Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  “Ready to begin?” the tattooist asked.

  Sergey hesitated. The tattooist had been right—this was urgent. But why was it so urgent, why couldn’t he wait until the policeman was dead? Because if he was caught after the murder and sent to a Norwegian prison, where, unlike in Russia, there were no tattooists, he wouldn’t be able to get the fucking tattoo he needed.

  But there was another answer to the question as well.

  Was he getting the tattoo before the murder because, deep down, he was afraid? So afraid he was not sure he would be able to go through with it? That was why he had to have the tattoo now, to burn all the bridges behind him, remove all possibilities of a retreat so that he had to carry out the murder? No Siberian urka can live with a lie carved into his skin—that goes without saying. And he had been happy, he knew that he had been happy, so what were these thoughts, where did they come from?

  He knew where they came from.

  The dope seller. The boy with the Arsenal shirt.

  He had started to appear in his dreams.

  “Yes, let’s begin,” Sergey said.

  “The doctor figures Oleg will be on his feet again within a few days,” Rakel said. She was leaning against the fridge holding a cup of tea.

  “Then he’ll have to be moved somewhere that absolutely no one can get their hands on him,” Harry said.

  He was standing by her kitchen window and looking down on the town, where the cars of the afternoon rush hour were crawling like glowworms along the main roads.

  “The police must have such places for witness protection,” she said.

  Rakel had not become hysterical. She had taken the news of the knife attack on Oleg with a kind of resigned composure. As though it were something she had been half-expecting. At the same time Harry could see the indignation on her face. Her fight face.

  “He has to be in a prison, but I’ll talk to the prosecutor about a move,” Hans Christian Simonsen said. He had come as soon as Rakel had called, and he sat at the kitchen table with circles of sweat under the arms of his shirt.

  “See if you can circumvent official channels,” Harry said.

  “What do you mean?” the lawyer asked.

  “The doors were unlocked, so at least one of the prison guards must have been in on this. As long as we’re in the dark about who was involved, we have to assume that everyone could have been.”

  “Aren’t you being a little paranoid now?”

  “Paranoia saves lives,” Harry said. “Can you fix that, Simonsen?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. What about where he is now?”

  “He’s in Ullevål Hospital, and I’ve made sure there are two officers I trust looking after him. One more thing: Oleg’s attacker is in the hospital, but he will end up with restricted rights afterward.”

  “No mail or visitors?” Simonsen asked.

  “Yep. Can you make sure we find out what he says in his statement to the police or his lawyer?”

  “That’s trickier.” Simonsen scratched his head.

  “They probably won’t get a word out of him, but try anyway,” Harry said, buttoning his coat.

  “Where are you going?” Rakel asked, holding his arm.

  “To the source,” Harry said.

  It was eight o’clock in the evening, and the traffic in the capital of the country with the world’s shortest workday had eased long ago. The boy standing on the steps at the bottom of Tollbugata was wearing shirt number 23, Arshavin. He had his hoodie drawn over his head and wore a pair of oversize white Air Jordan sneakers. The Girbaud jeans were ironed and so stiff they could almost stand up by themselves. Full gangsta gear, everything copied down to the last detail from the latest Rick Ross video, and Harry assumed that when the trousers slipped down the right boxer shorts would be revealed, no scars from knives or bullets, but at least one violence-glorifying tattoo.

  Harry walked over to him.

  “Violin, a quarter.”

  The boy looked down at Harry without taking his hands from the pockets of his zipped-up hoodie and nodded.

  “Well?” Harry said.

  “You’ll have to wait, boraz.” The boy spoke with a Pakistani accent that Harry presumed he dropped when he was eating his mother’s meatballs in their one hundred percent Norwegian home.

  “I don’t have time to wait for you to get a group together.”

  “Chillax, it’ll be quick.”

  “I’ll pay you a hundred more.”

