Jo Nesbo - The Son

Bjornstad shook his head. ‘If she was shot in the doorway and walked backwards, there would have been bloodstains from the exit wound along the hallway.’

‘And there were,’ Simon said, ‘but the killer cleaned them up. Like you said yourself, there were no fingerprints on the door handle. Not even the family’s. Not because Agnete Iversen started spring-cleaning seconds after her husband and son had touched the handle on their way out, but because the killer didn’t want to leave us any evidence. And I’m quite sure that the reason he mopped up the blood on the floor was that he had stepped in it and didn’t want to leave shoeprints. So he also wiped down the soles of his shoes.’

‘Is that right?’ Bjornstad said, still leaning his head backwards, but no longer grinning quite so broadly. ‘And you surmise all this out of thin air?’

‘When you dry the soles of your shoes, you don’t remove the blood in between the ridges in the pattern of the sole,’ Simon said, looking at his watch. ‘But that blood will come out if, for example, you stand on a thick rug whose fibres get into the sole pattern and soak up the blood. In the bedroom you’ll find a rectangular bloodstain in the carpet. I think your blood technician will agree with me, Bjornstad.’

In the silence that followed, Kari heard the sound of a car being stopped by police officers further up the road. There were agitated voices, one of them belonging to a young man. The victim’s husband and son.

‘Whatever,’ Bjornstad said with forced indifference. ‘Ultimately, it doesn’t matter where the victim was shot, this is a burglary gone wrong, not an assassination. And it sounds as if someone will be here shortly who can confirm that jewellery is missing from the jewellery box.’

‘Jewellery is all well and good,’ Simon said, ‘but if I’d been the burglar, I would have taken Agnete Iversen inside and forced her to show me where the real valuables are kept. Made her give me the combination to the safe which every idiot burglar knows a house like this will have. But instead he shoots her right here where the neighbours can hear. Not because he panics — the way he removed evidence shows how callous he is. No, he does it because he knows he won’t be spending very long in the house, that he’ll be long gone by the time the police arrive. Because he’s not there to steal very much, is he? Just enough so that an inexperienced investigator with nice parents will swiftly conclude that it’s a burglary gone wrong and not look too closely for the real motive.’

Simon had to admit that he enjoyed the silence and the sudden colour in Bjornstad’s face. Deep down Simon Kefas was a simple soul, but he wasn’t vindictive. Though he was sorely tempted, he spared his young colleague his parting shot: school’s out, Bjornstad .

Given time and experience it was always possible that Asmund Bjornstad might one day make a good investigator. Humility was also something good investigators had to learn.

‘Very enjoyable theory, Kefas,’ Bjornstad said. ‘I’ll keep it in mind. But time is passing and. .’ Short smile. ‘. . perhaps you should be on your way?’

‘Why didn’t you tell him everything?’ Kari asked while Simon carefully manoeuvred the car around the sharp bends coming down from Holmenkollasen.

‘Everything?’ Simon said, feigning innocence. Kari had to laugh. Simon was doing his eccentric old-man act.

‘You knew that the shell had landed somewhere in that flower bed. You didn’t find a shell, but you did find a shoeprint. Which you photographed. And the soil there matched the soil in the hallway?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why not give him that information?’

‘Because he’s an ambitious investigator whose ego is bigger than his team spirit, so it’s better if he discovers it himself. He’ll be more motivated if he feels that it’s his evidence and not mine they’re following up when they start looking for a man who takes size 8? shoes and who picked up an empty shell in that rose bed.’

They stopped for a red light at Stasjonsveien. Kari strangled a yawn. ‘And how did you gain such insight into how an investigator like Bjornstad thinks?’

Simon laughed. ‘Easy. I was young and ambitious once.’

‘But ambition fades in time?’

‘Some of it does, yes.’ Simon smiled. A wistful smile, Kari thought.

‘Is that why you stopped working for the Serious Fraud Office?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You were management. Chief Inspector in charge of a large team. They’ve let you keep your title in Homicide, but the only person you’re in charge of is me.’

‘Yep,’ Simon said, crossing the junction and continuing towards Smestad. ‘Overpaid, overqualified, left over. Or just over.’

‘So what happened?’

‘You don’t want to-’

‘Yes, I do.’

They drove on in a silence which Kari deemed to be to her advantage so she kept her mouth shut. Even so, they had almost reached Majorstua before Simon began.

‘I had uncovered a money laundering operation. We’re talking serious money. People in high places. My fellow senior officers thought that my investigation and I represented a big risk. That I didn’t have enough evidence, that we would be hung out to dry if we pursued the inquiry but failed to secure a conviction. We’re not talking your usual common criminal, the suspects were powerful people, people who’ll fight back using the very same system the police use. My colleagues were afraid that, even if we won, we would pay for it later, there would be a backlash.’

Another silence. Which lasted till they reached Frogner Park where Kari finally lost patience.

‘So they kicked you out just because you’d launched a controversial inquiry?’

Simon shook his head. ‘I had a problem. Gambling. Or, to use the technical expression, ludomania. I bought and sold shares. Not many. But when you work for the Serious Fraud Office. .’

‘. . then you have access to inside information.’

‘I never traded in shares I had information about, but I still broke the rules. And they worked that for all it was worth.’

Kari nodded. They weaved their way towards the city centre and the Ibsen Tunnel. ‘And then?’

‘I no longer gamble. Nor do I bother anyone.’ Again this sad, resigned smile.

Kari thought about her plans for this evening. Go to the gym. Dinner with her in-laws. A viewing in Fagerborg. And heard herself ask the question which must have come from another, almost subconscious part of her brain: ‘Why did the killer take the shell with him?’

‘Every shell has a serial number, but it rarely leads us to the killer,’ Simon said. ‘He might have been scared that the shell would have his prints on it, but I think that this killer would have already thought of that, that he would have worn gloves when he loaded the gun. I think we can conclude that his gun is relatively recent, produced in the last few years.’

‘Oh?’

‘For ten years now it has been mandatory for handgun manufacturers to engrave a serial number on the weapon’s firing pin so that it leaves a kind of unique fingerprint when it hits the cap on the shell. It means all we need to identify the owner is an empty shell and the Firearms Register.’

Kari struck out her lower lip and nodded slowly. ‘OK, I get that. What I don’t get is why he wanted it to look like a robbery.’

‘Just like he’s scared of the evidence on the shell, he’s scared that if we know the real motive, it would lead us to him.’

‘Well, then it’s straightforward,’ Kari said, but she was really thinking about the Fagerborg property ad. It had stated that the flat had two balconies, one east-facing, one west-facing.

‘Oh?’ Simon said.