Jo Nesbo - Phantom

She was a towering figure, athletic, with broad shoulders and hips. The tight-fitting black trousers emphasised her big, muscular thighs. Harry decided that her breasts were bought, supported by an unusually clever bra or simply impressive. His Google search had revealed that she bred horses on a farm in Rygge; had been divorced twice, the last from a financier who had made a fortune four times and lost it three; had been a participant in national shooting competitions; was a blood donor, in trouble for having given a political colleague the boot because he ‘was such a wimp’; and she more than happily posed for photographers at film and theatre premieres. In short: a lot of woman for your money.

He moved into her field of vision, and halfway across the floor her stare still hadn’t relinquished him. Like someone who considers it their right to look. Harry went up to her, fully aware that he had at least a dozen pairs of eyes on his back.

‘You are Isabelle Skoyen,’ he said.

She looked as if she was about to give him short shrift, but changed her mind, angled her head. ‘That’s the thing about these overpriced Oslo restaurants, isn’t it? Everyone is someone. So…’ She dragged out the ‘o’ as her gaze took him in from top to toe. ‘Who are you?’

‘Harry Hole.’

‘There’s something familiar about you. Have you been on TV?’

‘Many years ago. Before this.’ He pointed to the scar on his face.

‘Oh yes, you’re the policeman who caught the serial killer, aren’t you?’

There were two ways to play this. Harry chose to be direct.

‘I was.’

‘And what do you do now?’ she asked without interest, her gaze wandering over his shoulder, to the exit. Pressed her red lips together and widened her eyes a couple of times. Warm-up. Must be an important lunch.

‘Clothes and shoes,’ Harry said.

‘I can see. Cool suit.’

‘Cool boots. Rick Owens?’

She looked at him, apparently rediscovering him. Was about to say something, but her glance caught a movement behind him. ‘My lunch date’s here. See you again perhaps, Harry.’

‘Mm. I had hoped we might have a chat now.’

She laughed and leaned forward. ‘I like the move, Harry. But it’s twelve o’clock, I’m as sober as a judge and I already have a lunch date. Have a nice day.’

She walked away on her click-clacking heels.

‘Was Gusto Hanssen your lover?’

Harry said it in a low tone, and Isabelle Skoyen was already three metres away. Nevertheless, she stiffened, as if she had found a frequency that cut through the noise of heels, voices and Diana Krall’s background crooning, and beamed into her eardrum.

She turned.

‘You rang him four times the same night, the last was at twenty-six minutes to two.’ Harry had taken a bar stool. Isabelle Skoyen retraced the three metres. She towered over him. Harry was reminded of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. And she was not Little Red Riding Hood.

‘What do you want, Harry boy?’ she asked.

‘I want to know everything you know about Gusto Hanssen.’

The nostrils on Axe-Nose flared and her majestic breasts rose. Harry noticed that her skin had large black pores, like dots in a comic strip.

‘As one of the few people in this town concerned about keeping drug addicts alive I’m also one of the few to remember Gusto Hanssen. We lost him, and that’s sad. These calls are because I have his mobile number saved on my phone. We had invited him to a meeting of the RUNO committee. I have a good friend whose name is similar, and sometimes I hit the wrong key. That sort of thing can happen.’

‘When did you last meet him?’

‘Listen here, Harry Hole,’ she hissed under her breath, stressing Hole and lowering her face even closer to his. ‘If I’ve understood correctly you are not a policeman, but someone who works with clothes and shoes. I see no reason to talk to you.’

‘Thing is,’ Harry said, leaning back against the counter, ‘I’m very keen to talk to someone. So if it isn’t you, it’ll be a journalist. And they’re always so pleased to talk about celebrity scandals and the like.’

‘Celebrity?’ she said, turning on a radiant smile aimed not at Harry but a suit-clad man standing by the head waiter and waving back with his fingers. ‘I’m just a council secretary, Harry. The odd photo in the papers doesn’t make you a celebrity. Look how soon you’re forgotten.’

‘I believe the papers see a rising star in you.’

‘Do you indeed? Perhaps, but even the worst tabloids need something concrete, and you have nothing. Calling the wrong number is-’

‘-the sort of thing that can happen. What cannot happen, however

…’ Harry took a deep breath. She was right; he had nothing on her. And that was why it was not a great idea to play it direct. ‘… is that blood of the type AB rhesus negative appears by chance in two places on the same murder case. One person in two hundred has that group. So when the forensics report shows the blood under Gusto’s nails is AB rhesus negative and the papers say that’s your group, an ageing detective cannot help but put two and two together. All I need to do is ask for a DNA test, then we’ll know with a hundred per cent certainty who Gusto stuck his claws into before he died. Does that sound like a somewhat above-average interesting newspaper headline, Skoyen?’

The council secretary kept blinking, as though her eyelids were trying to activate her mouth.

‘Tell me, isn’t the Crown Prince in the Socialist Party?’ Harry asked, scrunching up his eyes. ‘What’s his name again?’

‘We can have a chat,’ Isabelle Skoyen said. ‘Later. But then you’ll have to swear to keep your mouth shut.’

‘When and where?’

‘Give me your number and I’ll phone you after work.’

Outside, the fjord glinted and flashed. Harry put on his sunglasses and lit a cigarette to celebrate a well-accomplished bluff. Sat on the edge of the harbour, enjoying every drag, refused to feel the gnawing that persisted, and focused on the meaninglessly expensive toys the world’s richest working class had moored alongside the quay. Then he stubbed out the butt, spat in the fjord and was ready for the next visit on the list.

Harry confirmed to the female receptionist at the Radium Hospital that he had an appointment, and she gave him a form. Harry filled in name and telephone number, but left ‘Firm’ blank.

‘Private visit?’

Harry shook his head. He knew this was an occupational habit with good receptionists: seeing the lie of the land, collecting information about people who came and went and those who worked on the premises. If, as a detective, he needed the low-down on everyone in an organisation he made a beeline for the receptionist.

She pointed Harry to the office at the end of the corridor. On his way there Harry passed closed office doors and glass panes looking onto large rooms, people wearing white coats inside, benches littered with flasks and test-tube stands and big padlocks for steel cabinets Harry guessed would be an El Dorado for any drug addict.

At the end Harry stopped and, to be on the safe side, read the nameplate before knocking on the door: Stig Nybakk. He had barely knocked once when a voice reverberated: ‘Come in!’

Nybakk was standing behind the desk with a telephone to his ear, but waved Harry in and indicated a chair. After three ‘Yes’s, two ‘No’s, one ‘Well, I’m damned’ and a hearty laugh, he rang off and fixed a pair of sparkling eyes on Harry, who true to form had slumped in a chair with his legs stretched out.

‘Harry Hole. You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you.’

‘I’ve arrested so many people,’ Harry said.

More hearty laughter. ‘We went to Oppsal School. I was a couple of years below you.’