Jo Nesbo: Phantom

Truls pretended to be scratching his forehead while using his fingertips to dry the sweat.

‘No,’ he said and heard his own grunted laugh. ‘An idea, that’s all. Forget it.’

The stairs creaked under Stein Hanssen’s weight. He could feel every step and predict every creak and groan. He stopped at the top. Knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ he heard from inside.

Stein Hanssen entered.

The first thing he saw was the suitcase.

‘Packed and ready?’ he asked.

A nod.

‘Did you find the passport?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve ordered a taxi to take you to the airport.’

‘I’m coming.’

‘OK.’ Stein looked around. The way he had in the other rooms. Said his farewells. Told them he wouldn’t be coming back. And listened to the echoes of their childhood. Father’s encouraging voice. Mother’s secure voice. Gusto’s enthusiastic voice. Irene’s happy voice. The only one he didn’t hear was his own. He had been silent.

‘Stein?’ Irene was holding a photograph in her hand. Stein knew which one, she had pinned it over her bed the same evening Simonsen, the solicitor, had brought her here. The photograph showing her with Gusto and Oleg.

‘Yes?’

‘Did you ever feel a desire to kill Gusto?’

Stein didn’t answer. Just thought of that evening.

The phone call from Gusto saying he knew where Irene was. Running to Hausmanns gate. And arriving: the police cars. The voices around him saying the boy inside was dead, shot. And the feeling of excitement. Yes, almost happiness. And after that, the shock. The grief. Yes, in a way he had grieved over Gusto. At the same time as nursing a hope that Irene would at last be clean. That hope had of course been extinguished as the days passed and he realised that Gusto’s death meant he had missed out on the chance to find her.

She was pale. Withdrawal symptoms. It was going to be tough. But they would manage. They would manage between them.

‘Shall we…?’

‘Yes,’ she said, opening the bedside-table drawer. Looking at the photograph. Pressing her lips against it and putting it in the drawer, face down.

Harry heard the door open.

He was sitting motionless in the darkness. Listened to the footsteps cross the sitting-room floor. Saw the movements by the mattresses. Glimpsed the wire as it caught the street lamp outside. The steps went into the kitchen. And the light came on. Harry heard the stove being moved.

He rose and followed.

Harry stood in the doorway watching him on his knees in front of the rathole, opening the bag with trembling hands. Placing objects beside each other. The syringe, the rubber tubing, the spoon, the lighter, the gun. The packages of violin.

The threshold creaked as Harry shifted weight, but the boy didn’t notice, just carried on with his feverish activity.

Harry knew it was the craving. The brain was focused on one thing. He coughed.

The boy stiffened. The shoulders hunched, but he didn’t turn. Sat without moving, his head bowed, staring down at the stash. Didn’t turn.

‘I thought so,’ Harry said. ‘That this is where you would come first. You reckoned the coast was clear now.’

The boy still hadn’t moved.

‘Hans Christian told you we found her for you, didn’t he? Yet you had to come here first.’

The boy got up. And again it struck Harry. How tall he’d become. A man, almost.

‘What do you want, Harry?’

‘I’ve come to arrest you, Oleg.’

Oleg frowned. ‘For possession of a couple of bags of violin?’

‘Not for dope, Oleg. For the murder of Gusto.’

‘Don’t!’ he repeated.

But I had the needle deep into a vein, which was trembling with expectation.

‘I thought it would be Stein or Ibsen,’ I said. ‘Not you.’

I didn’t see his fricking foot coming. It hit the needle, which sailed through the air and landed at the back of the kitchen, by the sink full of dishes.

‘Fuck’s sake, Oleg,’ I said, looking up at him.

Oleg stared at Harry for a long time.

It was a serious, calm stare, without any real surprise. More like it was testing the lie of the land, trying to find its bearings.

And when he did speak, Oleg sounded more curious than angry or confused.

‘But you believed me, Harry. When I told you it was someone else, someone with a balaclava, you believed me.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘I did believe you. Because I so wanted to believe you.’

‘But, Harry,’ Oleg said softly, gazing down at the bag of powder he had opened, ‘if you can’t believe your best friend what can you believe?’

‘Evidence,’ Harry said, feeling his throat thicken.

‘What evidence? We found explanations for the evidence, Harry. You and I, we crushed the evidence between us.’

‘The other evidence. The new stuff.’

‘Which new stuff?’

Harry pointed to the floor by Oleg. ‘The gun there is an Odessa. It uses the same calibre as Gusto was shot with, Makarov, nine by eighteen millimetres. Whatever happens, the ballistics report will state with one hundred per cent certainty that this gun is the murder weapon, Oleg. And it has your dabs on it. Only yours. If anyone else used it and wiped their prints afterwards, yours would have been removed as well.’

Oleg touched the gun, as if to confirm it was the one they were talking about.

‘And then there’s the syringe,’ Harry said. ‘There are lots of fingerprints on it, perhaps from two people. But it is definitely your thumbprint on the plunger. The plunger you have to press when you’re shooting up. And on that print there are particles of gunpowder, Oleg.’

Oleg ran a finger along the syringe. ‘Why is there new evidence against me?’

‘Because you said in your statement you were high when you came into the room. But the gunpowder particles prove you injected the needle after because you had the particles on you. It proves you shot Gusto first and injected yourself afterwards. You were not high at the moment of the act, Oleg. This was premeditated murder.’

Oleg nodded slowly. ‘And you’ve checked my fingerprints on the gun and the syringe against the police register. So they already know that I-’

‘I haven’t contacted the police. I’m the only person who knows about this.’

Oleg swallowed. Harry saw the tiny movements in his throat. ‘How do you know they’re my prints if you didn’t check with the police?’

‘I had other prints I could compare them with.’

Harry took his hand from his coat pocket. Placed the Game Boy on the kitchen table.

Oleg stared at the Game Boy. Blinked and blinked as though he had something in his eye.

‘What made you suspect me?’ he whispered.

‘The hatred,’ Harry said. ‘The old man, Rudolf Asayev, said I should follow the hatred.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘He’s the man you called Dubai. It took me a while to realise he was referring to his own hatred. Hatred for you. Hatred for the fact that you killed his son.’

‘Son?’ Oleg raised his head and looked blankly at Harry.

‘Yes. Gusto was his son.’

Oleg dropped his gaze, squatted and stared at the floor. ‘If…’ He shook his head. Started afresh. ‘If it’s true Dubai was Gusto’s father and if he hated me so much why didn’t he make sure I was killed in prison straight away?’

‘Because you were exactly where he wanted you. Because for him prison was worse than death. Prison eats your soul, death only liberates it. Prison was what he wished for those he hated most. You, Oleg. And he had total control over what you did there. It was only when you began to talk to me that you represented a danger, and he had to be content with killing you. But he didn’t manage that.’