  The boy measured Harry with his eyes. And Harry knew roughly what he was thinking: an ugly businessman in a weird suit, regulated consumption, scared to death that colleagues and family will chance by. A man asking to be screwed.

  “Six hundred,” the boy said.

  Harry sighed and nodded.

  “Idra,” the boy said and began to walk.

  Harry presumed the word meant he had to follow.

  They rounded the corner and went through an open gate into a backyard. The dope man was black, probably a North African, and he was leaning against a stack of wooden pallets. His head was bobbing up and down to the beat of the music from an iPod. One earplug hung down by his side.

  “Quarter,” said Rick Ross in the Arsenal shirt.

  The dope man took something from a deep pocket and passed it to Harry palm down so that it couldn’t be seen. Harry looked at the bag he’d been given. The powder was white, but with tiny, dark flecks.

  “I have a question,” Harry said, putting the bag into his jacket pocket.

  The other two braced themselves, and Harry saw the dope man’s hand move behind his back. He guessed he had a small-caliber pistol in his trouser waistband.

  “Either of you seen this girl?” He held up the photo of the Hanssen family.

  They peered at it and shook their heads.

  “I’ve got five thousand for anyone who can give me a lead, a rumor, anything.”

  They looked at each other. Harry waited. Then they shrugged and turned back to Harry. Perhaps they allowed the question because they had experienced this before, a father searching for his daughter in Oslo’s junkie community. Nonetheless, they lacked the requisite cynicism or imagination to invent a story to cash in on a reward.

  “OK,” Harry said. “But say hello to Dubai for me and tell him I have some information that may be of interest. Concerning Oleg. Say he can come to Hotel Leon and ask for Harry.”

  The next moment it was out. And Harry was right—it looked like a Cheetah-series Beretta. Nine millimeter. Snub-nosed, nasty piece of work.

  “Are you baosj?”

  Kebab Norwegian. Police.

  “No,” Harry said, trying to swallow the nausea that always rose whenever he looked down the muzzle of a gun.

  “You’re lying. You don’t shoot violin—you’re an undercover cop.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  The dope man nodded to Rick Ross, who went to Harry and pulled up the sleeve of his jacket. Harry tried to take his eyes off the gun. There was a low whistle. “Looks like Norskie here shoots up after all,” Rick Ross said.

  Harry had used a standard sewing needle, which he’d held over a lighter flame. He’d made deep incisions and wriggled it around in four or five places on his forearm and rubbed ammonium soap into the wounds to give them a more inflamed red color. Finally he had perforated the vein on his elbow so that blood appeared under the skin and created some impressive bruises.

  “I think he’s lying anyway,” the dope man said, moving his legs apart and grabbing the stock of the gun with both hands.

  “Why? Look, he’s got a syringe and aluminum foil in his pocket as well.”

  “He’s not frightened.”

  “What the fuck do you mean? Look at the guy!”

  “He’s not frightened enough. Hey, baosj, show us a syringe now.”

  “Have you gone schiz, Rage?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Chillax. Why so angry?”

  “Don’t think Rage liked you using his name,” Harry
said.

  “You shut up, too! A shot! And use your own bag.”

  Harry had never melted or injected before, at least not when sober, but he had used opium and knew what was involved: melting the substance into a fluid form and drawing it into a syringe. How difficult could that be? He crouched down, poured powder into the foil—some fell to the ground and he licked his finger, dabbed it up and rubbed it into his gums, tried to seem into it. It tasted bitter like other powders he had tested as a policeman. But there was another taste as well. An almost imperceptible tang of ammonium. No, not ammonium. He remembered now—the tang reminded him of the smell of overripe papaya. He flicked the lighter, hoping they attributed his slight clumsiness to the fact that he was working with a gun to his head.

  Two minutes later he had the syringe charged and ready.

  Rick Ross had regained his gangsta coolness. He had rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and was posing with legs wide, arms crossed and head tipped back.

