Текст книги "Phantom"

Автор книги: Jo Nesbo

Соавторы: Jo Nesbo,Jo Nesbo
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

‘Yes?’

‘A few days ago I was sent on a job to arrest a guy at Leon, the hotel, you know?’

‘I think I know it, yes.’

‘But while I was in the middle of the arrest two other policemen I don’t know turned up, and they wanted to arrest us both.’

‘Double booking?’ Mikael laughed. ‘Talk to Finn. He coordinates operational matters.’

Truls slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t think it was a double booking.’

‘No?’

‘I think someone sent me there on purpose.’

‘You mean it was a wind-up?’

‘It was a wind-up, yes,’ Truls said, searching Mikael’s eyes, but found no indication that he understood what Truls was actually talking about. Could he have been mistaken after all? Truls swallowed.

‘So I was wondering if you knew anything about it, if you might have been in on it.’

‘Me?’ Mikael leaned back and burst out laughing. And when Truls saw into his mouth he remembered how Mikael had always returned from the school dentist with zero cavities. Not even Karius and Bactus got the better of him.

‘I wish I had been! Tell me, did they lay you out on the floor and cuff you?’

Truls eyed Mikael. Saw he had been wrong. So he laughed along with him. From relief as much as at the image of himself being sat on by two other officers, and because Mikael’s infectious laughter always invited him to laugh along. No, commanded him to laugh along. But it had also enveloped him, warmed him, made him part of something, a member of something, a duo consisting of him and Mikael Bellman. Friends. He heard his own grunted laughter as Mikael’s faded.

‘Did you really think I was in on it, Truls?’ Mikael asked with a pensive expression.

Truls, smiling, looked at him. Thought about how Dubai had found his way to him, thought of the boy Truls had beaten to blindness in remand. Who could have told Dubai that? Thought of the blood the SOC group had found under Gusto’s nail in Hausmanns gate, the blood Truls had contaminated before it got as far as a DNA test. But some of which he had procured and kept. It was evidence such as this that could be valuable one rainy day. And since it had definitely begun to rain, he had driven to the Pathology Unit this morning with the blood. And been given the result before coming here this evening. The test suggested, so far, that it was the same blood and nail fragments as those received from Beate Lonn a few days ago. Didn’t they talk to each other down there? Didn’t they think they had enough to do at Forensics? Truls had apologised and rung off. And considered the answer. The blood under Gusto Hanssen’s nails came from Mikael Bellman.

Mikael and Gusto.

Mikael and Rudolf Asayev.

Truls fingered the knot of his tie. It hadn’t been his father who taught him how to do it; he couldn’t even tie his own. It had been Mikael who had taught him when they were going to the end-of-school party. He had shown Truls how to tie a simple Windsor knot, and when Truls had asked why Mikael’s knot seemed so much fatter Mikael had answered that it was because it was a double Windsor, but it was unlikely to suit Truls.

Mikael’s gaze rested on him. He was still waiting for an answer to his question. Why Truls thought Mikael had been in on the stunt.

Been in on the decision to murder him and Harry Hole at Hotel Leon.

The doorbell rang, but Mikael didn’t move.

Truls pretended to be scratching his forehead while using his fingertips to dry the sweat.

‘No,’ he said and heard his own grunted laugh. ‘An idea, that’s all. Forget it.’

The stairs creaked under Stein Hanssen’s weight. He could feel every step and predict every creak and groan. He stopped at the top. Knocked on the door.

‘Come in,’ he heard from inside.

Stein Hanssen entered.

The first thing he saw was the suitcase.

‘Packed and ready?’ he asked.

A nod.

‘Did you find the passport?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve ordered a taxi to take you to the airport.’

‘I’m coming.’

‘OK.’ Stein looked around. The way he had in the other rooms. Said his farewells. Told them he wouldn’t be coming back. And listened to the echoes of their childhood. Father’s encouraging voice. Mother’s secure voice. Gusto’s enthusiastic voice. Irene’s happy voice. The only one he didn’t hear was his own. He had been silent.

