Jo Nesbo - Phantom

And blind because he hadn’t reflected on what was identical.

The nick in the copper that had gone black.

It was only when he had seen Martine’s wedding ring and heard her say he was the only person in the world who would buy a tacky ring that he had linked Oleg with Nybakk.

Harry had not doubted for a moment, even though he hadn’t found anything suspicious in Stig Nybakk’s flat. Quite the contrary, it was so utterly devoid of compromising objects that Harry had assumed at once that Nybakk had to be keeping his bad conscience elsewhere. The parents’ house that stood empty and he could not sell. The red house on the hill above Harry’s family home.

‘Did you kill Gusto?’ Harry asked.

Stig Nybakk shook his head. Heavy eyelids. He seemed sleepy.

‘Alibi?’

‘No. No, I don’t have one.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I was there.’

‘Where?’

‘In Hausmanns gate. I was going to see him. He had threatened to expose me. But when I got to Hausmanns gate there were police cars everywhere. Someone had already killed Gusto.’

‘Already? So you planned to do the same?’

‘Not the same. I don’t have a pistol.’

‘What have you got then?’

Nybakk shrugged. ‘Chemistry studies. Gusto was suffering from withdrawal symptoms. He needed violin.’

Harry looked at Nybakk’s tired smile and nodded. ‘So whatever white stuff you had you knew Gusto would inject it on the spot.’

The chain rattled as Nybakk raised his hand to point to the door. ‘Irene. May I say a few words to her before…?’

Harry watched Stig Nybakk. Saw something he recognised. A damaged person, a finished man. Someone who had rebelled against the cards fate had dealt him. And lost.

‘I’ll ask her,’ he said.

Harry found Irene upstairs in the sitting room. She was in a chair with her feet tucked up underneath her. Harry fetched a coat from the hall cupboard, draped it over her shoulders. He spoke to her in a whisper. She answered in a tiny voice, as though afraid of the echoes from the cold sitting-room walls.

She told him Gusto and Nybakk, or Ibsen as they called him, had worked together to trap her. Payment had been half a kilo of violin. She had been locked up for four months.

Harry let her say her piece. Waited until he knew she had run out before asking the next question.

She didn’t know anything about the murder of Gusto, beyond what Ibsen had told her. Or who Dubai was, or where he lived. Gusto hadn’t said anything, and Irene hadn’t wanted to know. All she had heard about Dubai were the same rumours about his flitting around town like some kind of phantom and that no one knew who he was or what he looked like, and that he was like the wind, impossible to catch.

Harry nodded. He had heard that image rather too often of late.

‘HC will drive you to the police station. He’s a solicitor and will help you to report this. Afterwards he’ll take you to Oleg’s mother where you can stay for the meantime.’

Irene shook her head. ‘I’ll ring Stein, my brother. I can stay with him. And…’

‘Yes?’

‘Do I have to report this?’

Harry looked at her. She was so young. So small. Like a baby bird. It was impossible to say how much damage had been done.

‘It can wait until tomorrow,’ Harry said.

He saw the tears well up in her eyes. And his first thought was: At last. Was about to lay a hand on her shoulder, but changed his mind in time. A strange man’s hand was perhaps not what she needed. But the next instant her tears were gone.

‘Is there… is there any alternative?’ she asked.

‘Such as?’ Harry said.

‘Such as never having to see him again.’ Her eyes would not release his. ‘Ever.’

Then he felt it. Her hand on top of his. ‘Please.’

Harry patted the hand, then placed it back in her lap. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to HC.’

After Harry had watched the car go, he went back into the house and down to the cellar. He couldn’t find any rope, but under the stairs hung a garden hosepipe. He took it to the storeroom and threw it at Nybakk. Looked up at the beam. High enough.

He took the bottle of Zestril tablets he had found in Nybakk’s pocket. Emptied the contents into his hand. Six.

‘You’ve got a heart condition?’ Harry asked.

Nybakk nodded.

‘How many tablets do you have to take a day?’

‘Two.’

Harry put the tablets in Nybakk’s hand and the empty bottle in his jacket pocket.

‘I’ll be back in two days. I don’t know what your reputation means to you. The shame would certainly have been worse if your parents had been alive, but I’m sure you’ve heard how other prisoners treat sex offenders. If you don’t exist when I return then you’re forgotten, your name will never be mentioned again. If you do, we’ll take you to the police station. Got that?’

Stig Nybakk’s screams followed Harry all the way to the front door. The screams of someone who was totally, totally alone with his own guilt, his own ghosts, his own loneliness, his own decisions. Yes, there was something familiar about him. Harry slammed the door hard behind him.

Harry hailed a taxi on Vetlandsveien and asked the driver to go to Urtegata.

His neck ached and throbbed as if it had a pulse of its own, had become alive, a locked-up inflamed animal made of bacteria that wanted out. Harry asked if the driver had any painkillers in the car, but he shook his head.

As they turned towards Bjorvika Harry saw rockets exploding in the sky above the Opera House. Someone was celebrating something. It struck him that he ought to do some celebrating himself. He had done it. He had found Irene. And Oleg was free. He had achieved what he set out to achieve. So how come he wasn’t in a celebratory mood?

‘What’s the occasion?’ Harry asked.

‘Oh, it’s the opening night of some opera. I took some elegant types there earlier this evening.’

‘ Don Giovanni. I was invited.’

‘Why didn’t you go? It’s supposed to be good.’

‘Tragedies make me so sad.’

The driver sent Harry a surprised look in the mirror. Laughed. ‘Tragedies make me so sad?’

His phone rang. It was Klaus Torkildsen.

‘Thought we were never to speak again,’ Harry said.

‘Me too,’ Torkildsen said. ‘But I… well, I checked anyway.’

‘It’s not so important any more,’ Harry said. ‘The case is wrapped up as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Fine, but it might be interesting to know that just before and after the time of the murder Bellman — or at least his phone — was down in Ostfold. It would have been impossible for him to make it to the crime scene and back.’

‘OK, Klaus, thanks.’

‘OK. Never again?’

‘Never again. I’m going now.’

Harry ended the call. Leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

Now he should be happy.

Inside his eyelids he could see sparks from the fireworks.

‘I’ll join you.’

It was over.

She was his again.

Harry moved forward with the check-in queue in the large concourse at Gardermoen. He had a sudden plan, a plan for the rest of his life. A plan anyway. And he had an intoxicating feeling he could not describe with a better word than happy.

The monitor above the check-in desk said ‘Thai Air, Business Class’.

It had happened so fast.

He had gone straight from Nybakk’s house to Martine at the Watchtower to return her phone, but had been told he could keep it because she had a new one. He had allowed himself to be persuaded to accept a coat that was hardly used, so that he looked relatively presentable. Plus three Paracet pills for the pain, but he had refused to let her examine the wound. She would only want to dress it, and there was no time. He had rung Thai Air and fixed himself up with a ticket.