Phantom

by Jo Nesbo

  Stig Nybakk’s screams followed Harry all the way to the front door. The screams of someone who was totally, totally alone with his own guilt, his own ghosts, his own loneliness, his own decisions. Yes, there was something familiar about him. Harry slammed the door hard behind him.

  HARRY HAILED A taxi on Vetlandsveien and asked the driver to go to Urtegata.

  His neck ached and throbbed as if it had a pulse of its own, had become alive, a locked-up, inflamed animal made of bacteria that wanted out. Harry asked if the driver had any painkillers in the car, but he shook his head.

  As they turned toward Bjørvika Harry saw rockets exploding in the sky above the Opera House. Someone was celebrating something. It struck him that he ought to do some celebrating himself. He had done it. He had found Irene. And Oleg was free. He had achieved what he had set out to achieve. So how come he wasn’t in a celebratory mood?

  “What’s the occasion?” Harry asked.

  “Oh, it’s the opening night of some opera. I took some elegant types there earlier this evening.”

  “Don Giovanni. I was invited.”

  “Why didn’t you go? It’s supposed to be good.”

  “Tragedies make me so sad.”

  The driver sent Harry a surprised look in the mirror. Laughed. “ ‘Tragedies make me so sad’?”

  His phone rang. It was Klaus Torkildsen.

  “Thought we were never to speak again,” Harry said.

  “Me, too,” Torkildsen said. “But I … well, I checked anyway.”

  “It’s not so important anymore,” Harry said. “The case is wrapped up as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Fine, but it might be interesting to know that just before and after the time of the murder Bellman—or at least his phone—was down in Østfold. It would have been impossible for him to make it to the crime scene and back.”

  “OK, Klaus, thanks.”

  “OK. Never again?”

  “Never again. I’m going now.”

  Harry ended the call. Leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

  Now he should be happy.

  Inside his eyelids he could see sparks from the fireworks.

  “I’ll join you.”

  It was over.

  She was his again.

  Harry moved forward with the check-in line in the large concourse at Gardermoen. He had a sudden plan, a plan for the rest of his life. A plan, anyway. And he had an intoxicating feeling he could not describe with a better word than happy.

  The monitor above the check-in desk said THAI AIR, BUSINESS CLASS.

  It had happened so fast.

  He had gone straight from Nybakk’s house to Martine at the Watchtower to return her phone, but had been told he could keep it because she had a new one. He had allowed himself to be persuaded to accept a coat that was hardly used, so that he looked relatively presentable. Plus three Paracet pills for the pain, but he had refused to let her examine the wound. She would only want to dress it, and there was no time. He had called Thai Air and gotten himself a ticket.

  Then it had happened.

  He had called Rakel, told her Irene had been found and that with Oleg’s release his mission was accomplished. Now he would have to leave the country before he himself was arrested.

  And that was when she had said it.

  Harry closed his eyes and played back Rakel’s words yet again: “I’ll join you, Harry.” I’ll join you. I’ll join you.

  And: “When?”

  When?

  Most of all he had wanted to answer, “Now.” Pack a bag and come now!

  But he had managed to think rationally, to some degree.

  “Listen, Rakel, I’m a wanted man, and the police are probably keeping an eye on you, hoping you’ll lead them to me, OK? I’ll go alone tonight. Then you follow tomorrow on the evening flight. I’ll wait in Bangkok. From there we can go on to Hong Kong.”

  “Hans Christian can defend you if you’re arrested. The sentence won’t be that—”

  “It’s not the length of the sentence that worries me,” Harry said. “As long as I’m in Oslo Dubai can find me. Are you sure Oleg’s in a safe place?”

  “Yes. But I want him to join us, Harry. I can’t travel—”

  “Of course he’ll join us.”

  “Do you mean that?” He could hear the relief in her voice.

  “We’ll be together, and in Hong Kong Dubai can’t touch us. We’ll wait a few days and then I’ll get a couple of Herman Kluit’s men to travel to Oslo and escort him.”