‘Stein?’ Irene was holding a photograph in her hand. Stein knew which one, she had pinned it over her bed the same evening Simonsen, the solicitor, had brought her here. The photograph showing her with Gusto and Oleg.

‘Yes?’

‘Did you ever feel a desire to kill Gusto?’

Stein didn’t answer. Just thought of that evening.

The phone call from Gusto saying he knew where Irene was. Running to Hausmanns gate. And arriving: the police cars. The voices around him saying the boy inside was dead, shot. And the feeling of excitement. Yes, almost happiness. And after that, the shock. The grief. Yes, in a way he had grieved over Gusto. At the same time as nursing a hope that Irene would at last be clean. That hope had of course been extinguished as the days passed and he realised that Gusto’s death meant he had missed out on the chance to find her.

She was pale. Withdrawal symptoms. It was going to be tough. But they would manage. They would manage between them.

‘Shall we…?’

‘Yes,’ she said, opening the bedside-table drawer. Looking at the photograph. Pressing her lips against it and putting it in the drawer, face down.

Harry heard the door open.

He was sitting motionless in the darkness. Listened to the footsteps cross the sitting-room floor. Saw the movements by the mattresses. Glimpsed the wire as it caught the street lamp outside. The steps went into the kitchen. And the light came on. Harry heard the stove being moved.

He rose and followed.

Harry stood in the doorway watching him on his knees in front of the rathole, opening the bag with trembling hands. Placing objects beside each other. The syringe, the rubber tubing, the spoon, the lighter, the gun. The packages of violin.

The threshold creaked as Harry shifted weight, but the boy didn’t notice, just carried on with his feverish activity.

Harry knew it was the craving. The brain was focused on one thing. He coughed.

The boy stiffened. The shoulders hunched, but he didn’t turn. Sat without moving, his head bowed, staring down at the stash. Didn’t turn.

‘I thought so,’ Harry said. ‘That this is where you would come first. You reckoned the coast was clear now.’

The boy still hadn’t moved.

‘Hans Christian told you we found her for you, didn’t he? Yet you had to come here first.’

The boy got up. And again it struck Harry. How tall he’d become. A man, almost.

‘What do you want, Harry?’

‘I’ve come to arrest you, Oleg.’

Oleg frowned. ‘For possession of a couple of bags of violin?’

‘Not for dope, Oleg. For the murder of Gusto.’

‘Don’t!’ he repeated.

But I had the needle deep into a vein, which was trembling with expectation.

‘I thought it would be Stein or Ibsen,’ I said. ‘Not you.’

I didn’t see his fricking foot coming. It hit the needle, which sailed through the air and landed at the back of the kitchen, by the sink full of dishes.

‘Fuck’s sake, Oleg,’ I said, looking up at him.

Oleg stared at Harry for a long time.

It was a serious, calm stare, without any real surprise. More like it was testing the lie of the land, trying to find its bearings.

And when he did speak, Oleg sounded more curious than angry or confused.

‘But you believed me, Harry. When I told you it was someone else, someone with a balaclava, you believed me.’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘I did believe you. Because I so wanted to believe you.’

‘But, Harry,’ Oleg said softly, gazing down at the bag of powder he had opened, ‘if you can’t believe your best friend what can you believe?’

‘Evidence,’ Harry said, feeling his throat thicken.

‘What evidence? We found explanations for the evidence, Harry. You and I, we crushed the evidence between us.’

‘The other evidence. The new stuff.’

‘Which new stuff?’

Harry pointed to the floor by Oleg. ‘The gun there is an Odessa. It uses the same calibre as Gusto was shot with, Makarov, nine by eighteen millimetres. Whatever happens, the ballistics report will state with one hundred per cent certainty that this gun is the murder weapon, Oleg. And it has your dabs on it. Only yours. If anyone else used it and wiped their prints afterwards, yours would have been removed as well.’

Oleg touched the gun, as if to confirm it was the one they were talking about.

