The Son

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘No thanks. I can leave if you want to sleep.’

  The voice coming from the window was so soft and low that Johnny couldn’t understand how it managed to cut through Ila’s constant noise of partying, screaming, music, arguing and traffic. So the guy wanted to know if Johnny was about to go to sleep, eh? So he could search him. Maybe find the wrap that Johnny had taped to his thigh.

  ‘I never sleep, I just shut my eyes. You get me, mate?’

  The young man nodded. ‘I’m going out now.’

  When the door had closed behind his new room enemy, Johnny Puma got out of bed. It took him only two minutes to search the guy’s wardrobe and the top bunk. Nothing. De nada. His room enemy couldn’t be as green as he looked; he carried everything with him.

  Markus Engseth was frightened.

  ‘Are you scared now?’ said the bigger of the two boys blocking his path.

  Markus shook his head and gulped.

  ‘Yes, you’re so scared you’re sweating, you fat pig. Hey, can you smell that?’

  ‘Look, he’s going to cry,’ the other boy laughed.

  They were fifteen years old, possibly sixteen. Or even seventeen. Markus didn’t know, he knew only that they were much bigger and older than him.

  ‘We just want to borrow it,’ said the bigger boy and grabbed hold of the handlebars of Markus’s bicycle. ‘We’ll give it back to you.’

  ‘Eventually,’ the other laughed again.

  Markus looked up at the windows of the houses in the quiet street. Black, blind, glass surfaces. Normally he didn’t like people watching him. He liked being invisible so that he could sneak past the garden gate and up to the abandoned yellow house. But right now he hoped that a window would open up somewhere, that a grown-up voice would shout at the big boys to clear off. Back to Tåsen or Nydalen, or some other neighbourhood where thugs like them belonged. But it remained completely silent. Summer silence. It was the holidays and the other children in the street had gone off to cabins, beaches or foreign cities. It made no difference as far as playing was concerned, Markus always played on his own. But being small was riskier when you weren’t one in a crowd.

  The big boy yanked the bicycle out of Markus’s hands and he realised that he didn’t have the strength to blink away the tears any more. The bicycle his mum had bought him with money they could otherwise have spent going away somewhere this summer.

  ‘My dad is home,’ he said, pointing across the street towards their red house that lay opposite the empty yellow one he had just been inside.

  ‘So why haven’t you called for him?’ The boy sat on Markus’s bicycle to try it out; it wobbled and he seemed cross that there wasn’t enough air in the tyres.

  ‘Dad!’ Markus called out, but could instantly hear how half-hearted and false it sounded.

  The older boys howled with laughter. The other one had sat down on the parcel rack and Markus saw how the rubber tyres began twisting off the rim.

  ‘I don’t think you have a dad,’ said the boy and spat on the ground. ‘Come on, Herman, ride!’

  ‘I’m trying, but you’re stopping me.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  The three boys turned round.

  A man was standing behind the bicycle holding onto the rack. He lifted the back of the bicycle so it started freewheeling and both boys fell forward. They stumbled off and glared at the man.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the older boy snarled.

  The man made no reply, he just looked at him. Markus noticed his strange haircut, the Salvation Army logo on his T-shirt and the scars on his forearms. It was so quiet that Markus thought he could hear every bird in Berg singing. And now it looked like the two older boys had also noticed the man’s scars.

  ‘We were only going to borrow it.’ The bigger boy’s voice had taken on a different tone; it was croaky and small.

  ‘But you can have it if you want,’ the other one added quickly.

  The man just carried on staring at them. He gestured to Markus to take the bicycle. The two boys started to back away.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Tåsen. Are . . . are you his dad?’

  ‘Might be. Next stop Tåsen, OK?’

  The boys nodded in unison. They turned round as if on command and marched off.

  Markus looked up at the man who was smiling down at him. Behind them he heard one of the boys say to the other: ‘His dad’s a druggy – did you see his arms?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ the man said.

  ‘Markus,’ he replied.

  ‘Have a nice summer, Markus,’ the man said, gave him back his bicycle and walked across to the gate to the yellow house. Markus held his breath. It was a house like every other house in the street; square like a box, not particularly large and surrounded by a small garden. But this house and its garden were in need of a lick of paint and a session with the lawnmower. Still, it was The House. The man headed straight for the basement stairs. Not the front door like Markus had seen salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses do. Did he know about the key which was hidden on the beam above the basement door and which Markus was careful always to put back?

  He got his answer when he heard the basement door open and close again.

  Markus’s jaw dropped. No one had been inside that house for as long as he could remember. Admittedly, he could only remember back as far as when he was five, which was seven years ago, but somehow it seemed right that the house was empty. Who would want to live in a house where someone had killed themselves?

  Well, there was one person who turned up at least twice a year. Markus had only seen him once and guessed that he must be the one who turned the heating on low before the winter and turned it off again in the spring. He must be paying the bills. His mum had said that without power the house would have been so damaged by now that it would have been uninhabitable, but she didn’t know who the man was, either. But he had looked nothing like the man who was inside the house now, Markus was convinced of it.

