Jo Nesbo - Phantom

Harry got off the airport express, crossed the bridge to the Opera House, walked over the Italian marble towards the main entrance. Through the glass he could see the elegantly dressed people making conversation, with finger food and drinks behind the ropes in the expensive foyer.

Outside the entrance stood a man wearing a suit and an earpiece, his hands in front of his crotch as if facing a free kick. Broad-shouldered, but no beef. Trained eyes that had spotted Harry long ago, and were now studying things around him that might have some significance. Which could only mean that he was a policeman in PST, the Norwegian security service, and that the Chief of Police or someone from the government was present. The man took two steps towards Harry as he approached.

‘Sorry, private party…’ he began, but stopped when he saw Harry’s ID card.

‘It’s nothing to do with your Chief, pal,’ Harry said. ‘Just need to have a few words with someone. Official business.’

The man nodded, spoke into the microphone on his lapel and let Harry pass.

The foyer was a huge igloo which Harry could see was populated by many faces he recognised despite his long exile: the press poseurs, TV’s talking heads, entertainers from sport and politics, plus culture’s eminences more or less grises. And Harry saw what Isabelle Skoyen had meant when she’d said it was hard to find a tall enough date when she wore heels. She was easy to spot towering above the assembled guests.

Harry strode over the rope and ploughed a path through with a repeated ‘sorry’ as white wine slopped around him.

Isabelle was speaking to a man who was half a head smaller than her, but her ingratiating, enthusiastic facial expression suggested to Harry that he was several heads higher than her in power and status. Harry was three metres away when a man appeared in front of him.

‘I’m the officer who’s just been talking to your colleague outside,’ Harry said. ‘I’m going to have a word with her.’

‘Be my guest,’ said the guard, and Harry thought he could hear a certain subtext.

Harry took the last steps.

‘Hi, Isabelle,’ he said and saw the surprise on her face. ‘Hope I’m not interrupting… your career?’

‘Inspector Hole,’ she answered with a screech of laughter as if sharing an in-joke.

The man beside her was quick on the draw with his hand and said — rather superfluously — his name. A long career on the top floor of City Hall had presumably taught him that popularity with the common man was rewarded on election day. ‘Did you enjoy the performance, Inspector?’

‘Yes and no,’ Harry said. ‘I was mostly glad it was over, and I was on my way home when I realised that there were a couple of things I hadn’t got clear.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, as Don Giovanni’s a thief and a philanderer surely it’s only right and proper that he should be punished in the final act. I think I understood who he is, the statue that comes to Don Giovanni and takes him down to hell. What I’m wondering, however, is who told him he could find Don Giovanni at that particular spot? Can you answer me that…?’ Harry turned. ‘Isabelle?’

Isabelle’s smile was rigid. ‘If you’ve got a conspiracy theory it’s always interesting to hear. But perhaps another time. Right now I’m speaking to-’

‘I need to have a couple of words with her,’ Harry said, facing her interlocutor. ‘By your leave, of course.’

Harry saw that Isabelle was about to protest, but the interlocutor was quicker. ‘Of course.’ He smiled, nodded and turned to an elderly couple who had been queueing for an audience.

Harry took Isabelle by the arm and led her towards the toilet signs.

‘You stink,’ she hissed as he placed his hands on her shoulders and pressed her up against the wall beside the entrance to the men’s toilets.

‘Suit’s been in the skip a couple of times,’ Harry said, and saw they were attracting a few looks from people around them. ‘Listen, we can do this in a civilised or a brutal way. What’s the basis of your cooperation with Mikael Bellman?’

‘Go to hell, Hole.’

Harry kicked the door to the toilets open and dragged her in.

A man in a dinner jacket by a sink sent them an astonished look from the mirror as Harry slammed Isabelle against a cubicle door and forced his forearm against her throat.

‘Bellman was at yours when Gusto was killed,’ Harry wheezed. ‘Gusto had Bellman’s blood under his nails. Dubai’s burner is Bellman’s closest colleague and friend. If you don’t talk now I’ll ring my man at Aftenposten and have it in tomorrow’s paper. And then I’ll place everything I have on the public prosecutor’s desk. So what’s it going to be?’

‘Excuse me.’ It was the man in the dinner jacket. He maintained a respectful distance. ‘Any help required?’

‘Get the fuck out of here!’

The man seemed shocked, perhaps not so much at the words but the fact that it was Isabelle who had uttered them, and he shuffled out.

‘We were shagging,’ Isabelle said, half strangled.

Harry let her go and he could tell from her breath that she had been drinking champagne.

‘You and Bellman were shagging?’

‘I know he’s married, and we were shagging, that’s all,’ she said, rubbing her neck. ‘Gusto appeared out of nowhere and clawed Bellman as he was being thrown out. If you want to tell the press about it, go ahead. I assume you’ve never shagged a married woman. But you might consider what press headlines will do to Bellman’s wife and children.’

‘And how did you and Bellman meet? Are you trying to tell me this triangle with Gusto and you two is quite by chance?’

‘How do you think people in positions of power meet, Harry? Look around you. Look at who’s here for the party. Everyone knows Bellman’s going to be Oslo’s new Chief of Police.’

‘And that you’re going to get a position in City Hall?’

‘We met at some opening or other, a premiere, a private view, don’t remember what. That’s how it is. You can ring and ask Mikael when it was. But not tonight perhaps, he’s having quality time with the family. That’s just… well, that’s how it is.’

That’s how it is. Harry stared at her.

‘What about Truls Berntsen?’

‘Who?’

‘He’s their burner, isn’t he? Who sent him to Hotel Leon to take care of me? Was it you? Or Dubai?’

‘What in heaven’s name are you going on about?’

Harry could see. She really didn’t have a clue who Truls Berntsen was.

Isabelle Skoyen started to laugh. ‘Harry, don’t look so crestfallen.’

He could have been sitting on a plane to Bangkok. To another life.

He was already on his way out.

‘Wait, Harry.’

He turned. She was leaning against the cubicle door and had pulled up her skirt. So high that he could see stocking tops and garters. A lock of blonde hair fell over her brow.

‘Now that we have the toilets all to ourselves…’

Harry met her eyes. They were misty. Not with alcohol, not with desire, there was something else. Was she crying? Tough, lonely, self-despising Isabelle Skoyen? And? She was yet another bitter person willing to ruin others’ lives to get what they thought was their birthright: to be loved.

The door continued to swing both ways after Harry had left, chafed against the rubber seal, faster and faster, like an accelerating and final round of applause.

Harry walked back over the covered bridge to Oslo Central, down the steps to Plata. There was a twenty-four-hour chemist at the other end, but the queue was always so long, and he knew that over-the-counter pills did not have the muscle to kill the pain. He continued past Heroin Park. It had started raining, and the street lamps shimmered in the wet tramlines up Prinsens gate. He considered the case as he walked. Nybakk’s shotgun in Oppsal was the easier option. Furthermore, a shotgun gave him more room for manoeuvre. To retrieve the rifle from behind the wardrobe in room 301 he would have to enter Hotel Leon unobserved, and he couldn’t even be sure they hadn’t already found it. But the rifle was more final.