Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Shut up,’ Franck hissed. ‘He can’t have made it past the guards. He’s still in here somewhere. Goldsrud, raise the alarm. Lock every door — no one gets in or out.’

‘But I need to take my kids to-’

‘Including you.’

‘What about the police?’ one of the prison officers said. ‘Shouldn’t they be informed?’

‘No!’ Franck yelled. ‘Lofthus is still inside Staten, I tell you! Not a word to anyone.’

Arild Franck glowered at the old man. He had locked the door behind him and made sure that there were no prison officers standing outside it.

‘Where is Sonny?’

Johannes lay in his bed, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. ‘Isn’t he in his cell?’

‘You know damn well he isn’t.’

‘Then he must have escaped.’

Franck bent down, grabbed the old man’s T-shirt by the neck and pulled him towards him.

‘Wipe that grin off your face, Johannes. I know that the security guards outside haven’t seen anything so he has to be in here. And if you don’t tell me where he is, you can wave goodbye to your cancer treatment.’ Franck saw the look of astonishment on the old man’s face. ‘Oh, you can forget about doctor-patient confidentiality, I’ve eyes and ears everywhere. So what’s it to be?’ He released his hold on Johannes, whose head fell back on the pillow.

The old man smoothed his thinning hair and folded his hands behind his head. He cleared his throat. ‘Do you know something, Governor? I think I’ve lived long enough. There’s no one waiting for me on the outside. And my sins have been forgiven, so for the first time I might just have a chance to get in upstairs. Perhaps I should take that chance while I still have it. What do you think?’

Arild Franck clenched his teeth so hard it felt as if his fillings might crack.

‘What I think will happen, Johannes, is that you’ll discover that not a single one of your sins has been forgiven. Because in here I am God and I can guarantee you a slow and painful death from cancer. I’ll make sure that you stay here in your cell while the cancer eats you up without ever seeing as much as a glimpse of pain relief. And you wouldn’t be the first, let me tell you.’

‘Rather that than whatever hell you’re going to, Governor.’

Franck wasn’t sure if the gurgling noises coming from the old man’s throat were death throes or laughter.

On his way back to cell 317 Franck checked his walkie-talkie again. Still no trace of Sonny Lofthus. He knew they would soon be forced to issue a wanted bulletin.

He went in to cell 317, landed heavily on the bed and scanned the floor, walls and ceiling with his eyes. He couldn’t bloody believe it. He grabbed the Bible on the bedside table and hurled it against the wall. It fell open on the floor. He knew that Vollan had used the Bible to smuggle in heroin and he glanced at the mangled pages. Damaged creeds and broken sentences with no meaning.

He swore and threw the pillow against the wall.

He watched it land on the floor. Stared at the hair that spilled out. Reddish hair that looked like tufts of beard and some long strands. He kicked the pillow. More matted, dirty blond hair drifted out.

Short-haired. Newly shaven.

And it was at that moment it finally dawned on him.

‘Night shift!’ he screamed into the walkie-talkie. ‘Check all the officers who left at the end of the night shift!’

Franck looked at his watch. 8.10 a.m. He knew what had happened now. And he knew that it was too late to do anything about it. He got up and kicked the chair which smashed into the shatter-proof mirror by the door.

The bus driver looked at the prison officer who was staring nonplussed at the ticket and the fifty kroner he had been given as change for his hundred-krone note. He could tell that the man was a prison officer because he was wearing a uniform under his long coat and had an ID card saying ‘Sorensen’ with a photo that looked nothing like him.

‘Been a while since you last caught the bus, has it?’ the driver asked.

The man with the bad haircut nodded.

‘It’s only twenty-six kroner if you buy a travel card in advance,’ the driver said, but he could tell from the passenger’s expression that he thought even this price was a rip-off. It was a common reaction in anyone who hadn’t travelled by bus in Oslo for a few years.

‘Thanks for your help,’ the man said.

The bus driver pulled out from the kerb while he followed the back of the prison officer in his rear-view mirror. He didn’t really know why, perhaps it was because of his voice. So warm and sincere as if he really thanked him with all his heart. He saw him sit down and gaze in wonder out of the window like one of those foreign tourists who strayed onto the bus from time to time. Saw him pull a set of keys out of his coat pocket and study them as if he hadn’t seen them before. Take a packet of chewing gum from his other coat pocket.

Then he had to concentrate on the traffic in front of him.

Arild Franck was standing at the window in his office. He looked at his watch. Most escaped prisoners were brought back in the first twelve hours. He had told the press it was the first twenty-four hours so that he could call it a fast result, should it take longer than twelve. But it was coming up for twenty-five hours now, and they still had no leads to go on.

He had just been to the prison governor’s large office. The one with no view. And there the man with no view had demanded an explanation. The prison governor was in a foul mood because he had been forced to return early from the annual Nordic prison conference in Reykjavik. On the telephone from Iceland yesterday he had said that he would contact the press. He liked talking to the media, did his boss. Franck had asked for twenty-four hours’ media blackout to find Lofthus, but his boss had dismissed this out of hand and said that this wasn’t something they could keep under wraps. Firstly, Sonny Lofthus was a killer so the public was entitled to be warned. Secondly, they needed to circulate his picture to the media to help find him.

And, thirdly, you want your own picture in the papers, Franck thought. So your political cronies can see that you’re working rather than floating around a blue lagoon drinking Svartadaudir schnapps.

Franck had tried explaining to the governor that circulating pictures was unlikely to be very effective; any photos they had of Sonny Lofthus were from when he was jailed twelve years ago and even then he had had long hair and a beard. And the images from the CCTV cameras after he had cut off his hair were so grainy as to be unusable. And still the governor had insisted on dragging the name of Staten through the mud.

‘The police are looking for him, Arild, so surely you know it’s only a matter of time before I get a phone call from a reporter wondering why the breakout hasn’t been made public and asking if Staten has covered up breakouts before. I prefer to control the story, Arild.’

The prison governor had gone on to ask which procedures Franck thought needed tightening up. And Franck knew why: so that the governor could go to his government friends and pass off the assistant prison governor’s ideas as his own. Ideas from a man with a view. And yet he had shared his thoughts with the idiot. Voice recognition to replace fingerprints and electronic tagging with indestructible GPS chips. Ultimately there were things Franck valued higher than himself and Staten Prison was one of them.

Arild Franck looked at Ekebergasen as it lay bathed in morning sunshine. Once it had been the sunny side of a working-class neighbourhood. Once he had dreamed of buying himself a little house there. Now he owned a bigger house in a more expensive part of Oslo. But he still dreamed about the little house.