Текст книги "Phantom"

Автор книги: Jo Nesbo

Соавторы: Jo Nesbo,Jo Nesbo
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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

PART FOUR
38

‘I’ll join you.’

It was over.

She was his again.

Harry moved forward with the check-in queue in the large concourse at Gardermoen. He had a sudden plan, a plan for the rest of his life. A plan anyway. And he had an intoxicating feeling he could not describe with a better word than happy.

The monitor above the check-in desk said ‘Thai Air, Business Class’.

It had happened so fast.

He had gone straight from Nybakk’s house to Martine at the Watchtower to return her phone, but had been told he could keep it because she had a new one. He had allowed himself to be persuaded to accept a coat that was hardly used, so that he looked relatively presentable. Plus three Paracet pills for the pain, but he had refused to let her examine the wound. She would only want to dress it, and there was no time. He had rung Thai Air and fixed himself up with a ticket.

Then it had happened.

He had rung Rakel, told her Irene had been found and that with Oleg’s release his mission was accomplished. Now he would have to leave the country before he himself was arrested.

And that was when she had said it.

Harry closed his eyes and played back Rakel’s words yet again: ‘I’ll join you, Harry.’ I’ll join you. I’ll join you.

And: ‘When?’

When?

Most of all he had wanted to answer ‘now’. Pack a bag and come now!

But he had managed to think rationally to some degree.

‘Listen, Rakel, I’m a wanted man, and the police are probably keeping an eye on you, hoping you’ll lead them to me, OK? I’ll go alone tonight. Then you follow tomorrow on the evening flight. I’ll wait in Bangkok. From there we can go on to Hong Kong.’

‘Hans Christian can defend you if you’re arrested. The sentence won’t be that-’

‘It’s not the length of the sentence that worries me,’ Harry said. ‘As long as I’m in Oslo Dubai can find me. Are you sure Oleg’s in a safe place?’

‘Yes. But I want him to join us, Harry. I can’t travel-’

‘Of course he’ll join us.’

‘Do you mean that?’ He could hear the relief in her voice.

‘We’ll be together, and in Hong Kong Dubai can’t touch us. We’ll wait a few days and then I’ll get a couple of Herman Kluit’s men to travel to Oslo and escort him.’

‘I’ll tell Hans Christian. And then I’ll buy the plane ticket for tomorrow, darling.’

‘I’ll be waiting in Bangkok.’

A small silence.

‘But you’re wanted, Harry. How are you going to board the plane without-’

‘Next.’ Next?

Harry opened his eyes again and saw the woman behind the desk smiling at him.

He stepped forward and gave her his ticket and passport. Watched her type in the name on the passport.

‘I can’t find you here, herr Nybakk…’

Harry put on a reassuring smile. ‘In fact I was booked on the plane to Bangkok in ten days’ time, but I rang an hour and a half ago and had it changed to this evening.’

The woman pressed some more keys. Harry counted the seconds. Breathed in. Out. In.

‘There it is, yes. Late bookings don’t always show up right away. But here it says you’re travelling with an Irene Hanssen.’

‘She’s travelling as previously planned,’ Harry said.

‘Oh, yes. Any luggage to check in?’

‘No.’

More pressing of keys.

Then she frowned. Opened the passport again. Harry steeled himself. She placed the boarding card into the passport and gave it to him. ‘You’d better hurry, herr Nybakk. Boarding has already started. Have a pleasant trip.’

‘Thank you,’ Harry said with rather more sincerity than he had anticipated and ran to security.

It was only on the other side of the X-ray machine, when he was about to pick up keys and Martine’s mobile phone, that he noticed he had received a text. He was about to save it with all Martine’s other messages when he saw the sender had a short name. B. Beate.

He sprinted to gate 54. Bangkok, final call.

Read it.

‘Got the last list. There’s one address that wasn’t on the list you got from Bellman. Blindernveien 74.’

Harry stuffed the phone in his pocket. There was no queue by the counter. He opened his passport and the official checked it and the boarding card. Looked at Harry.

‘The scar’s newer than the photo,’ Harry said.

The official studied him. ‘Get a new photo, Nybakk,’ he said and returned the documents. Motioned to the person behind Harry to indicate it was their turn.

Harry was free. Saved. A whole new life lay before him.

By the gate there were still five stragglers in the queue.

