The Son

by Jo Nesbo

  There was a bang and she felt as if someone had punched her, shoved her hard in the chest and she continued to move, stumbling backwards through the door, numb and with no control of her limbs and yet she stayed on her feet through the hallway; she flung out her arms in an attempt to regain her balance and felt her hand strike one of the pictures on the wall. She didn’t fall until she crashed through the doorway to the kitchen and barely noticed that she banged her head against the kitchen counter and took with her a glass vase which was standing there. But when she lay on the floor with her head pressed up against the bottom drawer and her neck bowed so that she was looking down at herself, she saw the flowers. The ox-eye daisies lying amid the broken glass. And something that looked like a red rose growing on her white apron. She looked towards the front door. Saw the silhouette of the boy’s head outside, saw him turn towards the maples to the left of the flagstone path. Then he bent down and was gone. And she prayed to God that he was.

  She tried to get up, but she couldn’t move; it was as if her body had been disconnected from her brain. She closed her eyes and felt the pain, a kind of pain she hadn’t felt before. It flooded all of her body as if she was about to be torn in half, but at the same time it was numb, almost distant. The news had ended; they played classical music again. Schubert. ‘Abends unter der Linde’.

  She heard the sound of soft footsteps.

  Trainers on the stone floor.

  She opened her eyes.

  The boy was coming towards her, but his gaze was focused on something pinched between his fingers. A cartridge shell; she had seen them when the family went hunting in the autumn at their cabin in Hardangervidda. He dropped it into the red bag, took out a pair of yellow washing-up gloves and a facecloth. He sat down on his haunches, put on the gloves and wiped something off the floor. Blood. Her blood. Then he rubbed the soles of his shoes with the cloth. Agnete realised that he was removing his footprints and cleaning his trainers. Like a professional killer would have done. Someone who didn’t want to leave behind any evidence. Or any witnesses. She should feel afraid. But she didn’t, she felt nothing – or she was capable only of observing, registering, reasoning.

  He stepped over her and went back to the hallway, to the bathroom and bedrooms. He left the door open. Agnete managed to turn her head. The boy had opened her handbag which she had left on the bed – she was planning on going into town to buy a skirt from Ferner Jacobsen. He opened her purse, took out her money and discarded everything else. He went over to the chest of drawers, pulled out first the top drawer and then the second where she knew he would find her jewellery box. The beautiful and priceless pearl earrings she had inherited from her grandmother. Well, strictly speaking they weren’t priceless; her husband had had them valued at 280,000 kroner.

  She heard the jewellery rattle into the sports bag.

  He disappeared into the family bathroom. He emerged again holding their toothbrushes, hers, Iver’s and Iver Junior’s. He must be either terribly poor or terribly disturbed, or both. He came over to her and bent down. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  She managed to shake her head. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  He moved his hand and she felt the rubber glove on her neck. His thumb and index finger pressed against her artery. Was he about to strangle her? No, he didn’t press very hard.

  ‘Your heart will stop beating shortly,’ he said.

  Then he got up and walked back to the front door. He wiped down the door handle with the facecloth. Closed the door behind him. Next she heard the garden gate close. Then Agnete Iversen felt it coming. The chill. It started in her feet and her hands. It spread to her head, the top of her scalp. Ate its way towards her heart from all sides. And darkness followed.

  Sara looked at the man who had got on the metro at Holmenkollen Station. He sat down in the other carriage, the one she had just moved from when three youths with back-to-front baseball caps had got on at Voksenlia. During the summer holidays there were few people on the trains immediately following the morning rush hour so she had been the only passenger. And now they were starting to harass him, too. She heard the smallest of them – who was clearly the leader – call the man a loser, laugh at his trainers, tell him to get out of their carriage, saw him spit on the floor in front of him. Stupid gangsta-wannabes. Now one of them, a handsome blond lad, probably a neglected posh boy, pulled out a flick knife. Dear God, were they really going to . . .? He jerked his hand in front of the man. Sara almost screamed. Howling laughter erupted in the other carriage. He had plunged the knife into the seat between the man’s knees. The leader said something, gave the man five seconds to get out. The man rose. For a moment it looked as if he was thinking about fighting back. Yes, it actually did. But then he pulled the red sports bag closer to his body and moved to her carriage.

