Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Go ahead,’ he said, extending his hand towards the briefcases.

Nestor sat down at the coffee table and opened the lid of first one, then the other. There was more than 400,000 kroner. There had to be.

And if the drugs in the other briefcase were as pure as the guy had suggested, there was more than enough to buy a small village of Asian girls.

‘Do you mind if I turn on the TV?’ Nestor asked, picking up the remote control.

‘Be my guest,’ the guy said; he was busy mixing drinks, something he didn’t look comfortable doing, although at least he was slicing lemon for the three gin and tonics.

Nestor pressed the pay-TV button, flicked past the children and family movies to the porn channel and turned up the sound. He went over to the bar.

‘She is sixteen years old and will be delivered to the car park at Ingierstrand Lido at midnight tomorrow. You’ll pull up in the middle of the car park and stay in your car. One of my men will come over to you, get in the back and count the money. Then he’ll leave with the money and someone else will bring the girl. Understood?’

The guy nodded.

What Nestor didn’t mention, because it didn’t need saying, was that the girl wouldn’t be in the same car as the car that came to pick up the money. The money would have left the meeting place before the car with the girl arrived. Same principle as in a drug deal.

‘And the money. .?’

‘Another 400,000,’ Nestor said.

‘Fine.’

Bo entered from the bedroom and stopped to look at the screen. He appeared to enjoy it. Most people seemed to. Nestor only found porn useful because it offered a predictable and steady soundtrack of moaning that frustrated any possible bugging of the room.

‘Ingierstrand Lido tomorrow at midnight,’ Nestor repeated.

‘Let’s drink to it,’ the guy said, holding out two glasses.

‘Thanks, but I’m driving,’ Bo said.

‘Of course,’ the guy laughed and slapped his head. ‘Coke?’

Bo shrugged and the guy opened a can of Coke, poured it into a glass and cut another slice of lemon.

They toasted and sat down at the table. Nestor signalled to Bo who picked up the first bundle of banknotes from the briefcase and started counting out loud. He had brought a bag with him from the car into which he put the money. They never accepted the customer’s bags, they might contain sensors that could trace where the money was taken. It wasn’t until Nestor heard Bo miscount that he realised something was wrong. Only he didn’t know what. He looked around. Had the walls changed colour? He looked down at his empty glass. Looked at Bo’s empty glass. And the lawyer guy’s glass.

‘Why isn’t there any lemon in yours?’ Nestor asked. His voice sounded very far away. And the reply came from the same distant place.

‘Citrus fruit intolerance.’

Bo had stopped counting; his head was slumped over the money.

‘You’ve drugged us,’ Nestor said and reached for the knife in his leg sheath. He had time to register that he was patting the wrong leg before he saw the base of the lamp coming towards him. Then everything went black.

Hugo Nestor had always loved music. And he didn’t mean the kind of noise or childish series of notes which common people called music, but music for adults, thinking people. Richard Wagner. Chromatic scale. Twelve half-tones with frequency ratios based on the 12th root of 2. Clean, pure mathematics, harmony, German order. But the sound he was hearing now was the opposite of music. It was discordant, nothing related to anything else, it was chaos. When he had regained consciousness, he had realised he was in a car, in some sort of large bag. He had felt nauseous and dizzy; his hands and feet were tied together with something sharp that cut into his skin — plastic ties probably, he sometimes used them on the girls.

When the car had stopped, he had been lifted out and realised he must be inside a soft case with wheels. Half lying down, half standing upright, he had been pushed and dragged across a rugged terrain. He had heard whoever was pulling the suitcase pant and wheeze. Nestor had called out to him, made financial offers in return for his release, but had got no response.

The next sound he had heard was this unmusical, atonal hullabaloo which only rose in strength. And which he recognised the moment the suitcase was put down and he lay on his back, feeling the ground underneath him and knowing — because he had now worked out where he was — that the cold water seeping through the suitcase and then through his suit was marsh water. Dogs. The short, choppy barking of Argentine mastiffs.

What he didn’t know was what it was all about. Who the guy was and why this was happening to him. Was it a turf war? Was the guy who had abducted him the same guy who had killed Kalle? But why go about it this way?

The suitcase was unzipped and Nestor squinted, blinded by the light from the torch pointing straight at his face.

A hand grabbed his neck and pulled him to his feet.

Nestor opened his eyes and saw a pistol gleam dully in the light. The dogs’ barking had suddenly stopped.

‘Who was the mole?’ said the voice behind the torch.

‘What?’

‘Who was the mole? The police thought it was Ab Lofthus.’

Hugo Nestor narrowed his eyes against the light. ‘I don’t know. You might as well shoot me, I don’t know.’

‘Who does know?’

‘No one. None of us. Perhaps someone in the police.’

The torch was lowered and Nestor saw that it was the lawyer guy. He had taken off his glasses.

‘You need to be punished,’ he said. ‘Would you like to ease your conscience first?’

What was he talking about? He sounded like a priest. Was this about that chaplain they had killed? But he was only a corrupt paedophile — surely no one would want to avenge him?

‘I’ve no regrets,’ Nestor said. ‘Just get it over with.’

He felt strangely calm. Perhaps it was a side effect of the drug. Or that he had thought it through enough times already, accepted that his life would probably end like this, with a bullet to the brain.

‘Not even for that girl you allowed to get mauled before you cut her throat? With this knife. .?’

Nestor blinked as the torchlight bounced off the curved blade. His own Arabic knife.

‘Don’t. .’

‘Where do you keep the girls, Nestor?’

The girls? Was that what he wanted, to take over the trafficking? Nestor tried to concentrate. But it was difficult, his brain was foggy.

‘Do you promise not to shoot me if I tell you?’ he asked, even though he realised that a yes would have about as much credibility as the German mark did in 1923.

‘Yes,’ the guy said.

So why did Nestor still believe him? Why did he believe the promise that he wouldn’t be shot from a guy who had done nothing but lie from the moment he appeared at Vermont? It had to be his crazy brain clinging to this last straw. Because there was nothing else, nothing but this foolish hope in a dog kennel in a forest at night: that the guy who had abducted him was telling the truth.

‘Enerhauggata 96.’

‘Thank you so much,’ the guy said and stuck the pistol into the waistband of his trousers.

Thank you so much ?

The guy had taken out his mobile and was entering some information from a yellow Post-it note, a phone number, probably. The display lit up his face and it occurred to Nestor that he might be a priest after all. A priest who didn’t lie. A contradiction in terms, obviously, but he was convinced that such priests existed, who weren’t aware that they were lying. He carried on pressing keys. A text message. He sent it with a final push of the buttons. Then he slipped the mobile into his pocket and looked at Nestor.