by Jo Nesbo
The noise sounded as if it had come from his dad’s belt.
Sylvester stared at the picture.
It was now spattered with blood and had a hole which went straight through the album. Something white floated down and got caught in the blood. A feather? It had to come from the chair’s upholstery. Sylvester thought he must be in shock because he felt no pain. Not yet. He looked at his gun which had slipped down on the floor and out of his reach. He waited for the next gunshot, but it didn’t come. Perhaps the guy thought that he had killed him. In which case he had a chance as long as he played dead.
Sylvester closed his eyes, heard the boy come in and held his breath. Felt a hand on his chest searching his jacket, finding his wallet and driving licence and removing them. Two arms clasped him around his waist, dragged him out of the chair and eased him up onto his shoulder; then the boy started walking. He must be very strong.
He heard the sound of a door opening, a light being switched on, footsteps staggering down the staircase, and felt raw air. He was being carried down to the basement.
They were downstairs now. There was a noise of plastic seals loosening their grip. Then Sylvester fell, but his landing was much softer than he had feared. He sensed pressure in his ears and it grew darker. He opened his eyes. It was completely dark. He couldn’t see anything, he was lying in some sort of box. The darkness is nothing to be afraid of. There are no monsters. He heard footsteps shuffle back and forth until they faded away. The basement door slammed shut. He was alone; the boy hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Now it was a question of staying calm, not doing anything rash. Wait until the boy had gone to bed. Then he could make his getaway. Or call Bo and get him and his guys to pick him up and kill the boy. The strange thing was he still didn’t feel much pain, only warm blood dripping down on his hand. But he was cold. Very cold. Sylvester tried moving his legs in order to twist himself into a position where he could reach his mobile, but was unable to, his legs must have fallen asleep. He managed to ease his hand inside his jacket pocket and pull out his phone. He pressed it and the display lit up the darkness.
Sylvester held his breath.
The monster was right in front of his face, staring at him with bulging eyes above an open mouth lined with tiny sharp teeth.
A codfish, probably. Wrapped in cling film. Around it lay several freezer bags, some boxes of Frionor seafood, chicken fillets, pork joints, berries. The glow from his phone was reflected in ice crystals in the snow-white walls that surrounded him. He was in a freezer.
Markus stared up at the house and counted the seconds.
He had opened the window, heard the bang coming from inside and seen a flash of light from the living room. Then everything had gone quiet again.
Markus was convinced that it was a gunshot, but who had done the shooting?
Dear God, please let it be the Son. Please don’t let it be him who was shot.
Markus had counted to one hundred when he saw the door to the bedroom open. Thank you, God, thank you; it was him!
The Son returned the pistol to the sports bag, removed the loose floorboard and started loading plastic bags of white powder into the sports bag. When he was done, he slung the bag over his shoulder and left the room without switching off the light.
Shortly afterwards the front door slammed shut and Markus saw the Son march towards the gate. Stop, look left and right and then disappear down the street in the same direction Markus had first seen him come from.
Markus flung himself down on his back in the bed. Stared at the ceiling. He was alive! He shot baddies! Because . . . they had to be villains, didn’t they? Of course they were. Markus was so excited he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink tonight.
Sylvester heard the front door slam shut. The chest freezer was too well insulated for him to be able to hear much, but the door had been slammed so hard that he had felt the vibrations. At last. Of course his phone couldn’t send or receive anything from a freezer in a basement, so after three attempts he had given up trying. Sylvester was starting to feel pain now while at the same time he was growing drowsy, but the cold kept him awake. He pressed his palms against the lid and pushed. Felt a small dart of panic when it didn’t budge immediately. Pushed harder. It still didn’t give. He remembered the sound of the plastic seals, how they had glued themselves together, it was just a question of a little more force. He pressed his hands against the lid, pushing as hard as he could. There was no movement. And that was when he realised. The boy had locked the freezer.
This time the panic wasn’t just a prickling, it was a stranglehold.
Sylvester began to hyperventilate, but forced himself to block out his panic to prevent the dam from bursting, and letting the darkness, the real darkness, flood in. Think. Keep a lid on things and think clearly.
His legs. Why hadn’t he thought of them before? He knew that his legs were much stronger than his arms. He could easily lift over two hundred kilos on the leg press, against barely seventy kilos on the bench press. And this was only a freezer lock, it was designed to prevent people from nicking meat and berries, not stop a big, desperate man who really wanted to get out. There was enough space between him and the lid so that if he bent his knees and pressed his feet against the lid . . .
But he was unable to bend his knees.
They quite simply refused to obey him. He had never had such a bad case of pins and needles before. He tried again. No response; it was as if they had been disconnected. He pinched his shin. He pinched his thigh. The dam started to crack. Think. No, don’t think! Too late. The hole in the photo album, the blood. The bullet must have severed his spinal cord. That would explain the absence of pain. Sylvester touched his stomach. It was wet with blood. But it was like touching someone else’s body.
