Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Am I supposed to know who that is?’

‘Before your time, Sylvester. Ab Lofthus was the toughest cop in town, by a mile.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Because I met the guy, you moron. Back in the nineties me and Nestor were in the middle of a deal at Alnabru when Lofthus and another cop just happened to drive by. Lofthus knew straight away that they had stumbled on a drugs deal, but rather than call for backup, him and his partner tried to nick us. Ab Lofthus single-handedly beat up four of our guys before we managed to floor him. Which was no easy matter, let me tell you — the guy was a wrestler. We were gonna shoot him right there and then, but Nestor chickened out, was scared that spilling cop blood would be bad for business. And while we were arguing about it, the guy was lying there screaming “Bring it on!” like that deluded knight in Monty Python — do you remember? They chop off his arms and legs, and still he won’t accept that he’s beaten.’

Bo laughed. Like you laugh at a treasured memory, Sylvester thought. The man was sick, he loved death and mutilation and would lie on his couch watching entire seasons of Ridiculousness on the Web because it consisted of footage of people properly hurting themselves, not just the funny home videos of people tripping over or spraining fingers, something the whole family could laugh at.

‘I thought you said there were two of them,’ Sylvester argued.

Bo snorted. ‘His partner backed off immediately. Very happy to cooperate, fell on his knees and begged for mercy, you know the type.’

‘Yep,’ Sylvester said. ‘A loser.’

‘Nope,’ Bo said. ‘A winner. It’s called emotional intelligence. And that guy’s strategy took him further along than you would think. But enough of that. Let’s check the house again.’

Sylvester shrugged and was almost out of the door when he realised that Bo hadn’t followed him. He turned round and looked at his partner who was still standing in the same place, staring at the spot where Sylvester had just been sitting. At the lid of the blanket box. Bo raised a finger to his lips and pointed at the box. Sylvester took out his gun and flicked the safety catch aside. He felt his senses heighten; the light grew stronger, sounds intensified and his pulse throbbed in his neck. Without making any noise Bo shifted to the left of the blanket box so that Sylvester also had a clear line of fire. Sylvester closed both hands around the gun handle and moved closer. Bo signalled that he would open the lid. Sylvester nodded.

He held his breath as Bo — with his pistol aimed at the blanket box — placed the fingertips of his left hand under the edge of the lid. Waited a second, listened. And flipped open the lid.

Sylvester felt the resistance from the trigger against his forefinger.

‘Damn!’ Bo hissed.

Apart from the bed linen, the blanket box was empty.

Together Bo and Sylvester searched the other rooms, turning the lights on and off, but found nothing. Eventually they went back to the bedroom where everything was as they had left it.

‘You were wrong,’ Sylvester said, articulating the words slowly and clearly because he knew exactly how much they would anger Bo. ‘He’s gone.’

Bo rolled his shoulders as if his suit didn’t fit him properly. ‘If the boy has gone, but left the light on, it could mean that he’s planning on coming back. And if we’re ready and waiting when he does, it makes our job easier than if we have to force our way in.’

‘Maybe,’ Sylvester said. He could see where this was heading.

‘Nestor wants us to get him asap. He can do a lot of damage, you know.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Sylvester scowled.

‘So you stay here tonight in case he comes back.’

‘Why do I always get the crappy jobs?’

‘The answer starts with an S.’

Seniority. Sylvester heaved a sigh. He wished that someone would shoot Bo so that he would get a new partner. One with less seniority.

‘I suggest you wait in the living room where you’ll have a view of the front door and the basement door,’ Bo said. ‘We can’t be sure this guy is as easy to end as that chaplain.’

‘I heard you the first time,’ Sylvester said.

Markus saw the two men leave the well-lit bedroom and shortly afterwards the small blond man left the house, got in the SUV and drove away. The Son was still in there somewhere, but where? Perhaps he had heard the car start and drive off, but did he know that one of the men was still in the house?

Markus aimed his binoculars at the dark windows, but he couldn’t see anything. The Son could have sneaked out of the back of the house and got away, but Markus didn’t think so; he had sat by the window listening out, he would have heard something.

Markus sensed movement and aimed the binoculars at the bedroom which was still the only room in the house with the light on. And saw that he was right.

The bed. It was moving. Or rather, the mattress was. It was pushed up and to the side. And there he was. He had hidden between the bed slats and the big, thick double mattress which Markus loved lying on. Just as well that the Son was so skinny; had he been as fat as Markus’s mother feared that Markus would be one day, they would have seen him. Carefully the Son made his way to the loose floorboard, lifted it up and took something from the red sports bag. Markus zoomed in. He focused. And gasped.

Sylvester had positioned the armchair so that he could see the front door and the gate outside. The gate was lit up by a street light, but he would hear in plenty of time if anyone came; he knew that from the crunching of the gravel when Bo left.

It might turn out to be a long night so he needed to think of something that would help him stay awake. He checked the bookcase and found what he was looking for: the family photo album. He switched on a reading lamp and angled it away from the window so that the light couldn’t be seen from the outside. He started flicking through the photographs. They looked like a happy family. So very different from his own. Perhaps this explained his obsession with other people’s pictures. He liked looking at them and trying to imagine what it must be like. He knew that these family photos didn’t tell the whole truth, obviously, but surely they told a truth. Sylvester paused at a picture of three people, possibly taken during the Easter holidays. Smiling and tanned, they were standing in front of a cairn. The woman was in the middle; Sylvester presumed from the other pictures that she was the mother. To her left the father, this Ab Lofthus. And to his right, a man with frameless glasses. ‘The Troika and me on a trip. Photographer: The Diver’ read the caption in feminine handwriting below. Sylvester looked up. Had he heard something? He looked towards the gate outside. No one there. And the sound hadn’t come from the front door or the door to the basement. But something had changed, the density of the air, there was something substantial in the darkness. The darkness. He would always be a little scared of the dark, his dad had made sure of that. Sylvester concentrated on the photograph again. On how happy they looked. Everyone knew you shouldn’t be scared of things that go bump in the night.

The noise sounded as if it had come from his dad’s belt.

Sylvester stared at the picture.

It was now spattered with blood and had a hole which went straight through the album. Something white floated down and got caught in the blood. A feather? It had to come from the chair’s upholstery. Sylvester thought he must be in shock because he felt no pain. Not yet. He looked at his gun which had slipped down on the floor and out of his reach. He waited for the next gunshot, but it didn’t come. Perhaps the guy thought that he had killed him. In which case he had a chance as long as he played dead.