Phantom

11

It was 6.30 A.M., a quarter of an hour before sunrise according to the back page of Aftenposten. Tord Schultz folded the newspaper and left it on the seat beside him. Glanced across the deserted atrium towards the exit again.

‘He’s usually here early,’ said the Securitas guard behind the reception desk.

Tord Schultz had caught a dawn train into Oslo and watched the town awaken as he walked from Central Station eastwards along Gronlandsleiret. He had passed a dustcart. The men treated the rubbish bins with a roughness that Tord thought said more about attitude than efficiency. F-16 pilots. A Pakistani greengrocer had carried boxes of vegetables to the front of his shop, stopped, wiped his hands on his apron and smiled a good morning to him. Hercules pilot. After Gronland Church he had turned left. An enormous glass facade, built and designed in the 1970s, towered up above him. Police HQ.

At 6.37 the door opened. The guard coughed, and Tord raised his head. He received a confirmatory nod and got to his feet. The man coming towards him was smaller than he was.

He walked with a fast springy step and had longer hair than Tord would have expected of a man responsible for the largest narcotics unit in Norway. As he came closer Tord noticed the pink and white stripes in the almost girlishly attractive, suntanned face. He remembered a stewardess who had had a pigment defect, a white patch spreading down from her solarium-scorched neck, between her breasts to her shaved sex. It had made the rest of her skin look like a tight-fitting nylon stocking.

‘Mikael Bellman?’

‘Yes, how can I help you?’ The man smiled without slowing down.

‘A private chat.’

‘I’m afraid I have to prepare for a morning meeting, but if you ring-’

‘I have to talk to you now,’ Tord said, surprised at the insistent tone in his voice.

‘Is that so?’ The head of Orgkrim had already swiped his ID card at the gate, but stopped to scrutinise him.

Tord Schultz approached. Lowered his voice although the Securitas guard was still the only other person in the atrium. ‘My name’s Tord Schultz, I’m a pilot for Scandinavia’s biggest airline, and I have information about drug smuggling into Norway via Gardermoen.

‘I see. How much are we talking about?’

‘Eight kilos a week.’

Tord could feel the man’s eyes examining him physically. Knew that the man’s brain was gathering and processing all available data: body language, clothes, posture, facial expression, the wedding ring he for some reason was still wearing on his finger, the ring he didn’t have in his ear, the polished shoes, the vocabulary, the firmness of gaze.

‘Perhaps we’d better get you registered,’ Bellman said, nodding to the guard.

Tord Schultz slowly shook his head. ‘I’d rather this meeting remained confidential.’

‘Rules state that everyone should be registered, but I can reassure you that the information stays here at Police HQ.’ Bellman signalled to the Securitas guard.

In the lift on the way up, Schultz stroked his finger over the name on the sticker the guard had printed and told him to wear on his lapel.

‘Anything wrong?’ Bellman asked.

‘Not at all,’ Tord said. But he continued rubbing, hoping he could erase his name.

Bellman’s office was surprisingly small.

‘Size doesn’t matter,’ Bellman said in a tone suggesting he was used to the reaction. ‘Great things have been accomplished from here.’ He pointed to a picture on the wall. ‘Lars Axelsen, head of what was the Robberies Unit. Smashed the Tveita gang in the nineties.’

He motioned Tord to sit down. Took out a notebook, met Tord’s glare and put it away again.

‘Well?’ he said.

Tord inhaled. And talked. He started with the divorce. He needed that. Needed to start with the why. Then he moved on to the when and where. Then to who and how. And in the end he talked about the burner.

Throughout the narration Bellman sat leaning forward, following carefully. Only when Tord talked about the burner did his face lose its concentrated, though professional, expression. After the initial surprise a red hue suffused the white pigment stains. It was a strange sight, as though a flame had been lit on the inside. He lost eye contact with Bellman, who was staring bitterly at the wall behind him, perhaps at the picture of Lars Axelsen.

After Tord had finished, Bellman sighed and raised his head.

Tord noticed there was a new look to his eyes. Hard and defiant.

‘I apologise,’ the section head said. ‘On behalf of myself, my profession and the police force. I apologise for not having disposed of the bedbug.’

Bellman must have been saying that to himself, Tord thought, and not to him, a pilot who had been smuggling eight kilos of heroin a week.

‘I appreciate that you’re concerned,’ Bellman said. ‘I wish I could say you have nothing to fear. But bitter experience tells me that when this kind of corruption is exposed it goes down a lot further than one individual.’

