Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Thank you. I’ll consider it.’

Thank you? I’ll consider it? He was offering drugs to a pathetic junkie in withdrawal! Had the boy repealed the laws of gravity?

‘Listen, Sonny-’

‘And thank you for your visit.’

Harnes shook his head and got up. The boy wouldn’t last. Harnes would just have to wait another day. Until the age of miracles had passed.

When a prison officer had accompanied the lawyer through all the doors and locks and he was back at reception where he asked them to call him a taxi, he thought about what his client would say. Or rather what his client would do if Harnes didn’t save the world.

His part of the world, that is.

Geir Goldsrud leaned forward in his chair and stared at the monitor.

‘What the hell is he up to?’

‘Looks like he’s trying to get someone’s attention,’ said another prison officer in the control room.

Goldsrud looked at the boy. The long beard reached down to his bare chest. He was standing on a chair in front of one of the surveillance cameras, tapping the lens with the knuckle of his index finger while mouthing incomprehensible words.

‘Finstad, come with me,’ Goldsrud said, getting up.

They passed Johannes who was mopping the floor in the corridor. The sight vaguely reminded Goldsrud of something from a movie. They walked downstairs to the ground floor, let themselves in, passed the communal kitchen and walked further down the corridor where they found Sonny sitting on the chair he had just been standing on.

Goldsrud could see from his upper body and arms that the boy had recently worked out, the muscles and veins were clearly outlined under his skin. He had heard that some of the most hardened intravenous drug users would do biceps curls in the gym before shooting up. Amphetamine and all sorts of pills were in circulation, but Staten was one of the few prisons in Norway — quite possibly the only one — where they actually had some limited control over the importation of heroin. Even so, it didn’t appear as if Sonny had ever had problems getting hold of it. Until now. Goldsrud could tell from the shaking that the boy hadn’t had a fix for several days. No wonder he was desperate.

‘Help me,’ Sonny pleaded when he saw them approach.

‘Sure,’ Goldsrud said, winking at Finstad. ‘A wrap will cost you two thousand.’

He meant it as a joke, but he could see that Finstad hadn’t been quite sure.

The boy shook his head. His muscles were bulging even in his neck and throat. Goldsrud had heard a rumour that the boy had once been a promising wrestler. Perhaps it was true what they said, that any muscles you build up before you’re twelve, you can regain in a matter of weeks as an adult.

‘Lock me up.’

‘We don’t lock you up until ten o’clock, Lofthus.’

‘Please.’

Goldsrud was puzzled. It happened that inmates asked to be locked in their cells because they were scared of someone. Sometimes, but not always, they had cause to be. Fear was a common by-product of a life of crime. Or vice versa. But Sonny was probably the only inmate in Staten who didn’t have a single enemy among the other prisoners. On the contrary, they treated him like a sacred cow. And the lad had never shown any signs of fear and he clearly had the physique and mental stamina to handle addiction better than most. So why. .?

The boy picked at a scab from a needle mark on his forearm and it was then Goldsrud realised there were scabs on all the marks. He had no fresh ones. The boy had quit. That was why he wanted to be locked up. He was in withdrawal and all too aware that he would take anything he was offered, no matter what it was.

‘Come on,’ Goldsrud said.

‘Lift your legs, will you, Simon?’

Simon looked up. The old cleaner was so small and bent double that she barely reached over the cleaning cart. She had worked at Police HQ since before Simon had started there himself sometime in the previous millennium. She was a woman with strong opinions, and always referred to herself — and to her colleagues regardless of gender — as a cleaning ‘lady’.

‘Hi, Sissel, is it that time again?’ Simon looked at his watch. Past four o’clock. The official end of the working day in Norway. Indeed, employment law practically prescribed that you had to leave on the dot for king and country. In the past he couldn’t have cared less about leaving on time, but that was then. He knew that Else was waiting for him, that she had started cooking dinner several hours ago and that when he came home she would pretend the meal was something she had just thrown together in a hurry and hope that he wouldn’t see the mess, the spills and the other signs that revealed her sight had deteriorated a little more.

‘Long time since you and I last had a fag together, Simon.’

‘I use snus now.’

‘I bet it’s that young wife of yours who made you quit. Still no kids?’

‘Still not retired, Sissel?’

‘I think you already have a kid somewhere, that’s why you don’t want another one.’

Simon smiled, looked at her as she ran the mop under his legs and wondered, not for the first time, how it had been possible for Sissel Thou’s tiny body to squeeze out such a huge offspring. Rosemary’s Baby. He cleared away his papers. The Vollan case had been shelved. None of the residents in the Sannerbrua flats had seen anything and no other witnesses had come forward. Until they found evidence to suggest that a crime had been committed, the case would be downgraded, said his boss, and told Simon to spend the next couple of days fattening up reports on two solved murder cases where they had been given a bollocking by the public prosecutor who had described them as ‘on the thin side’. She hadn’t found any actual errors; she only wanted to see ‘a certain raising of the level of detail’.

Simon switched off his computer, put on his jacket and headed for the door. It was still summer which meant that many of the staff who were not on holiday had left at three o’clock and in the open-plan office that smelled of glue from the old partition walls warmed by the sun he heard only scattered keystrokes. He spotted Kari behind one of the partitions. She had put her feet on the desk and was reading a book. He popped his head round.

‘So no dinner with friends tonight?’

She automatically slammed the book shut and looked up at him with a mixture of irritation and guilt. He glanced at the title of the book: Company Law . He knew that she knew that she had no reason to feel bad for studying during work hours since no one had given her anything to do. It was par for the course in Homicide; no murders equalled no work. So Simon concluded from her blushes that she knew her law degree would eventually take her away from the department and it felt like a kind of treachery. And irritation, because though she had convinced herself that it must be acceptable to use her time like this, her instinctive reaction when he appeared had been to shut the book.

‘Sam is surfing in Vestlandet this weekend. I thought I would read here rather than at home.’

Simon nodded. ‘Police work can be dull. Even in Homicide.’

She looked at him.

He shrugged. ‘Especially in Homicide.’

‘So why did you become a homicide investigator?’

She had kicked off her shoes and pulled up her bare feet on the edge of the chair. As if she was hoping for a longer reply, Simon concluded. She was probably one of those people who prefer any company to solitude, who would rather sit in a near-deserted open-plan office with the chance of company than in their own living room where they were guaranteed peace and quiet.

‘You may not believe it, but it was an act of protest,’ he said, perching on the edge of the desk. ‘My father was a watchmaker and wanted me to take over his business. I didn’t want to be a bad copy of my father.’