Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘The husband,’ Kari said. ‘Every husband knows that he’ll be the prime suspect unless he can make it look as if his wife was killed for another reason. A burglary, for instance.’

‘Another reason apart from?’

‘Apart from jealousy. Love. Hate. Is there anything else?’

‘No,’ Simon said. ‘There isn’t.’

Early that afternoon a shower of rain washed over Oslo without noticeably cooling down the city. And when the sun scorched its way through the layer of clouds, it was as if it wanted to make up for lost time by baking the capital in a white light which caused steam to rise from the roofs and streets.

Louis woke up when the sun was so low in the sky that the beams hit his eyes. He peered at the world. At the people and the cars going to and fro in front of him and his begging bowl. It had been a reasonably lucrative business until some years ago when Romanian gypsies started coming to Norway. A few had turned into many. Which in turn had become a swarm. A stealing, begging and swindling swarm of locusts. And like all vermin they must be fought with every possible means. It was Louis’s simple opinion on the matter, that Norwegian beggars — just like Norwegian shipping companies — were entitled to government protection against foreign competition. As things were now, he was having to rely on stealing; something which was not only exhausting, but frankly beneath his dignity.

He heaved a sigh and prodded his begging bowl with a filthy finger. Heard there was something in the bowl. Not coins. Banknotes? In which case he had better pocket them before one of the gypsies nicked them. He looked down in the bowl. Blinked twice. Then he picked it up. It was a watch. A lady’s watch, it would seem. A Rolex. It was fake, obviously. But heavy. Very heavy. Did people really enjoy wearing such heavy objects around their wrists? He had heard that watches like that were water-resistant to a depth of fifty metres, something which was sure to come in handy if you went swimming while wearing a watch like this. Could it be. .? There were some weirdos around, no doubt about it. Louis looked up and down the street. He knew the watchmaker on the corner of Stortingsgata; they had been at school together. Perhaps he should. .

Louis staggered to his feet.

Kine was standing next to her shopping trolley, smoking a cigarette. But when the green man lit up and the other pedestrians around her started walking, she stayed put. She had changed her mind. She wasn’t going to cross the street today. She stayed where she was, finishing her cigarette. She had nicked the trolley from IKEA a long, long time ago. Simply rolled it out of the store and into the van in the car park. Driven that and a Hemnes bed, a Hemnes table and some Billy bookcases to a place she thought was their future. Her future. He had fixed the furniture before preparing a fix for both of them. He was dead now, she wasn’t. And she was no longer a junkie. She was all right. But it was a long time since she last slept in the Hemnes bed. She trod on the cigarette and grabbed the handle of the IKEA trolley. She noticed that someone — probably one of the other pedestrians — had left a plastic bag on top of the filthy woollen blanket in her trolley. Irritated, she snatched the bag; it wasn’t the first time people had mistaken the trolley with all her earthly possessions for a common bin. She turned round; she could tell the location of every rubbish bin in Oslo with her eyes shut and knew there was one right behind her. But then she stopped. The weight of the plastic bag stirred her curiosity. She opened it. Plunged her hand in and brought its contents up into the afternoon sunshine. It glittered and sparkled. Jewellery. Necklaces and a ring. The pendants were diamonds and the ring was solid gold. Real gold, real diamonds. Kine was almost certain; she had seen gold and diamonds before. After all, the furniture in her childhood home hadn’t been self-assembly.

Johnny Puma widened his eyes, felt the terror creep up on him and turned over in the bed. He hadn’t heard anyone come in, but now he could hear heavy breathing and moaning. Was Coco in the room? No, this panting sounded more like someone screwing than someone collecting a debt. A couple had been allowed to stay at the centre once; the management must have thought that the two of them needed each other so much that they had made an exception to the men-only rule. It was certainly true that the man had needed the woman — she had financed their heroin addiction by screwing her way from room to room until the management said enough was enough and threw her out.

It was the new arrival. He was lying on the floor, facing away from Johnny, and Johnny could faintly hear a synthetic, rhythmic track and a robotic, monotonous voice coming from the earphones he was wearing. The boy was doing push-ups. In his heyday Johnny could have done a hundred, using just the one arm. The boy was strong, no doubt about it, but he was struggling with stamina, his back was sagging already. In the light that seeped in between the curtains and hit the wall, he saw a photo which the boy must have pinned up. A man in a police uniform. And he saw something else, on the windowsill. A pair of earrings. They looked expensive; he wondered where the boy had stolen them.

If they were as expensive as they looked, they might just solve Johnny’s problem. Rumour had it Coco was moving out of the hostel tomorrow and that his runners were busy collecting any debts he was owed. It left Johnny with only a few hours to scrape some money together. He had considered burgling one of the apartments in Bislett as many people were away on holiday. Ring the doorbell and see where there was no answer. He just had to summon up the energy first. But this was simpler and safer.

He wondered if he could sneak out of bed and snap up the earrings without getting noticed, but dropped the idea. Stamina or no stamina, he risked a beating. The very idea was laughable. But he could always try to distract the newcomer, make up an excuse to get him out of the room and then strike. Suddenly Johnny found himself looking into the boy’s eyes. He had turned round and was doing sit-ups. He smiled.

Johnny gestured that he wanted to say something and the boy pulled the earphones out. Johnny heard the lyrics ‘. . now I’m clean ’ before he started to talk.

‘Would you help me down to the cafe, mate? You’ll need something to eat yourself after that workout. If the body can’t burn fat or carbohydrates, it’ll start eating muscle, you know. And all your hard work will have been for nothing.’

‘Thanks for the tip, Johnny. I just need to shower first, but you get yourself ready.’ The boy stood up. Slipped the earrings into his pocket and headed out of the door in the direction of the communal showers.

Damn! Johnny closed his eyes. Did he have the energy? Yes, he had to. Only two minutes. He counted the seconds. Then he sat up on the edge of the bed. Pushed off. Stood up. Grabbed his trousers from the chair. He was putting them on when there was a knock on the door. The boy must have forgotten his keys. Johnny limped over to the door and opened it. ‘How many times do I have to-’

A clenched fist wearing knuckledusters landed right in Johnny Puma’s forehead and he fell backwards.

The door opened fully and Coco and two of his boys entered. The boys grabbed his arms and Coco headbutted Johnny so the back of his head slammed into the top bunk. When he looked up again, he was staring right into Coco’s ugly, heavily mascaraed eyes and the gleaming point of a stiletto.

‘I’m busy man, Johnny,’ Coco said in broken Norwegian. ‘The others have money, but still they don’t pay. You have no money, I know that, so you will be example.’