Phantom (44 page)

“Tried-and-tested small-fry logic, Hans Christian. It’s safer in the shallow end.”

“I thought you considered loneliness safer.”

Harry took out his pack of cigarettes, shook and held it out. “Did Rakel tell you that?”

Hans Christian nodded and took a cigarette.

“How long have you two been together?” Harry asked with a grimace.

“Awhile. Does it hurt?”

“My throat? A little infection, maybe.” Harry lit Hans Christian’s cigarette. “You love her, don’t you?”

The lawyer inhaled in a way that suggested to Harry that he had not smoked much since his student days.

“Yes, I do.”

Harry nodded.

“But you were always there,” Hans Christian said, sucking on the cigarette. “In the shadows, in the closet, under the bed.”

“Sounds like a monster,” Harry said.

“Yes, I suppose it does,” Hans Christian said. “I tried to exorcise you, but I failed.”

“You don’t need to smoke the whole cigarette, Hans Christian.”

“Thank you.” The lawyer threw it away. “What do you want me to do this time?”

“Burglary,” Harry said.

T
HEY HEADED OUT
right after the onset of darkness.

Hans Christian picked up Harry from Bar Boca in Grünerløkka.

“Nice car,” Harry said. “Family car.”

“I had an elkhound,” Hans Christian said. “Hunting. Cabin. You know.”

Harry nodded. “The good life.”

“It was trampled to death by an elk. I consoled myself with the thought that it must be a good way for an elkhound to die. On the job, so to speak.”

Harry nodded. They drove up to Ryen and snaked around the bends to east Oslo’s best scenic overlooks.

“It’s right here,” Harry said, pointing to an unlit house. “Park at an angle so that the headlights are shining at the windows.”

“Shall I …?”

“No,” Harry said. “You wait here. Keep your phone on and call if anyone comes.”

Harry took the crowbar with him and walked up the gravel path to the house. Autumn, sharp night air, the aroma of apples. He had a moment of déjà vu. He and Øystein creeping into a garden and Tresko on the lookout by the fence. And then suddenly out of the dark a figure came hobbling toward them wearing an Indian headdress and squealing like a pig.

He rang.

Waited.

No one came.

Nonetheless Harry had the feeling someone was at home.

He slotted the crowbar inside the crack by the lock and carefully applied his weight. The door was old, with soft, damp wood and an old-fashioned lock. Then he used his other hand to insert his ID card on the inside of the crooked snap latch. Pressed harder. The lock burst open. Harry slid inside and closed the door behind him. Stood in the darkness holding his breath. Felt a thin thread on his hand, probably the remains of a spider’s web. There was a damp, abandoned smell. But also something else, something acrid. Illness, hospital. Diapers and medicine.

Harry switched on his flashlight. Saw a bare coat rack. He continued into the house.

The sitting room looked as if it had been dusted with powder; the colors seemed to have been sucked out of the walls and the furniture. The cone of light moved across the room. Harry’s heart stopped when it was reflected back from a pair of eyes. Then went on beating. A stuffed owl. As gray as the rest of the room.

Harry ventured farther into the house and was able to confirm afterward that it was the same as the flat. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Until, that is, he reached the kitchen and discovered the two passports and the plane tickets on the table.

Although the passport photo had to be almost ten years old Harry recognized the man from his visit to the Radiumhospitalet. Her passport was brand-new. In the photo she was almost unrecognizable, pale, hair hanging in lank strands. The tickets were to Bangkok, departure in ten days.

Harry headed for the only door he had not looked behind. There was a key in the lock, and he opened it. He was met by the same smell he had noticed when he was in the hall. He flicked the switch inside the door, and a naked bulb lit the steps leading to the cellar. The feeling that someone was at home. Or, “Oh, yes, the gut instinct,” which Bellman had said with light irony when Harry had asked whether he had checked Martin Pran’s record. A feeling, Harry now knew, that had misled him.

Harry wanted to go down, but something was holding him back. The cellar. Similar to the one he had grown up with. When his mother had asked him to fetch potatoes, which they kept in the dark in two big bags, Harry had raced down, trying not to think. Trying to imagine that he was running because it was so cold. Because they were in a hurry to prepare the meal. Because he
liked
running. It had nothing to do with the yellow man waiting down there; a naked, smiling man with a long tongue you could hear slithering in and out of his mouth. But that wasn’t what stopped him now. It was something else. The dream. The avalanche through the cellar corridor.

Harry repressed the thoughts and set his foot on the first step. There was an admonitory creak. He forced himself to tread slowly. Still with the crowbar in his hand. At the bottom, he began to walk along between the storerooms. A bulb in the ceiling cast meager light. And created more shadows. Harry noticed that all the rooms were shut with padlocks. Who would lock a storeroom in his own cellar?

Harry inserted the pointed end of the crowbar under one hinge. Breathed in, dreading the noise. Pressed the crowbar back quickly, and there was a short crack. He held his breath, listened. The house seemed to be holding its breath as well. Not a sound.

Then he gently opened the door. The smell assailed his nostrils. His fingers found a switch on the inside, and the next moment Harry was bathed in fluorescent light.

The storeroom was much larger than it had appeared from the outside. He recognized it. It was a copy of a room he had seen before, the lab at the Radiumhospitalet. Benches with glass flasks and test-tube
stands. Harry lifted the lid off a big plastic box. The white powder was speckled with brown. Harry licked the tip of his index finger, poked it into the powder and rubbed it against his gums. Bitter. Violin.

Harry gave a start. A sound. He held his breath again. And there it was again. Someone sniffling.

Harry rushed back to turn off the light and hunched up in the dark, holding the crowbar ready.

Another sniffle.

