Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘More than a woman on disability benefit and a man on a police salary can afford.’

‘Else, listen. We’ve no children. We own the house, we don’t spend money on anything else. We’re frugal-’

‘Stop it, Simon. You know very well we haven’t got any money. And the house is mortgaged to the hilt.’

Simon swallowed. She hadn’t called it by its true name — his gambling debt. As always she had been too tactful to remind him that they were still paying off his past sins. He squeezed her hands.

‘I’ll think of something. I have friends who will lend us the money. Trust me. How much?’

‘You had friends, Simon. But you never speak to them these days. I keep telling you, you need to keep in touch or you’ll drift apart.’

Simon sighed. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have you.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not enough, Simon.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘I don’t want to be enough.’ She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’m tired, I’ll go and lie down.’

‘OK, but how much does it cost. .?’

She had already left.

Simon looked after her. Then he switched off the computer and took out his mobile. Scrolled down his contacts list. Old friends. Old enemies. Some of them useful, most of them not. He pressed the number of one of the latter. An enemy. But useful.

Fredrik Ansgar was surprised to hear from him as Simon knew he would be, but feigned delight and agreed to meet; he didn’t even pretend to be busy. When he had ended the call, Simon sat in the darkness, staring at his phone. Thought about his dream. His sight. He would give her his eyes. Then he realised what he was looking at on the mobile. It was the photo of the shoeprint in the rose bed.

‘Good grub,’ Johnny said, wiping his mouth. ‘Aren’t you gonna eat something?’

The boy smiled and shook his head.

Johnny looked around. The cafe was a room with an open kitchen, serving counters, a self-service section and tables which were all fully occupied. The cafe usually closed after lunch, but since the Meeting Place, Bymisjonen’s cafe for drug addicts in Skippergata, was being renovated, they had extended their opening hours which meant that not everyone here was a resident. But most people had been at sometime or other, so Johnny recognised every face.

He took another slurp of his coffee as he watched the scowling addicts. It was the usual, constant paranoia and prowling, heads whirring; the place was like a waterhole on the savannah where people took turns being prey and predator. Except for the boy. He had looked relaxed. Right until now. Johnny followed his gaze to the door at the back of the kitchen where Martha was emerging from the staffroom. She had put on her coat and was clearly on her way home. And Johnny saw the boy’s pupils dilate. Studying other people’s pupils was something an addict did almost automatically. Are they using? Are they high? Are they dangerous? In the same way he would watch what other people did with their hands. Hands that might steal from you or reach for a knife. Or, in threatening situations, instinctively cover and protect the place where someone kept their drugs or their money. And right now, the boy’s hands were in his pockets. The same pocket he had put the earrings. Johnny wasn’t stupid. Or, yes, he was, but not in every respect. Martha enters, boy’s pupils dilate. The earrings. The chair scraped against the floor as the boy got up with a feverish look that was fixed on her.

Johnny cleared his throat. ‘Stig. .’

But it was too late, he had already turned his back on Johnny and started walking towards her.

At the same moment the front door opened and in came a man who immediately stood out. Short black leather jacket, close-cropped dark hair. Broad shoulders and a determined expression. With an irritated movement he pushed aside a resident frozen in a crouching junkie position who was in his way. He gestured to Martha who waved back. And Johnny saw now that the boy had noticed. How he stopped as if he had lost his momentum, while Martha continued towards the door. He saw the man stick his hand in the pocket of his leather jacket and turn out his elbow, so that she could slip her hand under his arm. Which she did. It was the practised movement of two people who have been together for a while. Then they disappeared outside in the windy and suddenly chilly evening.

The boy stood in the middle of the floor, stunned, as if he needed time to digest the information. Johnny saw every head in the room turn to size the boy up. He knew what they were thinking.

Prey.

Johnny was woken by the sound of crying.

And, for a moment, he thought about the ghost. The baby. That it was here.

But then he realised that the sound was coming from the top bunk. He turned over on his side. The bed started shaking. The crying turned into sobbing.

Johnny got up and stood in front of the bunk bed. He put his hand on the shoulder of the boy who was trembling like a leaf. Johnny switched on the reading lamp on the wall above him. The first thing he saw were bared teeth biting into the pillow.

‘Does it hurt?’ Johnny said it as a statement rather than a question.

A deathly pale, sweaty face with sunken eyes stared back at him.

‘Heroin?’ Johnny asked.

The face nodded.

‘D’you want me to see if I can get you some?’

A shaking of the head.

‘You know you’re in the wrong place if you’re trying to quit, don’t you?’ Johnny said.

Nodding.

‘So what can I do for you?’

The boy moistened his lips with a white tongue. He whispered something.

‘Eh?’ Johnny said, leaning in. He could smell the boy’s heavy, rotten breath. He could barely decipher the words. He straightened up and nodded.

‘As you wish.’

Johnny went back to bed where he stared up at the underside of the mattress above him. It was covered with plastic to protect it against the residents’ bodily fluids. He listened to the constant noise from the centre, the sound of the endlessly hunted, running footsteps in the corridor, swearing, thumping music, laughter, knocking on doors, desperate screams and agitated dealing taking place right outside their door. But none of it could drown out the quiet sobbing and the words the boy had whispered:

‘Stop me if I try to get out.’

‘So you’re with Homicide now,’ Fredrik said, smiling behind his sunglasses. The designer logo on the sidebar was so small that you needed Simon’s eagle eyes to see it, but someone with greater brand awareness than Simon to know just how exclusive it was. Still, Simon presumed that the sunglasses must be expensive, in line with Fredrik’s shirt, tie, manicure and haircut. But really, a light grey suit with brown shoes? Or maybe that passed for trendy these days.

‘Yes,’ Simon said and squinted. He had sat down with the wind and the sun to his back, but the sunbeams bounced off the glass surfaces of the newly constructed building across the canal. They were meeting at Simon’s request, but it was Fredrik who had suggested the Japanese restaurant on Tjuvholmen; Tjuvholmen meant ‘isle of thieves’ and Simon wondered if it was pertinent to all the investment companies which were located there, including Fredrik’s. ‘And you’re investing money for people who are so rich they no longer care what happens to it?’

Fredrik laughed. ‘Something like that.’

The waiter had placed a small plate in front of each of them with what looked like a tiny jellyfish. Simon suspected that it might actually be a tiny jellyfish. It was probably everyday fare on Tjuvholmen; sushi had become the pizza of the upper-middle class.

‘Do you ever miss the Serious Fraud Office?’ Simon said, sipping water from his glass. It purported to be glacial water from Voss that had been sent to the US and then imported back to Norway, stripped of essential minerals that the body needed and which you could get for free in clean and tasty Norwegian tap water. It cost sixty kroner per bottle. Simon had given up trying to understand market forces, their psychology, and the jostling for power. But Fredrik hadn’t. He understood. He played the game. Simon suspected he always had done. He had much in common with Kari; too well educated, too ambitious, and all too aware of his own value for the police to be able to keep him.