The Son

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ he said.

  He didn’t used to swear, either.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was like the two of you . . . communicated. Who is that guy?’

  She exhaled. Relieved, almost. At least this was familiar territory. Jealousy. It hadn’t changed since they were teenage sweethearts and she knew how to handle it. She put her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Anders, don’t be so silly. Now come with me, we’ll go and get my jacket and then we’re going home. And we’re not going to argue tonight, we’re going to cook dinner.’

  ‘Martha, I—’

  ‘Shh,’ she said, but knew she already had the upper hand. ‘You cook dinner, while I take a shower. OK? And we’re going to talk about the wedding tomorrow. Is that all right?’

  She could see that he wanted to protest, but she placed her finger on his lips. The full lips which she had fallen for. She traced her finger downwards, stroking the dark, carefully trimmed stubble. Or was it his jealousy that first attracted her? She could no longer remember.

  By the time they got into his car, he had calmed down. It was a BMW. He had bought the car against her will, thinking she would grow to like it once she had experienced how comfortable it was, especially for long drives. And how reliable it was. When he started the car, she caught a glimpse of Stig again. He came out of the entrance, quickly crossed the street and headed eastwards. The red sports bag was slung over his shoulder.

  20

  SIMON DROVE PAST the playing fields and turned into the street where they lived. He could see that his neighbour was barbecuing again. The loud, sun-baked and beer-soaked outbursts of laughter emphasised the summer silence in the neighbourhood. Most houses were empty and only a single car was parked along the road.

  ‘And we’re home,’ Simon said and pulled up in front of their garage.

  He didn’t know why he said it. Else could surely see where they were.

  ‘Thank you for taking me to the movies,’ Else said and put her hand on his on top of the gearstick, as if he had walked her to her front door and was about to say goodnight and leave here there. I could never do that, Simon thought and smiled at her. He wondered how much of the film she had been able to see. Going to the cinema had been her idea. He had glanced furtively at her several times during the movie and seen that at least she had laughed in all the right places. But then again, Woody Allen’s humour lay more in the dialogue than in slapstick. Never mind, they had had a lovely evening. Another lovely evening.

  ‘But I bet you missed Mia Farrow,’ she teased him.

  He laughed. It was a private joke. The first film he had taken her to see had been Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski’s disgustingly brilliant movie with Mia Farrow who gives birth to a child who turns out to be the devil’s son. Else had been horrified and for a long time she had believed that it was Simon’s way of letting her know that he didn’t want children – especially when he insisted that they see it again. Not until later – after a fourth Woody Allen film with Mia Farrow – did she click that it was Farrow and not the spawn of the devil who so fascinated him.

  As they walked from the car towards their front door, Simon saw a brief flash of light from the street. Like a revolving lighthouse beam. It was coming from the parked car.

  ‘What was that?’ Else asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Simon said and unlocked the front door. ‘Would you mind putting on some coffee? I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  Simon left her and crossed the street. He knew the car didn’t belong to any of their neighbours. Or anyone living nearby. In Oslo limousines were associated mainly with embassies, the royal family or government ministers. He knew only one other person who drove around with tinted windows, plenty of leg room and his own driver. A driver who had just got out and was holding open the door to the back for Simon.

  Simon bent down, but remained outside. The small man sitting inside had a pointy nose in his round, ruddy face of the type people described as ‘jovial’. The blue blazer with the gold buttons – a favourite with 1980s Norwegian bankers, shipowners and crooners – had always made Simon wonder if it disguised a deeply anchored fantasy among Norwegian men to be the captain of a ship.

  ‘Good evening, Chief Inspector Kefas,’ said the small man in a bright, cheerful voice.

  ‘What are you doing in my street, Nestor? Nobody here wants to buy your crap.’

  ‘Now now. Always the dogged crime fighter, eh?’

  ‘Give me a reason to arrest you and I will.’

  ‘Unless it’s against the law to help people in trouble, I don’t think that will be necessary. Why don’t you get in so we can talk without being disturbed, Kefas?’