‘I understand.’

‘Have you told anyone else about this?’

‘No.’

‘Does anyone know you are here and talking to me?’

‘No, no one.’

‘No one at all?’

Tord looked at him. Smiled wryly without saying what he was thinking: who was there to tell?

‘OK,’ Bellman said. ‘This is an important, serious and extremely delicate matter you’ve brought to my attention. I’ll have to proceed very warily so as not to warn those who must not be warned. That means I’ll have to take the matter higher. You know, I ought to put you on remand for what you have told me, but imprisonment now could expose both you and us. So until the situation has been clarified you should go home and stay there. Do you understand? Don’t tell anyone about this meeting, don’t go outdoors, don’t open the door to strangers, don’t answer phone calls from unfamiliar numbers.’

Tord nodded slowly. ‘How long will it take?’

‘Three days max.’

‘Roger that.’

Bellman appeared to be about to say something, but stopped and hesitated before finally deciding.

‘This is something I’ve never been able to understand,’ he said. ‘That some people are willing to destroy the lives of others for money. Well, perhaps if you’re a poor Afghan peasant… But a Norwegian with the salary of a chief pilot…’

Tord Schultz met his eyes. He had prepared himself for this; it almost felt like relief when it came.

‘Nevertheless, coming here of your own free will and laying your cards on the table is brave. I know what you’re risking. Life won’t be easy from now on, Schultz.’

With that, the head of Orgkrim stood up and proffered his hand. And the same thought went through Tord’s mind as when he had seen him approaching in reception: Mikael Bellman was the perfect height for a fighter pilot.

As Tord Schultz was leaving Police HQ, Harry Hole was ringing Rakel’s doorbell. She opened up, wearing a dressing gown and narrow slits for eyes. She yawned.

‘I’ll look better later in the day,’ she said.

‘Nice that one of us will,’ Harry said, stepping inside.

‘Good luck,’ she said, standing in front of the living-room table piled with documents. ‘It’s all there. Case reports. Photos. Newspaper cuttings. Witness statements. He’s thorough. I have to go to work.’

By the time the door had slammed behind her Harry had brewed up his first cup of coffee and made a start.

After reading for three hours he had to have a break to fight the despondency stealing over him. He took the cup and stood by the kitchen window. Told himself he was here to question guilt, not to confirm innocence. Doubt was enough. And yet. The evidence was unambiguous. And all his years of experience as a murder investigator worked against him: things were surprisingly often exactly as they looked.

After three more hours the conclusion was the same. There was nothing in the documents that hinted at a different explanation. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one, but it wasn’t here, he told himself.

He left before Rakel came home, telling himself he had jet lag, he had to sleep. But he knew why. He couldn’t bring himself to say that from what he had read it was harder to cling to a doubt, the doubt that was the way, the truth, the life and the only hope of redemption.

So he grabbed his coat and left. Walked all the way from Holmenkollen, past Ris, over Sogn and Ulleval and Boltelokka to Schroder’s. Considered going in but decided against it. Headed east instead, over the river to Toyen.

And when he pushed open the door to the Watchtower, daylight had already started to fade. Everything was as he remembered. Pale walls, pale cafe decor, large windows that let in the maximum amount of light. And in this light the afternoon clientele sat around the tables with coffee and sandwiches. Some customers hung their heads over plates as if they had just reached the finishing line after a fifty-kilometre race, some carried on staccato conversations in impenetrable junkie-speak, others you wouldn’t have been surprised to see drinking an espresso among the bourgeois pram armada at United Bakeries.

Some had been provided with new second-hand clothes they either kept in plastic bags or were wearing. Others looked like insurance agents or provincial schoolmistresses.

Harry headed for the counter, and a rotund, smiling girl in a Salvation Army hoodie offered him free filter coffee and wholewheat bread with brown cheese.

‘Not today, thank you. Is Martine here?’

‘She’s working in the clinic.’

The girl pointed her finger at the ceiling and the Salvation Army first-aid room above.

‘But she should be finished-’

‘Harry!’

He turned.

Martine Eckhoff was as small as ever. The smiling kitten face had the same disproportionately broad mouth and a nose that was no more than a knoll in her tiny face. And her pupils looked as if they had run to the edge of the brown irises, forming the shape of a keyhole. She had once explained to him it was congenital and known as iris coloboma.

