Jo Nesbo: Phantom

Tord Schultz had answered yes as another thought announced its presence. What would the consequences be if he said no?

That was six trips ago.

Tord Schultz studied the package. A couple of times he had considered smearing washing-up liquid over the condoms and freezer bags they used, but he had been told that sniffer dogs could distinguish smells and were not fooled so easily. The trick was to make sure the plastic bag was fully sealed.

He waited. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ said Mr Small. ‘Yesterday’s delivery…’

He slipped his hand inside his jacket with an evil grin. Or perhaps it wasn’t evil, perhaps it was Eastern bloc humour. Tord felt like punching him, blowing unfiltered cigarette smoke into his face, spitting twelve-year-old whiskey in his eye. Western bloc humour. Instead he mumbled a thank-you and took the envelope. It felt thin between his fingertips. They had to be big notes.

Afterwards he stood by the window again and watched the car disappear into the darkness, heard the sound being drowned by a Boeing 737. Maybe a 600. Next generation anyway. Throatier and higher pitched than the old classics. He saw his reflection in the window.

Yes, he had taken their coin. And he would continue to take it. Take everything life threw in his face. For he was not Donald Draper. He was not Chuck Yeager and not Neil Armstrong. He was Tord Schultz. A long-spined pilot with debts. And a cocaine problem. He ought to…

His thoughts were drowned by the next plane.

Bloody church bells! Can you see them, Dad, the so-called next of kin all standing over my coffin? Crying crocodile tears, their sombre mugs saying: ‘Gusto, why couldn’t you have just learned to be like us?’ Well, you sodding self-righteous hypocrites, I couldn’t! I couldn’t be like my foster-mother, a daft, spoilt airhead, going on about how wonderful everything is, provided you read the right book, listen to the right guru, eat the right fricking herbs. And whenever anyone punctured that woolly wisdom she had bought into, she always played the same card: ‘But look at the world we have created: war, injustice, people who don’t live in harmony with themselves any longer.’ Three things, baby. One: war, injustice and disharmony are natural. Two: you are the least harmonious of all in our disgusting little family. You wanted only the love you were denied, and you didn’t give a shit about the love you were given. Sorry, Rolf, Stein and Irene, but she had room only for me. Which makes point three all the more amusing: I never loved you, baby, however much you considered you deserved it. I called you Mum because it made you happy, and life simpler for me. When I did what I did it was because you let me, because I couldn’t stop myself. Because that’s the way I am.

Rolf. At least you told me not to call you Dad. You really tried to love me. But you could not fool nature; you realised you loved your own flesh and blood more: Stein and Irene. When I told other people you were ‘my foster-parents’ I could see the wounded expression in Mum’s eyes. And the hatred in yours. Not because ‘foster-parents’ shrank you to the only function you had in my life, but because I wounded the woman you, incomprehensibly, loved. I think you were honest enough to see yourself as I saw you: a person who at some point in your life, intoxicated on your own idealism, undertook to raise a changeling but soon understood that your account was in deficit. The monthly sum they paid you for care did not cover the real expense. Then you discovered that I was a cuckoo in the nest. That I ate everything. Everything you loved. Everyone you loved. You should have realised earlier and thrown me out, Rolf! You were the first to see that I stole. Initially it was only a hundred kroner. I denied it. Said I’d been given it by Mum. ‘Isn’t that right, Mum? You gave it to me.’ And Mum nodded after some hesitation, with tears in her eyes, said she must have forgotten. The next time it was a thousand. From your desk drawer. Money that was meant for our holiday, you said. ‘The only holiday I want is from you,’ I answered. And then you slapped me for the first time. And it was as if it triggered something in you, because you went on hitting. I was already taller and broader than you, but I have never been able to fight. Not like that, not with fists and muscles. I fought in another way, one where you win. But you kept hitting me, with a clenched fist now. And I knew why. You wanted to destroy my face. Take my power away from me. But the woman I called Mum intervened. So you said it. The word. The Thief. True enough. But it also meant I would have to crush you, little man.

Stein. The silent elder brother. The first to recognise the cuckoo by the plumage, but smart enough to keep his distance. The clever, bright, smart lone wolf who upped and left for a student town as far away as possible and as soon as he could. Who tried to persuade Irene, his dear little sister, to join him. He thought that she could finish school in fricking Trondheim, that it would do her good to get away from Oslo. But Mum put a stop to Irene’s evacuation. She knew nothing of course. Didn’t want to know.

Irene. Attractive, lovely, freckled, fragile Irene. You were too good for this world. You were all I was not. And yet you loved me. Would you have loved me if you had known? Would you have loved me if you had known that I was shagging your mother from the age of fifteen? Shagging your red-wine-soaked, whimpering mother, taking her from behind against the toilet door or the cellar door or the kitchen door while whispering ‘Mum’ in her ear because it made both her and me hot. She gave me money, she covered my back if anything happened, she said she only wanted to borrow me until she was old and ugly and I met a nice, sweet girl. And when I answered, ‘But, Mum, you are old and ugly,’ she laughed it off and begged for more.

I still had the bruises after my foster-father’s punches and kicks the day I rang him at work and told him to come home at three, there was something important I had to tell him. I left the front door ajar so that she wouldn’t hear him come in. And I spoke into her ear to drown his footsteps, said the sweet nothings she liked to hear.

I saw the reflection in the kitchen window, of him standing in the kitchen doorway.

He moved out the next day. Irene and Stein were told that Mum and Dad had not been getting on well for a while and had decided to separate for a bit. Irene was broken-hearted. Stein was in his student town, and he answered with a text: ‘Sad. Where would u like me to go 4 Xmas?’

Irene cried and cried. She loved me. Of course she searched for me. For the Thief.

The church bells rang for the fifth time. Crying and sniffling from the pews. Cocaine, incredible earnings. Rent a city-centre flat in the West End, register it in some junkie’s name who you pay off with a shot, and start selling in small quantities by stairways or gates, ratchet up the price as they begin to feel secure; coke folk pay anything for security. Get on your feet, get out, cut down on dope, become somebody. Don’t die in a squat like a bloody loser. The priest coughs. ‘We are here to commemorate Gusto Hanssen.’

A voice from far back: ‘Th-th-thief.’

Tutu’s tribe sitting there in biker jackets and bandanas. And even further back: the whimpering of a dog. Rufus. Good, loyal Rufus. Have you come back here? Or is it me who has already gone there?

Tord Schultz placed his Samsonite bag on the conveyor belt winding its way into the X-ray machine beside the smiling security official.

‘I don’t understand why you let them give you such a schedule,’ the flight attendant said. ‘Bangkok twice a week.’

‘I asked them to,’ Tord said, passing through the metal detector. Someone in the trade union had proposed that the crews should go on strike against having to be exposed to radiation several times a day. American research had shown that proportionally more pilots and cabin crew died of cancer than the rest of the population. But the strike agitators had said nothing about the average life expectancy also being higher. Air crew died of cancer because there was very little else to die of. They lived the safest lives in the world. The most boring lives in the world.