‘And then there’s the syringe,’ Harry said. ‘There are lots of fingerprints on it, perhaps from two people. But it is definitely your thumbprint on the plunger. The plunger you have to press when you’re shooting up. And on that print there are particles of gunpowder, Oleg.’

Oleg ran a finger along the syringe. ‘Why is there new evidence against me?’

‘Because you said in your statement you were high when you came into the room. But the gunpowder particles prove you injected the needle after because you had the particles on you. It proves you shot Gusto first and injected yourself afterwards. You were not high at the moment of the act, Oleg. This was premeditated murder.’

Oleg nodded slowly. ‘And you’ve checked my fingerprints on the gun and the syringe against the police register. So they already know that I-’

‘I haven’t contacted the police. I’m the only person who knows about this.’

Oleg swallowed. Harry saw the tiny movements in his throat. ‘How do you know they’re my prints if you didn’t check with the police?’

‘I had other prints I could compare them with.’

Harry took his hand from his coat pocket. Placed the Game Boy on the kitchen table.

Oleg stared at the Game Boy. Blinked and blinked as though he had something in his eye.

‘What made you suspect me?’ he whispered.

‘The hatred,’ Harry said. ‘The old man, Rudolf Asayev, said I should follow the hatred.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘He’s the man you called Dubai. It took me a while to realise he was referring to his own hatred. Hatred for you. Hatred for the fact that you killed his son.’

‘Son?’ Oleg raised his head and looked blankly at Harry.

‘Yes. Gusto was his son.’

Oleg dropped his gaze, squatted and stared at the floor. ‘If…’ He shook his head. Started afresh. ‘If it’s true Dubai was Gusto’s father and if he hated me so much why didn’t he make sure I was killed in prison straight away?’

‘Because you were exactly where he wanted you. Because for him prison was worse than death. Prison eats your soul, death only liberates it. Prison was what he wished for those he hated most. You, Oleg. And he had total control over what you did there. It was only when you began to talk to me that you represented a danger, and he had to be content with killing you. But he didn’t manage that.’

Oleg closed his eyes. Sat like that, still on his haunches. As though he had an important race in front of him, and now they just had to be quiet and concentrate.

The town was playing its music outside: the cars, a distant foghorn, a half-hearted siren, noise as the sum of human activity, like the anthill’s perpetual, relentless rustle, monotonous, soporific, secure like a warm duvet.

Oleg slowly leaned over without taking his eyes off Harry.

Harry shook his head.

But Oleg grabbed the gun. Carefully, as though afraid it would explode in his hands.

43

Truls had fled to be alone on the terrace.

He had stood on the periphery of a couple of conversations, sipping champagne, eating from toothpicks and trying to look as if he belonged there. A few of these well-brought-up individuals had attempted to include him. Said hello, asked him who he was and what he did. Truls had given brief replies, and it had not occurred to him to return the favour. As though he wasn’t in a position to do that. Or was frightened he ought to know who they were and what kind of bloody important jobs they had.

Ulla had been busy serving and smiling and chatting to these people, as if they were old acquaintances, and Truls had achieved eye contact with her only on a couple of occasions. And then, with a smile, she had mimed something he guessed was supposed to mean she would have liked to talk to him but a hostess’s duties called. It transpired that none of the other boys who had worked on the house had been able to come, and the Chief of Police hadn’t recognised Truls and neither had the unit heads. He almost felt like telling them he was the officer who had punched the lights out of the boy.

But the terrace was wonderful. Oslo lay glittering like a jewel beneath him.

The autumn chill had come with the high pressure. Night temperatures down to zero had been forecast on higher ground. He heard distant sirens. An ambulance. And at least one police vehicle. From somewhere in the centre. Truls would have most liked to sneak away, switch on the police radio. Hear what was going on. Feel the pulse of his town. Feel that he belonged.

The terrace door opened, and Truls automatically took two steps back, into the shadows, to avoid being drawn into a conversation where he would have to shrink still further.

It was Mikael. And the politician woman. Isabelle Skoyen.

