Jo Nesbo - Phantom

‘Is what he says true?’

‘What who says?’ the boy asked.

‘Him,’ Harry said, turning to point at Cato. But he was already gone. He must have flitted into the darkness by the stairs.

‘Did the undercover cop die here, in my room?’

The boy stared at Harry before answering. ‘No, he went missing. He was washed ashore by the Opera House. Afraid I don’t have a curtain pole, but what about this nylon line? You can thread it through the curtains and tie it to the pole attachments.’

Harry nodded slowly.

It was gone two o’clock in the morning. Harry was still awake and on his last cigarette. On the floor lay the curtains and the thin nylon line. He could see the woman on the other side of the yard; she was dancing a soundless waltz, without a partner. Harry listened to the sounds of the town and watched the smoke curling up towards the ceiling. Studied the winding routes it took, the apparently random figures it made and tried to see a pattern in it.

It took two months from the meeting between the old boy and Isabelle for the clean-up to begin.

The first ones to be busted were the Vietnamese. The newspapers said the cops had struck in nine places simultaneously, found five heroin stores and arrested thirty-six Vietcong. The week after it was the Kosovar Albanians’ turn. The cops used elite Delta troops to raid a flat in Helsfyr which the gypsy chief thought no one knew about. Then it was the turn of the North Africans and Lithuanians. The guy who was head of Orgkrim, a good-looking model-type with long eyelashes, said in the papers they had been given anonymous tip-offs. Over the next few weeks street sellers, everything from coal-black Somalis to milky-white Norwegians, were busted and banged up. But not a single one of us wearing an Arsenal shirt. It was already clear that we had more elbow room and the queues were getting longer. The old boy was recruiting some of the unemployed street sellers, but keeping his end of the bargain: heroin dealing had become less visible in Oslo city centre. We cut down on heroin imports as we earned so much more on violin. Violin was expensive, so some tried to switch to morphine, but they soon came back.

We were selling faster than Ibsen could make it.

One Tuesday we ran out at half past twelve, and since it was strictly forbidden to use mobiles — the old boy thought Oslo was fricking Baltimore — I went down to the station and rang the Russian Gresso phone from one of the call boxes. Andrey said he was busy, but he would see what he could do. Oleg, Irene and I sat on the steps in Skippergata waving away punters and chilling. An hour later I saw a figure come limping towards us. It was Ibsen in person. He was furious. Yelling and cursing. Until he caught sight of Irene. Then it was as if the storm was over and his tone became more conciliatory. Followed us to the backyard where he handed over a plastic bag containing a hundred packages.

‘Twenty thousand,’ he said, holding out his paw. ‘This is cash on delivery.’ I took him aside and said that next time we ran out we could go to his place.

‘I don’t want visitors,’ he said.

‘I might pay more than two hundred a bag,’ I said.

He eyed me with suspicion. ‘Are you planning to start up on your own? What would your boss say to that?’

‘This is between you and me,’ I said. ‘We’re talking chicken-feed. Ten to twenty bags for friends and acquaintances.’

He burst out laughing.

‘I’ll bring the girl,’ I said. ‘Her name’s Irene, by the way.’

He stopped laughing. Looked at me. Club Foot tried to laugh again, but couldn’t. And now everything was written in big letters in his eyes. Loneliness. Greed. Hatred. And desire. Fricking desire.

‘Friday evening,’ he said. ‘At eight. Does she drink gin?’

I nodded. From now on she did.

He gave me the address.

Two days later the old boy invited me to lunch. For a second I thought Ibsen had grassed on me, because I could remember his expression. We were served by Peter and sat at the long table in the cold dining room while the old boy told me he had cut out heroin imports across the country and from Amsterdam and now only imported from Bangkok via a couple of pilots. He talked about the figures, checked I understood and repeated the usual question: was I keeping away from violin? He sat there in the semi-gloom gazing at me, then he called Peter and told him to drive me home. In the car I considered asking Peter whether the old boy was impotent.

Ibsen lived in a typical bachelor pad in a block on Ekeberg. Big plasma screen, little fridge and nothing on the walls. He poured us a cheap gin with lifeless tonic, without a slice of lemon, but with three ice cubes. Irene watched the performance. Smiled, was sweet, and left the talking to me. Ibsen sat with an idiotic grin on his face gawping at Irene, though he did manage to close his gob whenever saliva threatened to leak out. He played fricking classical music. I got my packages and we agreed I would drop by again in a fortnight. With Irene.

Then came the first report about the falling number of ODs. What they didn’t write was that first-time users of violin, after only a few weeks, were queueing with staring eyes and visible fits of the shakes from withdrawal symptoms. And as they stood there with their crinkled hundred-krone notes and found out that the price had gone up again, they cried.

After the third visit to Ibsen he took me aside and said that next time he wanted Irene to come alone. I said that was fine, but then I wanted fifty packages and the price was a hundred kroner apiece. He nodded.

Persuading Irene required some effort, and for once the old tricks didn’t work. I had to be hard. Explain this was my chance. Our chance. Ask if she wanted to stay sleeping on a mattress in a rehearsal room. And in the end she mumbled that she didn’t. But she didn’t want to… And I said she didn’t have to, she should just be nice to the lonely old man, he probably didn’t have much fun with that foot of his. She nodded and said I had to promise not to tell Oleg. After she left for Ibsen’s pad I felt so down I diluted a bag of violin and smoked what was left in a cigarette. I woke up to someone shaking me. She stood over my mattress crying so much the tears were running down onto my face and making my eyes sting. Ibsen had tried it on, but she had managed to get away.

‘Did you get the packages?’ I asked.

That was obviously the wrong question. She broke down completely. So I said I had something to make everything alright again. I fixed up a syringe and she stared at me with big, wet eyes as I found a blue vein in her fine, white skin and inserted the needle. I felt the spasms transplant themselves from her body to mine as I pressed the plunger. Her mouth opened in a silent orgasm. Then the ecstasy drew a bright curtain in front of her eyes.

Ibsen might be a dirty old man, but he knew his chemistry.

I also knew that I had lost Irene. I could see it in her face when I asked about the packages. It could never be the same. That night I saw Irene glide into blissful oblivion along with my chances of becoming a millionaire.

The old boy continued to make millions. Yet still he wanted more, faster. It was as if there was something he had to catch, a debt that was due soon. He didn’t seem to need the money; the house was the same, the limousine was washed but not changed and the staff remained at two: Andrey and Peter. We still had one competitor — Los Lobos — and they too had extended their street-selling operations. They hired the Vietnamese and Moroccans who were not already banged up, and they sold violin not only in the town centre but also at Kongsvinger, in Tromso, Trondheim and — so the rumour went — in Helsinki. Odin and Los Lobos may have earned more than the old boy, but the two of them shared this market, there were no fights for territory, they were both getting very rich. Any businessman with his brain fully connected would have been happy with the status fricking quo.