Текст книги "Phantom"

Автор книги: Jo Nesbo

Соавторы: Jo Nesbo,Jo Nesbo
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

36

Hans Christian Simonsen way between tourists up the slope of the Italian white marble that made the Opera House look like a floating iceberg at the end of the fjord. When he was atop the roof he looked around and caught sight of Harry Hole sitting on a wall. He was on his own, as the tourists by and large went to the other side to enjoy the view of the fjord. But Harry was sitting and staring inwards at the old, ugly parts of town.

Hans Christian sat down beside him.

‘HC,’ Harry said without looking up from the brochure he was reading. ‘Did you know that this marble is called Carrara marble and that the Opera House cost every Norwegian more than two thousand kroner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know anything about Don Giovanni?’

‘Mozart. Two acts. An arrogant young rake, who believes he is God’s gift to women and men, cheats everyone and makes everyone hate themselves. He thinks he is immortal, but in the end a mysterious statue comes and takes his life as they are both swallowed up by the earth.’

‘Mm. There’s the premiere of a new production in a couple of days. It says here that in the final scene the chorus sings, “ Such is the end of the evil-doer: the death of a sinner always reflects his life.” Do you think that’s true, HC?’

‘I know it isn’t. Death, sad to say, is no more just than life is.’

‘Mm. Did you know a policeman was washed ashore here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything you don’t know?’

‘Who shot Gusto Hanssen?’

‘Oh, the mysterious statue,’ Harry said, putting down the brochure. ‘Do you want to know who it is?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Not necessarily. The important thing to prove is who it isn’t, that it isn’t Oleg.’

‘Agreed,’ said Hans Christian, studying Harry. ‘But hearing you say that doesn’t tally with what I’ve heard about the zealous Harry Hole.’

‘So perhaps people change after all.’ Harry smiled quickly. ‘Did you check the progress of the investigation with your police solicitor pal?’

‘They haven’t gone public with your name yet, but it has been sent to all airports and border controls. Put it this way, your passport’s not worth a lot.’

‘That’s the Mallorca trip up in smoke.’

‘You know you’re wanted, yet you meet in Oslo’s number-one tourist attraction?’

‘Tried-and-tested small-fry logic, Hans Christian. It’s safer in the shoal.’

‘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.

‘A while. Does it hurt?’

‘My throat? Little infection perhaps.’ Harry lit Hans Christian’s cigarette. ‘You love her, don’t you.’

The solicitor inhaled in a way which suggested to Harry that he had hardly smoked since the parties of 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 wardrobe, 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 solicitor threw it away. ‘What do you want me to do this time?’

‘Burglary,’ Harry said.

They drove straight after the onset of darkness.

Hans Christian picked up Harry from Bar Boca in Grunerlokka.

‘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. In service as it were.’

Harry nodded. They drove up to Ryen and snaked round the bends to Oslo’s best viewing points in the east.

‘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 ring if anyone comes.’

Harry took the jemmy with him and walked up the shingle path to the house. Autumn, sharp night air, the aroma of apples. He had a moment of deja vu. He and Oystein creeping into a garden and Tresko on the lookout by the fence. And then suddenly out of the dark a figure came hobbling towards 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 jemmy 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. Nappies and medicine.

Harry switched on his torch. Saw a bare coat stand. He continued into the house.

The sitting room looked as if it had been dusted with powder; the colours 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 grey as the rest of the room.

Harry ventured further into the house and was able to confirm afterwards 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 recognised the man from his visit to the Radium Hospital. Her passport was brand new. In the photo she was almost unrecognisable, pale, hair hanging in lank strands. The tickets were to Bangkok, departure in ten days.

Harry went down to the basement. Headed for the only door he had not looked behind. There was a key in the lock. He opened it. The same smell he had noticed when he was in the hall met him. 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 that Harry now knew 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. 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 jemmy in his hand. At the bottom, he began to walk along between the storerooms. A bulb in the ceiling cast meagre light. And created more shadows. Harry noticed that all the rooms were shut with padlocks. Who would lock a storeroom in their own cellar?

Harry inserted the pointed end of the jemmy under one hinge. Breathed in, dreading the noise. Pressed the jemmy 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 light. Neon tube.

The storeroom was much larger than it had appeared from the outside. He recognised it. It was a copy of a room he had seen before. The lab at the Radium Hospital. 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, dabbed 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 jemmy 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 jemmy to his right hand. Tiptoed up to the door, which had a small peephole covered with wire netting, exactly like they’d had at home. With one difference: this door was reinforced with metal.

Harry held the torch 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 was used to this. Being inspected with a torch.

‘Irene?’ Harry asked tentatively.

