The Son

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘I don’t know, he just walked away from the crime scene where we found the car and the body last night, and no one has seen him since.’

  ‘Hm. So you’ve no idea?’

  ‘The last thing I did was give him a list of hotels where Lofthus might be staying.’

  ‘Based on what?’

  ‘That he pays cash. Hardly anyone does these days.’

  ‘Clever. Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Kari walked down the steps and was level with the sprinkler when she heard footsteps behind her. It was Parr.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ he said. ‘Based on what I’m hearing, I understand there’s a possibility that it might be you yourself who’ll finally track down Lofthus for us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kari said and knew it sounded as conceited as she had intended.

  ‘If that were to happen, then remember that he’s armed and dangerous. That you’ll be treated sympathetically if you or several of your colleagues are forced to defend yourselves.’

  Kari brushed aside the usual stray hairs. ‘Just what exactly does that mean?’

  ‘Just that the threshold for an armed response to stop this killer is low. Remember, he’s already tortured one public servant.’

  Kari could feel the wind blow a fine spray of water. ‘Very well,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll have a word with the head of Kripos,’ Parr said. ‘It might be an idea for you and Åsmund Bjørnstad to work together as a team on this investigation. I do believe you have the same understanding of the situation.’

  Simon stared into the mirror. The years were passing. The hours were passing. He wasn’t the man he had been fifteen years ago. He wasn’t even the man he was seventy-two hours ago. Once he had believed he was invincible. Once he had believed he was scum. He had come to the conclusion that he was neither, that he was a human being of flesh and blood, with the potential to do the right thing. Or let himself be ruled by his basest instincts.

  But did that mean that he, or anyone, had free will? Wouldn’t we all, given the same mathematical equation, the same odds, the same probability of what paid off, make the same choices over and over? People claimed that you could change your values, a woman might come into your life, you might grow wiser and reach a new appreciation of what really mattered. Yes, but only because those other things had become important, all that had happened was that the numbers in the equation had changed, you still solved it in the same way. You would then have made those new choices over and over. Determined by the composition of chemical substances in your brain, available information, survival instinct, sexual urges, mortal fear, learned morality and herd instinct. We don’t punish people because they are evil, but because they make bad choices, choices that are bad for the herd. Morality isn’t heaven-sent or eternal, just a set of rules that benefit the herd. And those who are incapable of following the rules, the accepted pattern of behaviour, will never be able to conform because they have no free will; it’s an illusion. Like the rest of us, lawbreakers just do what they do. That is why they must be eliminated to ensure they don’t procreate and so infect the herd with their negative behaviour genes.

  Simon Kefas thought that what he was looking at in the mirror was a robot. Complex and complicated and filled with possibilities. But a robot all the same.

  So what did the boy want to avenge? What did he hope to achieve? Save a world that didn’t want to be saved? Exterminate all the things we won’t admit we need? Because who can bear to live in a world without crime, without the idiotic rebellion of the stupid, without the irrational ones who bring about movement, change? Without the hope of a better – or a worse – world. This hellish restlessness, the shark’s need for constant movement to get oxygen.

  ‘This moment is fine. Let us stay as we are. Just like this.’ Only it never happened.

  Simon heard footsteps. He checked that his pistol’s safety catch was off.

  The key was turned in the lock.

  The footsteps sounded quick. Someone was in a hurry. He counted the seconds without taking his eyes off his face in the mirror over the sink in the bathroom. The boy, having seen that everything was exactly as when he left the room, would relax and drop his guard. He might come in here, but by then he would have put down any weapons. Simon kept counting.

  On twenty he opened the door and stepped out, holding his pistol.

  The boy was sitting on the bed.

  He had a bandage around his head. In front of him on the floor lay the briefcase from the wardrobe. It was opened and filled with bags of white powder which Simon recognised instantly. The boy had cut a hole in one of them. In his left hand he held a teaspoon with white powder, in the other a lit lighter. On the bed lay a pile of disposable syringes and a sheet of hypodermic needles.

  ‘Who shoots first?’ the boy asked.

  41

  SIMON SAT DOWN in the chair opposite him. Watched him hold the lighter under the teaspoon.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Your phone,’ Simon said, without taking his eyes off the flame. ‘And the background noises. Hookers at work. You know who I am?’

  ‘Simon Kefas,’ the boy said. ‘I recognise you from the photographs.’ The powder started to dissolve. Tiny bubbles rose to the surface. ‘I won’t resist arrest. I was going to turn myself in later today, anyway.’

  ‘Oh? Why? Is your crusade over so soon?’

  ‘There is no crusade,’ the boy said, putting down the teaspoon with care. Simon knew this was to allow the liquid heroin to cool. ‘There is only blind faith, those of us who still believe what we were taught as children. Until the day we discover that the world isn’t like that. That we’re trash. We’re all rubbish.’

  Simon put the gun in the palm of his hand and looked at it. ‘I’m not taking you to the police station, Sonny. I’m taking you to the Twin. You, the drugs and the money you stole from him.’