  “I’ll tell Hans Christian. And then I’ll buy the plane ticket for tomorrow, darling.”

  “I’ll be waiting in Bangkok.”

  A small silence.

  “But you’re wanted, Harry. How are you going to board the plane without—”

  “Next.”

  Next?

  Harry opened his eyes again and saw the woman behind the desk smiling at him.

  He stepped forward and gave her his ticket and passport. Watched her type in the name on the passport.

  “I can’t find you here, Herr Nybakk …”

  Harry put on a reassuring smile. “In fact I was booked on the plane to Bangkok in ten days’ time, but I called an hour and a half ago and had it changed to this evening.”

  The woman pressed some more keys. Harry counted the seconds. Breathed in. Out. In.

  “There it is, yes. Late bookings don’t always show up right away. But here it says you’re traveling with an Irene Hanssen.”

  “She’s traveling as previously planned,” Harry said.

  “Oh, yes. Any luggage to check in?”

  “No.”

  More pressing of keys.

  Then she frowned. Opened the passport again. Harry steeled himself. She placed the boarding card into the passport and gave it to him. “You’d better hurry, Herr Nybakk. Boarding has already started. Have a pleasant trip.”

  “Thank you,” Harry said with rather more sincerity than he had anticipated and ran to security.

  It was only on the other side of the X-ray machine, when he was about to pick up his keys and Martine’s cell phone, that he noticed he had received a text. He was about to save it with all of Martine’s other messages when he saw the sender had a short name: B. Beate.

  He sprinted to Gate 54. Bangkok, final call.

  Read it.

  “GOT THE LAST LIST. THERE’S ONE ADDRESS THAT WASN’T ON THE LIST YOU GOT FROM BELLMAN, 74 BLINDERNVEIEN.”

  Harry stuffed the phone in his pocket. There was no line by the counter. He opened his passport and the official checked it and the boarding card. Looked at Harry.

  “The scar’s newer than the photo,” Harry said.

  The official studied him. “Get a new photo, Nybakk,” he said and returned the documents. Motioned to the person behind Harry to indicate it was his turn.

  Harry was free. Saved. A whole new life lay before him.

  By the gate there were still five stragglers in the line.

  Harry looked at his boarding card. Business class. He had never traveled in anything but economy, even for Herman Kluit. Stig Nybakk had done well. Dubai had done well. Were doing well. Are doing well. Now, this evening, at this moment, the customers were standing there, their faces quivering and hungry, waiting for the guy in the Arsenal shirt to say: “Come on.”

  Two left in the line.

  74 Blindernveien.

  I’ll join you. Harry closed his eyes to hear Rakel’s voice again. And then it was there: Are you a policeman? Is that what you’ve become? A robot, a slave of the anthill and ideas other people have had?

  Was he?

  It was his turn. The woman at the desk raised her eyebrows.

  No, he was not a slave.

  He passed her his boarding card.

  He walked. Walked down the tunnel to the plane. Through the glass he could see the lights of a plane coming in to land. Coming over Tord Schultz’s house.

  74 Blindernveien.

  Mikael B
ellman’s blood under Gusto’s nails.

  Shit, shit, shit!

  Harry boarded, found his seat and sank deep into a leather seat. God, the softness of it. He pressed a button and the seat went back and back and back until he was lying in a horizontal position. He closed his eyes again, wanted to sleep. Sleep. Until one day he awoke and was changed and in a very different place. He searched for her voice. But instead found another, in Swedish:

  I have a false priest’s collar; you have a false sheriff’s badge. How unshakable is your faith in your gospel, actually?

  Bellman’s blood: “… down in Østfold. It would have been impossible for him to …”

  Everything fit.

  Harry felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes.

  A Thai flight attendant with high cheekbones smiled down at him.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you must raise your seat into the upright position before take-off.”

  Upright position.

  Harry breathed in. Took out his cell phone. Looked at the last call.

  “Sir, you have to turn off—”

  Harry held up his hand and pressed CALL.

