Phantom by Jo Nesbø Read Free Book Online

complain about someone doing his or her job? Dogs identified innocent people all the time, and an apology would be a partial admission that there was a flaw in the procedure, a failure in the system. On the other hand, they could see by his stripes that he was a captain. Not a three-striper, not one of the failed fifty-year-olds who had stayed in the right-hand seat as a first officer because he had messed up his career. No, he had four stripes, which showed that he had order, control; he was a man who was a master of the situation and his own life. Showed that he belonged to the airport’s Brahmin caste. A captain was a person who ought to welcome a complaint from a customs official, whether it was appropriate or not.
    “Not at all—it’s good to know someone is on the mark,” Tord said, looking for his bag. In the worst-case scenario they had searched it; the dog hadn’t detected anything there. And the metal plates around the space where the package was hidden were still impenetrable for existing X-rays.
    “It’ll be here soon,” she said.
    There were a couple of seconds when they silently regarded each other.
    Divorced, Tord thought.
    At that moment another official appeared.
    “Your bag …” he said.
    Tord looked at him. Saw it in his eyes. Felt a lump grow in his stomach, rise, nudge his esophagus. How? How?
    “We took out everything and weighed it,” he said. “An empty twenty-six-inch Samsonite Aspire GRT weighs twelve-point-eight pounds. Yours weighs thirteen-point-nine. Would you mind explaining why?”
    The official was too professional to smile overtly, but Tord Schultz still saw the triumph shining in his face. The official leaned forward a fraction, lowered his voice.
    “Or shall we?”
    H ARRY WENT INTO the street after eating at Olympen. The old, slightly dissipated hostelry he remembered had been renovated into an expensive west Oslo version of an east Oslo place, with large paintings of the town’s old working-class district. It wasn’t that it wasn’t attractive, with the chandeliers and everything. Even the mackerel had been good. It just wasn’t … Olympen.
    He lit a cigarette and crossed Botsparken between Police HQ and the prison’s old gray walls. He passed a man putting a tatty red poster on a tree and banging a staple gun against the bark of the ancient, and protected, linden. He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he was committing a serious offense in full view of all the front windows of the building that contained the biggest collection of police officers in Norway. Harry paused for a moment. Not to stop the crime, but to see the poster. It advertised a concert with Russian Amcar Club at Sardines. Harry could remember the long-dissolved band and the derelict club. Olympen. Harry Hole. This was clearly the year for the resurrection of the dead. He was about to move on when he heard a tremulous voice behind him.
    “Got ’ny violin?”
    Harry turned. The man behind him was wearing a new, clean G-Star jacket. He stooped forward as though there were a strong wind at his back, and he had the unmistakable bowed heroin knees. Harry was going to reply when he realized G-Star was addressing the posterman. But he kept on walking without answering. New wombos for units, new terms for dope. Old bands, old clubs.
    The façade of Oslo District Prison—Botsen, in popular parlance—was built in the mid-1800s and consisted of an entrance squeezed between two larger wings, which always reminded Harry of a detainee between two policemen. He rang the bell, peered into the video camera, heard the low buzz and shoved the door open. Inside stood a uniformed prison officer, who escorted him up the stairs, through a door, past two other officers and into the rectangular, windowless visitors’ room. Harry had been there before. This was where the inmates met their nearest and dearest. A halfhearted attempt had been made to create a homey atmosphere. He avoided the sofa, sitting down on a