  The boy looked up at him as he tore the wrapper off a syringe. ‘Fine. It’s all the same to me. He’s going to kill me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Taking out the trash. Just let me shoot up first.’ He put a ball of cotton wool in the spoon, pushed the needle through it and pulled up the plunger. ‘I don’t know these drugs, they might not be pure,’ he said, as if to explain the cotton-wool filtering.

  Then he looked up at Simon to see if he appreciated the irony.

  ‘Heroin from Kalle Farrisen’s stash,’ Simon said. ‘You’ve had it all this time without being tempted to sample it?’

  The boy laughed harshly, briefly.

  ‘I put that badly,’ Simon said. ‘Delete “tempted”. But you’ve managed to resist. How?’

  The boy shrugged.

  ‘I know a thing or two about addicts,’ Simon said. ‘The list of things that makes us quit isn’t long. Either we’ve found Jesus, a girl, our own children or the man with the scythe. In my case it was a girl. And in yours?’

  The boy said nothing.

  ‘Your father?’

  The boy simply probed Simon with his eyes as if he had discovered something.

  Simon shook his head. ‘You two are so alike. It’s even clearer to me now than in the photos.’

  ‘They always said that he and I were nothing like each other.’

  ‘Not you and your father. You and your mother. You have her eyes. She used to get up at the crack of dawn, before the rest of us, and have breakfast before she rushed off to work. Sometimes I would get up early just to see her sit there, before she got ready to go out, tired, but with these amazing, beautiful eyes.’

  The boy sat completely still now.

  Simon kept turning the pistol over as if he was looking for something. ‘We were four people who had nothing, who shared a flat in Oslo, it was cheaper that way. Three boys who went to the Police College plus your mother. The three boys called themselves “the troika” and they were best mates. They were your father, me and Pontius Parr. Your mother had looked in the paper for a place to stay and tak
en our spare room. I think all three of us fell in love with her the moment we saw her.’ Simon smiled. ‘We circled each other, courting her in secret. And we were three handsome guys, I don’t think she quite knew which one of us to pick.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ the boy said. ‘But I know she picked the wrong one.’

  ‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘She picked me.’

  Simon looked up from his gun. Met Sonny’s gaze.

  ‘Your mother was the love of my life, Sonny. I nearly went completely under when she left me and started seeing your father. Especially when it turned out soon afterwards that she was pregnant. The two of them moved out, bought the house in Berg. She was pregnant, he was still at the Police College, they didn’t have a pot to piss in. But interest rates were low and in those years the banks were throwing money at you.’

  Sonny hadn’t blinked once. Simon cleared his throat.

  ‘It was around that time I started gambling in earnest. I was already in debt when I started betting on the horses. High stakes. There was something liberating about standing at the edge of the abyss and knowing that whatever happened it would take me away from where I was. Up or down, it almost didn’t matter. At that time your father and I had drifted apart. I don’t suppose I could bear his happiness. He and Pontius had become close buddies, the troika had dissolved. I made up some excuse when he asked me to be your godfather, but I sneaked into the back of the church when you were christened. You were the only baby who didn’t cry. You just looked up calmly and smiled at the new, slightly nervous vicar as if you were christening him and not the other way round. I went right out and put 13,000 kroner on a horse called Sonny.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You owe me 13,000 kroner.’

  The boy smiled. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because from time to time I’ve wondered if things had to be like that. If I could have chosen differently. If Ab could have. If you could have. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over thinking you’ll get a different outcome. But what if there was something else, divine inspiration, which could make us choose differently next time?’

  The boy tied a rubber tube around his upper arm. ‘You sound like a believer, Simon Kefas.’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m only asking. What I do know is that your father’s intentions were good, no matter how harshly you judge him. He wanted to make a better life not just for himself, but for the three of you. Love was his downfall. And now you judge yourself just as harshly because you think you’re his copy. But you’re not your father. Just because he failed morally doesn’t mean that you will. A son’s responsibility isn’t to be like his father, but to be better than him.’

  The boy sank his teeth into the end of the rubber tube. ‘Perhaps, but why does it matter now?’ he said out of the corner of his mouth, pulling his head back so that the tube tightened and the veins on his forearm stood out. He held the syringe in an underhand grip with his thumb on the top of the plunger and the needle resting against the inside of his middle finger. Like a Chinese table-tennis player, Simon thought. He held the syringe with his right hand, even though he was left-handed, but Simon knew that junkies had to learn to shoot up with both hands.

  ‘It matters because it’s your turn to choose now, Sonny. Do you insert that needle? Or do you help me get the Twin? And the real mole?’

  A drop glistened at the tip of the needle. From the street came the sound of traffic and laughter, from the neighbouring room quiet pillow talk. The calm summer pulse of the city.

  ‘I’ll set up a meeting where both the Twin and the mole will be present. But I can’t do it unless you’re alive, you’re the bait.’

  The boy didn’t appear to have heard him, he had bowed his head and was practically curling around the syringe, getting ready for the high. Simon braced himself. And was surprised when he heard the boy’s voice:

  ‘Who is he, the mole?’

  Simon felt a pain in his chest and realised that he had forgotten to breathe.