  “Thought we were never to speak again,” Klaus Torkildsen answered.

  “Exactly where in Østfold?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Bellman. Where in Østfold was he when Gusto was killed?”

  “Rygge, by Moss.”

  Harry put his phone back and stood up.

  “Sir, the seat belt sign—”

  “Sorry,” Harry said. “This isn’t my flight.”

  “I’m sure it is. We’ve checked passenger numbers and …”

  Harry strode back down the plane. He heard the patter of feet behind him.

  “Sir, we’ve already shut—”

  “Then open it.”

  A purser had joined them. “Sir, I’m afraid the rules don’t allow us to open—”

  “I’m out of pills,” Harry said, fumbling in his jacket pocket. Found the empty bottle with the Zestril label and held it to the purser’s face. “I’m Mr. Nybakk, see? Do you want a passenger to have a heart attack onboard when we’re over … let’s say Afghanistan?”

  IT WAS PAST eleven o’clock, and the airport express was almost empty as it raced toward Oslo. Harry absentmindedly read the news on the screen hanging from the ceiling. He’d had a plan, a plan for a new life. Now he had twenty minutes to come up with a new one. It was lunacy. He could have been on a plane to Bangkok. But that was the point; he could have been on a plane to Bangkok now. He simply didn’t have the ability—it was a deficiency, an operating fault; his clubfoot was that he had never been able to tell himself he didn’t care, to forget, to clear out. He could drink, but he sobered up. He could go to Hong Kong, but he came back. He was undoubtedly a very damaged person. And the tablets Martine had given him were wearing off. He needed more; the pain was making him dizzy.

  Harry had his eyes focused on headlines about quarterly figures and sports results when it struck him: What if that was what he was doing now? Clearing out. Chickening out.

  No. It was different this time. He had had the date of the flight changed to tomorrow night, the same flight as Rakel. He had even reserved a seat for her beside him in business class and paid for an upgrade. He had wondered whether to tell her about what he was doing, but he knew what she would think: He hadn’t changed; there was still the same madness driving him; nothing would change, ever. But sitting there, beside each other, with the acceleration pressing them backward into the seats and then feeling the lift, the lightness, the inexorable, she would finally know they had left the old days behind them, beneath them, that their journey had begun.

  HARRY GOT OFF the airport express, crossed the bridge to the Opera House, walked over the Italian marble toward the main entrance. Through the glass he could see elegantly dressed people behind the ropes in the expensive foyer, making conversation and being served finger food and drinks.

  Outside the entrance stood a man wearing a suit and an earpiece, his hands in front of his crotch as if facing a free kick. Broad-shouldered, but no beef. Trained eyes that had spotted Harry long ago, and were now studying things around him that might have some significance. Which could only mean that he was with the Police Security Service, and that the Chief of Police or someone from the government was present. The man took two steps toward Harry as he approached.

  “Sorry, private party …” he began, but stopped when he saw Harry’s ID card.

  “It’s nothing to do with your chief, pal,” Harry said. “Just need to have a few words with someone. Official business.”

  The man nodded, spoke into the microphone on his lapel and let Harry pass.

  The foyer was a huge igloo that Harry could see was populated by many faces he recognized despite his long exile: the press poseurs, TV’s talking heads, celebrities from sports and politics, plus culture’s éminences more or less grises. And Harry saw what Isabelle Skøyen had meant when she’d said it was hard to find a tall enough date when she wore heels. She was easy to spot towering above the assembled guests.

  Harry hopped over the rope and plowed a path through, with a repeated “sorry” as white wine slopped around him.

  Isabelle was speaking to a man who was half a head smaller than she was, but her ingratiating, enthusiastic facial expression suggested to Harry that he was several heads higher in power and status. Harry was three yards away when a man appeared in front of him.

  “I’m the officer who’s just been talking to your colleague outside,” Harry said. “I’m going to have a word with her.”

  “Be my guest,” said the guard, and Harry thought he could hear a certain subtext.