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

37

I looked at my watch. I had searched the whole flat and still hadn’t found Oleg’s stash. And Ibsen should have been here twenty minutes ago. Just let him try not turning up, the perv! It was life for kidnapping and rape. The day Irene came to Oslo Central I had taken 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 boot. 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 entirely without feeling. But when I came over all ‘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 ground for me, this was, not getting what the body needed. I’d always got what I wanted, I realised that now. And if that wasn’t the way it was going to be in the future I would rather have dropped dead on the spot. Died 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. Neither him nor Oleg.

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

I’d shut out this option for a long time. I was frightened. 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. Sooner die than ring him.

The seconds passed. Ibsen wasn’t coming.

Hell! Better to die than be so ill.

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

Dying had lost out.

The finale awaited.

Ring him or die?

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Harry switched off the torch when the phone began to ring. 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 off if-’

‘Clear off?’ Hans Christian sounded genuinely indignant.

‘If you can see this is going down the tube, OK?’

‘Why should I-’

Harry rang off, switched the torch 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.’

‘Have you…?’ she mumbled, but Harry didn’t catch the rest.

‘Have I what?’

‘Have you got 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 shingle outside. One foot being dragged after the other. Club foot. And then the door opened.

The light came on.

And there he was. Big, round and plump.

Stig Nybakk.

The department head at the Radium Hospital. 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 stand and walked towards 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 face when he entered, which he had taken to be a spider’s web, must have been something else. Some invisible fibre Nybakk had wound across the hall to indicate whether he had had any unwelcome visitors.

Nybakk moved with surprising speed and agility towards a cupboard. Stuck his hand in. Pulled at something and the matt 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 finger.

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.

H-o-o-t 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 bloody 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 the cellar door was ajar.

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

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

Harry opened the cellar door and then followed Nybakk, didn’t need to tiptoe, knew the hooting would drown his footsteps. From the door he watched Nybakk as he drew the curtains aside. The room was filled with blinding light from the powerful xenon headlamps on Hans Christian’s estate car.

Harry took four long strides, and Stig Nybakk neither saw nor heard him approach. He was holding one hand in front of his face to shield it from the light as Harry reached both arms round Stig Nybakk’s shoulders, grabbed the gun, pulled the barrel into his fleshy neck. Dug his knees into the back of Nybakk’s legs, forcing both of them down as Nybakk desperately fought for air.

Hans Christian must have realised the hooting had done its job, because it stopped, but Harry continued to apply pressure. Until Nybakk’s movements slowed, lost energy and he seemed to wilt.

Harry knew Nybakk was losing consciousness. After a few seconds without oxygen the brain would be damaged and after a few more Stig Nybakk, the kidnapper and brain behind violin, would be dead.

Harry took stock. Counted to three and allowed one hand to let go of the gun. Nybakk slid to the floor without a noise.

Harry sat on a chair panting. Gradually, as the adrenalin level in his blood sank, the pain from his chin and neck returned. It had been getting worse by the hour. He tried to ignore it, and pressed ‘O’ and ‘K’ to Hans Christian.

Nybakk began to groan softly and hunched up into the foetal position.

Harry searched him. Laid everything he found in his pockets on the coffee table. Wallet, mobile phone and bottle of prescription pills. Zestril. Harry remembered his grandfather had taken them to prevent a heart attack. Harry stuffed the pills into his jacket pocket, put the muzzle of the shotgun to Nybakk’s pale brow and ordered him to get up.

Nybakk looked at Harry. Was about to say something, but changed his mind. Struggled to his feet and swayed.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked as Harry nudged him forward into the hall.

‘Downstairs,’ Harry said.

Stig Nybakk was still unsteady, and Harry supported him with one hand on his shoulder and the gun in his back as they clambered down to the cellar. They stopped by the door where he had found Irene.

‘How did you know it was me?’

‘The ring,’ Harry said. ‘Open up.’

Nybakk took a key from his pocket and twisted it in the padlock.

Inside, he switched on a light.

Irene had moved. She was cowering in the corner furthest from them, trembling, one shoulder raised, as though afraid someone might hit her. Around her ankle was a shackle attached to a chain that led up to the ceiling, where it was nailed to a beam.

Harry noticed that the chain was long enough for her to move around. Long enough for her to switch on the light.

She had preferred darkness.

‘Release her,’ Harry said. ‘And put the shackle on.’

Nybakk coughed. Held up his palms. ‘Listen, Harry-’

Harry hit him. Completely lost his head and hit him. Heard the lifeless thud of metal on flesh and saw the red weal the gun barrel had made across Nybakk’s nose.

‘Say my name one more time,’ Harry whispered and felt himself forcing out the words, ‘and I’ll plaster your head against the wall with the wrong end of the gun.’

With quaking hands Nybakk unlocked the shackle on her foot while Irene stared into the distance, stiff and apathetic, as though none of this concerned her.

‘Irene,’ Harry said. ‘Irene!’

She seemed to wake up, and looked at him.

