Jo Nesbo - The Son

‘It doesn’t look like him!’ Morgan insisted. ‘It is him, I keep telling you.’

‘Relax,’ his older colleague said.

‘Easy for you to say,’ Morgan snorted. ‘The guy is only wanted for six murders.’

‘I’ll call Ina on her mobile and if she doesn’t know where her boss is, we’ll start our own search. But I don’t want any panic, understood?’

Morgan looked at his colleague and back at the shift supervisor. It looked as if there was a shorter route to panic there than in Morgan himself. Personally, he just felt excited. Really excited. A prisoner, breaking into Staten, how was that even possible?

‘Ina?’ Goldsrud practically screamed into the phone and Morgan could see the relief in his face. It was tempting to accuse the shift supervisor of trying to avoid responsibility, but it must surely be hell to be middle management, reporting to the assistant prison governor. ‘We need to get hold of Franck at once! Where is he?’

Morgan saw relief give way to bewilderment and then horror. Goldsrud ended the call.

‘What. .?’ the older colleague began.

‘She says he has a visitor in his office,’ Goldsrud said, getting up and going over to the gun cabinets at the far end of the room. ‘A man called Sorensen.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Morgan asked.

Goldsrud stuck the key in the lock, turned it and opened the gun cabinet. ‘This,’ he said.

Morgan counted twelve rifles.

‘Dan and Harald, you’re coming with me!’ Goldsrud shouted and Morgan could no longer detect any trace of bewilderment, horror or fear of responsibility in his voice. ‘Now!’

Simon and Kari were standing by the lift in the atrium at Police HQ when his mobile rang.

It was the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

‘We have the preliminary DNA results from your toothbrushes.’

‘Great,’ Simon said. ‘And the score at half-time is?’

‘I’d rather call it thirty seconds before the whistle goes. Probability is over ninety-five per cent.’

‘For what?’ Simon said and saw the lift doors open.

‘That we’ve found a partial match in our DNA database to the saliva from two of the toothbrushes. What’s interesting about the match is that it isn’t to a known criminal or a police officer, it’s to a murder victim. More specifically, it proves that whoever used the toothbrushes is closely related to the victim.’

‘I was expecting that,’ Simon said, getting into the lift. ‘The toothbrushes come from the Iversen family. I noticed they were missing in the Iversen bathroom after the murder. It’s a partial DNA match to Agnete Iversen, isn’t it?’

Kari looked quickly at Simon, who held up a hand in triumph.

‘No,’ replied the voice from the Institute of Forensic Medicine. ‘We haven’t actually got Agnete Iversen’s DNA uploaded to our system yet.’

‘Oh? Then how-’

‘This is an unidentified murder victim.’

‘You can prove a relationship between two of the toothbrushes and an unidentified murder victim? Unidentified as in?’

‘As in unidentified. A very young and very dead female.’

‘How young?’ Simon asked and stared at the lift doors which were starting to close.

‘Younger than we usually get them.’

‘Come again?’

‘A four-month-old foetus.’

Simon’s brain tried to process the information to the best of its ability. ‘Agnete Iversen had a late abortion, is that it?’

‘No.’

‘It isn’t? Then who is- Damn!’ Simon closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the lift wall.

‘You got cut off?’ Kari asked.

Simon nodded.

‘We’ll be out of this lift in a second,’ she said.

The boy punctured the tape twice. Once under each nostril. And Arild Franck sucked new seconds of life into his lungs. All he wanted to do was to live. And it was the only instinct his body obeyed.

‘So, do you want to give me a name?’ the boy asked in a low voice.

Franck breathed hard; he wished he had broader nostrils, wider nasal passages for this sweet, delicious air. He listened out for sounds that would tell him help was on its way, his rescue, while he shook his head, trying to indicate with his dry tongue behind the sock, the lips behind the tape, that he didn’t have a name, didn’t know who the mole was, that he was pleading for mercy. To go free. To be forgiven.

And he froze when he saw the boy stop in front of him and raise the knife. Franck couldn’t move, every limb was taped down. Everything. . The knife came down. Nestor’s hideous, curved knife. Franck’s head strained against the headrest, every muscle tensed up and he screamed silently when he saw the blood spurt from his body.

‘Two,’ Goldsrud whispered.

The men stood with their weapons at the ready, listening to the silence behind the door to the assistant prison governor’s office.

Morgan exhaled. Now, it was about to happen now. This was the moment where he might finally get to take part in something he had dreamt about ever since he was a little boy. He would catch someone. Perhaps even. .

‘Three,’ Goldsrud whispered.

Then he swung the sledgehammer. It hit the lock on the door and splinters flew from the frame as Harald, the tallest of them, forced his way through the door. Morgan entered with a rifle held at chest height and took two steps to the left like Goldsrud had instructed him to. There was only one person in the room. Morgan stared at the man in the chair with blood on his chest, his throat and his chin. Christ, there was so much blood! Morgan felt his knees weakening as if some kind of drug had been injected into them. He mustn’t! But there was so much blood! And the man in the chair was shaking, convulsing as if he were being electrocuted. And his eyes stared at them, frantic, bulging as if he were a deep-sea fish.

Goldsrud took two steps forward and ripped the tape off the man’s mouth.

‘Where are you hurt, boss?’

The man opened his mouth wide, but no sound came out. Goldsrud stuck in two fingers and pulled out a black sock. Saliva poured from the man’s mouth and Morgan recognised the voice of assistant prison governor Arild Franck as he screamed: ‘Go after him! Don’t let him get away!’

‘We need to find out where he’s injured and stop the-’ Goldsrud was about to rip open his boss’s shirt, but Franck yelled: ‘Lock the bloody doors, he’s going to get away! He has my car key! And my uniform cap!’

‘Calm down, boss,’ Goldsrud said as he cut the tape off one armrest. ‘He’s trapped; he won’t get past the fingerprint sensors.’

Franck glared at him furiously and held up his now free hand. ‘Oh yes, he will!’

Morgan stumbled backwards and had to lean against the wall for support. He tried, but failed to avert his eyes from the blood pouring from the place where the assistant prison governor Arild Franck should have had a forefinger.

Kari followed Simon out of the lift and down the corridor to the open-plan office.

‘So,’ she said, trying to digest the information. ‘Three toothbrushes were sent to you by post with a note from someone called “S” who said they ought to be checked for DNA?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said as he pressed the buttons on his phone.

‘And two of the toothbrushes had DNA material that proves a family relationship to an unborn child? An unborn child who is registered as a murder victim?’

Simon nodded while holding a finger to his lips to indicate that he had re-established the connection. When he spoke, it was in a loud and clear voice and he had set the phone to loudspeaker mode.

‘It’s Kefas again. Who was the child, how did it die, and what was the family relationship?’