  ‘I fail to see why I’d want to do that.’

  ‘So your eyesight is bad as well?’

  Simon stared at Nestor. Short arms and a small, thick upper body. And yet the sleeves on his blazer were still so short that the golden cufflinks in the shape of the initials ‘HN’ peeked out. Hugo Nestor claimed to be Ukrainian, but according to the file they had on him, he was born and bred in Florø, came from a fishing family and his surname had originally been Hansen before he changed it. He had never spent time abroad apart from a brief and unfinished economics course in Lund, Sweden. God only knew where he had picked up that strange accent, but it certainly wasn’t the Ukraine.

  ‘I wonder if your young wife could see which actors were playing in the movie, Kefas. But then I guess she’d heard that Allen wasn’t in it himself. That Jew has such a disgusting, chattering voice. Not that I have anything against Jews as individuals, I just think that Hitler was right about them as a race. The Slavs are the same. Even though I’m an East European, I have to admit that he had a point when he said that the Slavs can’t lead themselves. On a racial level, I mean. And this Allen, isn’t he a paedophile as well?’

  The file also said that Hugo Nestor was Oslo’s most important drugs and human trafficking operator. Never convicted, never charged, always suspected. He was too smart and too careful, the slippery eel.

  ‘I don’t know, Nestor. What I do know is that there’s a rumour that your guys expedited the prison chaplain. Did he owe you money?’

  Nestor smiled overbearingly. ‘Isn’t it beneath your dignity to listen to rumours, Kefas? You usually have a bit of class, in contrast to your colleagues. If you’d had more than rumours – such as a reliable witness willing to come to court and point the finger, for example – you’d already have made an arrest. Isn’t that right?’

  A slippery eel.

  ‘Anyway, I want to offer you and your wife money. Enough money, say, for a very expensive eye operation.’

  Simon gulped; he heard his voice croak when he replied: ‘Did Fredrik tell you?’

  ‘Your former colleague at the Serious Fraud Office? Let me put it this way, I’ve heard about your predicament. I presume that you went to him with your request in the hope it would reach ears such as mine. Isn’t that right, Kefas?’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, I have a solution which I think would suit us both. So why don’t you get in?’

  Simon took hold of the door handle and saw Nestor automatically shuffle across the seat to make room for him. He concentrated on breathing calmly so that rage wouldn’t make his voice quiver. ‘Carry on talking, Nestor. Give me an excuse for arresting you, please.’

  Nestor raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘What excuse would that be, Chief Inspector Kefas?’

  ‘Attempted bribery of a public servant.’

  ‘Bribery?’ Nestor laughed a brief, squealing laughter. ‘Let’s call it a business proposal, Kefas. You’ll see that we can . . .’

  Simon never heard the rest of the sentence as the limousine was clearly soundproof. He walked away without looking back, wishing he had slammed the car door even harder. He heard the car start and the tyres crunch against the gravel on the tarmac.

  ‘You seem upset, darling,’ Else said when he had sat down at the kitchen table next to his coffee cup. ‘Who
was it?’

  ‘Someone who was lost,’ Simon said. ‘I told him where to go.’

  Else shuffled over to him with the coffee pot. Simon stared out of the window. The street was deserted now. Suddenly a burning pain spread across the top of his thighs.

  ‘Damn!’

  He knocked the coffee pot out of her hands and it landed on the floor with a bang while he shouted: ‘Bloody hell, woman, you’ve just poured boiling coffee all over me! Are you . . . are you . . .’ One part of his brain knew what was coming and was trying to block the word, but it was like slamming the back door of Nestor’s car: he didn’t want to be there, he refused, he wanted to destroy, he would rather plunge the knife into himself. And into her.

  ‘. . . blind?!’

  The kitchen fell silent; all he could hear was the coffee-pot lid rolling across the linoleum floor and the bubbling of coffee seeping out of the pot. No! He hadn’t mean it. He hadn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry. Else, I’m . . .’