  Markus could see the face of the new arrival in the kitchen window. There were no curtains in the house so whenever Markus went inside, he would stay well clear of the windows to avoid being seen. The man didn’t look like he was there to turn on the heating, so what was he doing in there? How could Markus . . . then he remembered the telescope.

  Markus pushed his bicycle through the gate to the red house and ran upstairs to his bedroom. His telescope – which was really just an ordinary pair of binoculars on a stand – was the only thing his dad hadn’t taken with him when he left. Or so his mum said. Markus pointed the binoculars towards the yellow house and zoomed in. The man had gone. He moved the circular field of view across the wall of the house, from window to window. And there he was. In the boy’s bedroom. Where the druggy had lived. Markus had explored the house and knew every nook and cranny. Including the secret hiding place under the loose floorboard in the master bedroom. But even if no one had killed themselves there, he would never want to live in the yellow house. Before it was abandoned for good, the son of the dead man had lived there. The son was a drug addict and had made a terrible mess and never cleaned up. He hadn’t carried out any repairs, either, so the water leaked through the roof whenever it rained. The son had disappeared shortly after Markus was born. He went to prison, Markus’s mum had said. For killing someone. And Markus had wondered if the house put an evil spell on those who lived in it so that they killed themselves or others. Markus shuddered. Even though it was his favourite thing about the house – that it was a bit sinister, that he could make up stories about what went on inside it. Only today he didn’t have to make anything up, today something was going on inside it all by itself.

  The man had opened the bedroom window – no wonder, the place needed airing. Even so, Markus liked this room best, though the bed linen was filthy and there were needles on the floor. The man was standing with his back to the window, looking at the pictures that Markus liked so much. The family photo where all th
ree of them were smiling and looking happy. The one with the boy in the wrestling suit next to his father in a tracksuit holding up a sports trophy together. The picture of the father in his police uniform.

  The man opened the wardrobe, took out the grey hoodie and the red sports bag with Oslo Wrestling Club in white letters. He put a couple of things into the bag, but Markus couldn’t see what. Then he left the bedroom and disappeared. And reappeared again in the study, a small room with a desk pushed up against the window. His mum said that was where they had found the dead body. The man was looking for something near the window. Markus knew what he was looking for, but unless he knew his way around, he would never find it. Then the man appeared to be opening the desk drawer, but he had set down the sports bag on top of the desk so Markus could no longer see properly.

  The man must have either found what he was looking for or given up because he took the sports bag and left. Then he went to the master bedroom before going downstairs and Markus lost sight of him.

  Ten minutes later the basement door opened and the man came up the steps. He had put on the hoodie, pulled the hood up over his head and thrown the bag over his shoulder. He walked out of the gate and down the road the way he had come.

  Markus jumped down and ran outside. He saw the back of the hoodie, jumped over the fence to the yellow house, raced across the lawn and down the basement steps. Trembling and out of breath he felt with his fingers along the beam. The key had been put back! He breathed a sigh of relief and let himself in. He wasn’t scared, not really, in a way this was his house. It was the stranger who was the intruder. Unless . . .

  He ran up to the study. Headed straight for the well-stacked bookshelves. Second shelf between Lord of the Flies and They Burn the Thistles. Stuck his fingers in. The key to the desk drawer was there. But had it been found and used? He looked at the desk while he inserted the key into the keyhole and turned it. There was a dark stain on the wood. It might be a greasy spot caused by years of use, but in Markus’s mind there was no doubt that it was the imprint of the head which had lain in that very spot, in a pool of blood and with a blood spatter across the wall, just like he had seen in the movies.

  Markus stared into the drawer. He gasped. It had gone! It must have been him. The son. He had come back. No one else could possibly know where the key to the desk drawer was kept. And he had had needle marks on his arms.

  Markus went into the boy’s bedroom. His room. He glanced around and immediately realised what was missing. The photo of the father in his police uniform. The Discman. And one of the four CDs. He looked at the other three. The one which wasn’t there was Depeche Mode, Violator. Markus had listened to it, but hadn’t thought much of it.

  He sat down in the middle of the room to be sure he couldn’t be seen from the street. He listened to the summer silence outside. The son had returned. Markus had invented a whole life for the boy in the photo. But he had forgotten that people age. And now he had come back. To fetch the thing in the desk drawer.

  Then Markus heard a car engine break the silence.

  ‘Are you sure the numbering doesn’t go the other way?’ Kari asked as she peered out at the modest wooden houses, hoping to spot a house number for guidance. ‘Perhaps we should ask that guy over there.’

  She nodded towards the kerb where a guy in a hoodie with the hood up, his head down and a red bag over his shoulder was walking towards them.

  ‘The house is just over the hill,’ Simon said and accelerated. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘So you knew his father?’

  ‘Yes. What did you find out about the boy?’

  ‘Anyone at Staten who was prepared to talk to me said that he was quiet and didn’t say much, but that he was well liked. He had no real friends and kept mainly to himself. I haven’t been able to track down any relatives. This is his last known address.’