He was paralysed; from the waist down. He bashed the lid with his fists, but it was no use, all that opened were the floodgates in his mind. The dam he had learned must never be opened. His dad had taught him that. But now the cracks appeared and Sylvester knew that he would die as in his nightmares. Locked up. Alone. In the darkness.
26
‘THIS IS THE perfect Sunday morning,’ Else announced as she looked out of the car window.
‘Agreed,’ Simon said, changing down through the gears and glancing at her. He wondered how much she took in, if she could see that Palace Gardens were especially green after yesterday’s violent downpour. If she could even see that they were driving past Palace Gardens.
It was Else herself who had suggested that they visit the Chagall exhibition at Høvikodden and Simon had said that it was an excellent idea, only he just had to swing by an old colleague who lived in Skillebekk which was on the way to the art gallery.
There were plenty of parking spaces along Gamle Drammensveien. The old patrician houses and apartment blocks looked decidedly empty during the holidays. The occasional embassy flag stirred in the breeze.
‘I won’t be long,’ Simon said. He got out and walked up to the door of the address he had found on the Net. The name he was looking for was listed at the top of a row of doorbells.
After ringing the bell twice, Simon was about to give up when he heard a woman’s voice.
‘Yes?’
‘Is Fredrik there?’
‘Eh . . . Who wants to know?’
‘Simon Kefas.’
There was silence for a few seconds, but Simon could hear crackling as a hand was placed over the microphone on the intercom. Then she was back. ‘He’ll be down in moment.’
‘OK.’
Simon waited. It was too early for normal people to be up and about, so the only ones he saw in the street were a couple his own age. They looked as if they were out on a Sunday walk. A walk whose starting point was also its destination. The man was wearing a tweed cap and nondescript khaki trousers. This was how you dressed when you grew old. Simon looked at his reflection in the glass pane in the carved oak front door. Tweed flat cap and sunglasses. Khaki trousers. Sunday uniform.
Fredrik appeared in jeans and a T-shirt. He had taken the time to shower – his wet, thick hair was combed back from his face.
‘This is unexpected,’ he said. ‘What—’
‘Why don’t we go for a little walk?’
Fredrik looked at his heavy wristwatch. ‘Listen, I’m—’
‘Nestor and his drug-dealing underlings paid me a visit,’ Simon said loud enough for the couple nearby to hear. ‘But I’m happy to carry this on upstairs in the flat where your . . . wife is?’
Fredrik looked at Simon. Then he closed the door behind him.
They walked along the pavement. Fredrik’s flip-flops slapped against the tarmac and cast an echo between the walls.
‘He came to offer me that loan I had discussed with you, Fredrik. Only discussed with you.’
‘I haven’t spoken to anyone called Nestor.’
‘You don’t have to refer to him as “anyone called Nestor”, we’re both well aware that you know the name. You’re free to lie about any other knowledge you have of him.’
Fredrik stopped. ‘Come on, Simon. Getting you that loan from any of my clients was impossible. So I discussed your problem with a third party. That was what you expected me to do, wasn’t it? Be honest?’
Simon made no reply.
Fredrik sighed. ‘Listen, I was only trying to help. The worst that could happen was surely that you got an offer you couldn’t refuse.’
‘The worst that could happen is that now some scumbags think they’ve found a way to get to me. Finally, they’re thinking. Because they never had anything on me before, Fredrik. On you, yes, but me, never.’
Fredrik leaned against the railings. ‘Maybe that’s your real problem, Simon. The reason you never had the career you should have had.’
‘Because I wasn’t for sale?’
Fredrik smiled. ‘Your temper. Your lack of diplomacy. You even insult people who are trying to help you.’
Simon looked down at the old abandoned railway line below. From the days when Vestbanen was still in use. He didn’t know why, but it made him both melancholic and excited to see that the cutting in the ground was still there. ‘Have you read about the triple homicide in Gamlebyen?’
‘Of course,’ Fredrik said. ‘The papers write about little else. Every member of Kripos has been drafted in, or so it would seem. Do you still get to play with them?’
‘They prefer to keep the best toys to themselves as usual. Kalle Farrisen was one of the men killed. Do you recognise the name?’
‘I can’t say that I do. But if Homicide isn’t allowed a look-in, why are you—’
‘Because Farrisen was once suspected of having killed this girl.’ Simon produced the picture he had printed out from the file and gave it to Fredrik. He watched him study the pale face with the Asian features. You didn’t need to see the rest of her body to realise that she was dead.
‘She was found in a backyard; it was made to look as if she had accidentally OD’d. Fifteen years old. Sixteen, perhaps. She had no papers, so we never found out who she was or where she was from. Or how she got into Norway. Possibly in a container on a ship from Vietnam. The only thing they did discover was that she was pregnant.’
‘Yes, wait, I remember that case. I thought someone had confessed?’
‘Yes. Late in the day and much to everyone’s surprise. What I want to ask you is: was there any connection between Kalle Farrisen and your favourite client, Iversen?’