Harry waited a few seconds. Then with quick, quiet steps, he walked out of the storeroom and headed to where the sounds had come from. A storeroom on the left. He moved the crowbar to his right hand. Tiptoed up to the door, which had a small peephole covered with wire netting, exactly like he remembered from home. With one difference: This door was reinforced with metal.

Harry held the flashlight ready, stood against the wall beside the door, counted down from three, switched on the beam and pointed it through the hole.

Waited.

After three seconds had passed and no one had either shot or launched themselves at the light, he put his head against the wire and peered inside. The beam roved over brick walls, illuminated a chain, flitted across a mattress and then found what it was looking for. A face.

Her eyes were closed. She was sitting quite still. As though she were used to this. Being inspected with a flashlight.

“Irene?” Harry asked tentatively.

At that moment the phone in Harry’s pocket began to vibrate.

I looked at my watch. I’d searched the whole flat and still hadn’t found Oleg’s stash. And Ibsen should have been here twenty minutes ago. He’d pay for this, the perv! It was life for kidnapping and rape. The day Irene came to Oslo Central I took her to the rehearsal room, where I said Oleg was waiting for her. He wasn’t, of course. But Ibsen was. He held her while I gave her a shot. I thought about Rufus. About how it was for the best. Then she calmed right down, and all we had to do was drag her into his car. He had my half-kilo in the trunk. Did I have any regrets? Yes, I regretted I hadn’t asked for a kilo! No, of course I had some regrets. I’m not completely soulless. But when I started to think, “Fuck, I shouldn’t have done that,” I told myself that Ibsen would take good care of her. He must love her, in his own warped way. Anyway it was too late—now the main thing was to get some medicine and to be healthy again
.

This was new territory for me, not getting what the body needed. I always got what I wanted—I realized that now. And if that wasn’t the way it was going to be in the future I would rather drop dead on the spot. Die young and beautiful, with my teeth more or less intact. Ibsen wasn’t coming; I knew that now. I stood by the kitchen window looking out onto the street, but the fricking limp-dick was nowhere to be seen. No sign of Oleg, either
.

I’d tried them all. There was only one left
.

I’d avoided this option for a long time. I was scared. Yes, I was. But I knew he was in town. He’d been here from the day he found out she had disappeared. Stein. My foster brother
.

I looked down the street again
.

No. I’d rather die than call him
.

The seconds passed. Ibsen wasn’t coming
.

Hell! Better to die than be so sick
.

I pinched my eyes again, but insects were crawling out of the cavities, darting under my eyelids, scrabbling all over my face
.

Dying lost out
.

The finale awaited
.

Call him or die?

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

H
ARRY SWITCHED OFF
the flashlight when the phone began to vibrate. Saw from the number that it was Hans Christian.

“Someone’s coming,” his voice, hoarse with anxiety, whispered in Harry’s ear. “He parked outside the gate, and now he’s heading for the house.”

“OK,” Harry said. “Take it easy. Text me if you see anything. And clear out if—”

“Clear out?” Hans Christian sounded genuinely indignant.

“If you can see this is going down the tube, OK?”

“Why should I—”

Harry hung up, switched the light back on and shone it at the wire. “Irene?”

The girl blinked at the light with saucer eyes.

“Listen to me. My name’s Harry. I’m a policeman and I’m here to get you out. But someone’s coming. If he comes down here, act as if nothing’s happened, OK? I’ll soon have you out of here, Irene. I promise.”

“Do you have …?” she mumbled, but Harry didn’t catch the rest.

“Do I have what?”

“Do you have any … violin?”

Harry gritted his teeth. “Hold out for a bit longer,” he whispered.

Harry ran to the top of the stairs and turned off the light. Pushed the door ajar and peered out. He had a clear view of the front door. He heard a shuffling gait on the gravel outside. One foot being dragged after the other. Clubfoot. And then the door opened.

The light came on.

And there he was. Big, round and plump.

Stig Nybakk.

The department head at the Radiumhospitalet. The one who remembered Harry from school. Who knew Tresko. Who had a wedding ring with a black nick. Who had a bachelor flat in which it was impossible to find anything out of the ordinary. But also a house left by his parents he hadn’t sold.

He hung his coat on the rack and walked toward Harry with his hand outstretched. Stopped suddenly. Fluttered his hand in front of him. A deep furrow in his brow. Stood listening. And now Harry knew why. The thread he had felt on his hand when he entered, which he
had taken to be a spider’s web, must have been something else. Some invisible fiber Nybakk had wound across the hall to indicate whether he had had any unwelcome visitors.

Nybakk moved with surprising speed and agility toward a cupboard. Stuck his hand in. Pulled at something and the metal gleamed. A shotgun.

Shit, shit, shit. Harry hated shotguns.

Nybakk took out a box of cartridges, which was already open. Removed two large red cartridges, held them between first and middle fingers.

Harry’s brain whirred and whirred, but failed to come up with any good ideas, so he chose the bad one. Took his phone and began to press.

B-e-e-p a-n-d w-a-j-p

Shit! Wrong!

He heard the metallic click as Nybakk broke the gun.

Delete. Where are you? Out with
j
and
p
and in with
i
and
t
.

Heard him loading the cartridges.

w-a-i-t t-i-l-l h-e i-s

Tiny fucking keys! Come on!

Heard the barrel click into place.

i-n t-h-e w-i-n-c

Wrong! Harry heard Nybakk’s shuffling gait come closer. Not enough time. Would have to hope Hans Christian could use his imagination.

l-i-g-h-t-s!

He pressed
SEND
.

Harry could see Nybakk had raised the shotgun to his shoulder. And it struck him that the pharmacist had noticed that the cellar door was ajar.

At that moment a car horn sounded. Loud and insistent. Nybakk flinched. Looked to the sitting room, which faced the road. Hesitated. Then went into the room.

The horn beeped again, and this time it didn’t stop.