Jo Nesbo - The Son

Johannes thought he could feel something in the darkness. A change in pulse and breathing.

‘Even so, Nestor and his people still managed to get in. They didn’t want the fallout that would come from shooting a police officer so they forced your father to write that suicide note.’ Johannes swallowed. ‘In return for a promise to spare you and your mother. Afterwards they shot him point-blank with his own gun.’

Johannes closed his eyes. It was very quiet and yet it felt as if someone was shouting into his ear. And there was a tightness in his chest and throat that he hadn’t felt for many, many years. Dear God, when did he last cry? When his daughter was born? But he couldn’t stop now; he had to finish what he had started.

‘I guess you’re wondering how Nestor got into the house?’

Johannes held his breath. It sounded as if the boy had also stopped breathing; all he could hear was the roar of blood in his ears.

‘Someone had seen me talk to your father, and Nestor thought the police had been a little too lucky with the trucks they had stopped recently. I denied that it was me, said that I knew your father a bit and that he was trying to get information from me. So Nestor said that if your father believed I might become his confidential informant, I would be able to walk up to the front door and make him open it. That way I could prove where my loyalties lay, he said. .’

Johannes could hear that the other had started breathing again. Quickly. Hard.

‘Your father opened the door. Because you trust your informant, don’t you?’

He sensed movement, but he didn’t hear or see anything before the punch hit him. And while he lay on the floor tasting the metallic blood, feeling the tooth glide down his throat, hearing the boy scream and scream, the cell door opening, the officers’ shouting and then the boy being restrained and handcuffed, he thought about the astonishing physical speed, accuracy and force in the blow from this junkie. And about forgiveness. The forgiveness which he hadn’t got. And about time. About the passing seconds. About the approaching night.

What Arild Franck liked most about his Porsche Cayenne was the sound. Or rather the absence of sound. The hum of the 4.8-litre V8 engine reminded him of his mother’s sewing machine when he was growing up in Stange outside of Hamar. That, too, had been the sound of silence. Of silence, calm and concentration.

The door on the passenger side opened and Einar Harnes got in. Franck didn’t know where young lawyers in Oslo bought their suits; he just knew it wasn’t the same shops he frequented. Nor had he ever seen the point of buying light-coloured suits. Suits were dark. And cost less than five thousand kroner. The difference in price between his suits and Harnes’s ought to be paid into a savings account for future generations who had families of their own to support and who would continue the work of building Norway. Or fund an early and comfortable retirement. Or a Porsche Cayenne.

‘I hear he’s in solitary,’ Harnes said as the car pulled away from the kerb outside the graffitied entrance to the law offices of Harnes amp; Fallbakken.

‘He beat up a fellow inmate,’ Franck said.

Harnes raised a well-groomed eyebrow. ‘Gandhi pulled a punch?’

‘You never can tell what junkies are capable of. But he’s had four days of cold turkey so I imagine he’s very cooperative by now.’

‘Yes, it runs in the family — or so I’ve heard.’

‘What have you heard?’ Franck honked the horn at a slow Corolla.

‘Only what everybody knows. Is there anything else?’

‘No.’

Arild Franck steered the car in front of a Mercedes convertible. He had visited the isolation cell yesterday. Staff had just finished cleaning up vomit and the boy sat huddled up under a woollen blanket in the corner.

Franck had never met Ab Lofthus, but he knew that the son had followed in his father’s footsteps. That he had been a wrestler like his father and showed such promise at the age of fifteen that the newspaper Aftenposten had predicted a national league career. Now he sat in a stinking cell, shaking like a leaf and sobbing like a little girl. In withdrawal everyone is equal.

They stopped in front of the security booth, Einar Harnes produced his ID and the steel barrier was raised. Franck parked the Cayenne in its allocated space and he and Harnes walked up to the main entrance where Harnes’s visit was logged. Usually Franck let Harnes in through the back door by the staff changing rooms to avoid signing him in. He didn’t want to give anyone cause to speculate what a lawyer with Harnes’s reputation was doing visiting Staten so often.

Any inmate suspected of involvement in a new criminal case was usually questioned at Police HQ, but Franck had asked if this interview could take place at Staten, given that Sonny Lofthus was currently in solitary confinement.

A vacant cell had been cleared and made ready for this purpose. A policeman and a policewoman in plain clothes sat on one side of the table. Franck had seen them before, but couldn’t remember their names. The figure on the other side of the table was so pale that he seemed to blend in with the milky-white wall. His head was bowed and his hands gripped the edge of the table tightly as if the room was spinning.

‘So, Sonny,’ Harnes said brightly, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, ‘are you ready?’

The policewoman cleared her throat. ‘The question should rather be is he finished.’

Harnes smiled thinly at her and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean? I hope you haven’t started questioning my client without his lawyer present.’

‘He said he didn’t need to wait for you,’ the policeman replied.

Franck looked at the boy. He sensed trouble.

‘So he’s confessed already?’ Harnes sighed, opened his briefcase and pulled out three sheets of paper stapled together. ‘If you want it in writing then-’

‘On the contrary,’ the policewoman said. ‘He’s just denied having anything to do with the murder.’

The room fell so silent that Franck could hear the birds singing outside.

‘He did what?’ Harnes’s eyebrows reached his hairline now. Franck didn’t know what made him angrier, the lawyer’s plucked eyebrows or his slowness to appreciate the catastrophe that was unfurling.

‘Did he say anything else?’ Franck asked.

The policewoman looked at the assistant prison governor, then at the lawyer.

‘It’s quite all right,’ Harnes said. ‘He’s here at my request in case you needed more information about Lofthus’s day release.’

‘I granted it personally,’ Franck said. ‘And there was nothing to indicate that it would have such tragic consequences.’

‘And we don’t know that it has yet,’ the policewoman said. ‘Given that we don’t have a confession.’

‘But the evidence-’ Arild Franck exclaimed, but then stopped himself.

‘What do you know about the evidence?’ the policeman asked him.

‘I just presumed that you had some,’ Franck said. ‘Since Lofthus is a suspect. Isn’t that right, Mr. .?’

‘Detective Inspector Henrik Westad,’ the policeman said. ‘I was the first person to interview Lofthus, but now he’s changed his statement. He even says he has an alibi for the time of the murder. A witness.’

‘He does have a witness,’ Harnes said, looking down at his silent client. ‘The prison officer who accompanied him on his day release. And he has said that Lofthus disappeared for-’

‘Another witness,’ Westad said.

‘And who might that be?’ Franck scoffed.

‘Lofthus says he met a man called Leif.’

‘Leif what?’

Everyone stared at the long-haired prisoner who looked like he was very far away and entirely oblivious to their presence.