Jo Nesbo - The Son

But he was sweating now. Even though he was the bearer of good news, he was sweating.

The man in the chair hadn’t raged. Hadn’t fumed about the money and drugs that had been stolen from Kalle Farrisen’s office. Not screamed how was it possible that Sylvester had gone missing. Or roared why the hell hadn’t they found that Lofthus boy yet. Despite everyone knowing what was at stake. There were four scenarios and three of them were bad. Bad scenario number one: Sonny killed Agnete Iversen, Kalle and Sylvester and he would continue to kill anyone they work with. Bad scenario number two: Sonny is arrested, confesses and reveals the names of the real killers in the murders he has served time for. Bad scenario number three: in the absence of the boy’s confession, Yngve Morsand is arrested for his wife’s murder, can’t handle the pressure and tells the police what really happened.

When Morsand had first come to them and said that he wanted his unfaithful wife killed, Nestor had taken it to mean that he wanted to hire a hit man. But Morsand insisted on the pleasure of killing his wife himself, he just wanted them to arrange for someone else to take the fall since he, as the cuckolded husband, would automatically be the police’s prime suspect. And at the right price everything is for sale. In this case, three million kroner. A reasonable hourly rate for a life sentence, Nestor had argued, and Morsand had agreed. Afterwards when Morsand had explained how he wanted to tie up the unfaithful bitch, put the saw to her forehead and look her in the eyes while he cut off her head, Nestor had felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in a mixture of horror and excitement. They had arranged everything with Arild Franck: the boy’s day release, his geographical location, and sent him off with one of Franck’s trusted, corrupt and well-paid prison officers, a hermit of a chubby chaser from Kaupang who spent his money on cocaine, paying off his debts and on hookers so fat and ugly, you would have thought the money would change hands in the opposite direction.

The fourth and only good scenario was very simple: find the boy and kill him. It should be straightforward. It should have been done long ago.

And yet the man spoke calmly in his deep, murmuring voice. And it was the voice that made Nestor sweat. From the tall white chair the voice had asked Nestor for an explanation. That was all. An explanation. Nestor cleared his throat, hoping that his voice wouldn’t betray his terror, which was always present when he was in the same room as his boss.

‘We went back to the house to look for Sylvester. All we found was an empty armchair with a bullet hole to the back. We’ve checked with our contact in Telenor’s operations centre, but none of their base stations has picked up a signal from Sylvester’s mobile since late last night. This means that either Lofthus destroyed his phone or his phone is somewhere with no coverage. In any case, I think there’s a real risk that Sylvester is no longer alive.’

The chair at the head of the table turned slowly and the man came into view. The bulging body, muscles that strained all the seams of his suit, the high forehead, the old-fashioned moustache, the dense eyebrows over a deceptively sleepy gaze.

Hugo Nestor tried to meet that gaze. Nestor had killed women, men and children, he had looked them in the eye while he did it, without even blinking. Quite the opposite, he had studied them to see if he could see it — mortal fear, the certain knowledge of what was about to happen, any insight the dying might gain at the threshold to the hereafter. Like that Belarus girl whose throat he had cut when the others were unwilling. He had stared into her pleading eyes. It was as if he got off on a mixture of his own feelings, his rage at the others’ and the woman’s capitulation and weakness. Got off on the excitement of holding a life in his hands and deciding whether — and indeed when — he would carry out the act that would end it. He could extend her life by a second, and then another second. And another one. Or not. It was entirely up to him. And it struck him that this was the closest he would ever come to the sexual ecstasy which people spoke about, a union which for him was only associated with mild discomfort and an embarrassing attempt at coming across as a so-called normal person. He had read somewhere that one individual in every hundred was asexual. It made him an exception. But it didn’t make him abnormal. On the contrary, he could concentrate on what really mattered, build his life, his reputation, enjoy the respect and fear of others without any distractions and the loss of energy that came from the sexual addiction other people were slaves to. Surely that was rational and — consequently — normal? He was a normal person who wasn’t frightened of, but, rather, curious about death. And, in addition, he had good news for his boss. But Nestor managed to hold his boss’s gaze for only five seconds before he had to look away. Because what he saw in it was colder and emptier than death and annihilation. It was perdition. The promise that you had a soul and that it would be taken from you.

‘But we’ve got a tip-off about where the boy might be,’ Nestor said.

The big man raised one of his distinctive eyebrows. ‘Who from?’

‘Coco. A drug dealer who lived at the Ila Centre until recently.’

‘The psycho with the stiletto, yes?’

Nestor had never be able to establish exactly how his boss got his information. He was never seen in the streets. Nestor had never met anyone who claimed to have spoken to him, let alone seen him. And yet he knew everything and that was the way it had always been. In the day of the mole that was not surprising, then his boss would have had access to practically everything the police did. But after they had killed Ab Lofthus when he was about to expose him, the mole’s activities appeared to have ceased. This was almost fifteen years ago now, and Nestor had accepted that he would probably never know the identity of the mole.

‘He talked about a young guy at Ila who had so much money that he paid his room-mate’s debt,’ Nestor said in a carefully rehearsed tone of voice and with what he thought was an East Slavic ‘r’. ‘Twelve thousand kroner in cash.’

‘No one at Ila ever pays off another junkie’s debts,’ said the Wolf, an older man who was responsible for the trafficking of girls.

‘Quite,’ Nestor said. ‘But this young guy did — even though his room-mate accused him of stealing some earrings. So I thought-’

‘You’re thinking about the money in Kalle’s safe?’ the big man said. ‘And the jewellery that was stolen at Iversen’s, yes?’

‘Yes. So I went to see Coco and showed him a picture of the guy. And he confirmed it was him, Sonny Lofthus. I even know his room number. 323. The question is now how we. .’ Nestor pressed his fingertips together and smacked his lips as if he could taste the synonyms for ‘kill him’.

‘We won’t be able to get in,’ the Wolf said. ‘Or at least not without getting noticed. The gate is locked, there are receptionists and CCTV everywhere.’

‘We could use one of the residents for the job,’ said Voss, formerly head of a security company who had been sacked after being involved in the importation and dealing of anabolic steroids.

‘We’re not going to leave this to a junkie,’ the Wolf said. ‘Not only has Lofthus eluded our own — presumably competent — people, he would also appear to have killed one of them.’

‘So what do we do?’ Nestor said. ‘Lie in wait for him outside the centre? Install a sniper in the building opposite? Set fire to the centre and jam the fire exits?’

‘This isn’t the time for jokes, Hugo,’ Voss said.

‘You ought to know that I never joke.’ Nestor felt his face getting hot. Hot, but not sweaty. ‘If we don’t get him before the police-’