Martine stretched up and gave him a long, lingering hug. And when she had finished she still would not let go of him, but held both of his hands while looking up at him. He saw a shadow flit across her smile when she saw the scar on his face.

‘How… how thin you are.’

Harry laughed. ‘Thank you. But while I’ve got thinner-’

‘I know,’ Martine cried. ‘I’ve got fatter. Everyone’s got fatter, though, Harry. Except you. By the way, I do have an excuse for being fat…’

She patted her stomach where the black lambswool jumper was stretched to its limit.

‘Mm. Did Rikard do this to you?’

She laughed and nodded with enthusiasm. Her face was red, the heat was coming off her like a plasma screen.

They walked over to the only free table. Harry sat down and watched the black hemisphere of a stomach trying to lower itself onto a chair. It looked incongruous against the backdrop of capsized lives and apathetic hopelessness.

‘Gusto,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about the case?’

She heaved a deep sigh. ‘Of course. Everyone here does. He was part of the community. He didn’t come here often, but we saw him now and then. The girls working here were in love with him, every last one. He was so good-looking!’

‘What about Oleg, the guy who it’s claimed killed him?’

‘He came sometimes, with a girl.’ She frowned. ‘Claimed? Is there some doubt about it then?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to establish. A girl you say?’

‘Lovely, but a wan little thing. Ingunn? Iriam?’ She turned to the counter. ‘Hey! What’s the name of Gusto’s foster-sister?’ And before anyone had a chance to answer she answered herself: ‘Irene!’

‘Red hair and freckles?’ Harry asked.

‘She was so pale that if it hadn’t been for her hair she would have been invisible. I mean that. In the end the sun shone right through her.’

‘In the end?’

‘Yes, we’ve just been speaking about that. It’s a while since she’s been here. I’ve asked lots of the people who come here if she’s left town or what, but no one seems to know where she is.’

‘Do you remember anything happening around the time the murder took place?’

‘Nothing special except for that particular evening. I heard the police sirens and knew they were probably for some of our young parishioners, when one of your colleagues here received a phone call and stormed out.’

‘Thought it was an unwritten rule that undercover officers weren’t allowed to work here in the cafe.’

‘I don’t think he was working, Harry. He sat alone at the table over there, supposedly reading Klassekampen. It might sound rather vain, but I think he came here to watch moi.’ She coquettishly laid her hand flat against her chest.

‘You still attract lonely police officers, I suppose.’

She laughed. ‘I was the one who checked you over, or have you forgotten?’

‘A girl from a Christian family like you?’

‘In fact his staring made me go all clammy, but he stopped when my pregnancy became visible. Anyway, that night he slammed the door after him, and I watched him head for Hausmanns gate. The crime scene was only a few hundred metres away from here. Straight afterwards rumours began to circulate that Gusto had been shot. And that Oleg had been arrested.’

‘What do you know about Gusto, apart from the fact that he was attractive to women and came from a foster-family?’

‘He was called the Thief. He sold violin.’

‘Who did he work for?’

‘He and Oleg used to sell for the bikers up in Alnabru, Los Lobos. But they joined Dubai, I think. Everyone who was approached did. They had the purest heroin, and when violin made an appearance it was the Dubai pushers who had it. And I suppose it still is.’

‘What do you know about Dubai? Who is he?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t even know if it is a who or a what.’

‘So visible on the streets and yet so invisible behind the scenes. Does nobody know?’

‘Probably, but those who do won’t say.’

Someone called Martine’s name.

‘Stay where you are,’ Martine said, struggling up from the chair. ‘I’ll be back in a sec.’

‘Actually, I’ve got to be off,’ Harry said.

‘Where?’

There was a second’s silence as they both realised he didn’t have a sensible answer to her question.

Tord Schultz sat at the kitchen table by the window. The sun shone low, and there was still enough daylight for him to see everyone walking on the road between the houses. But he couldn’t see the road. He took a bite of bread with cervelat.

Planes flew over rooftops. Landed and took off. Landed and took off.

