Phantom (47 page)

“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 your 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.

Isabelle Skøyen started to laugh. “Harry, don’t look so crestfallen.”

He could have been sitting on a plane to Bangkok. To another life.

He was already on his way out.

“Wait, Harry.”

He turned. She was leaning against the cubicle door and had pulled up her skirt. So high that he could see stocking tops and garters. A lock of blond hair fell over her brow.

“Now that we have the toilets all to ourselves …”

Harry met her eyes. They were misty. Not with alcohol, not with desire—there was something else. Was she crying? Tough, lonely, self-despising Isabelle Skøyen? And? She was yet another bitter person willing to ruin others’ lives to get what she thought was her birthright: to be loved.

The door continued to swing both ways after Harry had left, chafed against the rubber seal, faster and faster, like an accelerating and final round of applause.

H
ARRY WALKED BACK
over the covered bridge to Oslo Central and down the steps to Plata. There was a twenty-four-hour pharmacy at the other end, but the line was always so long, and he knew that over-the-counter pills did not have the muscle to kill the pain. He continued past Heroin Park. It had started raining, and the light from the street lamps shimmered on the wet tramlines up Prinsens Gate. He considered the case as he walked. Nybakk’s shotgun in Oppsal was the easier option. Furthermore, a shotgun gave him more room to maneuver. To retrieve the rifle from behind the wardrobe in Room 301, he would have to enter Hotel Leon unobserved, and he couldn’t even be sure they hadn’t already found it. But the rifle was more final.

The lock on the gate behind Hotel Leon was smashed. It had been broken recently. Harry presumed that was how the two suits had got in the night they came visiting.

Harry went in and, sure enough, the lock on the back door was damaged as well.

Harry climbed the narrow stairs that doubled as an emergency exit. Not a soul in the corridor on the third floor. Harry knocked on 310 to ask Cato if the police had been there. Or anyone else. But there was no answer. He put his ear against the door. Silence.

No attempt had been made to repair the door to his room, so a key was, in this respect, superfluous. He pushed at the door and it opened. Noticed the blood that had seeped into the bare cement where he had removed the doorsill.

Nothing had been done about the window, either.

Harry didn’t switch on the light, entered regardless, fumbled behind the wardrobe and verified that they had not found the rifle. Nor the box of cartridges, which was still next to the Bible in the bedside-table drawer. And Harry realized the police had not been there; the hotel occupants and neighbors had not deemed it necessary to involve the law on account of a few miserable rounds from a shotgun, at least as long as there were no bodies. He opened the wardrobe. Even his clothes and suitcase were there, as though nothing had happened.

Harry caught sight of the woman in the room opposite.

She was sitting in front of a mirror with her back to him. Combing her hair, from what he could see. She was wearing a dress that looked strangely old-fashioned. Not old, just old-fashioned, like a costume from another era. Without understanding why, Harry shouted through the smashed window. A short yell. The woman didn’t react.

Back on street level, Harry knew he wasn’t going to cope. His neck felt as if it were on fire, and the heat was making his pores pump out sweat. He was drenched and felt the first bouts of the shivers.

The music in the bar had changed. From the open door came Van Morrison’s “And It Stoned Me.”

Painkilling.

Harry walked into the road, heard a shrill desperate ring, and in the next instant a blue-and-white wall filled his field of vision. For four seconds he stood quite motionless in the middle of the street. Then the tram passed and the open bar door was back.

The barman gave a start as he looked up from his newspaper and caught sight of Harry.

“Jim Beam,” Harry said.

The barman blinked twice without moving. The newspaper slid to the floor.

Harry pulled euros from his wallet and laid them on the counter. “Give me the whole bottle.”

The barman’s jaw had dropped. The
EAT
tattoo had a roll of fat above the
T
.

“Now,” Harry said. “And I’ll be off.”

The barman glanced down at the money. Looked up at Harry. Reached for the bottle of Jim Beam, keeping his eyes fixed on him.

Seeing the bottle was less than half full, Harry sighed. He slipped it into his coat pocket, looked around, tried to think of some memorable words for a parting shot, gave up, nodded and left.

H
ARRY STOPPED AT
the corner of Prinsens and Dronningens Gate. First he called directory assistance. Then he opened the bottle. The smell of bourbon made his stomach knot. But he knew he would not be able to perform what he had to do without an anesthetic. It had been three years since the last time. Perhaps things had improved. He put the bottle to his mouth. Leaned back and tipped it. Three years of sobriety. The poison hit his system like a napalm bomb. Things had not improved; they were worse than ever.

