Phantom(83)

‘Simonsen!’

The solicitor looked up. And his face brightened. ‘Oh, hi there! Berntsen. Truls Berntsen, isn’t it?’

Truls’s right hand froze in his coat pocket. And he must have worn a crestfallen expression because Simonsen gave a hearty laugh. ‘I’ve got a good memory for faces, Berntsen. You and your boss, Mikael Bellman, investigated the embezzlement business at Heider Museum. I was the defence counsel. You won the case, I’m sorry to say.’

Simonsen laughed again. Jovial, naive West Oslo laughter. The laughter of people who have grown up with everyone wishing everyone else well, in a place with the wealth necessary for them to be able to do that. Truls hated all the Simonsens in this world.

‘Anything I can help you with, Berntsen?’

‘I …’ Truls Berntsen fumbled for words. But this was not his strong suit, deciding what to do face to face with … with what? People who were verbally quicker on their feet than he was? It had been fine that time in Alnabru, then it had been two boys and he had taken command. But Simonsen had a suit, education, a different way of speaking, superiority, he … oh shit!

‘I just wanted to say hello.’

‘Hello?’ Simonsen said with a question mark in his intonation and face.

‘Hello,’ Berntsen said, forcing a smile. ‘Shame about the case. You’ll beat us next time.’

Then he headed for the exit with an accelerated step. Feeling Simonsen’s eyes on his back. Digging muck, eating shit. Sod the lot of them.

Try the solicitor, and if that doesn’t work there’s a man called Chris Reddy whom everyone knows as Adidas.

The speed dealer. Truls hoped he would have a pretext for violence during the arrest.

Harry swam towards the light, towards the surface. The light became stronger and stronger. Then he broke through. Opened his eyes. And stared straight up at the sky. He was lying on his back. Something came into his field of vision. A horse’s head. And another.

He shaded his eyes. Someone was sitting on a horse, but he was dazzled by the light.

The voice came from far away.

‘I thought you said you’d ridden before, Harry.’

Harry groaned and struggled to his feet as he recalled what exactly had happened. Balder had sailed across the chasm and landed on the ground with his front legs, Harry had been thrown forward, banging into Balder’s neck, losing the stirrups and sliding down one side while holding on tightly to the reins. He vaguely remembered dragging Balder with him, but kicked out at him so as not to have half a ton of horse on top of him.

His back felt as if it was out, but otherwise he seemed to be in one piece.

‘Grandfather’s nag didn’t jump over canyons,’ Harry said.

‘Canyons?’ Isabelle Skøyen laughed, passing him Balder’s reins. ‘That’s no more than a little crevice of five metres. I can jump further without a horse. Didn’t know you were the jittery type, Harry. First back to the farm?’

‘Balder,’ Harry said, patting the horse’s muzzle as they watched Isabelle Skøyen and Medusa racing down towards the open field, ‘are you conversant with the equine gait “an amble”?’

* * *

Harry stopped at a petrol station on the E6 and bought a coffee. He got back into the car and looked in the mirror. Isabelle had given him a plaster for the graze on his forehead, the opportunity to join her at the premiere of Don Giovanni at the Opera House (‘… impossible to find a date taller than my chin when I wear heels … looks bad in the newspapers …’) and a firm departing hug. Harry took out his mobile and picked up the message.

‘Where have you been?’ Beate asked.

‘Bit of fieldwork,’ Harry said.

‘There wasn’t much to help us at the crime scene in Gardermoen. My people have hoovered the place. Nada. The only thing we found out is that the nails are a standard steel variety, with extra-large sixteen-millimetre aluminium heads, and that the brick probably comes from a property in Oslo built at the end of the 1800s.’

‘Oh?’

‘We found pig’s blood and horse hair in the mortar. There was a well-known Oslo bricklayer who used to mix it in, there’s loads of it in the city-centre apartment blocks. You can make mortar with anything.’

‘Mm.’

‘So, no lead there, either.’

‘Either?’

‘Yes, that visit you were talking about. It must have been to somewhere else, not Police HQ, because no Tord Schultz has been registered. The visitor’s pass only says Oslo Politidistrikt and there are similar ones in several police stations.’

‘OK. Thank you.’

Harry searched his pockets until he found what he was after. Tord Schultz’s visitor’s pass. And his, the one he’d been given when he visited Hagen at Crime Squad on the first day in Oslo. He placed them beside each other on the dashboard. Studied them. Drew his conclusions and stuffed them back in his pocket. Turned the ignition key, breathed in through his nostrils, confirmed he could still smell horse and decided to visit an old rival at Høyenhall.