Jo Nesbo - Phantom

‘Sounds good. Could you get it, wrap it up and deliver it to Schroder’s within three quarters of an hour?’

‘I can try. Wh- what are you going to do?’

‘I,’ Harry said, meeting Rita’s admonishing eyes from the counter, ‘am going to have breakfast.’

On his way to Gamlebyen Cemetery Truls Berntsen saw a black limousine parked outside the gate where he generally entered. And as he approached, the door opened on the passenger side and a man stepped out. He was wearing a black suit and had to be well over two metres tall. Powerful jaw, flat fringe and something indefinably Asian that Truls had always associated with the Sami, Finns and Russians. The jacket must have been made to measure, yet it was still too narrow on the shoulders.

He moved aside and gestured that Truls was to take his place in the passenger seat.

Truls stopped. If these were Dubai’s men it was an unexpected breach of the rules regarding direct contact. He looked around. No one in sight.

He hesitated.

If they had decided to rid themselves of the burner, this is how they would do it.

He looked at the enormous man. It was impossible to read anything from his facial expression, and Truls could not decide whether it was a good or a bad sign that the man had taken the trouble to put on a pair of sunglasses.

Of course he could turn and flee. But what then?

‘Q5,’ Truls mumbled to himself under his breath.

The door was immediately closed after him. It was strangely dark inside, must have been the tinted windows. And the air conditioning must have been unusually effective, it felt as if it was several degrees below zero. In the driver’s seat was a man with the face of a wolf. Black suit as well. Flat fringe. Probably Russian.

‘Nice you could make it,’ said a voice behind Truls. He didn’t need to turn. The accent. It was him. Dubai. The man no one knew. No one else knew. But what good was it to Truls to know a name, to recognise a face? Furthermore, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

‘I want you to get hold of someone for us.’

‘Get hold of?’

‘Collect. And deliver to us. You don’t need to bother yourself with the rest.’

‘I’ve told you I don’t know where Oleg Fauke is.’

‘This isn’t Oleg Fauke, Berntsen. This is Harry Hole.’

Truls Berntsen could scarcely believe his own ears. ‘Harry Hole?’

‘Don’t you know who he is?’

‘Course I do. He was at Crime Squad. Mad as a hatter. A drunk. Solved a couple of cases. Is he in town?’

‘He’s staying at Hotel Leon. Room 301. Collect him from there at twelve sharp tonight.’

‘And how should I collect him?’

‘Arrest him. Knock him down. Say you want to show him your boat. Do whatever you like, just get him to the marina at Kongen. We’ll take the rest from there. Fifty thousand.’

The rest. He was talking about killing Harry Hole. He was talking about murder. Of a policeman.

Truls opened his mouth to say no, but the voice on the back seat was quicker.

‘Euros.’

Truls Berntsen’s jaw dropped with a shipwrecked ‘no’ somewhere between his brain and vocal cords. Instead he repeated the words he thought he had heard but scarcely believed.

‘Fifty thousand euros?’

‘Well?’

Truls looked at his watch. He had a bit more than eleven hours. He coughed.

‘How do you know he’ll be in his room at midnight?’

‘Because he knows we’re coming.’

‘Eh? Don’t you mean he doesn’t know you’re coming?’

The voice behind him laughed. It sounded like the motor on a wooden boat. Chug-chug.

It was four o’clock and Harry was standing under a shower on the eighteenth floor of the Radisson Plaza. He hoped the gaffer tape would hold in the hot water — at least it was dulling the pain for a short while. He had been allocated room number 1937, and something fluttered through his mind as he was given the key. The king’s year of birth, Koestler, synchronicity and all that. Harry didn’t believe it. What he believed in was the human mind’s ability to find patterns. And where, in fact, there were none. That was why he had always been a doubter as a detective. He had doubted and searched, doubted and searched. Seen patterns, but doubted the guilt. Or vice versa.

Harry heard the phone peep. It was audible but discreet and pleasant. The sound of an expensive hotel. He turned off the shower and went to the bed. Lifted the receiver.

‘There’s a lady here,’ the receptionist said. ‘Rakel Fauske… My apologies. Fauke, she says. She has something she would like to give you.’

‘Give her a lift key and send her up,’ Harry said. He eyed his suit hanging in the wardrobe. It looked as though it had been through two world wars. He opened the door and wound a couple of metres of towel around his waist. Sat down on the bed listening. Heard a pling from the lift and then her footsteps. He could still recognise them. Quite firm but short steps, with a high frequency, as though she always wore a tight skirt. He closed his eyes for a second, and when he reopened them she was standing in front of him.

‘Hi, naked man,’ she smiled, dumping the bags on the floor and herself on the bed beside him. ‘What’s this?’ She stroked the gaffer tape with her fingers.

‘Just an improvised plaster,’ he said. ‘You didn’t need to come in person.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t find any of your clothes. They must have gone missing during the move to Amsterdam.’

Been chucked out, Harry thought. Fair enough.

‘But then I spoke to Hans Christian, and he had a wardrobe full of clothes he doesn’t wear. Not quite your style, but you’re not too far apart size-wise.’

She opened the bags, and he looked with horror as she took out a Lacoste shirt, four pairs of ironed underpants, a pair of Armani jeans with a crease, a V-neck sweater, a Timberland jacket, two shirts bearing polo players and even a pair of soft, brown leather shoes.

She began to hang them in the wardrobe, and he got up and took over. She observed him from the side, smiled as she tucked a lock of hair behind an ear.

‘You wouldn’t have bought any new clothes until that suit literally fell off you. Isn’t that right?’

‘Well,’ Harry said, moving the hangers. The clothes were unfamiliar but there was a faint, familiar aroma. ‘I have to concede that I was considering a new shirt and perhaps a pair of underpants.’

‘Haven’t you got any clean underpants?’

Harry looked at her. ‘Define clean.’

‘Harry!’ She slapped his shoulder with a laugh.

He smiled. Her hand remained on his shoulder.

‘You’re hot,’ she said. ‘Feverishly hot. Are you sure whatever is under your so-called plaster isn’t infected?’

He shook his head. Knowing full well, from the dull, pulsating pain, that the wound was inflamed. But with his many years of experience from Crime Squad he knew something else as well. That the police had interviewed the barman and the customers at the Nirvana bar and would know the person who had killed the knifeman had left the place with deep cuts to his chin and neck. They would also have alerted all the doctors in town and run surveillance on A amp;E departments. And this was no time to be held on remand.

She stroked his shoulder, up as far as his neck and back again. Over his chest. And he thought she must be able to feel his heart beating and that she was like the Pioneer TV they had stopped producing because it was too good, and you could see it was good because the black bit of the picture was so black.

He had managed to open a window a fraction; they didn’t want suicides on their hands at the hotel. And even up on the eighteenth floor they could hear the rush hour, the occasional car horn, and from somewhere else, perhaps another room, an inappropriate, belated summer song.