Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Not at all. He’s only in Oslo today and tomorrow, as far as I understand.’

‘Who is?’ Mats asked as he pulled and tugged at his uncle’s arm to get him to move from his chair.

‘An American doctor who is brilliant at eye operations,’ Simon said, pretending to be even stiffer than he really was as he allowed himself be pulled to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s go and see if we can find that police cap. Help yourself to some coffee, Edith.’

Simon and Mats went out into the hallway and the boy squealed with delight when he saw the black-and-white police cap which his uncle took down from the wardrobe shelf. But he grew silent and reverent when Simon placed the cap on his head. They stood in front of the mirror. The boy pointed to the reflection of his uncle and made shooting noises.

‘Who are you shooting at?’ his uncle asked him.

‘Villains,’ the boy spluttered. ‘Bang! Bang!’

‘Let’s call it target practice,’ Simon said. ‘Even the police can’t shoot villains without permission.’

‘Yes, you can! Bang! Bang!’

‘If we do that, Mats, we go to jail.’

‘We do?’ The boy stopped and gave his uncle a baffled look. ‘Why? We’re the police.’

‘Because if we shoot someone we could otherwise have arrested that makes us the bad guys.’

‘But. . when we’ve caught them, then we can shoot them, can’t we?’

Simon laughed. ‘No. Then it’s up to the judge to decide how long they’ll go to prison.’

‘I thought you decided that, Uncle Simon.’

Simon could see the disappointment in the boy’s eyes. ‘Let me tell you something, Mats. I’m glad I don’t have to decide that. I’m glad that all I have to do is catch criminals. Because that’s the fun part of the job.’

Mats narrowed one eye and the cap tipped backwards. ‘Uncle Simon. .’

‘Yes?’

‘Why don’t you and Auntie Else have any kids?’

Simon stepped behind Mats, placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders and smiled at him in the mirror.

‘We don’t need kids, we’ve got you. Haven’t we?’

Mats looked pensively at his uncle for a couple of seconds. Then his face lit up. ‘Yeah!’

Simon stuck his hand in his pocket to answer his mobile which had started to buzz.

It was a colleague. Simon listened.

‘Where by Aker River?’ he asked.

‘Past Kuba, by the art college. There’s a pedestrian bridge-’

‘I know where it is. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.’

He put on his shoes, tied the laces and pulled on his jacket.

‘Else!’ he called out.

‘Yes?’ Her face appeared at the top of the stairs. It struck him once again how beautiful she was. Her long hair flowing like a red river around her petite face. The freckles on and around her small nose. And it occurred to him that those freckles would almost certainly still be there when he was gone. His next thought, which he tried to suppress, followed swiftly: who would take care of her then? He knew that she was unlikely to be able to see him from where she was standing, she was only pretending. He cleared his throat.

‘I’ve got to go, sweetheart. Will you give me a call and tell me what the doctor said?’

‘Yes. Drive carefully.’

Two middle-aged men walked through the park popularly known as Kuba. Most people thought the name had something to do with Cuba, possibly because political rallies were often held here and because Grunerlokka was once regarded as a working-class neighbourhood. You had to have lived there for many years to know that there used to be a large gas holder here and that it had had a framework shaped like a cube. The men crossed the pedestrian bridge which led to the old factory that was now an art college. Lovers had attached padlocks with dates and initials to the bars of the railings of the bridge. Simon stopped and looked at one of them. He had loved Else for ten years, every single day of the over three and a half thousand they had been together. There would never be another woman in his life and he didn’t need a symbolic padlock to know that. And neither did she; hopefully she would outlive him for so many years that there would be time for new men in her life. And that was all good.

From where they were standing he could see Amodt Bro, a modest little bridge that crossed a modest little river which divided this modest little capital into east and west. Once upon a time, a long time ago, when he was young and foolish, he had dived from this very bridge into the river. A drunken troika of three lads, two of them with an unshakeable faith in themselves and their prospects. Two of them convinced that they alone were the best of the three. The third one, Simon, had realised long ago that he couldn’t compete with his friends when it came to intelligence, strength, social skills or appeal to women. But he was the bravest. Or, to put it another way, the most willing to take risks. And diving into polluted water didn’t require intellect or physical skill, only recklessness. Simon Kefas had often thought that it was pessimism that had prompted him to gamble with a future he didn’t value very much, an innate knowledge that he had less to lose than other people. He had balanced on the railings while his friends had screamed for him not to do it, that he was mad. And then he had jumped. From the bridge, out of life, into the wonderful, spinning roulette wheel which is fate. He had plunged through the water which had no surface, only white foam and, under that, an icy embrace. And in that embrace there was silence, solicitude and peace. When he resurfaced, unharmed, they had cheered. Simon, too. Even though he had felt a vague disappointment at being back. It was amazing what a broken heart could drive a young man to do.

Simon shook off the memories and focused on the waterfall between the two bridges. More specifically on the figure that had been left there like a photograph, frozen in mid-fall.

‘We think he floated downstream,’ said the crime scene officer who was standing next to him. ‘And then his clothes got caught on something sticking out of the water. The river is usually so shallow there that you can wade across it.’

‘All right,’ Simon said, sucking the tobacco in his mouth and cocking his head. The figure hung straight down with its arms out to the sides and the cascading water formed a white halo around the head and body. It reminded him of Else’s hair. The other CSOs had finally got their boat into the water and were working on freeing the body.

‘A beer says it’s suicide.’

‘I think you’re wrong, Elias,’ Simon said and hooked a finger under his upper lip to extract the snus . He was about to drop it into the water below, but he stopped himself. Different times. He looked around for a bin.

‘So you won’t bet a beer?’

‘No, Elias, I won’t.’

‘Oh, sorry, I forgot. .’ The CSO looked embarrassed.

‘That’s all right,’ Simon said and left. He nodded in passing to a tall, blonde woman in a black skirt and a short jacket. If it hadn’t been for the police warrant card dangling around her neck he would have taken her to be a bank clerk. He chucked the snus into the green rubbish bin at the end of the bridge and walked down to the riverbank, scanning the ground with his eyes as he did.

‘Chief Inspector Kefas?’

Elias looked up. The woman who had addressed him was the archetypal Scandinavian female as imagined by foreigners. He suspected she thought she was too tall, which was why she stooped slightly and wore flat shoes.

‘No, that’s not me. Who are you?’

‘Kari Adel.’ She held up a warrant card around her neck. ‘I’ve just joined the Homicide Squad. They told me I would find him here.’

‘Welcome. What do you want with Simon?’