She was clearly stewed; at any rate Mikael was supporting her. Big woman, she towered above him. They stood by the railing with their backs to Truls, in front of the windowless bay, so that they were hidden from the guests in the lounge.

Mikael stood behind her, and Truls half expected to see someone produce a Zippo and light a cigarette, but that didn’t happen. And when he heard the rustle of a dress and Isabelle Skoyen’s low, protesting laugh it was already too late to make his presence known. He saw the flash of a white thigh before the hem was pulled down firmly. Instead she turned to him, and their heads merged into one silhouette against the town below. Truls could hear wet tongue noises. He turned towards the lounge. Saw Ulla smiling and running between people with a tray of new provisions. Truls couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t bloody understand it. Not that he was shocked, it wasn’t the first time Mikael had been involved with another woman, but he couldn’t understand how Mikael had the stomach for it. The heart for it. When you have a woman like Ulla, when you have such incredible good luck, when you’ve hit the jackpot, how could you want to risk everything for a shag on the side? Is it because God, or whoever the hell it is, has given you the things women want in men – good looks, ambition, a smooth tongue that knows what to say – that you feel obliged to exercise your potential, as it were? Like people measuring two metres twenty think they have to play basketball. He didn’t know. All he knew was that Ulla deserved better. Someone to love her. Who loved her the way he had always loved her. And always would. The business with Martine had been a frivolous adventure, nothing serious, and it would never be repeated anyway. Every so often he had thought that in some way or other he ought to let Ulla know that if she were ever to lose Mikael, he, Truls, would be there for her. But he had never found the right words to tell her. Truls pricked up his ears. They were talking.

‘I just know he’s gone,’ Mikael said, and Truls could hear from the slightly slurred speech that he was not totally sober, either. ‘But they found the other two.’

‘His Cossacks?’

‘I still believe that all the stuff about them being Cossacks is bollocks. Anyway, Gunnar Hagen from Crime Squad contacted me and wondered if I could help. Tear gas and automatic weapons were used, so they have a theory it might have been the settling of an old score. He wondered if Orgkrim had any candidates. They were tapping in the dark, he said.’

‘And you answered?’

‘I answered that I had no idea who it could be, which is the truth. If it’s a gang they’ve managed to sail under the radar.’

‘Do you think the old boy could have escaped?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I think his body’s rotting somewhere down there.’ Truls saw a hand point into the starry sky. ‘Maybe we’ll find it very soon, maybe we’ll never find it.’

‘Bodies always turn up, don’t they?’

No, Truls thought. He stood with his weight distributed evenly across both feet, felt them press against the cement of the terrace, and vice versa. They don’t.

‘Nevertheless,’ Mikael said, ‘someone has done it, and he’s new. We’ll soon see who is Oslo’s new king of the dope heap.’

‘And what do you think that will mean for us?’

‘Nothing, my love.’ Truls could see Mikael Bellman place his hand behind Isabelle Skoyen’s neck. In silhouette, it looked as if he was about to strangle her. She lurched to the side. ‘We’ve got where we wanted to be. We jump off here. In fact, it couldn’t have had a better end than this. We didn’t need the old boy any more, and considering what he had on you and me in the course of… our cooperation, it’s…’

‘It’s?’

‘It’s…’

‘Remove your hand, Mikael.’

Alcoholic laughter, as smooth as velvet. ‘If this new king hadn’t done the job for us I might have had to do it myself.’

‘Let Beavis do it, you mean?’

Truls started at the sound of the hated nickname. Mikael had been the first person to use it. And it had stuck. People had caught on to the underbite and the grunted laugh. Mikael had even consoled him by saying he had been thinking more about the ‘anarchistic perception of reality’ and the ‘nonconformist morality’ of the cartoon character on MTV. Had made it sound as if he had awarded Truls an honorary bloody title.

‘No, I would never have let Truls know about my role in this.’

‘I still think it’s strange you don’t trust him. Aren’t you old friends? Didn’t he make this terrace for you?’

‘He did. In the middle of the night on his ownsome. See what I mean? We’re talking about a man who’s not a hundred per cent predictable. He’s prone to all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas.’

