Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘He doesn’t know,’ Westad said. ‘He says they chatted briefly at a lay by. He says the witness drove a blue Volvo with an “I ¦ Drammen” sticker and he thinks the witness might have been ill or had heart trouble.’

Franck barked with laughter.

‘I think,’ Einar Harnes said with forced composure as he returned the papers to his briefcase, ‘that we should end it here so I can speak to my client to take his instructions.’

Franck had a habit of grinning when he got angry. And now the rage bubbled in his head like a boiling kettle and he had to pull himself together not to laugh out loud again. He glared at Harnes’s so-called client. Sonny Lofthus must be mad. First his attack on old Halden and now this. The heroin must finally have corroded his brain. But Sonny wouldn’t be allowed to upset this, it was much too big. Franck took a deep breath and heard an imaginary click like a boiling kettle switching itself off. It was just a question of keeping cool, giving it time. Giving withdrawal a little more time.

Simon was standing on Sannerbrua looking down at the water which flowed eight metres below them. It was six o’clock in the evening and Kari Adel had just asked about the rules for overtime in the Homicide Squad.

‘No idea,’ Simon said. ‘Talk to Human Resources.’

‘Can you see anything down there?’

Simon shook his head. Behind the foliage on the east side of the river he could make out the towpath which followed the water all the way down to the new Opera House by Oslo Fjord. A man was sitting on the bench feeding the pigeons. He’s retired, Simon thought. That’s what you do when you retire. On the west side was a modern apartment block with windows and balconies offering a view of both the river and the bridge.

‘So what are we doing here?’ Kari said, kicking the tarmac impatiently.

‘Is there somewhere you need to be?’ Simon said and looked around. A car drove past at a leisurely pace, a smiling beggar asked if they had change for a 200-kronor note, a couple in designer sunglasses with a disposable barbecue in the bottom tray of their pram laughed at something as they strolled by. He loved Oslo in the summer holidays when the city emptied of people and became his once more. When it returned to being the slightly overgrown village of his childhood where nothing much ever happened and anything that did happen meant something. A city he understood.

‘Some friends have invited Sam and me over for dinner.’

Friends, Simon thought. He used to have friends. What happened to them? Perhaps they were asking exactly the same question. What happened to him? He didn’t know if he could give them a proper answer.

The river couldn’t be more than a metre and a half deep. In some places rocks protruded from the water. The post-mortem report mentioned injuries consistent with a fall from a certain height, something which could fit with the broken neck which was the actual cause of death.

‘We’re here because we’ve walked up and down Aker River and this is the only place where the bridge is high enough and the water shallow enough for him to hit the rocks that hard. Besides, it’s the nearest bridge to the hostel.’

‘Residential centre,’ Kari corrected him.

‘Would you try to kill yourself here?’

‘No.’

‘I mean if you were going to kill yourself.’

Kari stopped shuffling her feet. Looked over the railing. ‘I suppose I would have chosen somewhere higher. Too great a risk of surviving. Too big a risk of ending up in a wheelchair. .’

‘But you wouldn’t push someone off this bridge, either, if you were trying to kill them, would you?’

‘No, maybe not,’ she yawned.

‘So we’re looking for someone who broke Per Vollan’s neck and then threw him into the river from here.’

‘That’s what you call a theory, I suppose.’

‘No, that’s what we call a theory. That dinner. .’

‘Yes?’

‘Ring your other half and say it’s off.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’re starting door-to-door inquiries for potential witnesses. You can begin by ringing the doorbell of anyone whose balcony overlooks the river. Next we need to go through the archives with a fine-tooth comb for potential neck-breakers.’ Simon closed his eyes and inhaled the air. ‘Don’t you just love Oslo in the summer?’

Einar Harnes never had any ambition to save the world. Just a small part of it. More specifically his part. So he studied law. Just a small part of it. More precisely the part he needed to pass the exam. He got a job with a firm of lawyers operating decidedly at the bottom of Oslo’s legal system, worked for them just long enough to get his licence, started his own firm with Erik Fallbakken, an ageing, borderline alcoholic, and together they had set a new low for dregs. They had taken on the most hopeless cases and lost every one of them, but in the process had earned themselves a reputation as the defenders of the lowest in society. The nature of their clients meant the legal partnership of Harnes amp; Fallbakken mostly had its invoices paid — if indeed they ever were — on the same dates that people collected their benefits. Einar Harnes had soon realised that he wasn’t in the business of providing justice, he merely offered a marginally more expensive alternative to debt collectors, social services and fortune-tellers. He threatened the people he was paid to threaten with lawsuits, employed the city’s most useless individuals on minimum wage and promised potential clients victory in court without exception. However, he had one client who was the real reason Harnes was still in business. This client had no record in the filing system — if you could call the total chaos that reigned in the filing cabinets, managed by a secretary who was more or less permanently on sick leave, a system. This client always paid his bills, usually in cash, and rarely asked for an invoice. Nor was this client likely to ask for one for the hours Harnes was about to run up, either.

Sonny Lofthus sat cross-legged on the bed with white desperation radiating from his eyes. It was six days since the notorious interview and the boy was having a rough time, but he had lasted longer than they had expected. The reports from the other inmates Harnes was in contact with were remarkable. Sonny hadn’t tried to score drugs; on the contrary, he had turned down offers of speed and cannabis. He had been seen in the gym where he had run on the treadmill for two hours without stopping and then lifted weights for another two. Screams had been heard coming from Sonny’s cell at night. But he was holding out. A guy who had been a hard-core H user for twelve years. The only people Harnes had heard of who had managed that before were people who had replaced drugs with something equally addictive, which could stimulate and motivate them just as much as the high from a hit. And it was a short list. They might find God, fall in love or have a child. That was it. In short, they finally found something which gave their lives a new and different purpose. Or was it only a drowning man’s last trip to the surface before he finally went under? All Einar Harnes knew for certain was that his paymaster wanted an answer. No. Not an answer. Results.

‘They have DNA evidence so you’ll be convicted whether or not you confess. Why prolong the agony for no reason?’

No reply.

Harnes ran his hand so hard over his slicked-back hair that the roots stung. ‘I could have a bag of Superboy here in an hour, so what’s the problem? All I need is your signature here.’ He tapped his finger on the three A4 sheets on his briefcase which was resting on his thighs.

The boy tried to moisten his dry, cracked lips with a tongue that was so white that Harnes wondered if it might be producing salt.