  ‘Fucking coward!’ they shouted out after him in their MTV Norwegian. Then they roared with laughter.

  There was just her and him and the three youths on the train. In the door which connected the two carriages the man stopped and balanced for a few seconds and their eyes met. And though she couldn’t exactly see the fear in his eyes, she knew it was there. The fear of the weak and the degenerate who always defer, slink away and yield territory to anyone who bares their teeth and threatens physical violence. Sara despised him. She despised his weakness. And the well-intentioned goodness he undoubtedly surrounded himself with. In some way she wished they had beaten him up. Taught him to hate a little. And she hoped that he saw the contempt in her eyes. And that he would squirm, wriggle on the hook.

  But instead he smiled to her, muttered a modest ‘hello’, sat down two rows away and looked dreamily out of the window as if nothing had happened. Good God, what kind of people have we become? A bunch of pathetic old women who don’t even have the decency to be ashamed of ourselves. She was sorely tempted to spit on the floor herself.

  17

  ‘AND THEY SAY Norway doesn’t have an upper class,’ Simon Kefas remarked as he held up the white-and-orange police tape so that Kari Adel could duck under it.

  A panting, uniformed police officer whose forehead glistened with sweat stopped them in front of the double garage. They showed him their warrant cards; he checked the photographs and asked Simon to remove his sunglasses.

  ‘Who found her?’ Simon asked, squinting against the sharp sunlight.

  ‘The cleaners,’ the policeman said. ‘They turned up for work at twelve noon and called the emergency services.’

  ‘Any witnesses who saw or heard anything?’

  ‘No one saw anything,’ the policeman said. ‘But we’ve spoken to a neighbour who says that she heard a loud bang. At first she thought it might have been an exploding tyre. They wouldn’t recognise gunshots in a neighbourhood like this.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Simon said, put his sunglasses back on and walked up the steps ahead of Kari to where a CSO in white overalls was examining the front door old-school style with a small, black-haired brush. Little flags marked the path the CSOs had already cleared and it led right to the body which was lying on the kitchen floor. A ray of sunlight fell through the window, stretched across the stone floor and sparkled in the puddles of water and the broken glass around the ox-eye daisies. A man dressed in a suit was squatting beside the body and conferring with a medical examiner whom Simon recognised.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Simon said and the man in the suit looked up. His hair, glistening with several different products, and his carefully combed, narrow sideburns made Simon wonder if he was Italian. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question,’ the man said, making no attempt to get up. Simon guessed him to be in his early thirties.

  ‘Chief Inspector Kefas, Homicide.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Åsmund Bjørnstad, I’m a DI with Kripos. You don’t look like you’ve been told that we’re taking over this case.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Your own bos
s, as it happens.’

  ‘The Chief Superintendent?’

  The suit shook his head and pointed at the ceiling. Simon noticed Bjørnstad’s nails. They had to be manicured, surely.

  ‘The Commissioner?’

  Bjørnstad nodded. ‘He contacted Kripos and told us we might as well come over right away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I guess he thought you’d end up asking us for assistance sooner or later.’

  ‘When you would have waltzed in like you have now and taken charge?’

  Åsmund Bjørnstad smiled briefly. ‘Listen, it wasn’t my decision. But whenever Kripos is asked to assist in a murder inquiry, we always make it a condition that we’re given overall responsibility for the investigation, tactical as well as technical.’

  Simon nodded. He was well aware of it; it wasn’t the first time that Oslo Police’s Homicide Squad and the National Criminal Investigation Service, Kripos, were stepping on each other’s toes. And he knew that what he ought to do was say thank you and be grateful for one less case to deal with, go back to his office and focus on the Vollan investigation instead.

