Jo Nesbo - Phantom

Harry stubbed out his cigarette on the table. ‘Because I want to know a couple of things first. Why did you kill Gusto? Were you afraid he would inform on you?’

The old man stroked back his white hair, round his Dumbo ears. ‘Gusto had bad blood flowing through his veins, just like me. He was an informer by nature. He would have informed on me earlier, all that was missing was something to gain. But then he became desperate. It was the craving for violin. It’s pure chemistry. The flesh is stronger than the spirit. We all weaken when the craving’s there.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘We all weaken then.’

‘I…’ The old man coughed. ‘I had to let him go.’

‘Go?’

‘Yes. Go. Sink. Disappear. I couldn’t let him take over the businesses, I realised that. He was smart enough, he had inherited that from his father. It was spine he lacked. He inherited that deficiency from his mother. I tried to give him responsibility, but he failed the test.’ The old man kept stroking his hair back, harder and harder, as if it were steeped in something he was trying to clean. ‘Didn’t pass the test. Bad blood. So I decided it would have to be someone else. At first I thought of Andrey and Peter. Siberian Cossacks from Omsk. Cossack means “free man”. Did you know that? Andrey and Peter were my regiment, my stanitsa. They’re loyal to their ataman, faithful to the death. But Andrey and Peter were not businessmen, you know.’ Harry noticed the old man’s gesticulations, as if immersed in his own brooding thoughts. ‘I couldn’t leave the shop to them. So I decided it would have to be Sergey. He was young, had his future in front of him, could be moulded…’

‘You told me you might have had a son yourself once.’

‘Sergey may not have had Gusto’s head for figures, but he was disciplined. Ambitious. Willing to do what was required to be an ataman. So I gave him the knife. There was only one remaining test. For a Cossack to become an ataman in the old days you had to go into the Taiga and come back with a living wolf, tied and bound. Sergey was willing, but I had to see that he could also accomplish chto nuzhno.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The necessary.’

‘Was that son Gusto?’

The old man stroked his hair back so hard his eyes narrowed to two slits.

‘Gusto was six months old when I was sent to prison. His mother sought solace where she could. At least for a short while. She was in no position to take care of him.’

‘Heroin?’

‘The social services took Gusto from her and provided foster-parents. They were in agreement that I, the prisoner, did not exist. She OD’d the following winter. She should have done it before.’

‘You said you came back to Oslo for the same reason as me. Your son.’

‘I’d been told he had moved away from his foster-family, he had strayed off the straight and narrow. I had been thinking of leaving Sweden anyway, and the competition in Oslo wasn’t up to much. I found where Gusto hung out. Studied him from a distance at first. He was so good-looking. So damned good-looking. Like his mother, of course. I could just sit looking at him. Looking and looking, and thinking he’s my son, my own…’ The old man’s voice choked.

Harry stared at his feet, at the nylon cord he had been given instead of a new curtain pole, pressed it into the floor with the sole of his shoe.

‘And then you took him into your business. And tested him to see if he could take over.’

The old man nodded. Whispered: ‘But I never said anything. When he died he didn’t know I was his father.’

‘Why the sudden haste?’

‘Haste?’

‘Why did you need to have someone take over so quickly? First Gusto, then Sergey.’

The old man mustered a weary smile. Leaned forward in his chair, into the light from the reading lamp above the bed.

‘I’m ill.’

‘Mm. Thought it was something like that. Cancer?’

‘The doctors gave me a year. Six months ago. The sacred knife Sergey used had been lying under my mattress. Do you feel any pain in your wound? That’s my suffering the knife has transmitted to you, Harry.’

Harry nodded slowly. It fitted. And it didn’t fit.

‘If you have only months left to live why are you so afraid of being grassed up that you want to kill your own son? His long life for your short one?’

The old man gave a muffled cough. ‘Urkas and Cossacks are the regiment’s simple men, Harry. We swear allegiance to a code, and we stick to it. Not blindly, but with open eyes. We’re trained to discipline our feelings. That makes us masters of our own lives. Abraham said yes to sacrificing his son because-’

‘-it was God’s command. I have no idea what kind of code you’re talking about, but does it say it’s alright to let an eighteen-year-old go to prison for your crimes?’

‘Harry, Harry, have you not understood? I didn’t kill Gusto.’

Harry stared at the old man. ‘Didn’t you just say it was your code? To kill your own son if you had to?’

‘Yes, I did, but I also said I was born of bad people. I love my son. I could never have taken Gusto’s life. Quite the opposite. I say screw Abraham and his god.’ The old man’s laughter morphed into coughing. He laid his hands on his chest, bent over his knees and coughed and coughed.

Harry blinked. ‘Who killed him then?’

The old man straightened up. In his right hand he was holding a revolver. It was a large, ugly object and looked even older than its owner.

‘You should know better than to come to me without a weapon, Harry.’

Harry didn’t answer. The MP5 was at the bottom of a water-filled cellar, the rifle was at Truls Berntsen’s flat.

‘Who killed Gusto?’ Harry repeated.

‘It could have been anyone.’

Harry seemed to hear a creak as the old man’s finger curled around the trigger.

‘It’s not very difficult to kill, Harry. Don’t you agree?’

‘I do,’ Harry said, lifting his foot. There was a whistle under the sole of his foot as the thin nylon cord shot up towards the curtain pole holder.

Harry saw the question marks in the old man’s eyes, saw his brain working lightning-fast with the half-digested bits of information.

The light that didn’t work.

The chair that was in the middle of the room.

Harry who hadn’t searched him.

Harry who hadn’t moved a centimetre from where he was sitting.

And perhaps now he could see the nylon cord in the semi-gloom as it ran from under Harry’s shoe via the curtain pole holder to the ceiling lamp fitting right above his head. Where there was no longer a lamp but the only thing Harry had taken from Blindernveien apart from the priest’s collar. Which was all he had in his mind as he lay on Rudolf Asayev’s four-poster bed, soaking wet, gasping for breath as black dots jumped in and out of his vision and he was sure he was going to pass out any second, but fought to stay conscious, to stay on this side of the darkness. Then he had got up, and taken the zjuk, which was beside the Bible.

Rudolf Asayev hurled himself to the left, thus the steel nails embedded in the brick did not pierce his head but the skin between the collarbone and the shoulder muscle, which continued down to a juncture of nerve fibres, the cervico-brachial plexus, with the result that when, two hundredths of a second later, he pulled the trigger, the muscle in his upper arm was paralysed, causing his revolver to drop seven centimetres. The powder hissed and burned for the thousandth of a second the bullet needed to leave the barrel of the old Nagant. Three thousandths of a second later the bullet bored into the bed frame between Harry’s calves.

Harry got up. Flicked the security catch to the side and pressed the release button. The shaft quivered as the blade sprang out. Harry swung his hand, low, past the hip, with a straight arm, and the long, thin knife blade entered midway between the coat lapels, down the priest’s shirt. He felt the material and skin give, then the blade slid in up to the hilt without any resistance. Harry let go of the knife knowing that Rudolf Asayev was a dying man as the chair tipped back and the Russian hit the floor with a groan. He kicked the chair away, but stayed where he was, curled up like an injured but still dangerous wasp. Harry stood astride him, bent down and pulled the knife out of his body. Looked at the abnormally deep red colour of the blood. From the liver, maybe. The old man’s left hand scrabbled across the floor, round the paralysed right arm, searching for the pistol. And for one wild moment Harry wished the hand would find it, give him the pretext he needed to…