Jo Nesbo - Phantom

‘Switchboard.’

‘I have a body here. The address is-’

Harry noticed the visitor’s pass.

‘Yes?’

There was something familiar about it.

‘Hello?’

Harry picked up the visitor’s pass. At the top was OSLO POLITIDISTRIKT. Beneath it was TORD SCHULTZ and a date. He had visited a police HQ or a station two days ago. And now he was dead.

‘Hello?’

Harry rang off.

Sat down.

Pondered.

He spent ninety minutes searching the house. Afterwards he wiped all the places where he might have left prints and removed the plastic bag he had put around his head with an elastic band so as not to drop hairs. It was an established rule that all detectives and other officers who might conceivably enter a crime scene should register their fingerprints and DNA. If he left any clues it would take the police five minutes to find out that Harry Hole had been there. The fruits of his labours were three small packages of cocaine and four bottles of what he assumed was contraband booze. Otherwise there was exactly what he presumed: nothing.

He closed the door, got in the car and drove off.

Oslo Politidistrikt.

Shit, shit, shit.

When he reached the city centre, he parked and sat staring out of the windscreen. Then he rang Beate’s number.

‘Hi, Harry.’

‘Two things. I’d like to ask you a favour. And give you an anonymous tip-off that there is another man dead in this case.’

‘I’ve just been told.’

‘So you know?’ Harry said in surprise. ‘The method is called Zjuk. Russian for “beetle”.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The brick.’

‘Which brick?’

Harry breathed in. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Gojke Tosic.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The guy who attacked Oleg.’

‘And?’

‘He’s been found dead in his cell.’

Harry looked straight into a pair of headlights coming towards him. ‘How…?’

‘They’re checking now. Looks like he hanged himself.’

‘Delete himself. They killed the pilot as well.’

‘What?’

‘Tord Schultz is lying on the living-room floor of his house by Gardermoen.’

Two seconds passed before Beate answered. ‘I’ll inform the Ops Room.’

‘OK.’

‘What was the second thing?’

‘What?’

‘You said you wanted to ask me for a favour?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Harry pulled the visitor’s pass from his pocket. ‘I wonder whether you could check the visitors’ register in reception at Police HQ. See who Tord Schultz visited two days ago.’

Silence again.

‘Beate?’

‘Are you sure this is something I’ll want to be mixed up in, Harry?’

‘I’m sure this is something you won’t want to be mixed up in.’

‘Sod you.’

Harry rang off.

Harry left his vehicle in the multi-storey car park at the bottom of Kvadraturen and headed for Hotel Leon. He passed a bar, and the music floating through the open door reminded him of the evening he arrived: Nirvana’s inviting ‘Come As You Are’. He was not aware that he had entered the bar until he was standing in front of the counter in the winding intestine of a room.

Three customers sat hunched on bar stools. It looked like a month-old wake no one had broken up. There was a smell of corpses and creaking flesh. The barman sent Harry an order-now-or-go-to-hell look while slowly removing a cork from a bottle opener. He had three large Gothic letters tattooed across a broad neck. EAT.

‘What’s it to be?’ he shouted, managing to drown out Kurt Cobain, who was asking Harry to come as a friend.

Harry moistened his lips, which had suddenly gone dry. Looked at the barman’s hands twisting. It was a corkscrew of the simplest kind, one that requires a firm, trained hand, but only a couple of turns to penetrate, followed by a quick pull. The cork was pierced right through. This however was not a wine bar. So what else did they serve? He saw the distorted image of himself in the mirror behind the barman. The disfigured face. But it was not only his face; all of their faces, all the ghosts, were there. And Tord Schultz was the latest to join. His gaze scanned the bottles on the mirror shelf and like a heat-seeking rocket found its target. The old enemy. Jim Beam.

Kurt Cobain didn’t have a gun.

Harry coughed. Just one.

No gun.

He gave his order.

‘Eh?’ shouted the bartender, leaning forward.

‘Jim Beam.’

There is no gun.

‘Gin what?’

Harry swallowed. Cobain repeated the word ‘memoria’. Harry had heard the song a hundred times before, but he realised he had always thought Cobain sang ‘The more’ followed by something else.

In memoriam. Where had he seen it? On a gravestone?

He saw a movement in the mirror. At that moment the phone in his pocket began to vibrate.

‘Gin what?’ shouted the barman, placing the corkscrew on the counter.

Harry pulled out his mobile. Looked at the display. R. He took the call.

‘Hi, Rakel.’

‘Harry?’

Another movement behind him.

‘All I can hear is noise, Harry. Where are you?’

Harry turned and walked with hurried strides to the exit. Inhaled the exhaust-polluted yet fresher air outside.

‘What are you doing?’ Rakel asked.

‘Wondering whether to turn left or right,’ Harry said. ‘And you?’

‘I’m going to bed. Are you sober?’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. And I can hear you. I notice when you’re stressed. And that sounds like a bar.’

Harry took out a pack of Camel. Tapped out a cigarette. Saw his hand was shaking. ‘It’s good you rang, Rakel.’

‘Harry?’

He lit his cigarette. ‘Yeah?’

‘Hans Christian’s arranged for Oleg to be held in custody at a secret location. It’s in Ostland, but no one knows where.’

‘Not bad.’

‘He’s a good man, Harry.’

‘Don’t doubt it.’

‘Harry?’

‘I’m here.’

‘If we could plant some evidence. If I took the rap for the murder. Would you help me?’

Harry inhaled. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

The door opened behind Harry. But he didn’t hear any footsteps walking away.

‘I’ll ring you from the hotel. OK?’

Harry rang off and strode down the street without a backward glance.

Sergey watched the man jog across the street.

Watched him go into Hotel Leon.

He had been so close. So close. First of all in the bar and now here on the street.

Sergey’s hand was still pressed against the deer-horn handle of the knife in his pocket. The blade was out and cutting the lining. Twice he had been on the point of stepping forward, grabbing his hair with his left hand, knife in, carving a crescent. True, the policeman was taller than he had imagined, but it wouldn’t be a problem.

Nothing would be a problem. And as his pulse slowed he could feel his calm return. The calm he had lost, the calm his terror had repressed. And again he could feel himself looking forward, looking forward to the completion of his task, to becoming at one with the story that was already told.

For this was the place, the place for the ambush. Sergey had seen the eyes of the policeman when he was staring at the bottles. It was the same look his father had when he returned home from prison. Sergey was the crocodile in the billabong, the crocodile that knew the man would take the same path to get something to drink, that knew it was only a question of waiting.

Harry lay on the bed in room 301, he blew smoke at the ceiling and listened to her voice on the phone.

‘I know you’ve done worse things than planting evidence,’ she said. ‘So, why not? Why not for a person you love?’

‘You’re drinking white wine,’ he said.