Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  But it was only a few grains, which he could easily explain away by saying he had lent his ID card to someone at a party. That wasn’t his biggest problem now. The bag. It would be searched. As a pilot he had trained in and practiced emergency procedures so often it was almost automatic. That was the intention, of course; even when panic seized you this was what your brain would do. How many times had he visualized this situation: the customs officials asking him to go with them? Thinking what he would do? Practicing it in his mind? He turned to the flight attendant with a resigned smile, caught sight of her name tag. “I’ve been picked out, it seems, Kristin. Could you take my bag?”

  “The bag comes with us,” the official said.

  Tord Schultz turned back. “I thought you said the dog picked me out, not the bag.”

  “That’s true, but—”

  “There are flight documents inside that the crew needs to check. Unless you want to take responsibility for delaying a full Airbus 340 to Bangkok.” He noticed that he—quite literally—had puffed himself up, filled his lungs and expanded his chest muscles in his captain’s jacket. “If we miss our slot that could mean a delay of several hours and a loss of hundreds of thousands of kroner for the airline.”

  “I’m afraid rules—”

  “Three hundred and forty-two passengers,” Schultz interrupted. “Many of them children.” He hoped she heard a captain’s grave concern, not the incipient panic of a dope smuggler.

  The official patted the dog on the head and looked at him.

  She looks like a housewife, he thought. A woman with children and responsibility. A woman who should understand his predicament.

  “The bag comes with us,” she said.

  Another official appeared in the background. Stood there, legs apart, arms crossed.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Tord said, sighing.

  THE HEAD OF Oslo’s Crime Squad, Gunnar Hagen, leaned back in his swivel chair and studied the man in the linen suit. It had been three years since the sewn-up gash in his face had been bloodred and he had looked like a man on his last legs. But now his ex-subordinate looked healthy; he had put on a few sorely needed pounds, and his shoulders filled out the suit. Suit. Hagen remembered the murder investigator in jeans and boots, never anything else. The other difference was the sticker on his lapel saying he was not staff but a visitor: HARRY HOLE.

  But the posture in the chair was the same, more horizontal than vertical.

  “You look better,” Hagen said.

  “Your town does, too,” Harry said with an unlit cigarette bobbing between his teeth.

  “You think so?”

  “Wonderful opera house. Fewer junkies in the streets.”

  Hagen got up and went to the window. From the sixth floor of Police HQ he could see Oslo’s new district, Bjørvika, bathed in sunshine. The cleanup was in full flow, the demolition work over.

  “There’s been a marked fall in the number of fatal ODs in the last year,” Harry remarked.

  “Prices have gone up, consumption down. And the City Council got what it craved. Oslo no longer tops OD stats in Europe.”

  “Happy days are here again.” Harry put his hands behind his head and looked as if he were going to slide out of the chair.

  Hagen sighed. “You didn’t say what brings you to Oslo, Harry.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “No. Or, more specifically, to Crime Squad.”

  “Isn’t it normal to visit former colleagues?”

  “Yes, for other, normal, sociable people, it is.”

  “Well.” Harry bit into the filter of the Camel cigarette. “My occupation is murder.”

  “Was murder, don’t you mean?”

  “Let me reformulate that: My profession, my area of expertise, is murder. And it’s still the only field I know something about.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “To practice my occupation. To investigate murders.”

  Hagen arched an eyebrow. “You’d like to work for me again?”

  “Why not? Unless I’m very much mistaken, I was one of the best.”

  “Correction,” Hagen said, turning back to the window. “You were the best.” And added in a lower tone: “The best and the worst.”

  “I would prefer one of the drug murders.”

  Hagen gave a dry smile. “Which one? We’ve had four in the last six months. We haven’t made an ounce of headway with any of them.”

  “Gusto Hanssen.”

  Hagen didn’t answer, continued to study the people outside, sprawled over the grass. And the thoughts came unforced. Welfare cheats. Thieves. Terrorists. Why did he see that instead of hardworking employees enjoying a few well-earned hours in the September sunshine? The police look. The police blindness. He half-listened to Harry’s voice behind him.

