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Phantom(24)

By:Jo Nesbo


‘How do you know that?’

Harry shrugged. ‘There was a wealthy surgeon called Birayev. In the eighties he got his hands on one of the original astronaut suits from Apollo 11. Two million dollars on the black market. Anyone who tried to pull a fast one on Birayev or didn’t pay a debt was put in the suit. They filmed the face of the poor guy as they poured in the water. Afterwards the film was sent round to other debtors.’

Harry blew smoke towards the ceiling.

Beate sent him a lingering look and slowly shook her head. ‘What have you been doing in Hong Kong, Harry?’

‘You asked me that on the phone.’

‘And you didn’t answer.’

‘Exactly. Hagen said he could give me another case instead of this one. Mentioned something about an undercover guy who was killed.’

‘Yes,’ Beate said, sounding relieved that they were no longer talking about the Gusto case and Oleg.

‘What was that about?’

‘A young undercover Narc agent. He was washed ashore where the Opera House slopes into the water. Tourists, children, and so on. Big hullabaloo.’

‘Shot?’

‘Drowned.’

‘And how do you know it was murder?’

‘No external injuries; in fact, it looked as if he might have fallen into the sea by accident – his beat was the area around the Opera House. But then Bjørn Holm checked his lungs. Turned out it was fresh water. And Oslo fjord is salt water as you know. Looks like someone chucked him in the sea to make it look as if he had drowned there.’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘as a Narc agent he must have wandered up and down the river. That’s fresh water and it flows into the sea by the Opera House.’

Beate smiled. ‘Good to have you back, Harry. But Bjørn thought about that, and compared the bacterial flora, the content of microorganisms, and so on. The water in his lungs was too clean to have come from the Akerselva. It had been through water filters. My guess is he drowned in a bath. Or in a pool below the water-purification plant. Or …’

Harry threw the butt down on the path in front of him. ‘A plastic bag.’

‘Yes.’

‘The Man from Dubai. What do you know about him?’

‘What I’ve just told you, Harry.’

‘You didn’t tell me anything.’

‘Exactly.’

They stopped by Anker Bridge. Harry checked his watch.

‘Going somewhere?’ Beate asked.

‘Nope,’ Harry answered. ‘I did it to give you a pretext to say you’ve got to be off, without feeling you were dumping me.’

Beate smiled. She was quite attractive when she smiled, Harry thought. Strange that she wasn’t with someone. Or perhaps she was. One of the eight in his phone contacts list, and he didn’t even know that.

B for Beate.

H was for Halvorsen, Harry’s ex-colleague and the father of Beate’s child. Killed on active duty. But his number still hadn’t been deleted.

‘Have you contacted Rakel?’ Beate asked.

R. Harry wondered if her name had come up as a result of association with the word ‘dump’. He shook his head. Beate waited. But he had nothing to add.

They both started to speak at the same time.

‘I suppose you’ve—’

‘In fact, I have—’

She smiled. ‘—got to be off.’

‘Of course.’

He watched her walk up towards the road.

Then he sat on one of the benches and stared at the river, at the ducks paddling in a quiet backwater.

The two hoodies returned. Came over to him.

‘Are you five-o?’

American slang for police, stolen from a supposedly authentic TV series. It was Beate they had smelt, not him.

Harry shook his head.

‘After some …?’

‘Some peace,’ Harry completed. ‘Peace and quiet.’

He took a pair of Prada sunglasses from his inside pocket. He had been given them by a shopowner on Canton Road who was a bit behind with payments, but who considered himself fairly treated. They were a ladies’ model, but Harry didn’t care, he liked them.

‘By the way,’ he called after them, ‘got any violin?’

One snorted by way of response. ‘Town centre,’ the other said, pointing over his shoulder.

‘Where precisely?’

‘Look for Van Persie or Fàbregas.’ Their laughter faded as they headed towards Blå, the jazz club.

Harry leaned back and studied the ducks’ strangely efficient kick that allowed them to glide across the water like speed skaters on black ice.

Oleg was keeping his mouth shut. The way the guilty keep their mouths shut. That is their privilege and sole rational strategy. So where to go from here? How do you investigate something that is already solved, answer questions that have already found adequate answers? What did he think he could achieve? Defeat the truth by denying it? The way he, in his role as a Crime Squad detective, had seen relatives produce the pathetic refrain: ‘My son? Not a chance!’ He knew why he wanted to investigate crimes. Because it was the only thing he could do. The only thing he had to contribute. He was the housewife who insisted on cooking at her son’s wake, the musician who took his instrument to his friend’s funeral. The need to do something, as a distraction or a gesture of comfort.