‘Yet you advised the old boy to recruit Beavis as a burner?’

‘That’s because I’ve known Truls since childhood, and I know he’s corrupt through and through and easily bought.’

Isabelle Skoyen screeched with laughter, and Mikael shushed her.

Truls had stopped breathing. His throat tightened, and it was as if he had an animal in his stomach. A small roving animal searching for a way out. It tickled and quivered. It tried an upward route. It pressed against his chest.

‘By the way, you’ve never told me why you chose me as your business partner,’ Mikael said.

‘Because you’ve got such a great cock, of course.’

‘No, be serious. If I hadn’t agreed to work with you and the old boy, I would’ve had to arrest you.’

‘Arrest?’ She snorted. ‘Everything I’ve done has been for the good of the town. Legalising marijuana, distributing methadone, financing a room for fixes. Or clearing the way for a drug that results in fewer ODs. What’s the difference? Drug policies are pragmatism, Mikael.’

‘Relax, I agree, goes without saying. We’ve made Oslo a better place. Skal to that.’

She ignored his raised glass. ‘You would never have arrested me anyway. Because, if you had, I would’ve told anyone who wanted to listen that I was fucking you behind your sweet little wife’s back.’ She giggled. ‘ Right behind her back. Do you remember the first time we met at that premiere and I said you could fuck me? Your wife was standing right behind you, barely out of earshot, but you didn’t even blink. Just asked me for fifteen minutes to send her home.’

‘Shh, you’re drunk,’ Mikael said, placing a hand on her spine.

‘That was when I knew you were a man after my own heart. So when the old boy said I should find myself an ally with the same ambitions as me, I knew exactly who to approach. Skal, Mikael.’

‘Speaking of which, we need a top-up. Perhaps we should go back and-’

‘Delete what I said about after my own heart. There are no men after my heart, they’re after my…’ Deep rumble of laughter. Hers.

‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘Harry Hole!’

‘Shh.’

‘There’s a man after my own heart. Bit stupid, of course, but… hm. Where do you think he is?’

‘Having trawled the town for him for so long without success, I assume he’s left the country. He got Oleg acquitted, he won’t be back.’

Isabelle swayed, but Mikael caught her.

‘You’re a bastard, Mikael, and we bastards deserve each other.’

‘Maybe, but we should go back in,’ Mikael said, glancing at his watch.

‘Don’t look so stressed, big boy. I can handle a drink. See?’

‘I see, but you go in first, then it won’t look so…’

‘Mucky?’

‘Something like that.’

Truls heard her hard laughter and watched her even harder heels hitting the cement.

She was gone and Mikael was left, leaning against the railing.

Truls waited for a few seconds. Then he stepped forward.

‘Hi, Mikael.’

His childhood pal turned. His eyes were glazed; his face was a little bloated. Truls presumed from the time it took him to react with a cheery smile that this was due to the booze.

‘There you are, Truls. I didn’t hear you come out here. Is there life inside?’

‘Shit, yes.’

They looked at each other. And Truls asked himself exactly when and where they had forgotten how to talk to each other, what had happened to those carefree chats, the daydreaming they had done together, the days when it was OK to say anything and talk about everything. The days when the two of them had been as one. Like early in their careers when they had smacked around the guy who had tried it on with Ulla. Or the bloody poof who had worked in Kripos and made a move on Mikael, and whom they had taken to the boiler room in Bryn a few days later. The guy had blubbed and apologised, saying he had misinterpreted Mikael. They had avoided his face so that it wouldn’t be so obvious, but the bloody crybaby had made Truls so angry he had wielded the truncheon with more force than he had intended, and Mikael had only just been able to stop him. They weren’t what you might call good memories, but still, they were experiences that bound two people together.

‘Well, I’m standing here and admiring the terrace,’ Mikael said.

‘Thanks.’

‘There was something that occurred to me, though. The night you poured the cement…’

‘Yes?’

