Jo Nesbo - Phantom

‘Why, Oleg?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I thought for a while it was all about Irene. Jealousy. Or you knew he had sold her to someone. But if he was the only person who knew where she was, you couldn’t kill him until he had told you. So it must have been about something else. Something as strong as love for a woman. Because you’re no killer, are you.’

‘You tell me.’

‘You’re a man with a classic motive that has driven men, good men, to perform terrible deeds, myself included. The investigation has gone round in circles. Getting nowhere. I’m back where we started. With a love affair. The worst kind.’

‘What do you know about that?’

‘Because I’ve been in love with the same woman. Or her sister. She’s drop-dead gorgeous at night, and as ugly as sin when you wake next morning.’ Harry lit the black cigarette with the gold filter and the Russian imperial eagle. ‘But when night comes you’ve forgotten and you’re in love again. And nothing can compete with this love, not even Irene. Am I wrong?’

Harry took a drag and watched Oleg.

‘What do you want me to say? You know everything anyway.’

‘I want to hear you say it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want you to hear yourself say it. So that you can hear how sick and meaningless it is.’

‘What? That it’s sick to shoot someone because they try to nick your dope? The dope you’ve slogged your guts out to scrape together?’

‘Can’t you hear how banal that sounds?’

‘Says you!’

‘Yes, says me. I lost the best woman in the world because I couldn’t resist. And you’ve killed your best friend, Oleg. Say his name.’

‘Why?’

‘Say his name.’

‘I’ve got the gun.’

‘Say his name.’

Oleg grinned. ‘Gusto. What’s-’

‘Once more.’

Oleg tilted his head and looked at Harry. ‘Gusto.’

‘Once more!’ Harry yelled.

‘Gusto!’ Oleg yelled back.

‘Once m-’

‘Gusto!’ Oleg took a deep breath. ‘Gusto! Gusto…’ His voice had begun to tremble. ‘Gusto!’ It burst at the seams. ‘Gusto. Gus…’ A sob intervened. ‘… to.’ Tears fell as he squeezed his eyes and whispered: ‘Gusto. Gusto Hanssen…’

Harry took a step forward, but Oleg raised the gun.

‘You’re young, Oleg. You can still change.’

‘And what about you, Harry? Can’t you change?’

‘I wish I could, Oleg. I wish I had, then I would’ve taken better care of both of you. But it’s too late for me. I am the person I am.’

‘Which is? Alkie? Traitor?’

‘Policeman.’

Oleg laughed. ‘Is that it? Policeman? Not a person or anything?’

‘Mostly a policeman.’

‘Mostly a policeman,’ Oleg repeated with a nod. ‘Isn’t that banal?’

‘Banal and dull,’ Harry said, taking the half-smoked cigarette and regarding it with disapproval, as if it wasn’t working as it should. ‘Because that means I have no choice, Oleg.’

‘Choice?’

‘I have to make sure you take your punishment.’

‘You don’t work for the police any more, Harry. You’re unarmed. And no one else knows that you know or that you’re here. Think of Mum. Think about me! For once, think about us, all three of us.’ His eyes were full of tears, and there was a shrill, metallic tone of desperation in his voice. ‘Why can’t you just go away now, and then we’ll forget everything, then we’ll say this hasn’t happened?’

‘I wish I could,’ Harry said. ‘But you’ve got me cornered. I know what happened, and I have to stop you.’

‘So why did you let me take the gun?’

Harry shrugged. ‘I can’t arrest you. You have to give yourself up. It’s your race.’

‘Give myself up? Why should I? I’ve just been released!’

‘If I arrest you I’ll lose both your mother and you. And without you I am nothing. I can’t live without you. Do you understand, Oleg? I’m a rat that’s been locked out and there’s only one way in. And it goes through you.’

‘So let me go! Let’s forget the whole business and start afresh!’

Harry shook his head. ‘Premeditated murder, Oleg. I can’t. You’re the one with the gun, you have the key now. You have to think about all three of us. If we go to Hans Christian he can sort things out and the punishment will be substantially reduced.’

‘But it’ll be long enough for me to lose Irene. No one would wait that long.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you’ve lost her already.’

‘You’re lying! You always lie!’ Harry watched Oleg blinking the tears from his eyes. ‘What will you do if I refuse to give myself up?’

‘Then I’ll have to arrest you now.’

A groan escaped Oleg’s lips, a sound halfway between a gasp and disbelieving laughter.

‘You’re mad, Harry.’

‘It’s the way I’m made, Oleg. I do what I have to do. As you have to do what you have to do.’

‘ Have to? You make it sound like a bloody curse.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Bullshit!’

‘Break the curse then, Oleg. Because you don’t really want to kill again, do you.’

‘Get out!’ Oleg screamed. The gun shook in his hand. ‘Go on! You’re not in the police any more!’

‘Correct,’ Harry said. ‘But I am, as I said…’ He clenched his lips around the black cigarette and inhaled deeply. Closed his eyes, and for two seconds he stood there looking as if he was relishing it. Then he let air and smoke wheeze out from his lungs. ‘… a policeman.’ He dropped the cigarette on the floor in front of him. Trod on it as he moved towards Oleg. Lifted his head. Oleg was almost as tall as he was. Harry met the boy’s eyes behind the sights of the raised gun. Saw him cock the gun. Already knew the outcome. He was in the way, the boy had no choice either; they were two unknowns in an equation without a solution, two heavenly bodies on course for an inevitable collision, a game of Tetris only one of them could win. Only one of them wanted to win. He hoped Oleg would have the gumption to get rid of the gun afterwards, that he would catch the plane to Bangkok, that he would never breathe a word to Rakel, that he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night screaming with the room full of ghosts from the past and that he would succeed in making himself a life worth living. For his own was not. Not any longer. He steeled himself and kept walking, felt the weight of his body, saw the black eye of the muzzle grow. One autumn day, Oleg, ten years old, his hair ruffled by the wind, Rakel, Harry, orange foliage, staring into the pocket camera, waiting for the click of the self-timer. Pictorial proof that they had made it, been there, reached the peak of happiness. Oleg’s index finger, white at the knuckle as it curled tighter round the trigger. There was no way back. There had never been time to catch the plane. There had never been any plane, no Hong Kong, just a notion of a life none of them had been in a position to live. Harry felt no fear. Only sorrow. The brief salvo sounded like a single shot and made the windows vibrate. He felt the physical pressure from the bullets hitting him in the middle of the chest. The recoil made the barrel jump and the third bullet hit him in the head. He fell. Beneath him, darkness. And he plunged into it. Until it swallowed him up and swept him into a cooling, painless nothing. At last, he thought. And that was Harry Hole’s final thought. That at long, long last he was free.

The mother rat listened. The screams of her young were even clearer now that the church bells had chimed ten and fallen silent and the police siren that had been approaching had faded into the distance again. Only the faint heartbeats were left. Somewhere in rat memory was stored the smell of gunpowder and another, younger human body lying here and bleeding on the same kitchen floor. But that had been in the summer, long before the young had been born. And the body had not blocked the way to the nest.