Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Hey! You know you’re only allowed to smoke in the designated areas.’

Johannes’s grey-haired head slumped and Sonny let his hand drop.

Franck walked up to them. Gestured with his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Go mop floors somewhere else, Johannes.’ Franck waited until the old man had shuffled out of earshot. ‘What were you talking about?’

Sonny shrugged.

‘No, don’t tell me, the sanctity of the confession is inviolable,’ Arild Franck guffawed. The sound bounced between the bare corridor walls. ‘So, Sonny, have you had time to think about it?’

The boy stubbed out the cigarette on the packet, put it in his pocket and scratched his armpit.

‘Itchy?’

The boy said nothing.

‘I imagine there are worse things than an itch. Worse even than cold turkey. Did you hear about the guy in 317? They think he hanged himself from the light fitting. But that he changed his mind after he had kicked the chair away from underneath him. That’s why he clawed his own neck to pieces. What was his name again? Gomez? Diaz? He used to work for Nestor. There was some concern that he might start talking. No evidence, just a worry. That was all it took. Funny, isn’t it, when you lie in your bed at night and you’re in a prison and what scares you most is that the door to your cell might not be locked? That someone in the control room could give a prison full of killers access to you at the touch of a button?’

The boy had lowered his head, but Franck could see the beads of sweat on his forehead. The boy would come to his senses. He certainly ought to. Franck didn’t like prisoners dying in their cells in his prison; eyebrows were inevitably raised no matter how plausible it looked.

‘Yes.’

It came out so softly that Franck automatically leaned forward. ‘Yes?’ he echoed.

‘Tomorrow. You’ll get the confession tomorrow.’

Franck folded his arms across his chest and rocked back on his heels. ‘Good. Then I’ll bring Mr Harnes with me early tomorrow morning. And no funny business this time. When you lie in your bed tonight, I suggest you take another look at the light fitting in the ceiling. Understand?’

The boy raised his head and looked the assistant prison governor in the eye. Franck had long since dismissed the notion that the eyes mirrored the soul; he had stared into too many inmates’ baby-blue eyes while they lied through their teeth. Besides, it was a strange expression. Mirror of the soul. Logically it meant that you saw your own soul in someone else’s eyes. Was that why it was so uncomfortable to look into the boy’s? Franck turned away. It was a question of staying focused. And not allowing yourself to get sidetracked by thoughts that led nowhere.

‘It’s haunted, innit?’

Lars Gilberg raised a thin roll-up to his lips with fingers the colour of charcoal and squinted up at the two police officers who were standing over him.

Simon and Kari had spent three hours looking for Gilberg and finally tracked him down under Grunerbrua. They had started their search at the Ila Centre where no one had seen him for over a week, continued via Bymisjonen’s cafe in Skippergata, Plata by Oslo Central Station which still served as a marketplace for drugs, and finally the Salvation Army’s hostel in Urtegata where information had taken them in the direction of the river to Elgen, a statue which marked the border between speed and heroin.

Along the way Kari had explained to Simon that the Albanians and the North Africans were currently in charge of the sale of amphetamine and methamphetamine along the river south of Elgen and down to Vaterland Bridge. Four Somalis were hanging around a bench, kicking their heels, their hoods pulled low down over their faces in the evening sun. One of them nodded when he saw the photo that Kari held up, pointed them north towards heroin country and winked at them as he asked if they fancied a gram of crystals for the journey. Their laughter had followed Simon and Kari as they plodded up the path towards Grunerbrua.

‘You’re saying you don’t want to stay at the Ila Centre any more because you think it’s haunted?’ Simon asked him.

‘It’s not something I think, man. It’s something I know. No one can get to sleep in a room there, it’s already occupied, you feel a presence the moment you go in. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and there would be no one there, obviously, but it felt as if someone had been breathing on my face. And it wasn’t just my room, you ask anyone there.’ Gilberg looked at the finished cigarette with disapproval.

‘So you prefer to sleep rough?’ Simon asked, offering him his own tin of tobacco.

‘Ghosts or no ghosts, to tell you the truth I can’t handle small spaces, I feel trapped. And this place. .’ Gilberg gestured towards his bed of newspapers and the scruffy sleeping bag next to him. ‘It’s a top holiday destination, innit?’ He pointed to the bridge. ‘A roof that won’t leak. A sea view. No expenses, easy access to public transport and local amenities. What more could you want?’ He took three pieces of snus from Simon’s tin and stuck one under his upper lip and the other two in his pocket.

‘A job as a chaplain?’ Kari suggested.

Gilberg tilted his head to one side and peered up at Simon.

‘That dog collar you’re wearing,’ Simon said. ‘You may have read in those newspapers of yours that a chaplain was found dead in the river just up from here.’

‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ Gilberg took the two pieces of tobacco from his pocket, put them back in the tin and handed it to Simon.

‘It’ll take Forensics twenty minutes to prove that dog collar belonged to the chaplain, Lars. And it’ll take you twenty years to serve out your sentence for his murder.’

‘Murder? There was nothing about-’

‘So you do read the crime section? He was dead before he was thrown in the river. We can tell from the bruises on his skin. He hit some rocks and bruises show up differently if you’re already dead. Do you follow?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want me to spell it out to you? Or would you rather I tell you just how claustrophobic being in a prison cell really is?’

‘But I haven’t-’

‘Even as a suspect you should expect to be remanded in custody for several weeks. And remand cells are much smaller.’

Gilberg looked pensive and sucked hard on the snus a couple of times.

‘What d’you want?’

Simon squatted down in front of Gilberg. The homeless man’s breath didn’t just smell, it had a taste. The sweet, rotten taste of fallen fruit and death.

‘We want you to tell us what happened.’

‘I dunno know anything, I just told you.’

‘You’ve told us nothing, Lars. But it sounds as if it’s important to you. Not telling us, I mean. Why?’

‘It was just this collar. It floated ashore and-’

Simon got up and grabbed Gilberg by the arm. ‘Come on, off we go.’

‘Wait!’

Simon released him.

Gilberg bowed his head. He heaved a sigh. ‘They were Nestor’s men. But I can’t. . you know what Nestor does to people who. .’

‘Yes, I know. But you also know that he’ll hear about it if your name appears in the interview logs at Police HQ. So I suggest you tell us what you know right now and then I’ll decide if we can leave it at that.’

Gilberg shook his head slowly.

‘Now, Lars!’

‘I was sitting on the bench under the trees where the path leads down to Sannerbrua. I was only ten metres away so I could see them up on the bridge, but I don’t think they saw me, I was hidden among the leaves, you know what I mean? There were two of them and one was holding the chaplain while the other put his arm around his forehead. I was so close that I could see the white of the chaplain’s eyes. They were completely white, by the way, it was like the eyeballs had rolled back into his head, you know what I mean? But he didn’t make a sound. As if he knew there was no point. Then the second guy snapped his head backwards like a bloody chiropractor. I heard it break, I’m not kidding, it sounded like someone stepping on a twig in the forest.’ Gilberg pressed his forefinger against his upper lip, blinked twice and stared into the distance. ‘They took a look around. Christ, they’ve just killed a guy in the middle of Sannerbrua and they’re completely cool. Then again Oslo can be strangely deserted in the middle of the summer, you know what I mean? So they threw him over the brick wall where the railing stops.’