Tord Schultz listened to the various engine sounds. It was like a timeline: the old engines that sounded right, which had the exact growl, the warm glow, which evoked the good memories, which gave meaning, which were a soundtrack to when things had a meaning: job, punctuality, family, a woman’s caresses, recognition from colleagues. The new generation of engines moved more air, but were hectic, flew faster on less fuel, had greater efficiency, less time for inessentials. Also the essential inessentials. He glanced at the big clock on the fridge again. It ticked like a frightened little heart, fast and frenetic. Seven. Twelve hours left. Soon it would be dark. He heard a Boeing 747. The classic. The best. The sound grew and grew until it was a roar making the windowpanes tremble and the glass clink against the half-empty bottle on the table. Tord Schultz closed his eyes. It was the sound of optimism about the future, raw power, well-founded arrogance. The sound of invincibility to a man in his best years.

After the noise was gone and it was suddenly still in the house he noticed that the silence was different. As if the air had a different density.

As if it were occupied.

He turned right round, to the living room. Through the door he could see the weight-training bench and the furthest end of the coffee table. He looked at the parquet floor, at the shadows from the part of the living room he couldn’t see. He held his breath and listened. Nothing. Just the clock ticking on the fridge. So he took another bite of the bread, a swig from the glass and leaned back in the chair. A big plane was on the way in. He could hear it coming from behind. It drowned the sound of time ticking away. And he was thinking it would have to pass between the house and the sun as a shadow fell over him and the table.

Harry walked along Urtegata and down Platous gate to Gronlandsleiret. Heading for Police HQ on autopilot. He stopped in Bots Park. Looked at the prison, at the solid grey walls.

‘Where?’ she had asked.

Was he really in any doubt as to who killed Gusto Hanssen?

An SAS plane left Oslo for Bangkok, direct, every day before midnight. Flew from there to Hong Kong five times a day. He could go to Hotel Leon right now. Pack his bag and check out. It would take precisely five minutes. The airport express to Gardermoen. Buy a ticket at the SAS counter. A meal and newspapers in the relaxing, impersonal transit atmosphere of an airport.

Harry turned. Saw the red concert poster from the day before was gone.

He continued down Oslo gate and was walking past Minne Park by Gamlebyen cemetery when he heard a voice from the shadows by the gate.

‘Two hundred to spare?’ it said in Swedish.

Harry half stopped, and the beggar stepped out. His coat was long and ragged, and the beam from the spotlight caused his large ears to cast shadows over his face.

‘I assume you’re asking for a loan?’ Harry said, fishing out his wallet.

‘Collection,’ Cato said, extending his hand. ‘You’ll never get it back. I left my wallet at Hotel Leon.’ There wasn’t a whiff of spirits or beer on the old man’s breath, just the smell of tobacco and something that reminded him of childhood, playing hide-and-seek at his grandfather’s, when Harry hid in the wardrobe and inhaled the sweet, mouldy smell of clothes that had hung there for years. They must have been as old as the house itself.

Harry located a five-hundred note and handed it to Cato.

‘Here.’

Cato stared at the money. Ran his hand over it. ‘I’ve been hearing this and that,’ he said. ‘They say you’re police.’

‘Oh?’

‘And that you drink. What’s your poison?’

‘Jim Beam.’

‘Ah, Jim. A pal of my Johnnie. And you know the boy, Oleg.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Prison’s worse than death, Harry. Death is simple, it liberates the soul. But prison eats away at your soul until there is nothing human left of you. Until you become a phantom.’

‘Who told you about Oleg?’

‘My congregation is large and my parishioners are numerous, Harry. I listen. They say you’re hunting that person. Dubai.’

Harry checked his watch. There was usually plenty of room on the flights at this time of the year. From Bangkok he could also go to Shanghai. Zhan Yin had texted that she was alone this week. They could go to the country house together.

‘I hope you don’t find him, Harry.’

‘I didn’t say I was-’

‘Those who do, die.’

‘Cato, tonight I’m going to-’

‘Have you heard about the Beetle?’

‘No, but-’

‘Six insect legs that bore into your face.’

‘I have to go, Cato.’

‘I’ve seen it myself.’ Cato dropped his chin onto his priest’s collar. ‘Under Alvsborg Bridge by Gothenburg harbour. A policeman searching for a heroin gang. They smacked a brick studded with nails in his face.’

Harry realised what the man was talking about. Zjuk. The Beetle.

The method had originally been Russian and used on informers. First of all, the informer’s ear was nailed to the floor beneath a roof beam. Then six long nails were hammered halfway into a brick, the brick was tied to a rope slung around the beam and the informer held the rope end between his teeth. The point — and the symbolism — was that so long as the informer kept his mouth shut he was alive. Harry had seen the result of zjuk carried out by the Tapei Triad on a poor sod they found in a backstreet of Tanshui. They had used broad nail heads that didn’t make such big holes on their way in. When the paramedics came and pulled the brick off the dead man the face came with it.