  “Gusto Hanssen, nineteen years old. Known to police, pushers and users. Found dead in a flat on Hausmanns Gate on July 12. Bled to death after a shot to the chest.”

  Hagen burst out laughing. “Why do you want the only one that’s cleared up?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Yes, I do.” Hagen sighed. “But if I were to employ you again I would put you on one of the others. On the undercover-cop case.”

  “I want this one.”

  “There are about a hundred reasons why you will never be put on that case, Harry.”

  “Which are?”

  Hagen turned to Harry. “Perhaps it’s enough to mention the first. The case has already been solved.”

  “And beyond that?”

  “We don’t have the case. Kripos does. I don’t have any vacancies. Quite the opposite—I’m trying to make cuts. You’re not eligible. Should I go on?”

  “Mm. Where is he?”

  Hagen pointed out the window. Across the lawn to the gray-stone building behind the yellow leaves of the linden trees.

  “Botsen,” Harry said. “On remand.”

  “For the moment.”

  “Visits out of bounds?”

  “Who traced you in Hong Kong and told you about the case? Was it—”

  “No,” Harry interrupted.

  “So?”

  “So.”

  “Who?”

  “I might have read about it online.”

  “Hardly,” Hagen said with a thin smile and lifeless eyes. “The case was in the papers for one day before it was forgotten. And there were no names. Only an article about a drugged-up junkie who had shot another junkie over dope. Nothing of any interest for anyone. Nothing to make the case stand out.”

  “Apart from the fact that the two junkies were teenage boys,” Harry said. “Nineteen years old. And eighteen.” His voice had changed timbre.

  Hagen shrugged. “Old enough to kill, old enough to die. Next year they would have been called up for military service.”

  “Could you arrange a meeting for me?”

  “Who told you, Harry?”

  Harry rubbed his chin. “Friend in Krimteknisk.”

  Hagen smiled. And this time the smile reached his eyes. “You’re so damned kind, Harry. To my knowledge, you have three friends in the police force. Among them Bjørn Holm in Krimteknisk. And Beate Lønn in Krimteknisk. So which one was it?”

  “Beate. Will you arrange a visit?”

  Hagen sat on the edge of his desk and observed Harry. Looked down at the telephone.

  “On one condition, Harry. You promise to keep miles away from this case. It’s all sunshine and roses between us and Kripos now, and I could do without any more trouble with them.”

  Harry grimaced. He had sunk so low in the chair now he could study his belt buckle. “So you and the Kripos king have become bosom buddies?”

  “Mikael Bellman stopped working for Kripos,” Hagen said. “Hence, sunshine and roses.”

  “Got rid of the psychopath? Happy days …”

  “On the contrary.” Hagen’s laugh was hollow. “Bellman is more present than ever. He’s in this building.”

  “Oh,
shit. Here in Crime Squad?”

  “God forbid. He’s been running Orgkrim for more than a year.”

  “You’ve got new wombos, I can hear.”

  “Organized crime. They merged a load of the old sections. Burglary, Trafficking, Narc. It’s all Orgkrim now. More than two hundred employees, biggest unit in the Crime Department.”

  “Mm. More than he had in Kripos.”

  “Yet his salary went down. And you know what that means when people take lower-paid jobs?”

  “They’re after more power,” Harry said.

  “He was the one who got the drug trade under control, Harry. Good undercover work. Arrests and raids. There are fewer gangs and there’s no infighting now. OD figures are, as I said, on the way down.” Hagen now pointed a finger at the ceiling. “And Bellman’s on the way up. The boy’s going places, Harry.”

  “Me, too,” Harry said, rising to his feet. “To Botsen. I’m counting on there being a visitor’s permit in reception by the time I arrive.”

  “If we’ve got a deal?”

  “ ’Course we have,” Harry said, grabbing his ex-boss’s outstretched hand. He pumped it twice and made for the door. Hong Kong had been a good school for lying. He heard Hagen lift the telephone receiver, but as he reached the threshold he turned nonetheless.

  “Who’s the third?”

