Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Damn!’

He knocked the coffee pot out of her hands and it landed on the floor with a bang while he shouted: ‘Bloody hell, woman, you’ve just poured boiling coffee all over me! Are you. . are you. .’ One part of his brain knew what was coming and was trying to block the word, but it was like slamming the back door of Nestor’s car: he didn’t want to be there, he refused, he wanted to destroy, he would rather plunge the knife into himself. And into her.

‘. . blind?!’

The kitchen fell silent; all he could hear was the coffee-pot lid rolling across the linoleum floor and the bubbling of coffee seeping out of the pot. No! He hadn’t mean it. He hadn’t.

‘I’m sorry. Else, I’m. .’

He got up to embrace her, but she was already on her way to the sink. She turned on the cold tap and held a tea towel under it. ‘Pull down your trousers, Simon, let me. .’

He put his arms around her from behind. He pressed his forehead against her neck. He whispered: ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. Please, forgive me? I. . I just don’t know what to do. I should be able to help you, but I. . I can’t, I don’t know, I. .’

He couldn’t hear her crying yet, only feel that her body was trembling and how it spread to his. His throat thickened, he suppressed his own sobs and didn’t know if he had managed it, only that they were both shaking.

‘I’m the one who should say sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘You could be with someone better, someone who doesn’t. . scald you.’

‘But there is no one better,’ he whispered. ‘All right? So you just go ahead and pour boiling coffee all over me, I won’t ever let go. OK?’

And he knew that she knew that it was true. That he would do anything, suffer anything, sacrifice everything.

. . it would reach ears such as mine. .

But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it.

He heard the neighbours’ distant, ecstatic howls of laughter in the darkness while her tears flowed.

Kalle looked at the time. Twenty to eleven. It had been a good day; they had shifted more Superboy than they normally did over a whole weekend, so the cashing up and the preparation of new wraps had taken longer than usual. He took off the gauze mask they wore when they cut and mixed the drugs on the worktop in the plain, twenty-metre-square room which served as office, drug factory and bank. Obviously, the drug was cut before it reached him, but even so Superboy was still the purest drug he had come across in his career as a dealer. So pure that if they didn’t don gauze masks, they would not only be high, but also dead from inhaling the particles which whirled up in the air when they cut and handled the pale brown powder. He put the masks in the safe in front of the piles of banknotes and bags of drugs. Should he called Vera and tell her he would be late? Or was it time he put his foot down, told her who was boss, who brought home the dough and who should be able to come and go without accounting for his movements all the bloody time?

Kalle told Pelvis to check the corridor. From the iron door to their office the lift was just a few metres away on the right. At the far end of the corridor was a door leading to a stairwell, but that door they had — against fire regulations — sealed with a chain so that it was permanently locked.

‘Cassius, check the car park,’ Kalle called out in English while he locked up the safe. It was a quiet office with no noise other than anything that travelled from the rehearsal rooms, but he liked shouting. Cassius was the biggest and fattest African in Oslo. His shapeless body was so huge it was impossible to know what was what, but if just ten per cent of him was muscle, it would be enough to stop most people.

‘No cars, no people in the car park,’ Cassius said as he peered out between the iron bars in the window.

‘Corridor all clear,’ said Pelvis, who was looking out of the hatch in the door.

Kalle turned the combination wheel. He savoured the smooth, oiled resistance, the soft clicking. He kept the combination in his head and only there, it wasn’t written down anywhere, and there was no logic to it, no combination of birthdays or similar.

‘Let’s go,’ he said and straightened up. ‘Have your guns ready, both of you.’

They gave him a puzzled look.

Kalle hadn’t said anything to them, but there had been something about the eyes he had seen staring through the hatch earlier. He knew that they had seen Kalle sitting at the table. OK, so it was just some guy from a crappy band looking for management, but there had been enough money and drugs on the table for any idiot who wanted to have a go. Hopefully, the guy had also noticed the two guns on the table which belonged to Cassius and Pelvis.

Kalle went over to the door. It could be locked from the inside, and only his key unlocked it. It meant that Kalle could lock in anyone who worked here if he himself had to go out. The bars in front of the window were solid. In short, no one who worked for Kalle could run off with the money or the drugs. Or let in uninvited guests.

Kalle looked through the hatch. Not because he’d forgotten that Pelvis had just announced that the coast was clear, but because he automatically assumed that Pelvis would betray his boss by opening the door if someone was prepared to make it worth his while. Damn, Kalle would have done the same himself. He had done the same himself.

He couldn’t see anyone through the hatch. He checked the mirror which he had mounted on the wall to make sure that no one could hide by pressing themselves against the door below the hatch. The dimly lit corridor was empty. He turned the key and held the door open for the other two. Pelvis walked out first, then Cassius and finally Kalle. He turned round to lock the door.

‘What the. .!’ It was Pelvis.

Kalle turned back, and it wasn’t until now that he could see what he had been unable to from the hatch due to the angle: that the lift doors were open. But he still couldn’t see what was inside the lift as the light inside it was off. All he could see in the dim corridor light was something metallic on one side of the lift door. Duct tape covering the sensors. And broken glass on the floor.

‘Watch out. .’

But Pelvis had already taken the three steps to the open lift.

Kalle’s brain registered the flame from the muzzle in the darkness of the lift before it received the signal about the bang.

Pelvis whirled around as if someone had slapped him. He stared at Kalle with a stunned expression. It looked as if he had been given a third eye in his cheekbone. Then his life left him and his body fell to the ground like a coat shrugged off by its owner.

‘Cassius! Shoot for fuck’s sake!’

In his panic, Kalle forgot that Cassius didn’t speak Norwegian, but it clearly wasn’t an issue, he had already aimed his pistol at the darkness inside the lift and fired. Kalle felt something strike his chest. He had never been at the wrong end of a pistol before, but now he knew why the people he had aimed his gun at had frozen in such a comical manner, as if they were filled with cement. The pain in his chest spread, he couldn’t breathe, but he had to get away, there was air behind the bulletproof door, safety, a door he could lock. But his hand refused to obey, it couldn’t get the key into the lock, it was like a dream, like moving underwater. Fortunately he was shielded by Cassius’s vast body that kept shooting and shooting. Finally the key went in and Kalle turned it, flung the door open and hurled himself inside. The next bang had different acoustics and he reckoned that it must be coming from inside the lift. He spun round to slam the door shut, but it was pressing against Cassius, half of whose shoulder and an arm as thick as a thigh were trapped inside. Damn! He tried to push it away, but more of Cassius was trying to get into the office.