Cato stuffed the five-hundred note in his trouser pocket with one hand and placed the other on Harry’s shoulder.

‘I understand you want to protect your son. But what about the other guy? He also had a father, Harry. They call it self-sacrifice when parents fight for their children, but really they’re protecting themselves, the ones who have been cloned. And that doesn’t require any moral courage; it’s just genetic egotism. As a child my father used to read the Bible to us, and I thought Abraham was a coward when God told him to sacrifice his son and he obeyed. Growing up, I understood that a truly selfless father is willing to sacrifice his child if it serves a higher goal than father and son. For that does exist.’

Harry threw his cigarette down in front of him. ‘You’re mistaken. Oleg is not my son.’

‘He isn’t? Why are you here then?’

‘I’m a policeman.’

Cato laughed. ‘Sixth commandment, Harry. Don’t lie.’

‘Isn’t that the eighth?’ Harry trod on the smouldering cigarette. ‘And as far as I recall, the commandment says you shouldn’t bear false witness against your neighbour, which would mean it’s fine to lie a bit about yourself. But perhaps you didn’t complete your theology studies?’

Cato shrugged. ‘Jesus and I have no formal qualifications. We are men of the Word. But like all medicine men, fortune-tellers and charlatans we can sometimes inspire false hopes and genuine comfort.’

‘You’re not even a Christian, are you?’

‘Let me say here and now that faith has never done me any good, only doubt. So that is what has become my testament.’

‘Doubt.’

‘Exactly.’ Cato’s yellow teeth glistened in the darkness. ‘I ask: Is it so certain that a God doesn’t exist, that he doesn’t have a design?’

Harry laughed quietly.

‘We’re not so different, Harry. I have a false priest’s collar; you have a false sheriff’s badge. How unshakeable is your faith in your gospel actually? To protect those who have found their way and make sure those who have lost theirs are punished according to their sins? Aren’t you also a doubter?’

Harry tapped a cigarette from the packet. ‘Unfortunately there is no doubt in this case. I’m going home.’

‘If that is so, I wish you a good trip. I have a service to hold.’

A car hooted and Harry turned automatically. Two headlights blinded him before sweeping round the corner. The brake lights resembled the glow of cigarettes in the darkness as the police vehicle slowed down to enter the Police HQ garages. And when Harry turned back Cato had gone. The old priest seemed to have melted into the night; all Harry could hear were footsteps heading for the cemetery.

In fact it did take only five minutes to pack and check out of Hotel Leon.

‘There’s a small discount for customers who pay cash,’ said the boy behind the counter. Not everything was new.

Harry flicked through his wallet. Hong Kong dollars, yuan, US dollars, euros. His mobile phone rang. Harry lifted it to his ear while fanning out the notes and offering them to the boy.

‘Speak.’

‘It’s me. What are you doing?’

Shit. He had planned to wait and phone her from the airport. Make it as simple and brutal as possible. A quick wrench.

‘I’m checking out. Can I ring you back in a couple of minutes?’

‘I just wanted to say that Oleg has contacted his solicitor. Erm… Hans Christian, that is.’

‘Norwegian kroner,’ said the boy.

‘Oleg says he wants to meet you, Harry.’

‘Hell!’

‘Sorry? Harry, are you there?’

‘Do you take Visa?’

‘Cheaper for you to go to an ATM and withdraw cash.’

‘Meet me?’

‘That’s what he says. As soon as possible.’

‘That’s not possible, Rakel.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because-’

‘There’s an ATM only a hundred metres down Tollbugata.’

‘Because?’

‘Take my card, OK?’

‘Harry?’

‘First of all, it’s not possible, Rakel. He’s not allowed visitors, and I won’t get round that a second time.’

‘And second of all?’

‘I don’t see the point, Rakel. I’ve read the documents. I…’

‘You what?’

‘I think he shot Gusto Hanssen, Rakel.’

‘We don’t take Visa. Have you got anything else? MasterCard, American Express?’

‘No! Rakel?’

‘Then let’s say dollars and euros. The exchange rate’s not very favourable, but it’s better than the card.’

‘Rakel? Rakel? Shit!’

‘Something the matter, herr Hole?’

‘She rang off. Is this enough?’