Phantom

3

The man in the linen suit alighted from the airport express at Oslo Central Station. He established it must have been a warm, sunny day in his old home town, for the air was still gentle and embracing. He was carrying an almost comical little canvas suitcase and exited the station on the southern side with quick, supple strides. From the outside, Oslo’s heart — which some maintained the town did not have — beat with a restful pulse. Night rhythm. The few cars there were swirled around the circular Traffic Machine, were ejected, one by one, eastwards to Stockholm and Trondheim, northwards to other parts of town or westwards to Drammen and Kristiansand. Both in size and shape the Traffic Machine resembled a brontosaurus, a dying giant that was soon to disappear, to be replaced by homes and businesses in Oslo’s splendid new quarter with its splendid new construction, the Opera House. The man stopped and looked at the white iceberg situated between the Traffic Machine and the fjord. It had already won architectural prizes from all over the world; people came from far and wide to walk on the Italian marble roof that sloped right down into the sea. The light inside the building’s large windows was as strong as the moonlight falling on it.

Christ, what an improvement, the man thought.

It was not the future promises of a new urban development he saw, but the past. For this had been Oslo’s shooting gallery, its dopehead territory, where they had injected themselves and ridden their highs behind the barracks which partially hid them, the city’s lost children. A flimsy partition between them and their unknowing, well-meaning social democratic parents. What an improvement, he thought. They were on a trip to hell in more beautiful surroundings.

It was three years since he had last stood here. Everything was new. Everything was the same.

They had ensconced themselves on a strip of grass between the station and the motorway, much like the verge of a road. As doped up now as then. Lying on their backs, eyes closed, as though the sun was too strong, huddled over, trying to find a vein that could still be used, or standing bent with bowed junkie-knees and rucksacks, unsure whether they were coming or going. Same faces. Not the same living dead when he used to walk here, they had died long ago, once and for all. But the same faces.

On the road up to Tollbugata there were more of them. Since they had a connection with the reason for his return he tried to glean an impression. Tried to decide if there were more or fewer of them. Noted that they were trading in Plata again. The little square of asphalt to the west of Jernbanetorget, which had been painted white, had been Oslo’s Taiwan, a free trade area for drugs, established so that the authorities could keep a wary eye on what was happening and perhaps intercept young first-time buyers. But as business grew in size and Plata showed Oslo’s true face as one of Europe’s worst heroin spots, the place became a pure tourist attraction. The turnover for heroin and the OD statistics had long been a source of shame for the capital, but nonetheless not such a visible stain as Plata. Newspapers and TV fed the rest of the country with images of stoned youths, zombies wandering the city centre in broad daylight. The politicians were blamed. When right-wingers were in power the left were in an uproar. ‘Not enough treatment centres.’ ‘Prison sentences create users.’ ‘The new class society creates gangs and drug trafficking in immigrant areas.’ When the left was in power, the right were in an uproar. ‘Not enough police.’ ‘Access for asylum seekers too easy.’ ‘Six out of seven prisoners are foreigners.’

So, after being hounded from pillar to post, Oslo City Council came to the inevitable decision: to save itself. To shovel the shit under the carpet. To close Plata.

The man in the linen suit saw a youth in a red-and-white Arsenal shirt standing on some steps with four people shuffling their feet in front of him. The Arsenal player’s head was jerking left and right, like a chicken’s. The other four heads were motionless, staring only at the dealer in the Arsenal colours, who was waiting until there were enough of them, a full cohort, maybe that was five, maybe six. Then he would accept payment for the orders and take them to where the dope was. Round the corner or inside a backyard where his partner was waiting. It was a simple principle; the guy with the dope never had any contact with money and the guy with the money never had any contact with dope. That made it harder for the police to acquire solid evidence of drug-dealing against either of them. Nonetheless, the man in the linen suit was surprised, for what he saw was the old method used in the 1980s and 90s. As the police gave up trying to catch pushers on the streets, sellers had dropped their elaborate routines and the assembly of a cohort and had started dealing directly as punters turned up; money in one hand, drugs in the other. Had the police started arresting street dealers again?

A man in cycling gear pedalled past, helmet, orange goggles and heaving, brightly coloured jersey. His thigh muscles bulged under the tight shorts, and the bike looked expensive. That must have been why he took it with him when he and the rest of the cohort followed the Arsenal player round the corner to the other side of the building. Everything was new. Everything was the same. But there were fewer of them, weren’t there?

