Phantom (43 page)

“I
T WAS
B
ELLMAN
who took Truls Berntsen along to Orgkrim,” Harry said. “Is it conceivable that Berntsen is doing the burner jobs under Bellman’s instructions?”

“You’re aware of what we’re moving into here, Harry?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “And from now on you don’t have anything to do with it, Beate.”

“Try fucking stopping me!” The phone crackled. Harry couldn’t remember Beate Lønn ever swearing before. “This is my police force, Harry. I don’t want people like Berntsen dragging it down into the dirt.”

“OK,” Harry said. “But let’s not draw any hasty conclusions. The only evidence we have is that Bellman met Gusto. We don’t even have anything concrete on Truls Berntsen yet.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to start somewhere else. And if it’s what I hope it is, the pieces will topple against each other like dominoes. The problem is staying free long enough to launch the plan.”

“Do you mean to say you have a plan?”

“Of course I have a plan.”

“A
good
plan?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But a plan?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re lying, aren’t you?”

“Not half.”

I was racing into Oslo on the E18 when I realized what deep shit I was in
.

Bellman had tried to drag me upstairs. To the bedroom. Where he had the pistol he chased me with. He was willing to fricking liquidate me to keep my mouth shut. Which could only mean he was up to his knees in shit. So what would he do now? Get me busted, of course. For stealing a car, dealing drugs, not paying the hotel bill—take your pick. Put me behind bars before I could blab to anyone. And as soon as I was imprisoned, there was little doubt about what would happen: They would make it look either like suicide or like another inmate had popped me. So the stupidest thing I could do would be to drive around in this car that they probably already had on their radar. So I put my foot down. The place I was going was on the east side of town, and I could avoid going through downtown. I drove up the hill, headed for the quiet residential areas. Parked some distance away and started walking
.

The sun had appeared again, and people were out and about, pushing strollers, with picnic baskets hanging from the handles. Grinning at the sun as if it were happiness itself
.

I chucked the car keys into a yard and walked up to the apartment building
.

Found the name on the doorbell and rang
.

“It’s me,” I said when he eventually answered
.

“I’m a little busy,” said the voice on the intercom
.

“And I’m a drug addict,” I said. It was supposed to be a joke, but I felt the impact of the words. Oleg thought it was funny when, for a laugh, I occasionally asked customers whether maybe they were suffering from drug addiction and wanted some violin
.

“What do you want?” the voice asked
.

“I want some violin.”

The customers’ line had become mine
.

Pause
.

“Don’t have any. Ran out. No base to make any more.”

“Base?”

“Levorphanol base. Do you want the formula as well?”

I knew it was the truth, but he had to have some. Had to. I thought about it. I couldn’t go to the rehearsal room; they would be waiting for me. Oleg. Good old Oleg would let me in
.

“You’ve got two hours, Ibsen. If you don’t show up at Hausmanns Gate with four quarters I’ll go straight to the cops and tell them everything. There’s nothing for me to lose anymore. You got it? Ninety-two Hausmanns Gate. You go straight in and it’s on the third floor.”

I tried to imagine his face. Terrified, sweating. The old perv
.

“Fine,” he said
.

That’s how you do it. You just have to make them understand the gravity of the situation
.

H
ARRY WAS SWALLOWING
the rest of his coffee and staring into the street. Time to move on.

On his way across Youngstorget to the kebab shops on Torggata he received a call.

It was Klaus Torkildsen.

“Good news,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“At the time in question Truls Berntsen’s phone was registered at four of the base stations in downtown Oslo, and that locates his position in the same area as Ninety-two Hausmanns Gate.”

“How big is the area we’re talking about?”

“Erm, a kind of hexagonal area with a diameter of half a mile.”

“OK,” Harry said, absorbing the information. “What about the other guy?”

“I couldn’t find anything in his name exactly, but he had a company phone registered at the Radiumhospitalet.”

“And?”

“And, as I said, it’s good news. That phone was in the same area at the same time.”

“Mm.” Harry entered a door, walked past three occupied tables and stopped in front of a counter on which was displayed a selection of unnaturally bright kebabs. “Do you have his address?”

Klaus Torkildsen read it out, and Harry jotted it down on a napkin.

“Do you have another number for that address?”

“How do you mean?”

“I was wondering if he had a wife or a partner.”

Harry heard Torkildsen typing on a keyboard. Then came the answer: “No. No one else with that address.”

“Thank you.”

“So we have a deal? We’ll never speak again?”

“Yes. Apart from one final thing: I want you to check Mikael Bellman. Who he’s spoken to over recent months, and where he was on the evening of July twelfth.”

Loud laughter. “The head of Orgkrim? Forget it! I can hide or explain away a search for a lowly officer, but what you’re asking me to do would get me sacked on the spot.” More laughter, as if the idea were really a joke. “I expect you to keep your end of the bargain, Hole.”

The line went dead.

W
HEN THE TAXI
arrived at the address on the napkin a man was waiting outside.

Harry stepped out and went over to him. “Ola Kvernberg, the caretaker?”

The man nodded.

“Inspector Hole. I called you.” He saw the caretaker steal a glance at the taxi, which was waiting. “We use taxis when there are no patrol cars.”

Kvernberg examined the ID card the man held up in front of him. “I haven’t seen any signs of a break-in,” he said.

“But someone called it in, so let’s check. You’ve got a master key, don’t you?”

Kvernberg nodded and unlocked the main door while the policeman studied the names on the bells. “The witness maintained he’d seen someone climbing up the balconies and breaking into the third floor.”

“Who called it in?” asked the caretaker on his way up.

“Confidential matter, Kvernberg.”

“You’ve got something on your trousers.”