Harry bent forward, stuck out an arm and supported himself on a wall, so that he would not spatter his trousers or shoes.

He heard high heels on the pavement behind him. “Hey, mister. Me beautiful?”

“Sure,” Harry managed to utter before his throat was filled. The yellow jet hit the pavement with impressive power and radius, and he heard the high heels castanet into the distance. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried again. Head back. Whiskey and gall ran down. And were regurgitated.

The third time it stayed put. For the time being.

The fourth hit the mark.

The fifth was heaven.

Harry hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address.

T
RULS
B
ERNTSEN HURRIED
through the murk. Crossed the parking lot in front of the apartment building illuminated by lights from good, safe homes, where they were bringing out the snacks and pots of coffee, and maybe even a beer, and switching on the TV, now that the
news was over and it was more fun to watch. Truls had called Police HQ and said he was ill. They hadn’t asked him what was wrong, had just asked if he was going to be away for the full three days you could take without a doctor’s note. Truls had answered how the hell could he know if he was going to be ill for precisely three days? What a country of lazy shits, with fucking hypocritical politicians claiming that people
actually
wanted to work if they could. Norwegians voted for the Socialist Party because they made it a human right to shirk their jobs, and who the hell wouldn’t vote for a party that gave you three days off without a doctor’s note, gave you carte blanche to sit at home and jerk off or go skiing or recover from a hangover? The Socialist Party knew, of course, what a perk this was, but still tried to appear responsible, preened themselves with their “trust in most people” and declared the right to malinger as some kind of social reform. The Progress Party was even more fucking infuriating, buying itself votes with tax cuts and hardly bothering to conceal the fact.

He had been sitting and thinking about this the whole day while he went over his weapons, loading, checking, keeping an eye on the locked door, scrutinizing all the vehicles that came into the parking lot through the sights of the Märklin, the enormous assassination rifle from a case years ago, which the officer in charge of confiscated arms probably still thought was at Police HQ. Truls had known that sooner or later he would have to go out for food, but had waited until it was dark and there were not many people around. At a little before eleven o’clock, closing time at Rimi supermarket, he had taken his Steyr, sneaked out and jogged over there. Walked along the aisles with one eye on the food and the other on the customers. Bought a week’s worth of Fjordland rissoles. Small, transparent bags of peeled potatoes, rissoles, creamed peas and gravy. Chuck them in a pan of boiling water for a few minutes, cut open the bags and squeeze the contents onto the plate, and if you closed your eyes, damned if it didn’t remind you of real food.

Truls Berntsen was at the entrance to the apartment building, inserting the key in the lock, when he heard hurried steps behind him in the darkness. He whirled around, frantic, and his hand was already on the pistol butt inside his jacket as he stared into the terrified face of Vigdis A.

“D-did I frighten you?” she stammered.

“No,” Truls said curtly and went in without holding the door open for her, but heard her manage to squeeze her fat through anyway before it closed.

He pressed the elevator button. Frightened? ’Course he was fucking frightened. He had Siberian Cossacks on his tail. Was there anything about that which was
not
frightening?

Vigdis A. panted behind him. She was as overweight as most of them had become. Not that he would have said no, but why didn’t anyone come straight out with it? Norwegian women had got so fat they were not only going to drop dead from one of a whole range of illnesses, but they would also stop the race from reproducing; they were going to depopulate the country. Because in the end no man could be asked to wade through so much fat. Apart from his own, of course.

The elevator came, they went in and the wires screamed in pain.

He had read that men were putting on at least as much weight, but that it wasn’t visible in the same way. They had smaller asses, and just looked bigger and stronger. As he did. He looked a damn sight
better
than he had twenty pounds ago. But women got this rippling, quivering flab that made him want to kick them, see his foot disappear in all the pudge. Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the dieting hysteria and applauded the “real” woman’s body. As though doing no exercise and being overfed was some kind of sensible model. Be happy with the body you’ve got, sort of thing. Much better for hundreds to die of heart disease than for one person to die of an eating disorder. And now even Martine looked that way. She was pregnant—he knew that—but he couldn’t get it out of his head that she had become one of
them
.

“You look cold.” Vigdis A. smiled.

Truls didn’t know what the
A
stood for, but that was what was written by her doorbell,
VIGDIS A
. He felt like punching her, a right hook, with all his strength—he didn’t need to worry about his knuckles with those fucking hamster cheeks—or fucking her. Or both.