The prostitutes on the corner of Skippergata spoke to him in pidgin English — Hey, baby! Wait a minute, handsome! — but he just shook his head. And it seemed as if the rumour of his chasteness, or possible pecuniary difficulties, spread faster than he could walk because the girls further up showed no interest in him. In his day, Oslo’s prostitutes had dressed in practical clothing, jeans and thick jackets. There hadn’t been many of them; it had been a seller’s market. But now the competition was fiercer, and there were short skirts, high heels and fishnet stockings. The African women seemed to be cold already. Wait until December, he thought.

He advanced deeper into Kvadraturen, which had been Oslo’s first town centre, but now it was an asphalt-and-brick desert with administrative buildings and offices for 250,000 worker ants, who scuttled home at four or five o’clock and ceded the quarter to nocturnal rodents. When King Christian IV built the town in square blocks, according to Renaissance ideals of geometrical order, the population was kept in check by fire. Popular myth had it that down here every leap year’s night you could see people in flames running between houses, hear their screams, watch them burn and dissolve, but there would be a layer of ash left on the tarmac, and if you managed to grab it before the wind blew it away the house you occupied would never burn down. Because of the fire risk Christian IV built broad roads, by the standards of Oslo’s poor. Houses were erected in the un-Norwegian building material of brick. And along one of these brick walls he passed the open door of a bar. A new violation of Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, dance-produced reggae pissing on Marley and Rose, Slash and Stradlin, belted out to the smokers standing around outside. He stopped at an outstretched arm.

‘Gotta light?’

A plump, top-heavy lady somewhere in her late thirties looked up at him. Her cigarette bounced provocatively up and down between her red lips.

He raised an eyebrow and looked at her laughing girlfriend, who was standing behind her with a glowing cigarette. The top-heavy one noticed and then laughed as well, taking a step aside to regain her balance.

‘Don’t be so slow,’ she said in the same Sorland accent as the Crown princess. He had heard there was a prostitute in the covered market who got rich by looking like her, talking like her and dressing like her. And that the 5,000-kroner-an-hour fee included a plastic sceptre which the customer was allowed to put to relatively free use.

The woman’s hand rested on his arm as he made to move on. She leaned towards him and breathed red wine into his face.

‘You’re a good-looking guy. How about giving me… a light?’

He turned the other side of his face to her. The bad side. The not-such-a-good-looking-guy side. Felt her flinch and slip as she saw the path left by the nail from his time in the Congo. It stretched from mouth to ear like a badly sewn-up tear.

He walked on as the music changed to Nirvana. ‘Come As You Are.’ Original version.

‘Hash?’

The voice came from a gateway, but he neither stopped nor turned.

‘Speed?’

He had been clean for three years and had no intention of starting again.

‘Violin?’

Least of all now.

In front of him on the pavement a young man had stopped by two dealers; he was showing them something as he spoke. The youngster looked up as he approached, fixing two searching grey eyes on him. Policeman’s eyes, the man thought, lowered his head and crossed the street. It was perhaps a little paranoid; after all, it was unlikely such a young police officer would recognise him.

There was the hotel. The dosshouse. Leon.

It was almost deserted in this part of the street. On the other side, under a lamp, he saw the dope seller astride the bike, with another cyclist, also wearing professional cycling gear. The dope seller was helping the other guy to inject himself in the neck.

The man in the linen suit shook his head and gazed up at the facade of the building before him.

There was the same banner, grey with dirt, hanging below the third-and top-floor windows. ‘Four hundred kroner a night!’ Everything was new. Everything was the same.

The receptionist at Hotel Leon was new. A young lad, who greeted the man in the linen suit with an astonishingly polite smile and an amazing — for Leon — lack of mistrust. He wished him a hearty ‘Welcome’ without a tinge of irony in his voice and asked to see his passport. The man assumed he was often taken for a foreigner because of the tanned complexion and the linen suit, and passed the receptionist his red Norwegian passport. It was worn and full of stamps. Too many for it to be called a good life.

‘Oh, yes,’ the receptionist said, returning it. Placed a form on the counter and handed him a pen.

‘The marked sections are enough.’

A checking-in form at Leon? the man thought with surprise. Perhaps some things had changed after all. He took the pen and saw the receptionist staring at his hand, his middle finger. The one that had been his longest finger before it was cut off in a house on Holmenkollen Ridge. Now the first joint had been replaced with a matt, greyish-blue, titanium prosthesis. It wasn’t a lot of use, but it did provide balance for his adjacent fingers when he had to grip, and it was not in the way as it was so short. The only disadvantage was the endless explanations when he had to go through security at airports.

He filled in First name and Last name.

Date of birth.