  He got up to embrace her, but she was already on her way to the sink. She turned on the cold tap and held a tea towel under it. ‘Pull down your trousers, Simon, let me . . .’

  He put his arms around her from behind. He pressed his forehead against her neck. He whispered: ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. Please, forgive me? I . . . I just don’t know what to do. I should be able to help you, but I . . . I can’t, I don’t know, I . . .’

  He couldn’t hear her crying yet, only feel that her body was trembling and how it spread to his. His throat thickened, he suppressed his own sobs and didn’t know if he had managed it, only that they were both shaking.

  ‘I’m the one who should say sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘You could be with someone better, someone who doesn’t . . . scald you.’

  ‘But there is no one better,’ he whispered. ‘All right? So you just go ahead and pour boiling coffee all over me, I won’t ever let go. OK?’

  And he knew that she knew that it was true. That he would do anything, suffer anything, sacrifice everything.

  . . . it would reach ears such as mine . . .

  But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it.

  He heard the neighbours’ distant, ecstatic howls of laughter in the darkness while her tears flowed.

  Kalle looked at the time. Twenty to eleven. It had been a good day; they had shifted more Superboy than they normally did over a whole weekend, so the cashing up and the preparation of new wraps had taken longer than usual. He took off the gauze mask they wore when they cut and mixed the drugs on the worktop in the plain, twenty-metre-square room which served as office, drug factory and bank. Obviously, the drug was cut before it reached him, but even so Superboy was still the purest drug he had come across in his career as a dealer. So pure that if they didn’t don gauze masks, they would not only be high, but also dead from inhaling the particles which whirled up in the air when they cut and handled the pale brown powder. He put the masks in the safe in front of the piles of banknotes and bags of drugs. Should he called Vera and tell her he would be late? Or was it time he put his foot down, told her who was boss, who brought home the dough and who should be able to come and go without accounting for his movements all the bloody time?

  Kalle told Pelvis to check the corridor. From the iron door to their office the lift was just a few metres away on the right. At the far end of the corridor was a door leading to a stairwell, but that door they had – against fire regulations – sealed with a chain so that it was permanently locked.

  ‘Cassius, check the car park,’ Kalle called out in English while he locked up the safe. It was a quiet office with no noise other than anything that travelled from the rehearsal rooms, but he liked shouting. Cassius was the biggest and fattest African in Oslo. His shapeless body was so huge it was impossible to know what was what, but if just ten per cent of him was muscle, it would be enough to stop most people.

  ‘No cars, no people in the car park,’ Cassius said as he peered out between the iron bars in the window.

  ‘Corridor all clear,’ said Pelvis, who was looking out of the hatch in the door.

  Kalle turned the combination wheel. He savoured the smooth, oiled resistance, the soft clicking. He kept the combination in his head and only there, it wasn’t written down anywhere, and there was no logic to it, no combination of birthdays or similar.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said and straightened up. ‘Have your guns ready, both of you.’

  They gave him a puzzled look.

  Kalle hadn’t said anything to them, but there had been something about the eyes he had seen staring through the hatch earlier. He knew that they had seen Kalle sitting at the table. OK, so it was just some guy from a crappy band looking for management, but there had been enough money and drugs on the table for any idiot who wanted to have a go. Hopefully, the guy had also noticed the two guns on the table which belonged to Cassius and Pelvis.

  Kalle went over to the door. It could be locked from the inside, and only his key unlocked it. It meant that Kalle could lock in anyone who worked here if he himself had to go out. The bars in front of the window were solid. In short, no one who worked for Kalle could run off with the money or the drugs. Or let in uninvited guests.

  Kalle looked through the hatch. Not because he’d forgotten that Pelvis had just announced that the coast was clear, but because he automatically assumed that Pelvis would betray his boss by opening the door if someone was prepared to make it worth his while. Damn, Kalle would have done the same himself. He had done the same himself.