  “What?” Hagen was looking down at the keypad while tapping with a heavy finger.

  “The third friend I have in the force?”

  Gunnar Hagen put the receiver to his ear, sent Harry a weary look and said with a sigh: “Who do you think?” And: “Hello? Hagen here. I’d like a visitor’s permit … Yes?” Hagen laid a hand over the receiver. “No problem. They’re eating now, but get there around twelve.”

  Harry smiled, mouthed a thank-you and closed the door quietly after him.

  TORD SCHULTZ STOOD in the booth, buttoning up his trousers and putting on his jacket. They had stopped short of examining orifices. The customs official who had stopped him was waiting outside. Standing there like a professor after an oral dissertation.

  “Thank you for being so cooperative,” she said, indicating the exit.

  Tord guessed they’d had long discussions about whether they would say, “We’re sorry,” whenever a drug-sniffing dog had identified someone, but no dope was found. The individual stopped, delayed, suspected and shamed would undoubtedly consider an apology appropriate. But should you complain about someone doing his or her job? Dogs identified innocent people all the time, and an apology would be a partial admission that there was a flaw in the procedure, a failure in the system. On the other hand, they could see by his stripes that he was a captain. Not a three-striper, not one of the failed fifty-year-olds who had stayed in the right-hand seat as a first officer because he had messed up his career. No, he had four stripes, which showed that he had order, control; he was a man who was a master of the situation and his own life. Showed that he belonged to the airport’s Brahmin caste. A captain was a person who ought to welcome a complaint from a customs official, whether it was appropriate or not.

  “Not at all—it’s good to know someone is on the mark,” Tord said, looking for his bag. In the worst-case scenario they had searched it; the dog hadn’t detected anything there. And the metal plates around the space where the package was hidden were still impenetrable for existing X-rays.

  “It’ll be here soon,” she said.

  There were a couple of seconds when they silently regarded each other.

  Divorced, Tord thought.

  At that moment another official appeared.

  “Your bag …” he said.

  Tord looked at him. Saw it in his eyes. Felt a lump grow in his stomach, rise, nudge his esophagus. How? How?

  “We took out everything and weighed it,” he said. “An empty twenty-six-inch Samsonite Aspire GRT weighs twelve-point-eight pounds. Yours weighs thirteen-point-nine. Would you mind explaining why?”

  The official was too professional to smile overtly, but Tord Schultz still saw the triumph shining in his face. The official leaned forward a fraction, lowered his voice.

  “Or shall we?”

  HARRY WENT INTO the street after eating at Olympen. The old, slightly dissipated hostelry he remembered had been renovated into an expensive west Oslo version of an east Oslo place, with large paintings of the town’s old working-class district. It wasn’t that it wasn’t attractive, with the chandeliers and everything. Even the mackerel had been good. It just wasn’t … Olympen.

  He lit a cigarette and crossed Botsparken between Police HQ and the prison’s old gray walls. He passed a man putting a tatty red poster on a tree and banging a staple gun against the bark of the ancient, and protected, linden. He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he was committing a serious offense in full view of all the front windows of the building that contained the biggest collection of police officers in Norway. Harry paused for a moment. Not to stop the crime, but to see the poster. It advertised a concert with Russian Amcar Club at Sardines. Harry could remember the long-dissolved band and the derelict club. Olympen. Harry Hole. This was clearly the year for the resurrection of the dead. He was about to move on when he heard a tremulous voice behind him.

  “Got ’ny violin?”

  Harry turned. The man behind him was wearing a new, clean G-Star jacket. He stooped forward as though there were a strong wind at his back, and he had the unmistakable bowed heroin knees. Harry was going to reply when he realized G-Star was addressing the poster man. But he kept on walking without answering. New wombos for units, new terms for dope. Old bands, old clubs.

