oleg had a few short conversations. He called his foster-sister, Irene, quite a bit, but the conversations suddenly finished some weeks before he died. Otherwise the calls were mostly to Pizza Xpress. I’ll go to Rakel’s afterwards and google these other names. What can you tell me about the analysis?’

‘The substance you bought is almost identical to early samples of violin we have examined. But there is a small difference in the chemical compound. And then there are the brown flecks.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s not an active pharmaceutical ingredient. It’s quite simply the coating that’s used on pills. You know, to make them easier to swallow or to give them a better taste.’

‘Is it possible to trace it to the producer?’

‘In theory, yes. But I’ve checked, and it transpires that medicine manufacturers generally make their own coating, which means there are several thousand of them over the globe.’

‘So we won’t make any headway there?’

‘Not with the coating,’ Beate said. ‘But on the inside of some fragments there are still remains of the pill. It was methadone.’

Rita brought the coffee and beer. Harry thanked her, and she left.

‘I thought methadone was liquid and came in bottles.’

‘The methadone used in the so-called medicine-assisted rehabilitation of drug addicts comes in bottles. So I rang up St Olav’s Hospital. They research opioids and opiates and told me that methadone pills are used for the treatment of pain.’

‘And in violin?’

‘They said it was possible that modified methadone could be used in its manufacture, yes.’

‘That only means violin is not made from scratch, but how does that help us?’

Beate curled her hand round the beer glass. ‘Because there are very few producers of methadone pills. And one of them is based in Oslo.’