‘Get out of here,’ he said.

She pinched her eyes as if it cost her every ounce of concentration to interpret the sounds he had made, to convert the words into meaning. And actions. She walked past him and into the cellar passage with a slow, fixed somnambulist gait.

Nybakk had sat down on the mattress and pulled up his trouser leg. He was trying to attach the narrow shackle over his fat white calf.

‘I…’

‘Round your wrist,’ Harry said.

Nybakk obeyed, and Harry jerked the chain to check it was tight enough.

‘Take off the ring and give to me.’

‘Why? It’s just cheap tat-’

‘Because it’s not yours.’

Nybakk coaxed the ring off and passed it to Harry.

‘I know nothing,’ he said.

‘About what?’ Harry asked.

‘About what I know you’re going to ask. About Dubai. I’ve met him twice, but both times I was led there blindfolded, so I don’t know where I was. His two Russians came here and collected goods twice a week, but I never heard any names mentioned. Listen, if it’s money you want I’ve-’

‘Was that it?’

‘Was that what?’

‘Everything. Was it for money?’

Nybakk blinked a couple of times. Shrugged. Harry waited. And then a kind of weary smile flitted across Nybakk’s face. ‘What do you think, Harry?’

He motioned towards his foot.

Harry didn’t answer. Didn’t know if he wanted to hear. He might understand. That for two guys growing up in Oppsal, under the same conditions by and large, an apparent bagatelle of a congenital defect can make life dramatically different for one of them. A few bones out of line, turning the foot inwards. Pes equinovarus. Horse foot. Because the way someone with a club foot walks is redolent of a horse tiptoeing. A defect which gives you a slightly worse start in life, for which you find ways to compensate, or you don’t. Which means you have to compensate a bit more to become Mr Popular, the one they want: the boy who leads out the class team, the cool dude who has cool pals and the girl in the row by the window, the one whose smile makes your heart explode, even though the smile isn’t for you. Stig Nybakk had limped through life, unnoticed. So unnoticed Harry couldn’t remember him. And it had gone reasonably well. He’d got himself an education, worked hard, been made head of a department, had even begun to lead the class team himself. But the essential ingredient was missing. The girl from the row by the window. She was still smiling at the others.

Rich. He had to become rich.

Because money is like cosmetics, it conceals everything, it gets you everything, including those things which it is said are not for sale: respect, admiration, love. You just had to look around; beauty marries money every time. So now it was his turn, Stig Nybakk’s, Club Foot’s.

He had invented violin, and the world ought to be at his feet. So why didn’t she want him? Why did she turn away in barely concealed disgust even though she knew – knew – that he was already a rich man and would be richer with every week that passed. Was it because there was someone else she was thinking about, the one who had given her the foolish tawdry ring she wore on her finger? It was unjust, he had worked hard, tirelessly, to fulfil the criteria in order to be loved, and now she had to love him. So he had taken her. Snatched her from the row by the window. Shackled her here, so that she would never disappear again. And to complete the forced marriage he had taken her ring and put it on his own finger.

The cheap ring Irene had been given by Oleg, who in turn had stolen it from his mother, who in turn had been given it by Harry, who in turn had bought it at a street market, where in turn… it was like the Norwegian children’s song: ‘Take the Ring and Let It Wander’. Harry stroked the black nick in the ring’s gilt surface. He had been observant and yet blind.

Observant the first time he had met Stig Nybakk and said: ‘The ring. I used to have an identical one.’

And blind because he hadn’t reflected on what was identical.

The nick in the copper that had gone black.

It was only when he had seen Martine’s wedding ring and heard her say he was the only person in the world who would buy a tacky ring that he had linked Oleg with Nybakk.

Harry had not doubted for a moment, even though he hadn’t found anything suspicious in Stig Nybakk’s flat. Quite the contrary, it was so utterly devoid of compromising objects that Harry had assumed at once that Nybakk had to be keeping his bad conscience elsewhere. The parents’ house that stood empty and he could not sell. The red house on the hill above Harry’s family home.

‘Did you kill Gusto?’ Harry asked.

Stig Nybakk shook his head. Heavy eyelids. He seemed sleepy.

‘Alibi?’

‘No. No, I don’t have one.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I was there.’

‘Where?’

‘In Hausmanns gate. I was going to see him. He had threatened to expose me. But when I got to Hausmanns gate there were police cars everywhere. Someone had already killed Gusto.’

‘Already? So you planned to do the same?’

‘Not the same. I don’t have a pistol.’

‘What have you got then?’

Nybakk shrugged. ‘Chemistry studies. Gusto was suffering from withdrawal symptoms. He needed violin.’

Harry looked at Nybakk’s tired smile and nodded. ‘So whatever white stuff you had you knew Gusto would inject it on the spot.’

The chain rattled as Nybakk raised his hand to point to the door. ‘Irene. May I say a few words to her before…?’