  ‘Well, as we’re here, we might as well take a look around,’ Simon said.

  ‘Why?’ Bjørnstad made no attempt to hide his irritation.

  ‘I’m sure you have everything under control, Bjørnstad, but I have a newly qualified investigator with me; she would benefit from seeing how we examine a real-life crime scene. How about it?’

  The Kripos investigator looked reluctantly at Kari. Then he shrugged.

  ‘Great,’ Simon said and squatted down.

  It wasn’t until now that he looked at the body. He had deliberately avoided it and waited until he could give it his full attention. You only get one chance at first impressions. The almost symmetrical circle of blood in the middle of the white apron briefly reminded him of the national flag of Japan. Apart from the fact that the sun had gone down and not up for the woman who stared at the ceiling with that dead look he had never grown used to. Simon had concluded the look was a combination of a human body and the totally dehumanised expression, the absence of vitality, a human being reduced to an object. He had been told that the victim’s name was Agnete Iversen. What he knew for sure was that she had been shot in the chest. A single shot, or so it would appear. He looked at her hands. None of her nails were broken and her hands showed no sign of a struggle. The nail polish on the middle finger of her left hand was chipped, but that could have happened when she fell.

  ‘Any sign of a break-in?’ Simon asked and signalled to the medical examiner to turn over the body.

  Bjørnstad shook his head. ‘The door might have been left unlocked – the victim’s husband and son had just left for work. We didn’t find any fingerprints on the door handle, either.’

  ‘Not one?’ Simon let his gaze glide along the edge of the worktop.

  ‘No. As you can see, she’s very house-proud.’

  Simon studied the exit wound on the victim’s back. ‘Straight through. The bullet appears to have gone through soft tissue only.’

  The medical examiner pressed his lips together and pushed them out while he shrugged, a gesture that told Simon his conjecture wasn’t unreasonable.

  ‘And the bullet?’ Simon asked, glancing up at the wall above the worktop.

  Reluctantly Åsmund Bjørnstad pointed higher up.

  ‘Thank you,’ Simon said. ‘And the shell?’

  ‘Not found yet,’ the investigator said and took out a mobile with a gold-coloured casing.

  ‘I see. And what is Kripos’s preliminary theory as to what happened here?’

  ‘Theory?’ Bjørnstad smiled, pressing the mobile to his ear. ‘Surely that’s obvious. The burglar entered, shot the victim in here, took whatever valuables he could find and fled the scene. A planned robbery that ended up with a unplanned killing, I think. Perhaps she put up a fight or started to scream.’

  ‘And how do you think—’

  Bjørnstad held up a hand to indicate his call had been answered. ‘Hello, it’s me. Can you get me a list of anyone currently around with convictions for violent robbery? Do a quick check to see if there’s anyone in Oslo. Prioritise those who used guns. Thank you.’ He dropped the mobile into his jacket pocket. ‘Listen, old boy, we’ve quite a lot of work to do here, so I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to—’

  ‘All good,’ Simon said, proffering his broadest smile. ‘But if we promise not to get in your way, perhaps we could take a look around first?’

  The Kripos investigator looked at his older colleague with suspicion.

  ‘And we promise not to step inside the flags.’

  Bjørnstad granted his request with gracious benevolence.

  ‘He found what he was looking for,’ Kari observed when they stood in front of the bed on the thick wall-to-wall carpet in the master bedroom. On the bedspread lay a handbag, an open, emptied purse and a jewellery box lined with red velvet, also empty.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Simon said, ignoring the flag and squatting down beside the bed.

  ‘He would have been standing roughly here when he tipped out the handbag and the jewellery box, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, as everything is lying on the bed.’

  Simon studied the carpet. He was about to get up again when he stopped mid-motion and bent down.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Blood,’ Simon said.

  ‘He bled on the carpet?’