  The façade of Oslo District Prison—Botsen, in popular parlance—was built in the mid-1800s and consisted of an entrance squeezed between two larger wings, which always reminded Harry of a detainee between two policemen. He rang the bell, peered into the video camera, heard the low buzz and shoved the door open. Inside stood a uniformed prison officer, who escorted him up the stairs, through a door, past two other officers and into the rectangular, windowless visitors’ room. Harry had been there before. This was where the inmates met their nearest and dearest. A halfhearted attempt had been made to create a homey atmosphere. He avoided the sofa, sitting down on a chair instead, well aware of what went on during the few minutes the inmate was allowed to spend with a spouse or girlfriend.

  He waited. Noticed he still had the Police HQ sticker on his lapel, pulled it off and put it in his pocket. The dream of the narrow corridor and the avalanche had been worse than usual last night—he had been buried and his mouth had been stuffed with snow. But that was not why his heart was beating now. Was it with expectation? Or terror?

  The door opened before he had a chance to reach a conclusion.

  “Twenty minutes,” the prison officer said, and left, slamming the door behind him.

  The boy standing before him was so changed that for a second Harry had been on the point of shouting that this was the wrong person, was not him. This boy was wearing Diesel jeans and a black hoodie advertising Machine Head, which Harry realized was not a reference to the old Deep Purple record but—having calculated the time difference—a new heavy-metal band. Heavy metal was of course a clue, but the proof was the eyes and high cheekbones. To be precise: Rakel’s brown eyes and high cheekbones. It was almost a shock to see the resemblance. Granted, he had not inherited his mother’s beauty—his forehead was too prominent for that, lending the boy a bleak, almost aggressive appearance. Which was reinforced by the sleek bangs Harry had always assumed he had inherited from his father in Moscow. An alcoholic the boy had never really known properly—he was only a few years old when Rakel had brought him back to Oslo. Where later she was to meet Harry.

  Rakel.

  The great love of his life. As simple as that. And as complicated.

  Oleg. Bright, serious Oleg. Oleg, who had been so introverted, who would not open up to anyone, apart from Harry. Harry had never told Rakel, but he knew more about what Oleg thought, felt an
d wanted than she did. Oleg and him playing Tetris on his Game Boy, equally anxious to smash the record. Oleg and him skating at Valle Hovin. The time Oleg wanted to become a long-distance runner and in fact had the talent for it. Oleg, who smiled, patiently and indulgently, whenever Harry promised that in the autumn or spring they would go to London to see Tottenham playing at White Hart Lane. Oleg, who sometimes called him Dad when it was late, he was sleepy and had lost concentration. It was years since Harry had seen him, years since Rakel had taken him from Oslo, away from the grisly reminders of the Snowman, away from Harry’s world of violence and murder.

  And now he was standing there by the door; he was eighteen years old, half grown up and looking at Harry without an expression, or at least one Harry could interpret.

  “Hi,” Harry said. Shit, he hadn’t tested his voice; it came out as a hoarse rasp. The boy would think he was on the verge of tears or something. As if to distract himself, or Oleg, Harry pulled out a pack of Camel cigarettes and poked one between his lips.

  He peered up and saw the flush that had spread across Oleg’s face. And the anger. The explosive anger that appeared from nowhere, darkening his eyes and making the blood vessels on his neck and forehead bulge and quiver like guitar strings.

  “Relax—I won’t light it,” Harry said, nodding to the NO SMOKING sign on the wall.

  “It’s Mom, isn’t it?” The voice was also older. And thick with fury.

  “What is?”

  “She’s the one who sent for you.”

  “No, she didn’t, I—”

  “ ’Course she did.”

  “No, Oleg, in fact she doesn’t even know I’m in the country.”

  “You’re lying! You’re lying, as usual!”

  Harry gaped at him. “As usual?”

  “The way you lie that you’ll always be there for us and all that crap. But it’s too late now. So you can just go back to … Timbuktu!”

  “Oleg! Listen to me—”

  “No! I won’t listen to you. You’ve got no business here! You can’t come and play dad now—do you understand?” Harry saw the boy swallow hard. Saw the fury ebb, only for a new wave of blackness to engulf him. “You’re no one to us anymore. You were someone who drifted in, hung around for a few years and then …” Oleg made an attempt to snap his fingers, but they slipped off each other without a sound. “Gone.”