Harry watched Stig Nybakk. Saw something he recognised. A damaged person, a finished man. Someone who had rebelled against the cards fate had dealt him. And lost.

‘I’ll ask her,’ he said.

Harry found Irene upstairs in the sitting room. She was in a chair with her feet tucked up underneath her. Harry fetched a coat from the hall cupboard, draped it over her shoulders. He spoke to her in a whisper. She answered in a tiny voice, as though afraid of the echoes from the cold sitting-room walls.

She told him Gusto and Nybakk, or Ibsen as they called him, had worked together to trap her. Payment had been half a kilo of violin. She had been locked up for four months.

Harry let her say her piece. Waited until he knew she had run out before asking the next question.

She didn’t know anything about the murder of Gusto, beyond what Ibsen had told her. Or who Dubai was, or where he lived. Gusto hadn’t said anything, and Irene hadn’t wanted to know. All she had heard about Dubai were the same rumours about his flitting around town like some kind of phantom and that no one knew who he was or what he looked like, and that he was like the wind, impossible to catch.

Harry nodded. He had heard that image rather too often of late.

‘HC will drive you to the police station. He’s a solicitor and will help you to report this. Afterwards he’ll take you to Oleg’s mother where you can stay for the meantime.’

Irene shook her head. ‘I’ll ring Stein, my brother. I can stay with him. And…’

‘Yes?’

‘Do I have to report this?’

Harry looked at her. She was so young. So small. Like a baby bird. It was impossible to say how much damage had been done.

‘It can wait until tomorrow,’ Harry said.

He saw the tears well up in her eyes. And his first thought was: At last. Was about to lay a hand on her shoulder, but changed his mind in time. A strange man’s hand was perhaps not what she needed. But the next instant her tears were gone.

‘Is there… is there any alternative?’ she asked.

‘Such as?’ Harry said.

‘Such as never having to see him again.’ Her eyes would not release his. ‘Ever.’

Then he felt it. Her hand on top of his. ‘Please.’

Harry patted the hand, then placed it back in her lap. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to HC.’

After Harry had watched the car go, he went back into the house and down to the cellar. He couldn’t find any rope, but under the stairs hung a garden hosepipe. He took it to the storeroom and threw it at Nybakk. Looked up at the beam. High enough.

He took the bottle of Zestril tablets he had found in Nybakk’s pocket. Emptied the contents into his hand. Six.

‘You’ve got a heart condition?’ Harry asked.

Nybakk nodded.

‘How many tablets do you have to take a day?’

‘Two.’

Harry put the tablets in Nybakk’s hand and the empty bottle in his jacket pocket.

‘I’ll be back in two days. I don’t know what your reputation means to you. The shame would certainly have been worse if your parents had been alive, but I’m sure you’ve heard how other prisoners treat sex offenders. If you don’t exist when I return then you’re forgotten, your name will never be mentioned again. If you do, we’ll take you to the police station. Got that?’

Stig Nybakk’s screams followed Harry all the way to the front door. The screams of someone who was totally, totally alone with his own guilt, his own ghosts, his own loneliness, his own decisions. Yes, there was something familiar about him. Harry slammed the door hard behind him.

Harry hailed a taxi on Vetlandsveien and asked the driver to go to Urtegata.

His neck ached and throbbed as if it had a pulse of its own, had become alive, a locked-up inflamed animal made of bacteria that wanted out. Harry asked if the driver had any painkillers in the car, but he shook his head.

As they turned towards Bjorvika Harry saw rockets exploding in the sky above the Opera House. Someone was celebrating something. It struck him that he ought to do some celebrating himself. He had done it. He had found Irene. And Oleg was free. He had achieved what he set out to achieve. So how come he wasn’t in a celebratory mood?

‘What’s the occasion?’ Harry asked.

‘Oh, it’s the opening night of some opera. I took some elegant types there earlier this evening.’

‘ Don Giovanni. I was invited.’

‘Why didn’t you go? It’s supposed to be good.’

‘Tragedies make me so sad.’

The driver sent Harry a surprised look in the mirror. Laughed. ‘Tragedies make me so sad?’

His phone rang. It was Klaus Torkildsen.

‘Thought we were never to speak again,’ Harry said.

‘Me too,’ Torkildsen said. ‘But I… well, I checked anyway.’

‘It’s not so important any more,’ Harry said. ‘The case is wrapped up as far as I’m concerned.’

‘Fine, but it might be interesting to know that just before and after the time of the murder Bellman – or at least his phone – was down in Ostfold. It would have been impossible for him to make it to the crime scene and back.’

‘OK, Klaus, thanks.’

‘OK. Never again?’

‘Never again. I’m going now.’

Harry ended the call. Leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

Now he should be happy.

Inside his eyelids he could see sparks from the fireworks.