Jo Nesbo - Phantom

‘If he wants some violin, yes,’ I said.

But apparently Jesus didn’t, so we went back to our hotel room and had a goodnight shot. I have no idea why, but we hung around in the back of beyond. Did nothing, just got high and sang Sinatra. One night I woke up with Oleg standing over me. He was holding a fricking dog in his arms. Said he’d been woken up by the squeal of brakes outside the window and that, when he looked out, this dog was lying in the street. I had a peep. It didn’t look good. Oleg and I were agreed, its back was broken. Mangy with lots of sores as well. The poor creature had been beaten up, whether by an owner or other dogs who knows. But it was fine, it was. Calm, brown eyes looked at me as if it believed I could fix what was wrong. So I tried. Gave it food and water, patted its head and talked to the animal. Oleg said we should take it to a vet, but I knew what they would do, so we kept the dog in the hotel room, hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and let it lie in the bed. We took turns to stay awake and check it was breathing. It lay there getting hotter and hotter and with its pulse getting weaker. The third day I gave it a name. Rufus. Why not? Nice to have a name if you’re going to peg it.

‘It’s suffering,’ Oleg said. ‘The vet’ll put it to sleep with an injection. Won’t hurt at all.’

‘No one’s going to inject Rufus with cheap dope,’ I said, flicking the syringe.

‘Are you mad?’ Oleg said. ‘That violin is worth two thousand kroner.’

Perhaps it was. At any rate Rufus left this fricking world business class.

I seem to remember the journey home was cloudy. Anyway there was no Sinatra, no one sang.

Back in Oslo, Oleg was terrified about what would happen. As for myself I was quite cool, strangely enough. It was as if I knew the old boy wouldn’t touch us. We were two harmless junkies on our way down. Broke, unemployed and after a while out of violin. Oleg had found out that the expression ‘junkie’ was more than a hundred years old, from the time when the first heroin addicts stole junk metal from the harbour in Philadelphia and sold it to finance their consumption. And that was precisely what Oleg and I did. We began to sneak into building sites down by the harbour in Bjorvika and stole whatever we came across. Copper and tools were gold. We sold the copper to a scrap merchant in Kalbakken, the tools to a couple of Lithuanian tradesmen.

But as more people latched onto the scam, the fences grew in height, more nightwatchmen were employed, the cops showed up and the buyers went AWOL. So there we sat, our cravings lashing us like rabid slave drivers round the clock. And I knew I would have to come up with a decent idea, an Endlosung. So I did.

Of course I said nothing to Oleg.

I prepared the speech for a whole day. Then I rang her.

Irene had just returned home from training. She sounded almost happy to hear my voice. I talked without stopping for an hour. She was crying by the time I’d finished.

The following evening I went down to Oslo Central Station and was standing on the platform when the Trondheim train trundled in.

Her tears were flowing as she hugged me.

So young. So caring. So precious.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve never really loved anyone. But I must have been close to it, because I was almost crying myself.

Through the narrow opening of the window in room 301 Harry heard a church bell strike eleven somewhere in the darkness. His aching chin and throat had one advantage: they kept him awake. He got out of bed and sat in the chair, tilted it back against the wall beside the window so that he was facing the door with the rifle in his lap.

He had stopped at reception and asked for a strong light bulb to replace the one that had gone in his room and a hammer to knock in a couple of nails sticking up from the door sill. Said he would fix them himself. Afterwards he had changed the weak bulb in the corridor outside and used the hammer to loosen and remove the door sill.

From where he was sitting he would be able to see the shadow in the gap beneath the door when they came.

Harry lit another cigarette. Checked the rifle. Finished the rest of the pack. Outside in the darkness the church bell chimed twelve times.

The phone rang. It was Beate. She said she had been given copies of four of the five lists from patrol cars trawling the Blindern district.

‘The last patrol car had already delivered its list to Orgkrim,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ Harry said. ‘Did you get the bags from Rita at Schroder’s?’

‘Yes, I did. I’ve told Pathology to make it a priority. They’re analysing the blood now.’

Pause.

‘And?’ Harry asked.

‘And what?’

‘I know that intonation, Beate. There’s something else.’

‘DNA tests take more than a few hours, Harry. It-’

‘-can take days before we have a final result.’

‘Yes, so for the time being it’s incomplete.’

‘How incomplete?’ Harry heard footsteps in the corridor.

‘Well, there’s at least a five per cent chance there’s no match.’

‘You’ve been given an interim DNA profile and have a match on the DNA register, haven’t you?’

‘We use incomplete tests only to say who we can eliminate.’

‘Who’s the match for?’

‘I don’t want to say anything until-’

‘Come on.’

‘No. But I can say it’s not Gusto’s own blood.’

‘And?’

‘And it’s not Oleg’s. Alright?’

‘Very alright,’ Harry said, suddenly aware that he had been holding his breath.

A shadow under the door.

‘Harry?’

Harry rang off. Pointed the rifle at the door. Waited. Three short knocks. Waited. Listened. The shadow didn’t move. He tiptoed along the wall towards the door, out of any possible firing line. Put his eye to the peephole in the middle of the door.

He saw a man’s back.

The jacket hung straight and was so short he could see the trouser waistband. A black piece of cloth hung from his back pocket, a cap perhaps. But he wasn’t wearing a belt. His arms hung close to his sides. If the man was carrying a weapon it had to be in a holster, either on his chest or on the inside of his calf. Neither very common.

The man turned to the door and knocked twice, harder this time. Harry held his breath while studying the distorted image of a face. Distorted, and yet there was something unmistakable about it. A pronounced underbite. And he was scratching himself under the chin with a card he had hanging from his neck. The way police officers sometimes carried ID cards when they were going to make an arrest. Shit! The police had been quicker than Dubai.

Harry hesitated. If the guy had orders to arrest him he would also have a blue chit with a search warrant he had already shown the receptionist and he would have been given a master key. Harry’s brain calculated. He tiptoed back, pushed the rifle in behind the wardrobe. Went back and opened the door. Said: ‘What do you want and who are you?’ while glancing up and down the corridor.

The man stared at him. ‘What a state you’re in, Hole. Can I come in?’ He held up his ID card.

‘Truls Berntsen. You used to work for Bellman, didn’t you?’

‘Still do. He sends his regards.’

Harry stepped aside and let Berntsen go first.

‘Cosy,’ Berntsen said, looking around.

‘Take a seat,’ Harry said, indicating the bed and sitting on the chair by the window.

‘Chewing gum?’ Berntsen said, offering a packet.

‘Gives me cavities. What do you want?’

‘As friendly as ever?’ Berntsen grinned, rolled up the chewing gum, placed it in his drawer-like prognathous jaw and sat down.

Harry’s brain was registering intonation, body language, eye movement, smell. The man was relaxed, yet threatening. Open palms, no sudden movements, but his eyes were collecting data, reading the situation, preparing for something. Harry already regretted stowing his rifle. Failure to hold a licence was the least of his problems.