  ‘Do you have keys to the house?’

  ‘They were with his belongings that were being stored in the prison. I didn’t need a new warrant – a search warrant had already been issued in connection with his escape.’

  ‘So an officer has already visited?’

  ‘Only to check if Sonny had gone home. Though no one really thought he would be that stupid.’

  ‘No friends, no relatives, no money. That doesn’t leave him with a lot of options. You’ll soon learn that prisoners, as a rule, are remarkably stupid.’

  ‘I know, but that breakout wasn’t the work of an idiot.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Simon admitted.

  ‘No,’ Kari said firmly. ‘Sonny Lofthus was an A-grade student. He was one of Norway’s best wrestlers in his age group. Not because he was the strongest, but because he was a clever tactician.’

  ‘You’ve done your homework.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I just googled his name, looked at PDFs of old newspapers, made a few phone calls. It’s not rocket science.’

  ‘There’s the house,’ he said.

  Simon parked the car, they got out and Kari opened the garden gate.

  ‘How dilapidated it looks now,’ he remarked.

  Simon took out his police issue revolver and checked the safety catch was off before Kari unlocked the front door.

  Simon entered first with his weapon raised. He stopped in the hallway and listened. He flicked on the light switch. A wall lamp lit up.

  ‘Oops,’ he whispered. ‘Unusual for an uninhabited house to have power. Looks like someone has recently—’

  ‘No, Kari said. ‘I’ve checked it. Ever since Lofthus went to prison the utility bills have been paid from a Cayman Islands account that’s impossible to trace back to an individual. The amounts aren’t huge, but it’s—’

  ‘—mysterious,’ Simon said. ‘That’s all good, we detectives just love a good mystery, don’t we?’

  He led the way down the hallway and into the kitchen. He opened the fridge. He discovered that it wasn’t plugged in even though there was a solitary carton of milk inside it. He nodded to Kari who gave him a puzzled look before she understood. She sniffed the open milk carton. No smell. Then she shook the carton and they heard the rattling of lumps that had once been milk. She followed Simon through the living room. Up the stairs to the first floor. They checked all the rooms and ended up in what was clearly the boy’s bedroom. Simon sniffed the air.

  ‘His family,’ Kari said, pointing to one of the photographs on the wall.

  ‘Yes,’ Simon said.

  ‘His mother – she looks like a singer or an actress, doesn’t she?’

  Simon made no reply; he was looking at the other photograph. The one that was missing. More precisely, he looked at the faded rectangle on the wallpaper where the photograph used to be. He sniffed the air again.

  ‘I managed to speak to one of Sonny’s old teachers,’ Kari said. ‘He said that Sonny wanted to be a police officer like his father, but that he went off the rails when his father died. Got into trouble at school, pushed people away, deliberately isolated himself and became self-destructive. His mother, too, fell apart after the suicide, she—’

  ‘Helene,’ Simon said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Her name was Helene. An overdose of sleeping pills.’ Simon scanned the room. His gaze stopped at the dusty bedside table while Kari’s voice intoned in the background:

  ‘When Sonny was eighteen years old, he confessed to two murders and was sent to prison.’

  There was a line in the dust.

  ‘Up until then the police investigations had pointed in completely different directions.’

  Simon took two brisk steps towards the window. The afternoon sunshine fell on the bicycle that was lying on the ground in front of the red house. He looked down the road they had come up. There was no one there now.

  ‘Things aren’t always how they appear,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Simon closed his eyes. Did he have the energy? All over again? He took a deep breath.

  ‘Everyone in the police thought
that Ab Lofthus must have been the mole. When Ab died, the mole’s activities ceased, no more strangely failed raids, or evidence, witnesses or suspects suddenly disappearing. They took that as proof.’

  ‘But?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘Ab was a man who was proud of his work and the police force. He didn’t care about getting rich, all he cared about was his family. But there is no doubt that there was a mole.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So someone still has to find out who that mole was.’

  Simon sniffed again. Sweat. He could smell sweat. Someone had been here recently.

  ‘And who might that be?’ she asked.

  ‘Someone young and resourceful.’ Simon looked at Kari. Over her shoulder. At the wardrobe door. Sweat. Fear.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ Simon said loudly. ‘All good. Let’s go downstairs.’

  Simon stopped halfway down the stairs and signalled to Kari to carry on walking. He remained where he was and waited. He listened out as he gripped the handle of his pistol tightly.

  Silence.

  Then he followed Kari.

  He returned to the kitchen, found a pen and wrote something on a pad of yellow Post-it notes.

  Kari cleared her throat. ‘What exactly did Franck mean when he said you were kicked out of the Serious Fraud Office?’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ Simon said, tore off the Post-it note and stuck it on the fridge door.

  ‘Did it have anything to do with gambling?’

  Simon looked at her sharply. Then he left.

  She read the note.

  I knew your father. He was a good man and I think he would have said the same about me. Contact me and I promise you that I’ll bring you in in a safe and proper manner.