Phantom(110)

‘We’re not alone, it seems,’ Harry said. ‘I see you have backup.’

He nodded to the shadow under the door. Another shadow appeared. A straight, oblong shadow. Truls followed his gaze. And Harry saw it. The genuine astonishment on his face. The kind of astonishment types like Truls Berntsen cannot simulate. They weren’t Berntsen’s people.

‘Move away from the door,’ Harry whispered.

Truls stopped masticating the chewing gum and looked down at him.

Truls Berntsen liked to have his Steyr pistol in a shoulder holster, positioned in such a way that the gun lay flat against his chest. It made it harder to see when you stood face to face with someone. And as he knew that Harry Hole was an experienced detective, trained by the FBI in Chicago and so on, he also knew that Hole would automatically notice anything bulky in the usual places. Not that Truls reckoned he would need to use the pistol, but he had taken precautions. If Harry resisted he would escort him outside with the Steyr discreetly pointing at his back, having put on the balaclava so that any potential witnesses couldn’t say whom they had seen with Hole before he disappeared off the face of the earth. The Saab was parked in a backstreet; he had even smashed the only street lamp so that no one would see the number plate. Fifty thousand euros. He had to be patient, build stone by stone. Get a house a bit higher up in Høyenhall with a view, looking down on them. Down on her.

Harry Hole had seemed smaller than the giant he remembered. And uglier. Pale, ugly, dirty and exhausted. Resigned, unfocused. This was going to be an easier job than he had anticipated. So when Hole whispered he should move away from the door Truls Berntsen’s first reaction was irritation. Was the guy attempting to play games now everything looked to be going so well? But his second reaction was that this was the voice they used. Police officers in critical situations. No colouring, no drama, just a neutral, cold clarity with the least possible chance of a misunderstanding. And the greatest possible chance of survival.

So Truls Berntsen – almost without thinking – took a step to the side.

At that moment the top part of the door panel was blown into the room.

As Berntsen whirled round his instinctive conclusion was that the barrel must have been sawn off to have such wide coverage at such short range. He already had a hand inside his jacket. With the shoulder holster in its conventional position and without a jacket he would have drawn faster as the handle would have been sticking out.

Truls Berntsen fell backwards onto the bed with the gun freed and at the end of an outstretched arm as the remains of the door opened with a bang. He heard the glass shatter behind him before everything was drowned by a new explosion.

The noise filled his ears, and there was a snowstorm in the room.

In the doorway the silhouettes of two men stood in the snowdrift. The taller one raised his gun. His head almost touched the door frame, he must have been well over two metres. Truls fired. And fired again. Felt the wonderful recoil and even more wonderful certainty that this was for real, to hell with the consequences. The tall one jerked, seemed to flick his fringe before stepping back and disappearing from view. Truls shifted his pistol and his gaze. The second man stood there without moving. White feathers fluttered around him. Truls had him in his sights. But he didn’t fire. He saw him more clearly now. Face like a wolf. The kind of face Truls had always associated with the Sami, Finns and Russians.

Now the guy calmly raised his gun. Finger wrapped around the trigger.

‘Easy, Berntsen,’ he said in English.

Truls Berntsen gave a long, drawn-out roar.

Harry fell.

He had lowered his head, crouched up and moved back as the first blast of the shotgun sprayed over his head. Back to where he knew the window was. Felt the pane almost bend before it remembered it was glass and gave way.

Then he was in free fall.

Time had jammed on the brakes, as though he was falling through water. Hands and arms working like slow paddles in a reflex attempt to stop the body rotating into the beginnings of a backward somersault. Semi-transmitted thoughts bounced between the brain’s synapses:

He was going to land on his head and break his neck.

It was lucky he didn’t have curtains.

The naked woman in the window opposite was upside down.

Then he was received by softness everywhere. Empty cardboard boxes, old newspapers, used nappies, milk cartons and day-old bread from the hotel’s kitchen, wet coffee filters.

He lay on his back in the open skip amid a shower of glass. Flashes of light appeared from the window above him, like camera flashbulbs. Muzzles of flames. But it was eerily quiet, as though the flashes came from a TV with the volume turned down. He could feel the gaffer tape around his neck had torn. Blood was streaming out. And for one wild moment he considered staying where he was. Closing his eyes, going to sleep, drifting off. He seemed to be watching himself sit up, jump over the edge of the skip and race towards the gate at the end of the yard. Open it as he heard a protracted, furious roar from the window reach the street. Slip on a drain cover but manage to stay on his feet. See a black woman in tight jeans, on the game, who smiled instinctively and pouted at him, then reviewed the situation and averted her gaze.