“Kebab sauce. I keep thinking about getting them cleaned. Can you unlock the door?”

“The pharmacist’s?”

“Oh, is that what he is?”

“Works at the Radiumhospitalet. Shouldn’t we call him at work before we enter?”

“I’d rather see if the burglar’s here so we can arrest him, if you don’t mind.”

The caretaker mumbled an apology and hastened to unlock the door.

Hole went into the flat.

It was obvious that a bachelor was living here. But a tidy one. Classical CDs on their own CD shelf, in alphabetical order. Scientific journals about chemistry and pharmacy stacked in high but neat piles. On one bookshelf there was a framed photograph of two adults and a boy. Harry recognized the boy. He was stooping a little to one side with a sullen expression. He couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. The caretaker stood by the front door watching carefully, so for appearances’ sake Harry checked the balcony door before going from room to room. Opening drawers and cupboards. But there was nothing compromising on view.

Suspiciously little, some colleagues would say.

But Harry had seen it before; some people don’t have secrets. Not often, it’s fair to say, but it happened. He heard the caretaker shifting weight from foot to foot in the bedroom behind him.

“No signs of a break-in or anything taken,” Harry said, walking past him toward the exit. “Maybe a false alarm.”

“I see,” said the caretaker, locking up after them. “What would you have done if there had been a thief there? Taken him in the taxi?”

“We’d have probably called for a patrol car.” Harry smiled, pulling up and examining the boots on the stand by the door. “Tell me, aren’t these two boots
very
different sizes?”

Kvernberg rubbed his chin while scrutinizing Harry.

“Yes, maybe. He’s got a clubfoot. May I have another look at your ID?”

Harry passed his card to him.

“The expiration date—”

“The taxi’s waiting,” Harry said, snatching the card back and setting off down the stairs at a jog. “Thanks for your help, Kvernberg!”

I went to Hausmanns Gate, and, of course, no one had fixed the locks, so I went straight up to the flat. Oleg wasn’t there. It was deserted. They were all out getting stressed. Gotta getta fix, gotta getta fix. A bunch of junkies living together, and the place looked like it. But there was
nothing there, of course, just empty bottles, used syringes, bloodstained wads of cotton gauze and empty cigarette packs. Fricking burned earth. And it was while I was sitting on a filthy mattress and cursing that I saw the rat. When people describe rats they always say a huge rat. But rats aren’t huge. They’re pretty small. It’s just that their tails can be long. OK, if they feel threatened and stand up on two legs they look bigger than they are. But really, they’re poor bastards who get stressed just like us. Gotta getta fix
.

I heard a church bell ring. And I told myself that Ibsen would be showing up
.

He had to come. Shit, I felt so bad. I remembered how the junkies stood and waited when we went to work, so happy to see us it was moving. Trembling, their cash at the ready, reduced to begging. And now I was there myself. Sick with longing to hear Ibsen’s lame shuffle on the stairs, to see his idiotic mug
.

I had played my cards like an idiot. I wanted a shot, nothing else, and all I’d done was bring the whole pack of them down on me. The old man and his Cossacks. Truls Berntsen with his drill and crazed eyes. Queen Isabelle and her fuck-buddy-in-chief
.

The rat scampered along the baseboard. Out of sheer desperation I checked under the carpets and mattresses. Under one mattress I found a picture and a piece of steel wire. The picture was a crumpled and faded passport photo of Irene, so I guessed this had to be Oleg’s mattress. But I couldn’t understand what the wire was for. Until it slowly dawned on me. And I felt my palms go sweaty and my heart beat faster. After all, I had taught Oleg how to make a stash
.

Hans Christian Simonsen, wriggling between tourists, made his way up the slope of the Italian white marble that made the Opera House look like a floating iceberg at the end of the fjord. When he was atop the roof he looked around and caught sight of Harry Hole sitting on a wall. He was on his own, as the tourists by and large went to the other side to enjoy the view of the fjord. But Harry was sitting and staring inward at the old, ugly parts of town.

Hans Christian sat down beside him.

“H.C.,” Harry said, without looking up from the brochure he was reading. “Did you know that this marble is called Carrara marble and that the Opera House cost every Norwegian more than two thousand kroner?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know anything about
Don Giovanni
?”

“Mozart. Two acts. An arrogant young rake who believes he is God’s gift to women and men cheats everyone and makes everyone hate himself. He thinks he is immortal, but in the end a mysterious statue comes and takes his life as they are both swallowed up by the earth.”

“Mm. There’s the premiere of a new production in a couple of days. It says here that in the final scene the chorus sings, “
Such is the end of the evil-doer: the death of a sinner always reflects his life
.” Do you think that’s true, H.C.?”

“I
know
it isn’t. Death, sad to say, is no more just than life is.”

“Mm. Did you know a policeman was washed ashore here?”

“Yes.”

“Anything you don’t know?”

“Who shot Gusto Hanssen?”

“Oh, the mysterious statue,” Harry said, putting down the brochure. “Do you want to know who it is?”

“Don’t you?”

“Not necessarily. The important thing to prove is who it
isn’t
, that it isn’t Oleg.”

“Agreed,” said Hans Christian, studying Harry. “But hearing you say that doesn’t tally with what I’ve heard about the zealous Harry Hole.”

“So perhaps people change after all.” Harry smiled quickly. “Did you check the progress of the investigation with your prosecutor pal?”

“They haven’t gone public with your name yet, but it has been sent to all airports and border controls. Put it this way: Your passport’s not worth a lot.”

“That’s the Mallorca trip up in smoke.”

“You know you’re wanted, yet you meet at Oslo’s number-one tourist attraction?”