Harry looked at his boarding card. Business class. He had never travelled in anything but economy, even for Herman Kluit. Stig Nybakk had done well. Dubai had done well. Were doing well. Are doing well. Now, this evening, at this moment, the punters were standing there, their faces quivering and hungry, waiting for the guy in the Arsenal shirt to say: ‘Come on.’

Two left in the queue.

Blindernveien 74.

I’ll join you. Harry closed his eyes to hear Rakel’s voice again. And then it was there: Are you a policeman? Is that what you’ve become? A robot, a slave of the anthill and ideas other people have had?

Was he?

It was his turn. The woman at the desk raised her eyebrows.

No, he was not a slave.

He passed her his boarding card.

He walked. Walked down the tunnel to the plane. Through the glass he could see the lights of a plane coming in to land. Coming over Tord Schultz’s house.

Blindernveien 74.

Mikael Bellman’s blood under Gusto’s nails.

Shit, shit, shit!

Harry boarded, found his seat and sank deep into a leather seat. God, the softness of it. He pressed a button and the seat went back and back and back until he was lying in a horizontal position. He closed his eyes again, wanted to sleep. Sleep. Until one day he awoke and was changed and in a very different place. He searched for her voice. But instead found another, in Swedish:

I have a false priest’s collar; you have a false sheriff’s badge. How unshakeable is your faith in your gospel actually?

Bellman’s blood. ‘… down in Ostfold. It would have been impossible for him to…’

Everything fits.

Harry felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes.

A Thai flight attendant with high cheekbones smiled down at him.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but you must raise your seat into the upright position before take-off.’

Upright position.

Harry breathed in. Took out his mobile phone. Looked at the last call.

‘Sir, you have to turn off-’

Harry held up his hand and pressed ‘Call’.

‘Thought we were never to speak again,’ Klaus Torkildsen answered.

‘Exactly where in Ostfold?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Bellman. Where in Ostfold was he when Gusto was killed?’

‘Rygge, by Moss.’

Harry put his phone back and stood up.

‘Sir, the seat belt sign-’

‘Sorry,’ Harry said. ‘This isn’t my flight.’

‘I’m sure it is. We’ve checked passenger numbers and-’

Harry strode back down the plane. He heard the patter of feet behind him.

‘Sir, we’ve already shut-’

‘Then open it.’

A purser had joined them. ‘Sir, I’m afraid the rules don’t allow us to open-’

‘I’m out of pills,’ Harry said, fumbling in his jacket pocket. Found the empty bottle with the Zestril label and held it to the purser’s face. ‘I’m Mr Nybakk, see? Do you want a passenger to have a heart attack on board when we’re over… let’s say Afghanistan?’

It was past eleven o’clock, and the airport express was almost empty as it raced towards Oslo. Harry absent-mindedly read the news on the screen hanging from the ceiling. He’d had a plan, a plan for a new life. Now he had twenty minutes to come up with a new one. It was lunacy. He could have been on a plane to Bangkok. But that was the point; he could have been on a plane to Bangkok now. He simply didn’t have the ability, it was a deficiency, an operating fault; his club foot was that he had never been able to tell himself he didn’t care, to forget, to clear off. He could drink, but he sobered up. He could go to Hong Kong, but he came back. He was undoubtedly a very damaged person. And the effect of the tablets Martine had given him was wearing off; he needed more, the pain was making him dizzy.

Harry had his eyes focused on headlines about quarterly figures and sport results when it struck him: what if that was what he was doing now? Clearing off. Chickening out.

No. It was different this time. He had had the date of the flight changed to tomorrow night, the same flight as Rakel. He had even reserved a seat for her beside him in business class and paid for an upgrade. He had wondered whether to tell her about what he was doing, but he knew what she would think. He hadn’t changed. There was still the same madness driving him. Nothing would change, ever. But sitting there, beside each other, with the acceleration pressing them backwards into the seat and then feeling the lift, the lightness, the inexorable, she would finally know they had left the old days behind them, beneath them, that their journey had begun.

Harry got off the airport express, crossed the bridge to the Opera House, walked over the Italian marble towards the main entrance. Through the glass he could see the elegantly dressed people making conversation, with finger food and drinks behind the ropes in the expensive foyer.