Fredrik shrugged and looked across the fjord. He shook his head. Simon followed his gaze towards the forest of masts on the yachts moored in the marina where the term ‘yacht’ these days meant something slightly smaller than a frigate.
‘Did you know that the man who confessed to and was convicted of the murder of that girl has escaped from prison?’
Fredrik shook his head again.
‘Enjoy your breakfast,’ Simon said.
Simon was leaning against the curved cloakroom counter at the art gallery in Høvikodden. Everything was curved. Everything was neo-expressionist. Even the glass walls separating the rooms were curved and possibly neo-expressionist as well. He looked at Else. Else looked at Chagall. She seemed so small as she stood there. Smaller than Chagall’s figures. Perhaps it was the curves, perhaps they created an Ames Room illusion.
‘So you went to see this Fredrik just to ask him that one question?’ asked Kari, who was standing next to him. She had come over twenty minutes after he had called her. ‘And what you’re saying is . . .’
‘That I knew he would deny it,’ Simon said. ‘But I had to look at him to know if he was lying.’
‘You are aware, despite certain TV series that claim the opposite, that it’s extremely difficult to tell for certain if someone is lying?’
‘Fredrik isn’t just “someone”. I’ve experience of listening to him lying, I recognise his “tell”.’
‘So Fredrik Ansgar is a notorious liar?’
‘No. He lies out of necessity, not from predisposition or inclination.’
‘Right. And how do you know that?’
‘I didn’t before we started working together on a big property investigation at the Serious Fraud Office.’ He could see that Else was looking a little lost and he coughed loudly so that she could hear where he was. ‘It was tricky to prove that Fredrik was lying,’ Simon continued. ‘He was the investigation’s only expert accountant and it was difficult for us to verify everything he said. To begin with it was minor discrepancies and odd coincidences, but the sum total seemed a little too big just to be a coincidence. He failed to inform us of certain things or directly misinformed us. I was the only one who got suspicious. And in time I learned to tell when he was lying.’
‘How?’
‘It was very simple. His voice.’
‘His voice?’
‘Lying triggers emotions. Fredrik was good at lying with his choice of words, logic and body language. But his voice was the one emotional barometer he couldn’t control. He couldn’t strike quite the right natural tone, he had a lying inflection, which he himself could hear and he knew that it might give him away. When he was asked a direct question and had to give a straight answer, he couldn’t trust his voice. So he started nodding or shaking his head by way of response.’
‘And when you asked him if he knew of any connection between Kalle Farrisen and Iversen?’
‘He just shrugged as if he didn’t know.’
‘So he was lying?’
‘Yes. And he shook his head when I asked him if he knew that Sonny Lofthus had escaped from prison.’
‘Isn’t that a little simplistic?’
‘Yes, but Fredrik is a simple man who just happens to know his times tables better than most people. Listen, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go through all of Sonny Lofthus’s convictions. See if you can find out if there were any other suspects in each case.’
Kari Adel nodded. ‘Great, I didn’t have any plans for this weekend anyway.’
Simon smiled.
‘That Serious Fraud Office case,’ Kari said. ‘What was it about?’
‘Fraud,’ Simon said. ‘Tax avoidance, serious money, important names. As the case stood, it could bring down high-profile business people as well as politicians and it looked as if it could take us to Mr Big.’
‘Who was?’
‘The Twin.’
Kari shivered. ‘That’s a strange nickname, I must say.’
‘Not as strange as the story behind it.’
‘Do you know the Twin’s real name?’
Simon shook his head. ‘He goes by several names. So many that he’s totally anonymous. When I started in the Serious Fraud Office, I was naive enough to think that the biggest fish would be the most noticeable. The truth is, of course, that som
eone’s importance is inversely proportional to their visibility. The Twin eluded me yet again. Because of Fredrik’s lies.’
‘Do you think that Fredrik Ansgar could have been the mole?’
Simon shook his head vigorously. ‘Fredrik wasn’t even working for the police back when the mole started operating. I believe he was a minor player at that stage, but it’s clear that he could have done a lot of damage if he had been allowed to rise up the ranks. So I stopped him.’
Kari’s eyes widened. ‘You shopped Fredrik Ansgar to the Commissioner?’
‘No. I made him an offer. He could either go quietly or I would take what little I had on him to the top. It probably wasn’t enough to warrant an investigation or a dismissal, but it would have clipped his wings, put his career on hold for a while. He agreed to leave.’
A vein bulged on Kari’s forehead. ‘You . . . you just let him go?’
‘We got rid of a rotten apple without dragging the police force through the mud. Yes, I let him go.’
‘You can’t just let people like that walk away.’
He heard the outrage in her voice. Quite right.
‘Fredrik is a small fish and, like I said, he would have got away with it. He couldn’t even be bothered to pretend that it wasn’t a good offer. In fact, he feels that he owes me a favour.’