He wrote knowing he looked more like a man in his mid-forties now than the damaged geriatric who had left Norway three years ago. He had subjected himself to a strict regime of exercise, healthy food, plentiful sleep and — of course — absolutely no addictive substances. The aim of the regime had not been to look younger, but to avoid death. Besides, he liked it. In fact he had always like fixed routines, discipline, order. So why had his life been chaos instead, such self-destruction and a series of broken relationships between dark periods of intoxication? The blank boxes looked up at him, questioningly. But they were too small for the answers they required.

Permanent address.

Well, the flat in Sofies gate was sold right after he left three years ago, the same applied to his parents’ house in Oppsal. In his present occupation an official address would have carried a certain inherent risk. So he wrote what he usually wrote when he checked in at other hotels: Chungking Mansion, Hong Kong. Which was no further from the truth than anything else.

Occupation.

Murder. He didn’t write that. This section hadn’t been marked.

Telephone number.

He put a fictitious one. Mobile phones can be traced, the conversations and where you make them.

Next of kin’s telephone number.

Next of kin? What husband would voluntarily give his wife’s number when he checked in at Hotel Leon? The place was the closest Oslo had to a public brothel, after all.

The receptionist could evidently read his mind. ‘In case you should feel indisposed and we have to call someone.’

Harry nodded. In case of a heart attack during the act.

‘You don’t need to write anything if you don’t…’

‘No,’ the man said, looking at the words. Next of kin. He had Sis. A sister with what she herself called ‘a touch of Down’s syndrome’, but who had always tackled life a great deal better than her elder brother. Apart from Sis there was no one else. Absolutely no one. All the same, next of kin.

He ticked ‘Cash’ for mode of payment, signed and passed the form to the receptionist. Who skimmed through it. And then at last Harry saw it shine through. The mistrust.

‘Are you… are you Harry Hole?’

Harry Hole nodded. ‘Is that a problem?’

The boy shook his head. Gulped.

‘Fine,’ said Harry. ‘Have you got a key for me?’

‘Oh, sorry! Here. 301.’

Harry took it and noticed that the boy’s pupils had widened and his voice constricted.

‘It… it’s my uncle,’ the boy said. ‘He runs the hotel. Used to sit here before me. He’s told me about you.’

‘Only nice things, I trust,’ Harry said, grabbing his canvas suitcase and heading for the stairs.

‘The lift…’

‘Don’t like lifts,’ Harry said without turning.

The room was the same as before. Tatty, small and more or less clean. No, in fact, the curtains were new. Green. Stiff. Probably drip-dry. Which reminded him. He hung his suit in the bathroom and turned on the shower so the steam would remove the creases. The suit had cost him eight hundred Hong Kong dollars at Punjab House on Nathan Road, but in his job it was an essential investment; no one respected a man dressed in rags. He stood under the shower. The hot water made his skin tingle. Afterwards he walked naked through the room to the window and opened it. Second floor. Backyard. Through an open window came the groans of simulated enthusiasm. He grasped the curtain pole and leaned out. Looked straight down onto an open skip and recognised the sweet smell of rubbish rising forth. He spat and heard it hit the paper in the bin. But the rustling that followed was not of paper. There was a crack, and the stiff green curtains landed on the floor on either side of him. Shit! He pulled the thin pole out of the curtain hem. It was the old kind with two bulbous pointed ends; it had broken before and someone had tried to stick it together with brown tape. Harry sat down on the bed and opened the drawer in the bedside table. A Bible with a light blue synthetic leather cover and a sewing kit comprising black thread wound round card with a needle stuck through. On mature reflection, Harry realised they might not be such a bad idea after all. Afterwards guests could sew back torn fly buttons and read about forgiveness of sins. He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Everything was new. Everything… He closed his eyes. On the flight he hadn’t slept a wink, and with or without jet lag, with or without curtains, he was going to have to sleep. And he began to dream the same dream he had had every night for the last three years: he was running down a corridor, fleeing from a roaring avalanche that sucked out all the air, leaving him unable to breathe.

It was just a question of keeping going and keeping his eyes closed for a bit longer.

He lost a grip on his thoughts; they were drifting away from him.

Next of kin.

Kin. Kith.

Next of kin.

That’s what he was. That’s why he was back.

Sergey was driving on the E6 towards Oslo. Longing for the bed in his Furuset flat. Keeping under 120, even though the motorway was virtually empty so late at night. His mobile phone rang. The mobile. The conversation with Andrey was concise. He had spoken to his uncle, or ataman — the leader — as Andrey called Uncle. After they had rung off Sergey could not restrain himself any longer. He put his foot down. Shrieked with delight. The man had arrived. Now, this evening. He was here! Sergey was not to do anything for the moment, the situation might resolve itself, Andrey had said. But he had to be even more prepared now, mentally and physically. Had to practise with the knife, sleep, be on his toes. If the necessary should become necessary.