  ‘You’ll find out if you turn up, not before. I know what you’re going through, Sonny. But there is always a point where things can no longer be put off, where you can’t be weak one more day and promise yourself that tomorrow, tomorrow you will start that other life.’

  Sonny shook his head. ‘There won’t be another life.’

  Simon stared at the syringe. And that was when he realised. It was an overdose.

  ‘Do you want to die without knowing, Sonny?’

  The boy raised his gaze from the syringe and up to Simon.

  ‘Look where knowing has got me, Kefas.’

  ‘Is this it?’ Åsmund Bjørnstad asked as he leaned across the steering wheel. He read the sign above the entrance. ‘The Bismarck Hotel?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kari said and undid her seat belt.

  ‘And you’re sure this is where he is?’

  ‘Simon wanted to know which hotels in Kvadraturen had guests paying cash. I guessed that he must know something, so I called the six hotels and sent them pictures of Sonny Lofthus.’

  ‘And got a hit with the Bismarck?’

  ‘The receptionist confirmed that the man in the picture is staying in room 216. He also said that a police officer had already been there and had accessed the room. That the hotel had done a deal with the police officer which he expected us to honour.’

  ‘Simon Kefas?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘All right, we’d better get going.’ Åsmund Bjørnstad picked up the police radio and pressed the talk button. ‘Delta, come in.’

  The loudspeaker crackled. ‘Delta here. Over.’

  ‘I give you permission to enter. It’s room 216.’

  ‘Received. We’re going in. Over and out.’

  Bjørnstad put down the police radio.

  ‘What are their orders?’ Kari said, sensing how tight her shirt felt.

  ‘To prioritise their own safety, shoot to kill if necessary. Where are you going?’

  ‘To get some fresh air.’

  Kari crossed the street. In front of her ran police officers dressed in black and holding MP5 machine guns; some went into the hotel’s reception, some into the yard where the back stairs and the fire exit were located. She walked through reception and was halfway up the stairs when she heard the crash of a door being smashed in and the dull bang of stun grenades. She continued up the stairs and along the corridor and heard the crackling of police radios: ‘The area is cleared and secured.’

  She turned into the room.

  Four police officers: one in the bathroom, three in the bedroom. All wardrobes and windows opened. No one else. No possessions left behind. The guest had checked out.

  Markus was sitting on his haunches, looking for frogs in the grass when he saw the Son come out of the yellow house and walk towards him. The afternoon sun hung so low over the roof that when the Son stopped in front of Markus, it looked as if it was shining out of his head. He was smiling, and Markus was pleased that he no longer looked as miserable as he had earlier that day.

  ‘It was nice meeting you, Markus.’

  ‘Are you going now?’

  ‘Yes, I have to.’

  ‘Why do you always have to go?’ he burst out before he could stop himself.

  The Son squatted down as well and put his hand on Markus’s shoulder. ‘I remember your father, Markus.’

  ‘You do?’ Markus said, sounding unconvinced.

  ‘Yes. And no matter what your mother might say or think, he was always nice to me. Once he chased away a huge bull elk that had strayed from the forest and come into the neighbourhood.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Single-handedly.’

  Then Markus saw a strange sight. Behind the Son’s head, in the open bedroom window in the yellow house, the thin white curtains billowed out. Even though there was no wind at all. The Son got up, ruffled Markus’s hair and started walking down the road. Swinging a briefcase as he whistled. Some
thing caught Markus’s eye, and he turned towards the house again. The curtains were on fire. And now he saw that the other windows were also open. All of them.

  A bull elk, Markus thought. My father chased away a bull elk.

  The house made a noise as if it was sucking in air. The sound took on rumbling undertones and then singing overtones that gained strength and turned into menacing, triumphant music. And how they jumped and twirled behind the black windows now, the yellow ballerinas already celebrating the downfall, Judgement Day.

  Simon put the car in neutral and let the engine idle.

  Further down the street, outside his house, was another car. A new, blue Ford Mondeo. Tinted windows at the back. An identical model had been parked outside the Eye Unit at the hospital. It could be a coincidence, of course, but he knew that Oslo Police had purchased eight Ford Mondeos last year. With tinted windows at the back so that you couldn’t see the flashing blue light that was kept behind the rear headrest.

  Simon grabbed the mobile lying on the passenger seat.

  The call was answered before the phone had rung twice.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Hello, Pontius. It must be very frustrating for you that my phone keeps moving.’

  ‘Stop this lunacy now, Simon, and I promise you it won’t have consequences.’

  ‘None at all?’

  ‘Not if you call it off now. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘You always wanted to do deals, Pontius. Well, I’ve got a deal for you. Turn up at a restaurant tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What’s on the menu?’

  ‘A couple of criminals whose arrest will be a feather in your cap.’

  ‘Be more specific?’

  ‘No. But I will give you an address and a time if you promise to bring only one person. My colleague, Kari Adel.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  ‘Are you trying to set me up, Simon?’

  ‘Have I ever? Remember, you stand to win a great deal. Or more accurately: you have a lot to lose if you let these people get away.’

  ‘Do I have your word that we’re not walking into an ambush?’