  “Shoot,” he commanded. He twitched and held up a defensive palm. “Not you, Rage!”

  Harry looked at the two of them. Rick Ross had no marks on his bare forearms, and Rage looked a little too alert. Harry pumped his left fist up toward his shoulder twice, flicked his forearm and inserted the needle at the prescribed thirty-degree angle. And hoped it looked professional to someone who did not inject himself.

  “Ahh,” Harry groaned.

  Professional enough for them not to think about how far the needle penetrated a vein or just the flesh.

  He rolled his eyes and his knees gave way.

  Professional enough for them to fall for a faked orgasm.

  “Don’t forget to tell Dubai,” he whispered.

  Then he staggered to the street and swayed westward toward the Royal Palace.

  Only on Dronningens Gate did he straighten up.

  On Prinsens Gate he got the delayed effect. Caused by those parts of the drug that had found blood, that had reached the brain via the roundabout routes of capillaries. It was like a distant echo of the rush from a needle straight into an artery. Yet Harry felt his eyes filling with tears. It was like being reunited with a lover you thought you would never see again. His ears filled, not with heavenly music, but heavenly light. And all at once he knew why they called it violin.

  IT WAS TEN o’clock at night, and the lights were out in the Orgkrim offices, and the corridors were empty. But in Truls Berntsen’s office the computer screen cast a blue light on the policeman sitting with his feet on the desk. He had put fifteen hundred on Man City to win and was about to lose it. But now they had a free kick. Eighteen yards and Tévez.

  He heard the door open, and his right index finger automatically hit the escape button. But it was too late.

  “Hope it’s not my budget paying for streaming.”

  Mikael Bellman took a seat in the only other chair. Truls had noticed that as Bellman had risen through the ranks he had changed the accent they had grown up with in Manglerud. It was only when he talked to Truls that he sometimes went back to their roots.

  “Have you read the paper?”

  Truls nodded. Since there had been nothing else to read he had kept going after the crime and sport pages were finished. He had seen a good deal about the council secretary Isabelle Skøyen. She had begun to be photographed at premieres and social events after Verdens Gang ran a summer profile of her entitled “The Street Sweeper.” She had been credited as the architect behind the cleanup of Oslo’s streets, at the same time launching herself as a national politician. At any rate her steering committee had made progress. Truls thought he had noticed her neckline plunging in step with opposition support, and her smile in the photographs was soon as broad as her backside.

  “I’ve had a very unofficial conversation with the Police Commissioner,” Bellman said. “She’s going to appoint me Chief of Police, reporting to the Minister of Justice.”

  “Shit!” Truls shouted. Tévez had smashed the free kick against the crossbar.

  Bellman got up. “By the way, thought you’d like to know. Ulla and I are going to invite a few people over next Saturday.”

  Truls felt the same stab in his heart as always whenever he heard Ulla’s name.

  “New house, new job, you know. And you helped to build the terrace.”

  Helped? Truls thought. I constructed the whole fucking thing.

  “So unless you’re very busy …” Bellman said, motioning toward the screen, “you’re invited.”

  Truls thanked him and accepted. The way he had ever since they were boys, agreed to be odd man out, to be a spectator to Mikael and Ulla’s obvious happiness. Agreed to another evening when he would have to hide who he was and how he felt.

  “One other matter,” Bellman said. “Do you remember the guy I asked you to delete from the visitors’ register in reception?”

  Truls nodded without batting an eyelid. Bellman had called him and explained that a certain Tord Schultz had dropped by to give him information about drug smuggling and tell him they had a burner in their ranks. He was worried about the man’s safety and the name was to be removed from the register in case this burner was working at HQ and had access.

  “I’ve tried to call him several times, but there’s no answer. I’m a little concerned. Are you absolutely sure Securitas removed his name and no one else found out?”

  “Absolutely, Chief of Police,” Truls said. City was back in defense and scooped the ball away. “By the way, have you heard any more from that annoying inspector at the airport?”