  ‘Unlikely. It’s a rectangular mark so it’s probably a shoeprint. Imagine you’re burgling a house in a wealthy area like this: where do you think the safe is?’

  Kari pointed to the wardrobe.

  ‘Exactly,’ Simon said, got up and opened the wardrobe door.

  The safe was located in the middle of the wall and was the size of a microwave oven. Simon pressed the handle down. Locked.

  ‘Unless the burglar took the time to lock the safe afterwards – something which would seem odd given that he discarded the jewellery box and the purse – he didn’t touch it,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s see if they’ve finished with the body.’

  On the way back to the kitchen, Simon went into the bathroom. He reappeared, frowning.

  ‘What is it?’ Kari asked.

  ‘Did you know that in France they have one toothbrush per forty inhabitants?’

  ‘That’s a myth and those statistics are old,’ she said.

  ‘But then I’m an old man,’ Simon said. ‘Either way, the Iversen family doesn’t have a single toothbrush between them.’

  They returned to the kitchen where the body of Agnete Iversen had been temporarily abandoned and Simon could examine her unhindered. He looked at her hands, studying closely the angle of the entry and exit wounds. He got up and asked Kari to stand right in front of the victim’s feet with her back to the worktop.

  ‘I apologise in advance,’ he said, walked up beside her, pressed one finger between her small breasts in the same spot as the bullet had entered Agnete Iversen and another in between her shoulder blades in a place which corresponded to the victim’s exit wound. He studied the angle between the two points before he let his gaze travel up to the bullet hole on the wall. Then he bent down and picked up one of the ox-eye daisies, rested one knee on the worktop, stretched up and popped the flower into the bullet hole.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, sliding off the worktop and walking down the hallway towards the front door. He stopped at a picture which was hanging crooked, leaned closer and pointed at something red on the edge of the picture frame.

  ‘Blood?’ Kari asked.

  ‘Nail polish,’ Simon said and placed the back of his left hand against the picture and looked over his shoulder at the body. Then he continued towards the door. Stopped and squatted down by the threshold. Crouched over a lump of soil which had been marked with a flag.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch that!’ said a voice behind them.

  They looked up.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Simon,’ said the man in w
hite and ran a finger over his wet lips in the depths of his ginger beard.

  ‘Hi, Nils. Long time no see. Are they treating you properly in Kripos?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Oh, they are. But that’s probably because I’m so old and over the hill that they feel sorry for me.’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the crime scene technician sighed. ‘It’s all about DNA these days, Simon. DNA and computer models people like us don’t understand. It’s not like back in our day.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re quite over the hill yet,’ Simon said, studying the catch lock in the front door. ‘Give my best to your wife, Nils.’

  The bearded man remained standing. ‘I still don’t have a—’

  ‘To your dog, then.’

  ‘My dog’s dead, Simon.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to skip the pleasantries, Nils,’ Simon said and went outside. ‘Kari, count to three and then scream as loud as you can. Afterwards come outside on the steps and stay there. OK?’

  She nodded and he closed the door.

  Kari looked at Nils, who shook his head before he walked away. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs. She yelled the word ‘fore!’ which was what she had been taught to shout to warn anyone on the rare occasions she hooked or sliced a golf stroke.

  Then she opened the door.

  Simon was aiming his index finger at her from the foot of the steps.

  ‘Now move,’ he said.

  She did as she was told and saw him shift slightly to the left and narrow one eye.

  ‘He must have been standing here,’ Simon said, still aiming his index finger at her. She turned and saw the white ox-eye daisy on the kitchen wall.

  Simon looked to the right. Went over to the maples. Spread them. Kari realised what he was looking for. The shell.

  ‘Aha,’ he muttered to himself, took out his mobile, held it up to his eye and she heard the digitally simulated sound of a camera shutter. He pinched some soil from the ground between his thumb and forefinger and scattered it. Then he returned to the steps to show her the picture he had taken.