Outside the entrance stood a man wearing a suit and an earpiece, his hands in front of his crotch as if facing a free kick. Broad-shouldered, but no beef. Trained eyes that had spotted Harry long ago, and were now studying things around him that might have some significance. Which could only mean that he was a policeman in PST, the Norwegian security service, and that the Chief of Police or someone from the government was present. The man took two steps towards Harry as he approached.

‘Sorry, private party…’ he began, but stopped when he saw Harry’s ID card.

‘It’s nothing to do with your Chief, pal,’ Harry said. ‘Just need to have a few words with someone. Official business.’

The man nodded, spoke into the microphone on his lapel and let Harry pass.

The foyer was a huge igloo which Harry could see was populated by many faces he recognised despite his long exile: the press poseurs, TV’s talking heads, entertainers from sport and politics, plus culture’s eminences more or less grises. And Harry saw what Isabelle Skoyen had meant when she’d said it was hard to find a tall enough date when she wore heels. She was easy to spot towering above the assembled guests.

Harry strode over the rope and ploughed a path through with a repeated ‘sorry’ as white wine slopped around him.

Isabelle was speaking to a man who was half a head smaller than her, but her ingratiating, enthusiastic facial expression suggested to Harry that he was several heads higher than her in power and status. Harry was three metres away when a man appeared in front of him.

‘I’m the officer who’s just been talking to your colleague outside,’ Harry said. ‘I’m going to have a word with her.’

‘Be my guest,’ said the guard, and Harry thought he could hear a certain subtext.

Harry took the last steps.

‘Hi, Isabelle,’ he said and saw the surprise on her face. ‘Hope I’m not interrupting… your career?’

‘Inspector Hole,’ she answered with a screech of laughter as if sharing an in-joke.

The man beside her was quick on the draw with his hand and said – rather superfluously – his name. A long career on the top floor of City Hall had presumably taught him that popularity with the common man was rewarded on election day. ‘Did you enjoy the performance, Inspector?’

‘Yes and no,’ Harry said. ‘I was mostly glad it was over, and I was on my way home when I realised that there were a couple of things I hadn’t got clear.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, as Don Giovanni’s a thief and a philanderer surely it’s only right and proper that he should be punished in the final act. I think I understood who he is, the statue 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. ‘By your leave, 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 queueing for an audience.

Harry took Isabelle by the arm and led her towards the toilet signs.

‘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 toilets.

‘Suit’s been in the skip 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 civilised or a brutal way. What’s the basis of your cooperation with Mikael Bellman?’

‘Go to hell, Hole.’

Harry kicked the door to the toilets open and dragged her in.

A man in a dinner jacket by a sink sent them an astonished look from the mirror as Harry slammed Isabelle against a cubicle door and forced his forearm against her throat.

‘Bellman was at yours 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 ring my man at Aftenposten and have it in tomorrow’s paper. And then I’ll place everything I have on the public 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. ‘Any help required?’

‘Get the fuck out of here!’

The man seemed shocked, perhaps not so much at the words but the fact that it was Isabelle who had uttered them, and he shuffled out.

‘We were shagging,’ 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 shagging?’

‘I know he’s married, and we were shagging, that’s all,’ she said, rubbing her neck. ‘Gusto appeared out of nowhere and clawed Bellman as he was being thrown out. If you want to tell the press about it, go ahead. I assume you’ve never shagged a married woman. But you might consider what press 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 quite by chance?’

‘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 opening or other, a premiere, a private view, don’t remember what. That’s how it is. You can ring 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 Skoyen 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 blonde 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 Skoyen? And? She was yet another bitter person willing to ruin others’ lives to get what they thought was their 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.

Harry walked back over the covered bridge to Oslo Central, down the steps to Plata. There was a twenty-four-hour chemist at the other end, but the queue 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 street lamps shimmered in 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 for manoeuvre. 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 second floor. Harry knocked on 310 to ask Cato if the police had been. 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 threshold.

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 realised the police had not been there, at Hotel Leon; the occupants and neighbours 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 was 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’.

Pain-killing.

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 notes. 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.

Harry stopped at the corner of Prinsens and Dronningens gate. First of all he rang directory enquiries. 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 anaesthetic. It was 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 tarmac 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.