  Harry took the last steps.

  “Hi, Isabelle,” he said and saw the surprise on her face. “Hope I’m not interrupting … your career?”

  “Inspector Hole,” she answered with a screech of laughter, as if sharing an in-joke.

  The man beside her was quick on the draw with his hand and—rather superfluously—said his name. A long career on the top floor of City Hall had presumably taught him that popularity with the common man was rewarded on election day. “Did you enjoy the performance, Inspector?”

  “Yes and no,” Harry said. “I was mostly glad it was over, and I was on my way home when I realized that there were a couple of things I hadn’t got clear.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, since Don Giovanni’s a thief and a philanderer, surely it’s only right that he should be punished in the final act. I think I understood who the statue is that comes to Don Giovanni and takes him down to hell. What I’m wondering, however, is who told him he could find Don Giovanni at that particular spot? Can you answer me that …?” Harry turned. “Isabelle?”

  Isabelle’s smile was rigid. “If you’ve got a conspiracy theory it’s always interesting to hear. But perhaps another time. Right now I’m speaking to—”

  “I need to have a couple of words with her,” Harry said, facing her interlocutor. “With your permission, of course.”

  Harry saw that Isabelle was about to protest, but the interlocutor was quicker. “Of course.” He smiled, nodded and turned to an elderly couple who had been angling for an audience.

  Harry took Isabelle by the arm and led her toward the restrooms.

  “You stink,” she hissed as he placed his hands on her shoulders and pressed her up against the wall beside the entrance to the men’s bathroom.

  “Suit’s been in the garbage a couple of times,” Harry said, and saw they were attracting a few looks from people around them. “Listen, we can do this in a civilized way or in a brutal way. What’s the basis of your cooperation with Mikael Bellman?”

  “Go to hell, Hole.”

  Harry kicked the door to the bathroom open and dragged her in.

  A man in a dinner jacket by a sink gave them an astonished look as Harry slammed Isabelle against a cubicle door and forced his forearm against her throat.

  “Bellman was at you
r place when Gusto was killed,” Harry wheezed. “Gusto had Bellman’s blood under his nails. Dubai’s burner is Bellman’s closest colleague and friend. If you don’t talk now, I’ll call my contact at Aftenposten and get it in tomorrow’s paper. And then I’ll place everything I have on the prosecutor’s desk. So what’s it going to be?”

  “Excuse me.” It was the man in the dinner jacket. He maintained a respectful distance. “Do you need any help?”

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  The man seemed shocked, perhaps not so much at the words as the fact that it was Isabelle who had uttered them, and he shuffled out.

  “We were fucking,” Isabelle said, half strangled.

  Harry let her go and he could tell from her breath that she had been drinking Champagne.

  “You and Bellman were fucking?”

  “I know he’s married, and we were fucking, that’s all,” she said, rubbing her neck. “Gusto appeared out of nowhere and scratched Bellman as he was being thrown out. If you want to tell the press about it, go ahead. I assume you’ve never fucked a married woman. But you might consider what any headlines will do to Bellman’s wife and children.”

  “And how did you and Bellman meet? Are you trying to tell me this triangle with Gusto and you two is a coincidence?”

  “How do you think people in positions of power meet, Harry? Look around you. Look at who’s here for the party. Everyone knows Bellman’s going to be Oslo’s new Chief of Police.”

  “And that you’re going to get a position in City Hall?”

  “We met at some event or other, a premiere, a private art opening, don’t remember what. That’s how it is. You can call and ask Mikael when it was. But not tonight, perhaps; he’s having quality time with the family. That’s just … well, that’s how it is.”

  That’s how it is. Harry stared at her.

  “What about Truls Berntsen?”

  “Who?”

  “He’s their burner, isn’t he? Who sent him to Hotel Leon to take care of me? Was it you? Or Dubai?”

  “What in heaven’s name are you going on about?”

  Harry could see. She really didn’t have a clue who Truls Berntsen was.