‘You said, I think, that you were restless and couldn’t sleep. But it struck me that was the night we arrested Odin and raided Alnabru afterwards. And he disappeared – what was his name?’

‘Tutu.’

‘Tutu, yes. You were supposed to have been with us that night, but you were ill, you told me. And then you mixed concrete instead?’

Truls smirked. Looked at Mikael. At last he managed to catch his eye, and to keep it.

‘Do you want to hear the truth?’

Mikael seemed to hesitate before answering. ‘Love to.’

‘I was skiving.’

The terrace went quiet for a couple of seconds; all that could be heard was the distant rumble from the town.

‘Skiving?’ Mikael laughed. Sceptical, but good-natured laughter. Truls liked his laugh. Everyone did, men and women alike. It was a laugh that said you’re funny and nice and probably clever and well worth a friendly chuckle.

‘ You skived? You who never skives and loves making an arrest?’

‘Yes,’ Truls said. ‘I couldn’t be bothered. I’d pulled.’

Silence again.

Then Mikael roared with laughter. He leaned back and laughed so much he was gasping for breath. Zero cavities. Bent forward again and smacked Truls on the shoulder. It was such happy, liberating laughter that for some seconds Truls simply couldn’t help himself. He joined in.

‘Screwing and building a terrace,’ Mikael Bellman gasped. ‘You’re quite a man, you are, Truls. Quite a man.’

Truls could feel the praise making him grow back to his normal size. And for one moment it was almost like the old days. No, not almost, it was like the old days.

‘You know,’ he grunted, ‘now and then you have to do things all on your own. That’s the only way you get a decent job done.’

‘True,’ Mikael said, wrapping an arm round Truls’s shoulders and stamping both feet on the terrace. ‘But this, Truls, is a lot of cement for one man.’

Yes, Truls thought, feeling exultant laughter bubble up in his chest. It is a lot of cement for one man.

‘I should have kept the Game Boy when you brought it,’ Oleg said.

‘You should,’ Harry said, leaning against the door frame. ‘Then you could have brushed up on your Tetris technique.’

‘And you should have taken the magazine out of this gun before you left it here.’

‘Maybe.’ Harry tried not to look at the Odessa pointing half at the floor, half at him.

Oleg smiled wanly. ‘I suppose we’ve made a number of mistakes, both of us. No?’

Harry nodded.

Oleg had got to his feet and was standing beside the stove. ‘But I didn’t only make mistakes, did I?’

‘Not at all. You did a lot right as well.’

‘Like what?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Like claiming you threw yourself at the gun of this fictional killer. Saying he wore a balaclava and didn’t say a word. He only used gestures. You left it to me to draw the obvious conclusions: that it explained the gunshot residue on your skin, and that the killer didn’t speak because he was afraid you would recognise his voice, so he had some connection with the drug trade or the police. My guess is you used the balaclava because you noticed the policeman with you at Alnabru had one. In your story you located him in the neighbouring office because it was stripped bare, and it was open so everyone could come and go from there to the river. You gave me the hints so that I could build my own convincing explanation of why you hadn’t killed Gusto. An explanation you knew my brain would manage. For our brains are always willing to let emotions make decisions. Always ready to find the consoling answers our hearts need.’

Oleg nodded slowly. ‘But now you have all the other answers. The correct ones.’

‘Apart from one,’ Harry said. ‘Why?’

Oleg didn’t reply. Harry held up his right hand while slowly putting his left in his trouser pocket and pulling out a crumpled pack and lighter.

‘Why, Oleg?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I thought for a while it was all about Irene. Jealousy. Or you knew he had sold her to someone. But if he was the only person who knew where she was, you couldn’t kill him until he had told you. So it must have been about something else. Something as strong as love for a woman. Because you’re no killer, are you.’

‘You tell me.’

‘You’re a man with a classic motive that has driven men, good men, to perform terrible deeds, myself included. The investigation has gone round in circles. Getting nowhere. I’m back where we started. With a love affair. The worst kind.’

‘What do you know about that?’

