Jo Nesbo - Phantom

The lock on the gate behind Hotel Leon was smashed. It had been broken recently. Harry presumed that was how the two suits had got in the night they came visiting.

Harry went in and, sure enough, the lock on the back door was damaged as well.

Harry climbed the narrow stairs that doubled as an emergency exit. Not a soul in the corridor on the second floor. Harry knocked on 310 to ask Cato if the police had been. Or anyone else. But there was no answer. He put his ear against the door. Silence.

No attempt had been made to repair the door to his room, so a key was, in this respect, superfluous. He pushed at the door and it opened. Noticed the blood that had seeped into the bare cement where he had removed the threshold.

Nothing had been done about the window, either.

Harry didn’t switch on the light, entered regardless, fumbled behind the wardrobe and verified that they had not found the rifle. Nor the box of cartridges, which was still next to the Bible in the bedside-table drawer. And Harry realised the police had not been there, at Hotel Leon; the occupants and neighbours had not deemed it necessary to involve the law on account of a few miserable rounds from a shotgun, at least as long as there were no bodies. He opened the wardrobe. Even his clothes and suitcase were there, as though nothing had happened.

Harry caught sight of the woman in the room opposite.

She was sitting in front of a mirror with her back to him. Combing her hair, from what he could see. She was wearing a dress that looked strangely old-fashioned. Not old, just old-fashioned, like a costume from another era. Without understanding why, Harry shouted through the smashed window. A short yell. The woman didn’t react.

Back on street level, Harry knew he wasn’t going to cope. His neck felt as if it was on fire, and the heat was making his pores pump out sweat. He was drenched and felt the first bouts of the shivers.

The music in the bar had changed. From the open door came Van Morrison’s ‘And It Stoned Me’.

Pain-killing.

Harry walked into the road, heard a shrill desperate ring, and in the next instant a blue-and-white wall filled his field of vision. For four seconds he stood quite motionless in the middle of the street. Then the tram passed and the open bar door was back.

The barman gave a start as he looked up from his newspaper and caught sight of Harry.

‘Jim Beam,’ Harry said.

The barman blinked twice without moving. The newspaper slid to the floor.

Harry pulled euros from his wallet and laid them on the counter. ‘Give me the whole bottle.’

The barman’s jaw had dropped. The EAT tattoo had a roll of fat above the T.

‘Now,’ Harry said. ‘And I’ll be off.’

The barman glanced down at the notes. Looked up at Harry. Reached for the bottle of Jim Beam, keeping his eyes fixed on him.

Seeing the bottle was less than half full, Harry sighed. He slipped it into his coat pocket, looked around, tried to think of some memorable words for a parting shot, gave up, nodded and left.

Harry stopped at the corner of Prinsens and Dronningens gate. First of all he rang directory enquiries. Then he opened the bottle. The smell of bourbon made his stomach knot. But he knew he would not be able to perform what he had to do without an anaesthetic. It was three years since the last time. Perhaps things had improved. He put the bottle to his mouth. Leaned back and tipped it. Three years of sobriety. The poison hit his system like a napalm bomb. Things had not improved; they were worse than ever.

Harry bent forward, stuck out an arm and supported himself on a wall, so that he would not spatter his trousers or shoes.

He heard high heels on the tarmac behind him. ‘Hey, mister. Me beautiful?’

‘Sure,’ Harry managed to utter before his throat was filled. The yellow jet hit the pavement with impressive power and radius, and he heard the high heels castanet into the distance. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried again. Head back. Whiskey and gall ran down. And were regurgitated.

The third time it stayed put. For the time being.

The fourth hit the mark.

The fifth was heaven.

Harry hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address.

Truls Berntsen hurried through the murk. Crossed the car park in front of the apartment block illuminated by lights from good, safe homes where they were bringing out the snacks and pots of coffee, and maybe even a beer, and switching on the TV now the news was over and it was more fun to watch. Truls had rung into Police HQ and said he was ill. They hadn’t asked him what was wrong, they had just enquired if he was going to be away for the three days without a sick note. Truls had answered how the hell could anyone know if they were going to be ill for precisely three days? What a country of bloody shirkers, what bloody hypocritical politicians claiming that people actually wanted to work if they could. Norwegians voted for the Socialist Party because they made it a human right to shirk, and who the hell wouldn’t vote for a party that gave you three days off without a doctor’s note, gave you carte blanche to sit at home and wank or go skiing or recover from a hangover? The Socialist Party knew of course what a perk this was, but still tried to appear responsible, preened themselves with their ‘trust in most people’ and declared the right to malinger as some kind of social reform. The Progress Party was even more bloody infuriating as it bought itself votes with tax cuts and hardly bothered to conceal the fact.

He had been sitting and thinking about this the whole day while he went over his weapons, loading, checking, keeping an eye on the locked door, scrutinising all the vehicles that came into the car park, through the sights of the Marklin, the enormous assassination rifle from a case years ago which the officer in charge of confiscated arms probably still thought was at Police HQ. Truls had known that sooner or later he would have to go out for food, but waited until it was dark and there were not many people about. At a little before eleven o’clock, closing time at Rimi supermarket, he had taken his Steyr, sneaked out and jogged over there. Walked along the aisles with one eye on the food and the other on the customers. Bought a week’s worth of Fjordland rissoles. Small, transparent bags of peeled potatoes, rissoles, creamed peas and gravy. Chuck them in a pan of boiling water for a few minutes, cut open the bags and squelch it onto the plate, and if you closed your eyes, damned if it didn’t remind you of real food.

Truls Berntsen was at the entrance to the apartment block, inserting the key in the lock, when he heard hurried steps behind him in the darkness. He whirled round, frantic, and his hand was already on the pistol butt inside his jacket as he stared into the terrified face of Vigdis A.

‘D-did I frighten you?’ she stammered.

‘No,’ Truls said curtly and went in without holding the door open for her, but heard her manage to squeeze her fat through anyway before it closed.

He pressed the lift button. Frightened? Course he was bloody frightened. He had Siberian Cossacks on his tail. Was there anything about that which was not frightening?

Vigdis A panted behind him. She was as overweight as most of them had become. Not that he would have said no, but why didn’t anyone come straight out with it? Norwegian women had got so fat they were not only going to snuff it from one of a whole sodding range of illnesses, but they would also stop the race from reproducing; they were going to depopulate the country. Because in the end no man could be arsed to wade through so much fat. Apart from their own, of course.

The lift came, they went in and the wires screamed in pain.

He had read that men were putting on at least as much weight, but that it wasn’t visible in the same way. They had smaller bums, and just looked bigger and stronger. As he did. He looked a bloody sight better than ten kilos ago. But women got this rippling, quivering flab that made him want to kick them, see his foot disappear in all the podge. Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the slimming hysteria and applauded the ‘real’ woman’s body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible model. Be happy with the body you’ve got, sort of thing. Much better for hundreds to die of heart disease than one person should die of an eating disorder. And now even Martine looked the same. Right, she was pregnant, he knew that, but he couldn’t get it out of his head that she had become one of them.