  He couldn’t see anyone through the hatch. He checked the mirror which he had mounted on the wall to make sure that no one could hide by pressing themselves against the door below the hatch. The dimly lit corridor was empty. He turned the key and held the door open for the other two. Pelvis walked out first, then Cassius and finally Kalle. He turned round to lock the door.

  ‘What the . . .!’ It was Pelvis.

  Kalle turned back, and it wasn’t until now that he could see what he had been unable to from the hatch due to the angle: that the lift doors were open. But he still couldn’t see what was inside the lift as the light inside it was off. All he could see in the dim corridor light was something metallic on one side of the lift door. Duct tape covering the sensors. And broken glass on the floor.

  ‘Watch out . . .’

  But Pelvis had already taken the three steps to the open lift.

  Kalle’s brain registered the flame from the muzzle in the darkness of the lift before it received the signal about the bang.

  Pelvis whirled around as if someone had slapped him. He stared at Kalle with a stunned expression. It looked as if he had been given a third eye in his cheekbone. Then his life left him and his body fell to the ground like a coat shrugged off by its owner.

  ‘Cassius! Shoot for fuck’s sake!’

  In his panic, Kalle forgot that Cassius didn’t speak Norwegian, but it clearly wasn’t an issue, he had already aimed his pistol at the darkness inside the lift and fired. Kalle felt something strike his chest. He had never been at the wrong end of a pistol before, but now he knew why the people he had aimed his gun at had frozen in such a comical manner, as if they were filled with cement. The pain in his chest spread, he couldn’t breathe, but he had to get away, there was air behind the bulletproof door, safety, a door he could lock. But his hand refused to obey, it couldn’t get the key into the lock, it was like a dream, like moving underwater. Fortunately he was shielded by Cassius’s vast body that kept shooting and shooting. Finally the key went in and Kalle turned it, flung the door open and hurled himself inside. The next bang had different acoustics and he reckoned that it must be coming from inside the lift. He spun round to slam the door shut, but it was pressing against Cassius, half of whose shoulder and an arm as thick as a thigh were trapped inside. Damn! He tried to push it away, but more of Cassius was trying to get into the office.

  ‘Come on in then, you fat fuck!’ Kalle hissed and opened the door.

  The African poured
in like rising bread dough, spreading his body mass over the threshold and the floor inside. Kalle stared down at his glassy expression. The eyes bulged like the eyes of a freshly caught deep-water fish, his mouth opened and closed.

  ‘Cassius!’

  The only reply he got was a wet smack when a big, pink bubble burst on the African’s lips. Kalle pressed his legs against the wall in an attempt to move the black mountain out of the way so he could close the door again, but it was no use, so he bent down and tried to drag him inside instead. Too heavy. The pistol! Cassius had landed on top of his own arm. Kalle straddled the body, trying desperately to slip his hand under it, but for every roll of fat he passed there was another and still no pistol. He had his arm buried in fat up to his elbow when he heard footsteps outside. He knew what was about to happen, tried to get out of the way, but was too late, the door smacked into his head and he blacked out.

  When Kalle opened his eyes, he was lying on his back staring up at a guy in a hoodie, wearing yellow washing-up gloves and pointing a pistol straight down at him. He turned his head, but saw no one else, only Cassius who lay with half his body inside the door. From this angle, Kalle could see the barrel of Cassius’s pistol sticking out from under his stomach.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to open the safe. You have seven seconds.’

  ‘Seven?’

  ‘I started counting down before you woke up. Six.’

  Kalle scrambled to his feet. He was woozy, but he made his way to the safe.

  ‘Five.’

  He turned the combination wheel.

  ‘Four.’

  One more digit and the safe would open and the money would be gone. Money he would personally have to replace, those were the rules.

  ‘Three.’

  He hesitated. What if he could get hold of Cassius’s pistol?

  ‘Two.’

  Would the guy really shoot or was he just bluffing?

  ‘One.’