‘Because I’ve been in love with the same woman. Or her sister. She’s drop-dead gorgeous at night, and as ugly as sin when you wake next morning.’ Harry lit the black cigarette with the gold filter and the Russian imperial eagle. ‘But when night comes you’ve forgotten and you’re in love again. And nothing can compete with this love, not even Irene. Am I wrong?’

Harry took a drag and watched Oleg.

‘What do you want me to say? You know everything anyway.’

‘I want to hear you say it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want you to hear yourself say it. So that you can hear how sick and meaningless it is.’

‘What? That it’s sick to shoot someone because they try to nick your dope? The dope you’ve slogged your guts out to scrape together?’

‘Can’t you hear how banal that sounds?’

‘Says you!’

‘Yes, says me. I lost the best woman in the world because I couldn’t resist. And you’ve killed your best friend, Oleg. Say his name.’

‘Why?’

‘Say his name.’

‘I’ve got the gun.’

‘Say his name.’

Oleg grinned. ‘Gusto. What’s-’

‘Once more.’

Oleg tilted his head and looked at Harry. ‘Gusto.’

‘Once more!’ Harry yelled.

‘Gusto!’ Oleg yelled back.

‘Once m-’

‘Gusto!’ Oleg took a deep breath. ‘Gusto! Gusto…’ His voice had begun to tremble. ‘Gusto!’ It burst at the seams. ‘Gusto. Gus…’ A sob intervened. ‘… to.’ Tears fell as he squeezed his eyes and whispered: ‘Gusto. Gusto Hanssen…’

Harry took a step forward, but Oleg raised the gun.

‘You’re young, Oleg. You can still change.’

‘And what about you, Harry? Can’t you change?’

‘I wish I could, Oleg. I wish I had, then I would’ve taken better care of both of you. But it’s too late for me. I am the person I am.’

‘Which is? Alkie? Traitor?’

‘Policeman.’

Oleg laughed. ‘Is that it? Policeman? Not a person or anything?’

‘Mostly a policeman.’

‘Mostly a policeman,’ Oleg repeated with a nod. ‘Isn’t that banal?’

‘Banal and dull,’ Harry said, taking the half-smoked cigarette and regarding it with disapproval, as if it wasn’t working as it should. ‘Because that means I have no choice, Oleg.’

‘Choice?’

‘I have to make sure you take your punishment.’

‘You don’t work for the police any more, Harry. You’re unarmed. And no one else knows that you know or that you’re here. Think of Mum. Think about me! For once, think about us, all three of us.’ His eyes were full of tears, and there was a shrill, metallic tone of desperation in his voice. ‘Why can’t you just go away now, and then we’ll forget everything, then we’ll say this hasn’t happened?’

‘I wish I could,’ Harry said. ‘But you’ve got me cornered. I know what happened, and I have to stop you.’

‘So why did you let me take the gun?’

Harry shrugged. ‘I can’t arrest you. You have to give yourself up. It’s your race.’

‘Give myself up? Why should I? I’ve just been released!’

‘If I arrest you I’ll lose both your mother and you. And without you I am nothing. I can’t live without you. Do you understand, Oleg? I’m a rat that’s been locked out and there’s only one way in. And it goes through you.’

‘So let me go! Let’s forget the whole business and start afresh!’

Harry shook his head. ‘Premeditated murder, Oleg. I can’t. You’re the one with the gun, you have the key now. You have to think about all three of us. If we go to Hans Christian he can sort things out and the punishment will be substantially reduced.’

‘But it’ll be long enough for me to lose Irene. No one would wait that long.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you’ve lost her already.’

‘You’re lying! You always lie!’ Harry watched Oleg blinking the tears from his eyes. ‘What will you do if I refuse to give myself up?’

‘Then I’ll have to arrest you now.’

A groan escaped Oleg’s lips, a sound halfway between a gasp and disbelieving laughter.

‘You’re mad, Harry.’

‘It’s the way I’m made, Oleg. I do what I have to do. As you have to do what you have to do.’

‘ Have to? You make it sound like a bloody curse.’