Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ Morgan replied automatically and looked over, but couldn’t place him. Even so, the guy continued walking alongside him as if they knew each other. Or as if he wanted to get to know him.

‘You don’t work in A Wing,’ the guy remarked. ‘Or are you new?’

‘B Wing,’ Morgan said. ‘Two months.’

‘Ah, right.’

The guy was younger than the other uniform fetishists. Mostly it was the older officers who travelled to and from work in their uniform, as if they were somehow proud of it. As did Franck, the assistant governor, himself. Morgan would have felt like an idiot if he had to sit on the bus and have people staring at him and perhaps asking questions about where he worked. At Staten. In a prison. No way.

He looked at the ID card on the young man’s uniform. Sorensen.

They passed the security booth side by side and Morgan nodded to the security guard inside.

When they approached the entrance, the guy took out his mobile and lagged slightly behind; perhaps he was sending a text.

The door had slammed shut behind the staff in front of them, so Morgan had to pull out his own key. He unlocked the door. ‘Thank you so much,’ said the Sorensen guy as he slipped in in front of him. Morgan followed, but turned off towards the lockers. He saw the guy join the rest of the staff as they poured into the lock towards the wings.

Betty kicked off her shoes and flopped down on her bed. What a night shift. She was exhausted and knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while, but she had to give it a try at least. And in order to do that, she first had to rid herself of the feeling that she should have reported the incident in Suite 4 to the police. After she and the security guard had searched the room to see if anything was damaged or missing, Betty had tidied up and was about to throw away the half lemon when she discovered a used, disposable syringe in the bin. Without any prompting her brain had put two and two together: the discoloured citrus flesh and the syringe. She had traced her fingers over the lemon peel and found several tiny holes. Squeezed a drop of lemon juice into her hand and saw that the juice was cloudy, as if it contained chalk. She touched the drop carefully with her tongue to taste it; besides the almost overpowering acidity, there was another bitter, medicinal note. She had to make a decision. Was there a law against guests having strangely tasting lemons in their possession? Or a disposable syringe? What if they happened to be diabetic or suffer from some other condition? Or play bizarre games with visitors in their room? So she had carried the contents of the bin down to reception and disposed of it. Written a brief entry in the log about the noise coming from Suite 4 and the man they found tied to the lavatory. A man who had himself dismissed the whole incident. What else could she do?

She turned on the wall-mounted TV while she undressed, went to the bathroom, took off her make-up and cleaned her teeth. She could hear the steady hum of voices from TV2’s news channel. She tended to leave it on at low volume because it helped her fall asleep. Possibly because the news anchor’s reassuring voice reminded her of her father’s, a voice which could report on the downfall of continents, and yet she would still feel safe. But the TV alone was not enough any more. She had started taking sleeping pills. Not very strong ones, admittedly, but even so. Her doctor said she should consider asking to be let off night shifts to see if that might help. But no one got to the top by shirking, you had to pull your weight. Over the noise of the tap and her own foaming toothbrush she heard the voice say that police were looking for a person in connection with the killing of a man in a dog kennel last night, and that they linked this person to the murder of Agnete Iversen and the triple homicide in Gamlebyen.

Betty rinsed her mouth, turned off the tap and went back to the bedroom. Stopped in her tracks on the threshold. Stared at the photo of the wanted man on the TV.

It was him.

He had a beard and long hair, but Betty was trained to strip a face of disguises and masks, comparing faces with the photographs the Plaza and other international hotels kept on file of notorious hotel con men who were bound to show up at their reception sooner or later. And it was him. The man she had checked in, only without glasses, but with eyebrows.

She stared at her mobile which she had left on her bedside table.

Attentive, but discreet. Puts the hotel’s interests first. Could go far.

She pressed her eyes shut again.

Her mother had been right. That damn curiosity of hers.

From his office window, Arild Franck watched the officers from the night shift leave through the gate. He made a mental note of anyone who turned up late for the morning shift. It irritated him. People who couldn’t do their job irritated him. Like Kripos and the Homicide Squad. The police had been given a tip-off to raid the Ila Centre and even so Lofthus had eluded them. It just wasn’t good enough. And now they were having to pay the price for the police’s ineptitude. Hugo Nestor had been killed last night. In a kennel. It was unbelievable that one man, a junkie, could cause so much mayhem. The law-abiding citizen in Franck was equally outraged by this repeated example of police incompetence; at times he even felt frustrated that the police had never managed to catch him, a corrupt assistant prison governor. He had seen the suspicion in Simon Kefas’s eyes, but Kefas didn’t have the guts to go after him, the big coward, he had too much to lose. Simon Kefas was only brave when there was money at stake. That bloody money. What had Franck expected? That it would buy him a bust, a reputation as a pillar of the community? And once he had become hooked on money, it was like heroin and the numbers in the bank account became the end rather than the means because there was no longer any meaningful goal. And just like the junkie, he knew and understood it, and yet he was incapable of doing anything about it.

‘An officer called Sorensen is on his way to see you,’ said his secretary in the front room.

‘Don’t let him-’

‘He walked right past me, said it would only take a minute.’

‘Really?’ Franck frowned. Was Sorensen reporting fit for duty before his sick leave had ended? Out of character for a Norwegian worker. He heard the door behind him open.

‘So, Sorensen,’ Arild Franck said without turning round. ‘Did you forget to knock?’

‘Sit down.’

Franck heard the door being locked and he turned towards the voice in surprise. He stopped moving when he saw the gun.

‘If you make a single sound, I’ll shoot you right through your forehead.’

When you point a gun at someone, that person will usually focus all their attention on the gun and it will take time before they look at the person behind the gun. But when the boy lifted his foot and nudged the chair so that it rolled across the floor to the assistant prison governor, Franck saw who it was. The Son had returned.

‘You’ve changed,’ Franck said. He meant to say it with greater authority, but his throat was dry and no particular sound came out of it.

The gun rose slightly higher and Franck immediately dropped down on the chair.

‘Put your arms on the armrests,’ the boy said. ‘I’m going to press the button on your intercom and you’re going to tell Ina to go to the baker’s to get some pastries. Now.’

The boy pressed the button.

‘Yes?’ They heard Ina’s obliging voice.

‘Ina. .’ Franck’s brain searched desperately for alternatives.

‘Yes?’

‘Go. .’ Franck’s search ended abruptly when he saw the boy’s finger tighten on the trigger. ‘. . down to the baker’s and get me some fresh pastries, would you? Now.’