Truls Berntsen hurried through the murk. Crossed the car park in front of the apartment block 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 the news was over and it was more fun to watch. Truls had rung into Police HQ and said he was ill. They hadn’t asked him what was wrong, they had just enquired if he was going to be away for the three days without a sick note. Truls had answered how the hell could anyone know if they were going to be ill for precisely three days? What a country of bloody shirkers, what bloody 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, 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 wank 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 bloody infuriating as it bought itself votes with tax cuts and hardly bothered 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, scrutinising all the vehicles that came into the car park, through the sights of the Marklin, 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 waited until it was dark and there were not many people about. 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 squelch it 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 block, inserting the key in the lock, when he heard hurried steps behind him in the darkness. He whirled round, 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 lift button. Frightened? Course he was bloody 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 snuff it from one of a whole sodding 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 arsed to wade through so much fat. Apart from their own, of course.

The lift 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 bums, and just looked bigger and stronger. As he did. He looked a bloody sight better than ten kilos ago. But women got this rippling, quivering flab that made him want to kick them, see his foot disappear in all the podge. Everyone knew that fat had become the new cancer, yet they bellyached about the slimming 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 one person should die of an eating disorder. And now even Martine looked the same. Right, 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 bloody hamster cheeks. Or fucking her. Or both.

Truls knew why he was so angry. It was the mobile phone.

When they had finally got Telenor to track down Hole’s phone they had seen it was located in the city centre, around Oslo station, to be precise. There is probably nowhere in Oslo so jam-packed with people day and night. Then a dozen police officers had trawled the crowds searching for Hole. They had kept at it for hours. Nada. In the end a fresh-faced cop had come up with the banal idea of synchronising their watches, spreading around the area and then one of them would ring his number every quarter of an hour. And if anyone heard a phone ring at that moment, or saw anyone taking out a phone, they had to pounce, it had to be here somewhere. No sooner said than done. And they had found the phone. In the pocket of a junkie sitting half asleep on the steps at Jernbanetorget. He said he had been ‘given’ the phone by a guy at the Watchtower.

The lift stopped. ‘Goodnight,’ Truls mumbled and got out.

He heard the door close behind him and the lift start again.

Rissoles and a DVD now. The first Fast amp; Furious, maybe. Shit film, of course, but it had one or two scenes. Or Transformers, Megan Fox and a good, long wank.

He heard her breathing. She had got out of the lift with him. Some pussy. Truls Berntsen was going to get laid tonight. He smiled and turned his head. It met something. Something hard. And cold. Truls Berntsen strained his eyeballs. A gun barrel.

‘Thank you very much,’ said a familiar voice. ‘I’d love to come in.’

Truls Berntsen sat in the armchair staring down the muzzle of his own pistol.

He had found him. And vice versa.

‘We can’t keep meeting like this,’ Harry Hole said. He had positioned the cigarette in the corner of his mouth so that he would not get smoke in his eyes.

Truls didn’t reply.

‘Do you know why I’d rather use your gun?’ he said, patting the hunting rifle he had placed in his lap.

Truls continued to keep his mouth shut.

‘Because I’d prefer the bullets they find in you to be traced back to your weapon.’

Truls shrugged.

Harry Hole leaned forward. And Truls could smell it now: the alcoholic breath. Hell, the guy was drunk. He had heard stories about what the man did in a sober state, and now he’d been boozing.

‘You’re a burner, Truls Berntsen. And here’s the proof.’

He held up the ID card from the wallet he had taken from him along with the gun. ‘Thomas Lunder? Isn’t that the man who collected the dope from Gardermoen?’

‘What is it you want?’ Truls said, closing his eyes and settling back in the chair. Rissoles and a DVD.

‘I want to know what the link is between you, Dubai, Isabelle Skoyen and Mikael Bellman.’

Truls recoiled in the chair. Mikael? What the fuck did Mikael have to do with this? And Isabelle Skoyen? Wasn’t she the politician?

‘I have no idea…’

He watched Harry cock the pistol.

‘Careful, Hole! The trigger’s more sensitive than you think. It’s-’

The hammer of the gun rose further.

‘Wait! Wait, for Christ’s sake!’ Truls Berntsen’s tongue circled his mouth in search of lubricating saliva. ‘I know nothing about Bellman or Skoyen, but Dubai-’

‘Yes?’

‘I can tell you about him…’

‘What can you tell me?’

Truls Berntsen took a deep breath, held it. Then let it out with a groan. ‘Everything.’