Jo Nesbo - The Son

She smiled, but without looking up this time. ‘And you need a haircut. Come on.’

She followed him up the stairs and back to reception, sat him down on a chair, covered him with two towels and found a pair of kitchen scissors. She wet his hair with water from the kitchen tap and combed his hair with her own comb. And while the other girls at reception commented and offered suggestions, tufts of hair fell to the floor. A couple of residents stopped outside the reception hatch and complained that they had never been offered a haircut, so why was the newcomer getting special treatment?

Martha waved them away and concentrated on the job in hand.

‘Where will you try to get work?’ she said and looked at the fine white hairs at the back of his neck. She needed an electric shaver for them. Or a disposable razor.

‘I have some contacts, but I don’t know where they live so I thought I would look them up in the phone book.’

‘The phone book?’ one of the girls snorted. ‘You can just look them up on the Net.’

‘I can do that?’ the young man said.

‘Are you for real?!’ she laughed. A little too loud. And her eyes sparkled, Martha noticed.

‘I’ve bought a mobile with Internet,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know how you-’

‘I’ll show you!’ The girl walked up to him and held out her hand.

He took out his mobile and handed it to her. She pressed the keys with easy familiarity. ‘You just google them. What’s the name?’

‘The name?’

‘Yes. Their name. My name is Maria, for example.’

Martha sent her a gentle warning look. The girl was young and had just started working with them. She had studied social science, but had little practical experience. The kind of experience that means you know exactly where the invisible line between professional concern and socialising with the residents is drawn.

‘Iversen,’ he said.

‘That’s going to result in too many hits. Do you know their first name?’

‘Just show me how to search and I’ll do the rest myself,’ the young man said.

‘OK.’ Maria pressed some buttons and handed him the mobile. ‘Just type in their name there.’

‘Thank you so much.’

Martha had finished, only the fine hairs on his neck remained and she had just remembered that she had found a razor blade stuck to a window in a room she had cleared out earlier today. She had put the razor blade — which had undoubtedly been used to chop coke for sniffing — on the kitchen counter in order to dispose of it safely in the next syringe container that came in. She lit a match and held the razor blade over the flame for a few seconds. Then she rinsed it under the tap and pinched it between her thumb and index finger.

‘You need to sit very still now,’ she said.

‘Mm,’ said the young man who was busy pressing buttons on his mobile.

She shuddered as she watched the thin steel blade glide across the soft skin on his neck. She watched as the hairs were cut and fell. The thought announced itself spontaneously: How little it took. How little separated life from death. Happiness from tragedy. The meaningful from the meaningless. She finished and looked over his shoulder. Saw the name he had entered, the white tails of the searching symbol spinning.

‘Done,’ she said.

He leaned his head backwards and looked up at her.

‘Thank you.’

She took the towels and walked quickly to the laundry room so as not to scatter loose hairs everywhere.

Johnny Puma was lying in the darkness with his face to the wall when he heard his room enemy come in and close the door silently behind him. Tiptoe across the floor. But Johnny was on his guard. The guy would get a taste of Puma’s iron fist if he tried to nick his stash.

His room enemy, however, made no attempt to approach him; instead Johnny heard the wardrobe door open.

He turned over in his bed. It was his room enemy’s wardrobe. That was all right; Johnny assumed that the guy must already have searched Johnny’s own wardrobe while he was asleep and discovered that nothing of value was stored there.

A beam of sunlight fell in between the curtains and on the young man. Puma flinched.

The boy had taken something out of a red sports bag and now Johnny could see what it was. The boy slipped the object into the empty box from the trainers which was then placed on the top shelf.

When he closed the wardrobe and turned round, Johnny quickly shut his eyes.

Bloody hell, he thought. And made sure to keep his eyes shut. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Markus yawned. He pressed his eyes against the binoculars and studied the moon that hung above the yellow house. Then he aimed the binoculars at the house itself. It was completely still now. Nothing more had happened. But would the son return? Markus hoped so. Perhaps he would find out what he wanted to do with it, the old ‘thing’ that had been lying in the drawer, gleaming, smelling of oil and metal, and might be the one that the father had used when he. .

Markus yawned again. It had been an eventful day. He knew he would sleep like a log tonight.

Agnete Iversen was forty-nine years old, but if you judged her by her smooth skin, bright eyes and slim figure, she looked thirty-five. Most people, however, took her to be older than she was due to her greying hair, the conservative, classic and timeless way she dressed and her educated speech which bordered on the dated. And, of course, the life the Iversen family lived high up on Holmenkollasen. They seemed to belong to a different, an older generation, with Agnete as the stay-at-home wife with two domestics who helped her manage the house and garden as well as service every need of Agnete herself, her husband Iver and their son Iver Junior.

Even compared to the other imposing houses in the neighbourhood, the Iversen home was impressive. Nevertheless, the domestic tasks were still suitably manageable so that the help (or ‘the staff’ as Iver Junior liked to refer to them with a hint of sarcasm since he had finished his final school exams and developed a new and more social democratic frame of reference) didn’t start work until twelve noon. This meant that Agnete Iversen could be the first person to rise, go for a little early-morning walk in the forest which bordered their property and pick a bouquet of ox-eye daisies before making breakfast for her two men. She sat with her teacup as she watched them consume the healthy and nutritious meal she had prepared for them as the start to a long and demanding day at the office. When they had finished eating and Iver Junior had thanked her for the meal with a handshake as had been the tradition in the Iversen household for several generations, she wiped the table and dried her hands on a white apron she would shortly drop into the laundry basket. Then she followed them out onto the front steps, gave them each a peck on the cheek and watched them get into the elderly, well-maintained Mercedes in the double garage and drive out into the bright sunshine. Iver Junior spent his school holidays at the family’s property company in the hope that it would teach him the meaning of hard work, that nothing is for free, and to appreciate that controlling a family fortune entails as many obligations as privileges.

The gravel on the drive crunched as father and son drove up to the road while she waved to them from the steps. And if anyone had told her that the whole scene looked like a 1950s commercial, she would have laughed, agreed with them and then given the matter very little thought. Because Agnete Iversen lived the life she wanted. She spent her days taking care of the two men she loved so they in turn could manage assets in the best interests of the family and society — what could possibly be more rewarding?