  “No,” Bellman said. “Seems as if he’s accepted it must have been potato flour. Why?”

  “Just wondering, Chief of Police. Regards to the dragon at home.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t use that term, OK?”

  Truls shrugged. “It’s what you call her.”

  “I mean the ‘Chief of Police’ stuff. Won’t be official for a couple of weeks.”

  THE OPERATIONS MANAGER sighed. The air traffic control officer had phoned to say the Bergen flight was delayed because the captain had not turned up or called in, and they had to scramble to get a new one fast.

  “Schultz is having a rough time right now,” said the manager.

  “He’s not answering his phone, either,” said the officer.

  “I was afraid of that. He might be doing some solo trips in his free time.”

  “So I’ve heard, yes. But this is not free time. We almost had to cancel the flight.”

  “It’s a bumpy road at the moment, as I said. I’ll talk to him.”

  “We all have bumpy roads, Georg. I’ll have to write a full report—you understand?”

  The operations manager paused. But gave up. “Of course.”

  As they hung up an image appeared in the operations manager’s memory. One afternoon, barbecue, summer. Campari, Budweiser and enormous steaks straight from Texas, flown in by a trainee. No one saw him and Else sneak into a bedroom. She groaned softly, softly enough not to be heard over the screams of children playing, the incoming flights and carefree laughter outside the open window. Planes coming and going. Tord’s ringing laughter, after another classic flying story. And Tord’s wife’s low groans.

  “You’ve bought violin?”

  Beate Lønn stared in disbelief at Harry, who was sitting in the corner of her office. He had dragged the chair away from the bright morning light into the shadow, where he folded his hands around the mug she had passed him. He had hung his jacket over the back of the chair, and sweat lay like cling wrap over his face.

  “You haven’t …?”

  “You crazy?” Harry slurped the boiling-hot coffee. “Alcoholics can’t be up to that kind of business.”

  “Good, because otherwise I would think that was a botched shot,” she said, pointing.

  Harry looked at his forearm. Apart from the suit, he had only three pairs of underpants, a change of socks and two short-sleeved shirts. He had thought of buying whatever clothes he needed in Oslo, but so far there had
n’t been a free moment. And this morning he had woken up with what seemed so much like a hangover that from habit he almost threw up in the toilet. The place where he’d injected was the shape and color of the U.S.A. when Reagan was re-elected.

  “I’d like you to analyze this for me,” Harry said.

  “Why?”

  “Because of the crime-scene photos showing the bag you found on Oleg.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve got fantastic cameras. You can see the powder was pure white. This powder has brown in it. I want to know what it is.”

  Beate took a magnifying glass from the drawer and leaned over the powder Harry had sprinkled onto the cover of Forensic Magazine.

  “You’re right,” she said. “The samples we’ve had in have been white, but in fact over recent months there hasn’t been a single confiscation, so this is interesting. Especially since an inspector from the police at Gardermoen called the other day and said something similar.”

  “What?”

  “They found a bag of powder in a pilot’s hand luggage. The inspector wondered how we’d come to the conclusion that it was potato flour. He had seen the brown grains in the powder with his own eyes.”

  “Did he think the pilot was smuggling in violin?”

  “Since there hasn’t been a single confiscation of violin on the borders, the inspector has probably never seen it. White heroin is rare. Most of the stuff that winds up here is brown, so the inspector probably thought the two had been mixed. By the way, the pilot wasn’t coming in—he was going out.”

  “Out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where to?”

  “Bangkok.”

  “He was taking potato flour to Bangkok?”

  “Perhaps it was for some Norwegians to make white sauce for their fish balls.” She smiled while blushing at her attempt to be funny.

  “Mm. Something quite different. I’ve just read about that undercover man who was found dead in Gothenburg harbor. There were rumors he’d been a burner. Were there any rumors about him in Oslo?”